So today is International Women's Day.
If you look around the left side of the internets, you can find all kinds of pompous self-congratulatory crap, talking about all how the female gender is Superior and dammit, every other day is Men's Day! To be fair, not all of them are doing this, but it should be no surprise that there's no similar screaming about the brutality against women in the Muslim world. Every day is Men's Day? Yep, in the Muslim world. Where are the left-wing feminists "every day?" We all know...they're busy being apologists for Islamists. Defending Islamic countries "rights" to live without Western (or should I say AMERICAN) "interference." Cheering (and again, congratulating themselves) for "tolerance."
You won't see me getting all excited about some stupid "International Women's Day," until those who claim it as their day stop being too weak and afraid to speak out against Islamic violence. Pffft.
NRO's Kathryn Lopez has an interview up today with Phyllis Chesler, the author of The Death of Feminism : What's Next in the Struggle for Women's Freedom. Excerpt:
Lopez: What do you hate most about feminism today?Chesler: I don't "hate" anything about feminism. Those feminists who work in the areas of violence against women (incest, rape, sexual harassment, domestic battering, prostitution, and pornography); those feminists who work within religion to further the cause of both God and humanity; and those feminists who fight discrimination against women in the workplace have my profound respect and gratitude: such feminists are both Republicans and Democrats, religious and secular, they are in all professions, and they exist everywhere in the world.
However, I mourn the Stalinization and Palestinianization of the feminist postcolonial and postmodern academy and media. Because such feminists refuse to "judge" Islamic gender apartheid, they and their institutions and organizations have become anti-activist, anti-American, anti-Israeli, isolationist, and, at best, tools of the Democratic party. At worst, they are apologists for Islamist jihad. To avoid the McCarthyite charge of "racism," such feminists have been willing to sacrifice the victims of Islamism on their "multicultural" altars.
Lopez: Did you actually get grief from feminist for writing about the "gender cleaning" of women in Sudan?Chesler: Yes, I did. When I sent one such piece around, certain left feminists told me that they did not even want to read what I had written because they did not "approve" of my writing for conservative publications. Not even if my pro-woman pieces were solicited and welcomed in conservative quarters and totally censored in left-liberal mainstream quarters. I had a similar problem when I wrote about the refusal of Lukas Moodyson, the brilliant Swedish filmmaker, to allow his film against trafficking (Lilya-4-ever), to be shown at a feminist anti-trafficking conference in Israel. While he allowed the film to be shown in every country on earth where brothels, pimps, and traffickers flourished, he refused to allow anti-trafficking Israelis to show the film once because he disapproved of Israel's military policies. I wrote a piece about censorship and prejudice and about the demonization of Israel which was immediately rejected by the New York and L.A. Times. I published it in Frontpage Magazine and within 48 hours Moodyson reversed his decision and allowed the Israeli feminists to show his film. The fact that my piece got some immediate positive results did not matter. All that mattered was that I had published it in a so-called "right-wing rag."
More women you should know HERE, also at NRO.
Posted by Beth at March 8, 2006 11:49 AM