Mark Steyn on the "Two-Tier Sisterhood"

[jordan179]

This excellent piece by Mark Steyn, in the National Review, makes a point that I've also been making about the curious relationship between the feminist movement and the Islamists:

http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/1049/26/

and his summary is priceless:

Yet

Comments

[mosinging1986]

Gotta run, and I'll read the whole thing when I get home. This is a question I have not been able to figure out for the longest time!

[spcteppy]

This is news? Ask Alice Walker and Ana Castillo what *they* think of white upper-class feminists. Wear a helmet. It's not just the Islamic world they ignore, but non-white and lower class white women. When was the last time you saw any of these 1970s feminists say anything about making day care more accessible, or the lack of health care for the ladies who clean office buildings late at night, or the physical safety of same as they get off work in the wee hours of the morning? The public face of western feminism is amazingly out of touch, and if you think the Americans and Canadians are bad, the European feminists, particularly the French, are absolutely out to lunch.

Do I think feminism is bad or passe? Absolutely not. I identify as one. However I think it needs to read some bell hooks (not a typo) and admit that it's full of women who are so smug they can't see their own racism and classism.

[aboutagirl777]

Seconded, and rofl @ French feminists.

[madwriter]

>>When I used to point that out in speeches, huffy western feminists would object that the Taliban were a particularly vile regime but a long way away and not especially relevant.<<

Some, no doubt, but not all. From the Washington Post article "Working to save the women of Afghanistan" (11/4/98), for example:

More than 120 American women's rights groups and human rights organizations have signed on to the campaign in the United States, which is being led by the Feminist Majority Foundation.

They are urging that the United States and the United Nations refuse to recognize the rogue Taliban regime. They are also urging the United States and the United Nations to go full tilt to restore women's rights in that benighted country. This includes pressuring neighboring Pakistan and Saudi Arabia from funding the Taliban.

And a 2/24/04 editorial by Martha Burk criticized an article similar to the Steynonline one:

Feminists sounded the alarm on the Taliban years before Sept. 11, 2001, making them a household word. National Council of Women'

[jordan179]

Yet, notably, after the actual US invasion of Afghanistan, the feminist movement did not praise Bush for his actions. It seems to me as if the feminists are just fine with "sympathizing" with Muslim feminists, as long as this sympathy is not translated into meaningful action.

[madwriter]

They didn't thank him for invading, or didn't thank him for the administration's actions towards Afghan women?

It runs in my mind that they didn't praise Bush because they thought he didn't do enough. A database search of papers like the Post with the terms "Afghanistan", "women", and "Bush" didn't turn up a single item, but other searches did turn up numerous articles where the feminist and other women's rights groups kept saying that more needed to be done for the women of that country.

[aboutagirl777]

I consider myself a feminist, and it absolutely disgusts me that magazines like "Bitch" twitter about My Little Ponies being "oversexed" than the actual problems women face in the world.

[cutelildrow]

I knew a girl back in college who, utterly brainwashed by the rather unpleasant feminist /communist movement that tends to run rampant in my college, considered Martha Stewart a bigger threat to women's rights than the spead of Islam and the practice of sha'ria in Europe.

[kishiriadgr]

MARTHA STEWART????? That woman ROCKS! How can a self-made billionaire possibly be a "threat to womens' rights"?

[cutelildrow]

Because she, apparently, 'brainwashes' women into enjoying their 'domestic slavery' with her 'shallow' suggestions of 'creativity' instead of encouraging them to be 'independent working women who do not need to rely on their husbands for everything' and getting rich because of her 'pandering to the patriarchal mores'. Or something equally bizarre

[kishiriadgr]

She was a massively successful stockbroker who took her earnings to start her own catering business when she and her husband moved to Connecticut.

I'm a feminist and I LIVE for cooking. I guess the upper class white feminists I bitch about eat out. Kind of reminds me of the South Park episode where Rob Reiner is yelling at a blue-collar guy who was smoking in a bar after a long shift that if he wanted to relax he should go to his vacation home, like Rob does.