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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:07 pm Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
Sure sure. You might want to take an honest look at the women's studies department at your local university. See how much time they devote to the evils of Western society and how preciously little to hindu, islamic, Confucius etc. An even better example would be to look at the stunning silence about how gays have been treated by hamas/fatah in these past few years. Total silence, less a few articles in the various islamophobic publications.
I'm sure you are aware that this was the biggest criticism of so-called feminism by non-white women. That it was a white club that treated non-white women as having almost mystical abilities to withstand their own cultural garbage. I'm quite astonished that someone who thinks herself such an "'ist" of all stripes doesn't know this.. Maybe it wasn't in The Guardian. |
Frankly, I've probably read very little feminist literature in the whole course of my life. I've never done women's studies, either. This criticism of which you speak may or may not be fair. I suspect it's probably just more w@nk. Most prominent feminists will be white. And they will most likely be interested in their own experiences. Because that's their reference. I think that's fairly normal. They're not as qualified to discuss abuses in other cultures as the women who are concerned. Although when I've read about the abuses of women in other cultures (at least until recently when it's become very fashionable to use misogyny in islamic cultures as another stick to beat muslims with) it's been in articles written by white women.
I have never yet met a woman who thought it was cool for other women to be beaten by their ethnic husbands, or have their genitals mutilated or be treated as second class citizens. "Oh it's OK for them because they're not white like us!" is something I've yet to hear. It's OK for them but not for us: The only thing that's come close from anecdotal experience is from some South African women when talking about black women, and an Israeli girl who was talking about arab women.
I doubt there are any 'lefties' running about saying it's cool for gays to be treated like crap so long as they are muslim and treated like crap by other muslims. More bollocks.
How will lefties in the West help gays in the East? They can not. Why should they spend their energy shouting about something they can not change. Only the societies concerned can change their behaviour. If we make a fuss, they are more likely to stick to their ways out of defiance for outsiders. Think about it. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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So, because you can not directly change something shutup? Then why do you rant about the Pals? They have as much a chance of liberation as do women in Afganiland.
But you have it all wrong. The left in the West doesn't say "those women are brown and as such deserve it". Not at all. But there is a hierarchy of sins. A white person criticizing a brown person is more bad than a brown person beating a brown woman. Do you understand? The highest sin involves perceived racism, and all other sins bow down to it.
So, a brown person can discuss brown violence against women but a white women must only rail against the racism of those whites who make the mistake of calling a brown person out.
If you can't see this pattern in your own posting, you might want to go to some mystical brown country and discover yourself, as do so many of your ideological peers. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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How about from your bible:
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The ideas interview: Phyllis Chesler
Feminism has failed Muslim women by colluding in their oppression, the US author tells John Sutherland
John Sutherland
Tuesday April 4, 2006
Guardian
In 1961, Phyllis Chesler agreed to marry her college sweetheart, a young, westernised Muslim man who had come to study in the US. At his request, they married and lived in his home country, Afghanistan. "When we arrived in the country they took my American passport away - very typical with foreign wives," she says. "Then I found myself clapped up in very posh purdah. Here I was in this gorgeous country, but I wasn't supposed to go out without the chauffeur and without servants in tow and other women of the family.
"Of course, I made regular escapes and I saw how women were treated and I saw how the children of co-wives competed with each other for inheritance and attention. And I saw how women mistreated their female servants. I saw, at first hand, that polygamy was not a good thing. My father-in-law turned out to have three wives and 21 children. He was a very dapper fellow, also westernised on the surface like my husband - in America. But my husband became an easterner overnight in Afghanistan. I was really shocked." She returned to America in December 1961 and, she has written, "kissed the ground at New York City's Idlewild airport".
Chesler's experiences in Afghanistan have helped shape her thoughts about the failure of feminism to engage with what she sees as the oppression of women in Islamic countries. After "40 years on the front lines" of feminism - she is now emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at the City University of New York - her current project means that she gets a "chilly" reception from fellow feminists. It does not help, perhaps, that her latest book is called The Death of Feminism.
Isn't the title somewhat stark? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say there are trends in feminism that she, personally, finds disturbing?
"I am still a feminist," she insists. "The reason that I have announced the death of feminism, which I agree is stark, is that from my point of view, looking at mainstream feminism in the west - in the universities, in the media, among academics and the socalled intelligentsia - there is a moral failure, a moral bankruptcy, a refusal to take on, in particular, Muslim gender apartheid. So you have many contemporary feminists who say, 'We have to be multiculturally relativist. We cannot uphold a single, or absolute, standard of human rights. And, therefore, we can't condemn Islamic culture, because their countries have been previously colonised. By us.' I disagree."
But are the Islamic nations as culturally monolithic as Chesler suggests? Wasn't Saddam Hussein's Iraq, to take a particularly tendentious example, secular? And didn't it offer professional careers for women? "I don't think that makes any big difference. Saddam's regime gassed Kurds and perpetrated genocide. His men kidnapped women and prostitutes off the streets and subjected them to private rape sessions. So merely because his Iraq was religiously secular, and women had certain rights, doesn't mean that we as intelligent western publics should be condoning genocidal states."
Western feminism's failure to confront the problems raised by Islam, Chesler believes, is a result of the creation of a hierarchy of sins, "an intellectual culture in which racism trumps gender concerns". The example she cites as the embodiment of wrongheaded priorities is "gay and lesbian movement activists rooting for the Palestinians who, meanwhile, are very busy persecuting homosexuals, who in turn are fleeing to Israel for political asylum".
The result, she argues, is that "instead of telling the truth about Islam and demanding that the Muslim world observes certain standards, you have westerners beating their breasts and saying, 'We can't judge you, we can't expose you, we can't challenge you.' And here in the west you have a dangerous misuse of western concepts such as religious tolerance and cultural sensitivity so that one kind of hate speech is seen as something that must be rigorously protected. That means, principally, lies about America and lies about Jews."
Chesler's critics say the vehemence of her language points to Islamophobia. A piece she wrote last month for the controversial webzine Frontpage.com suggested that "a small but organised number of Muslim-Americans and Mulim immigrants ... are currently seeking to begin the Islamisation of America". It went on to compare the Muslim academic Tariq Ramadan to Hitler. The blog Islamophobia Watch suggested that this signalled "the point of total dementia".
Chesler will not accept the Islamophobe label. She claims it is a blanket term used to silence those who portray Islam accurately, and bemoans feminism's embrace of what she sees as misguided causes."Feminism began to fail when they began to say, 'We can't judge barbarism. We can't even call it barbarism, because the barbarians will be offended'," she says. Feminism has become just one part of a wider anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist movement, "so much so that many feminists are now much more concerned with the occupation of a country that doesn't exist - namely Palestine - than they are concerned with the occupation of women's bodies worldwide".
But, paradoxically, Chesler's criticisms of feminist preoccupation with a wider world do not prevent her arguing for a feminist foreign policy: it's just that she believes the foreign policy should concentrate on the issues she is passionate about.
"American feminism hasn't taken on these international issues because of its fear of being branded racist," she says. "But many Muslim feminists and dissidents are totally supportive of what I'm trying to do, because they say that here is finally a western feminist who will not abandon us on the basis of cultural relativity. The attention of the American feminist movement has been forced to focus for far too long on issues like abortion or gay and lesbian rights. I totally support this. But in so doing they have neglected other real issues, such as the needs of working people.
"This is simply not enough, given the moment in history in which we find ourselves. What feminism must do is spell out something that might be called a feminist foreign policy. So that, for example, if we make a trade or a peace treaty with a country, we ought to build into that treaty a commitment not - for example - to genitally mutilate girls who live in that country. This is not easy. But I would like feminists to think very globally and very strategically and very long-term. It's one thing to write an article now and again, but what are we, as feminists, actually going to do?"
� Phyllis Chesler's The Death of Feminism: What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom, is published in the US by Palgrave Macmillan. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ideas/story/0,,1746153,00.html
You see? She talks about the oppression of islam, and gets called an islampohobe. She broke the rules. That actually proves her thesis. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
| So, because you can not directly change something shutup? Then why do you rant about the Pals? They have as much a chance of liberation as do women in Afganiland. |
If we didn't support Israel, it would be extremely difficult, both militarily and financially for them to keep up this occupation. They would be forced to negotiate peace. If we, the electorate, refuse to support our governments in this affair, we can change things. So you are wrong to say that bringing the 'Pal's' plight into the open is a waste of time.
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| But you have it all wrong. The left in the West doesn't say "those women are brown and as such deserve it". Not at all. But there is a hierarchy of sins. A white person criticizing a brown person is more bad than a brown person beating a brown woman. Do you understand? The highest sin involves perceived racism, and all other sins bow down to it. |
What is 'The left' BJWD. Is it some monolithic body of homogenised thought? There are many different opinions within 'the left' which are generally ignored by people such as yourselves, as you cherry pick the opinions of some of 'the left' that best suit your own agenda. People I know 'on the left' don't seem to have much problem criticising a brown person. I certainly don't.
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| So, a brown person can discuss brown violence against women but a white women must only rail against the racism of those whites who make the mistake of calling a brown person out. |
White women are quite welcome to 'rail about browns' if they know what they're talking about. I have no problem with that. But there is a danger that white women telling brown women how to go about things may be resented. Better for 'brown women' to get their sh.t together and start making a fuss, if they want something done.
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| If you can't see this pattern in your own posting, you might want to go to some mystical brown country and discover yourself, as do so many of your ideological peers. |
You see this pattern in my posting because you're trying to see it. Much of your criticisms of me are utter shy-it. You invent my position on a range of issues. For example, I once recall you accusing me of being a 'mulitcult' - one of your favourite little bogeymen. I had never posted anything about multiculturalism prior to your nonsense. In fact, I had (and still don't) have strong views on it. I don't know if I support it or not, as I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what it is exactly. If it involves shipping people over and leaving the in the kind of ghettoes I've seen in some parts of England, then I am most definitely not for it. Nor do I take kindly to people of other cultures telling us Brits how to do things. My attitude to them is, if you don't like how it's done here, just F**K OFF, and that always has been my attitude. Yet you would have me an apologist for every one of 'their' transgressions. It always make me laugh.
And I'm reminded of your nonsense the other day. How much a part environmental conditions play in the Darfur conflict is very interesting, and worth discussing. And yet, when I joined this discussion, I was accused by you in not so many words of excusing the crimes of the Janjaweed. Absolute w@nk. I detest the horrific attrocities of the Janjaweed. I have even heard of them throwing small children onto fires. There is nothing that will ever excuse that, and I hope that one day the perpetrators of such crimes will be rounded up and forced to pay for their terrible deeds. Calling me an apologist for these people is quite libelious BJWD. But you invent my views to suit your own silly agenda. This is why I have very little time or respect for you.
Last edited by Big_Bird on Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:42 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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| You didn't read the article eh. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
| You didn't read the article eh. |
You posted your article after I began writing my reply to you. I have only just seen it. I do not have time to read it now. If I do, I will comment about it some other time. Good day. |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| BJWD wrote: |
| You didn't read the article eh. |
You posted your article after I began writing my reply to you. I have only just seen it. I do not have time to read it now. If I do, I will comment about it some other time. Good day. |
Which is never. Just like you ran away from the Chavez threads. You are a coward. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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| Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 6:33 pm Post subject: |
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| If we didn't support Israel, it would be extremely difficult, both militarily and financially for them to keep up this occupation. |
What occupation? The one that began in 1948 or the one in 1967?
I have met many muslims who don't distinguish between the two. So maybe the US is just supporting a people who may not have anywhere else to go. |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2007 7:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
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| If we didn't support Israel, it would be extremely difficult, both militarily and financially for them to keep up this occupation. |
What occupation? The one that began in 1948 or the one in 1967?
I have met many muslims who don't distinguish between the two. So maybe the US is just supporting a people who may not have anywhere else to go. |
In BB's case, its the 1948 one. Listen, dont expect anything from that coward. Just like she ran away from all the Chavez threads, she will run away from this.
She claims that if nothing can be changed then its not worth screaming to high heaven about it. Thats simply a cop out not to criticize Islam for its HIDEOUS treatment of women. It doesnt stop BB from criticizing Israel at every goddamn step, in every goddamn thread even though her shrill screams wont make any difference in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. BB refuses to take Islam to task over anything, not even the hideous way Muslim women are relegated to non-human status in many of these stone age countries. It took a lot of effort on my and other posters' part to even get BB to say that Sharia law is a crime. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| Big_Bird wrote: |
| BJWD wrote: |
| You didn't read the article eh. |
You posted your article after I began writing my reply to you. I have only just seen it. I do not have time to read it now. If I do, I will comment about it some other time. Good day. |
I read your article, and it doesn't change anything. It is simply an example of the criticism we had already discussed. I also wrote you a long post, which I just lost when my young son came over and caused the pc to reboot.
I haven't got the energy to write it all again. But I will ask you: who is your thread directed at? Is it directed at the ordinary people on this forum who you've labelled 'leftie?' Or are you calling out to the 'leaders' of the 'left?' If it is the latter, I am not interested in answering for them. But if your OP is directed at such as me, I can only say 'bollocks to you mate, if you believe that to be my stance.' And if you do believe that to be my stance, it is because you've read anything I've written through your own prejudices of who I am (no doubt a little leftie caracature of your imagination), imbueing me with opinions I do not have. This is, in fact, what I believe you do do. If hollering about the injustices of other societies could correct them, I would be all for it. However, I do not see it having anything other than an adverse effect. Take for example the issue of dog eating in Korea. Most Koreans had not partaken in it. But when outsiders like Brigit Bardot started berating Koreans for it, Koreans suddenly began to embrace and defend the practice. Quite a few of my students admitted to eating dog meat out of principle, after this, having never had an interest in it before. How will our condemnation of them help things? As a young girl I wondered why we didn't impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia for their gender apartheid, the way we had for South African race apartheid. Well, I didn't understand our relationship with oil then, of course. But if you were to recommend some practical way of tackling the problems of others, I'd be all ears. Try me.
Secondly, I do not believe people who point out the transgressions of some muslims to be necessarily islamophobes. However, when they consistently highlight the most pernicious acts some individuals or sections of that society, and try to apply it to the whole society, I think that constitutes a prejudice against all muslims. I also have to laugh at the likes of people like junior, who took great pains to point out how badly Palestinian women were sometimes treated by their men. As if this somehow excused our killing of these women's children and imprisoning of their teenage sons. Or excused bulldozing down their family homes and appropriating their precious water for settler's swimming pools. As if women's equality in these places was far more important than there mere right to live free from occupation, or even their right to live at all.
I wrote much more than this, but I'm afraid I haven't the energy to replicate it. |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 2:46 am Post subject: |
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| Summer Wine wrote: |
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| If we didn't support Israel, it would be extremely difficult, both militarily and financially for them to keep up this occupation. |
What occupation? The one that began in 1948 or the one in 1967?
I have met many muslims who don't distinguish between the two. So maybe the US is just supporting a people who may not have anywhere else to go. |
If you were an arab, Summer Wine, the chances are you'd consider 1948 the beginning of an occupation.
But, I am talking about the 1967 occupation, as you well know. I think it would be madness to dismantle an entire nation, and would end up being yet another travesty. But we don't need to support Israel taking the last 22% of what was once Palestine. 78% is quite enough.
Unless Summer Wine would be generous to rehouse several million Palestinians in his or her own country so that the Israelis could settle the West Bank in peace and comfort....? |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:11 am Post subject: |
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| 95% of muslims in NL are considered moderates |
Define 'moderate'. |
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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:19 am Post subject: |
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| I suspect that if there are any such "lefties" they are few and far between. Just another invention for the conservative media to w@nk on about |
What is your opinion of the Leftist mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, meeting, and publicly embracing a man who supports Shariah Law and who believes that gays should be executed?
There are many, many on the left so blinded by their ludicrous division of the world into oppressed (brown people), and oppressors (The West, white people, especially Yanks) that they ignore the most disgusting human rights abuses committed by the 'oppressed'.
Just look at the anti-war marches that were carried out in London. People from the Socialist Workers, and Respect Party marching with supporters of Shariah like the MAB and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. To say that this unholy marriage is an invention of the right-wing media is nonsense, and it is time that people like yourselves asked yourselves exactly what your principles are. |
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Treefarmer
Joined: 29 May 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 5:29 am Post subject: |
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I agree with some of your point BJWD, in England the doomed Respect coalition, and the SWP both cosied up to Islamic fundamentalists, and invited Mullahs and extreme Muslims onto their marches, meetings etc this usually ends badly, I have heard of examples of the left wing organisers getting extremely embarassed when the religious element start chanting 'Death to Israel' on peace marches etc
but this is not a valid criticism of the left, just a criticism of a section of the left, they are closer to the (english) definition of liberals, so someone further to the left could say they were essentially conservative despite claiming to be on the left
It is a problem, but I don't think it's as big a problem as you say it is, it is not a paradox to oppose American foriegn policy and also oppose the religious nutters who run these countries
there is the problem of the extent to which we can impose western standards onto other countries, especially religious ones, but I don't think many people on the west would argue that we should try to help people in countries who are suffering under Sharia law etc |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2007 7:20 am Post subject: |
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| bigverne wrote: |
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| I suspect that if there are any such "lefties" they are few and far between. Just another invention for the conservative media to w@nk on about |
What is your opinion of the Leftist mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, meeting, and publicly embracing a man who supports Shariah Law and who believes that gays should be executed?
There are many, many on the left so blinded by their ludicrous division of the world into oppressed (brown people), and oppressors (The West, white people, especially Yanks) that they ignore the most disgusting human rights abuses committed by the 'oppressed'.
Just look at the anti-war marches that were carried out in London. People from the Socialist Workers, and Respect Party marching with supporters of Shariah like the MAB and Hizb-ut-Tahrir. To say that this unholy marriage is an invention of the right-wing media is nonsense, and it is time that people like yourselves asked yourselves exactly what your principles are. |
You've just highlighted the problems of labelling people 'left' and 'right.' A lot of things that Red Ken says and does are pretty cool. A lot of other things he says/does are not so hot. But because Red Ken is labelled 'left' and because most people here would label 'Big_Bird' as 'left' you feel somehow that I should be in agreement for anything and everything Kenny boy says, and that somehow I even share responsibility for it. It is as though 'the left' is like The Borg, and everyone who gets swept up in its path must have an identical view to any other 'leftie' and must share all responsibility for whatever any other 'leftie' gets up to. If I applied this logic to 'men' instead of 'leftie' you see how stupid it is. If you are a man, you share responsibility for rape and murder, because that is what some men do. You are to blame for Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong, because they are men like you. And that's why I can't be bothered getting into deep discussions with people like BJWD or ChimpumCallao (or yourself), because this is essentially what they do. They pin opinions onto me that they identify with 'lefties' and they're not arguing with me at all, just some invention of their own making. They don't even bother to read what I've said - that's not important, because they already KNOW what I think, because I'm identified as a 'leftie' and hey, they're onto these lefties doncha know...?
I think you've made some ridiculous points in your post. Firstly, plenty of conventional pollies rub shoulders and shake hands with despots and people with poor human rights records. Red Ken does not stand out from the crowd in that regard. Secondly, are you suggesting that because some people who marched against the war were all for Sharia Law (according to you), that therefore anyone who marched against the war was wrong? That seems a pretty absurd stance. If some of the people who are against 11 year old boys being buggered up the botty are theives, or anti-semites, does this mean it's not wrong to bugger 11 year old boys up the botty? |
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