This excerpt is from the November 12 New Yorker article called “Two Revolutions: What has Egypt’s transition meant for its women?” by Wendell Steavenson.
If the cause of women in Egypt has an immediately recognizable face, it is that of Samira Ibrahim. In March 2011, Ibrahim, who is now twenty-six, was one of seven female protesters who were arrested, beaten, electrocuted, and forced to submit to virginity tests. Their hymens were inspected by a male Army doctor who left the door of his examination room open, exposing the women to the leers of the guards outside. Of the seven, only Ibrahim was willing to bring a lawsuit against the Army. The response of the generals echoed the typical chauvinism of mainstream Egypt. The Army did its best to discredit her story, initially denying that the incident had occurred, and then casting aspersions on the morals of the women involved. “The girls who were detained were not decent girls like your daughter or my daughter,” one senior general told a CNN reporter, and asserted that not all of them had been virgins. Ibrahim was taunted in the street and vilified online. But, last December, she won her case, and a court ruled that virginity tests were unlawful. Graffiti portraits of her started to appear all around Tahrir Square, and, in a few months later, Time named her one of the world’s hundred most influential people.
Does that sound a little bit familiar? Sort of like recent anti-abortion laws in Virginia and other states?
Don’t think it can’t happen here. So women, you must vote in state elections and get rid of the politicians who use “morals” as an excuse for making misogyny state law.