Yes, it stinks to be a woman in Afghanistan right now..but it stinks to be anyone who wants any kind of freedom in Afghanistan. No one cares or complains about anyone but the women. And where is NOW and their gang these days? They are just as concerned that we don't beat up on the Taliban as anything else.
Well, NOW got so focused on abortion "rights" that they forgot that improving the condition of families is part of improving the condition of women. They identify all conservative religious Americans with repression of the flushable uterus, and so important is that one issue to them that it fuzzes their thinking: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if that "friend" stones women for showing an ankle.
OK - I can see why this posting got a minor gag alert, because of Ellen Goodman's STUPID comment morally equating the Taliban with fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews. However ... just because Ellen Goodman is wrong here, and just because feminists have brought these Taliban atrocities to light, is no reason to dismiss them. And yes, there was a good point made too, to the effect of "It shouldn't just be about the women." From what I've read, boys are taken from their homes at age 6 or 7, to be brainwashed in Taliban "seminaries" which are basically training schools for murder. Jamie Glazov of Front Page magazine has written how boys in these societies are frequently sexually abused by older men. The Taliban has been putting pre-teenage boys on the front lines with rifles.
The thing to keep in mind, though, is that these Taliban abuses of young boys and young men is made possible BY the abuse of the women. Free women (especially free ARMED women) wouldn't stand for their sons being ripped out of their homes, to be given to the same murderous pederasts who are trying to oppress them.
So let's not get bogged down here in our own problems with the NOW gang. Taliban-style oppression of women, girls AND boys is only the most extreme example of a world-view that wants to FORCE everyone into their medieval prisons. This medieval world view PRODUCES terrorism.