May 16, 2007
The subjection of Islamic women and the fecklessness of American feminism
Christina Hoff Summers in the Weekly Standard:
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?
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 12:24 AM | Permalink
Comments
I would think that groups at the national level don't routinely condemn entire societies and interpretations of their most holy books out of a certain cultural sensitivity. Feminists in the Middle East are also Muslims, they share distrust of western things.
(Incidentally, Nafisi's book is sensationalist and transparently dishonest, it panders to western academics and their preconceptions about life in Iran. It's not a very good read in my opinion.)
The only thing women in the west can hope to do is support Middle Eastern women that have an interest in working, studying, and understanding the practical realities of living liberated. Many Muslim women simply do not want that sort of life.
Posted by: David | May 16, 2007 6:51:17 AM
David, you make some good points, although I can't agree with you about "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Unless you feel that Nafisi simply fabricated memories to create as ersatz a memoir as this era of the pseudo-memoir has seen, then at the very least her book must be valued as a testament to how far some young women living in a repressive society are prepared to go to have a life of the mind that they can call their own and share with others.
I think most Western feminists recognize that Western-style feminism is not necessarily the way to go for every oppressed woman in every conservative society around the world. We recognize, too, that freedom is something you take for yourself, not something you wait to have conferred on you by a liberator who is stronger and freer than you are. To think otherwise is to ignore one of the hideously costly lessons of the war in Iraq -- that barging in to present democracy to people who are struggling for other things is a "white man's burden" type of aggression bound to have intolerable effects. We know how well we would like it if militant sisters in chadri were thronging our cities, eager to instruct us in how to find God, serve men, produce children and embrace destiny as "real" women. Yet, if these same sisters were to encourage us in getting an education and finding gainful employment, we might actually listen, because listening would not be a form of obeisance requiring us to drop everything we believed in at the door.
The message to give up your culture for my culture, to be like me, or else, is feminism at the point of a sword; it only works if you like carnage. I believe that on the most practical level, Western feminists -- women and men alike -- can best help women in deeply conservative societies by supporting the work of women they genuinely regard as leaders. Some of these are only moderate feminists by our own standards, but they are braver than any Second Wave feminist in the West has ever had to be, and they represent real hope for empowerment, not "regime change."
Posted by: Elatia Harris | May 16, 2007 10:21:36 AM
Summers plays her wingnut hand---American feminists are in cahoots with Iranian mullahs! Some bombing is in order to establish male dominance at home.
Posted by: Amanda Marcotte | May 16, 2007 11:23:45 AM
Interesting. Is the right testing the civil liberties of women in Muslim societies message point to see if it sticks? Maybe they can find feminist hawks to shill for them.
None of which is meant to deny that women have fewer and unequal rights and liberties in most of the Muslim world.
Posted by: Robin | May 16, 2007 1:26:28 PM
One of Hoff Summers' comments is usually false and another is a red herring.
As I write, the top four links on www.msmagazine.com are about the rights of women in Islamic countries. This is characteristic of their news coverage and has been for decades; e.g., I know I read of RAWA in Ms rather earlier than I ever heard of it in the mainstream press. (They also regularly discuss the particular conditions of women in, say, Darfur, and ex-Yugoslavia, and Cambodia.)
NOW does not have anything about other countries -- but that's to be expected from a US group that describes itself as "National"; their purpose is to extend legal and practical equality to women in the US. (What they do that the MSM particularly ignores is agitate for labor rights and the rights of the poor.)
Posted by: clew | May 16, 2007 1:40:49 PM
This is another cart before the horse issue.
Until superstition based Islam and the hatred and fear of the feminine that these Islamic males harbor, I think "feminist rights" is a oxymoron in theses societies--
I have a good friend who is a educated Turkish Woman And arguably Turkey is as good as Islam is going to get at the moment. After her days of living in San Francisco, she cannot bear the oppression and backward social norms of islam.
Until these Bronze Age Societies and their childish fears of women are addressed, the cart is before the horse.
Posted by: Scott Ahlf | May 16, 2007 8:39:31 PM
Scott, how would you address these society-wide fears of women found in ever so many societies if not by empowering women? You don't think men are going to let up on us all on their own, but what DO you think? If there is some better, non-violent thing a woman can do than to strive for equality in education and in voting, not to mention for more control of her own and her family's resources, I would like to know about it.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | May 17, 2007 12:24:26 AM
Elatia, your point is taken. At the same time, I'd direct your attention to two authors from Czechoslovakia, and ask you to consider how Milan Kundera and Valclav Havel are regarded in their home country in contrast to the rest of the world. I found Nafisi's book most interesting in its role a reader in English literature, as a memoir it was self-congratulatory and dishonest. When I think about artistic impressions of Iran that ring true, people like Satrapi and Majidi come to mind.
Posted by: David | May 17, 2007 1:26:17 AM
Did the critical commenters actually read the article? CHS praises the local women's movements in Islamic countries for promoting a feminine, family-friendly movement for women's rights, and criticizes individualistic Western feminism.
This is exactly the opposite of the imperialist our-society-is-better approach.
Posted by: Pseudonym | May 17, 2007 9:49:13 AM
Elatia--
I agree, women need to fight for rights whenever possible. Also, a point well taken by Pseudo-- western feminism is often individualistic, self centered, and often New Age Noble Savage bound in superstition.
However, one cannot argue with the advances of western feminism (I am speaking of equality feminism, not gender equality, which is another issue entirely)--
The most just societies are ones where women have equal economic and political rights---
In Islam, from direct observation, this seems impossible after all these centuries. Until such Bronze Age Myths are abandoned, the culture will continue to be poisoned for women's rights.
Posted by: Scott Ahlf | May 18, 2007 10:56:17 PM
The emotional-knee-jerk reaction the author tries to elicit in this article makes my blood boil. How does a pissing match about whose-oppression-is-worse fit into helping any women, anywhere? Of course there are going to be feminist organizations devoted to both local and global causes. Activism starts on the local level, change doesn't come swooping down from on high, and certainly not from across the ocean.
Her implication that there is a moral imperative for American Feminists to ignore issues of domestic violence and discrimination, (regardless of how "minor" she may deem them), and run to the aid of budding Muslim feminists is as intractable as it is extreme. Yes, we have a responsibility as HUMANS to do what we can to support global justice on a macro scale, obviously - but the accusation that American feminists are selfish, entitled, and deluded because they want to help their neighbors before someone on the other side of the world is absurd.
The examples of oppression CHS brings to light compares apples to oranges. Feminists like Eve Ensler are not stupid or callous enough to compare hangings with societal pressure to be thin - let's be realistic. Her tactic of being emotionally explosive to cloud the issue, seems to have come straight from the conservative thinktank of whence it came. I would wager instead that these women are trying to give young women a global and historical idea of where feminism is going, where it's been and what battles there are still to be fought for ALL women - problems run the gamut in seriousness, that much is clear. CHS's characterization of american feminism is as skewed as it is irresponsible.
Posted by: Lauren | May 23, 2007 5:30:58 PM
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