[lit-ideas] Feminism's Failed Agenda?
- From: Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:48:39 -0500
Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education,
Phyllis Chesler argues that the "multicultural
feminist canon has not led to independent,
tolerant, diverse, or objective ways of thinking.
On the contrary. It has led to conformity,
totalitarian thinking, and political passivity."
[EXTRACT of "The Failure of Feminism"]
http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=pXgdqcZYzSdrCxdn2ytfR4qnjmpj85xm
<MAJOR SNIP>
Nevertheless feminists are often perceived as
marginal and irrelevant; and in some important
ways the perception is accurate.
Today the cause of justice for women around the
world is as urgent as it has ever been. The plight
of both women and men in the Islamic world (and
increasingly in Europe) requires a sober analysis
of reality and a heroic response. World events
have made feminism more important — yet at the
same time, feminism has lost much of its power.
To my horror, most Western academic and mainstream
feminists have not focused on what I call gender
apartheid in the Islamic world, or on its steady
penetration of Europe. Such feminists have also
failed to adequately wrestle with the complex
realities of freedom, tyranny, patriotism, and
self-defense, and with the concept of a Just War.
Islamic terrorists have declared jihad against the
"infidel West" and against all of us who yearn for
freedom. Women in the Islamic world are treated as
subhumans. Although some feminists have sounded
the alarm about this, a much larger number have
remained silent. Why is it that many have
misguidedly romanticized terrorists as freedom
fighters and condemned both America and Israel as
the real terrorists or as the root cause of
terrorism? In the name of multicultural
correctness (all cultures are equal, formerly
colonized cultures are more equal), the feminist
academy and media appear to have all but abandoned
vulnerable people -- Muslims, as well as
Christians, Jews, and Hindus to the forces of
reactionary Islamism.
Because feminist academics and journalists are now
so heavily influenced by left ways of thinking,
many now believe that speaking out against head
scarves, face veils, the chador, arranged
marriages, polygamy, forced pregnancies, or female
genital mutilation is either "imperialist" or
"crusade-ist." Postmodernist ways of thinking have
also led feminists to believe that confronting
narratives on the academic page is as important
and world-shattering as confronting jihadists in
the flesh and rescuing living beings from captivity.
<SNIP>
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