Are You Free, Woman? Take This Fun, Easy Quiz!

Over at what The Cornerites have dubbed "The H-Bomb", there's a nifty quiz created in response to an Erica Jong item in which she barfs up the limousine liberal tripe that woman have it better under Islamofascist theocracies than they do here in Evil America. (Why don't people like Erica f*cking MOVE to Kreplochistan if it's so damn nice?!?)

Myself, I've never understood why women’s groups weren't out front cheering the wars against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Were there ever more feminist wars than these? You'd think the National Organization for Women would be egging the administration on to Saudi Arabia and Iran. But no, and for the same reason that organized feminists have refused to applaud George Bush’s historic appointments of women to positions of high office, including most recently his nomination of two women, one of them black, to appellate judgeships. Bush is a Republican. The organized feminists are Democrats. It's as simple as that.

Still, I wouldn’t think the feminist worldview could be quite SO simple as to equate the oppression of women who live under repressive and murderous regimes in the Islamic world with the condition of women in the United States. For HP bloggers and readers who have trouble telling the difference, I’ve prepared the following quiz:

1. Are you allowed to drive a car? Y/N
2. Must you be accompanied at all times in public by a male escort? Y/N
3. If you were to say "what the hell" and drive to the mall by yourself, would you be immediately surrounded by bat-wielding male police officers? Y/N
4. Could you be beaten for saying “what the hell”? Y/N
5. When you go outside on a hot summer day, can you wear shorts and a t-shirt? Y/N
6. You wouldn’t know what the weather was because your vision is a confined to the small slit opening in a burkha or abaya? Y/N
7. Have you ever been stoned at a party? Y/ N
8. Have you ever been buried up to your neck and stoned (i.e. with rocks) for kissing a man not your husband at a party? Y/N
9. Were you free to marry the man of your choice or, as it may be, free not to marry? Y/N
10. Did your parents force you to marry a man of their choosing? Y/N
11. If you refused your parents’ choice of husband would you be banished from the family and/or beaten within an inch of your life and/or to death? Y/N
12. Were you 11-years-old when you were married? Y/N
13. Does your husband have more than one wife? Y/N
14. Does your religion permit and encourage “moderate beatings” by the husband whenever he feels his wife is disobedient? Y/N
15. If you are unhappy with your husband, can you initiate a divorce? Y/N
16. Were you educated? Y/N
17. Were you educated for a career? Y/N
18. Was the career that of a suicide bomber? Y/N
19. When dealing with the law or facing a court case, is your word valued at half that of a man’s? Y/N
20. In a rape case in which there are no witnesses, is your word worth nothing against that of the rapist’s—and furthermore, for the admission of sex with a man outside of marriage, even forcibly, can you be put to death? Y/N
21. Can you vote? Y/N
22. Can you read any book you like? Y/N
23. Did you read the Arabic version of “Fear of Flying”? (oh, skip this one—it doesn’t exist)
24. Is fear of flying how you feel whenever you step on a plane post-9/11?

SCORING: If you answered “yes” to questions 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18, 22,23, and 25, congratulations! You live in the freest society for women in the history of Planet Earth. If you answered “yes” to any of the other questions, Allahu Akbar!

Interestingly, Erica herself posts a reply in the Comments section. She sounds like her batteries had died.

Hi Danielle--You seem to think that publicly applauding democracy is the same thing as creating or sustaining it. I think Ms. Bush's stated concern with women's freedom in the Middle East is a screen to hide our deteriorating women's rights at home. You take Laura Bush at face value. I don't. Many women in the Middle East don't either. They know that the Bush administration imposes Christian Right Wing values on international women's health clinics, will not support clinics that teach contraception and thereby compromise women's health care. Laura Bush, like Condi Rice, is a great tool in Bush's arsenal of PR for women's rights. But look at this administration's actions rather than its words. Words are cheap.

Can't have a American Feminist comment without the obligatory smears against Christianity and demands that we fund they Liberal Holy Sacrament of Abortion, can we?