I posted this on another thread, but few read it. Increasing Independence of Pakistan’s Women Has a Price We certainly can support these women, but ultimately they must band together and fight their own horrific misogynistic situations. Let’s clean up our own house before we venture forth into theirs. Example: Remember Sabrina Harman, the young woman that worked as a guard on the night shift at Abu Ghraib? The reason she joined the army was to pay for college. Described as a gentle, sweet woman who “wouldn’t hurt a fly” her interest lay in photography. She took many of the pictures that we have seen. But that’s all she did. Yet she was sentenced to six months in prison, a reduction in rank to private, a forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and a bad conduct discharge. NONE of the men who were responsible for her subject’s death (the man who had been tortured to death) were ever prosecuted, NO one above the rank of sergeant was even tried. Harman and her friends caught in the photographs were punished for embarrassing the administration, One central irony: Sabrina Harman was threatened with prosecution for taking pictures of a man who had been killed by the CIA. She had nothing whatsoever to do with the killing, she merely photographed the corpse. But without her photographs we would know nothing of this crime. This is one example of women still getting the short end of a very long stick or as Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver (unfortunate last name in this context) recalled the mounting excitement among her male colleagues, including men from the CIA and the DIA, as different interrogation techniques were being bandied about. “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas.” Nuf said.

James, you’ve followed changing times, showing sensitivity to so many challenges you see around you regardless of whether they’re kith, kin or strangers. Your voice is heard here and reaches all over thanks to wOw. Keep it up!

My heart is pulsing with sympathy and grief for your experience. After 3 healthy children, and being very pinched for funds, my husand and I told my doctor we wanted to have my tubes tied. To our utter astonishment, this had to be presented as a petition to a board at our hospital. This board, consisting of 3 male doctors, refused to allow the procedure. Yes, they wrote up their reasoning: I might feel I wanted no more children, but my husband might change his mind in the future and thus the decision to tie my tubes might prove to be unfair to him, EVEN THOUGH he signed the petition! You see, my 3 healthy children were all girls, and these men simply could not stretch their minds to believing my husband would not eventually crave that more valuable child: a son! There is such a primal scream within me over the fact that men do not want to allow women control over their own bodies. I have a terrible time understanding why EVERY woman does not feel and hear this scream within herself!

Women still do not hold their own “pink slip”, and social conservatives want to put it further out of reach. How far women have come says much about women. How far they have yet to go says much about men. Testosterone poisoning is one of the great undiagnosed ailments of the world.