The silence of the 'large F' Feminists is deafening.sniffs a commenter on Kate's blog in response to a list of outrages against women that are not news to feminists.
Pardon me while I rant.
This canard seems to be rampant in the blogosphere and is well on its way to becoming a pundit's truism that bears no relation to reality, kind of like Phyllis Shlafly's defeat-the-ERA drumbeat against unisex bathrooms. Two examples from this week alone:
But the women's organizations are busy trying to get women golfers into Augusta. . . . They talked about the Taliban before the US military went in, but now that's not on their agenda. Sickening.Scroll down: sage nodding of heads all around, including a successful female lawyer who I know ought to know better. No one doubts the assertion is true. Glenn sniffs:
Why don't we hear more of this kind of thing from feminists?Why don't you stop beating your wife, Glenn? Oh - you say you don't? Well, why didn't you say so? What's that? You say I should check whether my accusation is true before making it?
What gets me is: here is a self-identified group of people who know that a lot of important news doesn't make it onto the front page. They know to dig in obscure journals and blogs and read between the lines to get the scoop on all sorts of domestic and international happenings. But if Gloria Steinem wasn't on "Good Morning America" last week denouncing female genital mutilation (although she and Robin Morgan wrote about it before it was on anyone else's radar screen), they assume the feminist movement is MIA.
What happened to all that investigative reporting and not taking conventional wisdom for granted that the blogosphere is famous for?
Have any of you picked up a copy of Ms. lately? Ever? When I used to read it regularly there was always news about Third World feminists and American allies challenging various oppressions. The Feminist Majority Foundation was trying to publicize the Taliban problem for years before anyone else cared. (And no one cared because of how they treated women, but because the Taliban harbored the gang that attacked us.) Guess what, Glenn? They haven't stopped. You just aren't hearing about it. But you aren't looking for it either. How hard would it be to go to their website and, you know, check your preconceptions?
I'm glad Kate's comment section is outraged by oppression of women in third world countries. Most of these cultures have had their own feminist movements for decades, work together with Western feminists (and disagree with them too), and periodically hold big conferences where these issues are addressed. So, believe me, they know what they are up against, and I bet they would appreciate your help.
Ironically, most of the "where are the feminists now?" crowd are feminists: feminism's successes are Exhibit B (right after capitalism) in their list of Western values worth fighting for. They proudly compare the personal autonomy, self-confidence, and smarts of American women to the subjugation of women in Islamic countries. And indeed, they recognize that the success of feminism is crucial to global freedom and prosperity, even as they resist giving feminism credit for its achievements because most self-identified feminists are Leftists.
I agree with many of the critiques of typical feminist politics, but there are many flavors of feminism and disagreements about how to proceed. It's not that hard to find your own place to stand without smearing the movement that played a huge role in bringing us to the (imperfect but impressive) state of equality and opportunity that we want to export to the Middle East. Especially with a dumb cliche that 15 minutes of googling would show you isn't even true.
PS The Ms. blog makes the same point with some additional links, and leftist bloggers with whom I rarely agree on anything have also thoroughly debunked this particular piece of inanity.
UPDATE: Meryl and Ilyka and Allison and more Allison and Lesley and Diane all chime in. (Diane is living in an alternate universe, and so are the Brothers Judd, but I've said as much as I want to in some of the comment threads.) (I don't visit Dean's World anymore - life is too short.)
Tangentially relevant to my post: Women do not all agree on everything or like the same things: Exhibit A.
Thanks to Meryl for the link to the Afgan feminist group that first publicized the Taliban misogynist hell. I don't know how I overlooked them, but I'm sure they were on at least one link compendium I linked to above. (Mostly I just googled on phrases like "muslim feminist" and "feminist history" and "lies about feminism" (which brought back far more links to sites about "the lies of feminism") and sifted through what came up. See? Not so hard. I did link directly to Ms. because I knew the magazine reliably had international feminist news, and to the '95 NGO Women's Conference in Beijing because I knew a few people who had attended.)
UPDATE: Ilyka fisks the Kay Whatserface essay that Dean thinks is the death-blow to feminism. Like Glenn, Dean is so eager for feminism to be wrong that he doesn't bother to fact-check. And neither does Kay Whatserface, which makes it an easy fisking for Ilyka.
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