Laughingstock

You know, just when you think you have reached the absolute pinnacle of male politicians shoving their trotters into their snouts with respect to “women’s place”, you discover that you’re only at the base camp, and you have another 1300 meters to go.

But then you realize that social media are hauling out their boots, slacklines and carabiners to get to the summit and bitchslap the medieval moron who’s mouthing off.

This week that would be Turkish deputy prime minister Bülent Arinç, who on Monday announced that women should be banned from laughing in public. Virtuous women, he said, do not do that.

(He also thinks they shouldn’t be using mobile phones because they’re only gossiping with one another. As opposed to the important stuff men talk about on the run, like Monday-morning quarterbacking, the tits on that girl in marketing and—in the case of Turks—how much money can they extort from the EU before they actually have to deliver on things like human rights.)

Well, obviously, where Arinç lives in the 7^th Century, they have not yet invented Twitter or Instagram, and they don’t understand the concept of “viral”. I’m trying to think of what the Virtuous-Woman equivalent of shitstorm would be, because that’s what happened over the past few days. Women have been posting pictures of themselves laughing like there’s a global pandemic of the tickles—first Turkish women, then women all over. The hashtags are #kahkaha (“laughter” in Turkish”), #direnkahkaha (“resist laughter”) and #direnkadin (“resist woman”).

Here’s the thing—even if I didn’t know why these photos were showing up, I’d still be retweeting them, because every single one of these women just makes you want to join in the laughter. They are beautiful, and joyful, and inviting.

Don’t believe me? How about

  

Or

Or

 

Or

Or

Or

Listen—there are hundreds out there. Search on one of the hashtags. You’ll feel better, whatever your status when you started.

And you go, girls!.