Fundamentalism and Freedom

Recently a few feminists have begun to question the status of women in societies where Uttabollux is the majority religion. Acting, they claim, according to the Holy book of the Uttabollux, Ladhifeah, the Holy men of Uttabollux (the Dhaftghits) state that it is the duty of all Uttabollux women to live their lives, from puberty until death, inside a cardboard box. A Uttabollux woman is only ever to emerge from her box if there is no man within a Farhahwahy

(roughly two miles) of her, and then only if it is the middle of a moonless night.

The men of the Uttabollux claim that this is because the mere sight of a woman would be enough to send a man mad with desire, or Lhoophifroot (literally: blind to the delights of his goat flock). Nohbrahin Re-Actshunahri, the Hibossmahn (High priest) Dhaftghit interprets the crucial chapter in The Ladhifeah this way: ''Other domestic appliances like washing machines, vacuum cleaners and fridges come in cardboard boxes, so why shouldn't women? Women are - it says in our Holy Book Ladhifeah - God's domestic appliance that he built specifically for men."

Some feminists claim that this treatment is degrading to women - making them little more than chattels or domestic slaves. For example in Uttabollux holy law - the Mhahdehupstuff (supposedly the direct words their God, Skhighhibhoss, dictated to the prophet Nhighel as he waited in a Post Office queue) the word of a women is granted less authority in a Mhahdehupstuff court than that of a man's premier goat.

However, other - more militant - feminists claim that rather than degrading women, life in a cardboard box is essentially liberating. Harpi Braindrain, a noted Harvard feminist professor of Cultural Studies, said recently that:

'living her entire life within the confines of a cardboard box frees the Uttabollux women from the tyrannies of the male-dominated hegemony. Unlike in the West where a woman is paralysed by having to live up to the so-called freedoms of choosing motherhood, career, independence, her own life, husband and so on, the Uttabollux woman is free within the confines of her cardboard box to be a total absolute woman, free from interference. True, her husband is free to beat, kill, rape, sell or mutilate her anyway he sees fit as long as he can claim that the Skhighhibhoss says its fine by him, but that is far better than the so-called 'freedoms' of the so-called 'liberated' West.'

Then our reported pointed out that as a woman Harpi Braindrain would not even be allowed near a university in an Uttabollux country, nor would she be allowed to have an education, a career, or even freedom of speech, movement, and association with men not of her husband's family. In response, Harpi Braindrain then called our reporter a fascist racist warmonger in the pay of the male-dominated Western media hegemony and called for security to escort our reporter from the premises.