Terrible events in Iran by brutal police

So pleased someone has commented that it isn't only men who are involved in the police actions. A friend who lived in Iran said that the people who really supervise and administer punishment to women not wearing the hijab are the women police and they can be very violent. Religious fundamentalism has never been purely a male preserve.

Good to see the State tv hacked, if only for a few seconds, in support of all the people murdered in Iran by the so called security or morality police.
Yes Maybee70 I agree with your comment.

Let us try and be non aggressive to each other on this matter.

Agree

Much as I agree with the criticism of the treatment of women in Iran I don’t think there has been widespread condemnation and publicity given to what’s happening to women in Afghanistan since the west pulled out and let the Taliban rule the country. We let down the Afghan people so badly

Looks like quite a wind of change is blowing through Iran. The days of power of the ayatollahs might be numbered. Fingers crossed. This is 2022 not 1022!

While Iran is a male dominated society that is isolated from the west nothing is going to change, like Afghanistan and a few others we have no influence, when a woman has a husband or brothers in the same house there is little alternative for most.

If these countries become open and secular then it will change.

I am awestruck about what the young women - and not only women - in Iran are doing.

Yes you're right, there were a couple of newsreaders in the early days, Nan Winton for the BBC. She apparently wasn't acceptable for what ever reason, and it wasn't till 1975 that the BBC agreed that Angela Rippon was acceptable. ITV did a bit better with Barbara Mandell in 1955 who did appear quite often and was the first permanent woman newsreader to broadcast on the News at 10 in 1967. Not a ringing endorsement but better than the Beeb!

They are still in their Middle Ages. It will probably take about 1400 years for them to shake off religion. That's about the length of time it took Europe to escape from dogmatic Catholicism and witch burning though there are worrying signs of religion becoming political in the US.

I just googled earliest female newsreaders! Several were noted.

MerylStreep

Chapeau
The video I watched showed these women trying to strip the woman they were attacking. If it wasn’t so sick it would be laughable ?
The morality police trying to strip a woman on a public street in front of men !!! You couldn’t make it up.

This is where indoctrination leads everyone, no matter which sex or religion
or creed or colour, eventually.

We had a TV in 1949. My stepfather was a radio ham and built our first one at that time . It could be a bit fuzzy,but I remember Ice skating and Muffin the Mule. Can't find any evidence of lady newsreaders at this time. There was a young woman who presented a children's programme in the mid 50's called Jennifer. Apparently I wanted to be her when I grew up, but apart from her? Who were they? Perhaps their names have fallen into obscurity that's why they're not appearing in any search.

Female newsreaders on BBC and ITV in the 50s.
Actually I was more struck by the bravery of an older lady photographed in Iran tearing off her hijab to reveal white hair. How difficult her life must have been and how that must have made it do much harder for her to be do brave.

Ethnic minorities in some countries are treated terribly, the Uyghur people in China particularly so, and often Christians there too.
There have been some reports that I wish I had not read, one concerned a young disabled boy and it is hard to get out of my head.
Women and their rights seem to be under threat in so many places.

I think it was Angela Rippon who was the first female news reader in 1975, I think! Yes its true women still tend to be given a hard time in some areas. Mrs May, because she was a woman? Perhaps! Mrs Thatcher? definitely. Ms Truss? probably. However, compared to some other countries we in this country are extremely fortunate, but hopefully in time, what sex you are, what colour you are, what orientation you are simply won't be an issue that anyone discusses any more, as it will have ceased to be an issue. Content of character will be the issue, nothing else. Meanwhile we must do all we can to support all persecuted people, men and women, the Uyghurs and other ethnic Turkic Muslims come particularly to mind. The world seems very unconcerned about these poor souls.

It’s horrible, and is part of a wider global pattern of rolling back women’s rights. The things happening in Iran are brutal and extreme, but the reversal of Roe v Wade in the US and the erosion of women’s spaces here is part of the same trend. South Korea has scrapped the ‘gender ministry’ which existed to protect womens’ rights - on a greater or lesser scale it is happening everywhere.

I don’t know if it’s because economies are contracting or a backlash against the way women were making progress in living independently, but I genuinely fear for our granddaughters, and despair at how other women collude with their sisters’ oppression.

I would like to think that the riots in Iran will start a return to more secular values that give young women there the rights that their grandmothers had, but I’m not very optimistic I’m afraid.

None of us know how brave or not we would be until it happened to us, but fortunately there are always some who will speak out.
I can well believe that sketch on radio 4.I cannot remember the date when a woman first read the news on the BBC but think it was around 1969/1970 sort of time.What shocked me was that a woman could decry this as my fellow worker did.
My heart goes out to women who are oppressed anywhere,
Afghanistan and Iran are particularly awful regimes.

Prentice

This is true Wyllow3
On a more trivial note, I remember a fellow worker saying that it wasn’t a good thing that there was now a woman reading the news, as a woman could not sound as ‘grave’ as a man when reading out tragic stories.How we have moved on since those days.

When I was 15 a comedy programme on R4 I'll never forget it.
this was for real.

Usual set up for the time - group of comedy men with token woman.

Male voice,

" Imagine a woman reading the news!"

Woman's voice,

"Ooooo, the prime minister has just visited a factory, just imagine the girls have got all dressed up, I bet they spent ages on their make up today"...(you get the drift).

I honestly don't know if I'd have the courage those young people have.

Chapeau
The video I watched showed these women trying to strip the woman they were attacking. If it wasn’t so sick it would be laughable ?
The morality police trying to strip a woman on a public street in front of men !!! You couldn’t make it up.

There seems to be an assumption that the Gashte Ershad (morality police) are all male. This is not the case. I have seen them in action on a couple of occasions and a typical unit, usually in a cruising van, has a mixed crew. I was appalled by what I witnessed but even more so to see women as members of the crew.

This is true Wyllow3
On a more trivial note, I remember a fellow worker saying that it wasn’t a good thing that there was now a woman reading the news, as a woman could not sound as ‘grave’ as a man when reading out tragic stories.How we have moved on since those days.

Prentice
It was the death of Mahsa Amini that sparked the riots.
I just want her name heard. It’s not too much to ask when your asking for comments, is it ?

" There are videos of women violently attacking women like a pack of hyenas."

It will always be thus initially.

On a different scale, physical violence wise, but the millions of women who opposed women wanting rights in the UK in the fight not just for the vote, but even before, for example the Married Women's Property Act in 1882, many women believed it was against either or both god's law or the Natural Order of matters for women to be "owned" effectively by men and were actively hostile.

When oppression is internalised by the victim, they are afraid, fear breeds hostility. And other complex feelings.

I am glad to hear that you have MerylStreep.
I did not know the names of the many young women who have been abused and killed there, and I have the utmost respect for them all.
There may well be women also acting in abusive ways there towards others, but the killings are done by the morality police who are men.
Let us try and be non aggressive to each other on this matter.
It would be a wonderful thing if this movement to get reform for women in Iran works.

Mahsa was the first that the world outside Iran new about.

I doubt if she was the first and I know she will not be the last.

My thoughts and prayers are with all the courageous young women.