Religion 2, women 0
Watched a report on the BBC News channel last night about "bride kidnapping" and the like in Chechnya, which was pretty unrelentingly grim and horrific (branching out as it apparently often does into rape and murder). Perhaps the lowlight, however, was a brief interview with Ramzan Kadyrov, the Putin-backed ex-rebel president, which was startling in it's cheery take on "bandit folk Islam", and consequent frank scoffing at women's rights, the law, democracy, etc. If we're stuck with Putin through fear of something worse (outright collapse of the Russian state, as appeared to be on the cards at one point -- glossing over that we're stuck with him largely because we're stuck with him), and Putin is stuck with this guy through fear of something worse (to prevent runaway secessionism, as a bulwark against supposed Islamic fundamentalism in the region, etc), you really start to wonder how far the depths of "least of assorted evils" goes down.
Just watched half a programme on C4 on divorce in Orthodox Judaism. Lots and lots of rather predictable religious stupidity and gross sexism. What most got me down about this one was one UK woman (a "chained wife" who had a civil divorce, but was refused a religious one) speaking with some disdain about the prospects of being reduced to a Reform remarriage, or a civil one, and approvingly of the situation in Israel, where religious marriage law is the law of the land. (The upside from her point of view being that there, some such husbands get lent on by the state on to cough up the divorce.) That couldn't help but strike me as a swallowing a theocratic cat to get rid of the religious mouse that was wriggling around inside her. No chance of just leaving the religious denomination that's causing the whole problem, then? The second half of the programme may have had more to say about the lack of civil divorce -- or indeed civil marriage, as I understand it -- but by that point I'd switched over to C4+1 to see the news I'd missed earlier, and to avoid making myself even more fed up.
In other "news", it's pouring down outside. Goodbye July, hello, more of the same, it seems.
Just watched half a programme on C4 on divorce in Orthodox Judaism. Lots and lots of rather predictable religious stupidity and gross sexism. What most got me down about this one was one UK woman (a "chained wife" who had a civil divorce, but was refused a religious one) speaking with some disdain about the prospects of being reduced to a Reform remarriage, or a civil one, and approvingly of the situation in Israel, where religious marriage law is the law of the land. (The upside from her point of view being that there, some such husbands get lent on by the state on to cough up the divorce.) That couldn't help but strike me as a swallowing a theocratic cat to get rid of the religious mouse that was wriggling around inside her. No chance of just leaving the religious denomination that's causing the whole problem, then? The second half of the programme may have had more to say about the lack of civil divorce -- or indeed civil marriage, as I understand it -- but by that point I'd switched over to C4+1 to see the news I'd missed earlier, and to avoid making myself even more fed up.
In other "news", it's pouring down outside. Goodbye July, hello, more of the same, it seems.