Dutch Roman Catholic church 'castrated' boys in 1950s

Up to 11 boys were castrated while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic church in the 1950s to rid them of homosexuality, a newspaper investigation has said.

A young man was castrated in 1956 after telling police he was being abused by priests, the newspaper reported.

The justice minister is investigating the role of the government at the time.

Last year, an inquiry found thousands of children had been sexually abused in Dutch Catholic institutions since 1945.

Dutch MPs called for an inquiry after the report was published in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper at the weekend.

Henk Hethuis, a pupil at a Catholic boarding school, was 18 when he told police in 1956 he was being abused by a Dutch monk. He was castrated on the instructions of Catholic priests, NRC Handelsblad said, and told this would "cure" him of his homosexuality.

The same happened to at least 10 of his schoolmates, the newspaper said.

Hethuis died in a car crash in 1958.

Dutch Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten called the allegations "very serious and shocking" and said he would investigate the role of the Dutch government at the time.

The Dutch Catholic church has said it is willing to co-operate with an investigation to find out whether the media reports are true, Reuters reports.

A commission of inquiry last year said Catholic officials had failed to tackle the widespread abuse at schools, seminaries and orphanages.

The commission - headed by former cabinet minister Wim Deetman - found tens of thousands of children had suffered abuse ranging from inappropriate touching to rape.

It condemned what it called the church's cover-up and culture of silence.

NRC Handelsblad said the commission received a complaint about the alleged castration cases in 2010.

Dutch MPs are to ask formally for a parliamentary hearing with the head of the commission, former cabinet minister Wim Deetman, to ask him why he did not include the information in his report.

Clue to male baldness discovered

A biological clue to male baldness has been discovered, raising the prospect of a treatment to stop or even reverse thinning hair.

In studies of bald men and laboratory mice, US scientists pinpointed a protein that triggers hair loss.

Drugs that target the pathway are already in development, they report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The research could lead to a cream to treat baldness.

Most men start to go bald in middle age, with about 80% of men having some hair loss by the age of 70.

The male sex hormone testosterone plays a key role, as do genetic factors. They cause the hair follicles to shrink, eventually becoming so small that they are invisible, leading to the appearance of baldness.

Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have analysed which genes are switched on when men start to go bald.

They found levels of a key protein called prostaglandin D synthase are elevated in the cells of hair follicles located in bald patches on the scalp, but not in hairy areas.

Mice bred to have high levels of the protein went completely bald, while transplanted human hairs stopped growing when given the protein.

Prof George Cotsarelis, of the department of dermatology, who led the research, said: "Essentially we showed that prostaglandin protein was elevated in the bald scalp of men and that it inhibited hair growth. So we identified a target for treating male-pattern baldness.

"The next step would be to screen for compounds that affect this receptor and to also find out whether blocking that receptor would reverse balding or just prevent balding - a question that would take a while to figure out."

The inhibition of hair growth is triggered when the protein binds to a receptor on the cells of hair follicles, said Prof Cotsarelis.

Several known drugs that target this pathway have already been identified, he added, including some that are in clinical trials.

The researchers say there is potential for developing a treatment that can be applied to the scalp to prevent baldness and possibly help hair regrow.

Can halal speed-dating work?

Many young Muslims are seeking new ways to meet their future spouses that don't compromise their commitment to Islam

• Shaista Aziz
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 May 2011 12.30 BST

Divorce rates among British Muslims are on the rise in line with wider society. According to some Muslim commentators one in eight Muslim marriages now ends in divorce, up from one in 20 in the space of two generations, and increasing numbers of Muslims are seeking alternative avenues to meet their future spouses, without compromising their commitment to Islam. They want to meet members of the opposite sex in a halal environment, and no, I don't mean a date in the local branch of Dixie Fried Chicken.

So they go to Muslim matrimonial websites, "halal speed-dating" and face-to-face matrimonial events to find a husband or wife. Traditionally many second- and third-generation wife- or husband-hunters would expect family and their communities to introduce them to prospective life partners, many even travelling to their parents' country of origin to view future brides and grooms.

Mizam Raja is the Simon Cowell of the British Muslim matrimonial scene. Raja founded the social enterprise Islamic Circles 10 years ago in east London. Raja employs two part-time staff and receives on average 200 calls a day from men and women seeking his advice on how they can meet a compatible partner. Raja is charismatic, chatty and has an acid tongue that he uses to devastating effect in his day-to-day work. "I'm ruthless with some of them. I have no problem telling a man who has hygiene issues to go home, have a shower and shave and to really think about why he wants to get married and what he can offer his wife in a marriage. A successful Muslim marriage is about yin and yang complementing one another. Marriage in Islam is not about yin and yin."

Raja says British Muslims have failed to embrace the best aspects of modernity when it comes to marriage and as a result increasing numbers of highly educated Muslim women find themselves part of the "spinster generation" excelling in their academic and professional lives but left out in the cold when they try to find a husband.

Sociologist Fauzia Ahmad from the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (ISMC) specialises in Muslim women and relationships in Britain. She says Muslim parents and families are realising how difficult it is for their daughters to find suitable husbands and increasingly communities are realising their daughters are facing a backlash from within.

"Contrary to stereotypes, there has been a real drive for qualifications among Muslim women and their families, with one of the motivating factors being the assumption that a degree would help attract a 'good husband'," says Ahmad. "While this may be a criteria for many Muslim men, women are finding a mismatch in expectations from similarly educated men, many of whom seem to be intimidated by confident women and know that at the end of the day, their parents can always find them a wife 'back home'. British Muslim women are less likely to want to do the same. Instead, the initial 'checklist' or list of criteria that women used to have become increasingly shorter as the years go by."

Raja also agrees that Muslim women are facing challenges on the marriage front. "While I believe that many Muslim men are failing to step up to the plate and take responsibility when it comes to marriage, I've also met many women who talk down to men as if they are talking to a colleague or a client at work," he says.

In the past 10 years Raja has organised hundreds of workshop and gatherings for marriage introductions. The events cater for different Islamic sects, Sunnis and Shias, Muslims with disabilities and special needs – the organisation even runs courses for women on how they can become "surrendered wives". When I ask him if he's for real he is unapologetic in his response. "If you don't have a stable family, you can't have a stable community," he says. "The events we organise enable people to really work on themselves and think about what marriage is really about. Many of our sisters neglect the idea of marriage because they are too focused on their education or careers. Many find it difficult to compromise and hard to adapt to the role of being a wife alongside being a career woman."

Raja insists that these matrimonial events offer a more Islam-centric approach to marriage that can't be found through speed-dating or on matrimonial websites. "Our events are not a place to go shopping for a husband or wife but to fully understand what marriage means in Islam," says Raja.

On SingleMuslim.com, one of the most popular matrimonial websites used by Muslims surfing to find a partner, users are encouraged to believe they are a few clicks away from reaching their goal of meeting Mr or Mrs Right.

Salma, a divorced single mother in her late 20s used a matrimonial website for a year but has decide to deactivate her account and look at other ways of finding a suitable husband. In one year almost 400 men contacted her online from all over the world to discuss marriage.

"I realised very quickly that men and women were on the website with a shopping list trying to tick as many boxes as they could in as little time as possible and get married," she says. "A lot of men lie about how much money they have and most of the ones I came across claimed to earn in excess of £60,000 a year, but are unable to write a sentence in English. It just didn't make any sense."

Salma discovered some men were already married and looking to find wife number three and four without being upfront about it. "There is no real way of knowing who is genuine and who isn't. I even had some men contact me telling me to be aware of certain men on the website who were known liars. By trying to find a husband this way I felt like I was drawing a straw or trying to pick out a lucky number out of a hat – it felt like an illusion. In a traditional arranged marriage a woman or a man have the safety net of growing up in the same village, knowing each other's family for generations. For this reason I've decided to adopt a more organic approach to finding a partner and prefer to meet Muslim men chaperoned in an Islamic environment so we get to interact face to face."

Pakistan supreme court to decide fate of Hindu woman in Muslim marriage row

Rinkle Kumari, 19, claims she was kidnapped, converted to Islam and married against her will

• Jon Boone in Islamabad
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 March 2012 12.35 BST

The Afghan girls who live as boys

For economic and social reasons, many Afghan parents want to have a son. This preference has led to some of them practising the long-standing tradition of Bacha Posh - disguising girls as boys.

When Azita Rafhat, a former member of the Afghan parliament, gets her daughters ready for school, she dresses one of the girls differently.

Three of her daughters are clothed in white garments and their heads covered with white scarves, but a fourth girl, Mehrnoush, is dressed in a suit and tie. When they get outside, Mehrnoush is no longer a girl but a boy named Mehran.

Azita Rafhat didn't have a son, and to fill the gap and avoid people's taunts for not having a son, she opted for this radical decision. It was very simple, thanks to a haircut and some boyish clothes.

There is even a name for this tradition in Afghanistan - Bacha Posh, or disguising girls as boys.

"When you have a good position in Afghanistan and are well off, people look at you differently. They say your life becomes complete only if you have a son," she says.

There has always been a preference for having sons in Afghanistan, for various economic and social reasons.

Ms Rahfhat's husband, Ezatullah Rafhat, thinks having a son is a symbol of prestige and honour.

"Whoever came [to our house] would say: 'Oh, we're sorry for you not having a son.' So we thought it would be a good idea to disguise our daughter, as she wanted this too."

Azita Rafhat is not the only mother who has decided to do this.

Many girls disguised as boys can be found in Afghan markets. Some families disguise their daughters as boys so that they can easily work on the streets to feed their families.

"If my parents force me to get married, I will compensate for the sorrows of Afghan women and beat my husband so badly ”

Some of these girls who introduce themselves as boys sell things like water and chewing gum. They appear to be aged anywhere between about five and 12. None of them would talk to me about their lives as boys.

Girls brought up as boys do not stay like this all their lives. When they turn 17 or 18 they live life as a girl once again - but the change is not so simple.

Elaha lives in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. She lived as a boy for 20 years because her family didn't have a son and reverted only two years ago when she had to go to university.

However, she does not feel fully female: she says her habits are not girlish and she does not want to get married.

"When I was a kid my parents disguised me as a boy because I didn't have a brother. Until very recently, as a boy, I would go out, play with other boys and have more freedom."

She has returned reluctantly to her gender and says she has done it only because of the social traditions.

"If my parents force me to get married, I will compensate for the sorrows of Afghan women and beat my husband so badly that he will take me to court every day."

Atiqullah Ansari, head of the famous blue mosque in Mazar-e Sharif, says the tradition is about appealing to the divine.

He says those families who do not have a son disguise their daughters as boys for good luck so that God gives them a son.

Mothers who do not have sons come to the shrine of Hazrat-e Ali and ask him to grant them sons, he adds.

Atiqullah Ansari says that according to Islam the girls who live as boys must cover their heads when they come of age.

In Afghanistan, stories like this have become more common. Almost everyone has relatives or neighbours who have tried this.

“Start Quote

You cannot change a girl to a boy for a short period of time - it's against humanity”

Fariba Majid, the head of the Women's Rights Department in the northern province of Balkh, used to go by the boy's name Wahid.

"I was the third daughter in my family and when I was born my parents decided to disguise me as a boy," she says.

"I would work with my father at his shop and even go to Kabul to bring goods from there."

She thinks that experience helped her gain confidence and helped her get where she is today.

It is not surprising that even Azita Rafhat, mother of Mehran, once used to live as a boy.

"Let me tell you a secret," she says. "When I was a kid, I used to live as a boy and work with my father.

"I experienced both the world of men and of women and it helped me to be more ambitious in my career."

The tradition has existed in Afghanistan for centuries. According to Daud Rawish, a sociologist in Kabul, it may have started when Afghans had to fight their invaders and for this women needed to be disguised as men.

But Qazi Sayed Mohammad Sami, head of the Balkh Human Rights Commission, calls it a breach of human rights.

"We cannot change someone's gender for a while. You cannot change a girl to a boy for a short period of time. It's against humanity," he says.

The tradition has had a damaging effect on some girls who feel they have missed out on essential childhood memories as well as losing their identity.

For others it has been good experiencing freedoms they would never have had if they had lived as girls.

But for many the key question is: will there be a day when Afghan girls get as much freedom and respect as boys?

Hundreds of Afghan women jailed for 'moral crimes'

Hundreds of Afghan women are in jail for "moral crimes", including running away and extra-marital sex, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

In a report, it said that women were punished for fleeing domestic abuse and violence while some rape victims were also imprisoned.

Sex outside marriage - even when the woman is forced - is considered adultery, another "moral crime".

The I Had to Run Away report was released in Kabul on Wednesday.

The report said that the government of President Hamid Karzai had failed to fulfil its obligations under international human rights laws.

"It is shocking that 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban, women and girls are still imprisoned for running away from domestic violence or forced marriage," HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said.

The report called on the government to release about 400 women and girls held in jails or juvenile detention centres.

"Some women and girls have been convicted of mina, sex outside of marriage, after being raped or forced into prostitution," it said.

"Judges often convict solely on the basis of 'confessions' given in the absence of lawyers and 'signed' without having been read to women who cannot read or write.

"After conviction, women routinely face long prison sentences, in some cases more than 10 years."

It said that the situation had been made worse by Mr Karzai frequently changing his position on women's rights.

"Unwilling or unable to take a consistent line against conservative forces within the country, he has often made compromises that have negatively impacted women's rights."

Earlier this month the president endorsed a "code of conduct" issued by an influential council of clerics which allows husbands to beat wives under certain circumstances.

The BBC's Emily Buchanan says that the lack of women's rights under the Taliban helped to justify Western military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.

Our correspondent says that since then there has been much progress on girls access to education and participation in public life.

Many activists fear that hard-won rights are increasingly being undermined as the government tries to woo conservative religious forces.

A brief history of breast enlargements

It is 50 years since the first breast enlargement using silicone implants. Today it rates as the second-most popular form of cosmetic surgery worldwide, undergone by 1.5 million women in 2010.

It was spring 1962 when Timmie Jean Lindsey, a mother-of-six lay down on the operating table at Jefferson Davis hospital in Houston, Texas.

Over the next two hours, she went from a B to a C cup, in an operation that made history.

"I thought they came out just perfect… They felt soft and just like real breasts," says Lindsey now aged 80.

"I don't think I got the full results of them until I went out in public and men on the street would whistle at me."

Though the operation boosted her self-confidence - and she enjoyed the extra attention - she had never planned to have a breast augmentation.

Lindsey had been to hospital to get a tattoo removed from her breasts, and it was then that doctors asked if she would consider volunteering for this first-of-its-kind operation.

"I was more concerned about getting my ears pinned back... My ears stood out like Dumbo! And they said 'Oh we'll do that too.'" So a deal was struck.

The surgeons were two ambitious pioneers, Frank Gerow and Thomas Cronin.

It was Gerow who had first come up with the plan for a new kind of breast implant.

"Frank Gerow squeezed a plastic blood bag and remarked how much it felt like a woman's breast," says Teresa Riordan, author of Inventing Beauty: A History of the Innovations that have Made Us Beautiful.

In search of a bigger bust

Injected: Paraffin was tried in the 1890s, but quickly dropped because it leaked to other parts of the body

Transplanted: In the 1920s and 1930s doctors tried moving fat from other parts of the body to the breast

Inserted: Polyurethane, cartilage, sponges, wood and even glass balls, were all tried in the 1950s

Non-surgical solutions: Vacuum pumps, suction devices, a multitude of lotions and potions, and padded or inflatable bras

Source: Inventing Beauty by Teresa Riordan

"And he had this 'Aha!' moment, where he first conceived of the silicone breast implant."

The first guinea pig for the silicone implant was a dog named Esmeralda. The basic principal behind the prototype was simple.

"A rocket achieves lift off with lift and thrust - same thing in breast augmentation," says Thomas Biggs, who was working with Gerow and Cronin in 1962 as a junior resident in plastic surgery.

"I was in charge of the dog. The implant was inserted under the skin and left for a couple of weeks, until she chewed at her stitches and it had to be removed."

The operation was deemed a success and Gerow declared that the implants were "as harmless as water". Soon after, the medical team began looking for women to try out the implants.

Timmie Jean Lindsey has only a hazy recollection of her operation day.

"As I came back from surgery there was just a lot of weight on my chest - like something heavy had been sitting there."

"That was about it - after maybe three or four days the pain part of it had let up."

The doctors were pleased with their work. But, at the time, Biggs had no idea quite what they had on their hands.

"Sure it was a little bit exciting, but if I'd had a mirror to the future I'd have been dumbstruck," he says.

"I was not wise enough to realise the magnitude of it."

The significance began to hit home when Cronin presented the work at the International Society of Plastic Surgeons in Washington DC in 1963. "The plastic surgery world was absolutely set on fire with enthusiasm," says Biggs.

The time seemed right. 1950s America had seen a whole swathe of cultural influences come together around the ideal of a larger breast.

It was the decade in which Playboy magazine and Barbie launched, and film stars played a big role too.

A brief history of breast enlargements

It is 50 years since the first breast enlargement using silicone implants. Today it rates as the second-most popular form of cosmetic surgery worldwide, undergone by 1.5 million women in 2010.

It was spring 1962 when Timmie Jean Lindsey, a mother-of-six lay down on the operating table at Jefferson Davis hospital in Houston, Texas.

Over the next two hours, she went from a B to a C cup, in an operation that made history.

"I thought they came out just perfect… They felt soft and just like real breasts," says Lindsey now aged 80.

"I don't think I got the full results of them until I went out in public and men on the street would whistle at me."

Though the operation boosted her self-confidence - and she enjoyed the extra attention - she had never planned to have a breast augmentation.

Lindsey had been to hospital to get a tattoo removed from her breasts, and it was then that doctors asked if she would consider volunteering for this first-of-its-kind operation.

"I was more concerned about getting my ears pinned back... My ears stood out like Dumbo! And they said 'Oh we'll do that too.'" So a deal was struck.

The surgeons were two ambitious pioneers, Frank Gerow and Thomas Cronin.

It was Gerow who had first come up with the plan for a new kind of breast implant.

"Frank Gerow squeezed a plastic blood bag and remarked how much it felt like a woman's breast," says Teresa Riordan, author of Inventing Beauty: A History of the Innovations that have Made Us Beautiful.

In search of a bigger bust

Injected: Paraffin was tried in the 1890s, but quickly dropped because it leaked to other parts of the body

Transplanted: In the 1920s and 1930s doctors tried moving fat from other parts of the body to the breast

Inserted: Polyurethane, cartilage, sponges, wood and even glass balls, were all tried in the 1950s

Non-surgical solutions: Vacuum pumps, suction devices, a multitude of lotions and potions, and padded or inflatable bras

Source: Inventing Beauty by Teresa Riordan

"And he had this 'Aha!' moment, where he first conceived of the silicone breast implant."

The first guinea pig for the silicone implant was a dog named Esmeralda. The basic principal behind the prototype was simple.

"A rocket achieves lift off with lift and thrust - same thing in breast augmentation," says Thomas Biggs, who was working with Gerow and Cronin in 1962 as a junior resident in plastic surgery.

"I was in charge of the dog. The implant was inserted under the skin and left for a couple of weeks, until she chewed at her stitches and it had to be removed."

The operation was deemed a success and Gerow declared that the implants were "as harmless as water". Soon after, the medical team began looking for women to try out the implants.

Timmie Jean Lindsey has only a hazy recollection of her operation day.

"As I came back from surgery there was just a lot of weight on my chest - like something heavy had been sitting there."

"That was about it - after maybe three or four days the pain part of it had let up."

The doctors were pleased with their work. But, at the time, Biggs had no idea quite what they had on their hands.

"Sure it was a little bit exciting, but if I'd had a mirror to the future I'd have been dumbstruck," he says.

"I was not wise enough to realise the magnitude of it."

The significance began to hit home when Cronin presented the work at the International Society of Plastic Surgeons in Washington DC in 1963. "The plastic surgery world was absolutely set on fire with enthusiasm," says Biggs.

The time seemed right. 1950s America had seen a whole swathe of cultural influences come together around the ideal of a larger breast.

It was the decade in which Playboy magazine and Barbie launched, and film stars played a big role too.

"The busty look of Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell and also Dior's New Look of 1957, really emphasised this curvy silhouette, and got women thinking about augmenting their breasts," says Teresa Riordan.

"Falsies" - basically stuffed bras - were popular, but increasingly women wanted something more.

Marilyn: Did she or didn't she?

I found no evidence whatsoever that Marilyn Monroe ever had any surgery to her breasts.

Thomas Noguchi, who performed the autopsy on Monroe, noted scars on her body - from an operation on her gallbladder and appendix - but made no mention of incision marks under the breasts.

I did hear that on occasion that, to make the treasure that the actress carried naturally appear even more bountiful, she occasionally enhanced it a little by putting additional padding into her bra.

A mortician was quoted in a documentary - ghoulish man - as saying that he fished some "falsies" belonging to Monroe out of the morgue and still had them in his possession.

A falsie refers to a bra cup that has been enhanced with spongy material to make a bosom appear larger than it naturally is. But not one of the some 600 people interviewed for my book - dressmakers, lovers and friends - suggested she used any such thing.

Rumours always proliferate about someone as celebrated as Monroe, especially after they are dead and cannot respond.

Anthony Summers, author of the biography Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe

Through the years, all manner of approaches had been tried to increase breast size. In the 1950s, doctors started inserting sponge implants into women's breasts. Some allege that Marilyn Monroe had this operation, though this is hotly contested.

Monroe biographer Anthony Summers says people he interviewed for his book, who knew her well - including Billy Travilla, who was both her dressmaker and one of her lovers - said she had no reason at all to have any breast enhancement.

"The filmmaker Billy Wilder described Monroe's bosom as, 'a miracle of shape, density and an apparent lack of gravity,'" he says.

The sponge technique worked well at first, but did not last - the sponges soon shrank, and became "hard as baseballs" says Biggs.

Silicone was also a material of the moment. "There was a post-war American fascination with all things plastic and artificial," says Riordan.

It is not in the US, though, that the silicone was first used for breast enlargement, but in Japan, where it was tried out by prostitutes.

Eager to do better trade with the occupying US forces, who they presumed preferred a larger chest, they experimented by injecting silicone - stolen from the docks of Yokohama - direct into the breast.

These injections turned out to have a nasty side-effect known as "silicone rot", in which gangrene set in around the injection site.

The early silicone breast implants pioneered in the US fortunately avoided this hitch, but were not entirely problem-free.

Hematoma, where blood collects in a swelling, was one early difficulty. There were cases of infections too, and also "fibrous capsular contractions" where a scar would form, making the implant hard.

"We are not worshipping what we had 50 years ago, because that's history," says Biggs.

Continue reading the main story

Health scares...

In the 1990s, the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) banned silicone implants as it investigated possible links to an immune response disease. Saline implants -saline solution inside a silicon shell - continued to be used.

The industry made big payouts, but studies found no basis for the fears, and silicone implants returned.

In 2010, implants made by French company PIP out of silicone intended for use in mattresses, were banned in some countries. French authorities say they have a higher than usual rupture rate.

The scandal peaked in December, when France recommended routine removal of all PIP implants. Breast enlargement figures for 2011 are expected to show a fall, when released later this year.

There have been many advances over the decades, like 3D-imaging, and implants that are increasingly rupture-proof - and the range has widened.

"In the early days, we only had four choices or sizes - large, medium, small and petite. Now we have over 450 choices," says Biggs.

Around the world, breast enlargement is now the second-most popular cosmetic surgery operation, after liposuction (the removal of fat). In many countries - including the UK - it is the most popular operation.

It's not only used by women who want to perfect their body shape but also by patients who have undergone mastectomy as a result of breast cancer. This was something Gerow and Cronin envisaged from the start, and one of their motives for developing the operation.

For many years, Timmie Jean Lindsey kept fairly quiet about her breast enlargement - one boyfriend never knew for example, and it was only decades later that she told many of her friends and family about it.

Fifty years on she remains delighted with the results, though there is no stopping the passing of time, she says.

"You would think they would stay real perky, but no - they are just like a regular breasts, they begin to sag over the years. That surprised me. I figured they'd just stay where they were."

But she still very happy with the little piece of history she carries inside her body.

"It's kind of awesome to know that I was first," she says.

Witness airs weekdays on BBC World Service. You can download a podcast of the programme or browse the archive. 

Saudi princess: What I'd change about my country

Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz tells the BBC there are many changes she would like to see in Saudi Arabia - but that now is not the time for women to be allowed to drive.

I speak as the daughter of King Saud, the former ruler of Saudi Arabia. My father established the first women's university in the kingdom, abolished slavery and tried to establish a constitutional monarchy that separates the position of king from that of prime minister. But I am saddened to say that my beloved country today has not fulfilled that early promise.

Our ancient culture, of which I am very proud, is renowned for its nobility and generosity, but we lack, and urgently need, fundamental civil laws with which to govern our society.

As a daughter, sister, (former) wife, mother, businesswoman and a working journalist, these are the things that I would like to see changed in Saudi Arabia.

1. Constitution

I would like to see a proper constitution that treats all men and women on an equal footing before the law but that also serves as a guide to our civil laws and political culture.

For example, today in Saudi courts, all decisions are made according to the individual judge's interpretation of the holy Koran. This is entirely dependent on his own personal beliefs and upbringing rather than universally agreed principles or a written constitution as a guide.

I am not calling for a western system but an adaptation of that system to suit our needs and culture. Thus our constitution should be inspired by the philosophy of the Koran with principles that are set in stone and not open to the whims of individual judges as is the case now.

In particular, the constitution should protect every citizen's basic human rights regardless of their sex, status or sect. Everyone should be equal before the law.

2. Divorce laws

“Start Quote

Our religion should not be a shield behind which we hide from the world but a driving force that inspires us to innovate and contribute to our surroundings”

I strongly believe that current divorce laws are abusive.

Today in Saudi, a woman can ask for a divorce only if she files for what is called "Khali and Dhali". This means either she pays a big sum of money running into tens of thousands of dollars or she has to get someone to witness the reason why she is filing for a divorce - an impossible condition to fulfil given that such reasons usually are the kind that remain within the four walls of a marriage.

Another way to keep a woman in the marital home against her will is the automatic granting of custody of any children over the age of six to the father in any divorce settlements.

This state of affairs is in complete contradiction to the Koran, upon which our laws are supposed to be based. In it a woman is given full rights to divorce simply in the case of "irreconcilable differences".

3. Overhaul of the education system

An insular kingdom

• Established in 1932 by King Abd-al-Aziz
• One of the most devout and insular countries in the Middle East
• The royal family is 15,000 strong
• The Al Saud dynasty holds a monopoly of power; political parties are banned
• Saudi women live a restricted life and are banned from driving
• The country includes the Hijaz region - the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and the cradle of Islam
• Saudi Arabia sits on more than 25% of the world's known oil reserves

The way women today are treated in Saudi Arabia is a direct result of the education our children, boys and girls, receive at school.

The content of the syllabus is extremely dangerous. For one, our young are taught that a woman's position in society is inferior. Her role is strictly limited to serving her family and raising children. They are actually taught that if a woman has to worship anyone other than God it should be her husband; "that the angels will curse her if she is not submissive to her husband's needs". Girls are also strictly forbidden from taking part in any physical education. This is a result of a complete misinterpretation of the Koran. I consider these ideologies to be inherently abusive.

Aside from that, the focus in most of our educational system is on religious subjects such as hadith (sayings attributed to the prophet), Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), tafssir (interpretation of the Koran) and of course the Koran. The attitude is that "learning itself, anything other than religion won't get you into heaven so don't waste your time". I would like to see religious teaching limited to the Koran and the Sunna (the way the prophet lived), where the true ethics of Islam lie. The rest is blind rote learning of the most dangerous kind. It has left our youth vulnerable to fundamentalist ideologies that have led to terrorism and abuse of the true meaning of the Koran.

Instead of wasting our youths' intellect on memorising quotations whose origins is uncertain (such as those found in hadith, Fiqh and tafssir) we need to encourage them to think freely, innovate and use their initiative for the betterment of our society. Early Islam was a time of great creativity. Scholars excelled in sciences and literature. Our religion should not be a shield behind which we hide from the world but a driving force that inspires us to innovate and contribute to our surroundings. This is the true spirit of Islam.

4. A complete reform of social services

The ministry of social affairs is tolerating cruelty towards women rather than protecting them. The only refuge homes that abused women can turn to are state ones. In these, women are continuously told that by seeking refuge they have brought shame on their families.

What do you think?

• Do you live in Saudi Arabia?
• Send us your views on the princess's comments, using the form at the bottom of the page
• A selection will be published

If they come from powerful families then they will be sent straight back to their homes in fear of the wrath of a powerful patriarch. As a result we have seen many cases of suicide by educated women, doctors and scientists who were sent back to their abusers.

We need independent women's refuges where the rights of women are upheld and backed up by powerful laws that can override family traditions and protect women.

The ministry of social affairs not only abuses women's rights but is also one of the reasons poverty is rife in the kingdom. A corrupt system that lacks transparency has meant that more than 50% of our population is poor and needy even though we are one of the wealthiest countries on earth.

5. The role of the Mahram (chaperone)

Women in Saudi cannot get around or travel without a mahram (a kind of chaperone - usually a male relative).

At the time of the prophet, women used to have a man to accompany them but in those days Arabia was a desert literally full of pirates.

Today the only purpose of such a law is to curtail women's freedom of movement. This not only infantilises women but turns them unnecessarily into a burden on their men and on society.

6. Driving

Today women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive.

Princess Basma

• Youngest daughter of the country's second king and niece to its current ruler
• Educated in Britain and Switzerland
• Lives in Acton, London
• Princess Basma, pictured above pointing to her place in the Saudi family tree, was interviewed by Outlook on the BBC World Service

• Listen to the interview
• Browse the Outlook archive

This one seems to concern western observers the most but I hope you will agree having read the previous five that there are more essential rights we need to obtain first.

I am definitely for women driving but I don't think this is the right time for a reversal of this law. In the current climate if a woman drives, she could be stopped, harassed beaten or worse to teach her a lesson.

This is why I am against women driving until we are educated enough and until we have the necessary laws to protect us from such madness. Otherwise we might as well hand out a licence to the extremists to abuse us further. If as drivers we get harassed, they will say to the Islamic world "see what happens when women drive, they get harassed they get beaten" and they will call for even more stringent laws to control women. This is something we can't afford. Fundamental changes in the law and its attitude to women are needed before we take this step.

On the whole it is the rights and freedoms of all citizens that are crucial in Saudi Arabia and from those the rights of women will emanate.

Princess Basma Bint Saud Bin Abdulaziz spoke to Outlook on the BBC World Service.

Can primates shed light on the roots of romance?

Sanjida O’Connell, contributor

Games Primates Play is a partially successful attempt to show how primate behaviour can inform our understanding of humans

IN 2000, movie stars Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston married in grand Hollywood style. Just five years later the couple were divorced, and Pitt's new girlfriend, Angelina Jolie, was pregnant with his child. Tabloids were filled with speculation about why Pitt left Aniston when they had seemed to be in love. But, as Dario Maestripieri writes in Games Primates Play, "no tabloid reporter ever interviewed an economist or an evolutionary biologist about the Brad and Jennifer marriage fiasco".

A psychiatrist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, Maestripieri argues that human behaviour, like our anatomy, can be explained by looking at our biology. Natural selection strongly shaped our social behaviour, and the same pressures faced by our ancestors would also have influenced our closest living relatives - other primates. So to understand how and why we behave the way we do today, he suggests we turn to those primates.

To get back to Brad and Jen, Maestripieri uses a combination of evolutionary biology and economics to explain why people fall in and out of love. Our big-brained children require two adults to stay together to rear them for four to seven years at least, he says, and love evolved to maintain relationships for this lengthy, albeit limited, period of time (even if the pair don't end up having children together).

In economic terms, he argues that we choose mates who enhance our material interests - but only so long as the benefits outweigh the costs. When the costs go up, or the benefits aren't enough, such as missing opportunities to date other people and produce more children, one or both partners will quit.

Romantic love, Maestripieri suggests, is a variation on an older, more primitive survival mechanism: the emotional and psychological bond between animal mothers and infants. For this bond to turn into romantic love, he says, some evolutionary shifts in behaviour were required - among them a reduction in promiscuity and testosterone levels in human males compared with other apes.

Just how our biology drives behaviour is the subject of numerous books, but Maestripieri does a commendable job of bringing something fresh to his analysis. In two areas this book falls short, however. To begin with, even though chimpanzees are the primates most closely related to us, most of the animal examples Maestripieri refers to involve macaques, presumably because he studies them. Secondly, in attempting to convince us that all of our behaviour can be explained by primate analogies, he glosses over the wide variation among people.

We can certainly learn much about our behaviour by looking at other primates, but due to our big brains, variability in upbringing, environment and culture - plus the fact that we are no longer subject to raw natural selection - humanity is a collection of people who are quirkily different from one another. Even though Maestripieri sprinkles his book with anecdotes from his own experience, he fails to acknowledge this.

Still, overall Games Primates Play is an interesting, funny and engaging study of human nature. And Maestripieri's amusing and often endearing anecdotes add colour and insight. For instance, the chapter "We are all Mafiosi" was inspired by an encounter with Barack Obama, before he became US president. Maestripieri relates how he met Obama at an event in Chicago for their children's school and attempted to explain to him how human politics mirror macaque behaviour. Like humans, he points out, macaques are nepotistic, hierarchical and form alliances to try to attain higher status. I, for one, would have loved to have found out what Obama said in return.

Uzbekistan's policy of secretly sterilising women

The BBC has been told by doctors that Uzbekistan is running a secret programme to sterilise women - and has talked to women sterilised without their knowledge or consent.

Adolat has striking looks, a quiet voice and a secret that she finds deeply shameful.

She knows what happened is not her fault, but she cannot help feeling guilty about it.

Adolat comes from Uzbekistan, where life centres around children and a big family is the definition of personal success. Adolat thinks of herself as a failure.

"What am I after what happened to me?" she says as her hand strokes her daughter's hair - the girl whose birth changed Adolat's life.

"I always dreamed of having four - two daughters and two sons - but after my second daughter I couldn't get pregnant," she says.

"Every doctor is told how many women are to be sterilised - there is a quota”

She went to see a doctor and found out that she had been sterilised after giving birth to her daughter by Caesarean section.

"I was shocked. I cried and asked: 'But why? How could they do this?' The doctor said, 'That's the law in Uzbekistan.'"

Sterilisation is not, officially, the law in Uzbekistan.

But evidence gathered by the BBC suggests that the Uzbek authorities have run a programme over the last two years to sterilise women across the country, often without their knowledge.

Foreign journalists are not welcome in Uzbekistan, and in late February of this year the authorities deported me from the country. I met Adolat and many other Uzbek women in the relative safety of neighbouring Kazakhstan. I also gathered testimony by telephone and email, and in recordings brought out of the country by courier.

None of the women wanted to give their real names but they come from different parts of Uzbekistan and their stories are consistent with those of doctors and medical professionals inside the country.

"Every year we are presented with a plan. Every doctor is told how many women we are expected to give contraception to; how many women are to be sterilised," says a gynaecologist from the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

Like all doctors I interviewed, she spoke on a condition of anonymity. Talking to a foreign journalist could result in a prison term, in a country where torture in detention is the norm.

"There is a quota. My quota is four women a month," she says.

Two other medical sources suggest that there is especially strong pressure on doctors in rural areas of Uzbekistan, where some gynaecologists are expected to sterilise up to eight women per week.

"Once or twice a month, sometimes more often, a nurse from the local clinic comes to my house trying to get me to the hospital to have the operation," says a mother of three in the Jizzakh region of Uzbekistan.

"Now it's free, but later you will have to pay for it, so do it now," the nurse tells the mother.

Another mother says she experienced months of mysterious pain and heavy bleeding following the birth of her son. Then she had an ultrasound check and discovered that her uterus had been removed.

"They just said to me, 'What do you need more children for? You already have two,'" she says.

The BBC gathered similar testimony from the Ferghana Valley, the Bukhara region and two villages near the capital Tashkent.

According to a source at the Ministry of Health, the sterilisation programme is intended to control Uzbekistan's growing population, which is officially held to be about 28m people. Some demographers are sceptical, however, pointing to the large numbers of people who have emigrated since the last census in 1989, when the population stood at around 20m.

"We are talking about tens of thousands of women being sterilised throughout the country," says Sukhrob Ismailov, who runs the Expert Working Group, one of very few non-governmental organisations operating in Uzbekistan.

In 2010, the Expert Working Group conducted a seven-month-long survey of medical professionals, and gathered evidence of some 80,000 sterilisations over the period, but there is no way of verifying the number and some of the procedures were carried out with the patient's consent.

The first cases of forced sterilisation were reported in 2005, by Gulbakhor Turaeva - a pathologist working in the city of Andijan who noticed that uteruses of young, healthy women were being brought to a mortuary where she worked.

"On paper, sterilisations should be voluntary, but women don't really get a choice”

After gathering evidence of 200 forced sterilisations, by tracing women from whom the uteruses were removed, she went public with her findings and asked her bosses for an explanation. Instead they sacked her.

In 2007 Turaeva went to jail, accused of smuggling opposition literature into the country. Like many others, she refused to be interviewed for this report because of fears for her and her children's safety.

In 2007, the United Nations Committee Against Torture also reported forcible sterilisations and hysterectomies in Uzbekistan, and the number of cases of forced sterilisation appeared to fall.

But according to medical sources, in 2009 and 2010 the Uzbek government issued directives ordering clinics to be equipped to perform voluntary surgical contraception. In 2009, doctors from the capital were also despatched to rural areas to increase the availability of sterilisation services.

There is evidence that the number of sterilisations then began to rise again.

"On paper, sterilisations should be voluntary, but women don't really get a choice," says a senior doctor from a provincial hospital, who wished to remain unnamed.

"It's very easy to manipulate a woman, especially if she is poor. You can say that her health will suffer if she has more children. You can tell her that sterilisation is best for her. Or you can just do the operation."

Several doctors I spoke to say that in the last two years there has been a dramatic increase in Caesarean sections, which provide surgeons with an easy opportunity to sterilise the mother. These doctors dispute official statements that only 6.8% of women give birth through C-sections.

"Rules on Caesareans used to be very strict, but now I believe 80% of women give birth through C-sections. This makes it very easy to perform a sterilisation and tie the fallopian tubes," says a chief surgeon at a hospital near the capital, Tashkent.

Uzbekistan: Infant and maternal deaths

• Uzbekistan ranked 140th out of 194 countries in terms of infant mortality in 2005-2010, according to data from the UN Population Division
• This put it just behind Laos, Madagascar and Bolivia, and just ahead of Bangladesh, Ghana and Papua New Guinea
• Figures from the UN Population Fund indicate that Uzbekistan had a maternal mortality ratio of 30 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2008 - a 44% improvement on 1990
• This ratio put it level with Iran, just ahead of Albania and Malaysia (31) and just behind Armenia (29), Romania and Uruguay (27)

Several doctors and medical professionals said forced sterilisation is not only a means of population control but also a bizarre short-cut to lowering maternal and infant mortality rates.

"It's a simple formula - less women give birth, less of them die," said one surgeon.

The result is that his helps the country to improve its ranking in international league tables for maternal and infant mortality.

"Uzbekistan seems to be obsessed with numbers and international rankings," says Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

"I think it's typical of dictatorships that need to construct a narrative built on something other than the truth."

Swerdlow believes foreign governments could do more. Until recently Uzbek President Islam Karimov was a pariah in the West, but in recent years both the US and the EU have lifted sanctions, including a US ban on arms sales.

This is apparently related to America's worsening relationship with Pakistan and Nato's increased use of routes through Central Asia, including Uzbekistan, to get supplies and troops in and out of Afghanistan.

Islam Karimov

• Born 1938, became first secretary of the Uzbek Communist Party in 1989 and president of the Uzbek Socialist Republic in 1990
• Elected president of independent Uzbekistan in 1991 with 86% of the vote, re-elected in 2000 with 92%, and again in 2007 with 88%
• Mr Karimov has been accused of using the threat of Islamic militancy to justify authoritarianism

• Uzbekistan country profile
• 
  

A number of Western dignitaries have visited Uzbekistan in recent months, but few have made any public comment on the country's human rights record.

"Karimov has managed to get to the point in his relationship with the West when there are no consequences for his actions and human rights abuses," says Swerdlow.

"There is a deafening silence when it comes to human rights. Reports of forced sterilisation add urgency to breaking this silence."

In a written reply to the BBC's request for comment, the Uzbek government said the allegations of a forced sterilisation programme were slanderous and bore no relation to reality.

The government also said that surgical contraception was not widespread and was carried out only on a voluntary basis, after consultation with a specialist and with the written consent of both parents.

The Uzbek government stressed that Uzbekistan's record in protecting mothers and babies is excellent and could be considered a model for countries around the world.

However, Nigora is among many for whom forced sterilisation is a reality. She had an emergency C-section. A day later she was told she had been sterilised. On the same day, her newborn died.

Nigora is 24 and will never have children.

Masturbating may protect against prostate cancer

• 19:00 16 July 2003 by Douglas Fox, Adelaide

It will make you go blind. It will make your palms grow hairy. Such myths about masturbation are largely a thing of the past. But the latest research has even better news for young men: frequent self-pleasuring could protect against the most common kind of cancer.

A team in Australia led by Graham Giles of The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne asked 1079 men with prostate cancer to fill in a questionnaire detailing their sexual habits, and compared their responses with those of 1259 healthy men of the same age. The team concludes that the more men ejaculate between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to develop prostate cancer.

The protective effect is greatest while men are in their twenties: those who had ejaculated more than five times per week in their twenties, for instance, were one-third less likely to develop aggressive prostate cancer later in life (BJU International, vol 92, p 211).

The results contradict those of previous studies, which have suggested that having had many sexual partners, or a high frequency of sexual activity, increases the risk of prostate cancer by up to 40 per cent. The key difference is that these earlier studies defined sexual activity as sexual intercourse, whereas the latest study focused on the number of ejaculations, whether or not intercourse was involved.

The team speculates that infections caused by intercourse may increase the risk of prostate cancer. "Had we been able to remove ejaculations associated with sexual intercourse, there should have been an even stronger protective effect of other ejaculations," they suggest. "Men have many ways of using their prostate which do not involve women or other men," Giles adds.

Macho exaggeration

Giles accepts the possibility that the men who completed the questionnaires could have lied about their habits. But he doubts this skewed the results, since questions about masturbation are unlikely to evoke the same macho exaggeration as questions about, say, number of sexual partners.

But why should ejaculating more often cut the risk of prostate cancer? The team speculates that ejaculation prevents carcinogens building up in the gland. The prostate, together with the seminal vesicles, secretes the bulk of the fluid in semen, which is rich in substances such as potassium, zinc, fructose and citric acid.

Generating the fluid involves concentrating these components from the bloodstream up to 600-fold - and this could be where the trouble starts. Studies in dogs show that carcinogens such as 3-methylcholanthrene, found in cigarette smoke, are also concentrated in prostate fluid.

"It's a prostatic stagnation hypothesis," says Giles. "The more you flush the ducts out, the less there is to hang around and damage the cells that line them."

Sexual repertoire

His findings suggest an intriguing parallel between prostate cancer and breast cancer, as recent studies indicate that lactating reduces a woman's risk of breast cancer, perhaps because this also flushes out carcinogens. Alternatively, ejaculation might induce prostate cells to mature fully, making them less susceptible to carcinogens.

"All these mechanisms are totally speculative," cautions breast cancer expert Loren Lipworth of the International Epidemiology Institute in Rockville, Maryland.

But if the finding is confirmed, future health advice from doctors may no longer be restricted to diet and exercise. "Masturbation is part of people's sexual repertoire," says Anthony Smith, deputy director of the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

"If these findings hold up, then it's perfectly reasonable that men should be encouraged to masturbate," he says.

Masturbation calms restless leg syndrome

• 00:01 01 April 2011 by Helen Thomson
• For similar stories, visit the The Human Brain and Love and Sex Topic Guides

Too much of it will make you go blind – or so you might have been told. But for some, masturbation might have a real clinical benefit: it can ease restless leg syndrome (RLS). The insight could provide sweet relief for the 7 to 10 per cent of people in the US and Europe who suffer from the condition.

RLS is a distressing neurologic disorder characterised by an urge to move the legs. It is usually associated with unpleasant sensations in the lower limbs such as tingling, aching and itching.

The exact causes of RSL have yet to be pinpointed, but brain autopsies and imaging studies suggest one contributing factor is an imbalance of dopamine – a hormonal messenger that, among other things, activates the areas of the brain responsible for pleasure. It is suspected that dopamine imbalance is responsible for some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

Drugs that increase dopamine have been shown to reduce symptoms of RLS when taken at bedtime and are considered the initial treatment of choice.

Although such drugs provided significant improvement of symptoms for a 41-year-old man with RLS, he found an even better treatment – complete relief after masturbation or sex.

J. Arthur

Luis Marin and colleagues at the Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil, who report on the novel treatment this month in Sleep Science, speculate that the release of orgasm-related dopamine might play a role in the alleviation of symptoms.

An orgasm provides one of the biggest natural blasts of dopamine available to us. When Gert Holstege at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and colleagues scanned the brains of ejaculating men, he said the resulting images resembled scans of heroin rushes.

This temporary increase in dopamine may act in a similar way to drugs that mimic the hormone, granting the man in question enough relief from his restless legs to allow him a full night's sleep.

While the proverbial five-knuckle shuffle has already been shown to protect men against prostate cancer and ease hay fever, researchers have yet to discover any detrimental side effects to the visual system.

Journal reference: Sleep Medicine, DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2011.01.001

Telling the truth about masturbation

Jamie Condliffe, contributor

Masturbation. Auto-eroticism. Solitary sex. There are plenty of words to describe the age-old practice of solo sexual gratification, yet it remains perhaps one of the most taboo physical acts of all.

Despite presumably being undertaken by most people at some stage in their life, society still turns away from masturbation; it declines to comment on the topic and, when it does, chooses to do so pejoratively.

As such, Mels van Driel’s With the Hand: A history of masturbation is a rare and welcome exploration of the topic. With a distinct lack of similar historical texts available, Van Driel attempts to cover all the bases, guiding the reader through a swift - if sometimes superficial - tour of the scientific, medical and religious aspects of the practice, along with a more cultural take through the study of art, literature and philosophy.

Unsurprisingly, the history of our medical understanding of masturbation makes for amusing - though at times disturbing - reading. Van Driel traces much misunderstanding back to the 18th-century physician Samuel-Auguste Tissot. A world-renowned doctor, Tissot produced one of few texts of the time about masturbation, despite knowing little about the topic. Sadly it was his fame, and not the document's content, that made it an influential work.

Tissot assumed that sperm was a form of concentrated blood, so release without the prospect of impregnation was not just wasteful but dangerous. His list of ailments afflicting those who masturbate - including, as you may expect, eye disease and blindness - fills pages. Fortunately, we now know Tissot's thinking was incorrect, and some evidence even points to masturbation reducing incidence of prostate cancer and restless leg syndrome in men, though that doesn’t do much to change the effect of his work on society.

Historical remedies brought about by these aged theories range from the hilarious to the gruesome. Van Driel points out that one British medical journal went so far as to suggest placing a bird cage over the genitals to remove temptation to masturbate, for instance, while his accounts of deliberate scarring, mutilation of even removal of the genitals - in both sexes - demand a strong stomach.

It's tempting to point to religious institutions for inspiring Tissot’s treatise and the ensuing madness, but Van Driel suggests otherwise. Counterintuitively, he concludes that it was the scholars of the Enlightenment - the first "men of science" - who pushed the concept of masturbation as self-abuse and self-pollution, rather than clerics.

Van Driel’s analysis of the history of medicine and cultural reactions surrounding masturbation holds together, but his forays into literature, art and entertainment feel shallow and hurried by comparison. 

Such criticisms aside, Van Driel has produced an enthusiastic, amusing and eye-opening exploration of a topic which remains disappointingly taboo. Given the lack of previous exploratory literature about masturbation, it becomes the seminal text on the subject almost by default - but it deserves to hold that baton firmly on its own strengths.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17628279

Why do some people propose in public?

Jimmy Hill's very public proposal to Josie Stanford

In today's Magazine

• Uzbekistan's secretly sterilised women
• Who gets on the FBI's 'top 10' list?
• Are our street names sexist?
• The school run... from class to court

A wedding proposal is the most intimate of occasions - so why are a growing number of people proposing in public?

The traditional wedding proposal was a low-key sort of thing.

One might think of something in a restaurant or a peaceful garden. When it was in public, any bystanders might have been completely oblivious.

But now a slew of YouTube videos are testament to a wave of ever more elaborate and often very public proposals.

You can see compilations of proposals at baseball and basketball stadiums in the US. Some unkind souls have even gathered together the most notable refusals.

And the flashmob wedding proposal - a craze which may have begun in the US in 2009 - is increasingly popular in the UK.

In November 2011, a marriage proposal which featured a hired choir on a packed London train was viewed by millions after taking off on YouTube.

“Start Quote

I'm very English. I would have been mortified”

Public proposals come in other forms too. One man opted for the confined space of an aeroplane and took control of the tannoy system to propose to his girlfriend. The other passengers were also happy when the woman said yes - they got free champagne.

The Blossom Street Choir has taken part in a number of very public proposals. Director Hilary Campbell says it costs between £400 and £2000 to hire a choir and that there has been a marked increase in the number of people proposing this way.

The choir played a part in Jimmy Hill's proposal to his girlfriend at Piccadilly Circus, in the heart of London in front of a crowd to the strains of (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher. The 60 people also included friends and amateur singers who had responded to a Facebook call for volunteers.

Hill, 22, got down on bended knee under the watchful gaze of the statue of Anteros - the Greek god of requited love, commonly mistake for Eros. Josie Stanford, his girlfriend of six years, said "yes" without hesitation.

"I knew it was going to be big because I know what he's like. But I didn't know it was going to be that big," Stanford says.

While that particular recipient was delighted, albeit self-conscious, such a proposal is not for everyone.

"You would either be thrilled or mortified by something like that, depending on just how gregarious you are as a person," says celebrity wedding planner Siobhan Craven-Robins.

"But ultimately it's very romantic - well, it shows great organisation anyway."

The public proposal is part of a growing trend away from tradition, suggests Craven-Robins. It spread to the UK when rules on where you could get married were relaxed, allowing couples to tie the knot in places such as castles, hotels and stately homes.

The increased level of expectation that surrounds weddings these days has led to people feeling that their proposal also has to be out of the ordinary, she says.

Glenn Wilson, a consultant psychologist, thinks public wedding proposals may sometimes be a ploy on the part of men.

"It's possible that some men think that this will pile pressure upon her and increase the likelihood of getting a positive response, that she must think that he really loves her if he goes to this extent of trouble and trickery."

Proposal etiquette

Public marriage proposals can be fun and memorable for both those who happen to witness it, and for the couple involved. There is, however, a time, place and type of person for everything - a grand public gesture should be fitting to the situation, and the recipient must be comfortable with public attention. The proposer should also be extremely confident - there would be nothing more embarrassing than a public refusal.

A public proposal that could be particularly loud, intrusive or embarrassing for people to watch should be avoided. Equally, strangers going about their day-to-day business and people who are doing their jobs (waiters, bar staff etc) shouldn't be put in an awkward situation. Planning is crucial, so ensure every last detail is set up in advance and thought through before publicly getting down on one knee.

A memorable proposal does not have to be public, so never underestimate the power of a personal and intimate approach to popping the question. There are months of celebrations and attention to be had during the engagement and the actual wedding, so opting for a more traditional, low-key approach might be wise.

Jo Bryant - Etiquette Advisor, Debrett's

The recipient of the proposal, put on the spot before an expectant crowd, may feel rather constrained in how they can respond.

"There is tremendous social and public pressure behind the woman to say 'yes'," says Wilson. "If she says 'no' so publicly it's difficult to revise that response later.

"There's a danger that the guy will get the right response for the wrong reason. It does put her on the spot."

The craze for elaborate proposals does not just mean public. Even choosing the top of mountains or towers, or far-flung beaches, still represents a break from tradition.

Debrett's etiquette adviser, Jo Bryant, says public gestures should be fitting to the situation and the recipient should be comfortable with public attention.

"A public proposal that could be particularly loud, intrusive or embarrassing for people to watch should be avoided."

And not everyone is impressed with the long history in the US of men proposing during the interval of sporting events.

Rick Morrissey, a sports writer with the Chicago Sun-Times, had described such proposals as "one of the scourges of modern society".

He continued: "Any time these clips are shown on TV, a news reader coos, 'Awwwwwwwwwwww'. I reach for the cyanide capsules."

Despite the pressure of the situation not all public proposal recipients go along with the plan. At this NBA basketball match the woman said "no" and was booed by the crowd, while the distraught man was consoled by a giant cuddly mascot.

The result is YouTube fodder, as much as the successful proposals make popular videos. Wilson says people feel compelled to watch these videos for the same reason they watch reality TV.

"They are just entertaining, to see real things happening to people."

Georgia Tolley, editor of the Before the Big Day wedding blog, got engaged six months ago and describes her fiance's proposal as being "a very lovely, very private moment".

While "very beautiful", a proposal like Hill's would not have been for her. "I would have died of embarrassment. I'm very English, I would have been mortified."

Tolley says she does not see the trend taking off in the same way it has in the US.

"In America people are a lot more showy-offy and outgoing and that's a fantastic side of the American culture. Here in the UK I just can't see people really engaging with it. I've seen some of the films and the girls just look like they want to fall into the ground.

"You're going to have your wedding, there's going to be loads of opportunities for you to rub your love in other people's faces and go 'look, we're fantastic, we're perfect, we're an amazing couple'. You don't need the bells and whistles. It's a pretty cool moment as it is."

Jimmy Hill and Josie Stanford appeared on the BBC World Service programme Newshour.

The 'mommy porn' seducing women

There's a movie deal in the pipeline for erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. Photo / Thinkstock

Last week, an unusual parcel landed in my letter box. It was wrapped in charcoal tissue tied with a stiff grey ribbon, and accompanied by a handwritten note from the publisher: "I thought you'd like to see what all the fuss was about."

Inside was a book with a black cover bearing a faded picture of a grey man's neck tie.

The book was Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, an erotic novel and internet publishing sensation. It's the story of Anastasia Steele, a 21-year-old college student whose innocence vanishes soon after she interviews the super-rich, super-handsome businessman Christian Grey for her college newspaper. Her nervous, bumbling ways lead Grey to believe she'd make a suitable "submissive" and he sets out to stalk, pursue and woo her into signing a contract by which she agrees to let him dominate and control her in all manner of ways. This being an erotic novel, Grey is of course an irresistible "Greek God" and Anastasia finds herself "beguiled" and heading down a path she never knew existed. And so on and so on.

The book originated as a work of "fan fiction" inspired by the Twilight vampire series, with chapters published on a website for amateur romance writers receiving a lot of reader attention. It was picked up and released as an e-book by independent publisher The Writer's Coffee Shop, and its popularity grew through word-of-mouth recommendations.

The e-book went on to sell 250,000 copies, hitting number one on the New York Times e-book bestseller list and attracting huge publicity.

Its apparent housewifely readership inspired the term "mommy porn", and in the US the book supposedly prompted a run on grey silk neck ties, just like the one Christian uses to, er, secure Anastasia, in certain explicit scenes.

Two sequels rapidly followed - Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed - and now the rights to publish the trilogy in print form have been purchased by Random House, reportedly for more than NZ$1 million. The company released 750,000 copies of the trilogy in the US last month and it is now available in New Zealand.

Part of the book's online success has been attributed to the rising popularity of e-readers. Readers can download the book discreetly and read it on the bus or in a café, without anyone knowing it is an erotic novel (save perhaps, for a tell-tale blush or two.)

Whether the printed novel will prove such a success for Random House remains to be seen. The mainstream branding, discreet cover and incredible hype may well attract some readers who would usually avoid erotica or romance. On the other hand, part of the book's indie allure as a secret recommendation passed from one woman to another will be lost with its conversion to conventional publication.

Like that other exceedingly popular novel The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey will win no prizes for its prose. There are far too many references to Anastasia's irritating inner goddess doing back flips and jumping up and down like a five-year-old, while her subconscious purses her lips or taps her foot. And there are some exceedingly awful descriptions (notably the one in which our heroine refers to a key piece of her beloved's equipment as her, ahem, Popsicle) which would almost certainly be worthy contenders for the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award, were that prize not limited to literary novels.

I'm no connoisseur of erotic or romantic fiction, but given the rigorous selection requirements of Mills & Boon I'd hazard a guess that many of the novels published under its Harlequin erotic imprints would have more attention paid to plot, language, character and motivation than is evident here.

But perhaps focusing on the novel's technical attributes is missing the point. Clearly thousands of readers have been willing to be diverted by the story of Miss Steele and Mr Grey, or at least willing to buy a copy of the e-book to see what all the fuss is about, (presumably at a far cheaper price before Random House got involved). It's easy reading and if you like things a little bit raunchy and can suspend your disbelief and your desire to - if you'll pardon the expression - slap the heroine for having so little self respect, you might enjoy it.

If you can't bring yourself to buy a copy, you could always wait for the movie. In a deal said to be worth US$5 million, E.L. James has sold the rights to the trilogy to Universal Pictures and Focus Features. But how will these plot-light novels translate to the big screen? And will women be as comfortable watching scenes of bondage and discipline in a public cinema as they seem to be reading the novel in the privacy of their own homes?

If you're curious to know more about writing erotic fiction, watch out next week for our Q&A with New Zealand author Leigh Marsden, author of Scarlet (described by publisher Penguin New Zealand as the most sexually explicit book it had ever published) and Crush. If you have any questions send us an email here.

42-year-old becomes father of 82

Ed Houben has a high success rate - 80 per cent of the women he sleeps with fall pregnant. Photo / Thinkstock

A Dutch man who remained a virgin until the age of 34 is now the proud father of 82 children, some of whom are kiwis.

New Zealand women who used a 'baby-making' service set up by the Dutch man may not know their children are linked to up to 80 other children worldwide, the Daily Mail newspaper reported.

Ed Houben, now aged 42, launched his business after becoming frustrated with his sexless life and had fathered 82 children in just nine years - 45 girls, 35 boys and two unknown.

He has another 10 children on the way.

His growing "family" of 82 live in Berlin, Holland, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France and New Zealand.

The oldest child is nine and the youngest two months old.

Houben is now far removed from his previous life as a 34-year-old virgin still living with his mother.

He runs his baby-making business for free, when sperm banks generally charge thousands of dollars for artificial insemination, the Mail said.

The business sees women come to him from across the world or he can go to them if they cover his travel expenses and accommodation.

Since the launch of his business he's been getting lucky - he says he sleeps with around 15 childless women a month in a bid to make their quest to become mothers a reality.

With a no strings attached policy, he asks his partners to sign documents waiving any legal claim to child support.

"My girlfriend says that what I do only makes me more interesting," he told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine.

"She's coming to visit again soon but she hasn't managed to get pregnant yet," he said.

Houben is understood to be the most prolific professional baby-maker in the world.

His success rate is high - 80 per cent of the women he sleeps with fall pregnant.

The website Spermaspender.de in Germany is one the websites he uses to connect with childless women desperate to conceive.

All his partners must submit medical records showing they are disease and drug-free.

Included in his paper work is a semen analysis known as a 'spermiogram' which shows he is the real deal - a sperm count of less than 20 million shows the potential donor is "not a good prospect."

Prospects are increased for sperm counts of 80 to 100 million.

Houben's count is 100 million. "I don't fire blanks," he joked.

- APNZ

Vatican orders crackdown on 'radical' nuns in the US

The Vatican has ordered a crackdown on a group of American nuns that it considers too radical.

It says the group is undermining Roman Catholic teaching on homosexuality and is promoting "feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith".

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious is the largest organisation of Catholic nuns in the US.

An archbishop has been appointed to oversee its reform to ensure that it conforms to Catholic prayer and ritual.

The Leadership Conference, which is based in Maryland, represents about 57,000 nuns and offers a wide range of services, from leadership training for women's religious orders to advocacy on social justice issues.

But its activities have clearly worried the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the nuns' organisation faced a "grave" doctrinal crisis.

It said issues of "crucial importance" to the church, such as abortion and euthanasia, had been ignored.

Vatican officials also castigated the group for making some public statements that "disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops", who are the church's "authentic teachers of faith and morals."

The review will include an examination of ties between the Leadership Conference and Network, a Catholic social justice lobby.

Network played a key role in supporting the Obama administration's health care overhaul despite the bishops' objections that the bill would provide government funding for abortion.

The Leadership Conference disagreed with the bishops' analysis of the law and also supported President Barack Obama's plan.

A Vatican report into the group suggested that they "collectively take a position not in agreement with the church's teaching on human sexuality."

In its presentations investigators noted "a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

The investigation also found that the group has been "silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States".

Australian wins compensation for work trip sex injury

An Australian public servant who was injured while having sex on a work trip has won compensation in court, local media report.

The woman was hit by a glass light fitting above her bed while having sex at a motel in New South Wales in 2007.

Her workers' compensation claims for facial and psychological injuries were initially rejected.

But the judge ruled she had suffered the injuries during the course of her employment.

"If the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room she would have been entitled to compensation, even though it could not be said that her employer induced or encouraged her to engage in such an activity," Justice John Nicholas said.

"In the absence of any misconduct or an intentionally self-inflicted injury, the fact that the applicant was engaged in sexual activity rather than some other lawful recreational activity does not lead to any different result," he added.

The federal government employee, who is in her late 30s, said she suffered injuries to her nose, mouth and a tooth as a result of the glass light fitting hitting her face.

She reportedly also suffered from depression and anxiety.

Her employer had booked her stay at the motel before a work meeting the next day.

She sued Australia's federal government workplace safety body, ComCare, after it rejected her compensation claim. The rejection was also upheld by an appeals tribunal.

But Justice Nicholas said the appeals tribunal was wrong in saying that the woman had to prove her injury had been caused by an activity that had been "implied" or "encouraged" by her employer.

Erotic book Fifty Shades Of Grey becomes UK bestseller

E L James: "I am completely stunned by the reaction to these books"

Erotic novel Fifty Shades Of Grey, by British novelist E L James, has become a number one bestseller in the UK, claims trade magazine The Bookseller.

More than 14,000 copies of the novel have been sold from bookstores around the country, putting it top of this week's mass market fiction chart.

The book is fourth in the official top 50 chart this week across all genres.

Earlier this year the novel topped the prestigious New York Times bestseller list on e-book downloads alone.

Steamy romance

The success of the book in the US prompted Cornerstone publishers to buy the UK rights to the novel and its two sequels, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, which are released next week.

The trilogy of stories tells the tale of a steamy romance between "successful young entrepreneur", Christian Grey and "unworldly, innocent" literature student, Anastasia Steele.

The book has broken the weekly sales record for an erotic novel surpassing Anais Nin's Delta of Venus, which sold 510 copies in one week in 2004, according to Nielsen BookScan.

Phone data shows romance 'driven by women'

A study of mobile phone calls suggests that women call their spouse more than any other person.

That changes as their daughters become old enough to have children, after which they become the most important person in their lives.

The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

It also shows that men call their spouse most often for the first seven years of their relationship. They then shift their focus to other friends.

The results come from an analysis of the texts of mobile phone calls of three million people.

According to the study's co-author, Professor Robin Dunbar of Oxford University, UK, the investigation shows that pair-bonding is much more important to women than men.

"It's the first really strong evidence that romantic relationships are driven by women," he told BBC News.

"It's they who make the decision and once they have made their mind up, they just go for the poor bloke until he keels over and gives in!"

But the data shows that women start to switch the preference of their best friend from about the mid-30s, and by the age of 45 a woman of a generation younger becomes the "new best friend", according to Professor Dunbar.

"What seems to happen is that women push the 'old man' out to become their second best friend, and he gets called much less often and all her attention is focussed on her daughters just at the point at which you are likely to see grandchildren arriving," he says.

Prof Dunbar also claims that the findings suggest that human societies are moving away from a patriarchy back to a matriarchy.

The aim of the project was to find out how close, intimate relationships vary over a lifetime.

This kind of anthropological study is normally very difficult to do because it is hard for researchers to get such a big picture of people's lives.

But by looking at an at an extremely large mobile phone database, they were able to track these changes extremely accurately.

They had access to the age and sex of the callers, who between them made three billion calls and half a billion texts over a period of seven months.

Intensely focussed

The team wanted to find out how the gender preference of best friends, as defined by the frequency of the calling, changed over the course of a lifetime and differed between men and women.

They found that men tend to choose a woman the same age as themselves - which the researchers presumed to be their girlfriend or wife - as a best friend much later in life than women do, and for a much shorter time. This occurs when they are in their early-30s, possibly during courtship, and stops after seven years or so.

Women, however, choose a man of a similar age to be their best friend from the age of 20. He remains for about 15 years, after which time he's replaced by a daughter.

The researchers say that a woman's social world is intensely focussed on one individual and will shift as a result of reproductive interests from being the mate to children and grandchildren.

According to Prof Dunbar, the data suggests that "at root the important relationships are those between women and not those between men".

"Men's relationships are too casual. They often function at a high level in a political sense, of course; but at the end of the day, the structure of society is driven by women, which is exactly what we see in primates," he explains.

Many anthropologists argue that most human societies are patriarchal on the basis that in most communities men stay where they are born whereas the wives move.

But Professor Dunbar and his colleagues are arguing that this only occurs in agriculturally based societies.

"If you look at hunter-gatherers and you look at modern humans in modern post-industrial societies, we are much more matriarchal. It's almost as if the pendulum between the two sexes, power-wise, is swinging (back) as we move away from agriculture toward a knowledge-based economy," he says.

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Pakistani women's lives destroyed by acid attacks

Campaigners in Pakistan say cases of acid attacks are increasing in most areas, even though tougher penalties were introduced last year. An Oscar-winning Pakistani documentary has put the crime under the spotlight, but it is estimated that more than 150 women have acid thrown on them every year - usually by husbands or in-laws - and many never get justice. The BBC's Orla Guerin reports.

Her name is Shama, meaning "candle", and she says her husband burnt her flesh as if it was a candlewick.

The young mother of four has just joined the ranks of Pakistani women doused in acid. She is scarred for life, with burns on 15% of her body. Her crime was her beauty.

"My husband and I often had arguments in the house," she said, in her hospital bed. "On that day before going to sleep he said 'you take too much pride in your beauty'. Then in the middle of the night he threw acid on me, and ran away."

When her husband fled, he took her mobile phone with him, so she could not call for help.

Shama shows me a picture taken at a children's party four months ago. It is a snapshot of an attractive young woman, with immaculate make-up, wearing an orange outfit flecked with gold.

Her hair is swept back to reveal dangling earnings. But acid has erased that confident, composed Shama.

"I feel pain at what I was, and what I have become," she said, with tears coursing down her scorched cheeks.

"All the colours have gone from my life. I feel like I'm a living corpse, even worse than a living corpse. I think I have no right to live."

Shama now lies in Ward 10a of the burns unit in Nishtar Hospital in Multan in Pakistan's Punjab province.

It is a monument to neglect. The plaster is peeling off the walls and there is a leaking pipe hanging from the ceiling. When patients need transfusions, their relatives are despatched to buy pints of blood.

But the doctors here are expert at treating women disfigured by acid - they see one or two new victims every week.

At morning rounds they gather at Shama's bed, asking if she is eating, and is keeping her burns covered with cream. They try to relieve her pain, but cannot ease her despair.

"I can't say anything about the future," she says, "maybe I won't be alive. I will try - for my kids - to get back to how I was. I have to work to build a future for them.

"If I can't I'll do what one or two other girls have done.

"They killed themselves."

Fakhra Younis, a former dancing girl in Karachi, was one such woman, who ended her life to escape suffering.

It has been said of Fakhra that she died twice - once when she was drenched in acid 13 years ago, and again when she committed suicide in Italy last month.

Before taking her own life, she had endured almost 40 surgeries.

Supporters say Fakhra had given up hope of getting justice. Her former husband, who comes from a powerful political family, was acquitted of the attack.

He continues to protest his innocence.

Fakhra's death made the headlines here, but activists say many victims are shunned and silenced.

"Only about 10% of cases are getting to court," said Zohra Yusuf, the chair of Pakistan's Human Rights Commission.

"Even in high-profile cases like Fakhra's there are poor prosecutions. Most of the time, victims can't get a case registered by police."

Offenders now face a tougher sentence - between 14 years and life imprisonment - under a law passed last year. But most attackers still get off scott free, according to Marvi Memon, the former MP who sponsored the new law.

"Even if he [the attacker] gets caught, he'll pay police off and he'll get away with it in most parts of Pakistan," she said.

"It's the easiest way to punish a woman. You can just throw acid and destroy her entire life in one second."

Marvi Memon blames a lack of political will to implement the law.

“Start Quote

I want the severest punishment for him," she said. "That would make anyone think a thousand times before committing such a crime."”

"It's very difficult to get the police to co-operate with the women," she said, "because they are under no pressure to do so."

The government admits it needs to do more for acid victims, and says implementing the new law is a major challenge.

"Passing the legislation was a first step," said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, a goverment adviser, "but how do cases get to trial speedily? That's the part we still need to work on. We need to sensitise the police, the lower courts and even the legal community."

Back in Ward 10a, there's a new arrival. A woman named Maqsood is wheeled in, still wearing clothing eaten away by the acid.

Beneath her cream shawl the skin on her face is singed and mottled, and her right eye is sealed shut.

"My son-in-law came in the night, and threw acid on me," Maqsood said "after a small family dispute. He broke in through the roof. There was no power in our area, so we could not catch him."

But he was caught later, and he at least is now in custody.

A plastic surgeon, Dr Bilal Saeed, rushes to assess the new patient. He has treated hundreds of women like Maqsood in recent years. He admits to being depressed by his work.

"On average we do multiple surgical and cosmetic procedures on these patients," he said. "But whatever we do, we are not getting their smile back."

Many commit suicide, according to Dr Saeed, in spite of his best efforts.

He says others are forced to return to the in-laws or husbands who attacked them because of social pressure or money problems.

A few beds away, Shama's children come to visit, crowding around her bed.

She reaches out a burnt arm to stroke their anxious faces, and asks for her youngest, Noor, to be placed on her chest.

"Do pray for Mummy," she tells them, "ask God to make me get better quickly."

Shama's husband remains at large. If he is ever caught she wants acid thrown on his face.

"I want the severest punishment for him," she said. "That would make anyone think a thousand times before committing such a crime."

As the children prepare to leave, Shama cannot hold back her tears. For their sake, she says she will try to keep going.

But like Fakhra Younis before her, she is not expecting justice.

Leader of 'radical' US nuns rejects Vatican criticism

Sister Simone Campbell thinks there is a "strong connection between her group's health care position and the report"

The leader of a group of US nuns the Vatican accuses of flouting Church teaching has rejected the claims.

"I've no idea what they're talking about," Sister Simone Campbell, head of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby, told the BBC.

"Our role is to live the gospel with those who live on the margins of society. That's all we do."

On Wednesday the Vatican announced a crackdown on US nuns long considered too liberal by the church hierarchy.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Office of the Inquisition, issued a highly critical report that accused US nuns of engaging in "corporate dissent" and of ignoring, or worse, challenging the church's teachings on abortion, homosexuality and an all-male priesthood.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents 80% of America's 57,000 nuns, was the subject of a lengthy of investigation led by Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio.

The resulting report noted the good work they did with the poor and in running schools and hospitals, but also documented what it called a "grave" doctrinal crisis.

It said the sisters were promoting radical feminist themes and criticised US nuns for challenging the bishops, who it said were "the church's authentic teachers of faith and morals".

The Archbishop of Seattle, Peter Sartain, is to lead a reform of the LCWR.

This will include a review of ties between it and its close partner, Network, a social justice organisation involved in healthcare and poverty programmes.

Network was singled out for criticism in the report for "being silent on the right to life" and other "crucial issues" to the church.

Sister Campbell suggested that her organisation's vocal support for President Barack Obama's healthcare bill was behind the slapdown.

"There's a strong connection," she said. "We didn't split on faith, we split on politics."

American Bishops saw the Obama administration's Affordable Care Act as backing state-funded abortion. The nuns disagreed.

The Vatican said that the mandate to carry out reforms of the nuns' leadership "will be for a period of up to five years, as deemed necessary".

Archbishop Sartain said, "I hope to be of service to them and to the Holy See as we face areas of concern to all."

But Sister Campbell suggested a difficult time ahead: "It's totally a top-down process and I don't think the bishops have any idea of what they're in for."

Child marriages blight Bangladesh

Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world, with 20% of girls becoming wives before their 15th birthday, even though 18 is the minimum age allowed by law. Why?

"It is the new kind of slavery," says Mirna Ming Ming Evora, who's the country director for the NGO Plan International.

"Here girls are a burden, they don't earn income in this culture."

Which means they are totally dependent on their families to support and protect them and pay their dowries. That's the money a father must pay to a future husband to secure a marriage.

"Dowry for a very poor family is work of a lifetime, they'd rather start early because the dowry is not too high. The girl is more saleable."

She's met many of these child brides.

"They say to me I lost my childhood."

These are the stories of three children living with the consequences of child marriage.

'Please pray for me'

In a quiet voice Poppy says: "It's a very hateful illness, I can't stand the smell".

She sits on a bed in in a hospital in Dhaka. There are cockroaches on the walls and next door, women who have just had operations sleep two to a bed.

"I cry sometimes what else can I do" she says.

She's suffering from fistula, serious internal injuries which have left her incontinent. It's caused by giving birth too young and not getting proper medical attention.

Nurses don't know exactly how old Poppy is. They think she's 12 but she won't say.

She was forced to marry a man who was more than 10 years older than her. She got pregnant, but lost her child.

"It died in my tummy and they had to cut it out".

She walked into the clinic alone, her husband abandoned her because of the illness.

There are tens of thousands of girls and women like Poppy.

I ask her if she'll ever marry again, and she shakes her head.

"I say to other girls my age: 'You should not get married. if you do, this is the condition you will be in.'"

As we leave, Poppy says: "Please pray for me, pray that I get better."

'We're saving lives'

"I do this work because I wanted to put a smile back on the face of the parents," says Oli Ahmed. He grins as he says it.

Oli is a campaigner who goes around the slum where he lives in Dhaka standing up to his elders and telling them why they shouldn't marry off their daughters so young.

He's the same age as Poppy, just 12.

"I used to know a girl who was like an older sister to me, but she was forced to get married and never came back."

It made him very angry and sad.

"Even though parents marry their children off early, they still feel a sense of guilt and they don't know what happens to their children."

Oli approached Plan International which was already working in his slum in Dhaka.

He told them he wanted to set up a group led by children to try and stop the practice. He goes door to door with a group of friends persuading, scolding and hectoring parents.

At one house, he demands to know why there's no birth certificate for a man's daughter.

There and then, they register her birth and warn the father that they'll be watching him.

"I think we do a better job than the adults… the adults think we're so young and yet we know so much… we're more enthusiastic than the older people."

One NGO worker says that since they started work, the number of child marriages in that area has dropped by as much as 50%.

"I feel very good that a girl's life has been saved because of the work that I've done," says Oli.

'I'm getting her married because I love her'

Jemi, 13, likes playing hopscotch or kut kut as it's known here.

When we meet her she's due to get married in six days. Her mother has chosen the day and picked the groom.

She lives in a village which is six hours drive from the capital Dhaka. We track her down with the help of an activist.

When we ask if she's looking forward to her wedding she looks down at the floor and says: "Not very much, no."

She's small and very shy. She has stickers of butterflies on the back of her hands.

Her mother tells us she has to get her married now because she won't have to pay a dowry. If she waits, it will cost her money they don't have.

"I have no fear, I am giving her away to my sister's son. Girls never say they want to get married."

She is reminded that it's against the law. When officials from the local government and an NGO arrive to stop the wedding she argues with them.

She tells them the family can't afford to send her to school any more. If she remains unmarried, people will say bad things about her.

"I'm getting her married because I love her."

But the officials threaten to prosecute her if she goes ahead, and she starts to cry. Then, in front of her neighbours, she announces that the wedding is cancelled, adding: "I didn't realise it was wrong."

As for Jemi, she smiles and confides "I think it is really good what has happened".

Angus Crawford's Crossing Continents is on Radio 4 on Thursday 26 April at 11:00 BST and again on Monday 30 April at 20:30 BST. People can listen online, download the podcast and browse the archive.

Ingrid Turinawe 'sexual abuse' protesters strip

A group of women have stripped to their bras in protest at the alleged sexual assault by Ugandan police of a high-profile female opposition politician.

Footage shows an officer squeezing the breast of Ingrid Turinawe of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) during her arrest ahead of a rally last week.

Deputy police chief Andrew Kaweesa has apologised, saying the incident will be investigated.

Uganda's opposition says police regularly harass them during protests.

Since President Yoweri Museveni's controversial 2011 re-election, there has been a wave of opposition demonstrations - many of which have ended in violence and arrests.

But correspondents say Ugandans are outraged by the arrest on Friday of Ms Turinawe, who is the head of the Women's League of the FDC led by Kizza Besigye.

Ugandan television footage clearly shows that, as several officers tried to pull her out of her vehicle, another grabbed and squeezed her breast - and she is heard shouting out in pain.

The BBC's Siraj Kalyango in the capital, Kampala, says a group of about 15 women marched through the town to the main police station waving placards, including one that read "How would you feel if we squeezed your balls?"

Six protesters were arrested after they refused to put their tops back on - but they were released two hours later without charge.

"We wanted to ask the police if they are there to do their jobs or there to pinch breasts," event organiser Barbara Allimadi told the AFP news agency.

Yes… yes… no? G spot finding fails to convince

• 05:00 25 April 2012 by Helen Thomson
• For similar stories, visit the Love and Sex Topic Guide

G marks the spot. Or does it? One researcher claims to have pinpointed and described the anatomy of the elusive G spot, an area of the vagina reputed to produce intense orgasms when stimulated. Many others are not so sure, saying that the G spot is unlikely to be a single structure.

"It's akin to concluding that the Empire State Building is New York City," says Barry Komisaruk at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

The G spot refers to an area on the front of the vaginal wall, a few centimetres from the entrance of the vagina. Stimulating this area is said to cause swelling and create an orgasm without stimulating the clitoris.

As far back as the 11th century, ancient Indian texts described a sensitive area in the vagina inducing sexual pleasure. In 2008, Emmanuele Jannini at the University of L'Aquila in Italy discovered anatomical differences in the thickness of tissue in the region between the vagina and urethra in women who claimed to have vaginal orgasms compared with those who did not.

However, a recent review of G spot research published since 1950 concluded that objective measures "have failed to provide strong and consistent evidence for the existence of an anatomical site related to the G spot" (The Journal of Sexual Medicine, DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02623.x).

Adam Ostrzenski, director of the Institute of Gynecology in St Petersburg, Florida, now claims to have found a clear anatomical structure, not yet described in the literature, that he identifies as the G spot. Ostrzenski performs cosmetic gynaecological procedures and says he has observed the structure several times. His patients confirm that its position coincides with the G spot area.

To get a clearer picture, he has dissected the anterior vaginal wall in the cadaver of an 83-year-old.

"I selected an old lady for the dissection because I wanted to see whether this structure was persistent through life or just in the younger population."

He found a clearly defined sac in a layer between the vagina and the urethra close to the perineal membrane. The sac was around 16 millimetres from the upper part of the urethral opening. At less than a centimetre long, it was positioned at a 35-degree angle to the urethra.

Inside the sac Ostrzenski found a "worm-like" structure with three distinct regions that broadly "resemble erectile tissue – normally found in areas such as the clitoral body".

See diagram: "They seek it here..."

He believes no one has found the sac before because of its size and location deep within the vaginal tissue. "It's not easy to find," he says. He adds that it should not be confused with Skene glands – another contender for the G spot. These glands are small, flaccid balloon-like masses on either side of the urethra, analogous to the male prostate gland, which are involved in sexual arousal.

Amichai Kilchevsky at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut, who led the recent review of the G spot literature, says that without a detailed examination of the tissue to determine its function in life, "the significance of the organ that has been uncovered is unclear". Ostrzenski says he will perform the necessary histological analysis on cadavers within the next few weeks.

Jannini raises another possibility: the structure may be a sign of disease, given the age of the cadaver. If it is not, though, it probably has a sexual function – Jannini says that structures found in this area usually do. With such a density of nerves and glands here, he says, there may be a G spot complex that also involves the clitoris – rather than a distinct, solitary G spot.

Beverly Whipple at Rutgers University and colleagues, who coined the term "G spot" in 1981, agrees. "I'm very happy that people are interested in this but I think there's a lot more to it than just one tissue," she says. "We have never said that the G spot is a distinct structure."

The area is also under dramatic hormonal control, says Jannini, which has an impact on the function of the tissue. "Anatomy is wonderful but not enough by itself."

Journal reference: The Journal of Sexual Medicine, DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2012.02668.x

Indian teenager annuls her child 'marriage'

A young woman has had her child "marriage" legally annulled in northern Rajasthan state, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind in India.

Laxmi Sargara, 18, wed Rakesh when she was just one and he was three.

She grew up with her own family, only finding out she was married when her in-laws came to claim her this month.

Child marriages are illegal in India but are still common in many parts of the country, especially in rural and poorer communities.

"I was unhappy about the marriage. I told my parents who did not agree with me, then I sought help," Laxmi told Agence France Presse (AFP) news agency.

She knew nothing of her future life until a few days ago when her groom's family came to take her home with them to start her new life as Rakesh's wife.

After appealing to her parents Laxmi sought help from a local non-governmental organisation, the Sarathi Trust in Jodhpur city.

"She got depressed. She did not like the boy and was not ready to go ahead with her parents' decision," Sarathi Trust worker Kriti Bharti told AFP.

"It is the first example we know of a couple wed in childhood wanting the marriage to be annulled and we hope others take inspiration," Kriti Bharti added.

At first Rakesh wanted to go ahead with the marriage. But he relented after counselling from the NGO.

Since child marriages are not legal under India's Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, both Laxmi and Rakesh signed an affidavit declaring the marriage null and void in the presence of a notary public in Jodhpur.

Narayan Bareth, a journalist in the state capital Jaipur, says a recent survey found that 10% of girls in Rajasthan are married off before the age of 18.

There have been several cases of young girls refusing to get married in India but these are rare cases, correspondents say.

According to Unicef, 40% of the world's child marriages take place in India, although recent efforts to stop the practice mean the number of such marriages has declined.

Bangladesh teacher 'burns' legs of girl pupils

Police in Bangladesh are looking for a teacher from a Muslim religious school who allegedly placed burning hot iron rods on the legs of her students for failing to offer prayers regularly.

They say 14 girls, aged between eight and 12, received burn injuries.

The school has been temporarily closed following the incident, while the "hellish experience" of the girls has been widely reported in newspapers.

Their injuries are not thought to be serious.

The Bangladeshi government banned all corporal punishment in all educational institutions, including religious schools - or madrassas - in 2010.

"I was shocked to see the burn injury of my daughter," Jumur Akhter, mother of one of the affected students, told the BBC.

The girls were learning Arabic and Bengali at the Talimul Koran Mahila madrassa at Namashyampur in Dhaka. The incident is said to have happened on Tuesday.

"It was the first day of the madrassa after our holidays. Our teacher got angry when she heard that we were not offering regular prayers during our vacation," said Ferdousi Akther, aged eight.

"Then she asked her servant to heat up the rod and then she pressed it on our legs. The pain was unbearable."

Pupils say that the teacher asked the students whether they knew the severity of the fire in hell.

They were allegedly told that if they did not offer prayers regularly, they would experience a similar punishment.

The neighbourhood of small businessmen, day labourers and garment factory workers is shocked over the incident.

"This is... human rights violence on children. The government has been trying to stop this kind of violence against children, especially in educational institutions. But the implementation is weak," Rasheda K Chowdhury of the Campaign for Popular Education said.

Police are investigating the incident following complaints by parents.

"We have registered a case against the madrassa teacher following a complaint by the father of a girl. The teacher and her husband have gone into hiding. We are still searching for them," Shafiqul Islam, a police officer in charge of the Kadamtoli area of Dhaka told the BBC.

Parents, meanwhile, say that they are reluctant to carry on sending their children to the madrassa.

"If we had a government school in the vicinity then we would send them there. But the nearest government school is far away," said Sumaiya Begum, mother of another student who received injuries.

"That is why we have to send our children to this madrassa."

Bangladesh has two types of madrassas.

There are more than 16,000 state-sponsored Alia madrassas across the country teaching more than five million students.

Apart from Islamic studies, students in these institutions learn English, maths and science.

The second type are Qaumi madrassas, which are independent and run by donations from people inside and outside Bangladesh.

They focus mainly on Islamic studies.

Almost every village in Bangladesh has a Qaumi madrassa. People from poorer communities tend to enrol their children in them when there are no government-run schools in their villages.

India court: Insisting on condom not grounds for divorce

The Bombay High Court has ruled that a wife's refusal to have sex with her husband without a condom does not constitute grounds for divorce.

Pradeep Bapat told the court his wife Prerna refused to have children because they were not financially stable.

The judges said Mr Bapat's other grounds for divorce, a lack of cooking and cleaning skills on his wife's part, were also not grounds for divorce.

They said arranged couples should get to know each other before marrying.

The couple (whose real names were not released to protect their privacy) married in February 2007 and by June Prerna had left their home.

"She wanted to give the child a better life. It is a mutual decision and a husband can not insist," said Justice PB Majmudar in remarks quoted by the Times of India.

Mr Bapat's lawyer told the court that his client wanted an educated, working woman as his wife, who would also do the housework.

"A woman is not a slave," Justice Majmudar said.

"You have put [common marital troubles] in the plea. If we construe these as cruelty, then no marriage will be safe."

In the ruling, made with fellow Justice Anoop Mohta, the judges said couples should get to know each other before marrying, especially in the case of arranged marriages.

"It is the duty of parents to consider various aspects before the actual marriage takes place," the judges said.