The XX Factor: What women really think.

Thursday, December 13, 2007 - Posts

• Cover or Die

  Posted Thursday, December 13, 2007 2:45 PM | By Emily Yoffe
  
  
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  We often hear of the freedom from being judged by their sexual attractiveness experienced by Muslim women in traditional covering. Can we agree, however, that such freedom is compromised when it comes under threat of death? Here are two horrifying stories. In one, a young Shiite fighter in Iraq enters a girls' high school and says, "If the girls don't wear hijab, we will close the school or kill the girls." In the other, a Canadian Muslim immigrant is charged with strangling his teenage daughter. Her classmates say since she stopped wearing a head covering, her arms had been covered with bruises, and she was terrified her father would kill her. Where is the outrage from the Muslim community, from feminists, over atrocities such as this? Spokespeople for two Canadian Islamic groups say this murder was simply a sad example of "domestic violence" and, incredibly, the result of raging teenage hormones. It was about rage, all right, but not the teenage-hormone variety. I went to the National Organization for Women Web site, and I would be thrilled if someone could find the place in it in which NOW denounces forced covering and "honor" killing. When the Washington Post's fashion writer wrote about Hillary Clinton's cleavage, NOW was outraged. Their section on violence against women seems to cover every possible permutation except that of Islamic extremism. 
  Filed under: Islam, hijab

• Galjinks

  Posted Thursday, December 13, 2007 11:02 AM | By Dana Stevens
  
  
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  Dahlia's right: Female fun in the movies is a dangerous thing. There's a 1994 movie by that title, Fun, in which two teenage girls meet, form an instant, high-spirited and giggly bond, and then decide to murder an old woman together just for kicks. The obsessive bond between two wildly imaginative girls in Heavenly Creatures ends in a similarly gruesome joint undertaking. For all the diverting comedies about guy high jinks (guyjinks?), it's tough to come up with female equivalents in which somebody doesn't end up pregnant or dead. Thelma and Louise have a blast together, but then they have to crash their car into the Grand Canyon. (Thelma and Louise II: Two mangled bodies in a ditch.) There are some brilliant movies about female friendship—Heavenly Creatures is one, this year's Cannes winner, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 4 Days, is another—but they tend to focus on women helping each other through crises rather than goofing off together as a creative act. I'm racking my brain to think of exceptions; will post if I think of any.
  
  Filed under: women, movies, friendship

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