Putting aside the silly Greer bashing Janet Albrechtsen writes a good column today.
However, that we continue to support with arms, questionable trade practices etc. many of the nations that are oppressive to women in this way appears to have escaped her, and let’s not even discuss the many regressive social demands being made by the Americans on the UN regarding important aid that would usually go to colonial women, bans on things like elementary birth control education for example, policies favoured by the troglodytes on the christian right. However it’s not a question of left and right, just simple humanity and understanding.
Still it’s good that she has highlighted the case of Mukhtaran Mai. a truly horrible story to come out of Pakistan, our steadfast ally in the WoT. There are many stories like Mukhtaran, many go without comment, and many are simply about day to day survival.
The issue of how we view the women of developing nations is an important one, and should also be a litmus on how we view the countries they live in. But in the end who are we to judge given our own rank hypocrisy?
Well, one of my many regular blog reads is also asking that same question about her own personal situation.
I think the way that “colonial” women are constructed as “undereducated and exploitable” is racist and delibrately seeks to appeal to racist notions in others.
Kama of Kingston is one of the more interesting blogs out there, she defies stereotype, elicits many questions from a reader and comes to her positions from her own experience, reading her is always an interesting and puzzling experience but she can be a compelling voice. I’m always torn, yet in the end we can do no more than to fully support her ambitions and self determination.
As an aside, Kama has this interesting message for her Republican and American clients. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so serious.
“But in the end who are we to judge given our own rank hypocrisy? ”
I do take your point but nonetheless I’m willing to give it a red hot go. The “crimes” of the US pale really really pale next these.
My crimes agaisnt punctuation and proofreading are pretty awful as well
James……..let’s move on from my assumed anti-Americanism and your cherry picking a part a quote for a moment and step back. I said:
“The issue of how we view the women of developing nations is an important one, and should also be a litmus on how we view the countries they live in. ”
Give that a red hot go. And discuss our many allies on the WoT who fail the test.
Now back to US crimes………..the latest ones perhaps? Fallujah drowned in phosphorous, a globalised and outsourced network of things that look suspiciously like a gulag system?
I give ‘em some credit on the latter example though, they sure are committed to the principles of modern economy…..they use it in everything.
I think Albrechtsen’s column sucks. Greer-bashing aside, feminist-bashing aside, what’s left is another one-dimensional view of Muslim culture. Yes, this is an important issue, yes, we are being hypocritical, but do you really think this is Albrechten’s point, or her agenda? Admirable though Mukhtaran Mai is, she’s now the unwitting poster child for those culture warriors who will wheel out anything to slur Muslims.
I agree with Weathergirl here, I think that Albrechten’s column is utterly wrong. Her whole point is that instead of dealing with the issues that we understand and experience, Western women should be stepping in and trying to speak on behalf of women who have damn well shown that they are quite capable of speaking out for themselves.
Albrechten claims that “These women need our support, not our silence. ” Actually, they need our support AND our silence (generally speaking). There was a huge amount of debate (that Albrechten apparently missed) over the arrogance of Western feminists trying to speak on behalf of women whose lives (and cultures) they did not understand. These women rightly said that by doing so, Western feminists did them a disservice on many fronts:
First, they assisted those people (often men) in the community who claimed that feminist demands were Western corruption and not the desires of the women themselves.
Second, they further stripped these women of their own voice and agency, by assuming that they needed someone else to speak on their behalf – reasserting colonial experiences of domination and the “white (wo)man’s burden of civilizing the natives”.
Third, they framed the needs, demands, and experiences of these women in their own Western terms – as defined by their own experiences, culture and history and in a way that was frequently unhelpful and inappropriate to the lived experience of the women who they were trying to speak for.
Now, many Western feminists (like those that Albrechten is trying to condemn) instead seek to support Non-western feminist through their actions. They work on programs that might empower women to speak for themselves, or they contribute funding towards local advocacy groups or women’s networks. However, what they don’t do, if they have listened properly, is try to speak on their behalf.
Feminists in the West have abandoned islamic women largely because cultural factors – like bashing and killing – are being afforded by them a kind of deranged ‘respect’. Your attempt to take the focus off islam and place it on America and the WoT – the latter being a phenomenological blip historically – exemplifies the denialism of which Albrechtson writes. The racism implicit in the Western left’s feminism (or lack of it), vis-a-vis muslim women, is that they are politically expendable. Being mostly non-white, their situation is somehow ‘natural’.
“Troglodytes on the Christian right”? You’ll find that muslims won’t take kindly to UN-imposed “things like elementary birth control education.” Why do you think the Vatican sees islam as its greatest ally in UN forums when it comes to fending off such programmes? Why, therefore, have you not called muslims troglodytes?
——
Breaking news from the Indonesian town where RoPers beheaded three Christian girls in late October.
Two more shot in the head, point blank.
But in the end who are we to judge?
And let’s remember that the US has also alinged itself with Islamic nations and the Vatican on many of these social/cultural issues, hence my statement on which you and James appear to obsess on. Hypocritical indeed. In that I’m quite happy to see them as birds of a feather.
Now about your comment on the abandonment of colonial women by western feminists, I refer you to Christy’s comment above yours. The strategy of western women on this is quite clear, it far surpasses the current imperialistic approach by our well known actors.
See Kama’s comments on this as well for a perspective on the ground.
Sigh. I just lost my Janet comment and the second one ended up on Dylan. Shorter version: Janet is tiresome, unconvincing and very unoriginal
Shorter C.L. – I agree totally with the feminist of convenience, Ms Albrechtsen. It’s the culture wars and the clash of civilisations!
C.L. – I can’t help feeling you are being slightly disingenuous when you attack feminists for not attacking the Vatican. Go back in the archives to the thread where I was running for Pope and read what I had to say about these issues.
Cristy makes an excellent point – though I will give you the benefit of the doubt and not question the sincerity of your intentions on these issues, the fact that you as a male want to lecture women as to what concerns we should and shouldn’t take up is an interesting speaking position, as is the consonance your remarks have with right wing talking points.
These women can and do speak for themselves, and our role ought to be to support that, and to listen to them, not to speak
overfor them, particularly not when the context is not actually speaking to their own experiences but to debates – within our own culture – about Islam.Just as I don’t presume to lecture you on what priorities Santa Socialists should have, I think you need to take our assurance that we in the feminist movement are fighting against violence and degradation of women on a daily basis. Blog comments adjudicating on that struggle – or op/eds such as Albrechtsen’s – do not and should not replace attempts to shift power relations – particularly when they have the intended or unintended effect of reinforcing existing gendered relations of power.
Had Kim been successful in her campaign for Pope, we could have had the same gravatar (though perhaps Kim’s would have had an appropriate tiara).
But – levity and flirting aside – Kim makes her point exceptionally well.
Kind of a trackback – thinking about Albrechtsen’s crap made me so angry I’ve put up my own post on it.
The truth often stings, and I wonder if it hasn’t done so here.
Me, I’d put Mukhtar Mai and Ayaan Hirsi Ali high on my list of heroes of the early 21st century.
I’m surprised to hear anyone claim feminists have been silent on this and many other issues. As far as I can tell, this is just another myth, like commie pinko domination of schools and “activist” judges.
First of all, while there are organisations like NOW out there, for the majority feminism is not some monolithic group with spokespersons and formal representatives (although many of the notable feminists, such as Greer, are inevitably identified as such), and second, there has been no such silence. There are women who have abandoned feminism, but those who remain involved in the issues feminism tries to address are very vocal.
It doesn’t take books, 5 or 500, but if you’re not paying attention, you might indeed miss hearing about it. But that says more about you than it does about feminism.
Yes, and it says more about Albrechtsen. Why does she always trot out Greer (or Anne Summers) when bashing feminism? What about the 13,673 other female feminists who have published, spoken at conferences or issued media releases in Australia in the past 10 years? To Albrechtsen, feminists are some one-size-fits all, undifferentiated bunch.
Not being from the sex industry community I wouldn’t expect you to have known that not one single word belongs to Kama. Kama is being pimped by a group of very dubious people, who use that religeous crap to lure in weak men.
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Clicked too soon
Kama doesn’t even have a good grasp of the english language, she is uneducated or at least not to a very high standard. Nothing those people print are her thoughts.
“Why does she always trot out Greer (or Anne Summers) when bashing feminism?”
Because they’re the only feminists she’s ever heard of. But since when was ignorance a barrier to publishing op eds? I thought it was part of the job description.
Steve Howard’s comments are so typical of the colonial gaze that women from the developing world have to confront when they arrive in the UK.
If we do not comply with racist notions of our passivity and supposed complicity in our own subjugation we are to be silenced by having our voices attributed to others…usually men.
South Asian woman are only safe for such racists when they constructed as being subjugated to men.
Steve is actually a woman who has a huge problem with the possibility that I am living outside her racist notions of what is acceptable for “prositutes”. She uses a male identity because she actually realises that she transgresses sisterhood with her racism.
Mohantry in discussing the colonial gaze makes its clear that presumptions of South Asian passivity and under-education and traditonalism are the means by which others capture the voices of South Asian women and deny us our own voices…
Steve is determined that the thoughtful South Asian woman should not exist because in her world we are lesser beings, so I am reconstructed as the passive, ignorant, voiceless victim of powerful men…The perfect patriachal fantasy…
Anyone who wants to hear my voice just visit my blog…
Thanks for the comment, Kama.