{"id":2229,"date":"2006-04-06T01:01:02","date_gmt":"2006-04-06T08:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2229"},"modified":"2006-04-06T01:01:02","modified_gmt":"2006-04-06T08:01:02","slug":"womens-rights-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2229","title":{"rendered":"Women's Rights In The Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting-sounding panel discussion of women’s rights in the Mid East<\/a>. I thought this point – about the attraction of patriarchy in dictatorships – was well-made:<\/p>\n

Darwish placed the blame on the patriarchy of the Middle East.<\/p>\n

“In the Middle East, men struggle with little freedoms because they, too, are oppressed by the dictatorship,”\u009d she said. “Women are the one aspect of control in their life, so inside the home, the men rule.”\u009d<\/p>\n

Narrowing the discussion to Muslim women, Darwish said, “A woman in the Middle East must answer to everyone, and her honor and purity is the business of her family, her neighbors, and sometimes, even the virtue police.”\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At the same time, I’m not sure if I entirely agreed with this:<\/p>\n

Darwish said the solution to human rights abuses toward women in the Middle East is democratization and that it will be impossible to improve women’s stations without proper democratic institutions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Do “democratic institutions” include things like a civic commitment to equal treatment of the sexes, protections for minorities against dictatorship by the majority, and a safe civil society for dissent? It seems to me that these freedoms may be more essential than mere Democracy – and may be preconditions for a successful liberal democracy. Women in Iraq and Afghanistan have the vote (in theory), but in many areas can’t walk the streets with bare faces without fear of violent reprisal; freedom to vote doesn’t guarantee freedom in any substantive sense. Democracy is one element of freedom, but it’s not the only element, and maybe not even the most essential element.<\/p>\n

The conflict between democracy and women’s fundamental human rights is a topic I’ve blogged on several times already, generally in the context of Iraq (1<\/a> 2 <\/a>3<\/a> 4<\/a> 5<\/a> ). Women’s liberty in Iraq, already in decline under Hussain, have sharply plummeted<\/a> since the U.S. invasion. The ability to vote for religious fanatics who are determined to end women’s freedoms is not freedom in any meaningful sense, and ought not be celebrated as freedom.<\/p>\n

Unusually for panels with this subject matter, Israel wasn’t ignored:<\/p>\n

Panelist and NYU politics professor Hani Zubida discussed Israeli women’s rights from a socio-political perspective.<\/p>\n

“The notion of equality [in Israel] is a double-edged sword … women can no longer say that they are being discriminated against, because they were given this equality with suffrage and ability to join the army,”\u009d Zubida said. “However, there is disenfranchisement of Israeli women through the mechanism of the army … the military as a social construct does not accept women as equal.”\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m glad they didn’t ignore Israel, although there’s no doubt that Israeli women are far better situated than most (all?) of their counterparts in the Mid-East. Zubida’s point – that formal legal equality can be used to dismiss other legitimate concerns (“you’ve got the vote, so what are you complaining about?”) – is one that in theory I agree with. But I wish the article had given more detail about Zubida’s argument; the quote from her really isn’t enough to know what specific problems she’s talking about.<\/p>\n

The question of liberty versus democracy is relevant to Palestine, as well. I favor independence for the occupied territories as an independent Palestine, but I do so without much enthusiasm, largely because I suspect that a Palestinian state, while democratic, would nonetheless be hugely oppressive to Palestinian women and Palestinian queers. From the BBC<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A number of gay Palestinian men are risking their lives to cross the border into Israel, claiming they feel safer among Israelis than their own people. […]<\/p>\n

In practice, Palestinian gays end up being placed under virtual house arrest because of the fear that they may be potential suicide bombers. […] However, many Palestinian gays say they would still rather live under house arrest in Israel, where homosexuality is not considered a crime, than at home. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a way, U.S. leftists regarding Palestine are in a similar position as U.S. right-wingers regarding Iraq; in both cases, the Americans are advocating the creation of a new government that will virtually certainly be brutally oppressive to both women and queers. And both groups tend to sweep this fact under the rug.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, gaymiddleeast.com<\/a> seems to be a good source of news stories about queer rights throughout the middle east).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting-sounding panel discussion of women’s rights in the Mid East. I thought this point – about the attraction of patriarchy in dictatorships – was well-made: Darwish placed the blame on the patriarchy of the Middle East. “In the Middle East, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,40,42,49,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism-sexism-etc","category-international-issues","category-iraq","category-lesbian-gay-bi-trans-and-queer-issues","category-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}