Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Liz Jones fucks it up

This article, by Liz Jones, is perfectly acceptable:

The body of 16-year-old Medine Memi – her first name means ‘civilisation’ - was discovered tied to a chair in a hole in the garden of her home in a small village in south-eastern Turkey.
She had been buried alive as punishment for having talked to boys on the telephone. We know she was buried alive because of the amount of soil found in her stomach and lungs. Her father and her grandfather have been arrested.
Medine lived in a country mired in the dominance of a medieval, backwards-thinking, feudal patriarchy, albeit one that has been taking steps to stamp out violence towards women in its bid to be allowed into the European Union.
In 1998, the country’s supreme court overturned a law that criminalised adultery. In 2004, it introduced mandatory life sentences for those who carry out so-called ‘honour’ killings.
But despite these measures it continues to fail to protect its women and children. Four out of ten women in Turkey are beaten by their husbands. Half of all murders are ‘honour’ killings.
In an attempt to circumvent the stiffer sentences, ‘honour suicides’ have mushroomed.
Batman, a town in the south-east of Turkey, has been nicknamed ‘Suicide City’: three-quarters of all suicides here are committed by women – nearly everywhere else in the world, men are three times more likely to kill themselves.
Women who are told to kill themselves are usually given three options: a noose, a gun or rat poison. They are then locked in a room until they have done the deed.
Despite all of the above, President Obama made no mention of this shocking record on women’s rights in the speech he made during a visit to Istanbul last year in which he urged the EU to welcome Turkey with open arms.
He concentrated instead on the far less controversial issue of global warming.
Girls in Afghanistan are staying home because of a spate of acid attacks. In Italy, a country where until 1981 ‘honour’ was an ‘extenuating circumstance’ for murder, a young Moroccan woman was murdered last autumn by her father for wearing jeans.
In Iran, honour killings are legal. In Pakistan, a 17-year-old girl who, it was claimed, became pregnant by a man who was not her husband was forced to give birth before having her baby thrown to its death in a canal. The teenager was then mauled by dogs before being fatally shot in the head.
But can we in the West really claim the moral high ground when it comes to condemning these ‘honour’ killings’?
I would counter that the number of women harmed psychologically and physically by the West’s obsession with extreme youth far outstrips the number of women who are murdered for adultery, or even for the ‘crime’ of being the victim of rape in Islamic countries.
Every society has things it should be ashamed of. We have battered wives, domestic violence, child abuse, rape. These crimes are not done in the name of religion, other than as part of our cult of worshipping only women who are barely adolescent.
Violence against women is widespread in all countries. In Britain, 45 per cent have experienced some form of domestic abuse. In Germany, that figure is 37 per cent. Let’s not make this a war against Islam.
Let’s make it a war between genders, and try to fix it with education and emancipation, not prejudice.

Unfortunately this isn't the article that appeared in today's Mail, because for some reason it was decided by someone - presumably Jones herself - to introduce Emma Watson into the article, not with a shoehorn so much as a nine-pound hammer:

You could be forgiven for thinking the 'we' in that instance refers to 'we at the Daily Mail'. Let's not forget the newspaper's delight at her 'wardrobe malfunction' and how they used the opportunity to use another upskirt photo; or how they used paparazzi photos of her in a bikini; or how they said:

Emma Watson shows how much she's grown up at Harry Potter premiere

Jones isn't criticising her own employers, though, but society at large for valuing 'virginal' beauty above all other characteristics. I'm not so sure that you can uncouple that from what the mainstream media have to say about women's bodies from how women are seen, but there you are. Perhaps you can, perhaps you can't. All I do know is that Liz Jones had a perfectly reasonable article there, wrecked beyond belief by a clunky, jarring comparison between successful, young Emma Watson and the fate of Medine Memi. Surely there are better cases to choose when highlighting Western hypocrisy towards women's rights?

So, it's not that bad really. It just could have been so much better. Someone could have turned around, at any point, and said: Do you know what, Liz, this doesn't quite work... but no-one did, and so we're left with something pretty feeble instead.

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