When you think you have heard it all...

"As long as there is rape ... there is not going to be any peace or justice or equality or freedom. You are not going to become what you want to become or who you want to become. You are not going to live in the world you want to live in."
-- Andrea Dworkin
"Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetuate it, and privately we excuse and overlook it."
-- Victoria Billings
" The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.... Need we wonder, then, at the sad spectacle which humanity offers us? Its hideous wars, its social abominations, its foul creeds, its treacheries, vices, wants, diseases, lusts, tyrannies, and crimes are the natural outcome of the subjugation of one half of the human race by the other."
-- Tennessee Claflin

I can't even express the rage I felt when I read this news story. I would like to think that I try my best to be tolerant of other races and religions. I try to understand them and respect their ways and accept that their beliefs are just as important as my own. When I hear a story like the following, I just want to chuck all of that out the window and nuke all the men who subjugate women. Is it just coincidence that the majority of them seem to be Muslim? Quite a plateful of food for thought. BTW, N.O.W., why don't you get off your lazy, liberal, lobby kissing asses and get involved. If you have such political clout, why don't you use it?!

UP woman forced to 'marry' her father-in-law rapist

Wed Jun 15, 6:39 AM ET

A rape victim in Uttar Pradesh is being forced by village elders to "marry" her rapist -- her father-in-law, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Community leaders in Charthawal village, backed by local Muslim clerics, believe that by being raped, 28-year-old Imrana's 10-year marriage has been nullified under Islamic law, The Asian Age newspaper said.

Holding a special council on Sunday, village leaders ordered the mother of five to leave her husband, Noor Mohammed, and live with her parental family for seven months and 10 days and make herself "pure" again, The Age said. It did not say how she becomes pure.

After that, she must "marry" her father-in-law and live with him, along with his legal wife.

"She... will then be like a mother to Noor Mohammed," the paper quoted local cleric Shamim Ahmad saying.

Her four brothers have agreed to the edict. She has not but in India, victims of crime often have nowhere to turn and with even her own family supporting the edict she may have little choice.

Police are now investigating and say they plan to arrest the father-in-law. They refuse to comment on the village elders' ruling, saying it is a sensitive religious issue.

Stay cool and safe! And Yoan, thanks for all you do in the name of freedom in Iraq. With freedom, suffrage will come to the Iraqi women! Hopefully, one country down, with many more to go. Let's hope they are like Dominos!