The XX Factor: What women really think.

Neda and All Her Sisters

Anne Applebaum puts the Neda video in context, by forcefully arguing that women's rights advocates—not Bush or Obama or Twitter—are behind the incredible energy in the Iranian vote and the protests: "The truth is that the high turnout was the result of many years of organizational work carried out by small groups of civil rights activists and, above all, women's groups, working largely unnoticed and without much outside help." She also explains why the presence of so many women on the streets matters:

Obama in Cairo: Nice Start. What's Next?

Without question, this was the first serious foreign policy speech Obama has made as president. In giving it, he broke a number of taboos and slid over several potential minefields, reaffirming America's commitment to Israel as well as to Palestinian statehood in front of an Egyptian audience, and going out of his way to make statements about democracy, womens' rights, and religious freedom. If the speech were the dawn of a new age of public diplomacy then I'm all in favor.

Two things worried me about it, however... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!) 

Love, Marriage, Recession ... Rape?

Two notable pieces of news about women's rights and rape.

On the domestic front: Could the recession end up leading to a drop in rape convictions? Yesterday, ProPublica noted that the Los Angeles County police department is severely backlogged in processing rape kits—which sometimes contain DNA that leads to arrests and convictions. According to the site,

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has 4,700 untested rape kits, which potentially contain DNA evidence taken from sexual assault victims. The police department's backlog, which was the subject of a ProPublica and Los Angeles Times investigation [2] in November, is currently more than 4,000 cases. LAPD officers never sent many of the kits to the department's lab, which is underfunded and understaffed. ...

Meanwhile, on the foreign front: Is Afghanistan sliding backward in its treatment of women? According to the United Nations, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has signed a bill that is a blow to women's rights; and it looks like he did so in a craven bid to gather votes before the summer elections. From what I can tell, not a peep yet from the White House about this bill. But activists are already demanding a response, and you can see why. According to the Independent,

the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home. ...

The bill draws explicit lines in the sand about consensual sex within marriage. It apparently "stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least 'once every four nights' when travelling, unless they are ill." There is, however, a silver lining, as Beliefnet points out: The bill's proposed marriage age for girls was originally 9; in the final version, it's 16. It also originally contained "provisions" for temporary marriage, which some believe to be a form of legalized prostitution; those provisions were removed.