Want to know what’s wrong with the world? Here it is, a picture paints a thousand words as they say, so here are three:
#1 A solidarity march for Charlie Hebdo. Do you see German Prime Minister Angela Merkel front and center? Can’t miss her, right? Elbows linked with other marchers who are marching for the right to free speech, the right not to be censored.
#2 Here’s how the photo appears in the orthodox newspaper HaMevaser. Merkel is photoshopped out along with two other women Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. The names of these three women are also not printed in the paper.
#3 Here’s what the photo looks like with the women shown and the men disappeared. I don’t know who created this photo but I saw it on Soraya Chemaly’s Facebook page.
Lori Day comments on Soraya’s page:
The secondary benefit of this photo, to me, is showing how few female leaders we have. Look at that empty street. PROBLEM.
Is this the march that the White House is apologizing for not sending a higher level official to? Why is that story headline news while this sexism is under the radar, something I didn’t hear about until I checked my Facebook page? Why does the world sit by and allow sexism to happen again and again and again?
HaMevaser, this is a visual assassination. The world is waiting for an apology for your sexism and misogyny, for falsifying news, for using censorship to supposedly cover a story censorship, for using religious extremism to cover a story about religious extremism, for being hypocrites and liars.
They also removed prime minister of my country (Poland) and he was male. What I supposed to think about this? Maybe they removed Merkel due to her nationality? She is german and maybe they still remember death caps and didn’t forgive. And removing other woman was just a bonus.
As a Jew, I am BAFFLED by HaMavaser. The misogyny of the laws of Judaism are remarkably specific:
1. Menstruation is considered dirty
2. A woman may not enter the temple (that is, the one that was DESTROYED and has not been rebuilt) while menstruating.
3. A woman must go to the mikvah–a special bath where you can do ritual cleansing–after her menses in order to regain “cleanliness.”
4. A husband must not engage in sexual relations with his wife during her menses (and for 12 days after it is over, I believe) or else he must also go to the mikvah for cleansing. So period sex is not prohibited–you just gotta clean up afterwards.
From these laws (which are already embarrassingly backward), Orthodox Jews have decided that a man cannot touch a woman who is menstruating (which is NOT what it says). Since you can’t tell by looking that a woman is menstruating, and since you can’t trust those wily bleedin’ wimmin to tell when you they have cooties, the Orthodox have decided that men cannot touch women other than their wives/women they have a close enough relationship with that they know when they’re on the rag.
It’s bad enough that the laws of my faith make it clear that menstrual blood = spiritual cooties. For the Orthodox to decide that the cooties are passed via skin-to-skin contact and not just sexually transmitted is unbelievably offensive. To go from THERE, which already sucks, to saying that women simply don’t exist in public is a level of crazy-town I simply cannot understand.
We need more women in politics. Once they have to print a photo where three men are standing on an otherwise empty street, they might rethink their ideology.
Also, why do they even print this photo, when they are clearly against freedom of speech?
I just have to say LOL the irony! Gets Photochoped out of the photo of a protest for free speech for being a woman! What this paper did is an absolute joke!
This is why I’m with Bill Maher when he says RELIGION is a problem. Obviously, it’s not something that can be eradicated, but we need to stop pretending Islam is the only one with BAD ideas. I was raised Jewish (reform, not orthodox) and identify as atheist now. I admire some things Pope Francis has said. All religions need to adapt the way Catholicism is starting to. Removing the women is NOT ACCEPTABLE.
Perhaps if more women were in charge there’d be less violence.
Good visuals. Glaring inequality of the playing field.