Egypt

Live feed from 6 October Bridge. All men.

Gang assaults and rapes of women in crowds.

Ahmed Shihab-Eldin ‏@ASE 2h

80 sexual assaults in one day – the other story of #Tahrir Square @Guardian http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jul/05/egypt-women-rape-sexual-assault-tahrir-square …

A degenerate society. 95 % of women genitally mutilated.

Now the men are fighting each other with rocks.

Not too clever prediction: The military will intervene and restore order.

 More: There is a really nasty attack on Joyce Carol Oates (of all people) going on on Twitter, around the question of Muslim fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism in general, and the role of fundamentalism in the current revolt in Egypt.  As I interpret this, and tweets are so compressed that this could be somewhat inaccurate, Joyce Carol Oates asked the kind of question a professor would ask a class (She does teach at Princeton) and writer Teju Cole said it really must be awful for her to be so ignorant. Two things: First, there is the kind of question that is designed to  start a conversation and increase knowledge and understanding, the sort of question asked in classrooms. Second, the proper response to a question, which is basically a request for further information,  never is to tell the questioner that she is ignorant.

I'm trying to sort out the tweets to make them coherent, but it is difficult. Scahill may have put up something I can use, because somewhat to my surprise he follows Oates and Cole too. He  is indeed a man of parts. I'll keep looking.

This could blow up into a big literary set-to.

For my part, I think religious fundamentalism and its close brother, cultism, are hideous. They're always about respecting the rights of the Alpha male against everyone else's interests. The most awful example of a deformed culture today is Saudi Arabia.  Cole was implying that Americans have no right to criticize what goes down in Saudi and other Muslim countries, because hey, we're not perfect here in the U.S. But in the U.S. we women can walk down the street without having to encase ourselves in gunnysacks, for instance. We can even drive cars.

By what set of criteria can we be chastised for criticizing these degenerate men and their filthy society? I don't get it.

More More: This does shift the discourse a little. I can't be accurate, as I would like to be, because the tweets go by so fast. But  to me Cole was implying that Americans have no right to say anything about other countries and cultures on account of what goes around comes around and we shouldn't talk. That, to me, is a very lame argument. If we don't criticize these things, doesn't this mean we think rape and genital mutilation and running around in gunnysacks are OK for women in other countries but not for us? We have to fight these tendencies, these attacks on women, here and abroad.

This is the place where I am supposed to put in the caveat about how I know many perfectly reasonable Muslims. Which I actually do. But that is not what this is about. It's about ongoing injustices against women that, if they don't stop, seriously make me question whether these societies should survive, or can survive. A world that is miserable for women is not worth living in.

Yet more: You know, it's a pity that the winger media are the ones pointing out that the Egyptians are starving.

Comments

[Rain Trueax]

I don't have a problem with people criticizing a group who let others rape and abuse without finding fault-- wherever it's found. I think religion is just an excuse and it's found in many of them unfortunately. I do worry what will happen with Egypt as it all seems very iffy right now.

[Hattie]

Rain: Scahill says no one in that country has anything to gain no matter what happens. It's just a waste.

[Florence]

The people of Egypt are starving and the economy is shattered. And what are the men doing? Fighting for power. And raping more than usual.
IMHO, as world population continues to increase in the midst of climate change, there will be more starving people rioting and more military take overs.

[Poppa Zao]

Yes. I heard about it through Max Blumenthal's Twitter. He and others have been jumping all over her, unfairly, I think. He has a tendency to insinuate. See this tweet as an example:

A pattern for @JoyceCarolOates ?http://t.co/hnbSgBdW0b RT @SanaSaeed: Racism is natural, everyone! https://t.co/6uadyKOAIO h/t @bangpound Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 5, 2013

It's the false equivalence argument: Americans have no room to talk about ---- because we ----.

[Hattie]

Florence: Have they lost hope?
Poppa Zao: We are long overdue for attacks on white women. Who are said to be elitist. We're a much better and safer target, as a group, than white men, because we don't have much power but can be made to look as if we represent the power elite. It's all crap. Look around you. At all those elite white women, ha ha.
Thanks for being so on this issue, Brandon.

[Musings]

That is so awful to hear about the rapes. I haven't heard anything about it on the news. I wonder why.

[Pamela (LadyLuz)]

No. nothing in the British press either. Very strange.

[Hattie]

Kay, Pamela: I stopped watching mainstream news a long time ago. Twitter is where I find breaking news and links to in depth-articles. I'll try to remember always to cite my sources, so you can see where this news come from.

[Cop Car]

NPR and BBC have regularly broadcast on the situation (including sexual assaults) in Egypt - if I'm not hallucinating!

[Cop Car]

P.S. I listen to NPR and BBC via radio - not TV.

[Hattie]

Cop Car: My sources were BBC and Guardian Online, via my Twitter feed.

[Rain Trueax]

There have been articles on Daily Beast regarding what is happening to women with sexual abuse in Egypt. Maybe it's the cable news that is not covering it although I can't say as lately I haven't watched much news there.