The Kitchen Cabinet’s Lily Malcolm links approvingly to an anti-feminist screed by Kay Hymowitz, “Why Feminism Is AWOL on Islam.” The article gives a broad overview of the horrifying conditions women live under in “Islamic fundamentalist” countries, and has a good sidebar on Islamic feminism.
I’m glad conservatives are finally paying attention to how women are abused under Sharia law – but the article’s critique of feminism is nonsense. Ms. Hymowitz’s critique consists mostly of the usual recycled antifeminist cliches (a dab of Who Stole Feminism, a riff on pomo academic feminists, etc). That fluff aside, Hymowitz does float a (relatively) new antifeminist claim: According to her, feminists haven’t said a word about how women in countries like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia suffer under Sharia law; feminists never mentioned the women sentenced to death in Nigeria, feminists have never objected to honor killings. Instead, we’ve all been worrying about if women can golf at Augusta.
Ms. Hymowitz’s thesis is ridiculous. Not only have feminists (including the academic feminists Ms. Hymowitz disdains) been speaking on these issues for decades, until recently feminists have been almost the only Westerners speaking. There have been literally thousands of feminist speaking (in books, websites, articles, fundraisers, letter-writing campaigns, conferences, etc) about women under Islam and Sharia law.
Let’s address one of Ms. Hymowitz’s specific claims:
[Feminists] have averted their eyes from the harsh, blatant oppression of millions of women, even while they have continued to stare into the Western patriarchal abyss, indignant over female executives who cannot join an exclusive golf club and college women who do not have their own lacrosse teams.
Have feminists paid more attention to Augusta and lacrosse than to the oppression of women under Sharia law? I decided to search the websites of the two largest feminist organizations in the US; how many hits would I get for Sharia versus Augusta?:
| Sharia, Afghanistan, or Islam |
Augusta or lacrosse |
|
|---|---|---|
| NOW | 133 | 10 |
| FMF | 1340 | 674 |
| FMF (w/o newswire) |
191 | 11 |
Contrary to Ms. Hymowitz’s accusation, feminists overwhelmingly pay more attention to women under Sharia than to women golfing. Her entire argument is based on a factual mistake – and one that she could have easily have corrected herself, if she had bothered to do fifteen seconds of research. (That feminists pay more attention to the plight of women in Saudi Arabia than the plight of women excluded from Augusta is no surprise; conservatives have been far more obsessed with Augusta than feminists. Body & Soul has an excellent post about the “feminists-only-pay-attention-to-Augusta” silliness.)
(Of course, none of the many right-wing bloggers who blogged this article checked to see if Ms. Hymowitz’s thesis was true, either.)
Statistics aside, there’s a deeper issue here: Is it ridiculous for American feminists to be concerned about American problems when women elsewhere have it worse?. Ms. Hymowitz wants us to answer “yes,” but the same criticism could be applied to Ms. Hymowitz’s work. In the mid-1990s, when the Feminist Majority Foundation was gearing up their campaign against the Taliban, Ms. Hymowitz was trying to show that Sesame Street doesn’t help kids learn to read. By her own standards, shouldn’t she have been ignoring that issue, concentrating instead on more urgent educational problems faced by Afghani children (especially girls)?
Well, yes – but Ms. Hymowitz wouldn’t dream of living up to the standards she measures feminism by, because those standards are ridiculous. It’s human nature to pay more attention to what’s going on in our own culture; and if anything, feminists have been less insular than most Americans. (Even Ms. Hymowitz has to admit that the Feminist Majority Foundation was focusing on the Taliban years before 9/11).
Perhaps it would be better if Americans paid less attention to American issues, and more attention to people who have things objectively worse abroad. But is it fair for Ms. Hymowitz to hold feminists to a standard she doesn’t hold anyone else – including herself – to?
Let me make a prediction: Five years from now, Ms. Hymowitz will have moved on to some other issue-of-the-moment; but feminists will still be working to help women under Sharia law (alongside the thousand other issues feminists worry about). Feminists were almost the only Westerners who gave a shit about women under Sharia law before 9/11 (Dworkin was writing about it in the 1970s), and we’ll still give a shit when it’s no longer fashionable.
The truth is, feminists haven’t been silent; Kay Hymowitz just hasn’t been listening.
Update: Boy, am I late! Off the Kuff and The Sideshow were covering this question back in September.
Second Update: There’s a little discussion of this going on over on Eschaton (whose post on this subject sums up what’s happening well). The funniest comment comes from Carpeicthus: “Ah yes, how well I remember my pre-9/11 college days, when the Young Republicans were constantly holding rallies and passing out flyers decrying the Taliban.” Hee hee.
Update the third: Body and Soul picks up the ball (is it a golf ball?) and runs much further with it; if you liked this post, you’ll love Jeanne’s.
.
Did anyone hear a story about women who were married voting for Bush because their husbands were?
A story on the Afgan election and women led to this blog link, but your claims like Hymowitz also don’t add up. You claim for example that “feminists have been almost the only Westerners speaking” about women under Islam. This is false. The respected Middle Eastern scholars Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis has been writing on Islam and its social and political effects for years, and this was before 9/11. And this doesn’t even begin to touch the decades of scholarship on Islam logged by numerous MALE academics, or the voluminous news analysis on such during the Iran hostage crisis, Lebanon, Libyan stories during the Carter and Reagan years. Conservatives have been attention to this area a long time, contrary contrary to your bogus claim.
Your comparative search was also carefully loaded to yield maximum distortion. It is interesting that in YOUR category, you choose several broad terms: “Sharia, Islam or Afghanistan” but in the opposing category merely confine yourself to “Augusta or Lacrosse”. Since the issue at Augusta was gender discrimination why didn’t you ALSO include this term in your search, or would it have yielded inconvenient results?
It seems that you too are playing a little sleight of hand when scrutiny is applied.
My search was perfectly appropriate to Ms. Hymowitz’s claim. Since the accusation was that feminists care more about Augusta (or Lacrosse) than they do about women under Sharia law, it would have been bizaree to search for “gender discrimination” – an issue that covers many hundreds, if not thousands, of feminist stories that aren’t even slightly related to Augusta.
If Pipes & Lewis have been pressing the issue of women’s suffering under Sharia law and the Taliban for years, then good for them (where they talking about it in the 70s, like Dworkin was?). I genuinely wasn’t aware of that.
However, since I never made a blanket claim that 100% of conservatives ignored the issue before 9/11, your implication that you’ve caught me in a lie is unjustified.
Finally – as I argued in the post – I think it’s perfectly acceptable for Americans (or anyone else) to concentrate on local problems. So even if Pipes and Lewis HADN’T been talking about the Taliban, I wouldn’t criticize them for it.
Deborah, thanks for highlighting this post with your comment. I recall seeing an editorial on this theme on Fox online a few months ago. I don’t always agree with the Fox-endorsed iFeminists (I think they’re conservatives first and feminists second), but I thought the editorial made some good points; wish I could dig it up.
Ampersand, I’m disappointed in your response. You sound as if you’re avoiding the issue. As I understand it, the substance of the claim on the conservative side is that liberal feminists have, in general, been turning a blind eye to islamist misogyny in recent years. (I am talking about now, not 30 years ago.) I share this concern, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve become disenchanted with establishment liberalism. It’s certainly valid to concentrate on local problems, but let’s not use this as a cop-out.
‘The funniest comment comes from Carpeicthus: “Ah yes, how well I remember my pre-9/11 college days, when the Young Republicans were constantly holding rallies and passing out flyers decrying the Taliban.” Hee hee.’
Ampersand, I don’t see anything funny about this, and the flippant tone of your post doesn’t help matters. You know as well as I do that those pre-9/11 days are long gone. What I want to know is, where are the Democrats NOW? What have they done to fight the Taliban and give Afghan women some hope for the future?
Yeah, I used to be a Democrat too.
bite your tongue, Asher! Amp is too liberal to wear the same moniker as Joe Lieberman.
amp’s more of a… umm…
discrimination oriented progressive, skewing slightly towards women in particular.
does that seem like a fair pidgeonholing, Amp? you strike me as more driven by specific human plight than enviromentalism or raw social progressiveness.
so issues, in order would run:
Roe v. Wade defense et al, Israel (I know it concerns you, although you aren’t cliche pro or anti-israel in any sense), anti-PATRIOT act, enviromentalism, gun control.
I know, way off topic, but damn, it’s a game I enjoy “I’m sick of a false duality. let’s organize our positions in terms of specific priority.”
Karpad, I stand humbly corrected!
I’m totally with you about the false duality business. I was active with the Green Party in California and Oregon for seven years, including a very rewarding (but grueling) stint as secretary for the Portland chapter. (Google my name and you’ll still get meeting minutes I took back in 2000-2001.)
I went back to the Democrats for about a year because I liked – yes – Joe Lieberman. But he didn’t even make it to Oregon, so it was pretty much a waste of time.
I started warming to the Bush team after I saw they were really serious about challenging the dictatorships in Afghanistan and the Mideast. When they pulled saddam out of his rat-hole a year ago, I thought: “There’s no way I can NOT vote for this guy.”
Interestingly enough, the things that bother me about the Democratic Party today (as a Republcan) are not that different from the things I criticized in my Green days. The biggest problem, I think, is the Dems’ sense of entitlement: instead of simply campaigning against Nader, they acted as if they were somehow entitled to the vote of everyone who wasn’t GOP. It hurt them, and it made them look weak and defensive.
While I’m clearly not on the GP team anymore, I still have a lot of respect for them, and I think democracy is better served by a plurality of parties, not just two.
So I’m totally with you on the false-duality business. It’s unfortunate that many conservatives overlook the Bush administration’s mistakes (yes, they’ve made some) in their zeal to support the “home team”; it’s also sad – very sad – that many liberals are loath to make common cause with “right-wingers” on issues that should concern all people of good conscience. I hope we can get past this.
One of the things I do like about “Alas” is that Amp is, as you say, issue-driven rather than ideology-driven. I am fully confident that he will be able to give us a well-considered post on Afghanistan – perhaps outlining some areas where all of us, regardless of political affiliation, will be able to work together.
Actually, right now, my number-one issue is “Hereville, page 21.” So especially if a post requires a lot of research – as an intelligent post about Afghanistan would – I’m sorry, but I’m bound to disappoint you right now. :-)
What I’d really like to see, from either party, is a real dedication to making the civil rights of women a central goal of our activities in both Iraq and Afghanistan. For the Republicans – who, as the party controlling all three branches, should be held responsible for getting things done – that means that toppling a misogynist government but turning a blind eye to misogynist warlords who are our allies is not nearly good enough. For the Democrats, that means that they should be acting like a real opposition party, and yelling, kicking and screaming over every horrible violation of women’s rights that occurs in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Frankly, I don’t think either party is doing its job. The Republicans are so eager to declare “problem solved! We’ve saved the women!,” they’re ignoring serious threats to the basic freedoms of women in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And the Democrats are so eager to appear “centrist,” they’re running away from anything that sounds like “women’s issues” (as Kerry did during the campaign).
Frankly – and here perhaps I’ll get in trouble – I think we’re emphasizing “getting the vote” far too much, and basic civil liberties not enough. Democracy is one freedom, and it’s an important one – but it’s not the end-all and be-all. Democracy isn’t freedom if democracy means that the majority will vote to enslave women under Sharia law.
I think that establishing basic civil rights and individual freedoms – free speech, legal equality, a fair court system, safe streets, education system, functional economy, independent media etc – is the base necessary to build a stable democracy on. If individual freedoms don’t exist – or exist only for men, to a substantial degree – then the right to vote won’t be very meaningful.
It seems to me that we’re eager to get “the vote” so fast because it’ll look good for the American public. When it comes to women’s rights, it’s of course great that women have the right to vote. But we should also be asking more basic questions, like: Is it safe for a woman to walk the street? Can women be hired for jobs? Can girls get equal education? And so on. If women have the right to vote, but for too many the answers to the other questions remain “no,” then it’s too soon to declare victory.
* * *
That said, Karpad is right that I’m not a Democrat, and although I consider Democrats provisional allies, it’s not my purpose to be a Democratic Party apologist. I loathed them when they were in power, and if they ever get in power again I’ll probably loathe them again.
To tell you the truth, I don’t forsee myself doing much blogging outside of my usual subject areas for the next few weeks; between cartooning and the busy season at my day job, my time is very limited. Thanks for posting, though.
Ampersand, thanks for your response. And I’m not “disappointed” at all – you’ve addressed the issues very well. I agree without reservation that “getting women the vote” is only one of many basic issues before us – including basic freedoms and safety – and that we have a long way to go before we can “declare victory” in any meaningful sense.
And I do understand that “Alas” can’t be all things to all people. One of your blog’s strengths is its sharp focus.
I totally understand the importance of balancing the political stuff with the creative. (I’m working on a couple of creative writing projects myself, and while they’re nowhere near web-worthy, they do help me keep what’s left of my sanity.)
So I’ll leave this topic and let you get back to “Hereville”!