It turned out to be worth missing. Advice to Western women: stay out of Islamic countries, and don't ever, ever marry a man hailing from one.
On that euphoric day when Egypt's Hosni Mubarak relinquished the power of his presidency, and many Americans seemed to join their hearts with those of Egyptians in the street yearning for the fresh air of freedom, CBS reporter Lara Logan was made a prisoner by a mob of freedom-loving Egyptian males who brutally assaulted her physically and sexually, apparently determined to draw and quarter her by hand. The perpetrators have not been found, and it is unlikely that anyone is looking for them. Logan is convinced that had she not somehow been saved, she would have died. She is married and the mother of two very young children. At last she tells her story:
The transcript is here. Follow-up video on this page.
Comments (13)
Lara Logan seems to have uncritically swallowed the feminist argument that women should enjoy 'equal opportunities' to place themselves in harm's way. If a man is willing to risk life and limb in some volatile situation, then why not a woman? Common sense and the instinct for self preservation should caution any woman that by infiltrating an unpredictable mob, she is likely to expose herself to hideous sexual violence. Whether posing as soldiers or journalists, women risk far more than men would in a front line.
I note, in her interview, that she tries to conceal her self deception and stupidity under a cloak of cant about her "commitment to journalism".
Posted by Alex | May 2, 2011 4:03 AM
Your sympathy for what happened to her is quite touching.
Posted by William Luse | May 2, 2011 5:33 AM
What has sympathy got to do with it?
Posted by Erik | May 2, 2011 6:29 AM
Sympathy? Is that appropriate on this occasion?
If I'm foolish enough to stick my head in a lion's mouth and he bites it off, why should you sympathize?
Lara Logan's ordeal was foreseeable and could have been avoided had she been guided by her natural feminine prudence. She's the victim of a delusion.
By drawing attention to her rashness, it does not follow that I'm callously indifferent to her suffering. Talk is cheap, but had I been on the scene I should certainly have risked my neck to save her.
Posted by Alex | May 2, 2011 7:44 AM
I tend myself to think that your advice, Bill, in the post goes along with what Alex says, though "stupidity" is a pretty harsh way for him to put it. This advice needs to be more widely accepted, but it really is an unfortunate fact that feminism is going to block that, under, predictably, the label of "professionalism."
Now, to tell the truth, I think that even married men with children need to be asking themselves if they have the right to endanger their lives unnecessarily, but there is definitely a gender issue here. She was in that danger of rape or sexual assault specifically because she was female. Yet it's pretty clear that our cultural signals are telling her and other women that this shouldn't matter, that they should be able to do everything and anything that men do. And _that_ is very dangerous advice.
Posted by Lydia | May 2, 2011 8:47 AM
Stories like this is one good reason why we should kick every Muslim out of the USA, and get out of the Middle East.
Posted by Stephen E Dalton | May 2, 2011 9:37 AM
Yes. I recall in my heathen televison-consumption days being a frequent watcher of MTV's The Real World and Road Rules in one of those shows, the producers allowed them to pick a vacation anywhere in the world. They chose India and it was clear that they chose India for the reason you would expect dumb, young progressives would: they thought India was more spiritual than the West, but spiritual in a way that wouldn't wreck anyone's weekend party plans. Well, they got there and the girls of the group decided to walk around in public in India in their usual Western "Come do me" outfits. That young Indian boys pelted them with stones was not surprising--also not surprising was the girl's indignant shock that they got pelted.
Posted by Scott W. | May 2, 2011 9:45 AM
I'm with Erik on this one. She "had to" be there?
I have about as much sympathy for her in the ordeal she suffered as I would for someone with a severe peanut allergy going to work in a peanut btter factory. She put herself into a situation where she was subject to specific dangers because of who she is.
Men can't say it so I will - it's time for us women to stop lying to ourselves. We can't function in front-line combat roles like men and we can't report on the action like men. To do so puts us in danger like men, but it also puts us at specific risks which cannot be visited upon men. And when we do put ourselves in these positions, it is an unthoughtful selfish act because, not only do we incure these additional risks -- we put the men around us at additional risk because their instinct and duty will be to turn away from the task at hand and then put themselves at further risk by trying to protect or rescue us.
Feminists not only hate being women, they hate men and think nothing of the dangers to themselves and others because feminism is inherently self-focused.
Posted by Kamilla | May 2, 2011 10:00 AM
Bill,
I would slightly amend your advice to women and suggest that there may in fact be suitable mates from Islamic countries -- they would, of course, be the persecuted minority Christians! I say this as someone who lives around a rather large Assyrian community here in the Chicagoland area and they are a civilized people who love Christ.
Posted by Jeff Singer | May 2, 2011 10:29 AM
It would be stupid for a woman to wander through an Egyptian crowd like this without protection, but let's remember that Logan did not do that.
Logan - or rather, the security experts on whom she relied - miscalculated, but I'm not sure I'd call it imprudence. In hindsight she obviously didn't have enough security with her. Three security men were not enough. How many would have been enough? Thirty?
Her story definitely does not fit the silly feminist "a woman can walk anywhere she wants to" pattern that some people are trying to, uh, force on it. I'm not defending her: I think she should have been home with her children. But she and the people she was with recognized that it was risky. The security people apparently took what they calculated to be appropriate security measures, and the news people relied on their expertise.
Posted by Aaron | May 2, 2011 10:41 AM
Aaraon,
If any of that was aimed at me - I'll not take offense. I just want to point out that it seems you have proved my point.
Kamilla
Posted by Kamilla | May 2, 2011 11:39 AM
Aaron, I think it does fit that pattern, because I don't think they would have considered her not going. Nor is there any hint that the security was especially heavy because they had a pretty, Western-clad woman with them. It was just a bit of extra security on general principles. The Egyptian drivers were just these guys. They weren't security experts. I don't get the impression that the news team ever sat down seriously with any of these people and said, "Is this safe for Lara? Are we sure she should do this? Is it really possible for us to take enough security for her to be safe?" It was _assumed_ that she was going to go and cover it, because she was a "pro" and "had to" be there, and they took along three men in a sort of "just in case" move. It doesn't sound like the possibility of her being mobbed by a whole crowd ever crossed their minds.
Posted by Lydia | May 2, 2011 2:05 PM
Sympathy? Is that appropriate on this occasion?
To someone whose estimate of his own opinion is more important than another's suffering, I guess not.
If I'm foolish enough to stick my head in a lion's mouth and he bites it off, why should you sympathize?
This amounts to "she had it coming."
By drawing attention to her rashness, it does not follow that I'm callously indifferent to her suffering.
Since sympathy is inappropriate, the evidence to support you is lacking. However wrongheaded this woman and her employers, the first reaction of a Christian man ought to be an expression of outrage at the insult to her dignity, an empathetic desire to restore to her, if it were possible, that sense of worth as a woman, a wife, and a mother that she possessed before the attack, to at least wonder at the degree of pain this must be causing her husband, perhaps even to hold forth on whether we should be making any sort of accommodation with a culture so sunk in misogyny that a blonde, blue-eyed, female human being, one of the life-bearers of our race, could be treated in such a way that her human worth to these scumbags was no more than that of an animal brought to slaughter. Instead, I see no note of sympathy at all among any of the commenters. You all can piss off now. Comments are closed.
Posted by William Luse | May 2, 2011 6:21 PM