Non-muslim feminists face off over the veil

Natalia Antonova writes astutely about the recent "debate" over the hijab in Salon.

I put "debate" in quotes, since it isn't recent and isn't a debate, more of an ongoing, convoluted ideological brawl.

Okay, so two well-known Jewish feminists dueling over the hijab have been given ample coverage in a well-trafficked lefty space... during Ramadan? Oh dear God. (Pardon expression.) I was cringing already, before I clicked on Natalia's link.

Who decides on these things? Where is the Muslim feminist? (I actually met one on my JOB here in conservative South Carolina, so I do know they exist.) Were they afraid a Muslim feminist would not be able to comment intelligently on her own culture and religion? Or were they going for the famous feminist "names"? In this corner, Naomi Wolf, and in this corner, Phyllis Chesler!

Predictably, this is cast as a cool, multicultural Third-Waver vs old-fogie Second-Waver, although plenty of Second-Wavers (including me) have harshly criticized Chesler's unending anti-Islamic jihad. (And her comments quoted in Salon must be read in that context. Below, I have linked her own blog, so that you can judge for yourself.)

Natalia, who has lived in Islamic countries, comments:

On one hand, I think Islam (at least classically speaking) is more more tolerant of the human body than, say, Christianity (being at least a nominal Christian myself, I do often think about this divide). Yet you can’t deny that not all aspects of veiling or purdah are all about celebrating family [as Wolf claimed], some of them are there to celebrate prudishness, sexual anxiety, dehumanization of women, gender apartheid, and The Grand Tournament of Punishing Sluts. Who are sluts? Well, any women who don’t fit into whatever arbitrary standard of what is “appropriate” out on the street today. Something tells me that Wolf has never overheard, say, a clutch of women loudly discussing another for looking like a “slut” because her hijab does not cover her eyebrows. Maybe she will one day, and a dash of actual complexity will be introduced to her further writings on the subject.

Salon writer Tracy Clark-Flory correctly reports that Chesler tends to freak out about the idea that the veil could be anything but oppressive:

Chesler is horrified by Wolf's argument and doesn't pull any punches in a blog response titled "The Burqa: Ultimate Feminist Choice?" It bears the taunting subhead: "Naomi Wolf Discovers That Shrouds Are Sexy." Chesler hyperbolizes Wolf's argument, suggesting that she sees women in chadors as "feminist ninja warriors" and "believes that the marital sex is hotter when women 'cover' and reveal their faces and bodies only to their husbands."

She goes on to contend that "most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice about wearing the chador, burqa, abaya, niqab, jilbab, or hijab (headscarf), and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families" and asks whether Wolf is so "thoroughly unfamiliar with the news coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan on these very subjects." (Never mind that Wolf is talking specifically about the experiences of women she encountered in Morocco, Jordan and Egypt, as well as those of women in France and Britain, where there is great political resistance to Muslim dress.) This caused Wolf to e-mail Chesler to ask that she correct "terrible inaccuracies" in the post. Chesler hit back, posting Wolf's e-mail along with a hostile response; yesterday, she posted a related item with the subhead, "The Hundred Year War Begins."

It's always a very nasty, immoral act to publish someone's email. To me, a pretty LOW thing to do. Chesler takes the LOW ROAD, then. Automatically. And she brought her crew, too! That famous radical feminist David Horowitz has jumped into the fray. (Caution, extremely unpleasant and noxious link.) And Chesler responds to the Salon piece, angry, of course. (And we wonder why Second-Wavers have such bad reputations?)

[EDIT ADDED 9/10/09: Reader Histfan upbraids me and maintains that Wolf gave Chesler permission to publish the email, although on my first reading, this was not evident. Wolf's words on page 2 of the Chesler post: "You are welcome to reprint this letter on your website, actually please do, I don’t know how to do so." I have issues with this, since of course she knows how to do so, it's called leaving a comment on a blog, and even I have managed to learn how to do that... so I dunno the reason for Wolf's sudden net-ignorance? But I have added this for clarification and correction.]

Sometimes, you just can't think of anything to say. Natalia does, thankfully:

Of course, I agree with Wolf about the aspect of choice. I don’t care what Phyllis Chesler, or anyone else, feels about the veil, the burkini, the hot-pink catsuit I saw a woman wear on the bus today… You don’t get to tell anyone how to farking dress. I don’t care what you may think their reasons for dressing this or that way are.

Amen! I am so tired of women policing each other!

And it comes back to that. I am often "offended" by the clothes I see both women and men wear every day. So? They didn't ask me before they put them on, and it is none of my business. Conversely, they can keep their mouths shut if they don't like what I am wearing.

But Natalia also describes the experience of women "on the ground"--so to speak. She doesn't quite accuse Wolf of "slumming"--but comes very close:

Chesler does, however, have a point when she says that the Muslim world can be just as “debauched” as anything you’d ever see in the West; people just hide that sort of thing better, they don’t flaunt it, it’s all very surreptitious, but it happens. Closed societies deal with repression in all sorts of colourful ways. Considering the amount of so-called Muslim men that regularly tried to solicit sex from me while I was in Jordan, I just don’t buy Wolf’s insistence that society is somehow purer and human interaction is less explotative when most of the women are veiled. I found Wolf’s own wearing of shalwar kameez and headscarf in Morocco to be touching. Personally, I’ve worn the veil to escape sexual harassment, and no, it was not a “calming” or “serene” experience, it was an “oh crap, now I get to pretend to be someone else just for a scrap of respect around here” kind of experience.

I don’t like Chesler’s blanket, baiting statements about Islam, especially as Islam does often get confused with culture, but I’m not going to sit here and say that trying to pass as a Muslim for fear of something genuinely bad happening to me was a bit of wonderful cultural exchange I’d gush to my friends about. It would be as silly as expecting a woman who is, say, forced to take off her headscarf for fear of Islamophobic attacks to gush about it as well. I don’t mean to say that Wolf has no right to frame her experience as she sees fit – hey, I’m glad she enjoyed, I wish I could have felt the same, if only for a moment or two – but I do hope she at least realizes that when she says “choice is everything” she has to apply that to her own situation as well, and perhaps realize that choice can have a bit of a gray, fuzzy area around it.

Indeed. Within patriarchy, we only have limited choices, and make our lives within the boundaries we know. We all do. And that awareness is a global radical feminist awareness, not demonizing the evillll Muslims as the "worst of the worst," but as a particular manifestation of patriarchy.

But we are groping for these truths. Because we are not Muslim and in a very real sense, we have to admit that on a religious level, we don't know what we are talking about.

I'll end with Natalia's incisive wind-up, because I can't improve on it:

The publicity must be pretty good for both Wolf and Chesler right about now (and awww, look, isn’t it sweet? They both agree that porn is ba-yud), but if I was a Muslim woman watching all of this, I’d probably feel as though I was in a room full of people who were telling me to be quiet when the adults are talking.

And with that, I wish a prayerful Ramadan to my Muslim readers.

Feminists on High Horses, pt. 2

A woman who is admittedly hostile to feminism, Typhonblue, posted the following recently at the Feminist Critics blog:

Feminists disavow or ignore violence that happens to women when it does not follow their ideology. Namely, violence done to women by other women, or violence done to daughters by their mothers.

This suggests it’s not women’s suffering, per se, that’s important to them, but upholding their ideology.

Ouch! She brought me up short with that one. In attempting to refute her statement, the best I was able to do is offer the example of Phyllis Chesler's book, Woman's Inhumanity to Woman, (as well as an old thread here at DEAD AIR, on female friendship).

And then I thought, ohhh wait a minute. Phyllis is now in the business of adversely judging Muslim women, isn't she?

Not a good example, maybe.

Of course, this left me no examples at all. I was then forced to face Typhonblue's words.

It is important for feminists to remember, always, that feminists (not just women, but feminist women) have oppressed other women. Leni Riefenstahl was considered a feminist, you know. Feminist heroine Margaret Sanger was a racist and eugenicist. Feminists have freely collaborated with men in brutal communist regimes, as well as within terrorist factions worldwide.

My question is, are we to ignore the agency and free choices of these feminists and other feminists like them? Are all women so oppressed by "The Patriarchy" that we unable to choose a proper, moral course of action?

Are we also, then, mere puppets, mouthing the words? Because if so, why do we bother?

~*~

All of this came to mind as I read an interesting post at Palin PUMA Watch. This post deftly deconstructed Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff's (aka Heart at Women's Space) impassioned defense of fundamentalist Christian women and Sarah Palin in particular. Heart and other feminists such as Violet Socks at Reclusive Leftist have been zealous in their defense of Palin. This has left me somewhat dumbfounded.

I was hopeful that after the election, this embarrassing state of affairs would just go away. I was wrong. Both blogs are attacking Obama for his (very bad, no question about it) choice of Rick Warren to lead the invocation at his inaugural. This is, they claim, because Warren is a well-known homophobe, which of course begs the question: Have they checked out Palin's positions on gay rights? They are the same as Warren's.

This disconnect, I find very strange. Heart begins:

I have been intending to write a post about the way so many feminists, leftists, liberals and progressives consummately misunderstand conservative Christianity and conservative Christian women in particular. I keep feeling overwhelmed by this writing project and so deciding against it. But given the across-the-board anger among women over the misogyny of the 2008 Presidential elections, it seems important to me to at least begin to take a stab at offering some of my thoughts in the interests of working towards uniting women, bringing women together, something that is not going to be possible so long as feminists simply, again, don’t get conservative Christian women (and too often don’t even try because despite all the evidence to the contrary, they think they know.)

As my regular readers know, I live in what is possibly the most conservative county in the USA. A quick look at an electoral map of 2008, shows us that Heart's state, Washington, is blue and went Democrat. Mine, South Carolina, is red, and has been that way for a very long time.

In addition, I speak to conservative Christian women every single day, on my job, as both customers and co-workers. I consider some of these women to be my friends. Although once a proud Quiverfull fundamentalist, Heart is now a political lesbian feminist. Her dealings with fundamentalist women are in the past, not the present. Thus, I think I qualify as one who can critique this rather bizarre broadside. Heart continues:

During the 2008 election campaigns the staggering amounts of misunderstanding, misinformation, disinformation and absolute hogwash circulating about Sarah Palin and her connections with conservative Christianity were startling and, honestly, shocking to me. Cluelessness reigned, with all sorts of people claiming Palin was a “dominionist,” a “reconstructionist,” a stealth member of various kinds of secret, fascist Christian cabals and cults, and you name it. There was little to no concern for facts or for accuracy; worse, leftists, progressives, you name it, just spouted off randomly, continually, without bothering to do a bare minimum of homework, you know, talk to folks, talk to dominionists and reconstructionists and theoretically secret-cabal-and-cult-members, or if not that, at least read their writings, which are available in superfluity, in abundance, nay, in a GLUT, all over the internet.

They are not just all over the internet, but right here on DEAD AIR, as a matter of fact. (see argument in comments here)

Is Cheryl saying here that Pentecostals are never Dominionists or Reconstructionists? My seminarian (see link) tells me they can overlap fine, although they don't always. (Why can't they?) If one believes that religious laws (i.e. abortion, gay marriage) should apply to the government, then one is arguing from a Reconstructionist position. The concept is that the government should be reconstructed to reflect Christian values. The Bob Jones University people sometimes refer to this philosophy as theonomy.

What homework are people supposed to be doing, exactly? You either want the government to be an arm of the church or directly reflect church law/morality, or you don't. Period. It isn't complicated. Palin's positions are in perfect keeping with this perspective. Considering that she does attend a very right-wing church with conservative theology, is Cheryl/Heart saying that she doesn't really believe what her church teaches?

And here we come to the heart of it. How responsible is Palin, the governor of the largest land-area in the USA, for what she says? Is she merely mouthing the words, but somehow doesn't really believe them? She calls herself a feminist and is a member in good standing of "Feminists for Life." Is this why we are supposed to look the other way when she makes offensive or theocratic statements? Why?

If women are to be equal, then we must take complete responsibility for our actions, our politics, our beliefs, our ideology, as men have historically been held accountable. And you know, I think Sarah Palin would totally agree with me about that.

But Heart doesn't. We are not supposed to call Palin a homophobe or point out that her policies would actually hurt women, if made law.

And Heart reminds us that she was once a leader in this right-wing:

I walked among these scary Christians for many years. During those years, I was a leader of women, and among those women were my closest friends, mentors, sisters.

Does this mean that Heart/Cheryl was "scary" too? Well, if she was a LEADER, of course it does. But look at how she abdicates responsibility for being a leader, while still wanting to brag about being a leader. How does that work, exactly?

This is exactly her approach to Palin: Isn't she fabulous? But she can't help being deeply indoctrinated by her church, poor dear.

Which is it? Both cannot be true.

I show Sarah Palin respect by taking her at her word, that yes, that she believes what she says she believes. She has never said that she is dissenting from the teaching of her church (as I have said I dissent from mine, for instance). We are not putting Sarah Palin down for being a Christian. This is utter bullshit--we are putting her down for what she has SAID SHE BELIEVES AND WANTS TO MAKE LAW. She wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, and has never made a secret of that, among other radical measures that would adversely affect the lives of millions of women.

Why are we supposed to grant her an exception for being a woman? Is that feminist?

But then, this isn't the only recent post in which Cheryl/Heart has made it clear that we are not to hold women to the same standard as men, except when we should.

~*~


Ampersand, at Alas, A Blog, weighed in a couple of weeks ago, about the term Christianism, which upset me terribly (as a Christian, even a slipshod, bad one) ...and yet, it did make sense. What other word could there be for the Christian-supremacy of the USA, such as the "Christian litmus test" for political office, which I have written about also? Ampersand also made fun of the idea (as I would, too) that Christians are oppressed. Heart responded that Christian women ARE oppressed, so Ampersand is terribly misogynist and wrong for laughing at the very idea:

“Christians” are not oppressed in the same way “Americans” are not oppressed in the same way “whites” are not oppressed — they are not oppressed if they are male. They are not oppressed unless they are female persons, in which case they are oppressed by men in their group or by men who are at war with or in other kinds of conflict with the men in their group. “Christians” are not a sexless, genderless monolith; there are male Christians and female Christians and many, many members of the former group severely, and in a dedicated fashion, oppress the latter; as well, men from other religious groups oppress the latter in times of conflict or war.

And with this, I get dizzy.

What about the female nazi officers, many of whom were proud members of Deutsche Christen? I was suddenly reminded of the movie made from Fania Fenelon's biography, Playing for Time. There is a terrifying sequence in which a female nazi officer at Auschwitz, played by Shirley Knight, brings a sweet, gurgling baby in to show the Jewish women prisoners. Knight is happy, laughing, ecstatic; the women prisoners have never seen her so human, so real, so feminine. But... whose baby is it? Where did the baby come from? They know where: she has stolen the baby from some executed, Jewish mother. They obediently coo over the baby, in a forced, frozen manner. They want to stay in the Kommandant's good graces; she has power over life and death, after all. But the horror in their faces is evident.

This searing scene has never left me, all of these years. It was true, an actual event in Fania Fenelon's imprisonment. I saw the movie once, 28 years ago... and I never forgot it. Know why? This was a woman's story, and a woman's moment. It pressed into my consciousness, and reminded me: Women can be evil, too, and don't forget it.

Did Christian women help identify the witches for burning? Did especially pious women volunteer to clean up the blood after the Inquisition? (You didn't expect MEN to do that, did you?) Christian women owned slaves; Christian women sent the dogs out to retrieve them when they ran off. YES, THEY DID. As a Christian woman, let me take full responsibility and admit what other Christian women have done.

And Heart/Cheryl tells us she was "a leader of women" among the fundamentalists, so let me be very clear: Heart counseled women to homeschool, to abstain from birth control, to have as many babies as they could, as part of the Quiverfull movement. She proudly spoke at podiums, organized groups, and published/wrote/edited a magazine that they read. In short, Heart oppressed women, as a Christian leader. She has never taken responsibility for this. The reason she has not apologized is that she was too oppressed as a woman to NOT do this, so she is off the hook. As are all the women I have mentioned above. Right?

(((ethical dizziness ensues)))

Heart writes:

This is an important part of my own reality and story, because, as I’ve also written about frequently, I suffered tremendous harm and loss at the hands of these men and eventually sued several of them (and won). As is true of so many other Christian women now and throughout history (consider the witch burnings in Europe and the U.S.), I was specifically targeted, subjugated and harmed as a Christian woman by the men and male-led organizations in my Christian group with the goal that I would remain in subordination to them.

(Note: She also sued TWO WOMEN, Sue Welch and Mary Pride, but has conveniently left that part out.)

Heart says she was a leader. But then, she says she was subordinate to men. Well, which was it?

Which is Sarah Palin?

Heart decides Ampersand is full of shit:

As to Amp’s post about “Christianism,” that would have to be “Christian Male-ism,” Christian Patriarchy, the “fathers of the faith” so-called having played, along with other fathers of other fundamentalisms, a crucial and central role as an architect of male heterosupremacy. But that has nothing to do with women.

Christian women, oppressing other women, DOES have to do with women. And anyone who can't get this, is politically a mess, and does not deserve to be listened to.

And in closing, I am reminded of Sudy's post, in which she declares the word PATRIARCHY to be "old school"--it doesn't quite account for the twisting and turning realities we are discussing here, does it?

Sudy proposes the word Kyriarchy(read the whole thing!):

When people talk about patriarchy and then it divulges into a complex conversation about the shifting circles of privilege, power, and domination -- they're talking about kyriarchy. When you talk about power assertion of a White woman over a Brown man, that's kyriarchy. When you talk about a Black man dominating a Brown womyn, that's kyriarchy. It's about the human tendency for everyone trying to take the role of lord/master within a pyramid. At it best heights, studying kyriarchy displays that it's more than just rich, white Christian men at the tip top and, personally, they're not the ones I find most dangerous. There's a helluva lot more people a few levels down the pyramid who are more interested in keeping their place in the structure than to turning the pyramid upside down.

Who's at the bottom of the pyramid? Who do you think are at the bottom of the pyramid who are less likely to scheme and spend extravagant resources to further perpetuate oppression? I think of poor children with no roads out of hell, the mentally ill who are never "credible," un-gendered or non-gender identified people, farm workers, modern day slaves...But, the pyramid stratifies itself from top to bottom. And before you start making a checklist of who is at the top and bottom - here's my advice: don't bother. The pyramid shifts with context. The point is not to rank. The point is to learn.

Learning does not take place in the face of open denial. Learning can not happen when we are busy abdicating our role in society. Yes, I have more status and money than a newly-arrived male immigrant from Mexico. The Guatemalan waiter in my local diner is not "oppressing" me, because he is male and I am female. This just doesn't cover the intricacies of social arrangements in these modern times.

And yes, Sarah Palin can be a woman, even a feminist, and oppress other women. I take her at her word that she believes what she says she believes, and will do as she promises she will do.

Let us proceed, then, from there.