Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Opinion

Iranian Women's Key Role in the Iran Election Protests

June 22, 2009 02:59 PM ET | Bonnie Erbe | Permanent Link | Print

Reader Comments

Women peace builders in Iran

Readers might be interested in a prescient 2006 report that traces the history of Iranian women’s struggles for their rights. Iranian women have long allocated funds for women's empowerment, by working with civil society groups, and by organizing workshops and educational programs. They are also leading in the use of electronic and mass media as part of their push for rights. Its key finding? “The struggle for women’s rights is fully intertwined with the larger struggle for democracy.” The report can be found at: www.huntalternatives.org/iran.cfm

Females the source of all males

All faiths tell girls they're doomed to be mothers and cover the earth with people who will pay ten percent of their lifetime income to feed and house clerics. How insulting it is to expect them to lose girlish energy and beauty and become nothing but caretakers of males when, without women, there would not be people of either gender.

Why cover women?

Is it true that Muhammad's daughter Fatima by his first wife was so beautiful that she was supposed to cover herself for personal safety, being so alluring to men? I suggest that some males, being easily aroused by seeing any part of a female, draw attention away from their abnormally extreme interest in sex, so they blame women. Like "Oh my, here comes a female. Don't expose yourself to weak little me, because even the sight of an ankle drives me crazy with lust." I was in Riyadh in the mid-1970's. A Muslim woman told me some women wear three veils to please older relatives. Some wear two to please other relatives, some wear one veil and they take it off in the airplane when they visit Europe. In the U.S.A. the Catholic Church still tries to prevent men and women from having small families of tithers--to me, that grab of power is as stifling as layers of veils.

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About Bonnie Erbe

Bonnie Erbe is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and hosts PBS's weekly news analysis program, To the Contrary with Bonnie Erbe. She also writes a weekly syndicated newspaper column for Scripps Howard News Service.

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