By Jess McCabe | 16 February 2008, 09:06

Two Iranian journalists who write for women’s rights websites have been charged with “violating national security”, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The organisation also reports that five conservative websites have been shut down.

The women charged are Jelveh Javaheri and Nahid Keshavarz. They write for WeChange and Zanestan. WeChange is a great website, which publishes lots of information about women and men fighting for gender equality in Iran, much of it in English.

Over at Racialicious, Tami posts about white men treating her as though she’s not a woman, because she is black:

I still feel shitty. And that makes me mad. It makes me mad that a short exchange in a morning meeting has made me feel self-conscious all day. It makes me mad that I stared at myself in the office bathroom a little longer than usual to see if I looked “old.” It makes me mad that I began wondering if I should wear more makeup. It makes me mad that I made mental plans to upgrade my wardrobe. It makes me mad that I had to wrestle agian with the impact my natural hair may have on my career. It makes me mad that I started obsessing over the weight I need to lose and thinking about that cleansing fast I read about last week. It makes me mad that I honestly thought about including my picture with this post to prove to my readers (and myself) that I am not a hideous, hunchbacked troll.

Sometimes it is freaking tiring being a black woman in America.

Here in the UK, the debate about sharia law continues: womensphere reposts a statement by Diana Nammi from the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, setting out how a move towards integrating some aspects of Muslim law could harm women:

Ibrahim Mogra’s statement is deceptive in the extreme: ‘when they choose’ he says, as if it is a simple matter to leave Islam, when in fact we know that many of those people born into Muslim households who give up their parents’ religion are harassed and rejected by their Muslim communities and families. Thirty-six percent of Muslims in Britain believe that leaving Islam should be punished by death. The percentage of young Muslim men taking a hard line on Sharia is increasing. In this context, there is no choice involved whatsoever: women will, inevitably, be coerced into accepting judgements which discriminate against them, and women of Muslim background, who already suffer the most within their communities and within British society will have their second-class status embedded in law.

Jezebel notes some research that shows women “can make themselves orgasm…just by thinking about dirty thoughts”.

Shameless posts a peon to the wonderful, amazing Emma Peel (um, Diana Rigg).

And finally, the blogs Women’s Space and What Tami Said are running a women’s history month carnival, which they have called: “Come Together: Healing Tensions Among Women Working for Equality”. Sounds like a great project - you have till 28 February to submit anything from an essay to a YouTube post to an anonymous postcard (along the lines of Post Secret). More info here.