[lbo-talk] freedom to swim

[shag carpet bomb]

while i don't disagree, it's cracking me up. the issue was gender
segregation. a single mother cannot take her kid to a public pool b/c
they won't let women in the same pool as men. i didn't think i'd have
to actually spell that out as I thought that people understood the
general oppression of women in Iran via gender segregation schemes --
for which Imadickinjar was notable during his tenure as mayor.

nothing to do with just basic swimming and whether you can or can't
go, but about being able to, as a mother, take your 10 year old kid to
the public swimming pool. Or to use the swimming pool at your
apartment complex.

these issues are emblematic of what's at root of these protests:
gender oppression and a desire for a modicum of freedom in one's
personal life that is free from the mercurial wishes of a clerical
elite, or whatever government bureaucrat decides to be an asshole that
day. the issue is a kind of rule-lessness that allows petty tyrants in
the bureaucracy, among the basiji, among clerics to just make it up as
they go along.


> Re: all those who think that the freedom to swim is somehow an elitist
> concern when it comes to Iran, Lou Proyect cites this excellent
> passage from Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?":
>
> <http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/a-velvet-revolution-in-iran/
>  >
>
> Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not add
> to the authority and prestige of the Social-Democracy? Because Social-
> Democracy is always found to be in advance of all the others in
> furnishing the most revolutionary appraisal of every given event and
> in championing every protest against tyranny
It intervenes in every
> sphere and in every question of social and political life; in the
> matter of Wilhelm’s refusal to endorse a bourgeois progressive as city
> mayor (our Economists have not managed to educate the Germans to the
> understanding that such an act is, in fact, a compromise with
> liberalism!); in the matter of the law against ‘obscene’ publications
> and pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election
> of professors, etc., etc. Everywhere the Social-Democrats are found in
> the forefront, rousing political discontent among all classes, rousing
> the sluggards, stimulating the laggards, and providing a wealth of
> material for the development of the political consciousness and the
> political activity of the proletariat.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
http://cleandraws.com
Wear Clean Draws
('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)