Thanks to GP Reader Lesbian NeoCon for sending along this piece swimming in irony…..
Women’s Studies Departments Ignore the Plight of Women in Islam – FrontPage Magazine
Despite their vigilance in behalf of women’s rights in America and other Western nations, Women’s Studies Departments across the nation have been strangely passive in the face of the barbaric treatment of women in Islamic regimes. Numerous hours are spent in the classroom, dissecting the reasons for the ‘wage gap’ in America, violence against women and the ‘privileges’ accorded Caucasian males. But courses on the plight of women in Islamic regimes are strangely absent. Where there are a few courses that touch on Islamic women in Women’s Studies programs, the focus is often cultural and literary, while the abuses go unmentioned.
This failure to confront the abuse of women who live in Islamic countries stands in stark contrast to the mission statements of many Women’s Studies departments, which describe their focus as the inequality that women suffer in patriarchal societies. Thus the official mission statement of the Penn State Women’s Studies Department declares that “As a field of study, Women’s Studies analyzes the unequal distribution of power and resources by gender.” Why then does the Penn State department not offer a course analyzing the extreme inequalities that characterize the status of women in the Islamic world?
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In a study of eight prominent universities, the University of Pennsylvania was the only school which offers a course specifically concerned about the equal and oppressive treatment of women in Islamic nations. That course, “Women Social Movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” focuses on the struggle of women in these nations to claim equal rights with men while still maintaining their identity as Muslims.
Well, come on. We know the answer to these questions. America’s universities, especially the Women’s Studies departments, are chock full of America-hating, white men-hating, anti-capitalist left wing professors. They can be shown a true global threat against women right to their eyes yet only see what they want to see: Evil White American Men.
[Related Story – Ivory Tower Decay – Michael Barone, Real Clear Politics]
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
It’s always my pleasure (& pretty darn easy) to point out the glaring hypocrisy and phony concern the leftist femnist movement puts forth.
Here’s my observations about Islam and women, from visiting an Islamic country – Egypt.
One thing that struck me was: There were few women walking openly on the streets, even in Cairo, the most cosmopolitan city. There was an eerie predominance of men, just in terms of numbers. When a woman did appear on the streets, she’d often be carrying a kid, walking 2 steps behind her man, and looking downtrodden.
In Cairo, the capital, there were a few more women around, such as young college students. They wore Western dress, but very modestly: jeans with baggy long-sleeved turtle-neck sweaters, and the like. That was pleasant. After 2 weeks of that, when I returned to NYC and to our world’s slutty belly piercings, etc. it was shocking (and not a little disgusting).
My group’s tour guide, and an Islamic university professor we spent some time with, were most anxious to assure us that women’s rights were no problem in Islam; that Islam treats women very well. It became a case of ‘The lady doth protest too much”. They would say the most sexist things, without even realizing it. A common refrain was, “Women have it really good in Islam. They are really taken care of. Even if they are Westernized and have a job, they still always have some man always looking out for them and paying for them. Who could have it better?”
The Western women in my tour group were older moderate-liberals. They definitely recognized the sexism I just described. Yet they didn’t make (or feel) any connection with their own politics; it didn’t affect their stance that the U.S. was an oppressor, the War on Terror was bad, etc. In our group’s discussion with the Islamic professor, they smugly agreed the U.S. was oppressive to women, volunteered to him that women in the U.S. were markedly underpaid even after adjusting for equal work / experience, and so forth.
True, Bruce. My own assessment of what the leftliberals are about is the Seven Pillars of Progress: multiculturalism, feminism, monetary redistributionism, transnationalism, secularism, pacifism and environmentalism.
Behind each of these ism’s stand the image of the enemy, the reason the ism arose in the first place. These seven Enemies are white racism, male domination, capitalist wealth, nationstate patriotism, Christianity, the military and the police, and First World consumers and businesses.
So if you search for the embodiment of the The Enemy you get a white male American Christian businessman, solider/cop and/or consumer.
Sound like, oh, say George W Bush?
What (white) leftliberals fear above all is to be seen to be racist, so they can never allow themselves to see any group or individual or religion as Enemy if it’s Third World. Too frightening a prospect for them.
And Israel/Jews are the stand-in for the The Enemy in the Middle East.
All very predictable after about ten minutes.
PS. And Islam get treated like a race, not a set of religious beliefs. So you have to turn away from its darkside and make believe that either it’s not there or it’s just a reaction to oppression from the white male American Christian, etc.
Bruce, I’m no defender of Women’s Studies departments at universities, but it seems silly to think that the people who generally habit those departments as faculty or study there as students would, could or should be concerned about anything as concrete as civil rights in arab countries… or the brutal treatment of women in the Taliban-era Afghanistan, etc. Their very essence is the abstracted reality afforded them in their dept’s protection from real life and global concerns.
I know, you see them as an anti-everything group but I see them as simply ineffective.
These are depts where entire careers are spent studying the influence of 18th C romantic novels on modern-day perceptions of gender. Or the role of scent in gender affinity. They’re depts taken over by gender studies that are little more than validation exercises for lesbians… not true intellectual research or discourse. These are depts devoted to advancing a “victimized” history of women… when everyone with a nut at age 9 knows that men are the real victims in our culture. (oops, sorry)
Universities should be about learning & research; not about advancing the political agenda of elite minorities currently in vogue with college leadership. Wasn’t that the conservatives’ lesson in Columbia’s embrace of Iran’s Prez?
Frankly, where the heck is the First Lady on this issue??? She was front-and-center in the lead-up to the invasion and so-appropriate buttkicking of the Taliban… why doesn’t she take the Peace Corps and make their commitment to Afghanistan, Iraq and other arab/islamic countries into a vehicle for advancing women’s civil and economic rights? Why is she so silent about a condition that lingers in Afghanistan? Why not a $10b program to invest in female entrepreneurship in Islamic countries… that’ll bust em out of the burka.
We can complain about the lack of a demonstrable voice from Women’s Studies depts, but the real leadership on this issue needs to come from the political elites and others who have already engaged the issue –the former category isn’t up to the task in any way, shape or form. They’re too busy trying to discern the true weight scholars should give to 17th C African art’s portrayal of women in fertility and how that applies to modern pan-pacific cultures. LOL; what a lame excuse for scholarly research. Women’s studies with application to the real world; what a laugh.
Kind of like expecting the GayLeft leadership to care about gays being hanged in Iran or elsewhere… it’s not in their character nor aligned with their political preferences. All they want to do now to help Hillary is to beat the phoney drums about America getting ready to invade Iran… or Syria… or North Korea… or Venezuela. Now that get’s ’em stoked in a major way!
I think you’re being unreasonable (but truthful) about any expectation that women’s studies depts should, could or ought to be applicable to the real world or stand up for women in Islamic countries.
Wow, I think this makes me a chauvinist coming out of the closet. Can you be gay and chauvinist?
Anyone else feel kind of like there should be a middle ground between Islamic repression of women and secular western objectification of women? A middle-ground where women aren’t covered in black Hefty bags nor dressed like whores from the age of six, but just dress modestly enough to show self-respect? A middle ground where women are not barred from participation in society nor indoctrinated that men are evil and career and “independence” trump everything, but where a woman is respected regardless of whether she chooses career, family life, or some combination thereof?
Oh, wait, there is such a middle-ground, and contemporary Christianity occupies it fairly nicely.
V, agree 100%, except I should have said, secular *left-liberal* objectification of women. Secular-right or secular-libertarian-conservative philosophy is another place where you find women who strike a balance between playfulness and dignity, display and self-respect.
Not so sure about libertarians respecting women. Libertarians are generally pro-pr0n and pro-prostitution, in theory, because it allows women to do what ever they want with their bodies. In practice, however, pr0n and prostitution more often lead to degradation and exploitation of women. I part company with libertarians largely because their theories tend to be absolutist, and don’t take into account real-world consequences. I think there has to be some sort of moral code in place to preserve the dignity of the sexes, and I think Christianity does that better than anything else we have.
Well, Judeo-Christianity anyway.
I have a slightly different perspective on this being a moderate liberal myself. For whatever reason, it is considered not politically correct to criticize third world people for their customs. Even when they are horrific, like female circumcision or executing accused homosexuals or whatever.
I believe that all people are entitled to freedom, no matter where they live. So I don’t have a lot of paticence with this. I also don’t have a lot of patience for women’s studies, gay studies, etc because from what I can tell they don’t stand up what in my college days (so long ago) passed for academic rigor. But then I find most of what I hear from new graduates to be drivel (including new grads who are conservatives so it’s not just a liberal thing).
People should be studying what is and what was. And only after knowing that should they form opinions about what it means and how it might be in the future. Instead we are taught a cherry-picked curriculum that only reinforces the teacher’s or the author’s views. And the right is just as guilty of this crap as the left.
While working on a recent degree, I remember taking a class in ‘Economic Geography’. (The description, though misleading, was interesting but I should’ve known better.) It was taught by an Ethiopian immigrant whose politics were somewhere to the left of Trotsky, although he wasn’t a firebrand (arguing with a firebrand is simply too justifiable); rather, he presented leftism in a soothing, gentle lilt that made the medicine so much easier for the ignorant to swallow.
The subject of Islam and terrorism came up and sure enough, we were encouraged not to judge Muslim culture (‘Judge not lest ye be judged’ recited our Coptic Christian communist professor) and were fed a litany of western sins and exploitations (the distraction de riguer and the implied justification of terrorist acts). I remember that the most enthusiastic responses came from the students who were in danger of failing the class. One brave student disagreed and he made several very good arguments, but hostility quickly ensued and sheer numbers and nature of the delivery soon had him silent. I (and a number of other students) simply sat there knowing that disagreement would never amount to anything; so fully had they swallowed without digestion, so completely closed were their minds that I remember thinking how useless it was to defend this lone, brave, and principled student. I remember thinking how bad I felt about it and I went to him and apologized for not defending him.
Defending sanity and reason exacts real costs and many students like myself simply hunker down and concentrate on getting through school. Forced to take electives, I avoided controversy and simply did the work required, though without a smile. Only in my written work did I more than suggest that I disagreed with the ideology being expressed.
As I said: libertarian-conservative.
There are “libertarians” who in fact are leftists, just anarcho-leftists… and then there are real friends of liberty.
Not to get off-topic, ILC, but how would you identify a “libertarian-conservative”… is that someone who is libertarian in natl economic, fiscal and budget policies but a social conservative? Or something else?
Because I always gave low points to libertarians for the embrace of decriminalization of illicit drugs, hemp4all and that pesky if indirect support of porn and prostitution as victimless crimes and simple marketplace “choices”… let alone the notion that govt shouldn’t regulate 1/5th of what it does… buyer beware, et al.
Is it a socially conservative libertarian masked by the hyphen?
You mention leftists… does a “friend of liberty” believe that the US military should be used for nation-building if it advances “liberty” in the world? Does that “friend of liberty” think gun laws are ok for DC in order to allow citizens the liberty of walking the streets safely at night and not getting mowed down by a driveby shooter? I thought most true libertarians want to harness govt, remove its influence on society and devolve into the smallest unit of self-govt possible. That’s kind of contrary to a conventional conservative’s aim to enforce moral choices on public institutions and conserve the status quo or nostalgia’s status quo.
Libertarian-conservative? A libertarian friend once noted that he never voted because it didn’t affect the outcome… why waste his time was his take on that civic duty. BTW, he’s now a professor of economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan… a big libertarian college.
A truly consistent believer in small government. Someone who wants the smallest government possible, like the Founding Fathers did, and like Goldwater, Reagan, and Milton Friedman talked about; and yet who still understands and accepts the necessity of government. The necessity of police, of courts, of military, and in today’s world, of a War on Terror. Liberty, to be liberty, must be combined with Rule of Law.
Well do I understand your intent, and hence, not that I expect to persuade you here; but let me note the following for other eyes: Criminalization of the recreational drug industry is the economic driver of the existence of gangs and other organized crime. The existence of illegal businesses, profits and property in its turn causes the existence of illegal “services” to protect same – since their owners can hardly turn to the police. If the recreational drug industry were heavily taxed and regulated, rather than criminalized, civil society would end up with net gains.
Not as such; rather, if it advances rational U.S. interests in the world, including U.S. defense & preservation (such as in the present GWOT).
A true friend of liberty does understand that the fundamental problem in all these other nasty countries – reflected in their dictatorships, and driving their poverty, their disease, their abuse of women, their wars with each other, etc. – is their lack of liberty, including their lack of the rule of laws rather than men.
I don’t understand the question. A consistent friend of liberty would want DC residents to be armed – to the extent they, as individuals, may want it. The 2nd Amendment is a key right, and an armed society is a polite society.
But what could be more conservative (in a liberty-loving way) than wanting to reduce government to its original role and purposes?
I must compliment you, MM, on getting through your comment without trying to directly attack me on a personal level.
P.S. DC is a perfect example of 2 principles at once:
(1) Participants in the recreational drug industry would not need to form gangs and engage in drive-by shootings if they were legitimized (again, under appropriate regulation and taxation) and hence could more easily and safely turn to police and courts for protection and settlement of disputes; and
(2) Participants in gangs and drive-by shootings would rapidly stop their activities if they knew that, unlike the situation today, large numbers of passers-by and victims were trained, willing and able to shoot back.
(And permitted. Permitted to shoot back.)
Realistically, drug legalization would not “solve” problems, but merely exchange one set of problems for another. Under drug prohibition, we have the problems of gang violence, the expense of incarcerating drug traffickers, and the compromise of civil liberties. Legalization would ameliorate those problems, but at the expense of a much larger pool of drug users and with that greatly expanded social costs, health care expenses, lost economic productivity, and… in particular, damage to children and families. The choice isn’t between having problems solved or not solved, but in which set of problems one chooses to manage.
I respectfully question that. I don’t know how the pool of drug users can get much larger. People – and by “people”, I mean high school kids – have access to drugs now. Their only issue is getting the money; the laws don’t stop them. (I know, from the recent travails of my oldest nephew.) It’s possible that, were recreational drugs legal, then we (as a society) could really give them a status like smoking, where it’s not a crime but people will actually confront each other over it, and reduce use over time – which we aren’t doing now.
P.S. I accept that we must never return to the manners of 100 years ago when Coca-Cola was so named because cocaine was one of the ingredients, and dowdy housewives, after a long day of campaigning against the evils of alcohol, would get themselves doped to the gills on it. Yuck.
I would phrase it this way, ILC; which is worse, marijuana arrests or a bunch more stoned drivers on the 101?
And that really is the gist of the problem. Drug legalization sounds good in theory — eliminate government regulation, decrease price, decrease money spent, decrease incentive for gang wars, but it really boils down to this; I don’t want people shooting up on speed, snorting cocaine, or taking heroin walking around in public.
To me, the simultaneous pushes to outlaw tobacco and legalize marijuana are two of the sillier manifestations of our cultural schizophrenia.
IMHO, this is still about baby boomers getting back at their parents, by outlawing an earlier generation’s drug of choice and substituting their own.
http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=CB16F817-6DCB-4EB3-A29E-C56487C0ABD1
Oops – Too late.
Again: What is your evidence/logic for believing that full legalization (CA already has partial) would result in *more* stoned drivers? And BTW, I don’t want market prices to drop, I want them to rise – by taxation, etc. As with smoking. Wrong as most taxes are, there are certain things where government may as well collect a profit to defray the social costs.
LNC / Bruce, sorry about the thread-jacking. I’ll shut up now 😉
ILC – thread-jack away!! Bothers me not!! 😉
ILC, thanks for the reply. That better explains what you meant with the term libertarian-conservative.
Oops – Too late.
Well, you’re right that they’re already doing it.
But at least now they can be arrested after they do it, while they do it, and when they are procuring the materials to do it in advance.
Again: What is your evidence/logic for believing that full legalization (CA already has partial) would result in *more* stoned drivers?
Because, ILC, despite the fact that there are rather stringent penalties for it, people still risk life, limb, jobs, and home to do it.
I base mine on the theory that there are indeed people who would love to smoke pot constantly, but who don’t do it because doing so could cost them any or all of the above.
NDT: I assure you… NO ONE who wants to smoke pot constantly in CA, is stopped from doing it or even much hindered by the law as it exists today. Yes, some are eventually arrested – usually in connection with other offenses. But none take the prospect into account, in calculating whether or how much to use. Hence, in CA, we are already at the max number of people who will ever use.
Hmmmm. You may be onto something.
I am in much agreement with you on this one ILC, especially marijuana. This is a plant that can be grown in yards, closets, attics etc. and except for drying, requires little further processing. That this remains illegal is silly.
One could use the same logic to argue for open borders, ILC.
Never confuse the fact that California police and governments don’t enforce the law with whether or not the laws actually work. I assure you, we are not a typical state.
And I think V the K’s point is well-taken; look, for example, at the SF supervisors, who have banned tobacco smoking at outdoor bus stops and on the city golf courses, but who are demanding fast-track permits for pot clubs and that the police not arrest people for smoking marijuana.
It’s interesting that they scream about how bad inhaling the smoke from burning leaves is for you and how it imposes on others for one thing, but actively promote and push it for another.
@30: I think V’s point is well taken only if the SF supervisors are supporting smoking of marijuana in places where smoking tobacco is banned. Otherwise, it’s apples and oranges.
No, as I shall now demonstrate.
*You, NDT*, made a point that legalization should increase the number of marijuana users on 101. I refuted your claim, by pointing out that marijuana use in CA is already at or near its likely maximum. That was a mere refutation of your incorrect claim. It was not, and is not, my own argument *for* legalization.
My argument for legalization rests on different grounds altogether. As indicated earlier, my argument for legalization is:
(1) that the outright criminalization of intoxicants is wrong in principle, i.e., is no legitimate function of government; and as a corollary or natural consequence,
(2) that the criminalization of intoxicants is a net injury to society. For example, it drives the economic need / demand for underground or criminal “protection” services.
Border security, by contrast, is a legitimate function of government. It falls under the rubric of national security. As a corollary, border security is a net benefit (injury) to society.
In short, you have taken a mere refutation of your (incorrect) claim as if it were my own argument for legalization. But, it is not. Hence, I call foul.
sorry, benefit (NOT injury)
ILC, you may be too young to remember it (wink), but during the Reagan Administration, the flow of illict drugs into THIS country was a “clear and present danger” to our natl security… and the Reagans turned it into a War on Drugs. Please see the movie “Clear and Present Danger” if you doubt how much the War on Drugs (narco-terrorists, et al) parallels the War on Terror.
And to be fair before crying foul, I think NDT was offering that the excuse or rationalization that nearly everyone is doing “x” works for both dope use in CA and the tide of illegal immigrants into CA/Open Borders. Plus, I think he tossed in the notion of lax enforcement in that extension of your argument… just ’cause it aint enforced doesn’t mean society accepts the practice.
I thought NDXXX’s application made sense.
Narco-terrorists. Natl Security. American family values, not SF values ought to be the standard… just because the FSF organizers allow kids into the event and no one stops ’em doesn’t make it right, acceptable or a social good. To touch on a few threads last week.
As should have been clear at #32: **I have not offered** “the excuse or rationalization that nearly everyone is doing ‘x'”. If you think I have, you have not comprehended what I’ve written.
Also, for the record, I’m certain that CA pot smokers remain a minority of the population …far from “nearly everyone”!
It’s really simple. NDT indicated why he thought legalization should have a consequence of increasing the proportion of CA population that smokes pot. I gave reasons why I thought his claim untrue, as the proportion was likely already as large now as it ever would be. End of (that) story.