Off to two days at the soggy beach. Blogging continues.

“They[‘ve] had mass arrests in the past few days of journalists, and of people who they thought could potentially be leaders. They did that, but the protests haven’t been shut down. They couldn’t shut it down. In fact, it has become more widespread.

Nasrin Sotoudeh is a human-rights lawyer who has represented many of these women who, over the past ten years, have been sentenced to jail or summoned to court on the basis of not observing the compulsory hijab. She recently said this movement is leaderless and is only led by those women who are doing this one revolutionary act. And that revolutionary act is not carrying a weapon. They’re not armed. This is completely peaceful.

And the only thing that they’re doing is they’re harmlessly taking something off of their head and they’re walking in the streets of Iran. The figure of this revolution is the body of these women, these unveiled women who are walking in the streets without harming anyone. Without even chanting “death to the dictator” or saying anything harmful against anyone.

Their bodies have become the revolutionary figure of this movement. And this is unprecedented.”

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Once you understand what the hijab – and its revolutionary repudiation – represents, the US/Euro feminist championing of the hijab as liberatory (“Hijab Means Power, Liberation, Beauty, and Resistance”) looks so perverted, mes petites.

We also see [in Iran] a change in gender-related norms and values. These are the concepts that refer to virtue and honor, and traditionally relate to the male protection of females virtues, and the female body.

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And what of gender fluidity, little ones? Ain’t you a mite embarrassed, throwing your lot in with I. AM. WOMAN. SEE ME SHEATHE. ?…?

Of course it’s completely hohum for soccer matches to end in bloody slaughter all over the field, but UD wondered about this comment. I think it must mean that the crowd that killed itself the other day was made up exclusively of supporters of the home team. The slaughter wasn’t even about opposing fans – just the local guys unhappy that their guys lost. What an achievement.

When will Repubs give in to their deepest passion of all and welcome The Dear Leader to the next CPAC?

[S]ome residents of Fort Myers Beach trickled back on foot, pulling wagons and carts over the Matanzas Pass Bridge in the hopes of salvaging what they could from what was once their homes. 

… [A group of] Sanibel residents wanted to ride out in a boat since the bridge was impassable, but the marina was so jammed with storm-tossed boats that [they] did not think [they] could safely navigate …

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As if they’ve gone back in time.

… Recently, her son’s teacher told the class that all the planets revolve around the Earth, and drew a picture to illustrate.

“My son, who’s a little bit of a space geek, raised his hand and was like, ‘No, that’s not how it works,’” [Beatrice] Weber says. “And the teacher was actually surprised and actually paid a lot of attention when my son explained it to him. And I was like, ‘Wasn’t he angry that you disrespected him?’ He’s like, ‘No, no, no. The teacher was very curious. He said he had never learned that before.’” …

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NY’s yeshivas: We do it our way!

Sanibel’s mayor conjures free-range bobcats, alligators, and iguanas in that sudden waterworld.

As the mayor speaks, UD remembers the flamingoes, the turtles, the gators, and tries to imagine the island today, cut off from the mainland, and teeming with loose wildlife.

We talked to our friend, Peter, who is in Croatia. He said his house looked ok in a satellite picture, but “the inside might be a disaster.” He’ll have to wait before he knows.

The chant is already all over Tehran, and you can hear it (Woman, Life, Freedom) in lots of other cities of the world these days, as the Iranian diaspora marches against theocracy.

I’ll admit I didn’t think the enslaved women of Afghanistan would have the guts to come out with it, but, inspired by the Iranian protesters, a small group of them just did. With bullets whirling about.

She wrote about it here.

My friend’s house on the ocean will probably be destroyed if the surge is eighteen feet (a possibility).

KIIILLLLLLLLLLLL the murderers!

It’s staring right at you. I tried a closer shot, but it hid in the high grasses. I maintain this wild corner of my garden in hopes that animals like rabbits will eat stuff they find there rather than in the expensive pollinator garden to their left. Its main purpose turns out to be a flophouse for deer. They bed down here for the night and then leave deep long impressions in their wake.

… საქართველო.

SING IT

Russia proved too much for the man (too much for the man, he couldn’t take it)
So he’s leaving a life he’s come to know, ooh (he said he’s going)
He said he’s going off to find (going off to find)
Ooh, ooh, ooh, what’s left of the world
The world of the sane he knew not long ago

He’s leaving (leaving)
On that midnight train to Georgia, yeah (leaving on the midnight train)
Said he’s going off (going off to find)
To a simpler place and time, oh yes, he is (whenever he takes that ride)
(Guess who’s gonna be right by his side?)

And I’ll be with him (I know you will)
On that midnight train to Georgia (leaving on a midnight train to Georgia, woo, woo)
He’d rather live in that world (live in that world)
Than live with Putin in ours (his world is nuts, his and his alone)

‘[A] distinct feature of the current protests is the presence of very young women at the forefront. In many of the protests, women appear to outnumber men and do not seem afraid of being seen without hijab, even in the presence of security forces…

As evinced by the outburst of public indignation triggered by [Mahsa] Amini’s death, her case is not seen as an isolated incident but the visible tip of an iceberg of injustice, humiliation, indignity, and oppression routinely felt by countless Iranian women intercepted by the so-called guidance patrols charged with enforcing Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code: refusing to comply with state’s conception of “Islamic hijab” in public spaces is a criminal offense punishable by flogging, incarceration, or a fine…

More than four decades after the Islamic Republic embarked on the Sisyphean enterprise of bureaucratizing a very narrow definition of Islamic morality, with an almost obsessive focus on women’s appearance in public, mandatory hijab as well as the institutions set up to enforce it have failed veritably at forcing the state’s interpretation of “Islamic hijab” on Iranian women.

Instead, this encroachment on women’s liberty has gradually sown resentment in the hearts of millions of Iranian women and their families—resentment not only toward a dehumanizing law but also toward the state as a whole. Countless videos now course through social media showing the humiliating way Iranian police officers routinely manhandle women into vans before they are taken to detention centers to be “guided” and “educated.” Such encounters are at best stressful and patronizing, and at worst lethally brutal.

It is also counterproductive. In the face of such repression, women’s voluntary adherence to the state’s ideal hijab has not increased but drastically decreased over the last few decades, something even authorities openly acknowledge. Support for the hijab law and the morality police is even lower than the rates of public compliance…’

Sajjad Safaei, Foreign Policy

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Injustice, humiliation, indignity, and oppression: It’s important to think hard about the micro-phenomenology of all the heavy black coverups – of face and mouth and breast and head and hands – reserved for the world’s women.

Now, the Syracuse University pool-drapers (see this post) will say the following: We love God, and we know that the right way to humble ourselves before our loved one is to hide from men, because above all God asks that we do not allow our female sexuality to tempt man to sin.

We can point out all we like that there’s no scriptural warrant for self-demeaning behavior whose roots lie above all, obviously, in fear – a fear of exposure and engagement and visibility that must be instilled in women at a very young age. Hijabs are something you put on your eight-year-old.

Its roots lie also in repression and self-hatred — from a young age you regard yourself as a vessel of sin that must be put away. Any stray hair may lead an innocent man to perdition. You must police your hoods and robes constantly, as do the Iranian morality police, for the slightest betrayal of your atrocious allure. It is hard to think of anything more purely, more deeply, more thoroughly, more malignantly, misogynistic.

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Who can be surprised that Iran’s women have correctly identified the state’s “obsessive focus” on… the economy? education?… no – on the perverted and violent erasure of women – as intimately and unacceptably humiliating every single moment of their lives? Who can have failed to grasp the self-annihilating stupidity of a state that thinks tickling the dicks of morality boys is more important than statecraft? It was always a matter of time before the lascivious/homicidal energy against women implicit in Islamic Iran’s twisted founding principle destroyed enough women and girls to detonate a populace enraged by daily sexual degradation.

All of this makes the work of Western hijabis – who disseminate material like this to free women who might be persuadable to be unfree – much, much, harder. Good.

The West’s idiot fashion enthusiasm for the hijab is due for a takedown. Here’s one.

[P]eople in the West continued to regurgitate the Islamist propaganda, insisting to we who know better that wearing hijab is simply “an empowering choice.” … You continued to parade the hijab on the cover of your magazines and books as if it was nothing more than benign cultural dress…

You actively supported extremists who encouraged you to make child-size hijabs in the name of inclusion and diversity.

Endorsing hijab on children is endorsing child abuse and gender segregation. Those are not cultural values; those are toxic misogynist ideals.

Here’s another:

When I see non-Muslim western women donning a hijab in so-called solidarity with Muslim women, I wonder if they take into consideration the oppression of women in Iran. For many, the hijab has become an odd sort of feminist symbol, but they do not take into account that the majority of women in the Muslim world only wear a hijab when they are forced to do so.

Separate women-only hours, sheeting on the pool windows… And here’s another reason these are great ideas!

“I’m sure it’s not only Muslims, I think there’ll be a lot of female students that would benefit from it because not everyone is comfortable with all genders swimming (together),” [another student] said.

Hey now that you mention it a lot — a TON!! — of American women are uncomfortable swimming – hell, being in the same room – with men! Now we see what hijabs and long black coats are about. I think we’ll wear them too!

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UD thanks Stephen.