Holy shit-flinging insanity from the Middle East, Batman! Last week, influential Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader, blamed earthquakes on immodest women. No, really, I’m not kidding, he totally said that women’s trampy behavior leads to earthquakes. I know, that’s bananas, right? Only a borderline sociopath born and raised in a totally backwards culture that blames women for everything could… Ooooh…. Riiiight.
Yeah, so this guy told the faithful in Tehran during Friday prayers on April 16 that: “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes. … And now, if a natural earthquake hits Tehran, no one will be able to confront such a calamity but God’s power, only God’s power. … So let’s not disappoint God. … We cannot invent a system that prevents earthquakes, but God has created this system, and that is to avoid sins, to pray, to seek forgiveness, pay alms, and self-sacrifice” (italics mine).
Well. Holy shit damn. I mean, it looks like the guy is trying to do his job by bringing God into the equation; that’s pretty much what clerics are there for. Except… like… Dude, Iran is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. There are fault lines all up under that shit, left over from the beginning of time and Pangea and shit, and scientists have been predicting a major quake in Tehran for decades. A 2003 earthquake in Bam killed 31,000 people, and President Ahmadinwhateverhisfaceis just recently predicted (cause he’s a psychic, natch) a major quake quite soon, and even made cursory comments about planning to evacuate several million people from Tehran. (Cursory statements seem to be Ahmadnahoosiewhatsit’s best line of defense for most difficult issues.) And now suddenly God is setting off quakes because some women aren’t wearing their headscarves right? There seems to have been a really huge leap from rational thinking into frothing at the mouth territory here. Sounds like Sedighi is a government rat trying to scare the Western-minded Iranian women into hunkering down under the weight of their modest clothing, thousands of years of institutional oppression, and now responsibility for natural disasters, to boot. Sounds like Sedighi is kind of a prick.
I mean, check out his reasoning: it’s women’s fault that men see them and sacrifice their chastity, and only when men are promiscuous is the overall morality of Iran lowered to earth-shaking levels. It seems that men are the only people who have the power to cause anything, but it’s the women who are at fault for being too sexy. Wait, what? According to this “logic,” a good man doesn’t want to be promiscuous, but when he sees a woman whose head scarf shows too much hair, his manly urges overwhelm him and cause him to have sex with her, whether either of them want to or not. But the logic here is all screwy: If men are so awesomely in control of the country that the women must be kept under hijabs and iron fists; if men inherit twice what women do; if their testimony in court is worth twice a woman’s; if men are the only ones attracting Allah’s notice and bringing down the moral fiber of the country; if men are really these paragons of control and government and society… then how come it’s the woman’s fault that the man has sex with her when he sees her ankles? Shouldn’t this be-all-end-all of human goodness, the Iranian man, be the one getting in trouble with Allah for sticking his boner in everything without a chador on? How in the name of earth-quaking Christ is this the women’s fault?
I do want to point out that I’m not an anti-religious bigot. I think that it’s silly for any of us mere mortals to pretend to know about divine mysteries like how God makes decisions on earthquakes and other natural disasters; none of us really know how that works, no matter how much geology and physics we apply to the problem. Nobody ever knows when an earthquake will happen, except for household pets like George Clooney’s pig Max. So while we “civilized Westerners” with all our fancy schmancy “enlightened” worldviews might want to claim that God doesn’t cause earthquakes because of skanks, we don’t really know that he’s wrong any more than we know when San Francisco will be swallowed by an angry Cthulu. But it’s still painfully obvious that Sedighi was being a douche: he was using fear to influence the masses, and that shit ain’t cool.
Anyway, the point is: if scantily clad women forcing men to go on uncontrollable penetration binges is really what’s causing earthquakes—as opposed to the dozens of fault lines that Tehran and the rest of the country sit on—then why has, say, Brazil not been visited by massive, infrastructure-destroying quakes? Why does LA still exist? What about the nude beaches in Europe? And let’s not even talk about what those savages in the Phillippines wear! Why have none of these bogs of moral degeneracy been struck down by the angry hand of Allah? True, most of these places have been visited by earthquakes, but by Sedighi’s reasoning, they should have been wiped off the planet by now due to their hordes of scantily clad women bringing down fire and brimstone on everyone’s heads, à la Sodom and Gomorrah.
In all seriousness, friends, if Sedighi is right and barely-covered breasts, are what’s causing all the natural disasters lately, shouldn’t we test their theories for validity? This dick-waving cleric might be right, for all we know. Luckily for you, Sedighi, you thumb-up-your-ass sonofoabitch, American women were willing to go ahead and give you some scarf-less sex appeal to give you a chance to prove yourself right. On April 26, the first ever Boobquake was held—a day on which women around the world (according to the Facebook page, as of publication, at least 210,525 of them) donned their most scandalously cleavage-tastic shirts, shortest short-shorts, and any other skimpy clothing they could reasonably wear in public in late April, in an effort to cause the jiggliest, bounciest, most beautifully boob-tastic earthquake in history and prove Sedighi right or wrong, once and for all.
According to Jen McCreight, Boobquake’s founder, “I thought ‘Boobquake’ just sounded funny. Really, it’s not supposed to be serious activism that is going to revolutionize women’s rights, but just a bit of fun juvenile humor. I’m a firm believer that when someone says something so stupid and hateful, serious discourse isn’t going to accomplish anything—sometimes light-hearted mockery is worthwhile.” I think she’s fucking-A right, and if it gets me some quality boob-ogling time to boot, I’m all for light-hearted mockery. Alas, Monday turned out to be chilly and rainy in New York, so my ogling didn’t go quite as well as planned, but I did wear my most boobtastic top, and saw a few other flashes of serious cleavage across the city. As of publication, no serious seismic activity has been recorded in Boobquake-affected areas, but I suppose a few days’ time should be given for the sometimes slow hand of God to act. We’ll report back if any further double-D developments occur.
April 27, 12:06 pm
According to Slate magazine, the magnitude 6.9 quake that hit Taiwan on April2 6, the day of Boobquake, is being dismissed by McCreight: “It happened before Monday had started in [McCreight’s] time zone, and quakes happen every day, anyway. ‘On average, 134 magnitude 6-6.9 earthquakes occur annually,’ she wrote, and said it would take ‘many of a similar magnitude in the next 24 hours’ to convince her to ‘start worshipping the power of immodesty.’”
We’re on the fence over here at Whack! but we’re still pretty sure we’d be willing to risk quakes, hell, AND high water for more boob ogling opportunities…
Signing off for now—with my B cups abounding—Miss Lagsalot