The Pit of Despair

To be a father of daughters in the Taliban’s Afghanistan has become a daily nightmare for Amir. Now, he says, he is more prison guard than loving parent, an unwilling and unpaid enforcer of a system of gender apartheid that he despises yet feels compelled to inflict on his two teenage girls in order to protect them from the Taliban’s rage and reprisals.

Just a few years ago, Amir’s daughters had a life and a future. They went to school, to see friends and moved around their community. Now, he says he would prefer it if his daughters never left the house. He, like many other fathers in Afghanistan, has heard stories about what can happen to young women who find themselves in the crosshairs of the Taliban’s “morality police”.

In the rare instances when their begging and pleading to be allowed out in the world gets too much for him, he ensures they go accompanied by a male member of the family and are fully covered.

Last summer, three years after they swept to power in August 2021, the scale of the Taliban’s ambition to erase women from public life was laid bare in their unveiling of an extensive set of “vice and virtue” laws.

Under the new rules, women were told to cover themselves completely when outside the house; not to allow their voices to be heard talking loudly; to only appear in public with a male escort and never to look at a man who was not their direct relation.

When the rules were announced, it was unclear how a relatively small number of “morality police” employed by the Taliban would enforce and implement these rules.

Yet, in the months since the rules were announced, it has been fathers, brothers and husbands who have become, in effect, unpaid foot soldiers imposing the Taliban’s oppressive regime on Afghanistan’s women and girls.

They are driven not just by fear of what will happen to women if apprehended by Taliban enforcers. Under the Taliban’s new rules, if a woman is deemed to be found in breach of its morality rules, it is her male relative, not her, who could be punished and face fines or even prison.

The Guardian and Rukhshana Media spoke to more than a dozen men, as well as young women across Afghanistan, about how the Taliban’s morality laws were changing their attitudes and behaviours towards the women in their families.

“Men have become unpaid soldiers of the Taliban,” says Jawid Hakimi, from Bamyan province. “We are forced, for the sake of our honour, reputation and social standing, to enforce the Taliban’s orders on the women in our families. Day by day, society is adjusting to the Taliban’s rules, and their restrictions [on women] are gradually reshaping society according to their vision – and we feel compelled to align our families with their expectations. It is a suffocating atmosphere.”

Other men who spoke of how the fear of social shame if they were punished for “immoral” behaviour was spilling over into repression and violence towards their female family members.

Freshta, a young woman from Badakhshan province, says she is beaten by her husband if she leaves the house, even to get food at the market. “I went to the corner of the street to buy vegetables and I had put on a long, black hijab but no burqa. When I returned, he hit me across the face and beat me.

Rabia, 22, says he cannot risk the family facing the “dishonour” of his elder sister Maryam going out and people thinking that she is dressed immodestly.

“Our pride doesn’t allow it. We have shame, we have honour. We can’t bear the thought that, God forbid, something might be said about her in the city or the market,” he says.

Young women spoke of the pain of their families turning into enforcers of a morality code imposed on them by an extremist ideology that had already stripped them of their right to education, work and self-autonomy.

“My father’s behaviour changed after the Taliban came. Before that, he didn’t care much about our [his daughters’] clothing,” says 25-year-old Masha. “Before, he never told us not to wear something or to avoid certain places, but as soon as the Taliban came he changed. He said: ‘If you consider me your father and care about the dignity of your family you will wear the hijab. Don’t wear makeup, not even a strand of your hair should be visible, don’t wear high-heeled shoes, and you don’t need to go out so often. Tell me or your brothers so we can get it for you from the market,’” she says.

“So now every time I have my period I have to go without sanitary products or medicine. I just stay inside.”

Richard Bennett, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan says that, while he has documented “acts of resistance” from Afghan men against the Taliban’s institutionalised repression of women, “within families, male family members are increasingly enforcing restrictions on their female relatives, and more women report needing permission to leave their homes. There are also increasing reports of female family members ensuring compliance.”

And today, after 3 days at the top of tumblr's trending tags, United Healthcare is suddenly just... gone?

because the burn isn't meant on her. it's meant on the lamp oil company

R.E. Danforth's Non-Explosive Burning Fluid came to be notorious in its time, because it apparently had a habit of giving off flammable fumes after the manner of gasoline. people didn't expect that, because most lamp oil only burned when lit directly. even though they'd grown up with such lamps, all the safety advice they knew was wrong for this stuff- which the company never told anyone, natch

without having a sample or the original formula, we can't say what the issue was now for certain. but it's believed to have contributed to the sinking of the steamship War Eagle the same year as Ellen's death. six people died in the incident, and an inquiry into Danforth's by the New York Board of Health (since it was produced in NY) deemed it a "murderous oil" (source)

Elon received no votes. Elon will take no oath.

Also, if you're someone who'd like to customize your discord further, or remove nitro garbage or bypass it, better discord (an open source project) can be used on desktop for a lot of fun results:

Plugin options can entirely replicate nitro stuff, and enhance privacy, such as:

"Fuck those buttons"

"Hey maybe I don't want you to know when I'm typing"

"Fuck the character limit"

"Can I see my friends in a normal manner please"

"I would like navigating discord to be like a powerpoint please"

And many other features that range from helpful to profoundly useless but fun.

-don't get catcalled

-feel fine walking home at night

-don't get sexually harassed by people who read me as cis

Cons of being a passing trans guy:

-hiring managers conveniently rescind my application for "administration errors" when HR requests my legal documents and I let them know they don't match my real name and gender

-landlords can deny me housing for personal biases i can't avoid

-ANYBODY who needs access to my legal documents for that matter treats me in accordance to their personal biases

-if i want my reproductive healthcare to be covered I need to keep the F on my health card

-"women's clinics" turn me away on the basis of me "making others uncomfortable" or because "they don't serve men"

-using public washrooms feels like avoiding landmines

-my HRT is registered as an addictive narcotic

-my own community classified me as an oppressor because I was lucky enough to be a sheep who could afford a wolf costume. Ergo I must be the exact same thing as a wolf when I wear it around all the wolves who drool over lamb chops

-if my wolf coworkers find out about me I will be targeted and sexually harassed into quitting