Women’s Space

I have been intending to write a post about the way so many feminists, leftists, liberals and progressives consummately misunderstand conservative Christianity and conservative Christian women in particular. I keep feeling overwhelmed by this writing project and so deciding against it. But given the across-the-board anger among women over the misogyny of the 2008 Presidential elections, it seems important to me to at least begin to take a stab at offering some of my thoughts in the interests of working towards uniting women, bringing women together, something that is not going to be possible so long as feminists simply, again, don’t get conservative Christian women (and too often don’t even try because despite all the evidence to the contrary, they think they know.)

During the 2008 election campaigns the staggering amounts of misunderstanding, misinformation, disinformation and absolute hogwash circulating about Sarah Palin and her connections with conservative Christianity were startling and, honestly, shocking to me. Cluelessness reigned, with all sorts of people claiming Palin was a “dominionist,” a “reconstructionist,” a stealth member of various kinds of secret, fascist Christian cabals and cults, and you name it. There was little to no concern for facts or for accuracy; worse, leftists, progressives, you name it, just spouted off randomly, continually, without bothering to do a bare minimum of homework, you know, talk to folks, talk to dominionists and reconstructionists and theoretically secret-cabal-and-cult-members, or if not that, at least read their writings, which are available in superfluity, in abundance, nay, in a GLUT, all over the internet. I’ve come to expect leftist and liberal men to spout off without doing any research. For the most part they are the most arrogant, bombastic, wearisome know-it-alls on the face of the earth, and it doesn’t even occur to them that they might not know everything and might should check a few things out. But I would have expected that feminist women would do some research so far as what a woman Vice-Presidential candidate actually believed, as opposed to similarly spouting off. We are talking about women here, and feminist women theoretically are concerned about women and about their relationships with and connections with all women. If they aren’t, then honestly, I give up. Because how will we ever make revolution without these connections and relationships?

A stellar example of the aforementioned cluelessness phenomenon was Naomi Wolf’s bizarre essay posted to the Huffington Post. Shortly before the elections, with a straight face and in all sincerity, Wolf wrote (and HuffPo published!) (cue Rhoda with the blonde shiny braids from the 1956 (horribly misogynist and chillingly relevant to the misogyny of the 2008 elections) horror movie The Bad Seed playing Au Claire de la Lune on the piano):

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin.You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state…

… the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them…

Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal… a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

…Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on your access to a free internet:

“Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God…Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive “viral” breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing ‘inappropriate content’. At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election…”

…Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime? Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo and speech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on into forever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computers of the challengers.

With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.

…Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all.

Wait though, hold up. What about, like, Michael Moore and Bowling for Columbine? I thought as good leftists and progressives and feminists, we were all agreed that fear-mongering was so 1990s, so ignorant, so conservative Christian, so Bush Republican and we were so done with all of that and so above it all? (Not only that, everybody I know, including me, saw the video from the Wasilla Assembly of God so I don’t even know what she’s talking about, and if there was such suppression of what she wrote on the internet, how is it that she’s got this essay up on the HuffPo?)

Wolf moves on to accuse McCain/Palin and their various operatives of messing with her e-mail accounts, corrupting her bank accounts and stealing money out of them, making her money transfers vanish, all the way up to opening her daughter’s report cards and then resealing them (no, kids never do anything like that when they are worried about their report cards), concluding (swell Au Claire de la Lune):

I am not telling you this because it’s about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life –whoever you are…History shows that nothing portects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Make no mistake: Sarah “Evita” Palin is Rove and Cheney’s cosmetic rebranding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible “fear society” in this once free once proud nation. For God’s sake, do not let her; do not let them.

I know (and hope!) this might seem to some of you — as it did to me — like a bizarre joke, but it wasn’t. Wolf honestly wrote this. HuffPo honestly published it. People read it and for the most part, took it seriously. Honestly, this whole election process has been such a fork in the road for me in so many ways because of phenomena like this!

Now, consider what the actual dominionists, reconstructionists, conservative and otherwise legitimately scary Christians were writing about Sarah Palin during this same time period in which this ridiculous essay was published on the internet. Essays of the kind I’m about to quote were all over the place. All anyone had to do was pull up Google, enter “Sarah Palin Christian”, and take her pick of hundreds and thousands of links with sentiments similar to what I’ve posted below in what came to be known as the “Palin Dilemma” debate amongst evangelicals, reformed, and otherwise conservative Christians. (Note: Einwechter and Phillips, whom I quote, were members of the group of Christians responsible for my national excommunication in 1994 and 1995. Phillips, matter of fact, publicly pronounced me a “Jezebel” more than once.)(All bolds mine.)

Sarah Palin identifies herself with the anti-Christian philosophy of feminism. She uses feminist terminology, identifies with feminist political objectives, publicly praises liberal icons of the feminist movement, and has built her lifestyle around the feminist ideal of motherhood and careerism. She represents the feminist lie that a woman can do it all; that she can be a wife and mother and pursue a full-time career outside of her home and still meet all her responsibilities in the home. She personifies the feminist image of the tough, take-charge woman who is fitted to rule and govern in any sphere she chooses. She establishes the feminist principle that if a woman can do something, and she wants to do it, she ought to do it; there should be no constraints placed on her by her family, her church, or her society. She validates the feminist notion that it is fine for a mother to leave the care and training of her children in the hands of others while she seeks her own version of success in the world. Sarah Palin has brought to light the degree to which feminist ideology has triumphed in American culture and in the American church.

— Reconstructionist William Einwechter in Vision Forum

“. . . the widespread acceptance of a pro-life professing Christian Republican, self-proclaimed feminist mother of an infant and four children as a candidate for the highest office of the land is the single most dangerous event for the conscience of the Christian community of the last ten years at least. The IQ of the Christian community has dropped 50 points. In order to win an election they have sold the core of what is right and true about the defining issue of our generation—the family! Once this threshold is passed, it will be virtually impossible apart from widespread repentance to recapture this ground.”

– Doug Phillips quoted by William Einwechter in the same link

From a post entitled “What the Bible tells us about Sarah Palin’s future — American feminism has triumphed — even on the religious right”:

Since the Republican Party suffered widespread defeat on Election Day, the GOP faithful have been debating whether the party should move to the proverbial political center or embrace the conservativism of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. What has gone unnoticed is that support for Palin is a repudiation of the Bible.

… The power of the belief that women are not eligible to lead came crashing into religious living rooms in September when more than 100 Christian bookstores, run by the Southern Baptist Convention, refused to publicly display an edition of Gospel Today magazine that featured five female pastors on the cover. The magazine had to be withdrawn from public display, said a spokesman, because the story “clearly advocates a position contrary to our denomination’s statement of faith.” Christians could only get the magazine by asking for it from behind the counter, a la Penthouse or Playboy.

How could it be that a female in the White House was acceptable at the same time that females at the pulpit posed a problem?

…politically inconvenient passages from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy … make clear that men, not women, should rule…The charitable Christian will leave aside the implications of this injunction for Palin’s notorious $150,000 clothes shopping spree, and ask how biblical fundamentalists can accept Timothy’s teachings and still celebrate a female politician skilled in forthright rhetoric.

…The answer is: Not very easily.

For those who believe that there is an all-encompassing plan by God as delivered in the Scripture, the complementarian view is fundamental. The belief in specific gender roles with men being in leadership positions over women cannot be separated from the order that the Bible says God created…

— Link from the blog Essential Estrogen

From a blog post entitled “Sarah Palin: Biblical Womanhood vs. Feminism and the Implications for America”:

But as much as Sarah Palin might be a supporter of the right to life, she is an enemy of Biblical womanhood. She’s cloaked in a sheepskin of conservatism and religion, but there’s wolf fur poking out of the edges. As we rail from the pulpit against feminism in America, against the feminizing of our culture and our men, let us remember that a vote in her direction will do more to advance the cause of feminism in America than has ever been accomplished in one single Presidential election. And most feminists do not stand for life. As we train our daughters to be keepers at home, fulfilling God’s divine plan for their lives and His Church, are we with one stroke going to cast a vote for someone who has rejected the Biblical standard of wife and mother? — Link

The “Palin Dilemma” indeed! This is the woman many of my sister feminists, and my wanna-be progressive, leftist and liberal male allies were and are so afraid of. These are the sentiments of this vast dominionist army for which she was supposedly some sort of stealth “muse”!

I walked among these scary Christians for many years. During those years, I was a leader of women, and among those women were my closest friends, mentors, sisters. I know these people– what they believe, what they stand for, what makes them tick. And that’s one reason that from the very beginning, I viewed Sarah Palin’s candidacy not as a threat to the future of feminism, not as a threat to women or to this country, but as evidence of an amazingly positive change in the wind, an incredible shift, ultimately in favor of all women. Just as the patriarchs I’ve quoted above similarly recognized her candidacy as quite dangerous to them and to their determination that white male heterosupremacy continue.

Feminists, progressives, liberals, leftists, Democrats, roundly simply did not get it. For the most part they missed something very big, big time.

For me this was exquisitely, exquisitely painful. So many feminists’, and prominent feminists’, failure to study, investigate and to be able to cogently articulate and analyze what the issues really were for conservative Christians, women in particular, and for all women, was also painful. We are talking about a large group of women here, and believe it or not, and their lives and issues are not so very different from the lives and issues of all women as women in the U.S. It is tragic to me the degree to which feminists don’t get this.

I know I am a good writer and communicator, and yet I struggle to communicate the degree of disconnect I see between the stated goals and intentions of feminism for women and the behaviors of feminists as I witnessed them during the election campaign, including towards Sarah Palin. How do we make revolution if we do not attempt to understand women, all women, and their issues and struggles? How are we ever going to connect across the kind of over-the-top fear-mongering exemplified in Naomi Wolf’s essay excerpted above and the similar fear-mongering of so many others? How are we ever going to have credibility with women who might be our allies one day if some of us are so willing to lie about them and attack them, wth no apparent interest in learning what is accurate and true about them?

Like I say, this post is a small beginning in my own project of working towards repairing the disconnect I see. Given what I see around me all of the time, though, honestly, I am just not very hopeful.

Heart

From Gunilla of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women listserv via Karla Mantilla:

Dear Friends,

I just received the news that the Norwegian Parliament passed the legislation that prohibits the purchase of a sexual service - 44 votes vot, 28 against. The Law will come into force on January 1, 2009!!!

This is indeed a great victory for all of us. Congratulations to the all the women in Norway and internationally who worked to hard to get the law passed!!!!

Warmest greetings to all of you!

Gunilla

This news is too new to provide any additional links, but I will as I am able.

Heart

Then there’s this guy.

His name is Roger Sweet and he is 60. He worked for the Ford Motor Company in Detroit for 30 years, just an everyday guy, probably went out for lunch and beer with coworkers, contributed to United Way, who knows. In all likelihood there was nothing remarkable about him.

There was a fire at his house about a year ago and his wife, Lizzie Mae Collier-Sweet, 49, (above)went missing. When police investigated, they found more than half a million images of child porn on his computer in the wreckage of his burned home. Among the images police found were more than 1,000 images of Sweet assaulting a mentally disabled 16-year-old teenage girl.

Sweet and his wife were divorcing; police found a packed bag in her car. The cause of the fire was ruled to have been arson and Sweet’s wife has not been found. She never picked up her last paycheck, she never used any of her credit cards after the fire, and her upper dentures were found in the rubble of the home. These facts caused police to re-open a long-closed case: the death of Sweet’s first wife, Marlene, in 1990, at the age of 38. Sweet had reported that Marlene Sweet was an alcoholic who had fallen and bumped her head and her death was ruled accidental. After the fire, the case was reopened and Sweet was finally charged with her murder. Marlene Sweet’s son testified that he had seen Roger Sweet abuse his mother for years, slam her against walls, threaten her with rifles. Marlene Sweet’s brother had moved in with her twice to protect her from Roger Sweet. Lizzie-Mae Collier Sweet’s sister reported that Sweet also abused her sister, at one point throwing her down the stairs.

Sweet pled guilty to the murder of his first wife and will be sentenced next week. He has already been sentenced to 10 to 17 years in prison for sexually assaulting the 16-year-old girl and 21 years, 10 months for making pornography out of his assaults.

I hope they charge him with the murder of his first wife.

But who knows, maybe they won’t. Maybe, as with his first wife, they’ll just let it go, drop the ball, despite all the eye witnesses to his abuse.

This is the way the world is for women and girls. They are raped by the neighbor (the 16-year-old was the daughter of a neighbor of Sweet), they are brutally beaten, threatened with rifles, thrown down stairs, their rapes and assaults are turned into pornography and circulated amongst their rapists’ fellow rapists and batterers. Meanwhile, their rapists, batterers, murderers — the men they live with or next door to — get up in the morning, eat breakfast, go about their daily routines. What’s another rape, another assault, another attack, another murdered wife, anyway?

Link, link, link, link, link

Heart

I had read a while ago that once her tenure as Secretary of State is over, Condoleeza Rice planned to devote herself to, at the international level, fighting violence against women. I thought that was wonderful news! If we need powerful women, of whatever persuasion, anywhere, it’s to fight violence against women.

Perhaps the following marks the beginning of this new journey for Rice.

The times are so strange, aren’t they? If leftists or feminists say a woman shouldn’t be Vice President if she has children to care for (as many did! bizarrely!), we’re supposed to still regard them as leftists and feminists, despite the fact that this is conservative, right-wing sentiment and politics. If right-wingers or conservatives support a woman in the White House, family in tow, we’re supposed to continue to regard them as right-wingers and conservatives, even though for hundreds of years, women have been fighting to serve at the top levels of U.S. government. In the same way, if a leftist or a feminist signs on to fight violence against women (well, not many leftists, male or female, would, sadly), we’re supposed to applaud. If someone like Condoleeza Rice, a Republican from the Bush Administration, signs on to fight violence against women, I guess we’re supposed to… what? Condemn her for it? Be suspicious of her motives? Be really quiet about it and not mention it and hope nobody notices?

Not me. With women targeted for femicide, tortured, raped throughout the world every minute of every day, we need some four-star generals in an ever-growing army of fighting women. So, go Condi! I wish you well.

Rice signs onto UN campaign to fight violence against women1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed onto a UN-sponsored campaign pressuring governments around the world to find ways to end violence against women, her spokesman said Wednesday.

“The secretary signed the UNIFEM (the United Nations Development Fund for Women) ‘Say-No-to-Violence’ pledge as part of the campaign at the Web site, saynotoviolence.org,” spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

In signing the document on Tuesday, Rice released a statement describing the campaign’s growing momentum and steps it has taken.

“One year ago… UNIFEM began its global campaign to advocate among publics and governments for an end to violence against women,” Rice said in the statement read by McCormack.

“During its June 2008 Security Council presidency, the United States focused on actions that would follow from UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security,” Rice said.

On June 19, she chaired a UN debate that culminated in the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820, which she said “condemns the use of sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.

“Violence against women remains a fact of life in countries worldwide,” Rice said in the statement.

“Like poverty, HIV-AIDS, poor maternal health, and lack of access to education, violence against women is an ill that affects the person, her community, and her nation,” Rice said.

With the campaign going strong, she said, “we should dedicate ourselves to creating awareness among individuals and communities of the great damage violence against women afflicts and commit ourselves to end this atrocity.”

During the debate in New York in June, Rice cited the example of Myanmar where she said “soldiers have regularly raped women and girls even as young as eight years old.”

In the meantime, Rice said the Myanmar junta keeps opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman, under house arrest instead of allowing her to take the office as the country’s elected leader.

Rice also referred to widespread acts of sexual violence in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan.

The top US diplomat also highlighted acts of sexual violence perpetrated by UN peacekeepers in several countries around the world.

Link

Army Gen. Ann Dunwoody broke through [an important glass ceiling] last week, becoming the military’s first female four-star general. But groups representing women in national security roles want the obstacle to shatter completely.

“Gen. Dunwoody’s promotion is the major advance we’ve been waiting for for 10 years,” said Lory Manning, director of the Women’s Research and Education Institute’s Women in the Military Project.

Women make up about 21 percent of the senior civilian ranks of the Pentagon and about 14 percent of the uniformed military.

…Still, Dunwoody is not in line for a promotion to the highest ranks of the military, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because she has never commanded a combat unit. The Army and the Marines bar women from serving in direct-combat infantry or armored units.

Officers in the Navy and Air Force may have a better chance, Manning said, because those services have allowed women in some combat roles since the mid-1990s. “The time is not long before we’ll not just see women in a four-star role, but one where she has responsibility for combat troops,” she said.

But groups for women in the military aren’t waiting. They’re putting together position papers for Obama’s transition team on how well women have performed and urging him to take a look at the positions closed to women.

The policy doesn’t make much sense now, women’s groups say, because the front lines in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are ambiguous.

They cite a 2007 Rand Corp. study that pointed out that, although the Army is trying to comply with its policies restricting women from combat, the definitions of combat are blurring.

The Center for Military Readiness, however, denounced the Rand study, saying it “creates needless confusion” and argues that restrictions against women serving in combat should be strengthened. Opening combat roles to women, the center said in a paper, threatens lives because women lack the physical strength to aid men in combat.

…

In a survey that year, 98 percent of men and 97 percent of women believed the most appropriate role for women in the military was as a cook, said Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey.

…

After Dunwoody’s 33 years of service, Gates, along with Central Command’s Gen. David Petraeus and past and present members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were ready to welcome Dunwoody into an exclusive club. At the end of September, just 37 four-star generals and admirals were on active duty.

But in a military that’s still less than one-fifth female, women made up close to half of those on hand for Dunwoody’s promotion. Their excitement was palpable.

Amid all the tributes, a Pentagon policewoman, her hair tied back in a bun, wiped tears from her cheek and snapped pictures of Dunwoody with her cell phone.

Link

From today’s Guardian UK:

New prostitution laws to be set out today will mean a plea of ignorance is no defence for men facing prosecution for buying sex from a woman who has been trafficked or is being exploited by a pimp.

Under proposals to be published today by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, a man who pays for sex with a woman who has been trafficked or is under the control of a pimp could face a charge of rape, which carries a potential life sentence.

The new offence of paying for sex with somebody who is “controlled for another person’s gain” is to carry a hefty fine and a criminal record.

The decision to criminalise men who pay for sex with trafficked women is likely to have a widespread impact. The Metropolitan police have estimated that 70% of the 88,000 women involved in prostitution in England and Wales are under the control of traffickers.

It forms part of a wider package of reforms to tackle street prostitution, including prosecuting first-time kerb crawlers and implementing stronger police powers to close down brothels.

The package marks a sharp change of approach for Labour, which four years ago proposed a partial decriminalisation of prostitution in red-light “tolerance zones”, and then powers to allow two or three women to work together in a brothel to provide protection for each other. The first proposal, by the former home secretary David Blunkett, was blocked by Downing Street, reportedly because of fears of a hostile media response.

Despite some expectations, today’s package will not include changes to the licensing of lapdancing clubs, although Smith has indicated that proposals will be made in future to regulate them on the same basis as sex shops. This is expected to give residents stronger powers to object and to lead to the closure of some clubs, especially in residential areas.

The change in the law follows a six-month Home Office-led review of prostitution laws which included visits by ministers, including Harriet Harman and Vernon Coaker, to Amsterdam and Stockholm to see how the law worked there.

Harman has described the flow of women brought into Britain by human traffickers as “a modern slave trade”, and said that it only exists because men are prepared to buy sex: “So to protect women we must stop men buying sex from the victims of human trafficking.”

The home secretary has made clear that under the new offence it will not be enough for a man to say “I didn’t know”. The new offence will include a “strict liability” test so that police will only have to prove that the man paid for sex, and that the woman had been trafficked. There will be no need to prove he knew it at the time.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Smith said this meant a man would be committing an offence even if he asked a prostitute whether she had been trafficked and was told that she had not been.

When it was put to Smith that this was unfair, she replied: “I will tell you what I think is more unfair. That’s that there are women in this country who are effectively being held in slavery. There would not be this exploitation, there would not be this slavery of women, controlled in the way that they are, if there was not the demand for prostitution.”

She said that in the past the government has concentrated on addressing the “supply side” issues relating to prostitution. Now the government wanted to curtail the demand.

“At the end what we also need to recognise is that if there is no demand for sex with women, there will be less trafficking,” she said.

Full article is here.

There’s an interesting article on the Daily Beast today about a poll it commissioned Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates (PSB) to conduct. Demographics of the 1,000 persons polled were as follows:

• Males [N=461]
• Females [N=542]
• Democrats [N=361]
• Republicans [N=301]
• Independents [N=341]

Highlights of the poll results:

• 85 percent of women feel strongly that a female president would definitely bring some good qualities that are lacking in most male candidates. They say it is time to elect a women president, believing such a victory will serve as a role model for the next generation. Women reject the idea that a women president would be too emotional and end up crying in the Oval Office.

• But 4 in 10 men freely admit sexist attitudes towards a female president. 39 percent of men say that a male is “naturally more suited” to carrying out the duties of the office. Almost equal numbers doubted that a women would be strong enough to carry out the job of Commander in Chief.

• 45 percent of those polled said it would be harder for a single mother than a single father to run for President. Only 10 percent said it would be harder for a single father.

• 61 percent of women saw gender bias in the media’s treatment of the candidates. Only 48 percent of women thought Hillary Clinton was treated fairly by the media, and only 29 percent believe Sarah Palin was treated fairly. By contrast, nearly 8 in 10 voters thought the press treated Obama and Biden fairly.

• Women over 50 in the proportion of 2 to 1 said Sarah Palin was subjected to unfair comments by the media.

•70 percent of women believe the topics of clothes and appearance are not fair game for discussion of woman candidates.

• More than two-thirds of women polled, 68 percent, said they were being treated unfairly in the workplace.

• 72 percent of women say they are being treated unfairly in politics.

• Whereas men, patting themselves all over the back, by 2/1 think women are treated equally at home, only 48 percent of women agree.

Only 20 percent of women polled identified as feminists, despite the overwhelming agreement among them that women are treated unfairly in the workplace, the media, in politics and at home. But, I understand that. The word “feminism” has been co-opted by all sorts of groups and individuals and organizations that are anything but feminist, and it’s confusing, discouraging and irritating. The bright spot is, women are angry, and perhaps we’ll mobilize for real change, real revolution, in the days to come.

Heart

So go vote for one of them!

H/t Feminist Peace Network.

Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism is looking for contributions for our annual ACTIVISM Issue (deadline December 5, 2008).

What does radical feminist activism mean to you? What does it look like in your life? In your community? What are your strategies as an activist for creating a culture of resistance? What are your tactics? What do you do to prevent burnout? What activist stories give you hope? Who are activists that inspire you?

Send us your creative pieces on activism as well as photos, collages, poems, chants and more! We welcome women’s writing from radical feminist perspectives and writing that contributes to radical feminist ideas. We are interested in theory, opinion, strategy, action updates, news, reviews, and upcoming events. Contributions can be sent via U.S. mail or email to Rain and Thunder, PO Box 674, Northampton, MA 01061, USA,

rainandthunder@yahoo.com, http://www.rainandthunder.org.

Join us in creating a radical feminist culture of resistance!

On Monday a French court struck down a ruling that allowed a Muslim man to annul his marriage because his wife was not a virgin, Benedicte Manier reports today.The case continues the legal battle over freedom of religion and women’s secular legal rights.

PARIS (WOMENSENEWS)–In a case that has sparked a national controversy here, a French appeals court in the northern city of Douai handed down a decision on Nov. 17 that virginity could not be considered as an “essential quality” for a valid marriage, overturning a lower French court’s decision.

The case involves an April 1 decision from a judge in the northern city of Lille to annul a French Muslim couple’s 2006 union because the bride was not a virgin as she had claimed to be. The ruling said the bride should not have lied about her virginity because it was an “essential quality” in her husband’s culture.

That raised concerns among some legal observers that the ruling could pave the way for a wider recognition of virginity as a legal obligation to marriage if a husband or family demanded it.

A few hours after the wedding night, the bride–in her 20s–was returned to her parents by her in-laws, who felt dishonored. She then agreed that her husband–an engineer in his 30s–could file for an annulment in the local court.

Women’s rights activist Sihem Habchi said she was relieved and told reporters this decision was a “recognition of equality between men and women.”

Habchi, president of the Paris-based group Neither Whores Nor Submissive (Ni Putes ni Soumises), said the Muslim women’s progressive movement had worked with other women’s rights groups to organize demonstrations after the case first broke into public view in May. Several hundred activists came together to demonstrate in Paris on May 31.

“Will one day female genital mutilations be considered as an ‘essential quality’ for a woman?” one demonstrator told reporters.

Link