[Via Feministing.]
I was really moved by the acceptance speech Iranian feminist activist Parvin Ardalan recorded on YouTube for her acceptance of the Olaf Palme prize. Ardalan was prevented by Iranian authorities from travelling to Sweden to accept the award. The text of her remarks can be found here, though I’d recommend watching the video itself. Like Samhita at Feministing, I’m struck by the similarity of the issues she and other Iranian women confront with those confronted by women across the world. I’m also very struck by her tribute to feminists of other nations.
Thanks for that Kim.
How refreshing it is to read the comments of a person whose consciousness is so attuned to the continuities of world culture. It is my belief that only a thorough understanding of these continuities provides opportunities for initiating discontinuities.
And the discontinuities that Parvin Ardalan is trying to initiate are difficult and dangerous ones indeed to initiate and to carry through.
I also wish to observe that it is the democratic Left that genuinely offers hope for important cultural change in theocracies and in other forms of absolutist polity. This is for three broad reasons:
1. The Right masquerade only when it suits the Right’s wider agenda as supporters of feminism and other movements that seek to redress historic grievances. For example, when Bush wanted to bash up the Taliban, suddenly he discovered that Afghan women were severely oppressed. And for a brief season Wingnuts adopted these talking points.
2. All right-wing ideologies are based on the assumption of some kind of hierarchy, whether formal or informal, or both. The most persistent of these hierarchies is domestic patriarchy. Without domestic patriarchy there is not much point in being a rightist.
3. The Right attracts and encourages the reproduction of authoritarian personality types. In democracies such as ours and the US, these authoritarian types most readily propose and vote for adoption of military “solutions” to problems. These “solutions” in fact exacerbate many problems, especially the task of persons like Parvin Ardalan who are the best hope for beneficial cultural change everywhere in the world, and most especially in the Middle East.
What Katz said, not much to add to that, but congratulations to Parvin Ardalan.
Well said, Katz; for example the assassination attempts against Malalai Joya and her subsequent suspension from parliament were inconvenient to the narrative of “restored democracy” after the taliban was displaced.
If people want to sign to support “One Million Signatures Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws” go to the following website:
http://www.wechange.info/spip.php?article19#sp19
I was struck by her very simple but very telling statement:
“I am proud that I am a secular woman…”
Thank you for posting this Kim. It is inspiring.
Katz says:
I guess it all depends on how you define “democratic Left”, because I note that Venezuela’s marxist President, and devoted acolyte of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, openly supports Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, describing Ahmadinejad as a “revolutionary” and a “brother”.
That is the same Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who boasts of ridding Iran of its homosexuals and who strangles adulterers in public.
Bah!
No loud denunciations at all! Call yourself a feminist…
Seriously great speech. I was a tad troubled by the glances off camera though. I hope she’s going to be alright.
Cuba excepted, of course. Where authoritarian personality types get a free run from the “democratic” left.
su says:
This raises a very interesting and important point – namely, any democratic society is ultimately constrained by the values extant in that society. This is very different from the boats made by marxists who purport to be able to deliver a totally transformed society, one not only no longer constrained by the values of the society, but ultimately one in which by some magical process collective ownership of the means of production alters social relations between men and women, etc.
This worked terrifically well in China during the Cultural Revolution, for example. Not.
What that means I suggest is that in a liberal democratic society, movements like feminism are central to the ongoing transformation of society. under socialism, of course, they’d be deemed unnecessary.
Eliot: “the boats made by marxists ”
Sinking ships? Ships of Fools?
Katz referred to: “important cultural change in theocracies and in other forms of absolutist polity”
This is a key question you raise, Katz. Greater human freedom may be achievable when a society is under “the rule of law, not the rule of men” [sic]. But theocracies are by no means the only societies which stifle freedom. Some polities ruled by ideologies of the (nominal) Left are in practice unfree dictatorships. I think Eliot has a point when he says that under a “Marxist” government feminism may wither.
Feminism is an important part of modern societies. So’s general freedom.
You seem to ascribe all faults to ‘teh Right’. I venture to suggest that the public campaigns in the US, Australia, Europe, against Taliban autocracy and misogyny were so effective, that Pres Bush had little choice but to declare “women’s rights” part of his anti-Taliban campaign.
Ambigulous says:
A Freudian slip especially dedicated to the fast sinking Robert Mugabe, another leading Left feminist advocate. Just ask the courageous Senator-elect Sekai Holland, whom Mugabe’s thugs nearly beat to death recently.
There were huge protests about Sekai’s treatment by the Democratic Left, especially here in Australia where she has family. You remember those, don’t you? There was a float dedicated to her in the Gay Mardi Gras.
No, wait. That was David Hicks.
pfft-tha-feckin-ffft’.
Would have been mad not to have hitched a free ride off it anyway.
Eliot: “the boats made by marxists ”
Sinking ships? Ships of Fools?
A cargo cult, I would think.
Helen says:
A very astute observation, Helen. And like any cult, overwhelmed by a sense of its own perfect righteousness – and buttressed by an infinite capacity to forget the more incongruous and embarrassing aspects of its own history.
Perhaps the most brilliant political cartoon to ever emerge in the final days of the Soviet Union was a simple black and white representing a Soviet official lobotomising himself with the ‘Hammer and Sickle’ emblem of the Party.
Anyone who imagines socialism automatically tends to ignore the history of women under socialist regimes. For example…
says:
Need I remind everyone that the Taliban came to power after overthrowing a series of Soviet-backed marxist regimes in Afghanistan?
Fascinating mish-mash of sense and its opposite in Eliot Ramsey’s #9.
Quite true, except for the fact that these values change. For example, western societies don’t have serfs any more. However, it is true that sexist hierarchies are among the most persistent of hierarchies. Perhaps ER thinks that these hierarchies can never be eradicated (unlike serfdom).
If Eliot Ramsey believes that, then I commend him for being an honest right-winger. If other Rightists think that ER is being either dishonest or wrong about this, perhaps those rightists should retreat to some discrete nook out of public earshot and thrash the question out amongst themselves.
Does ER seriously believe that marxism is the only basis for leftist thinking? How embarrassment!
And talking about embarrassment:
Ambi:
1. All faults? Pffft.
2. So are you are saying here that Bush wasn’t brave enough to proclaim his mission to be the continuation of oppression of women in Afghanistan?
Katz leaping like a proud young puma to conclusions, says
My very point is that pluralist western societies do change – a lot. Unlike socialist backwaters like this startling example.
(That’s Calle San Lazaro, La Habana – and its one of the more salubrious neighbourhoods open to the masses there.)
The reason feminsim is in a position to change western societies in that, unlike Afghanistan under Socialism, western societies are pluralist and by and large more open that their socialist counterparts.
Name one.
In my naivete, I thought perhaps that right wingers wouldn’t use this as an opportunity for scoring predictable and dumb political points. Oh well.
Mark I agree although Katz @1 got stuck straight into point scoring.*grin*
Perhaps, then, this would be a good forum for Kim to explain why freedom of speech does not extend to causing offence for political purposes.
Bismarck, you’re coming close to trolling. If you want to have an argument with Kim about this, post it on an open thread, please. Clogging up others with it isn’t particularly helpful.
Take your pick… (yes there are some marxist examples included as well. I need to point this out to forestall your reflex to make a cheap point.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leftism
ER indulging in weasel words:
ER I
ER II
Statement I is a truism.
Statement II is vacuous.
Yet somehow, ER cannot explain how societies overcome those dreaded “ultimate constraints” to change “a lot”. How do “extant” values become “extinct” values?
Rightists cannot explain this process because the process plays havoc with their fetish for hierarchy.
Mark says:
You mean like this? – “Without domestic patriarchy there is not much point in being a rightist.”
Just examine the logic in that statement. “Rightism” is simply equated with “patriarchy” hollus bollus – which neatly excuses the exponents of theoretical leftist feminist gobbledygook from having to explain the rather conspicuously unsatisfactory outcomes for women in the several score of failed socialist experiments conducted over the last one hundred years ranging from the Leninist holocaust that was the USSR right up to today’s very special results in Zimbabwe or North Korea or Cuba.
I mean, since they’re obviously brutal, backward, soul-destroying, almost tribalistic patriarchal tyrannies, then Bingo! They cannot be “really” socialist, can they? They are “objectively” Rightist.
One doesn’t have to explain the outcome because it doesn’t “really” have anything to do with us socialist-feminists.
On the other hand, how to explain the obviously vibrant feminist movements in the USA and the UK and Germany other god-awful places like that?
Oh, that’s feminism struggling “against” the dominant social formations in those countries – struggling from “within”, oddly enough.
That’s nonsense ER.
Absolutists of all stripes, left and right, are guilty of imposing uncontestable hierarchies on societies.
You are also being irrelevant.
You appear to be stuck in the Cold War groove. When was the last time you read anyone on LP suggesting that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be a really, really good idea?
How about engaging with an argument instead of whacking a straw man of your own creation?
We are now talking about the argument between leftists and rightists within democratic culture. I don’t doubt that you think that democracy (as you understand it) is a Good Thing. I’d appreciate it if you accorded me and other leftists the same courtesy.
Your logic is sadly deficient ER.
This statement says that patriarchy is a necessary condition of rightism.
It does not say that patriarchy is a unique quality of rightism.
If you don’t understand the distinction, don’t hesitate to ask for help.
Katz says:
Oh, thanks Katz, I went to your link but all I could find was the Wickipedia entry on “left wing politics” largely filled up with examples of failed marxist political movements, as you correctly observe, and various of their futile off-shoots.
(And perhaps because I’m pissed, I keep stuffing up the link to that really excellent street scene at Calle San Lazaro, La Habana. I’ll try again here. There, if that’s worked, notice especially the barrios on the left of the image – four out of five completely burned out at street level but still inhabited above! I bet Raul doesn’t live in there, though perhaps Fidel could be buried in one of them. Anyway. Takes swig of scotch.)
I like the term ‘marxisant’ better than Marxist, as that manages to capture the whole range of Cargo Cult activists (thanks Helen) including student protesters, hippies, yippies, Situationists, advocates of psychedelic liberation, be-ins, happenings, free love advocates, messianic feminists and others of the conviction that “bad bourgeois society” can (indeed will be) be replaced by “good socialist society” at any moment now if we just struggle, give witness, drop-out, turn-on or socio-babble enough.
(Also, note the sewage backed up in the gutter on the right of frame).
Linked text
Mark, I don’t think I’m trolling. That was an inspiring speech by Parvin Ardalan and she has been very courageous in the face of the disapproval of Iran’s governmental/religious establishment. Kim’s comments yesterday as to the (tightly circumscribed) limits of free speech therefore struck a chord.
But it’s your blog. I’ll withdraw from the discussion if you don’t think my comment was apposite.
The Castro thread. And guess who was championing that idea.
Are you still calling me a liar GregM?
Katz says:
I couldn’t agree moaah! Burp.
(Thank God that link’s working somewhere finally. One out of three’s not bad I suppose)
At 1.41pm Katz inscribed “2. So are you are saying here that Bush wasn’t brave enough to proclaim his mission to be the continuation of oppression of women in Afghanistan?”
No, I’m not.
Mark, the thread should be about conditions in Iran and the difficulties feminists have there, granted.
You seem upset that posters here spent time “scoring predictable and dumb political points”.
IMHO the very first poster at 6.42am took the thread skeetering off sideways by claiming that “it is the democratic Left that genuinely offers hope…”
So apparently, others who “offer hope” are not genuine, or cannot have a chance of success. OT?
Iran should be amenable to some general, global prescription – formulated by the democratic Left… in Australia? in Europe? in Zimbabwe?
This was followed by a swing at Teh Right and its patriarchal, autocratic nature. OT? Apparently not.
Only when other posters take up several points in post [1] and criticise those points, is the phenomenon of “scoring predictable and dumb political points” noted.
Oh well.
Now, as to Iran: have liberal and feminist and social-democratic groups made progress and achieved any small successes?, or is the theocracy well-entenched. I’d be interested to hear reliable news. Women in Iran deserve support.
How risible.
Olaf Palme in whose name Parvin Ardalan’s prize was awarded, was a democratic leftist.
Details here for those who do seen to know this fact:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Palme
Olaf Palme is named in the heading of this thread, viz:
How can mention of democratic leftists possibly be off-topic?
Have these rightists lost whatever may remain of their reason?
Katz points out
“Olaf Palme in whose name Parvin Ardalan’s prize was awarded, was a democratic leftist.”
Well here’s Iranian feminist Shirin Ebadi getting a Nobel prize. And Alfred Nobel wasn’t a socialist – he was an arms trader.
Mark, the thread should be about conditions in Iran and the difficulties feminists have there, granted.
You can’t raise those issues on a lefty blog. Pamela Bone would have nothing to write about for the next 6 months.
Bismarck, I’d be happy to have that conversation with you, but I think it would be better on a specific thread devoted to it. Perhaps the impetus for one will arise.
As to Ms Bone, I could have made the obvious points about the Decentists but I decided to refrain.
However, I’m happy to accept that there can be legitimate scope for discussion on this thread of different political approaches and societal contexts. So, if you’d like to do that, please get on with it and stop arguing over whether or not it’s on topic.
The elision of “democratic leftists” with Marxist regimes is of course risible.
Having seen a few Iranian films it’s interesting how powerful the the urges are to acquire the rights of modern secular society. I don’t think there’s a country that ever produced as many feminist films. It’s not even just ‘rights’ politically speaking that the films are crying out for it’s the deep desire just to be able to have some fun!
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And this happening in the same place where they string up 16 year olds for being gay or defending themselves against rapists!
Her speech (and living conditions) starkly highlights how badly most women have it in countries such as hers compared to the West. Who’d be female living anywhere other than the West. Isn’t the US great!
Adrien, there’s a significant split also between the way young Iranian women (and men) from the relatively secular middle classes behave in public and in private – some of which spills over into the cultural sphere, which I agree with you is very important.
Partially correct ER. That may or may not be regarded as an improvement.
The Wiki entry explains the circumstances of the prize succintly enough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_nobel
When he set up his prize Alfred Nobel was in fact an ex-arms trader who had suffered some major pangs of guilty conscience.
Kim – Yeah apparently they’ve got a kind of police force that goes arounding raiding private parties to bust people for not wearing the right clothes or listeing to te wrong music or whatever.
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Sometimes I think the best way to combat religious fundamentalism is let ‘em rule for a while. After 10 years of that the one thing you know is you don’t want to live in theocracy.
That appears to be the case with Iran! But not everyone in Iran is middle class… Ahmenijad took power on what was essentially a class vote. In that way, he’s kinda the mirror image of the theocratic populist right in the States – think Huckabee’s combination of tubthumping about globalisation and trade stuffing workers over and his full on evangelical line.
Speaking of patriarchy:
The Vatican City is one of the few places on earth where men can vote for the Head of State, but women can’t.
Ever noticed how Ahmenijad resembled Bush? Get Bush a tan and a different model nose and he’s the spitting image.
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How can you say that about Huckabee. He’s a good man. He’s smart. Look at his face. And obviously not descendant from monkeys. I’m thinking maybe goldfish.
Didn’t the dude buy any new suits when he lost 30 kg or whatever? That one’s way too big.
He’s just flaunting his weight loss, Kim. Who’d have noticed it if he’d right-sized his suits following his great down-sizing. Just put it down to male vanity.
Unlike Cuba where both men and women can vote but because there is only one candidate they can vote for their vote doesn’t make the slightest difference.
Your hero is sooo much more progressive than the Vatican, isn’t he?
Or is that the democratic Left’s solution to the patriarchy? Disenfranchise the lot- just as long as when you do so a bloke’s in charge?
Elliot @9: This raises a very interesting and important point – namely, any democratic society is ultimately constrained by the values extant in that society.
I think Malalaia’s main offense was not or perhaps not only that she was a feminist but rather that she had the audacity to point to the power of the mujahideen warlords as an impediment to any rebuilding process. From my understanding of news stories from Afghanistan she was right about this. So while I’m sure what you are saying is true, the initial constraint is simply disentangling entrenched undemocratic forces from political power.
Thanks for the link Darlene, I haven’t had much luck with signing though- no confirmatory email has come through, did you have any trouble?
Disenfranchise the lot- just as long as when you do so a bloke’s in charge?
Sounds a lot like a few countries that have nothing to do with the left. Egypt and Saudi Arabia come to mind.
Can we give up on the obsession with Cuba, please? No sensible point is being made about the beliefs or values of all social democrats in Australia when Castro’s name is invoked. He’s not my hero, for instance. I didn’t want to encourage a free for all of right v. left sniping, but rather a sensible debate about political and social change. Please try to respect that.
I don’t defend those regimes THR. I abhor them because they are not democratic. Katz defends Castro’s even though it has much more in common with them than it does with any democracy. Perhaps you should with him the strange that he has, as a member of the “democratic” Left, towards undemocratic authoritarian regimes.
I, for one, am getting tired of this prosecution of disputes across several threads. Please try to get over these ancient hatreds and discuss the topic!
… specifically because, as tigtog said on another thread, it discourages participation by those actually wishing to engage in good faith with the topic if they have to wade through a long stream of what are essentially private disputes by two commenters.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/03/31/creeping-pinkification-the-persistent-feminization-of-unisex-commodities/#comment-452161
I’m going to be deleting any further off topic comments. Enough latitude has been given.
Sorry Kim. I sent my last post before I saw yours.
No probs, GregM.
Really disturbing to hear they treat girls at 9 and boys at 15 as adults in their criminal law, and then go on to hang them at 18.
I’d call that the ayatollah incapax version of doli incapax, with a discriminatory twist for females.
The Shah was a rotter, but it must be tragic for Iranian women (and secularists in general) to have seen all that pre-revolution secularism of 30 years ago wither away. I wonder what it was like under Mossadegh for comparative purposes.
God is Not Great, to coin a Hitchens title.
Let’s examine Parvin Ardalan’s ideas about social and political change:
Here in Parvin Ardalan’s speech is the strongest evidence for why Kevin Rudd, eschewing recent Australian policy, should embrace multilateralism. There is a failing war effort in two countries that border Ardalan’s homeland, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Iran is surrounded by war, and the US Fleet prowls the Persian Gulf. These wars are suppposed to be carrying the “beacon of freedom” to the Middle East, yet Ardelan makes no mention of them. Instead, she points to he foundational principles of the United Nations, an institution dismissed as irrelevant to the self-appointed “beacon bearers” of the world.
I believe that Parvin Ardalan thinks that the UN is by far the more important beacon of freedom for herself and for fellow Iranians.
I think that you’ll find that the reason that the “beacon bearers” dismiss the United Nations as an institution is because of that institution’s track record of making a mockery of its foundational principles, as demonstrated by the composition and conduct of its “Human Rights Commission” where in 2004, in the midst of its Darfur genocide, Sudan was elected chair of that United Nations Commission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Commission_on_Human_Rights#Criticism
Parvin Ardalan’s appeal is to the founding principles of the UN, articulated way back in the 1940s, and not the institution that has traduced them.
I thought we were discussing Ardalan’s ideas.
Problem is Ardalan doesn’t appear to agree with the words that GregM seems so keen to put into her mouth. She seems to rather like the UN. Is that, perhaps, a little inconvenient for inveterate haters of the UN?
And GregM’s rationalisation doesn’t expain why Ardalan made absolutely no mention at all of her putative “saviours” next door in Iraq and Afghanistan and prowling up and down the Gulf in terribly big boats.
Does GregM think, perhaps, that Ardalan is too scared to talk about Iraq and Afghanistan?
I am, Katz. She quoted UN Conventions, passed long ago upon the instigation and with the support of the UN’s founding nations, but she at no time expressed any support for the institution, supposedly set up to advance them, which has traduced them.
She did not mention Iraq and Afghanistan because they are irrelevant to the point she was trying to make, which was about the need for respect for universally recognised rights in her own country, irrespective of what is happening outside it.That should be perfectly obvious from reading the text of her speech.
But then she is trying to make sincere and principled points. She is not a cheap point scorer.
Ardalan made no comment at all about the current status of the UN. A person exhibiting a certain kind of ideational flexibility may construe that silence as a denunciation.
Ardalan was talking about the prospects for liberty in her country, which is an important part of the Middle East and of the Islamic world. It seems clear that GregM is correct. She regards what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan to be at least irrelevant to these prospects.
Katz says:
But was he a social democrat? I think not. Nor is the King of Sweden who hands out the Nobel prizes (Peace Prize excepted) nor the King of Norway who also officiates at the presentation.
su says:
I’d even go so far as to suggest that feminism is only possible in a Liberal Democratic pluralist society – because pluralist societies, unlike monist societies such as theocracies, fascist and socialist dicatorships – don’t purport to have a monopoly on understanding on what is, or is not appropriate for people in the social or political dimensions. They’re pluralist, after all.
The racist terrorist theocracy running Iran, like their marxisant political allies running Venezuela and Cuba, purport to have the Answer to History and thus claim prior authority on all questions relating to how men and women “should” conduct their lives. That’s why the Iranian regime murders adulterers and homosexuals, and why there are only “official” women’s organisations in Cuba, for example.
And why the birth of modern mass popular feminist movements more or less got underway big-time in the USA in the late 1950s, spreading to countries like the UK, Italy, France and our own. Such a thing would be inconceivable under socialism.
Discussing Ardalan’s ideas:
well, as she mentioned fundamental principles of the UN – a good starting point if one wishes to invoke “Universal” principles – all we know for sure is that she agrees with those principles and wishes her Government would do more than pay lip service.
My Persian isn’t good enough to investigate whether she has ever expressed views on the wars in nearby nations, or the presence of various armies and guerillas and “insurgents” there. So I’d venture to say we DON’T KNOW her views on those wars.
So why speculate?
Why suppose that it’s OK to ascribe views to her??
BTW, when a speaker doesn’t mention Issue X or Event Y or Nation Z in a speech, by what right does anyone draw a conclusion on the speaker’s views (if any)?
Every good speech is focussed and therefore selective. Would you have expected Princess Diana’s brother to discuss his favourite soccer team in his speech in the Abbey? Or Kevin Rudd to discuss the plan to put PCs in every school, in his Sorry speech? It wouldn’t make any sense.
cheerio
Huh? What does “possible” mean in this context? It’s obviously possible for Parvin Ardalan and other women to be feminists in Iranian society, though difficult.
I think Katz nailed it ages ago with the comment about social change. “The West” wasn’t always characterised by freedom of speech or pluralism.
Mark says:
Yes, but you’ll notice there’s no “mass popular feminist movement” in Iran, let alone Cuba, in the way there has been in liberal western societies for the last 50 years or so. There cannot be so long as Iran is an “Islamic Republic” with a “Supreme Leader” and council of Ayatollahs deciding what pople can or cannot say.
During the recent elections in Iran, the opposition parties there had two thirds of their candidates “disqualified” by the government of the grounds they were not “suitable” to be in an Iranian parliament.
As I said, “any democratic society is ultimately constrained by the values extant in that society”. But it’s more generally true that “any society” is so constrained.
If a culture doesn’t value openness, pluralism, or individuality, then it will be very difficult for feminists or anyone else promoting notions like “diversity”, “tolerance” or the “right to self expression”.
Imaginge being lesbian feminist in Iran? Imagine putting out something as mild even as Lesbians on the Loose in Cuba? Or staging a Gay Mardi Gras?
But now it is – to an extent unimaginable in Iran or Cuba, at any rate.
In fact, with respect to Katz’s original remark about feminism being something inherently “democratic Left”, I will venture that the term “democratic Left” is actually an oxymoron.
At least to the extent that “Left” implies “socialism”, because in a democracy you are free to not be a socialist if you choose, or be one if you wish. But you cannot be a “capitalist’ under socialism – any more than you can be a “feminist” in Iran or Cuba.
It’s the nagging consciousness of this simple fact about socialism which led 1960s and 1970s marxisant “thinkers”, I belive, to dredge up sucn nonsensical and desperate concepts as “repressive tolerance” and “the manufacture of consent” – to explain away:
• (a) the endless, implacable failures of socialist societies to produce anything remotely like democracy;
• (b) the truculent refusal of people living in democratic societies to embrace anything like socialism.
Feminism is not a “democratic socialist” concept, because “democratic socialism” cannot even exist. Feminism is a pluralist, individualist concept.
I concur Mark and perhaps to expand on your theme.
The history of “The West”, contrary to the fantasies large parts of the Right wasn’t the story of groups with power graciously conceding a place at the table to groups without power.
Rather the history of “The West” is bloody in tooth and claw, where rights have been wrested by violence or threat of violence from its traditional wielders.
Only in the wake of the American Revolution did the ruling classes of Britain learn how to concede strategically to preserve what was possible rather than to hang on to what was impossible. It could be argued that most other Europeans didn’t learn that trick until after the end of WWI.
The Burkean Right (the most respectable right of all) have constructed a mythos wherein sweet reason and gentlemanly compromise have been asserted to be the “Western” way since time immemorial. Of course that’s twaddle.
But other strains of the Right have been even worse than Burkeans in their promotion of their menagerie of shibboleths.
And to return to Parvin Ardalan’s speech, her comments on the century of feminist struggle worldwide show that she understands the violent history of “The West”.
The violent history of British Suffragettism would, I imagine, constitute an important part of Ardalan’s intellectual baggage.
“I think Katz nailed it”
…
“I concur Mark”
Now there’s a shock!
blockquote>Katz says:
Yes, but the “history of the West” and “the West now” aren’t the same thing. The struggle for individual rights, the struggle to assert your identity was undoubtedly part of making the West pluralist and open. As was ironically the struggle to be a socialist according to this or that conception of what “being a socialist” means.
But you couldn’t be a “socialist’ or be a “feminist” in any practical sense of the word, and certainly not without pernalty unless you were in an open, liberal and typically western society.
It’s futile to state that “Sure, you can be a feminist in Iran today, because England under Oliver Cromwell was really tough on dissenting Catholics” or because “women didn’t have the vote in England in the 1890s.”
What made it possible ultimately for religious minorities to demand their rights, or for women to become political powerful in the West was the implicit understanding that religious beliefs are a private matter, and women are as entitled to active in civil sovoety as men.
That they weren’t in practice allowed to exercise such rights is what made the demands for such rights meaningful. If nobody imagined women were entitled to rights, nobody would be much able to demand them.
Your point being…
That is the point, Katz – the extent to which you live in an open, liberal, pluralist society, you can be a feminist. C’est ironique n’est il pas?
Eliot -
It’s obvious that the democracies have made more feminist progress than other places on the whole. Democracy makes it much more difficult for the state or various vested interests to silence dissent or squash movements for social change. However it’s well worth remembering that the Soviet Union, for example, had its own version of feminism which did go further in places than feminism in ‘the West’.
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Speaking of ‘the West’:
When reading the Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon one interesting thing is the index at the end which lists the works that comprose it. It is a global list containing works from Japan, from Africa, from Russia, from Persia, from Arabia, from India, from South America. It’s a global list. So even if the idea of a canon derives from European traditions (and Europe is only a section of the Mesopotamian-descendant civilizations that make up ‘the West’) it is now a global phenomena.
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Likewise the term connotes a much more geographically restricted mentality. Where is this “West”? We here are speaking from a position from which the West lies to the east and the East lies to west.
This is a circular argument.
That “implicit understanding” didn’t exist until it was wested out of the ruling classes, usually with threats, and often violently.
The thing achieved (liberty of conscience) cannot be explained by the prior existence of liberty of conscience. That’s a silly argument characteristic of the Right.
The Right often supports its rationalisations with circular arguments of this kind.
So I guess that ER’s point is that the Right either cannot recognise a circular argument, or has nothing better to offer a debate than circular arguments.
A circular argument if ever I saw one. Katz must be a member of teh dreaded Right.
On the serious point; of course it’s possible to be a feminist when the society you live in isn’t open, liberal or pluralist. It just takes a lot more courage and perseverance and the task is more pressing and often dangerous, even sometimes life-threatening. There are plenty of feminists in societies today which are not open liberal or pluralist who are fighting for women’s reproductive rights, for decent health care for themselves and their children, for their right to choose their partners in marriage, and to divorce on just terms, for their rights to education, to work with dignity and without exploitation,for their right to equal access to and standing before the law and, in some places, for their right not to suffer genital mutilation.
It is in those societies that the greatest challenges of feminism lie.
And as they score their successes they will change their societies into more open, liberal and pluralist ones, their version, of course.
I don’t dread the Right GregM.
I see them as objects of amusement.
The second part of your comment shows that you can be sensible rather than amusing.
But of course to be wise rather than merely sensible you need to acknowledge that in the West the liberties of which you speak are of recent origin and were wrested away by force from the ruling classes of the West.
Is that so hard to acknowledge?
And if so, why?
Katz, certainly the liberties of which you speak (I hadn’t previously commented on them) are, overall, recent (though trial by jury goes back to the thirteenth century and the independence of the judiciary from the executive, along with the supremacy of the Parliament was secured in the late seventeenth century as part of the settlement of the Glorious Revolution) but as to them being wrested away by force from the ruling classes, well the situation is much more varied. For example universal male suffrage was introduced for the first time in the world in Victoria in 1855. It could be argued that the Eureka Stockade led to its introduction but then it was introduced in short order in the rest of the Australian colonies without any violent wresting that I can recall. Women’s rights to keep ownership of their own property after marriage was introduced in Victoria in 1870 but I don’t recall that that involved any violent wresting. Female suffrage was introduced in all the Australian colonies in the last decade of the nineteenth century and in the Commonwealth in 1902. I don’t recall any horse races being disrupted or any massive civil disobedience movements involving chainings to the railings of public buildings or forced feedings in order to achieve that.
Indeed the transition of Australia from penal colonies through to responsible government, then democratic franchise to representative government, then to federation and then formally recognised legal independence (the Australia Act 1986) has on the whole been remarkably free of any wresting by force. I feel confident that when the republic finally comes that too will occur through the quiet exercise of democracy through a referendum rather than through wresting by force, with the lynching of monarchists from the light poles of Swanston Street in Melbourne and tumbrels rolling down Martin Place in Sydney to deposit the recalcitrant supporters of the House of Windsor to the guillotine, entertaining though that would be, and thoroughly deserved in the case of Sophie Mirabella, ne Panopoulos, (on which I am sure we both agree).
Come to think of it, given the incumbent Prime Minister’s lack of interest in pursuing the Republic it may well fall on that well known member of the ruling class, Malcolm Turnbull, to bring it realisation after his accession to the Prime Ministership in 2013.
Katz @ [74] wrote
“was the implicit understanding that religious beliefs are a private matter, and women are as entitled to active in civil sovoety as men.
This is a circular argument.
That “implicit understanding” didn’t exist until it was wested out of the ruling classes, usually with threats, and often violently.”
which GregM has responded to with some pertinent examples of non-violent change and lack of wresting. I wish to support GregM’s assertion that these advances were made in a piecemeal fashion, in many different societies, in different eras. It seems to me an illusion to focus on “threats” and “violence” as a primary means of social change: first because it’s not commonly an effective method, second because it puts good people in harm’s way.
Martin Luther: “Here I stand, I can do no other.” Defying the Church which he served, in the name of individual conscience and a person’s relation to her/his God without mediation by priest or Pope. Did the Church bring violent force against him? Did he achieve – in the very long term – major social change in Europe with global consequences still reverberating? Did he use arrows, guns or swords? The pen can be mightier than the sword. Yes of course: not always, perhaps not often but it’s possible.
The founding ideas of international law – several centuries old, in The Netherlands – did they require Protestantism as a seed bed? – how far are we along their full development now? perhaps 15%?? Major wars no doubt played a part in spurring on the Geneva Conventions, the World Court in den Haag; terrible acts of genocide wrested the new Internatinal Criminal Court also in den Haag, out of the turmoil amongst nations…..
Why did Solidarnosc gain hundreds of thousands of adherents in Old Poland circa 1980, within DAYS? Because Lech Walesa took up arms? I think not.
How did a young lawyer, Mohandas Ghandhi, succeed in building a movement amongst some of the poorest persons on the globe, and force a Major Power to give up its prized colony? By real or threatened violence? ummmmmmm
How has the elected PM of Burma/Myanmar kept her nation in the headlines? By retreating to the jungle and asking the PRC to supply rifles? ummmmmm nope. And her movement is demanding democracy, at great personal cost in many cases. One bloke copped a 53 year jail sentence for distributing pamphlets.
Upon the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as one of the first acts of the UN General Asembly, the civilised world set a standard … “of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, … shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance…
Voted: 48 in favour, 0 against, with 8 abstentions [Byelorussian SSR, Czecholslovakia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Afica, Ukrainian SSR, USSR, Yugslavia]
Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
cheers
I’m very pleased to see that GregM and his little acolyte have decided to argue cases rather than indulge in personal abuse.
This is progress. Well done both of you.
Now, to cases.
Yes, the rule of law (that is, judge-made law) is older than royal edict in England. The Tudor revolution in governance was (among other things) a counter-attack on this form of law.
The Glorious Revolution was illegal. It was also violent.
If you review what I said on this topic earlier, I suggested that in Britain the ruling classes learned an important lesson from the American Revolution. They learned how to concede ground gracefully. Your comments about Eureka and manhood suffrage, etc., are examples of the intelligence of the British ruling classes. So thanks for amplifying my argument.
The same applies to many elements of governance in the Australian colonies. It is a well-known fact that the Australian colonies were regarded as a great laboratory of social reform in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. People travelled from all over the world to marvel at Australian progressivism. Once the traditional ruling classes are sufficiently weakened, then the procsses of democracy and peaceful change can occur. There’s nothing surprising about that fact. It’s called progress.
(However, the Upper House in NSW did remain an unelected, self-perpetuating oligarchy until the 20th century. The victory of democracy in Australia was therefore by no means complete.)
Ambi, do you understand the difference between “illegal” and “violent”? Please use the examples of Walesa and Gandhi to illustrate your response.
In both cases, their illegal actions implied the use of violence. That is why the Polish Communist authorities and the British Raj felt incapable of crushing these movements with violence. Daniel O’Connell “the Liberator” (and a personal hero of Eureka’s Peter Lalor — are you paying attention, GregM?) pioneered this use of symbolic violence. You can read all about it on the plinth of the statue to Dan O’Connell that stands to this day in the grounds of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne.
Now, why do you think that such a statue commemorating such a man would stand in such a place, hmmmmm?
I believe that neither of you has challenged successfully my central thesis. But you’re welcome to keep trying.
A reminder:
1. “Western” liberties are a recent achievement. Those achievements were wrested away from old ruling classes illegally and often violently. The British ruling classes were the first ruling classes to learn how to concede ground strategically.
2. But more importantly for this discussion, the Right has not been able to explain this process, preferring rather myths about the longevity and the essential benignness of “western” ruling classes.
It would seem to me that in the light of this discussion it is rather difficult to be a both a sincere Right Winger and a sincere lover of liberty.
Adrien says:
Oh, really? And where did thatgo eventually? Here..
That was a fairly typical outcome, I’d say, for the sort of “official” women’s organisations they had in communist dictatorships I mentioned at Apr 4th, 2008 at 7:57 am. I bet they have “official” women’s organisations in Iran, too. You know, they type that turn up at international womens’ conferences hosted by the member states of the “non-alligned movement”. You know? Like those from Zimbabwe and Serbia?
Ambigulous says:
Yeah, well the “ruling classes” take a lot more “wresting” when they exert totalitarian control over social and political life including “womens’ organisations” than when genuine, independent womens’ groups exist in open oppositional relation to the prevalent distribution of status and power – as in pluralist, liberal societies.
That is precisely why womens’ groups in the USA, like Code Pink for example, can picket army recruiting stations, hold public demonstrations, demand this and that no matter how bizarre in California – but not on North Korea. Where the “masses” have already “wrested controld” from the “bourgeoisie”.
I don’t dread the Left, GregM.
I see them as the butt of near universal ridicule in the “Life of Brian” sense.
The British suffragettes used both illegal and violent means; burning buildings, disrupting the postal service etc. Also (and I am uncertain of the actual history of this; perhaps someone else has more information) there was some hint that they participated in the white feather campaign in WWI in order to free up employment opportunities for women.
Charming, su. “We’ll get the menfolk bumped off en masse in order to free up jobs for the girls.” If that’s true, it doesn’t reflect too well on the suffragettes …
Eliot – I merely made a point about the advocacy of women’s rights by the Communists. This is by way of painting a more nuanced picture than the rah-rah liberal-democracy portrait you’ve drawn. Rates of domestic violence in Russia aren’t strictly pertinent to the discussion unless you can demonstrate that communism causes it.
>
I agree democracy and feminism (or any emancipatory movement)are compatble. It is worth noting however that generally speaking it’s the Left that organize ‘em generally speaking. The revisionist tendencies of the Right lately to rewrite history so that feminism etc were conservative projects makes me want to throw up franky. This is not because of some partisan committment I have to the Left. I don’t.
>
But I do have a partisan committment to accurate history. For reasons George Orwell articulated best.
Hey. It’s a hardball world.
It’s true that they linked in with the White Feather campaign but whether it was just part of their wider strategy of emphasizing their own patriotic fervor or served another strategic purpose, I am not entirely sure. I’ll dig around a bit more. In either case it was not a particularly ‘moral’ campaign as it targeted recently returned soldiers equally with those who had not served.
After both World Wars there was a return to the coopting of women’s unpaid labour as they were kicked back out of the workforce and a concerted campaign launched to keep them at home.
As if charm ever got us anywhere.
Eliot @ [80], no those words aren’t mine. I was quoting Katz @ [74]. I apologise unreservedly for quoting Katz. Her subsequent comments about the campaigns by Gandhi and Solidarnosc are laughable. Apparently in her brutal world of threats and routine violence, non-violent civil disobedience cannot occur. She claims I don’t know the difference between “illegal” and “violent”; she is wrong on this score as on so much else. I invite any interested party to read what has actually been written, above from her post [74] onwards and draw their own conclusions.
Gandhi and Walesa led non-violent movements that shook the 20th century. Katz is in no position to belittle or misrepresent either movement. Rev Martin Luther King ditto. Her circular argument is that rights are only concedeed when wrested through threats and/or violence. How can we tell when they’ve been so wrested? Why it’s simple: it must have happened whenever they’ve been conceded, silly billy!
At least this “logic” has the advantage that no case study can ever show an exception. The hermetic, ideationally flexible and intolerant world of the diktat and fatwa. Piffle! Codswallop. Illusions, and very unpleasant ones at that.
Katz-Her? Hello gender stereotyping.
Ambigulous how would you characterize non violent resistance to violence? Does that render the whole encounter nonviolent? Is the fact that Martin Luther King was murdered an indication of a nonviolent encounter. What about the other murders, beatings and imprisonments that accompanied the civil rights movement? When unarmed Sikhs in their thousands ran into the oncoming cannon fire and certain death were they participating in a peaceful encounter? The threat of greater numbers and the willingless to resist over generations is still a threat. It says “you have the guns but we have the numbers and the patience and one day we will overwhelm you. Ghandi came onto the scene in the wake of many bloody encounters and note how useless his advice to European jewry was.
“Katz-Her? Hello gender stereotyping.”
Calling Katz “him” wouldn’t have been?
Here’s a link to an interesting discussion about Mrs Pankhurst’s penchant for white feathers
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/white-feathers-stories-of-courage-cowardice-and-recruitment-at-the-start-of-the-great-war/
Well calling Katz “Katz” wouldn’t and it seems that Ambigulous is jumping to some conclusions on the basis of Katz’s participation in a discussion of feminism.
The punch line of course is that Emmeline was a tory, and fell out with her socialist daughter over the white feathering and overall support for the war.
Talking about Feminism, if you’ve ever wondered what happened to all those ardent women’s liberationists you were at university with…
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/seeking-a-husband-first-get-a-uni-degree/2008/04/06/1207420201204.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Well, “Katz & Kim” is an old joke, I tried calling Katz “him” once. Certainly I didn’t assume Katz female because of the subject matter. There are dozens of male feminists, of course.
He, her is easier to write than Katz. “Ambigulous” is more tedious still: some call me “Ambi” though why on earth they think they’re entitled to use a nickname I have no idea; but it surely must be the fault of the patriarchy and the Ruling Classes.
Oh great, so antifeminists were trying to scare us by telling us that we had more chance of being blown up by terrorists (or some shit) than marrying if we were educated beyond a certain level. Now that that’s been found to be a load of old cobblers, they’re trying to shift the goalposts to “Highly educated women are getting married, thus they must all be renouncing feminism”. Hilarious. I guess the upside is that us feminist bloggers will never be short of blameworthy fodder.
i guess because the one anecdotal example in the linked article featured a Greek (and therefore more maritally conservative) woman.
If men get married, does that make them anti-male?
If some study showed that women were increasingly preferring black jellybeans over mixed, Eliot would write that in to the overarching narrative of Teh Death of Feminism™ .
I prefer coloured jellybeans, but I find them so difficult to accessorise.
Fortunately, here in Melbourne, even the coloured jellybeans are black.
(That’s one of the reasons why I’d never live anywhere but Melbourne.)
su says:
Katz, please note that Emmeline was only masquerading as a feminist because it suited the Right’s wider agenda as supporters of feminism and other movements that seek to redress historic grievances.
Helen says:
Hellen, I didn’t write the study showing women university graduates are mmore likely to marry than others. It’s by Genevieve Heard, of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, and based on census data, not the anecdotal experience of a Greek woman.
And I don’t think feminism dead at all.
su raised some interesting points this morning and here’s a quote:
“Ambigulous how would you characterize non violent resistance to violence? Does that render the whole encounter nonviolent? Is the fact that Martin Luther King was murdered an indication of a nonviolent encounter. What about the other murders, beatings and imprisonments that accompanied the civil rights movement? When unarmed Sikhs in their thousands ran into the oncoming cannon fire and certain death were they participating in a peaceful encounter?”
I would characterize non-violent campaigning or non-violent resistance as a voluntary and purposeful decision not to use violence oneself. So for example, a boycott of certain goods in shops; peaceful picketing (no intimidation or actual violence against persons or property; handing white feathers to men in the street; holding up a banner in a public place; marching without carrying weapons or punching people; lying down in front of a motorcade; pinning a protest note to a door; raising a clenched fist on an Olympic dais; letterboxing the neighbourhood; placing an ad in a newspaper.
I didn’t mean to imply that “the authorities”, be they police, army, or other citizens, were bound not to respond violently. Sadly, sometimes they did shoot to kill, injure, maim, arrest, beat up, etc.
I was characterising the actions (and steadfast intent) of the protestors as non-violent. And brave as they were, many of them knew that they may be beaten up or killed. Yet they didn’t use violence themselves. Martin Luther King was an advocate of and participant in mass non-violent action. He was shot dead. His death was a violent act; I don’t see how that makes King a violent man.
[If Zebediah never once drives after drinking alcohol, but is eventually knocked down and killed by a drunken hoon, does that somehow taint Zeb with drink driving? I think not.]
And yes, there were other beatings and murders in the South in King’s time: those victims deserve honour too.
Unarmed people who stand in the way of murderous gunfire as a deliberate gesture may be characterised in several ways: “violent” is not one I’d choose.
Anyway, to get back to Iran… I understand that many Iranians have been beaten up and jailed for their political beliefs. Amongst them no doubt many feminists. It stinks. The Iranian regime is behaving badly. To quote the First Lenin, “What Is To Be Done?”
su about the WW1 “White Feathers” campaign…
“In either case it was not a particularly ‘moral’ campaign as it targeted recently returned soldiers equally with those who had not served.”
As I understand it, the idea was: a lady would approach a gent on the street and hand him a white feather to indicate he was a coward and should be in the trenches like all the real men.
su, a story from London during WW1. A man in civilan clothes walking along the pavement is given a white feather by a lady. “Thank you Madam”, he says courteously. “That will go very nicely with the medal I received from the King this morning.” – reaching into a pocket to show her his gallantry medal for recent soldiering.
A better but equally apocryphal one, Ambigulous:
Campaigner hands young man in a scholar’s gown and mortarboard a white feather and asks “won’t you defend civilisation”?
Young man responds “Madam, I am civilisation”.
Eliot Ramsay, surely the subtext of your post is that these women must be renouncing feminism because they are getting married. Piffle!
Well looks like we could reach a consensus if we alter Katz’s original:
Rather the history of “The West” is bloody in tooth and claw, where rights have been wrested by violence or threat of violence from its traditional wielders.
to
Rather the history of “The West” is bloody in tooth and claw, where rights have been wrested via violent confrontations or the threat of violence from its traditional wielders.
Or some such.
su,
I’m not sure if you’re missing the point about non-violent civil disobedience…? Violence may be wreaked UPON the protestors, but that wasn’t their wish or plan. It was a possibility they might anticipate.
In stark contreast, “reformers” who take up the gun may expect harsh repression, quite likely by armed force.
There was a massacre in Hoddle Street in Melbourne some years ago. Those shot were driving (or walking?) along a busy street on a quiet evening. Do you say they acted violently, because (as it happened) a killer shot them? Somehow I think you’re confusing antecedent actions with later actions by others. Those killed or wounded in Hoddle Street didn’t “bring that fate upon themselves”, IMHO.
And I still reject Katz’s characterisation of non-violent civil disobedience as having implicit violence within its core. These people were seriously non-violent; staunchly, unyieldingly, courageously.
They tried to “speak truth to power”. They didn’t believe that “truth emerges from the barrel of a gun”.
cheers
good story, Liam.
oh what civilisation was represented in those foul trenches in France?
False analogy Ambi.
If you dare someone to hit you, it would be quite disngenuous for you to claim you weren’t expecting violence when you are hit. This disingenuousness is amplified if you announce to the world that you intend to prove how violent your assailant is by announcing that you intend to dare them to hit you. In this case, when you are duly hit, you aren’t VICTIM. You are a PROVOCATEUR. Some may even call you a MARTYR
The Hoddle Street victims weren’t expecting anyting and they certainly didn’t dare Julian Knights to shoot them. They were VICTIMS. They were not PROVOCATEURS. Nor, properly speaking, were they MARTYRS.
And most civil disobedience was designed to disrupt and derange the normal workings of society, to cause pain to the machine if not to the man.