Posted on 05/19/2007 5:30:20 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye. Accounts of lashings, stonings, and honor killings are regularly in the news, and searing memoirs by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi have become major best-sellers. One might expect that by now American feminist groups would be organizing protests against such glaring injustices, joining forces with the valiant Muslim women who are working to change their societies. This is not happening.
If you go to the websites of major women's groups, such as the National Organization for Women, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the National Council for Research on Women, or to women's centers at our major colleges and universities, you'll find them caught up with entirely other issues, seldom mentioning women in Islam. During the 1980s, there were massive demonstrations on American campuses against racial apartheid in South Africa. There is no remotely comparable movement on today's campuses against the gender apartheid prevalent in large parts of the world.
It is not that American feminists are indifferent to the predicament of Muslim women. Nor do they completely ignore it. For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?
The reasons are rooted in the worldview of the women who shape the concerns and activities of contemporary American feminism. That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
The feminist movement in the United States has embraced anti-Americanism, and any protest against foreign cultures would undermine that stance.
We can only hope it’s part of BDS syndrome. When Bush is gone, pro-women feminism and moderate muslims might come out of hiding. And I might be queen of Romania...
As long as they can kill their unborn they are happy.
Time for Michael Moore to do an expose. Yeah, right. When pigs can fly. Oh, Michael can already fly, so maybe there’s a chance.
I never have understood how Western women could embrace Islam!
The point is, a speaker beats the drum that women are oppressed in this country. Those women who hear it and believe they are oppressed then support said speaker by buying books, their movies, whatever. The speaker’s motivations may be many, but the foremost is money.
Speaking against ‘tyranny’ of women in this country can be lucrative. Speaking against ‘tyranny’ of women in a foreign country has no monetary value, hence no ‘outrage’.
The only exception to this that I see is when the blame for the oppression can be placed on the U.S.—preferably a conservative faction of the U.S. There are enough people here who hate their own country to make such speaking profitable.+
Very true. Yo-u have hit at the heart of this argument. This hypocrisy has been allowed to exist without attention from the major media... for the same reason.
because the ones that do have never been forced to live inside a silken prison and walk five paces behind a two-bit dictator.
American feminism is first and foremost about wealth and political power. Women overseas provide neither.
And Marxism.
The only "oppression" I've felt is from the femi-nazis I know who mocked, ridiculed and chided me for living with traditional values. They've ruined it for all of us.
Well, that’s your own fault because as an american woman, you have the obligation to liberate yourself from the stereotypical female roles.
In other words, you are free to live your life as you see fit, as long as it’s not traditional. I’m sure that’s in the fine print somewhere.
bump
Excellent article. Thanks for posting this.
You’re very welcome.
: )
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