and here i am thinking it's tough being a woman

in the united states.

little did i know

Lecturer suspended after breastfeeding fatwa

CAIRO (Reuters) - Cairo's al-Azhar Islamic University on Monday suspended a lecturer who suggested that men and women work colleagues could use symbolic breastfeeding to get around a religious ban on being alone together.
The lecturer, Ezzat Atiya, had drawn on Islamic traditions which forbid sexual relations between a man and a woman who has breastfed him to suggest that symbolic breastfeeding could be a way around strict segregation of males and females...........

...........Atiya's unusual opinion was widely publicised by Arabic-language satellite television channels and featured in a discussion in the Egyptian parliament.
The Dubai-based channel Al Arabiya quoted him as saying that after five breastfeedings the man and woman could be alone together without violating Islamic law and the woman could remove her headscarf to reveal her hair............

that breastfeeding fatwa
Jason Kuznicki
.............I know that scholars of the Enlightenment tend to see everything as though it were happening in the eighteenth century. But is this fatwa not a piece of audacious, Voltairean satire? I won’t even go into the reasons why no one could possibly take this seriously. I trust I don’t have to. But if it’s a joke, what kind of joke is it? Hint: It’s not just about flashing your boobs in an otherwise straitlaced society, although that, certainly, is funny enough in itself.
It seems to me that the real targets of the joke are the prudish legalists who have kept women out of the workforce, even when everyone concerned — men, women, employees, employers, colleagues — would much rather have them working. The satirist’s weapons are also those of the prudes — Atiyaa plays the Allah card, so to speak, and calls into question the faith of anyone who disagrees with him. It’s a turn that would no doubt have made Voltaire grin:.............