dreamer_easy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamer_easy) wrote2009-12-03 10:56 pm
dreamer_easy) wrote2009-12-03 10:56 pm
Entry tags:
I can't believe it's not feminism
Looking for any recent news on the prosecution of Asqa Parvez's alleged killers, I stumbled across this:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/12/barbara-kay-quot-discover-canada-the-rights-and-responisibilities-of-citizenship-quot-is-a-watershed-moment-for-the-policy-of-multiculturalism-and-a-banner-day-for-immigrant-women.aspx
National Post blogger Barbara Kay refers to "gender ideologues who can't bear the idea that some forms of violence against women are a culturally imposed pathology and not, as they would prefer, a tragic but predictable example of the inherent violence and controlling instincts of all men." Damned if I can think of one. Neither can Kay, apparently, since she doesn't name or quote one. Out of millions of people over a century there must be or have been some feminists who think that men are irredeemable. But you're actually much more likely to hear that belief from rape apologists than the women's movement. After all, we're hoping to change society; what would be the point if we thought the problem was biological instead of cultural?
Kay is writing about a Canadian guvmint guide for immigrants which states, "...Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, 'honour killings,'... or other gender-based violence." Kay hoots delightedly at the use of the word "barbaric", although she doesn't consider its possible effect on the intended readership. Let's hope the firm language opens eyes rather than closing minds.
Any hypothetical feminists who opposed this initiative, says Kay, would be "not really feminists at all." Someone who characterises Muslim women as too frightened, ignorant, and "brainwashed" to resist is skating on very thin ice when it comes to claiming to be a feminist, let alone dictating who else deserves the description. Squabbles over the f-word aside, I wonder what the Canadian Council of Muslim Women or the Federation of Muslim Women or the United Muslim Women of Canada or attendees of August's Muslim Women conference in Ontario would make of her description of them.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/12/barbara-kay-quot-discover-canada-the-rights-and-responisibilities-of-citizenship-quot-is-a-watershed-moment-for-the-policy-of-multiculturalism-and-a-banner-day-for-immigrant-women.aspx
National Post blogger Barbara Kay refers to "gender ideologues who can't bear the idea that some forms of violence against women are a culturally imposed pathology and not, as they would prefer, a tragic but predictable example of the inherent violence and controlling instincts of all men." Damned if I can think of one. Neither can Kay, apparently, since she doesn't name or quote one. Out of millions of people over a century there must be or have been some feminists who think that men are irredeemable. But you're actually much more likely to hear that belief from rape apologists than the women's movement. After all, we're hoping to change society; what would be the point if we thought the problem was biological instead of cultural?
Kay is writing about a Canadian guvmint guide for immigrants which states, "...Canada's openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, 'honour killings,'... or other gender-based violence." Kay hoots delightedly at the use of the word "barbaric", although she doesn't consider its possible effect on the intended readership. Let's hope the firm language opens eyes rather than closing minds.
Any hypothetical feminists who opposed this initiative, says Kay, would be "not really feminists at all." Someone who characterises Muslim women as too frightened, ignorant, and "brainwashed" to resist is skating on very thin ice when it comes to claiming to be a feminist, let alone dictating who else deserves the description. Squabbles over the f-word aside, I wonder what the Canadian Council of Muslim Women or the Federation of Muslim Women or the United Muslim Women of Canada or attendees of August's Muslim Women conference in Ontario would make of her description of them.
no subject
Sherri Tepper seems to think so, or at least to write books based on that premise. Well, not completely irredemable--she suggests that it might be possible to breed the aggressive traits out of them.
no subject
Major spoilers
Only, it turns out that actually none of the warriors are ever permitted to father children--only the servants who have forsworn violence and proved themselves capable of living in the peaceful society that the women have created. And the women of the neighboring towns negotiate wars to happen whenever their barracks get too full, or there is talk among the men of taking over the town--they're not wars, they are cullings. The women have engaged in this project in order to breed the aggressive traits out of men.
In Gibbons Decline and Fall the alien-derived solution is simply to enable parthenogenesis in human women, so that men are no longer necessary to reproduction and will no longer be created at all.
In several other of her books, men (or at least the ruling PTB men) are complicit in permitting aliens to harvest humans--often children--for their nefarious alien purposes.
What I find insidious--at least for me, personally--is that Tepper is a fine storyteller with very sympathetic characters, so it's very easy for me to get drawn along, going "yeah, yeah" and then get to the resolution and be left feeling a mighty "ewww!" Not to mention all the scientific objections one might raise.
*It's been a while, so the details may be off, but you get the idea.
Re: Major spoilers
Re: Major spoilers