Coincidentally, I read this upsetting piece (by Mona El-Naggar in the New York Times) about the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s attitude toward and treatment of women on the same day I read on some website a series of responses Republican women pols are robotically giving to journalists’ questions regarding women’s rights — specifically, the regressive Republican plans to take away our right to choose what we do with our bodies.
Given the loudly stated GOP platform, it’s natural and right that Republican women are being asked these questions by reporters. And they all have the same ready answer: such questions, they say (as they refuse to answer them) are a “distraction” from the “real” issues. Nobody, they say, is trying to take away women’s rights. There is no war against women.
Ann Romney, who ipso facto can be granted some expertise on women’s choices but none as far as I know about the economy, answers such questions with “That’s a distraction and I want to talk about the economy and jobs.” Ann Romney Declines To Answer Questions On Gay Marriage, Contraception.
“Distraction,” say Republican women, about women’s rights. Yeah, it sure is a distraction. All these women had better read the Times piece, which begins:
CAIRO — Women are erratic and emotional, and they make good wives and mothers — but never leaders or rulers. That, at least, is what Osama Abou Salama, a professor of botany at Cairo University and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, told young men and women during a recent premarital counseling class.
…
“Can you, as a woman, take a decision and handle the consequences of your decision?” [Abou Salama] asked?
A number of women shook their heads even before Mr. Abou Salama provided his answer: “No. But men can. And God created us this way because a ship cannot have more than one captain.”
Don’t Republican women get it? They might as well be sitting in Mr. Abou Salama’s class, mutely nodding their scarf-wrapped bobble-heads. Because they are true sisters with the women who follow meekly behind their Muslim Brotherhood masters.