Equality of the sexes

It's all too easy to forget that "women's liberation" hasn't even begun in some parts of the world, and that women aren't even given the dignity of being treated as second-class citizens.

In Saudi Arabia, an illiterate woman is set to be executed after she was tortured into confessing to using witchcraft to make a man impotent. And tribal elders in Pakistan decide that women shouldn't vote.

Here in the western civilized world (and I make no apology for using that term), there are people who want to roll back the clock and return to their imagined glory days where women knew their place. Childless old men like Pat Buchanan and macho wanna-be Patriarchs are trying to frighten European women with scare stories that if they don't give up their jobs, stay home, obey their husbands and have lots of babies, the terrorists will win and the Muslim Hordes will take over. It's the Yellow Peril redux, only now it's the "slightly off-white, not quite brown, Islamo-fascist Peril".

I believe that many feminists have well and truly lost their way, but don't imagine that means that feminism is no longer relevant or necessary. The forces of evil are still out there.

But it's not all bad news. Although the meme of sexism dies slow, it does die. When a religious school tried to ban a woman from refereeing a basketball match, her male colleagues boycotted the game:

The reason given, according to the referees: Campbell, as a woman, could not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's beliefs.

[...]

"I said, 'If Michelle [Campbell] has to leave, then I'm leaving with her,'" Putthoff said Wednesday. "I was disappointed that it happened to Michelle. I've never heard of anything like that."

Fred Shockey, who was getting ready to leave the gym after officiating two junior high games, said he was told there had been an emergency and was asked to stay and officiate two more games.
"When I found out what the emergency was, I said there was no way I was going to work those games," said Shockey, who spent 12 years in the Army and became a ref about three years ago. "I have been led by some of the finest women this nation has to offer, and there was no way I was going to go along with that."

Isn't that something?