You may indeed have complex thoughts about the plight of Muslim women at this moment in history, but in my opinion, they did not appear in this particular piece. What came through, instead, was a naive romanticization of the “veil” and a confusion about how a one-time only, freely chosen colorful headscarf and comfortable clothing (which you donned) compares to mandatory hijab/jilbab (severe head and shoulder covering which allows no hair to show, not even a stray strand); niqab (a face mask); abaya (a long shapless black head and body covering), burqa and chadari (a shroud, body bag).
I know that writers don’t often choose the titles of their articles but your article led your editor to title the piece: “Behind the Veil Lives a Thriving Muslim Sexuality.” I do not want to repeat what I’ve already written but your article asks whether “we in the West (are not) radically misinterpreting Muslim sexual mores?” And, you write that the “Western interpretation of veiling as repression of women and of their sexuality….is not so, (but is rather) rooted in a strong sense of public versus private…what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband.”
This does not sound like a feminist indictment of female genital mutilation, forced face-and body-veiling, forced illiteracy, forced arranged child marriage, polygamy, normalized daughter- and wife-beating, honor killings, or the torture and murder of so many people, both women and men, in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and Algeria, by Islamist paramilitary forces and by the Islamic government.
You ask that I publish your piece. Indeed, I have already “published” your piece by linking to it in my blog. It is embedded in yesterday’s piece. Check it out for yourself.
Naomi: Both your generation and my much earlier generation of feminists have failed a universal vision of women’s human rights; most have become multi-cultural relativists and politically correct leftists. Such feminists have been more concerned with the rights of formerly colonized Muslim men than with the rights of formerly colonized and still colonized Muslim women. And, they view America and often Israel as the Evil Empires par excellence and give a free pass to Muslim tyranny.
I have stood almost alone and have been condemned by many for telling the truth about Islamic gender and religious apartheid, and about Israel, anti-Semitism, jihad, and America.
At the risk of sounding self-serving: I suggest that you read my latest book The Death of Feminism. What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom. I write about what Islamic gender apartheid is and about what it does and I document how it is has penetrated the West–with the full blessing of western feminists and progressives.
Please read my articles at my website www.phyllis-chesler.com and at my blogsite at http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler. Then, perhaps, we may finally have a fruitful private conversation.
Sincerely yours,
Phyllis
P.S. I never wrote that you supported the burqa per se or viewed it as “sexy.” You yourself have confused soft, voluntary, “veiling” with all forms of hard, forced veiling. If we in the West do not clearly and carefully oppose forced veiling in all forms, especially the burqa and niqab–we are, in effect, being led down a very slippery slope which will lead to our being used to support the “right” of women to wear face masks and body-bags in the West.
HERE IS NAOMI WOLF’S LETTER TO ME
September 02, 2009 7:34 AM
To: Phyllis Chesler
Subject: please correct terrible inaccuracies in your piece
Dear Phyllis, I hope you are well. I was most surprised to see your attack on my piece on Muslim feminism, which is filled with terrible inaccuracies, not to mention personal attacks on me that are I feel unworthy of soomeone of your stature. You need to correct it immediately and reproduce the original piece.
I never advocated for the burka and my piece makes clear that Muslim women face terrible oppressions. My point was that many of them wish we would focus on those oppressions rather than on what they are wearing. I am truly astonished that you would misrepresent my work so seriously — I do feel that you should take some responsibility for these terrible falsehoods being reproduced at all — and insist that you correct the record at once — I am happy to go through the many errors one by one by phone – and I am happy to have a serious debate with you on these issues any time. You are welcome to reprint this letter on your website, actually please do, I don’t know how to do so. But you must also issue a correction, and frankly if it were I I would also add n apology. Yours Naomi Wolf
I cannot help but laugh heartily while reading Naomi’s letter to you Phyllis. It is so arrogant and typical. I love how she tells you what to do. Perhaps she can write the kinds of garbage she does because she relates so well to the garbage she writes about. I cannot help but see the ties to the controlling demanding commanding treatment of women in the Muslim culture and the same way she behaves in her letter toward you. In Naomi’s world as in the Islamic culture, you must think, act and behave as you are told. Phyllis, Naomi and I are from the same generation. I’ve personally battled women (and men) like her my entire life. So if you would permit me…Naomi, I insist that you for once have an independent thought and stop with the group think.
What Naomi Wolf is dishing out looks suspiciously what Syed Soharwardy dished out to Ezra Levant, which started 900 days of Ezra
being grilled by the thought police.
Leave it to Wolf to defend free speech for herself, but stomp on those who shine the light of scrutiny on her deeds that she wants
kept in the shadows.
There are arguments Wolf could have made — not very consistent ones, considering her article’s actual focus on sexuality and mystery and other claptrap, and the type of critique of western feminists that merely tottles that much further down the road of multicultural relativism, rather than back to rigorous equality — but to scold Chesler rather than respond to Chesler’s critique — that is just intellectually bankrupt.
Narcissism and political correctness, hand in glove; what a sad, weak, irrelevant thing mainstream feminism has become.
When Hillary didn’t double-bag Bill’s stuff and hurl it onto the White House lawn, feminism choked on it’s own hypocrisy.
What liberals cannot possible allow is this truth: if the neocon plan succeeds, then GWB did more for oppressed women than anyone in recorded history.
Naomi Wolf said “Western interpretation of veiling as repression of women and of their sexuality….is not so, (but is rather) rooted in a strong sense of public versus private…what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband.”
That one sentence is so telling as to exactly where she is coming from. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is rolling over in her grave!
Naomi Wolf, I am confused by your saying that what they are forced to wear has nothing to do with the oppressions they suffer and live under is not related to their Feminism being denied. At 76 years of age I see here in California both liberated muslim women and those that are still under male dominance, the liberated are smilling, the dominated will not even smile in return in fear of punishment and this is just in our country. Can you say that
the fear that they live with in their countries, we as women, should not consider are as we say and “I am sure you have said “A Total Package”.
Have a good week.
For female journalists and reporters writing about how fantastic, beautiful and wonderful is walking with a veil is becoming an obsession.
I don’t even loose my time reading these pseudo-phylosofical stuff that engage in semiotic and ultra-academic language. Boring!
It would be far more productive to write about experiences such as:
-traveling in the world as a single woman
-being seen and hanging out as a middle age or mature woman with a hunky muscular guy in his early 20′s
-walking in the street with a “nobody knows I am a lesbian” t-shirt
-posing as a domestic violence survivor and trying to get a job
-experience being a female homeless
-going shopping naked or in topless
-posing as a single mother struggling to meet ends
-going to a fake clinic telling you want to have an abortion
-work in a male dominated field
-posing as a muslim woman who is in love with a non-muslim man
-walking with a clerical collar so that people think you are a woman priest (try this in a catholic country!)
-posing as a female business owner and talk to a bank for credit
-posing as a pagan woman
I also wonder why no male journalisyt has ever tried to write how wonderful is FOR HIM to walk waring a veil or a burqa.
Phyllis – your courage and clear-headed analysis are an inspiration to us all.
She’s still deranged. I guess that’s personal.
Oh well. I take her Marxist attack on America personally so we’re sorta even.
It is a fallacy for the pygmy to blame the giant for his shortcomings.
And this someone wrote about a certain cheap-shot to Hannah Arendt.
Little space certain giants leave to “others”. Not their fault though, they are just manifesting themselves. Guilty, guilty, Hannah, for having one of the subtlest and more penetrating intellects of the 20th century. Your assessment of Eichmann was right on, On Revolution: not a comment, I bow to you.
Naomi Watts, I mean Wolf, good looking gal.
Methinks Naomi doth protest too much. Inability to accept criticism and a blind belief that you and only you are correct plus a colossal ego and arrogance and no sense of humour are the classic signs of a narcissist. Couple that with her obvious belief that she can order you to do what she wants you to do and you have the typical ‘libtard’ feminist NAZI.
Note to Naomi: The burqa IS the physical representation of their subjugation. What part of that do you not understand? Remove the veil and free the human being behind it.
As we moved toward Ramadan, Naomi and others posted stories and published stories about how Muslim society wasn’t bad at all, the same time that Obama was announcing a special day for his volunteers to take the place of any 9/11 WTC activities. If this isn’t sufficient proof of where the sympathies of the administration and its’ minions lie, I don’t know what would be. These folks in and out of office see Islam as an effective foil to what they call, “the evil West” and haven’t enough brains to realize that they can’t have a little agreement with Islam. Or, maybe they do and are Muslim themselves and just adhering to the rule of lying to infidels like the Christians in this country.
Either way, they’re more concerned about their own agenda than about the security of the country, and when the inevitable happens again due to their laxity, they’ll fall back to their old claim that it’s the fault of the West in spite of their being the ones in charge and making concessions hand over fist. Isn’t it about time to quit taking writers like Naomi seriously? They’re not thinking writers, they’re apologists and they apologize on command not on principal.
Regards
Naomi’s thin skin is about a thin as President Obama’s. Like Obama, she can dish it, but cannot take it. What a colossal, overpaid wimp. Naomi also needs to be covered from head to toe & only show her eyes & pray to Allah. Moral relativism can be quite nasty when it can be turned against the moral equivalence brigade…
Naomi does come across as a bit of a narcissist. She’s thrown her teddybear(no, his name isn’t Mohammed)from the pram and demands not just a retraction, but also a personnal apology for the ‘hurt’.
Sheesh….earth-tones for Al Gore!
“My point was that many of them wish we would focus on those oppressions rather than on what they are wearing.”
Naomi Wolf is obviously unable to think and follow a logical argument. The clothing that these Muslim women are forced to wear is part of the oppression they must endure! Does Wolf even take a single moment before typing out her responses?
What a strident buffoon Naomi Wolfe is!
To add to Phyllis Chesler’s so accurate vignette I’ll take the liberty to remind (to those who are willing to endure Naomi’s hysterical):
1) Naomi’s completely un-hinged phillipique against William Bennet in a talking heads format on PBS a few years ago – it was mesmerizing, evoking Sandra Bernhard’s unchained furies, Lehrer was completely embarrassed;
2) her being part of the idiots troika (Jane Fonda, Erica Jong and herself) of Obama supporters last years, an arrangement again of great class -
Now in addition to Obama’s COLB, we have another genealogy issue here: is Naomi Wolfe Sandra Bernhard’s sister?
Interesting thought -
Daniel Pipes on Niqabs and burkas
http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36144&dsq=15736798#comment-15736798
Way to go, Phyllis! The clarity and brilliance that is consistent throughout all of your analytical writings (and rebuttals) continues to shine the light brightly in these dark times. Naomi Wolf is out of her league in trying to take you on.
gzg
Marie-Claude, mon cher ami, ha, ha, vous êtes certainement le meilleur, Je n’ai pas entendu de votre part dans un moment, ma chère. Toi, femme pied noir. Ha, ha, obtenir de l’aide du gouvernement tout le temps, l’intelligence passe à zéro. Qu’il!
Feminism was taken over by the communist party USA long ago, which explains all the left wing concerns you speak off. Feminism caused more harm in the USA then good, I point to men no longer treating a lady like a lady, holding doors open, being extra polite, holding your chair,and etc.. and now we have girls behaving like out of control teenage boys sexually, I only judge it by its fruits, not intent. All that said, I think we need to get beyond race, gender, sexual choices and talk about American issues, or human issues. I for one am tired of the check boxes and hyphenated Americans
We cannot learn to come together until we stop separating ourselves.
It’s the Lawrence of Arabia syndrome. Goofy feminists can’t help but imagine themselves resplendently robed inside in a luxurious tent in the desert in the middle of an oasis being fanned by loving servants while they wait for their handsome warrior man to come home with eyes only for them.
They fight against themselves more than anything always trying to shape men into their fantasies. I know, I know men do the same thing too. Watch out ladies, Pamela Anderson was just roasted last night and it was hard to watch. I think that Hollywood is beginning to turn on itself and eat it’s own creations.
Please be careful and watch for danger, some people become very angry when they are “uncovered”.
That was a great response Ms. Chesler.
And as far as Naomi Wolf, well… lawl…
Phyllis, I’m shocked, just SHOCKED, that a well known liberal has a thin skin and proclaims your thoughtful critique to be filled with “terrible inaccuracies, not to mention personal attacks.” Shocked.
Leftists and islamists circle each other ever closer around a common bed.
Well, actually, some such as George Galloway have already jumped into the bed.
Ideologically armed S&M bed of love, horror, and pieces of gold.
Oh no no, the left says, it’s not that at all, and secretly thinks, what it is is a Grand Strategy to ally with the islamofascists, bring free enterprise to its knees, take over, then declare free cheese and thereby cause the islamofascist threat (which is due solely to “conditions”) to evaporate forever!
That strategy worked so well in Iran. Islamofascists ate the leftists for lunch. Some leftists such as Michel Foucault, watching from afar, kinda liked it.
Excellent response, Phyllis!
The veil is off! (Pardon the pun.) We will now see what real Feminism looks like.
It’s high time, too!!
My money is on Dr. Chesler:
http://syd4.blogspot.com/2009/09/naomi-wolf-would-like-apology-from.html
Naomi Wolf is stunningly ignorant.
What the hell happened to these people?
I mean really.
What the hell happened to the feminists?
They were so quick to condemn and attack Western patriarchy, especially when it was perpetrated by white men.
But once the men have a dark skin, they are quite willing to dress up the misogny as quaint.
Disgusting.
This is the nub of the matter:
Here’s the original article:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/behind-the-veil-lives-a-thriving-muslim-sexuality/2008/08/29/1219516734637.html
This is the closest thing out of that entire article that comes to criticizing “terrible oppressions”:
This was a much more pointed statement:
Phyllis is right, and Naomi is disingenuous and/or backpedaling.
MiamaM “t’étais où ?” did the crocodiles spitted you out lately ?
“My point was that many of them wish we would focus on those oppressions rather than on what they are wearing.”
What they are wearing (veil or chador) IS the manifestatin of those opressions!
Honestly, I think Wolf is just hurt because Chesler is an acquaintance. I’ve noticed that in feminist circles, people get really riled up when feminists critique each other. However, there are actually two inaccuracies – Wolf’s article was written a year ago in 2008, not last week, and I believe that Wolf and her husband (the one who works for the NYT) divorced quite some time ago…
“Naomi Wolf is stunningly ignorant.
What the hell happened to these people?
I mean really.
What the hell happened to the feminists?”
The majority of feminists have acquired phony degrees. Their affirmative action credentials are phonier than a three-dollar bill. They simply have to adhere to leftist ideology to often “earn” an unbelievable sum of money. The fatuous Ms. Wolf is easily rewarded with an annual six-figure income. Capturing the intellectual and cultural institutions can be extremely lucrative. This is perhaps the number one advantage the Left has over conservatives. The “radical right-wing whores of the corporations” normally have no idea what it to put so much money into their bank account.
Naomi Wolf needs to listen to her own voice about liberation & not be a supplicant to servitude:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOQCzTK5WQ
“Swimming Horses” by Siouxsie & the Banshees
The song is actually about stoning an innocent woman to death since, with tradition, she must die due to having an affair with another man & supposedly became pregnant from the encounter; however, the woman was innocent, but poisoned by her friend so she would not be stoned. And the lump in her stomach–the cause for the stoning–was not a child but cancer.
NMSC – (34)
So, it’s reposted annually for Ramadan or what?
Where did she state she has changed her opinion since writing the article? Wasn’t she married to Wolf when the quote in question was made? Are we supposed to just figure that with each new hubby she starts all over? I’m missing your divorce point entirely as well as not reallying understanding why it makes any difference when she wrote the article given that she has written nothing since that I can find that disagrees with it.
Regards
I think this article is just wonderful for people who equate Al Gore with being “green” because of the fact that she changed his wardrobe to earth tones. lmao
The alligators you mean? Very few crocodiles in Florida keys, ha, ha, vieille femme française.
“t’étais où ?” Je suis ici, le vieillissement en tant que personne d’autre. Je suis comme L’homme de Rio, tout comme Pierrot le Fou, Madame de Pompadour, Madame Poisson. On a le sentiment de l’humour est tellement, tellement, subtil! ha, ha
‘A reader’ asks:
“Naomi Wolf is stunningly ignorant.
What the hell happened to these people?
I mean really.”
Naomi went to Morocco and tried on a head scarf and felt oh so cool! Make that “hot!”. She missed the trip to Afghanistan where she didn’t wear a few pounds of clothing from head to toe in 100 degree heat, and where she didn’t meet up with a nice innocent Taliban man who has done a hell of a lot more to women than forbid cosmetics. Like, shoot them in the heads and throw acid in school girls’ faces for starters. She’s completely out of touch and is seeing what she wants to see while hearing what she wants to hear.
I’ve seen this woman on video saying things like “Yaaaaaaaahhhh! Hellllllllooooooo!,” something I expect to hear from my 15 year old. Then I read her editorial that reads like a fractured Harlequin Romance.
Thank your lucky stars that you aren’t the one who is going to have to start all over again working yourself to death for women’s rights, Phyllis, because the mess being created by the completely blind so-called third wave of swooning “feminists,”–who are missing all the HUGE red flags and squandering the rights another generation fought for and handed to them on a platter–is going to take decades to undo once they figure it all out and realize this is not all a game and they (and their rights)are the prey.
God, Wolf’s editorial just plain disgusted me.It’s like a culmination of everything that is dangerously wrong in the minds of the complacent third wave and my Democratic Party that got possessed by these people.
Phyllis, I admire your insight and your courage. Stick to your guns!
I’m a bit that surprised that Ms. Wolf has publicly revealed just how thin skinned she is when it concerns others honestly critiquing her viewpoints. Does she really believe that there is not one feminist who does not march lock step with the left wing agenda of the Western academy? Also: For Ms. Wolf to attempt to present a sophistical argument in relation to Muslim women’s attire and their “true freedom” insults the intelligence of her readers. Praise to Dr. Chesler for being the lone voice in the wilderness and having the intestinal fortitude to speak truth to the campaign of “Big Lies” being touted by the “politically correct” crowd.
Ms. Wolf states that her “point was that many of them (Muslim women) wish we would focus on those oppressions rather than on what they are wearing”.
Ummm… is it all possible that there could be a causal relationship between horrific oppression that is manifested in the form of heinous honor murders by male relatives and the fact that the women being oppressed are walking around in stifling body bags? Their dress code is imposed upon them by Muslim society and as such sends a clear message in “neon lights” to the men in their lives and the world around them that something is wrong with them and that they must be hidden from view. Therefore, any deviation from the daily regalia would result in Muslim women being indicted for a major infraction of the rules and thereby sentenced to death in the minds of their menfolk.
Another point: Ms. Wolf asserts that the burqa and other forms of veiling as voluntarily taken on by these women in order that they may feel as though they are people and not sexual objects. If so, why is rape of Muslim women by men so common in countries with Sharia Law?
Picture this scenario: Western women who are tired of being viewed as sex objects by men decide they too will do the burqa thing. Their oxygen supply is severely restricted and their eyesight is impeded. With each passing day, the stifling feeling gets worse. They come home after a long day and throw off their shackles of bondage and then suddenly, totally out of nowhere, they are overcome with uncontrollable proclivities towards uninhibited sexual encounters with their husbands.
Now, really, Ms. Wolf, what’s the likelihood of that happening?
‘Your demand that I print a “correction” and issue an “apology” is uncalled for as is your offer to go over my mistakes with me, point by point, on the phone or in a debate. I dare say, this last bit is a wee bit arrogant and frightening.’
Trying to figure out what about this is frightening. Also, whether the arrogance comes from thinking anyone would care about a debate between you two, or if it’s your arrogance speaking, as she shouldn’t presume to debate you?
Also, I loved your claim that the “piece is not a personal attack.” Despite making it very much about her in particular by calling her bubbly, a doe-eyed ingenue, going on about her irrelevant working relationship with Al Gore and friendship with his daughter, and finally by extremely impugning her motives at the end of the post. Not personal in the least.
This is the same sack of hammers that shouted on her web site during Bush’s last year that he, Bush, was planning to overthrow the constitution and set up a dictatorship! It was such a stupid thing to say that I checked to make sure that she was the one who said it. After that I pretty much figured there was some private issues in her life that I didn’t want to know about and sure as hell did not want to hear anymore from her publicly.
Phyllis,
Perhaps if Naomi didn’t want to be misunderstood, she should have made it clear that if the sexuality of Muslim women is thriving it is to their credit, NOT to the credit of what they wear.
That is how I read the piece and that is why it is wrong.
To be true to feminisim, Naomi should credited these women for what normalcy they have managed to preserve. She ought to have been far more critical of the oppressive cultural mores of Islam itself, where women are not safe in public from men trained up from birth to see a woman’s body as something so abnormal in public that a woman who does not cover is practically asking for it. She should have been more critical of a culture where the bodies women are not considered something normal but instead have such an extremely and irrationally high premium on them that they must be kept in effect, under lock and key.
And I say this not as a woman who believes that anything should go as far as the garments a woman wears. But if a woman in my society chooses to wear something more revealing that I would wear, I will still insist that she be every bit as safe as I am when she goes out in public.
That Naomi praises a culture like the above at all is the fatal flaw in her argument.
Phyllis, Thank you for your clarity and depth of thought. Naomi’s letter to Phyllis suggests that her reactivity is probably due to her embarrassment at being exposed for making such a shallow argument. I will say this for Naomi, she does a good job of demonstrating the uselessness of today’s lefty multicultural feminists in helping women who are treated abysmally. How can Naomi have any credibilty when she doesn’t seem to grasp the psychological coping mechanisms that women must develop in a male dominated culture that treats them sadistically? The general public has more understanding than Naomi. Ever hear of Stockholm syndrome? These women are conditioned and just trying to survive. I’m sure there are some who have better husbands than the average. However, the women are not free. They cannot choose. And maybe the reason they wonder why such a big deal is made about the dress code imposed on them is that it pales in comparison to being beaten or stoned to death. What is it with today’s lefty feminists? They seem unable to retain any link with the purpose of their beginnings.
Phyllis, you could have been a MMA cage fighter. You devastated the opposition with minimal effort, the mark of a expert jiu jitsu fighter.
However, in a battle of wits, Ms Wolf had over matched herself, a sure fire way to get your butt kicked. Poor woman, she should see if she can pick up work designing table decorations at Democratic functions. It will take a much more cerebrally enhanced mind to write propaganda pieces that defend absurdities and lunacy.
Ms Wolf advising Al Gore explains why he comes off as such a limp wristed, pompous, self righteous, sanctimonious, effeminate buffoon. He could benefit by taking cues from a real man and not a Chris Mathews leg tingler or a David Brooks fawner; I was thinking of someone like myself, a man who grew up hunting moose and running a trap line, a man who could feed 300 cattle at forty below in four foot of snow with a team, a man who has crossed wild rivers with a dozen pack horses, a man who has stared into the eyes of a grizzly at close range, a man who can butcher a half dozen pigs in one day, maybe if Al Gore learned to act a like a man from someone like that, he wouldn’t appear so much like a damned eunuch.
That is just a side point, thank you Phyllis that was an excellent job of eviscerating Naomi. I have a tip for you, when you stun someone with a left jab, you must be ready to throw a hard overhand right between the running lights or in the chops and then step in to throw an upper cut just beneath the ribs. There aren’t many people who can remain standing after that combination.
Phyllis
Not just right behind you, but with you head-on against stupidity, arrogance, and self-hatred.
Even against “Florence of Arabia”!
Norman
Hello Phyllis
Would you consider a public debate with Naomi – this may serve to elighten and open up the issue.
Naomi Wolf is living proof that any intellectual mediocrity an get into and get through our so-called best universities.
She, and other dwarfs of her ilk, are a testament to what cheap, shabby institutions our colleges have become since the 1960s.
Considering how self-absorbed they are, these people are so tone-deaf and un-self-aware, they have no idea how stupid and foolish they actually are.
Anyone who thinks Muslim women have it so easy needs to read Princess Sultana’s Circle.
A year ago, I remember stumbling on an article Wolf wrote that was published in Middle Eastern English-language papers (at the minimum in Egypt) calling for the foreign nationals of those States to rise up against the agenda of George Bush and the United States and that it was critical for them to do so.
I’ll see if I can find it.
Dear world, please confront America
http://dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15446
By Naomi Wolf
First Published: August 1, 2009
Is it possible to fall out of love with your own country? For two years, I, like many Americans, have been focused intently on documenting, exposing, and alerting the nation to the Bush administration’s criminality and its assault on the Constitution and the rule of law — a story often marginalized at home. I was certain that when Americans knew what was being done in their name, they would react with horror and outrage.
Three months ago, the Bush administration still clung to its devil’s sound bite, “We don’t torture.” Now, Doctors Without Borders has issued its report documenting American-held detainees’ traumas, and even lie detector tests confirm they have been tortured. The Red Cross report has leaked: torture and war crimes. Jane Mayer’s impeccably researched exposé “The Dark Side” just hit the stores: torture, crafted and directed from the top.
The Washington Post gave readers actual video footage of the abusive interrogation of a Canadian minor, Omar Khadr, who was seen showing his still-bleeding abdominal wounds, weeping and pleading with his captors.
So the truth is out and freely available. And America is still napping, worrying about its weight, and hanging out at the mall.
(snip… see link for the whole thing)
==================================
Bonus find:
Veiled sexuality
http://www.dailystaregypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=16123
By Naomi Wolf
First Published: August 31, 2008
begin portion
I experienced it myself. I put on a shalwar kameez and a headscarf in Morocco for a trip to the bazaar. Yes, some of the warmth I encountered was probably from the novelty of seeing a Westerner so clothed; but, as I moved about the market — the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me — I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity. I felt, yes, in certain ways, free.
Nor are Muslim women alone. The Western Christian tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful. Islam and Judaism never had that same kind of mind-body split. So, in both cultures, sexuality channeled into marriage and family life is seen as a source of great blessing, sanctioned by God.
end portion
Naomi Wolf is living proof that any intellectual mediocrity an get into and get through our so-called best universities.
You’re living proof that anybody planning on criticizing someone else’s intellect, had better use spellcheck first.
My favorite Wolf quote:
“Western interpretation of veiling as repression of women and of their sexuality….is not so, (but is rather) rooted in a strong sense of public versus private…what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband.”
So let me get this straight… after all the feminist railing against gender roles and the “patriarchy” here in the West, Wolf actually holds out wifely submissiveness as a cultural virtue?
Imagine, if you will, if Ms. Wolf, or anyone else, were to assert that American women should so dress and demure as such, and for the same reasons. There would be explosive “feminist” outrage.
One might conclude (as Jamie Glazov has) that the Leftist celebration of sexual exhibitionism is not an end in itself, but only one more way to express contempt for their own culture. How else to explain the celebration of decadence here, but the wistful romanticizing of the burqua there?
Behind the veil, so to speak, Ms. Wolf appears to want women put in their place.
Naomi Wolf’s problem is that she is just not very smart, in a place and a time where what she says and thinks is public knowledge. She only deserves ridicule.
If I were a feminist (anymore), I would want to disassociate myself from this ninny.
Naomi Wolff wrote:
“Is it possible to fall out of love with your own country? For two years, I, like many Americans, have been focused intently on documenting, exposing, and alerting the nation to the Bush administration’s criminality and its assault on the Constitution and the rule of law — a story often marginalized at home. I was certain that when Americans knew what was being done in their name, they would react with horror and outrage.”
Wow, Naomi, naughty girl. Long live Mohammed Atta, ha, ha.
You, like Hanoi Jane, Susan Sontag, Shirley MacLaine, and similar others, seem to belittle Uncle Sam at will. Pity you people can’t live for any extended period of time in those dream-like places you visit as “fellow travelers”, like Uncle Ho’s Viet-Nam, or Mao’s China, Fidel’s Cuba, or even Morocco (defined by General Patton as a combination of Hollywood and the Arabian’s One Thousand and One Nights).
Miamiman,poor Naomi may be incredibly stupid,but to give her the benefit of the doubt she’s probably not insane.After all even the resident troll “moho”med doesn’t have the cojones to live in an islamic cesspool.
As I noted yesterday, Naomi Wolf believes that if you wear a hajib you are exercising your freedom of choice, but if you wear mascara, you are a pawn of an oppressive patriarchal hegemony.
Sadly, I do not have the stature to merit a proper dressing down from Ms. Wolf. I mean, it’s not like I expected a voice mail but how hard is it to maybe text some manufactured outrage?
Phyllis,
Once you start with “American culture bad, every other culture good”, it becomes easy to rationalize shrouding a woman against her will as somehow liberating and cutting edge “oppressive chic”. My favorite was a real “progressive” commenting on your article yesterday who equated a woman forced to wear a hijab to a man having to wear a necktie to work in America.
What gets me is that our children are being taught to “celebrate” every culture under the sun except our own. Naomi is simply “celebrating diversity”. After all, being PC is most important, with human rights a distant second.
Ms. Wolf seems to like making peremptory demands of others. Also, from what we have seen of her multiple postings, she is something of a stalker.
After hearing Sweden claim they are protecting freedom of the press by allowing the blood libel against jews/israelis but not allowing cartoons of Mohammad,STICK A SOCK IN IT NAOMI WULF,YOU LIBERAL PARTISAN.Dont like freedom of speech?Move to Iran.
Keep the faith,Phyllis. Telling the truth has never been popular.I just hate seeing you attacked over and over again. But the last time I checked, we still have freedom of speech. Wolf’s assessment of why Muslim women veil is exactly what my Muslim sister told me was her reason for wearing her hair covering. So here’s what my late wife, Brenda, used to say to me and it rings so very true: “Choose a religion that insults your intellegence the least.” Most people I know could do that but won’t.To this day I still drive by Baptist churches and think “enemy outpost.” So please, my dear friend, keep telling the truth about the religious mandated oppression of women.
Your Feminist Friend.
After all even the resident troll “moho”med doesn’t have the cojones to live in an islamic cesspool.
And you don’t have balls period. You have the intellect of a coward, afraid that his little white pee pee is going to shrink if he thinks kindly about another group of people. You’re probably right.
I’m sorry, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything quite so MADE OF FAIL.
Naomi, you get on your damned high horse and talk about how women who wear a giant-ass body-bag are doing it with the legitimate aim of not being seen as sex objects.
And then you proceed to cover up the tiniest little bit (but not really cuz that’d be like not cool) and go on about how hottt and sexxx-AY it made you feel.
First, you say these women are trying to escape pornification, and then you turn them into porn yourself. That must be at least 1.8 metric shitloads of WTF, okay?
And I don’t give a damn if you wore a scarf for thirteen seconds and then went home — Marie Antoinette used to play dress-up as a shepherdess, too. You think that gave her any real insight into a peasant’s life? You treated their stifling oppression like a kinky theme park. How dare you.
Then, there’s the whole idea of CELEBRATING the fact that these women feel compelled to limit and narrow their lives in response to male ogling. Hey, here’s a radical idea! If MEN can’t keep from leering like animals, then why don’t we BLINDFOLD THEM instead of forcing women to wear their damn blindfolds for them? Sure, it’d mean that they would bang into walls, couldn’t drive, and dent their shins all the time, but I think their touching vulnerability would be totally like HAWTTT, and I’m sure that I could have great, hot, stinky monkeysex with My Mayun knowing that His Eyes Gazed Upon Me Alone.
Of course, this would leave women unfettered in our lives, along with SANE men (most of them) who are capable of interacting with a hot woman without turning into a flesh-eating lunatic.
I guess the idea of HOLDING SEXIST ASSHATS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR OWN ACTIONS is a little too advanced a concept for you, though? HOW long have you called yourself a feminist, and was this before or after the brainectomy you seem to have suffered?
I mean WTF, woman? You used to have one. You used to be smart and insightful. And now you’re some gooshy, pornsick, daddy-worshipping dumbsh*t who would rather turn herself into logical knots than hold ANY man ANYWHERE accountable for himself? Are you that afraid of never finding a husband again?
I mean, WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED with you, anyway?
Poor Naomi, she is forced to defend barbarism
How do you rationalize in the name of feminism
With shallow rambling verbiage, and dubious propriety
Poor Naomi, challenges the borders of polite society
With frantic pen she alienates and becomes a protagonist
She bails the forlorn sinking ship Of her own protasis,
With a hope that has died, victim of her periphrasis
now with black shroud she awaits the comedic epitasis
Naomi wear the funeral shroud for the death of your integrity
Celebrate an eponymous epic of Naomi the Bewildered Indemnity
“Naomi: Both your generation and my much earlier generation of feminists have failed a universal vision of women’s human rights; most have become multi-cultural relativists and politically correct leftists…
“I write about what Islamic gender apartheid is and about what it does and I document how it is has penetrated the West–with the full blessing of western feminists and progressives.”
At last. I put up with a lot of nonsense in the 1970′s from “Feminist” friends and family. There was nothing in most of what they said that might have passed for serious thought, and I finally gave up arguing on the assumption they’d get over it.
Today, I can hold a door and show other basic courtesies to women, as my mother and grandmother carefully taught me, without impromptu lectures of correction. Women even smile and say “Thank you!”
What women worldwide face in the institutionalized Islamic treatment of women, however, is another matter entirely. You are looking at a deadly serious and difficult issue of fundamental Human Rights.
IF you fight this fight, you will have to win it, and the challenge will be very different from the patient, Western World indulgence you now enjoy. If women DO fight and win this battle, however, the consequences will be truly historic.
The politics will be extremely difficult (perhaps impossible), the strategy and tactics unique (comedic literature will not provide a model), and the resistance will be fierce beyond what even you can imagine.
People WILL get killed. It won’t be won in a decade and it won’t run out of emotional energy and go away once it is well and truly begun.
I see that you understand this. I see that Naomi Wolf does not. Talking to this woman is a waste of your time.
“Behind the Veil Lives a Thriving Muslim Sexuality”
This is the equivalent of doing a similar piece circa 1820 called “Tied to the Whipping Post Lives a Thriving African American Worker” or circa 1939 called “Behind the Cattle Car Doors Lives a Blossoming Jewish Culture”.
Naomi Watts: Feminist or Clueless Poser?
I think it boils down to “Hey everybody, look at me, I have been to a muslim country and worn a hijab! I see now how evil the west is. See how enlightened and progressive I am?”
She says: “The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality…. I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.”
Does that mean we can reinstate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and expect people to keep their sexuality to themselves?
And my favorite, the obligatory bashing of America: “The Western Christian tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful.”
Really Naomi? I never read in the Bible where it says anything about sex inside marriage being sinful. Maybe you meant to say that sex outside of marriage is sinful, along with other forms of sexual deviance, being a pimp or a whore, having children out of wedlock (a favorite liberal pasttime) or cheating on your spouse, in which case there’s really not that much difference between us American right-wing nut jobs and your new Muslim friends. Except of course that here in evil America, with our antiquated, racist Christian traditions, we don’t bury sinners up to their necks in sand and throw rocks at there faces. Or murder the mothers of the 50% of our kids that are born out of wedlock. As a matter of fact, most of those things are not even criminal here. But it’s all relative, right?
To 66. Janis:
I do believe your post is today’s Grand Prize winner.
Steve Sampson #67 -
Bravo sir, bravo indeed. Your most excellent poem made me regret using the word “whore” in my last post. Well done.
Namoi Wolf has never experienced the repression of which Phyllis speaks. I my recall incorrectly, but I believe that Phyllis has a personal history with such violent attitudes and events. Therefore, I view this argument as no different than any other in which the two protagonists bring different backgrounds to the table.
Of course, it is Naomi Wolf who needs to shoulder the burden for trying to understand how someone can differ with her own viewpoint, she not having the broader experience of Phyllis. It is Naomi who needs to apologize for denying the truth of Phyllis’ real life experiences. It would have been nice had Naomi come to Phyllis’ conclusions through arms-length study, but she did not. Naomi seems to require sweaty hands-on moments of her own before she can hope to understand Phyllis.
Madashell, I agree with you that Janis @66 wrote quite a post indeed. There were some serious chuckles in front of my screen.
If she ever gets mad at me, I hope she lets me know, so I an back off before she boils over.
Too funny, I loved it Janis, thank you!
70, seconded. Janis is more woman that any of these metrosexual wienerschnitzels that Wolf hangs out with could handle.
Janis. You da bomb. You go. Any time you want.
I have a pretty good idea that Naomi Wolf really wanted to take an opportunity to say she’s still hot. “The curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me”–this is description of hotness by negation. Oh, that covered curve! Those obscured leg shapes! That non-tousled hair! Oh, baby, come to papa! Sheesh.
“my piece makes clear that Muslim women face terrible oppressions. My point was that many of them wish we would focus on those oppressions rather than on what they are wearing,” hot Naomi says. Oh, come off of it. There is NOT A WORD about terrible oppressions, nor any word that indicates that her thesis is that we should focus on those oppressions. On the contrary, the article is about how, in male-supremacist Muslim cultures, women’s body bags are liberating, and how oppressed by bodily exposure Western women are. The claim that the piece “makes clear that Muslim women face terrible oppression” would depend, for believability, on no one going back and checking. Too bad it’s so easy to do. Wolf’s description of her “point” is an arrant lie.
THANK YOU for showing adamant disgust and horror over female genitalia mutilation. I CAN’T BELIEVE all the liberal feminist who look the other way over such a complete vile act perpetrated on beautiful little girls. I can’t think about it without feeling deeply, deeply disturbed. Also, I can’t believe the liberal feminist silence on institutional rape by the Muslim community. I don’t care who a person is or what religion/code he/she subscribes to, these things are an abomination in the sight of Allah or any decent person, especially a woman. Please keep up the pressure for women to defend and support and advocate for women- isn’t that what “feminism” is supposed to be, defending and supporting women instead of rabidly seeing the world through the perspective of an abortion?
Thanks. As long as the Grand Prize involves a mojito, I’ll take it.
I see MOHO the JEW HATING Mohammedan troll can only post ad hominem attacks on here with nothing at all on the topic. That is understandable of course because as a Mohammedan he follows the example of his misogynistic CULT leader and inventor Mohammad and that is impossible to defend.
Picture this: A ritzy Los Angeles hotel swimming pool during August, 2009. A short, obese, middle-aged Muslim man in a men’s bikini swimsuit is enjoying swimming and the sun. His wife and six-year-old daughter are with him. It is extremely hot in LA, well over 100 degrees and very smoky from the big fire in the mountains.
His wife is wrapped up from head to toe in a black burga with some kind of black mask and headcover. I find myself feeling sorry for his wife and I’m arguing with myself, angry that I feel sorry for her, aware that she has a choice. But does she have a choice? I don’t know.
Their daughter is in a two-piece swimsuit, joyfully swimming with her smiling Dad while Mom is baking, sweating profusely from the hot, hot sun. She is in charge of soft drinks and sandwiches, it appears. I wonder why the daughter isn’t in a burqa and wonder if Mom wonders the same thing.
It is a disgusting scene and I leave.
I’ve seen Naomi Wolf a few times on TV a few years ago. All I remember about her is that I thought she was a beautiful woman; I just don’t remember what her points were or were not.
I’m convinced that any Jewish woman or man that is eager to hang out in Gaza is a tragically sick individual. After all, it’s been said that there were nice German Nazis with good senses of humor. It is tragic because Ms Wolf is obviously putting her own desire to hang out with Hamas above the Jewish people’s desire to live in Israel, peacefully or not. Does Ms Wolf really think she’s going to change anyone’s mind, that the people of Gaza will grow to love her?
About Phyllis Chesler: I’m keenly aware of her positions on women and I agree with her. I’m very disappointed in the ‘tone’ of her letter to Naomi. It sounds like Ms Chesler was much more interested in pleasing her avid readers than in seriously reaching Wolf, assuming she is reachable. Maybe Wolf is unreachable.
That article exposes naomi wolf as a traitor who’s real agenda is the destruction of America and will seek out any ally, even at the expense of her own freedoms. But Americans aren’t fools, they know how horrible islam really is and won’t be swayed otherwise. Liberalism truly is a mental disease.
The one person that Wolf really wants in a burka with face mask is Sarah Palin.
The women own most everything now. Check the deeds.
Chesler seems like a grown-up, interested in advancing the cause of women world wide, Wolf comes across like a childish, naval gazing, it’s-all-about-me type.
Thank you for your very important work Ms. Chesler, I only wish you could provide more information on how to help.
Shoshana just to expand a little more on your theme last year while visiting Penang island in Malaysia it must have been Arab holiday time and there on the beach in his deckchair was Mr Arab Mohammedan bare chested in shorts dripping with gold sweat and suntan oil and hairy as a monkey in the 33 deg C humid heat while alongside him on the sand , no chair for her, clad from head to foot in a coal black Burkha with full face mask sat his poor suffering wife. God knows what she must have been suffering under that black bag but of course a Mohammedan woman cannot leave her husbands side in public. Meanwhile out in the water the ultimate Mohammedan insanity six Burkha and mask clad women complete with safety jackets on a banana boat. My wife and I, who incidentally is an Indonesian Muslim too without any ARAB inspired and dictated clothing hang ups, could not stop laughing at this ridiculous spectacle.
In this case, Dr. Chesler should not “back down.” Wolf’s comment on “what is due to one’s husband” is very telling; as she does not say just what the husband[s] in question might do to the wives if they were to decide that they no longer wanted to wear chadors, burquas, niquabs or abayas.
Respect for different cultures does not require romanticization of oppression. I support Kwame Anthony Appiah’s call for a “rooted cosmopolitianism” that allows for cross-cultural communication – including honest disagreement about practices that sustain profound inequalities.
Ms. Wolf does not have an accurate memory of what she wrote. Ms. Chesler, your commentary does not require an apology.
Naomi Wolf is living proof that any intellectual mediocrity an get into and get through our so-called best universities.
You’re living proof that anybody planning on criticizing someone else’s intellect, had better use spellcheck first.
Now there is a dumb comment if I ever saw one. What spellchecker will pick up “an”, a correctly spelled word? There are editing programs on Word, for example, that are related to its spellchecker and can be appended to it that will pick up the incorrect use of the word in the sentence – but those are not spellcheckers.
Just goes to show that if you want to criticize someone else’s editing or spelling, you better have your own facts in place first….
There are just some arguments you should keep your nose out of, Moho.
This is four yew, Moho
Naomi,
I’m afraid you’re off your rocker. Sweating in uncomfortable clothes isn’t sexy no matter what religion you belong to.
Your premise is wrong, plus you deliver it like a person who’s so self absorbed in themselves that their observations on other people are off kilter. You appear to have forgotten what you recommended for Kerry and Gore. You seem to have forgotten what you said about burkas and such.
Your hot anger and demands for retractions suggest a person so out of touch with the rest of the world, that somehow she’s out of touch with herself. You blame every one but yourself for what you say is an area of expertise.
Honey, if you want to feel sexy and repressed so you can bust out in hot sex and hot tub sex, try having a great day of fun in the sun with someone you really care about.
Without knowing you, I can’t diagnose your
problems with any degee certainty . Maybe it’d safer to start your road back to sexual sanity by getting new batteries and start with yourself.
One thing is apparent. Something is very basic is out of kilter with your thinking process. Maybe the first thing to do is apologize to Phyllis Chesler for talking out of your head.
Regards, Bill
Keep up the fight for the truth Phyllis. I enjoy your articles. As the old saying goes, “non carborundum illegitimis” because they will try to grind you down!
So many good comments here it’s hard to add anything else but in my mind two really stand out because they go to the heart of the problem and those are:
13. AThinkingPerson: and 33. Linda Ahmed:
Thank you both for saying what needed to be said about clothing in Muslim cultures in.
66. Janis:
Wonderful!!
Naomi Wolf is being unfairly criticized for trying hard to make a living – for herself and eventually for her children. Were she able to do something else, surely she would have tried by now. Changing horses in the middle of the race (for achieving something in life) is not as easy as it might seem. And requires sacrifices not everyone is willing to make. Naomi Wolf already lost a husband and finding another is not that easy nowadays, especially for someone with her personality and, lately, her rather tired looks.
Defending the burqa is a “Constitutional Right”. On the other hand, defending the abject lack of personal hygiene of women forced to use that funny black bed sheet over their bodies is NOT. Being in the proximity of women using burqas is not a prospect one would cherish. Presumably, Muslim men have an iron stomach or a deficient olfactory sense – the only logical explanation for their strange preference.
At any rate, maybe one of the readers could recommend Ms. Wolf a decent job, thus giving her a fair chance to a new beginning. And us all a reasonable opportunity to … forget her.
65. Moho:
After all even the resident troll “moho”med doesn’t have the cojones to live in an islamic cesspool.
{And you don’t have balls period. You have the intellect of a coward, afraid that his little white pee pee is going to shrink if he thinks kindly about another group of people. You’re probably right.}
Moho, du, kranken welpen IslamoSS.
Listen pally, McBride is right, you ain’t got the cojones to live in Paki land.
Paki nach hause kommen, bitte.
Go back to one of them Burqa-riddled cesspools, you Leer Turban Kopf.
Wow. Wolf just got handed one of those painful life lessons: What happens when a run-with-the-pack leftwing femlib goes head-to-head with an honest-to-God independent woman. I hope Wolfie was paying attention.
Phyllis Chesler, you are my new hero.
In her post number 80, Laura pins the tail Right on the donkey named “wolf.”
And on every other self-and-own-culture-loathing sufferer from the FasciSSocialist Psychosis, every one of whose pathological envy will see him gladly, overtly — and, lately, arrogantly — ally himself with any one or more of America’s enemies.
Modern (il)liberalism is, indeed, but the manifestation of a deeper, deadly-dangerous, derangement.
Brian Richard Allen
Lost Angels – Califobambicated 90028
And the Very Far Away
wolf should pull the burka over her head and shut up.
“I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channeling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.”
This is another example of hypocrisy. Could you imagine if a right wing Christian conservative,even attempted to suggest, that perhaps young ladies should wear skirts that reach below the knee? What would the public outcry and reaction be from the Naomi Wolf, moral equivalency ilk? Somehow I bet Wolf, and her ilk, would have no problem sniffing out the oppression stink turd in that scenario.
Just to be, uh, well-rounded about the subject, at least one male commentator has asserted that the bikini is a tool by which men oppress women. So foolish equivalences do occur on both sides of the gender barrier.
That having been said, Western men are generally too sensible to put any stock in Wolf’s ravings. I pray most fervently that Western women are, too.
What is wrong about this is not your opinion, which has a lot of merit, but that you made a strategic decision to specially attack Naomi Wolfe–its just not a very good choice of targets.
She has really pretty much transformed into a libertarian, although I am sure still calls herself a leftist. Recently Wolf wrote how Obama is worse than Bush. She also had a nice piece on the arrogant world view of leftists–saying, using herself as an example–when you only hang with liberals you begin to feel any people with opposing views, like social conservatives, are ignorant douches.
To me, it just doesn’t make sense, strategically or even intellectually, to attack someone for past sins, when they are clearly drifting toward the right.
Janis@66: A terrific smackdown. However, I must dissent from your final admonition, “You used to be smart and insightful.” I’ve never seen any evidence of Naomi Wolfe being either smart or insightful. This is, after all, a woman who attempted — with a straight face, no less! — to equate the Bush administration with the Third Reich. While that frivolous sentiment certainly made the rounds among the incensed Lefty hoardes, it was never valid in any true historical and ideological analysis. I believe Wolfe also talked about having conversations with ghosts of children or some such other off-the-wall lunacy. In short, she’s a verifiable nutcase. Camille Paglia has had her number for years.
Jeez, Ruvy. Pick on someone your own IQ.
Becky, it’s a bad idea—not to mention extremely dumb—to refuse to criticize somebody’s bad ideas, or silly essays, because they might, just possibly, be drifting towards your side. Both strategically and intellectually, it’s harmful—it degenerates into “My side, right or wrong!” sooner or later, and you wind up defending the indefensible.
Whether or not Wolf has written other, more sensible essays, the fact is when she produces drivel like this, she’s not any kind of ally.
You can tell just how correct Ms. Chesler is, in this regard, by the fact that even the usual trolls, like the drooling Moho, are reduced to complaining about someone’s else’s spelling.
“a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband”
Well, I have a strong sense of public vs private, and what is due to my husband too. But we’re Christians living in a free country, so that means I personally choose (not forced) not to wear shirts that are cut so low they show my belly button, or skirts that barely cover my rear end. There is no need to drape myself in king-size bed sheets to dress modestly. Some women do choose to wear revealing clothing, yet despite being male, my husband manages to control himself just fine around them.
Also, it seems to me that feminists, such as Wolf, are always very contemptuous of Jewish and Christian women, and scornful of their attempts to dress modestly, save sex for marriage, etc. (And, of course, even a very traditional Jewish woman, or conservative Christian woman, has more freedom than your typical Moslem woman.)
But when Moslem women walk around in body bags and veils, suddenly hiding your sexuality becomes this wonderful, spiritual thing, and being religious is suddenly okay. Double standard, here?
Was anyone else reminded of Margaret Mead by what Wolfe uses as the basis of her “understanding” (and her right to scold the rest of us)?: “But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression [...] The bridal videos that I was shown, with the sensuous dancing that the bride learns as part of what makes her a wonderful wife, and which she proudly displays for her bridegroom, suggested that sensuality was not alien to Muslim women…” Heaven help us Ms. Chesler, I’m afraid you had a Cassandra-like vision (and thus struck a nerve) in suggesting Ms. Wolfe might be gaining some new customers for her consulting business. I look forward to THAT headline. Oh and how did everyone know at the market know it was a Westerner playing dress-up if she was totally covered?!
It’s easy to see from Wolf’s picture,why she suddenly favors the Burkha:She’s gotten too fat to wear stylish western clothes.This fraud, like all libtards spawned by the 60′s,is primarily motivated by vanity.This is what happens, when libtards go on a food pyramid diet!
Dr. Chesler hit the nail squarely on the head right here….”Naomi: Are you perchance angling for an image consultancy to one of the Saudi or Gulf state Princes? Something along the lines of how to position the oppression of women in ways that are more palatable to the West? In a way that might even appeal to Western women? God, say it isn’t so.”
That has to be why she freaked out and became so demanding. Who does this woman think she is to demand a real intelectual and scholar, to retract what is obviously the truth to anyone in the English speaking world.
I can appreciate the problem with C, I have the better part of an Italian sausage burrito stuck under the C key. It is an ongoing problem.
#99, Becky: I disagree that Dr. Chesler should not have addressed Naomi Wolf’s loony piece. The harm Wolf provides cover for is too great and affects too many women to tolerate. In addition, I am skeptical that Wolf has a moral compass that would enable her to have the true transformation you see in her. The direction Wolf takes is always due self.
As I just commented at Dr. Chesler’s original piece, I was one of the first bloggers to write about it and I updated my piece to address her points in this one: “UPDATED — Phyllis Chesler punksmacks Naomi Wolf — couldn’t happen to a nicer girl.” I checked to make sure that I trackbacked to this post correctly — it appears I have — I don’t know why it does not appear in the comments here.
I think Naomi Wolfe is a astute individual. I also think she should accept intelligent criticism and write a counter argument, which after reading Phyllis Chesler article on this subject would be a next to impossible thing to do because in essence Naomi wrote, hiding my femininity makes me feel more feminine.
“The harm Wolf provides cover for is too great and affects too many women to tolerate. In addition, I am skeptical that Wolf has a moral compass that would enable her to have the true transformation you see in her. The direction Wolf takes is always due self.”
Cynthia, I could not agree with you more, Wolf desperately needed to be called out on this one. Too many women continue to suffer while pompous, “multi-culturists” play dress up, and smile submissively, to gain favor from those who commit blatant human rights violations against our sisters in the middle east.
Dear Phyllis
Your observations and analysis are based on facts. Naomi’s are wishful thinking and devoid of reality. It’s a pleasure reading your articles. Keep on the good work.
Honestly, the single sentence in Wolf’s original story, “I do not mean to dismiss the many women leaders in the Muslim world who regard veiling as a means of controlling women,” is the only place her piece even obliquely states, in Wolf’s words, that “Muslim women face terrible oppressions.”
I was fascinated by another sentence in in Wolf’s piece. In her paragraph beginning, “Ideological battles are often waged with women’s bodies as their emblems, and Western Islamophobia is no exception,” Wolf writes, “When Americans were being prepared for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were demonised for female genital mutilation, forced wearing of the burka, refusal to educate women and girls, forced arranged child marriage, daughter- and wife-beating, and honor killings.” Ooops, sorry, that’s not what she wrote. Wolf wrote, “When Americans were being prepared for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were demonised for denying cosmetics and hair colour to women.” If ever there were an eptiaph for Western academic feminism, that is it.
Naomi Wolf and the Mohammedan men who try to justify forcing women to wear burkhas, etc. have sex on their brains. Men and women do not necessarily dress to attract members of the opposite sex; indeed, most of us do not, but dress to suit the seasons and to be attractive generally. It is a sign of respect for others to dress attractively. My own mother always dressed attractively until she died at the age of 100.
Naomi Wolf does not care about the welfare of women but only is pushing her Communist agenda that the U.S. is terrible, awful, etc.
116.
“Mohammedan” is racist.
Where I come from, Naomi Wolf is just an idiot.
An embarrassement to freedom.
If Naomi Wolf actually believed her own words, she would move to a Muslim country, give up her freedom, & be an object of desire just waiting to be stoned to death when she says something wrong. But she’s not. Naomi is full of hot air. She’s a little girl who needs her pink bunny rabbits with her daily unicorns & rainbows. She reeks of hypocrisy.
“This is another example of hypocrisy. Could you imagine if a right wing Christian conservative,even attempted to suggest, that perhaps young ladies should wear skirts that reach below the knee? What would the public outcry and reaction be from the Naomi Wolf, moral equivalency ilk? Somehow I bet Wolf, and her ilk, would have no problem sniffing out the oppression stink turd in that scenario”
…………………………………..
Exactly. Some Christian group ought to conduct an experiment, pretending to support such dress codes and let’s see liberals and feminists go ballistic.
“Camille Paglia has had her number for years”.
………………………………….
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Paglia has also defended islamic culture. And she definitely supports the anti-war appeasement approach to the islamic world.
Moho I got the cojones to engage in combat and put 14 of your muslim brothers down for their dirt naps.I earned my Combat Infantryman Badge.What do you have besides prison tats?
#122 McBride,re:MOHO#117 MOJON is a race-obsessed(quotas was the only way he could get into college), enemaphile,who wants to censor speech. BTW Mr. MCBride;thank you for your service.MOHO lacks, cojones,but he is very much obsessed with his MOJONES!That and libtardism constitute the crutches he needs to tolerate his mediocrity.
I got my butt buddys. You got yours?
Jason S, thank you for your kind words.
McBride, thank you for your service. I wish you the best in the future. There are many patriots who are proud of you and many vets who understand you better than you know.
Thank you, Pragmatist. You greatly improved my picture by 200%!
The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot.
Ironic the title of her book, never read it, but I’m wondering if she is warning the young patriot against people like herself.
122. McBride:
Careful, big boy, there are some nearby who did worse and know more and don’t agree with anything you say. You don’t have to be brave or smart to kill. You just have to be there. And when you come back, you either know it for the horror it is or you don’t. Calley was a coward. Never forget that. Calley was a coward. Now go out in the back yard and think about life for an your or so. Dirt nap . . . I doubt it.
There is a soccer field in Kabul.
A Mullah will “execute” with a AK47 shot to the head of quite a few women that did NOT wear the face covering Ms Wolf likes.
I saw it happen.
Ms Chester: You are a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman. I pray my daughter grows up to be so thoughtful and fearless.
Moho: ““Mohammedan” is racist.”
Did you mean to say “Muhammad was a racist”?
http://www.wikiislam.com/wiki/Qur'an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Muhammad_the_Racist
117, Moho:
No, Moho.
“Mohammedan” is not a racist term (do you even know what that term means?)
It is an extremely precise term, describing exactly what Muslims are, namely idolators of the teachings and way of life of Mohammed.
It is not non-Muslims’ fault that muslims worship a highway robber, rapist, child-f*cker and mass murderer.
And for that very reasons, muslims deserve to be condemned, and they have the moral obligation to renounce their reverence of this vile 7th century individual.
The enraging thing here is definitely the fact that Wolf is acting as if she has suddenly discovered modesty, and . . . decided that it can enhance female dignity!
So, she takes the next logical step, and sort-of says that forced modesty of an extreme nature, backed up by violence and indicative of gender slavery, must be paradoxically empowering to women who . . . aren’t Wolf.
Because, as everyone else has pointed out, if anyone here in the U.S. attempted to tell Wolf how long her skirts had to be, she’d freak.
Then, at the end of her essay, she attempts to walk back what she’s just said and throws in a sentence or two about how important choice is, in matters of dress.
As if to suggest that she hadn’t managed to really read the rest of her essay, or perhaps couldn’t make out what it said.
Perhaps, as she was finishing it up, she misplaced her reading glasses.
Highlights: Christianity is anti-sex, but Islam is pro-sex. Western women aren’t free to age. I wore a veil, and it was just ducky!
MOHO the JEW HATING antisemitic ARAB writes “Mohammedan” is racist.
Here let me correct it for you “Mohammad was racist” he was an Arab Supremacist and also called Blacks “Raisin Heads” so yes Old Mo the INVENTOR of Islam was a racist.
117.
“Mohammedan” is racist.” – Moho.
“Mohammedan” is accurate description.
Superb! The apparent mystery of the Left’s alliance with Islam is solved. Their masochistic sexual wishes to submit are STRONG. Wolf yearns for a male oppressor. She is palpably aroused by the fantasy of the strong, Muslim male, wrapping her in black and forcing her to do his sexual bidding. No way to reason with sado-masochism.
Followers of Mohammed? Mohammedan.
Followers of Christ? Christian.
Moho is a drooling fool who cannot refute anything but only whine about the politically incorrect word choices and spelling mistakes of infidels.
Mohammedan. Mohammedan. Mohammedan. The word is mine.
Nat:
Naomi Wolf is living proof that any intellectual mediocrity an get into and get through our so-called best universities. (Bad boy, dropped a “C”)
Moho:
You’re living proof that anybody planning on criticizing someone else’s intellect, had better use spellcheck first. (Leftist trash, sub-human)
Um, we’re not “free to age?”
I’m aging just fine, thanks — as Naomi herself said years ago back when she knew how to write, at the rate of one day per day. No problems here.
Of course, I’m not slavering for a man, either. Now THAT’S dignity.
131. James:
“Ms Chester: You are a beautiful, strong, intelligent woman. I pray my daughter grows up to be so thoughtful and fearless.”
She will, because, for starters, she has a father who Gets It.
According to Naomi Wolf, I as a woman have only two obligations, to my God and to my husband. Apparently it’s no longer feminist to believe I have any obligation to myself! Thanks, Naomi, for enlightening me.
Thank you for your appreciation and support.
Now&Then thank you for your service.I hope you received the support you deserved when you came home.I will refrain from directing personal snark your way.You are correct in the assertion that it doesn’t take brains to kill.However it does require that a man must “be willin” and that requires a certain amount of courage.The first time I saw human eyes through the scope,I admit a moment of hesitation,until he raised his rifle.I don’t loose sleep over the death of armed enemy combatants.They took their chances and lost.After the first guy I never had a second thought,in war you get your payback in advance. A hit center chest with a 7.62 is a dirt nap for certain,as you must know.They went down hard and didn’t get up.
Moho med maybe if you weren’t such a racist,misogynist dick you wouldn’t be so lonely and bitter.
Naomi dear,
If you want to please your husband, you don’t need to don any Muslim garb.
Just put a bag over your head and tell him to fantasize to his heart’s content.
I find it amusing that Ms. Wolf goes after Phyllis Chesler for “inaccuracies” when her own first major book, The Beauty Myth, was riddled with inaccuracies, bad research, and even bad math. If Ms. Chesler wrote to that same level, no liberal would leave a page unturned in the search of things to ridicule.
I’ve not read anything else Naomi Wolf has written since TBM; I don’t have time to pick apart books looking for kernels of truth amid piles of propagandist chaff.
Well all I can say is Naomi, please read the following.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090905/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_prisoner_ordeal
snip: “In the morning, Nazy wore a chador, was handcuffed and blindfolded and walked with a guard to an interrogation center known as the Evin School — so called perhaps because of the school desks used there.
The interrogator stood behind her asking questions and told her to write the answers at the bottom of the paper from underneath her blindfold. “He used foul language,” said Nazy.”