Punishing the victim, then punishing her more for protesting this

Just in case you were in too good a mood today, this should fix it for you:

A lawyer for a gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six-months in jail says the punishment contravenes Islamic law.The woman was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes – she was in an unrelated man’s car at the time of the attack.When she appealed, judges doubled her sentence, saying she had been trying to use the media to influence them.

Despite this, the woman and her lawyer are continuing to fight:

Her lawyer has been suspended from the case and faces a disciplinary session.Abdel Rahman al-Lahem told the BBC Arabic Service that the sentence was in violation of Islamic law:”My client is the victim of this abhorrent crime. I believe her sentence contravenes the Islamic Sharia law and violates the pertinent international conventions,” he said. “The judicial bodies should have dealt with this girl as the victim rather than the culprit.” The lawyer also said that his client his will appeal against the decision to increase her punishment.

Who knows what may happen to them as they continue their fight. (Thanks, Jender-Parents.)

Cary Tennis on feminism and names

Cary Tennis, in Salon, has an impressive response today to a reader wondering whether to change her name upon marriage.  In particular, it begins with a beautiful statement on feminism:

I think that the groundbreaking work of feminism, the work for which the pioneers, theoreticians, tacticians, adherents, proponents, members-by-charter and even secret, closet members of this world-historically important movement of liberation, the important work, the very crucial work, has been that work which untied the unconscious bonds of slavery that women had worn for millennia, untied those bonds by digging deeply into daily assumptions, those beliefs we held most sacredly because we did not know we held them. It was this difficult and collective work of self-discovery that untied a system of male dominance that was so hard to untie because it was, as it were, tied from underneath and behind, impossible to dismantle by oneself, like a chastity belt locked by the departing master. It was in the peeling back of layers to see how one privilege lay upon another, how the links of chain wound out of sight through hidden labyrinths of oppression. Those discoveries have resulted in great freedoms for women and in new customs and cultural practices. Some of those practices are important and some are seemingly trivial; it is easy for the young to mock some of these practices if they do not know the history.

After some more discussion (worth reading), he concludes:

My choice would be to go ahead and choose a name that puts it in the record books, that puts one in the win column for feminism.That way, when your kids say, Why do you have a different name from Daddy? you can tell them that there was a time when women were not free to choose what name to take, when women basically belonged to the man they married, when they had to obey him and, in fact, had to obey pretty much any man they saw on the street, whoever he may be, just because he was a man, much the same way that there was a time that black people belonged to white people and had to obey pretty much any white person at all, and could not choose their own names, but were given the names of the white people they belonged to.But it’s your decision. That’s the point. If you want to take your husband’s name, then take it. You are free. The important thing is that you are free.

(Thanks, Jender-Mom, for the link!)

Update: On further reflection, one might worry that Tennis thinks feminism, while noble, is a thing of the past that has accomplished all its goals; and that all there is now to do is to commemorate it. And it is true that his focus is on feminism’s history. But there’s nothing remotely dismissive about it– none of that “feminism was great but now there’s no need let’s all get over it” stuff.