FEMINISTS AND WOMEN IN IRAN [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Matthew Yglesias links to feminists talking about human rights in Iran to say that feminists are not all silent on such things and that I don't know what I'm talking about. Of course there are feminists talk about real human rights (and right about now is the big U.N. confab on women, so this is a time for such things). But how often? How loudly? They are listened to and yet what do we usually hear them talking about, and the loudest?

Unfortunately though--and tell me if this is an unfair perception on my part--when you think of NOW and co., do you immediately associate them with fighting realhuman-rights outrages or do you hear OH NO SAM ALITO WILL TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHTS? I know which press releases and sound bites I'm routinely bombarded with. I know which march on Washington (a.k.a. pre-2004 Democratic Convention) I was at.

Yesterday President Bush talked about girls in Afghanistan who are able to go to school for the first time. If I were the head of one of these groups that purports to speak for women I would have given him an award for the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban. And for challenging the U.N. and the nations of the world to take on sex slavery. Instead, they tell me he is waging a war on women.