Momentary failure to avoid politics
May. 5th, 2011 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyHow tedious and hypocritical it is when Western men and Muslim men tut-tut over each others' disrespect for women. Here's Paul Sheehan in the SMH doing a little mansplaining*:
If one were feeling really cynical, one could ask Sheehan to explain some of the other stories in today's online Herald: girlfriend raped and strangled by boyfriend, two year old stabbed to death by father as revenge on ex-fiancee, husband on trial for wife's murder, research shows huge percentage of transgender Australians beaten up or attacked with weapons. To be fair, it's not all bad news: sexual assaults in Victorian schools are down to just one every other day!
Better still, one could ask him to comment on violence against Western women without undermining it by tacking on attacks on feminism and Islam which call into question his real agenda. After all, he has done it before.
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* On the whole, I hate the term "mansplaining". It's overused by lazy posters to dismiss anything said by a man, whether it was patronising or sexist or not. In this instance, however, it does fit perfectly.
"Not just sexual inequality, but sexual repression, is a structural problem in the Muslim world. Millions of young men cannot have a girlfriend and are unable to find a wife because they are unable to find a job. A glimpse was provided on February 11, during the anti-government demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo, when a blonde, attractive American network TV journalist, Lara Logan, was set upon and sexually assaulted by a throng of men after she was separated from her bodyguards. It took a wedge of Egyptian soldiers half an hour to extract her."Now one might ask why, if their goal was to relieve sexual frustration, the rapists only digitally penetrated Logan. If one were feeling cynical, one might also wonder whether Sheehan's intent is to characterise Muslim men as mobs of dangerous darkies bent on violating white Western women.
If one were feeling really cynical, one could ask Sheehan to explain some of the other stories in today's online Herald: girlfriend raped and strangled by boyfriend, two year old stabbed to death by father as revenge on ex-fiancee, husband on trial for wife's murder, research shows huge percentage of transgender Australians beaten up or attacked with weapons. To be fair, it's not all bad news: sexual assaults in Victorian schools are down to just one every other day!
Better still, one could ask him to comment on violence against Western women without undermining it by tacking on attacks on feminism and Islam which call into question his real agenda. After all, he has done it before.
__
* On the whole, I hate the term "mansplaining". It's overused by lazy posters to dismiss anything said by a man, whether it was patronising or sexist or not. In this instance, however, it does fit perfectly.
