And Sometimes Extremists Hack Your Blog
Well, that was fun.
Roman emailed me the other day with a screenshot of my website, asking if there was some joke—instead of a little blog about my thoughts on life and social enterprise in Tanzania, a DOS-command-prompt-from-circa-1995-looking screen greeted me instead.
Thanks to some help from Scott (love you! and owe you vegan mac and cheese or something!), my website is back up and we should be good to go now.
Without going too far into the details because I can’t be bothered to expend calories typing about people like this, it appears that my site was targeted for daring to suggest that the single greatest thing that can be done to increase economic activity is to educate girls, which I put forth when writing on educating girls and my reaction to the kidnapping of 234 female Nigerian students for doing nothing more than trying to write a physics exam.
Just as John Oliver asked, ‘Who gives a shit?’ when he reported that a whopping one in four Americans is sceptical of climate change, I’m inclined to react the same way here.
Taking out extremist beliefs on bloggers who post facts doesn’t change the facts. Countries that repress women rank lower on the human development index (HDI) than countries that enjoy comparatively more equal representation and participation by women. Women are powerful forces for positive economic and social change within their communities, their countries, and the world as a whole. Adolescent girls are the most powerful force for change on the planet.
Regardless of what extremists anywhere do, say, or think, the fact remains that it is wrong to deny girls the same opportunities for educational advancement as their male counterparts.
And just as John Oliver summed up climate change, the debate ought not to be whether denying girls equal access to education is detrimental to development; it is what we should do about it.
To learn more, I highly recommend either watching To Educate a Girl or visiting girleffect.org.
And remember, there is no excuse for this sort of detrimental discrimination. It isn’t a matter of cultural differences and needing to respect the beliefs or actions of another peoples. They deserve no respect. It is inexcusable.
It is wrong.