[BRIEF NOTE] "There must be violence against women"

On the subjects of good old-fashioned family values and the strongly negative effects of tribalism on women, a while ago someone on my friends list linked to Maged Thabet Al-Kholiody's article "There must be violence against women", published in the Yemen Times. It's an interesting read.

Relationships between fathers and daughters or sisters and brothers also provoke argument from human rights organizations, which propose the suggested solutions for all relationships. Personally, I don’t think fathers or brothers would undertake such behavior unless there was a reason for it.

Fathers are responsible for their daughters’ behavior, but human rights organizations deny this too. Brothers also should take action regarding their sisters’ behavior, especially if their parents are too old or dead. If a daughter or sister makes a mistake--especially a moral one--that negatively affects the entire family and its reputation, what’s the solution by such organizations?

According to them, women should complain to the courts about any type of violence against them. Likewise, should fathers and brothers complain to police if their daughters or sisters violate moral, Islamic or social norms?

Fathers should handle their daughters via any means that suits their mistake; thus, is it better to use violence to a certain limit or complain to the police? Shall such women then complain to the police against their fathers or brothers? It’s really amazing to hear this.

Yemen is a country where tribalism has historically been strong, product of a geography that encouraged the country's fragmentation into small semi-sovereign political units, long more powerful on the ground than any state claiming sovereign power on the ground. The tribe--a social unit held together by claims that its membership shares common ancestry--may well have the potential to undermine the position of women who, if they were autonomous, might threaten these claims. The imposition of strict religious law certainly wouldn't help the matter.

It's perhaps for this reason that, as Carmen Niethammer documents in her 2005 World Bank paper for the World Bank "Gender and Development in Yemen: Women in the Public Sphere," women in Yemen lack access to education, health care, the political system, and the labour market to a degree virtually without precedents elsewhere in the Middle East. It might also explain how, as Amira Al-Husseini at Global Voices Online reported last May, a recent study that found that 70% of a sample of 191 Yemeni women suffered abuse at the hands of their husbands and fathers.

[LINK] "Ich bin ein Vancouverite: The quest for JFK's rumoured heir comes to Canada"

From today's edition of The Globe and Mail:

The Vancouver news media was in a tizzy yesterday, searching for a tall man in his late 40s named Jack, after reports surfaced that U.S. President John F. Kennedy had fathered a child who was living in Vancouver.

The New York Post reported that Vanity Fair magazine had been pursuing the story for more than a year, but had dropped it recently after contact with Senator Ted Kennedy, JFK's brother.

The Post said Vanity Fair had tracked down a tall man in his late 40s named Jack who bears a striking resemblance to JFK - and lives in Vancouver. The Post said the man's mother, who had been introduced to JFK by then-vice-president Lyndon Johnson, slammed the door when the magazine appeared at her home. Calls to Vanity Fair and the senator's office were not returned yesterday.

Although details were scarce and confirmation impossible, the possibility of Vancouver having its own claim to Camelot, a week before Valentine's Day, proved too tantalizing for local news media to resist.

"Could JFK have fathered another son and is he living in Vancouver? Answers tonight," promised a promo for Global's News Hour.

The local CBC website put out a call, asking listeners if they knew anyone who looked like a Kennedy. "We want to see your photo of someone who you think looks like the late American president."

On CTV's News at Six, reporter St. John Alexander stopped women of a certain age on the street and asked them if they'd had intimate relations with JFK. "I wish," one responded.

[. . .]

At the Vancouver chapter of Democrats Abroad, chairman Sean Lauer was excited by the possibility of having a Kennedy around. "If this was somehow true and he was willing to sort of promote Democrats Abroad and the ability of people in Vancouver and actually all through Canada to vote from abroad in the U.S. election, then I'd be happy if that was the outcome."

[URBAN NOTE] Code-switching

I was riding home, westwards on the westbound Bloor-Danforth line, when the train stopped at Spadina station and two women and their children boarded, one child per mother, and settled down just across from me. The children, one boy and one girl, sat next to each other while their mothers stood across from them, chatting to each other as each held her own beautiful big bouquets of flowers. One of the woman had a knit purse with "El Salvador" stitched into the side.

As I watched the children tug the water-filled vials attached to the stems of those flowers that were sticking out of the plastic wraps, I heard the women hadn't been switching fluently between English and Spanish as they talked to each other. One woman, the taller one, was distracted by her son, who kept asking her for juice, or pop, when they got home.

- Leche or agua.