Western feminists feeling the heat?
Cinnamon Stillwell reports that feminists are feeling pressure from critics of jihad and sharia to speak up about the oppression of women in Muslim culture:
Now it seems the Western feminist movement is starting to feel the heat. An open letter penned by Katha Pollitt of The Nation on behalf of “American Feminists” has been circulating throughout the Internet expressing the movement’s rejection of said criticism and its alleged commitment to fighting for “women in the developing and/or Muslim world.” Over 700 of the feminist movement’s leading lights, including at least one Middle East studies professor (a sphere notorious for being more anti-Western than anti-sexism), have signed the letter so far.
David Horowitz, the originator of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (which brought speakers to U.S. college campuses to address this very topic, among others) has responded to Pollitt’s open letter at Frontpage Magazine. Along with Islam scholar Robert Spencer, Horowitz seems to feel that the letter can only be evidence that all the criticism is beginning to have an effect. And I suspect as much myself. Whether or not this produces results, and not simply declarations of indignation, remains to be seen.
One thing’s for sure, the crimes against Muslim women and the threat to all women’s rights from the encroachments of Sharia law, demand action, not just words.
How about answering Phyllis Chesler’s call?
Or donations to the reward fund to find fugitive accused double-murderer/honor killer Yaser Abdel Said?
It would be a start.
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Categories: Sharia
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“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” may come back to bite you if sharia gets a foothold here ladies.
Yes. Worried about glass ceilings, stay-at-home mother, and abortion-on-demand?
Feminists have no idea how oppressed they’d *truly* be under Islam. It would make the overturning of Roe v. Wade look like a walk in the park.
Feminists aren’t interested in women in other parts of the world. Their stance for feminism is nothing more than a cover for their anti-American, anti-capitalist views…just like the environmental groups and MADD.
Well said.
The feminists have sacrificed womens issues on the altar of liberism. They will do anything to elect socialists. Relative silence when Bill Clinton was being a sexual predator while in office but frothing-at-the-mouth when Anita Hill was “testifying” against Clarence Thomas.
Now the chickens have come home to roost.
Why has no one asked, “Who do the American Islamists support for President?” Is this a question, and subject that will be avoided, at all costs, by the candidates for office?
My guess is that no liberal feminist will dare do, nor say anything that strengthens the Republicans, no matter what cost to our country. They cannot stand against Islam without weakening the Democrati!
Hmmm…I’m a stay at home mom. Is that anti-feminist?
Feminists are confused. They are fighting for the wrong thing and trying to appease the wrong people.
Whoops! Another aborted opportunity to speak up!
If that’s the path you chose, it makes you incredibly feminist. It’s just as feminist to choose to work a white collar job. The choice is yours. And that’s what the modern feminist movement is about: choice.
I have never met a feminist who didn’t have a problem with the way Islamic countries treat women. Just today, one leading feminist blog brought attention to an Iranian crackdown on a women’s magazine.
This whole post seems to be much ado about nothing.
By the way, for an interesting take on being a women through the Iranian revolution and beyond, check out Persepolis. The film adaptation was nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar.
I’m sure, if they do say anything, it’ll be a typical, watered down, intellectual rationalization that could mean anything but implying they are so wonderful and well adjusted while the rest of us are stupid bozos.
Maybe the bigger question is what the hell is wrong with the two biggest women’s groups in the country? NOW and Concerned Women for America have been shamefully silent on these issues. NOW has been a little vocal on the issue but not nearly as loud as they should be and CWFA has said nothing. That’s a disgrace.
Nothing is wrong with those 2 groups. It’s been obvious for years that the real purpose of the groups is abortion and socialism, with them, of course, coming out with the power.
How to you equate CWFA with socialism?
Perhaps, Mookie, liberalism is a better word.
Um…you might want to visit their website.
CWFA
Thanks Mookie…I will.
I have read Persepolis and Persepolis 2 but I have never heard a feminist or any
feminist org that pushed the books. When I read them, no one seemed to have
heard of them or had any interest in reading them. Feminists are too busy
feathering their own nests and pushing their own agendas. It is a cop out to
mouth that they do not interfere in “other cultures.” Feminism have never been
a viable way to get anything accomplished except perhaps unisex toilets.
If you think feminists of the Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem type haven’t been criticizing Muslim mistreatment of women, you haven’t been paying attention. They did it long before it was cool for conservatives to hate Islam, even back in the 1950’s when conservatives were anti Israel and pro Saudi Arabia.
Number 5 comment (from right_on) is an important one. I trust someone will raise that concern at some point in the future.
I’ve listened to the so-called feminists for years, and I’ve rarely heard any criticism of islamic treatment of women – especially when compared to the voluminous railing against conservatism.
When I hear Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Kim Grandy, etc – I always want to ask “Where’s your Burqa? Don’t you know that if you get what you want, you’ll be stoned to death or beheaded for not wearing one?”
Tammy Bruce is spot on!
You are woefully misinformed about Abzug and Islamic violence against women.
LGM, where now are your feminists? Won’t your demo candidates surrender to Islam? They have no alternatives to the Jihad threat and most of the GOP doesn’t either. Its time to wake up and find out how much thise Muslims want to destroy us. They merely laugh at you as useful idiots.
Wrong, they’ve lobbied for special interest projects to “support” women but raise taxes, then they destroyed a woman’s choice to stay home by lobbying for “equal” pay so much so, my husband and I have BOTH had to work to get by in our tax and spend crappy blue state. If anything, everything they’ve accomplished has screwed women over…
I get a real charge when PCer’s get caught up in their own logical contradictions.
If you think Moslem culture is inferior, then you’re a racist. We must embrace diverse cultures. But that would mean condoning the inferior position of women in many Moslem cultures. Hmmmm, I think I’ll solve this logical dilemma by assuming feminism is a universal human value, and therefore Moslems just need to be introduced to feminism to embrace it.
This is sort of the mistaken thinking of Bush in assuming that democracy isn’t just our culture, but a universal human value. They don’t really want Islam, no, they want American culture and feminism. An objective observer might note that it seems that not only don’t Iraqis want democracy, but you can’t even force it on them at gunpoint!
You might be surprised how many people are for sharia law. I ask that question a lot of time to Muslims, and the common answer is “it’s not appropriate for a non-Muslim country.” Of course, Muslim country is loosely defined, particularily in the EU where feminists are stunningly silent amidst Islam. Some of them even say females should dress more moderately as multiculturalism becomes even more evident.
Of course, they would be more than happy to get in the face of Jews, Christians and atheists, but not Islam. Why? Because they fear it, pure, plain and simple. The call of jihad is louder than the shrill paper-tiger voices of liberalism.
It was made clear during the Bill and Monica soap opera that feminist groups put politics ahead of women’s issues. Just before the news broke about this scandal, the company I worked for required us all to get sexual harassment training. They showed a video of several situations and then asked us to decide if any sexual harassment was going on.
One of the situations involved a boss asking an employee for a date. It seemed innocent enough, but we were instucted that it amounted to sexual harassment for two reasons. If she said no, she could reasonable fear repercussions from her boss or at least an uncomfortable work environment. If she said yes, she could be harassed by fellow employees who might think she is trying to “sleep her way to the top.”
After seeing this video, the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke out. I fully expected Feminist leaders to criticize President Clinton for having a sexual relationship with a young subordinate in the Whitehouse. But instead, they defended him and some even applauded him for it. They also attacked Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and other women who accused Clinton of misbehavor. Some Feminists even admitted that they were defending Clinton because he was pro-choice. They were willing to throw other women under the bus to support a corrupt politician because he supported their political causes.
It just occurred to me that my company never made us attend another sexual harassment training class after Monica. Apparently, the experts could no longer agree on what constituted sexual harassment, so they couldn’t produce another video.
If your main goal is to convince people to join your political cause because America is the most misogynist place in the world, it doesn’t help your cause to point out worse abuses in the Muslim world or elsewhere.
Look at the NOW web site. (Almost) all feminism is local — women’s rights in the US. But they were against mistreatment of women in Muslim countries before it was cool. They are interested in lots of other issues too.
Just because Rush tells you feminists aren’t interested in this or that doesn’t make it true. Maybe you should ask an actual feminist rather than taking the word of an anti-feminist.
Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.
lgm –
How insulting can you be? It appears to me that you are saying that because the people commenting here are mainly conservatives, we obviously don’t form our own opinions but rather just take the word of Rush as Gospel and get all of our info from him. Is that the basic gist of your comments in #26?
What makes you assume that the people on this site who speak negatively of feminism have never discussed it with a feminist? I clearly cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I’m pretty sure you are way off base here. In fact, as a young woman who attended a public university it would have been nearly impossible for me to get through life without discussing issues with feminists.
My negative opinion of the modern feminist movement as a whole comes directly from my contact with feminists and nowhere else. Under the misnomer “feminist,” these women have systematically undermined femininity. I have been repeatedly told that I was wasting my life because my career goals are to be a wife and a mother, full-time. My conservative opinions and traditional values have been met with universal disgust from all feminists. They do not, as Rusty asserts in #8, support individual choice. And I know that I am not the only woman to have experience these personal encounters with feminists.
I do not pretend to know what discussions you have had with feminists, but I cannot help but wonder… perhaps it is you who needs more direct conversations with feminists.
As for the “traditional values,” I guess it all depends on what those are. If you believe a woman’s place is in the home and that’s where women should end up, then, yeah, you deserve whatever grief you got. That’s wrong. It’s just as feminine to raise a family as it is to work as a CEO while the dad stays at home doting on the kids.
But if you think that being a stay-at-home mom is just one of many viable choices for a woman to make, then the people giving you such a hard time aren’t real feminists.
There are more than one type of feminist. The problem is with the radical feminists, and their fundamentalist creed.
Radical feminists, with their hatred of traditional values such as chastity before marriage, children born within the context of marriage, a husband supporting his wife and children, even the sacredness of motherhood, which has been morphed into the imaginary ‘right’ of a woman to have her pre-born child ripped apart in her womb, are all part of the agenda of radical feminists.
Men, especially white men, are touted as the enemy, seeking to oppress women, instead of the traditional value of men as the protector and defender of women.
Now we have a PC world of “choice”, the sexualization of children, perversion being deemed normal, and rampant pornography.
“Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports” by Kate O’Beirne does a superb job of explicating the situation.
Rusty – I’m insulted that you refer to staying home to raise children (the serious and important job) as “doting on the kids.” I’m sure you know that it is much more than that and I can’t figure out why you word it that way unless you are trying to be insulting and dismissive.
My beliefs on parenting actually don’t come in to play here. I told the women I spoke with of my plans for myself only, making no mention of “women’s roles.” So, their responses to me were indicative of a general dislike for the idea of any woman staying home, not all women staying home. I find it hard to believe that in the two liberal towns where I have lived and in an entire campus full of feminists (professors and students alike) none of the feminists I’ve known and conversed with are “real feminists.” It seems more likely to me that your concept of what a “real feminist” is may not be based in reality, but rather in some mythical construct of an ideal of feminism.
I do, if you were wondering, believe that families with children should have one parent home raising the kids (assuming it is financially viable.) I also believe that, genetically/physiologically speaking, women tend to be the better candidates for this role. That does not mean that fathers are not capable of raising children or that women should never work. I have never told a woman who works that she has made the wrong decision or that she is wasting her life. I have no right to judge that choice and no idea of the factors that went into it. I wish I could be treated with the same respect by women on the other side of this issue.
I agree with you then. For a feminist to disparage raising children strikes me as counter-intuitive. Typical college liberal trying to join a movement they don’t understand.
I used “doting on the kids” in a colloquial, friendly way. Didn’t mean for it to be belittling. Sorry at any offense caused.
Media Matters For America, apparently all for womanizing. I don’t get MMFA they want to be the standard bearers for the Jaded and Debased? N.O.W. is supporting Hillary Clinton, they just tore Teddy Kennedy a new one for endorsing Obama. Bill Clinton a ladys man well I guess NOT. Sisters are doing it for themselves, unless they send their husband insert (former president) here, to do their dirty work.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200801300009
RaisedRight said (#28):
It’s a deduction, not an assumption. You never quote actual feminists, only what people like Rush say they say.
With all due respect, what feminist thinks women in Saudi Arabia are treated better than women in the US? Let’s have a quote, or even a name.
A deduction? Based on what? I just read back over the posts and did not see a single reference to Rush or any other conservative figure. Besides, I can base my comments on conversations with feminists I have known and not have a link to post for you. I know that there is more to feminism than Gloria Steinem, do you know that there is more to conservatism and “anti-feminism” than Rush?
With all due respect, where did anyone say that feminists think “women in Saudi Arabia are treated better than women in the US”?
I can only deduce that you do not fully read the posts here, but rather place your own pre-conceived notions on the comments and the commenters and respond based on those. And please note, this is not some unfair attack on you because of the liberal views you posted. I disagree with Rusty’s views, but I appreciate that he read what I wrote and his responses were based on things I actually said.
Correction: “I just read back over the
postscomments…”I, for one, do not make decisions based on what Rush thinks.
I have held national women’s organizations in contempt for years. I was raised in Northern California and was the unwilling witness to their witless mischief during the ’70s and ’80s. They are one-note charlie’s re abortion and that’s it. When NOW blamed Monico for Bill’s behavior that just served to validate what I already knew. One of the major contributors to this rediculous PC group-think binge hamstringing our country was Smith University. As a thinking woman, that fact, frankly, causes me great shame. I’m sick of the male bashing now institutionalized in our culture for the better part of 30 years. There’s no honor nor courage in demeaning men to further a thoughtless, selfish cause. Like most far left movements, our country’s foundations are destroyed at the same time there’s nothing to take its place. Finally, no matter how hard you try to make it so, it’s still Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Before Shakespeare, it is the Biblical scriptures. If you don’t get that, you don’t read. While agnostic, the wisdom and beauty found in the Bible and the Western Canon remains to me a moving and compelling validation of our culture.
lgm
Try Tammy Bruce, try Camile Pagilia not the sore worn N.O.W. crowd. I am a woman and N.O.W. does NOT represent me. I am not voting for Bill Clinton’s wife. N.O.W. maybe happy with Hillary’s enabling but alot of other people are not.
Rusty:
Not really. Read what feminists have written about stay-at-home mothers (hint: they’re “wasting” their time). From an interview with Linda Hirshman (questions in bold):
Where’s the room for choice there?
Or what feminists like Ellen Goodman have written about films that don’t portray abortion in a positive light.
Not a whole lot of room for choice, there, either.
The original feminists were extremely feminine and also pro-life. That hard work has been twisted and corrupted by modern-day “feminists” who inexplicably demonize men while trying frantically to make women exactly like men in every aspect (employment, sexual behavior, etc.) or chasing men (a la “Sex in the City”) and who make big deals about things like stay-at-home mothers but don’t give impassioned interviews about burquas (or girls forced to die in a fire rather than flee their burning school sans burqua) and shari’a laws that punish women who paint their fingernails (by removing the offending finger, by the way).
Today’s feminists are shrill, angry women who do not speak for me and – I daresay – would criticize my choices to have more than 1 child, and eventually work from or be a stay-at-home mother. They would also criticize my choice to convert to Catholicism (I ran into a few feminists who swore I was “brainwashed” by my husband…), and my conservatism (like they treat MM, Ann Coulter, Condoleeza Rice).
I had an argument with a feminist that barely knew the woman she was criticising. I
knew the woman quite well and when she started in on the fact that this woman had
given up her medical practice to stay at home because one of her children was
terminally ill and she wanted to nurse him herself and spend as much time with him
as possible. The feminist didn’t know this and was going on and on about “she’s
letting down all women and setting the movement back 100 yrs, all I could say was,
“all by herself”? When I told her about her son all she could say was, she should have
aborted the kid. When I pointed out that he was 13 when the disease struck and it
wasn’t genetic, her answer was, that’s what hospice and nursing homes are for.
LGM I never hear feminists talk about the situations in Saudi Arabia or other parts of the Muslim world. I never hear them speak out when it occurs in Texas or Toronto but I always did hear them loud and clear when one once of abortion rights was threatened to be taken away. Yes I do think they are hypocrites because they never spoke up for all the women that Bill clinton abused. If Bill had been conservative the Kathleen Wilys would have been heard from. Anyway I doubt if any of the NOW gang will be speaking out of abuse of women by the muslims. Hell Hillary won’t even do it.
Here in New York City we have the Central Park Conservancy. It’s a charity whose purpose is to make Central Park nicer. They do a great job. I’ve never heard anyone say: “Why worry about Central Park when women in Afganistan have to wear burkas?” Yet this is exactly what you say to the organization that wants to keep abortion legal, and the one that wants women to have maternity leave, and the one that wants stricter enforcement of laws against date rape.
The problem is, they stopped criticizing islam a long time ago.
Nowadays, liberals, including most feminists, essentialize certain characteristics (pigmnent, anatomy, etc.) into irreducible markers of identity that define social being. From this notion springs identity politics.
One important implication of identity politics, and its corollary moral relativism, is that we in the west can’t criticize any other culture for failing to meet our “culture bound” standards.
To progressives, “female genital mutilation, veiling and hijab, purdah, normalized daughter- and wife-beating, arranged (child) marriage, often to first cousins, polygamy, honor murder, the imprisonment, torture, beheading, stoning to death, and hanging of rape victims, suspected prostitutes, and feminist dissidents” are just things that happen in another culture. This way of doing things isn’t wrong, just different.
Liberalism for the liberals, cannibalism for the cannibals.
Here’s my bottom line.
When I see hundreds of women from NOW etc. demonstrating in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy, THEN and only THEN will I believe their claims that they care about what happens to women under Sharia “law.” Until then, it’s just talk and talk as they say, is cheap.