Thursday 3 May 2012

No dating, no dancing, sexual segregation: this is "victorious diversity" according to the NY Times!


Letter to the New York Times/International Herald Tribune, today. Regarding "This Prom Has Everything, Except for Boys", by Patricia Leigh Brown.

Old geezers like me will remember when they first heard of "women's liberation" and perhaps thought, as I did, "good heavens, what next!"

But gradually most of us realized the force of the argument to do away with gender discrimination in law and in society.

How sad, then, to see Patricia Leigh Brown celebrate "diversity" in the shape of an all-female prom night without even a backward glance at the battles won by her sisterhood, but now threatened by these new gender discrimination trends.

How much more laudable if these young women had defied their parents -- as have teenagers through the ages -- and stood up against a strict and misogynist belief system that would make them second-class citizens: Islamic Sharia, to be precise. It is this that forbids these young women to date, to dance with boys, to be seen in male company without a veil.  Why is the Sisterhood not up in arms about this, rather than grotesquely celebrating the alleged "victorious diversity" of what is simply sharia sexual segregation.

Shame on you, Ms Leigh Brown!

Yours, etc,
Peter F.

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