IndCoup notes that Playboy is launching an Indonesian edition, enraging the country’s Islamist parties. IndCoup, however, argues that the outrage is not based on concerns that the magazine will diminish women.:

In politics, for example, the Muslim factions in Indonesia’s Parliament do everything they can to ensure that women are still seen as inferior to men and are excluded, wherever possible, from the sphere of political decision-making (women occupy just 8 percent of the seats in Indonesia’s Parliament).

Sure Indonesia may have had a female president - Megawati Sukarnoputri – but she was often made a target by the Islamists simply because of her gender (after all, men should never be ruled over by women, should they?)

Actually, I think the Indonesians should take a leaf out of the Swedes’ book given that women make up around 50 percent of Parliament members in Sweden. And this in a country where very permissive attitudes toward pornography are common. Coincidence? I think not…

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