Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

May 15, 2007 By Fausta

The American feminists’ silence on the subjection of Islamic women

Christina Hoff Sommers writes about The Subjection of Islamic Women And the fecklessness of American feminism,

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. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.

Sommers explains,

One reason is that many feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgment on non-Western cultures. They are far more comfortable finding fault with American society for minor inequities (the exclusion of women from the Augusta National Golf Club, the “underrepresentation” of women on faculties of engineering) than criticizing heinous practices beyond our shores. The occasional feminist scholar who takes the women’s movement to task for neglecting the plight of foreigners is ignored or ruled out of order.

Sommers mentions Katha Pollitt, who

casually places “limiting young people’s access to accurate information about sex” and opposing abortion on the same plane as throwing acid in women’s faces and stoning them to death. Her hostility to the United States renders her incapable of distinguishing between private American groups that stigmatize gays and foreign governments that hang them. She has embraced a feminist philosophy that collapses moral categories in ways that defy logic, common sense, and basic decency.

I can’t say that I would expect decency from the American feminists. After all, these are the women which, as I have said before, equate women with their gonads and see nothing wrong with a lesbian statutory rape, which is even presented as a “salvation”.

Phyllis Chesler has written eloquently about the feminist establishment’s unwillingness to take on Islamic sexism,

She faults it for “embracing an anti-Americanism that is toxic, heartless, mindless and suicidal.”

In the irony-poor mindset of the feminist establishment, there is no notion that believing that our culture is ruinous for women, while failing to see the horrors routinely perpetrated against women in Arab countries and in other parts of the world, shows their argument in all its emptiness.

Unfortunately, it is suicidal not only for the feminist establishment, it is lethal to women all around the world.

Update
Via Dreams Into Lightning, Is Phyllis Chesler right?

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Filed Under: feminism, FGM, Islam, Valentine's Day, women

February 20, 2007 By Fausta

Two exceptional posts at Gates of Vienna

Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Georgia – From the Air
and
The Feminislamists: Women of Woe. Don’t miss SC&A‘s comment,

I think the ‘acceptance’ of FGM (and thus the culture that allows for FGM), comes about as a response to ‘white man’s guilt over colonialism.

If we accept and endorse FGM, well, maybe that might mitigate some of the colonialist ‘guilt’ over colonialism.

This is the convoluted (and erroneous) logic that is behind so much of European anti semitism. If the Europeans can paint Israel as racist and evil, well, maybe the Holocaust wasn’t perpetrated against innocents, but rather ‘maybe they had it coming’- and thus, European ambivalence and acquiescence to the Holocaust might be mitigated.

To consider FGM as an ‘acceptable cultural alternative’ is to accept radical hatreds and bigotry as ‘acceptable alternatives’ and to assign them equal status to the values of free and civilized cultures.

What’s next- the celebration of cannibalism, bestiality and pedophilia?

and Dymphna’s reply.

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Filed Under: female genital mutilation, feminism, FGM, Islam

February 16, 2007 By Fausta

Chastity belts and the foundation of civilization

Warning: Post not suitable for work

I was rushing this morning to do several things and managed to finish well ahead of schedule, but I wasn’t planning to post until later. Then I came across a news item that made me change my mind.

Also, I don’t post when I’m angry, but right now I’m making an exception.

First, for a definition:
civ-i-li-za-tion

An advanced state of intellectual, cultural, and material development in human society, marked by progress in the arts and sciences, the extensive use of record-keeping, including writing, and the appearance of complex political and social institutions.

The basic premise of civilization is that men (and I mean men, not mankind, not men and women) can control their instincts and impulses in order to achieve an advanced state of development.

What, then, do we make of this?
Malaysian Islamic cleric proposes chastity belts to stop rape

Kuala Lumpur – A leading Malaysian Muslim cleric has suggested that all women should be fitted with chastity belts as a deterrent to rape and incest, a news report said Friday.

Abu Hassan Al-Hafiz, an influential cleric from the northeastern Terengganu state, said that women were most safe from sexual predators if they donned some form of barrier to their sexual organs.

Ponder that for a moment. This sorry excuse for a man is saying that it’s the women’s fault because they’re not donning a Medieval artifact of torture.

It’s clear he doesn’t think the predators are to blame.

‘We have even come across a number of unusual sex cases, where even senior citizens and children are not spared. The best way to avert sex perpetrators is to wear protection,’ Abu Hassan said in a sermon late Thursday, quoted by the Star daily.

My idea of protection would be firearm. Or a taser gun. Or a sharp enough knife.

I don’t believe that thought ever entered the cleric’s mind, though.

The cleric says he means well,

‘My intention is not to offend women but to safeguard them from sex maniacs.

but here comes the real reason,

Besides, husbands could also feel more secure, if you know what I mean.’

We know exactly what you mean – that the little bitches can’t be trusted. That’s why they must be mutilated before they even reach puberty.

But hey, it’s part of the cultural landscape, isn’t it?

Abu Hassan said that the practise of women wearing chastity belts in Malaysia could be traced to as recent as the mid-1960s.

I want to know, where are the Monologuers?
Where, indeed?
Fjordman

other feminists in academia assert that the veil, or even the burka, represents “an alternative feminism.” Dr. Wairimu Njambi is an Assistant Professor of “Women’s Studies” at the Florida Atlantic University. Much of her scholarship is dedicated to advancing the notion that the cruel practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is actually a triumph for Feminism and that it is hateful to suggest otherwise. According to Njambi “anti-FGM discourse perpetuates a colonialist assumption by universalizing a particular western image of a ‘normal’ body and sexuality.”

Because what it all comes down to is that, in the long run, we’re all “uncovered meat” for those intent on taking us back to the Dark Ages.

PS Meanwhile in Sweden…

Update, Saturday, 17 January Just kidding?
The women don’t think so:

“We hope he realises that he is definitely insulting all men by suggesting women have to be restrained because men are incapable of controlling their lust,” SIS said in a Press statement.

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Filed Under: chastity belt, female genital mutilation, feminism, Indonesia, Islam

January 17, 2007 By Fausta

Chastity in the news, and other items

Not Sonny and Cher’s daughter Chastity, but chastity, via The Anchoress: Casual sex is a con: women just aren’t like men
Former groupie Dawn Eden explains how she realised morality made more sense for women than free love

Our culture – both in the media via programmes such as Sex and the City and in everyday interactions – relentlessly puts forth the idea that lust is a way station on the road to love. It isn’t. It left me with a brittle facade incapable of real intimacy. Occasionally a man would tell me I appeared hard, which surprised me as I thought I was so vulnerable. In truth, underneath my attempts to appear bubbly, I was hard – it was the only way I could cope with what I was doing to my self and my body.

The misguided, hedonistic philosophy which urges young women into this kind of behaviour harms both men and women; but it is particularly damaging to women, as it pressures them to subvert their deepest emotional desires. The champions of the sexual revolution are cynical. They know in their tin hearts that casual sex doesn’t make women happy. That’s why they feel the need continually to promote it.

The article was published in the London Times. I’ll be very surprised if the NYT would carry it in their Styles section. Just a couple of weekeds ago they had a feature article about a 50-yr old porn actress. Dinesh D’Souza writes on Pornography — The Real Perversion (h/t Maria)

——————————–

Don’t miss LGF‘s videos of Dispatches: Undercover Mosque.
——————————–

Afghan civilians stop terror attack at U.S. base. As U*2 put it,

This seems to clash with the “America out of everywhere” mantra which is incessantly bleated by the French mainstream preSS.

——————————–

Say ‘ello to my leetle fren’? Well, My leetle fren’ has more fun than Hugo and Mahmoud!

Speaking of Hugo, he says Fidel doesn’t have cancer. Not if he’s dead, he doesn’t.
Update Dada lives: Elephants In Academia posts that CNN is concerned about Fidel Castro’s right to privacy.

——————————–

Muslims say they’ll boycott Northwest Airlines. I predict the stock price will rise.
——————————–

Via Larwyn,
American Digest says There’s No Stopping This Insanity Now

The media as red Cell

Saudi Arabia Joins Egypt In Supporting Bush Iraq Plan

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Filed Under: blogs, Cuba, Ecuador, feminism, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Iran, Iraq, Islam, men and women, Sex and the City

January 1, 2007 By Fausta

The killer princesses: Volver

A movie review of Volver

***************SPOILER ALERT***************

Pedro Almodovar brings to the screen a heartwarming chick-flick about murder and incest.

The movie starts at a cemetery where dozens of a town’s widows laboriously clean the tombstones of their dead husbands’ graves; “Men don’t live as long as women in this town,” we are told. The only exception are Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), her sister Sole (short for Soledad, which means loneliness, which indeed the character is, played by Lola Duenas) and Raimunda’s daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo), who are cleaning the grave of their mother and father who died three years earlier in a fire.

Their town in La Mancha (home of both Don Quijote and Almodovar) is named Alcanfor de las Infantas (the camphor of the princesses) and indeed the town is steeped in the mothballs of yesteryear – the widows wear black, the houses are classic courtyard houses, the dolls are made of porcelain, the traditions are part of everyday life, and the city is far away, separated by a modern windmill farm.

Theirs is a world without men.

It is a world of hard work and clean, modestly pleasant and very colorful surroundings, but, as I said, a world without men. The only men in Alcanfor de las Infantas show up at a funeral, and at that point one wonders if they are ghosts.

There is a great deal of symbolism in the film but I won’t focus on that. This is a movie about relationships. Bear with me for a moment.

Penelope Cruz does a terrific job in this film. All that remains from her Hollywood bimbo years is the breast surgery, and even that becomes a minor joke when her mother, played by the always great Carmen Maura, asks her

“Weren’t your t**s smaller? I don’t remember their ever being so big”.

Penelope’s acting reminded me of Sophia Loren in Sunflower. Like Sophia, Penelope credibly portrays a woman in her thirties coping with exhausting work and a hard life. Sophia’s part in Sunflower was a woman who was truly in love and whose commitment to her man was complete.

No such thing can exist in Volver. The men at the margins of these women’s lives might be helpful or considerate but the men with whom these women are involved are the worst of the worst – Raimunda’s ugly husband was a lazy drunk, and a pig. The message of the movie is that the only way these women can live in peace is by killing them.

I read the NYT review after watching the fim, and A. O. Scott said,

Men, for Raimunda and her circle, tend to be malevolent, irrelevant or simply absent: straying husbands, predators, dead bodies. They cause a fair amount of trouble, but the point of “Volver” is that it’s not about them.

It is about what American feminists of an earlier era called sisterhood, and also about the complicated bonds of kinship and friendship that Mr. Almodóvar observed as a child growing up among women in traditional, patriarchal, gender-separated (and fascist) Spain.

The American feminists have, in all their sisterhood, routinely defined relations between men and women as inherently adversarial. Complicated bonds of kinship and friendship can and should exist between the sexes, but in this movie what Almodovar tells us is that women can’t live in peace if there are men around. That’s why those widows were completing their wifely duties by keeping those tombs immaculate.

In previous films Almodovar’s women were completely subjugated to men (to the point where they were near-dead, like the women in the perverse Talk to Her). In Volver, the women just kill them off. Obviously this is not any improvement.

Volver is a chick-flick for the Oprahfied. There’s even a talk show scene to boot. This movie has its good moments, particularly because of the actresses, but its message is clear.

Almodovar writes in the film’s official website,

Volver destroys all the cliches about “black” Spain and offers a Spain that is as real as it is the opposite. A Spain that is white, spontaneous, funny, intrepid, supportive and fair.

Supportive and fair, as long as you kill off those bad men. Once the men are out of the way, the women can become whole and mend each others’ hearts.

While the NYTimes reviewer says,

Very few filmmakers have managed to smile so convincingly in the face of misery and fatality,

Mr. Almodovar is to be pitied for never having had a father to show him how to be a good man.

Rated R because of adult situations and language. In Spanish with English subtitles. The subtitles were clear and accurately conveyed the meaning of the dialogue.
(Tango purists might not be too happy that Carlos Gardel’s classic tango Volver has been changed into a flamenco song, but it’s a really lovely rendition which is one of the highlights of the story.)

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Filed Under: feminism, men and women, movies, Pedro Almodovar, Volver

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