The Hundred Year War Begins
The outpouring of support for my position in favor of universal women’s rights both humbles and strengthens me. This struggle is not about me nor is it about Naomi Wolf who so unwisely went to war over one blog of mine which critiqued her written views about the Islamic veil and the oppression/repression of Muslim women.
But now, the issue is also about liberal-left double standards vis-a-vis Free Speech, their incredibly thin skins when they are challenged, not personally, but politically. A different opinion calls for “apologies” and “corrections,” perhaps even for a dressing down and a public recantation. I also think that some people have a very hard time when they are exposed as less than perfect.
Thus far, my two recent articles on this subject have received nearly 300 comments, most of which are on point, amazing, hilarious, brilliant, and deadly. They are still pouring in. I did not publish those comments which were gratuitously insulting to Wolf as a woman. No need for that when there are so many important issues involved and so many thoughtful comments. I urge you to read these comments. They “annoint me, my cup floweth over.” Readers: Bless you and thank you.
Jamie Glazov, editor of Frontpage Magazine, author of United in Hate. The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror and blogger extraordinaire, also just wrote a passionate and serious blog of his own. You see, Naomi not only wrote to me, posted a comment at my blogsite, and left a message in my office–she also wrote to Jamie’s employer, David Horowitz, and demanded some kind of “correction” or “retraction” of what Glazov had written in support of my initial blog. Wolf wrote that she was “appalled.”
When this happened I heaved a mighty sigh because I knew Wolf had chosen to turn this into something of a campaign that could develop a life of it’s own: television appearances, book contracts, calls for a public debate, allegations of “victimhood,” perhaps even an attempt at a lawsuit. Perchance, a duel in Central Park?
Glazov points out that when travelers visited Soviet Russia, (Emma Goldman was an exception) they always came home with glowing reports. They were shown Potemkin Villages (not the Gulag) and so wanted to believe the Stalin’s Revolution, Mao’s Revolution, were good, not evil, that they asked no further questions and did not venture alone off the beaten path. Similarly, I might add: The Red Cross had few questions when they visited the Theresienstadt concentration camp; nothing there but happy, very musically talented Jews.
Correctly, Glazov situates Wolf in this historical context and asks whether she sees the “parallel,” the “analogy.” Glazov writes:
There is a reason why despotisms and apartheid structures create dress codes. The enforcement of such codes plays a crucial role in keeping the structures of tyranny and the enslavement of a people in check (e.g., Maoist unisex clothing had a ruthless purpose). Ms. Wolf, do you really fail to grasp the fact that dress codes in the Islamic world, such as the niqab and the burqa, play a crucial role in keeping the chains of gender apartheid in place, and that this is precisely why the guardians keep them in place?
No Ms. Wolf, I won’t stop worrying about what Muslim women are forced to wear. I care about the Muslim women who have had acid thrown in their faces, or who have been raped or killed or set aflame, because of the dress code they chose not to follow….Ms. Wolf, you cannot, with dignity, talk about any kind of veiling in the Muslim world without the context that there is a ramification, and a deadly one on myriad levels, for a woman who does not veil.
If you travel to despotic lands, where women face social stigma, physical violence, torture and death if they choose not to veil themselves, and if you justify veiling without stressing the consequences for not veiling, then you are in league with the oppressors — and you are calling out for, and are complicit in, the institutionalization of the burqa.
Naomi: Let it go. Think about it. If you can get past feeling personally offended and focus on the political issues involved–and if you can get past wanting to publicly debate me on these issues because attention is good for one’s career–then I will meet with you privately to discuss the plight of Muslim women and Muslim men who are in grave danger. My position on Islamic gender apartheid and jihad has been scorned and ostracized by people who move in your circles. For your sake, I am willing to keep our meeting private, even secret.
Your people take no prisoners. And do not allow anyone to depart, even slightly, from the politically correct truth. No wisp of hair can show, no wisp of thought can be out of place.
What a lion you are Chesser. The fight is going to be a knock out brawl, but who would want it any other way. Our masters have escaped the bounds of democracy and want us proals to shutup. I say, “Chesser for General.”
Ha, ha, Phyllis you are the best.
In 1998 I attended an international Bluewater Hunter Meet in Durban. Mr. White (Carcharodon carcharias), having been protected in them waters for a few years, was in everyone’s mind. Huuuuuhhh, scary.
Name of the meet: HITITWITHAWHIP. One word. Them Afrikaners the toughest ahead of the Aussies.
And that comes to mind when I think about you.
My mind goes to Hannah Arendt. Beautiful, real, fearless, misunderstood, brilliant.
Naomi, please, don’t let go, we are having a ball, ha, ha.
Your ending is great, Phyllis. The left wants its opponents to wear ideological burkas.
Dr. Chesler, you are seeing the small-time Stalinist schleppocracy mentality of Jews who won’t let the slightest slight go. This has nothing to do with religious observance, this is the cultural heritage of the sick Polish-Jewish culture that made Jews practically eat each other alive in Poland. I know another writer who is very similar in his mentality. I will not mention names, as I do not know that he necessaerily reads your columns.
Phyllis, really- I would not meet with her even privately or in secret – she is throwing a tantrum. This is silly- she had an absurd opinion that flies in the face of fact and that is that. I read your article – You did not attack her you simply refused to romanticice thise horible attire and validate whatever silly fantasy she was haboring.
Her continuating with this rant is harming her reputation- she should laugh it off and restore what little dignity she can salvage now.
We should be nominating you for a Nobel Prize not hauling you into Central Park for a duel( which you would win anyway!
The issues of cultural relativism, Identity Politics, civil liberties and the incursion of religion into the state even OUTside Islamic nations, raise other issues that go far beyond that of religion. Therefore, the issues of women’s dress under Islam and their relationship to their husbands and fathers must not be scrutinized only in a religious context. Those of us defending women’s rights are defending much much more, given the authoritarian, almost neo-fascist quality of the statements of people like Naomi Wolf and others on the left. We need to remind ourselves of the long and tragic history of European fascism and of those who chose to ignore the fact that it had more than one guise (that of Nazism). The fascism of Stalin as well as of Mao, Pol Pot, and others too numerous to count was prolonged by the misguided support of western leftists who swallowed whole the propaganda of these false populist prophets who freely slaughtered their own people as leftists averted their gaze. Today, with islamism, we see a repeat performance, backed up by the mindless drumbeat of anti-Americanism, a violent anthem played without pause by American leftists in order to distract the public from the real violence and oppression of islamism, with the counterpoint of blind pro-Palestinian support and blind anti-Israel rabble-rousing. As the clear-eyed, clear=thinking Bernard-Henri Levy said, the left lives in hard times, unable and reluctant to identify evil because its ideological commitment has paralyzed any moral sense it might have retained. The leftist political fanaticism is a twin of islamic religious fanaticism, both of which we must continually expose and excoriate as violations of human rights and threats to the liberty of thought passed down to us by the Enlightenment. Truly, civilization is threatened not so much by terrorist bombs but by the subversion of these values and of our Constitution.
Very good Ms. Chesler, I admire and respect you for the stand you’ve taken on exposing Islam and working towards women’s rights. Ms. Wolf is clearly out of her league.
I’ve always despised the “feminist” (aka femi-nazi) because the majority seem to be mindless shrews filled with hatred and penis envy who denigrate the contributions of women through out history. Women like my Grandmother who was hard working and self-reliant yet believed that her calling was her family.
While I haven’t read your books, I am a regular reader of your blog and from what I’ve read you bring respect and dignity back to the term feminist. Women should be free to pursue career, family, or both with equal honor and respect and not be subject to derision from anyone because of their life priorities. Too many self-described feminists look down their noses at women who’ve put family first and its disgusting. Like you said, people from Ms. Wolf’s camp take no prisoners and will treat women and minorities that go “off the plantation” mercilessly.
How in the world did we get to this point? The Left is so attached to their ideology, it has BECOME them. Who are they without their self righteous agenda?
The sight of elite women like Anette Bening and Naomi Wolf waxing rhapsodic about radical Islam is just the height of arrogance. Dittos to the left who are shepharding in communism when they would rather die than give up their coop apartments, vacations in Hawaii, and IPOD’s.
I’m a therapist and my diagnosis: Delusional Disorder.
Keep fighting the good fight, Phyllis. Wolfe is obviously trying to earn some money by manufacturing a fight. She needs the publicity.
I agree with other commenters that your ending analogy about a philosophical burqa is brilliant.
In the end, the most troubling aspect to the liberal left is their willingness to continue a double standard on this issue.
It’s clear, Phyllis, that you are due some serious re-education. Isn’t the “illiberal left” actually simply fascist? Just a thought…
Two comments:
Note to Naomi: Respect your elders!
And to our wonderful Phyllis: Ruvy’s comment was interesting. Can you blog a little more about why the Jews eat their own?
Brilliant! We are all better for having you out there fighting the good fight.
Dr. Chesler’s willingness to end this conflict amicably by offering a private meeting with her adversary along with her decision not to participate in a protracted, knock-down, drag-out brawl with Ms. Wolf has my deepest respect and admiration.
Dr. Chesler is the true embodiment of a “rodeph shalom” (Hebrew for pursuer of peace). Each day we pray three times a day and at the conclusion of our prayers we take three steps backward when we intone the prayer for peace. Why, you may ask?Because the true attainment of peace requires that we put our anger and strong personal feelings aside and step back in order to compromise. Peace can never be achieved or sustained when we stubbornly hold fast to our strident views.
Ms. Wolf would do well to learn this lesson or to have Rabbi Schmidman explain it to her.
In order to bury this unpleasant matter and achieve peace and unity amongst sisters, Dr. Chesler chose to pursue the higher ground, to cling to the Torah concepts of peace that she holds so dear.
Kudos to Jaime Glazov for penning such an important response to Ms. Wolf’s erroneous and dangerous assertions. He asks the ultimate question when he says:
“Ms. Wolf, do you really fail to grasp the fact that dress codes in the Islamic world, such as the niqab and the burqa, play a crucial role in keeping the chains of gender apartheid in place, and that this is precisely why the guardians keep them in place?”
If Ms. Wolf decides to answer that question either in private or in a public forum, I would prevail upon Dr. Chesler to let this journalist be present because that would be the scoop of the century.
Phyllis, expecting Naomi Wolf and her crowd to recant their perspectives is as far fetched as expecting a massive burst of sunlight in the far north when the night is at its darkest.
Wolf, and the crowd she runs with, circle round and round looking for an area to exploit, to attack those they deem to be their enemies. Well, such tactics can be used by those they demonize.
Wolf’s crowd has become what they perceived their opponents to be, and that is the final word. For they would rather reign in hades, than serve in heaven, because they know full well who is the ultimate arbiter referred to
by those they demonize. C.S. Lewis wrote about this arbiter, Mortimer Adler did as well, and in so many words this arbiter is responsible for the existence of objective truths, and the reality that objective truths
are communicated via ethics. Instead of objective truths being mere sentimentality, as
the likes of Wolf would say.
For the likes of Wolf follow in the footsteps of Antonio Gramsci.
“No wisp of hair can show, no wisp of thought can be out of place.”
Phyllis, this is so delicious. “PC thought-burqas” I savor it.
Let Ms Wolfe speak for herself. This is from
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/index1.html. She thinks being covered is “hot”. It’s all about sex.
“I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”
When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.
She must feel, I thought, so hot.”
No, dear, she feels closer to God.
I do believe Arab men are actually sexually aroused at the sight of a totally covered woman, as a studen in Lybia once told me. He further stated that the sight of naked or bikini-clad women repulsed him. The Arab male “kick” seems to be double here: he oppresses the woman and, at the same time, he is sexually aroused by the sight of the oppressed one.
Stacy,
Can you blog a little more about why the Jews eat their own?
This is long and painful – and it involves none of the principals in this argument personally. But Jews once prospered in Poland. It was the best place in Europe for a Jew to live, hands down – until Bogdan Hmielmnicki rebelled against the Polish overlords and their Jewish agents in 1648-49. Poland went from being rich and prosperous to being poor and exposed to foreign intervention. The Jews went from being prosperous agents of the Polish nobility to persecuted parasites the Polish nobility wanted little to do with.
Things got worse and worse and worse, until there was no longer even a Poland and Jews lived under the double persecution of the Catholic Poles and the Orthodox Russians. It was this vicious culture that Jews brought with them from Eastern Europe – and the fight you see here – aside from whatever principles may be embraced – is a tiny remnant of the sharp and tough struggling nature that all Jews from Poland had to have to merely survive from Sabbath to Sabbath.
Thank you Phyllis, for standing up to this nonsense. These women have lived lives of such freedom, bought by women of our age, they don’t get it.
To see this argument rage, as it is…. gives me hope in Feminism.
I realize it may be wishful thinking. But, if we can awaken one soul from this current crop of deluded “feminists” it will have been worth the battle.
Do not back down, Dr. Chesler! Do not give in.
Our hope as a movement rests on our winning this important argument.
Ruvy, my compliments on your analysis of Bohdan Khmelnytski. It is the odious effect of Poland is Holy, and those who are not Poles are not holy. (This is one example, for it also works if you substitute Russia for Poland, or Ukraine for Poland, etc).
The keys of this blood by Malachi Martin is roughly 20 years old, and it provides good coverage as to the 3 pacts of Polishness. These go a long way in defining Poland, and anyone who arrives at a different conclusion;
well, they are targeted.
In other words, those that Khmelnytski found odious saw the “kozakness” of Khmelnytski to be odious. Put another way, the Jewishness of
the pogrom victims was held against them by those who carried out the pogroms.
Plus, I hope you don’t mind my spelling of Khmelnytski, because in my reading of history,
he had more to do with Ukrainian culture than
with Polish culture. For more than a few saw
the best of Ukrainian culture as the Hetmanate
of Kozaks, even though Kyivan Rus had a number
of things to command respect. Such as the Bogatyri, and those canonized by the Orthodox Church headquartered in Kyiv, at that time.
Yes, this is wonderful, Phyllis:
beyond Naomi Wolfe and her complaints, there is the whole issue of different ways of looking at the world, imagining our position in it, and evaluating its meaning in a deep, thick historical context–or set of contexts.
Not the silly and dangerous ahistorical post-modernist, deconstructionist or politically-correct view: but the need to keep analyzing, teasing out the particles of truth from the muck of untruth and prejudice, the search for sparks of primal energies–tikkun ha-olam.
I am sure the pendulum will swing back eventually but am not sure it will happen i n our life times.
Norman
For Naomi Wolf to go against the intelligence and reasoned argument of Jamie Glazov or Phyllis Chesler independent of one another would have been a mismatch. In the face of an intellectual butt-whipping by them both, Naomi is left to plead for an apology. Outclassed, pitiful.
Naomi is a leftist apparatchik, willing to hold out the most untenable premise for argument with smiling. As shining example of a useful idiot, she would make Lenin proud.
David@18: “I do believe Arab men are actually sexually aroused at the sight of a totally covered woman, as a studen in Lybia once told me.”
Sexist asshats of any nationality are sexually aroused at the sight of ANY female clothing that signifies that a woman has assumed her role as sexual toilet and won’t fight back against it.
Normal, sane human men of any nationality, on the other hand, are aroused at the sight of a smiling woman who’s happy to be there with him and is aroused right back.
This fight prompted me to wonder what Naomi Wolf thought about another independent woman — Sarah Palin. The result was nuttier than I expected.
“Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account — he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.
“Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know when it is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, the opposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore the rule of law.
“Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That’s not all: people’s bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says “That’s impossible.” Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens’ report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived.” — Naomi Wolf, October 2008
4. Ruvy:
Hey, hey, you must be a Yeke. A little prejudice against the Ostjuden? Ha, ha.
Jews prospering in Poland? Ummm. A little fallacy often repeated, fact, the Pale of Settlement, which included most of Poland, the majority of Jews there were poor, poor, in their Sthetls, many of whom spoke mainly Yiddish and then Polish. Jews prospered in Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz, but generalizing this to the whole of Poland is not correct. The images of these poor, orthodox, Jews from these Sthetls in Poland, bearded, caftan-wearing, un-assimilated, were used by the Nazi propaganda right away and incorporated into the film “Der Ewige Jude”.
Moreover, “Jews practically eat each other alive in Poland”, totally incorrect. The uncanny behavior of some in the Judenrats, a Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, are exceptions and not the rule, the fact, Jews helped each other in Poland.
Finally, and again, let me quote Jew Eric Hoffer, who, in his opus “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements”, page 44, wrote:
“Thus the modern Jew became the most autonomous of individuals, and inevitably, too, the most frustrated. It is not surprising, therefore, that the mass movements of modern times often found in him a ready convert. The Jews also crowded the roads leading to palliatives of frustration, such as hustling and migration. He also threw himself into a passionate effort to prove his individual worth by material achievement and creative work”.
There is the key.
IS NAOMI’S RESPONSE AKIN TO THROWING THE TOY OUT OF THE COT?
If you were to engage in a dual in Central Park. I suggest the “weapon” of choice, a hankie, a good flick may reawaken Naomi Wolf’s talents in areas of writing she does well.
Whilst I don’t have a problem with the written article at question [as anyone can write what they want] and where published Naomi, has forgotten don’t moan when you don’t get your own way. [As anyone can respond as they want.]
Naomi’s action on your response and James Glazov, reminds me of the intolerance of dissent. Mmmmmm isn’t that like a “veil” over language? I think Naomi, you have thrown yourself from the “fry pan into the fire.”
Not a surprise there. Liberal (insert name) groups are liberal first before defending their (insert name) members.
Liberal feminists groups are liberal first before they defend women’s right (cf. burqa, clitoridectomy, etc.).
Liberal human right groups are liberal first before they defend human rights (cf. CIA paparazzi, Israel, Durban, etc.).
Liberal black groups are liberal first before they defend black people (cf. Ken Gladney, Clarence Thomas, etc.).
Liberal gay groups are liberal first before they defend gays’ right (cf. Cheney, etc.).
And so on.
I taught in Afghanistan in the 1950s, when the system of purdah still controlled the lives of Afghan women and veiling – wearing the encompassing chaderi or burkah – was mandatory. The iron rules of purdah closed in upon each girl as she reached adolescence. Shrouded in the shapeless chadri, women moved through the streets like huddled shadows. In the bazaar one day, a shrouded figure plucked at my arm and identified herself: a young European-educated girl I had known, who had just turned 12 and been forced intgo the chaderi; bursting into tears, she wept, “Nobody knows me — I don’t even know myself.”
I was the first woman to teach young men from the villages, a key player in modernizing Afghan efforts to eliminate purdah; my face was shamelessly exposed, of course, and eventually my students began to ask, “If you could go to a university and be a teacher,why can’t my sister…?”
In 1959, when mandatory purdah ended in Afghanistan, a young Afghan woman wrote to me, “I have come out of a prison into the world of light. In my whole life I will not ask for more…”
When the Taleban forced purdah onto Afghan women again, they wee throwing millions into prison — without trial, for the crime of being women.
Naomi Wolf is frivolous and superficial, playing “Let’s Pretend” and clinging to wishful thinking and fantasy. She puts on a veil as a costume, then takes it off and comes home to freedom.
Wolf has no right to justify a prison she does not have to share. She should be ashamed of herself.
Rosanne Klass
Author, “Land of the High Flags: Afghanistan When the Going Was Good.”
Phyllis, I have a question for you. Where would the world be if the views of Naomi Wolf were marginalized to a greater extent than they are. In other words, less credibility given to them.
For how much of what makes life more complicated than it ought to be, is attributable to the likes of Naomi Wolf who follow in the footsteps of Antonio Gramsci?
Thanks. For really, what is up for grabs is what will the future be like. Either more of the same from those who follow Gramsci, or more latitude given to those whose perspectives work with more than Gramsci dared
work with.
Huzzah, Sister Phyllis! How I love your sharp mind. I am so glad that you took the time to enlighten Ms. Wolf who seems to be pushing for a verbal and written fight. “You hurt me. I don’t like the way you play. Mum!” So childish!
Phyllis, as a Black woman in America, I can tell you about “limits” on women. The Black community has its own ‘veiling’ issues. Hmmm. Maybe I should write about that. Black women need to be freed, as Muslim women need to be, in so many ways!
27. MiamaMan:
I believe that if you will read Ruvy’s post you will see that he delineates between the pre and post 1648 eras. Sholem Asch wrote a wonderful book about the Chmielmnicki Cossack rebellion and its aftermath called “Kidush ha-Shem”.
Hang in there Phyllis. Eventually the truth will win out over political correctness. After all, the Berlin Wall finally did come down.
to paraphrase howard cosell: down goes wolf!! down goes wolf!! its over! its all over!
Wolf is a clueless libtard who beleives she’s a feminist. She does nothing but harm to Muslim women.
Thanks, Phyllis, for your clear-headed realism and your conclusions based on objective evidence. Naomi Wolf is a cheap apparatchik and has been for years. Intelligent people who chain themselves to an ideology are truly horrifying. Free-thinking women like you scare them.
You go, Girl!
Dr. Chesler, I hope you think better of your offer to meet with Naomi Wolf. If she were a true professional — as she should be at her age — she either would have let your original post pass, or would have written a reply at her own blog — at HuffPo, or wherever — responding to your points. Instead, Wolf went on a scorched earth campaign against you, and clearly was overwhelmed with shame. You’re the psychotherapist and can interpret those behaviors better than I, but surely they do not bode well for a real conversation to take place, if you meet with her.
I would expect you to enter such an encounter with kind and generous intentions of educating her. But I also would expect that Wolf would interpret your offer as a capitulation and then interpret your mentoring as a humiliation. Really, you know in your heart your compassion and wisdom would be wasted on her. The people on the Animal Farm of the Left like Wolf who have become more equal than the others are not the ones we can reason with, or save. It is the idealists in the barn who can’t make sense of the disconnect between the supposed ideals and the rigid reality of the Left who are reachable. Save your precious time for them, or for nourishing your soul and rejuvenating your powers.
I vote both of you get it on like burr and hamilton. Let the 21st century code duello begin.
The Chesler Cat has beaten the Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“No wisp of hair can show, no wisp of thought can be out of place.” This could not be more aptly put.
Congratulations on taking the fight to the left, the liberal left, the far left, the left that does not understand how its pretensions to progressive thinking have been and are being threatened by its inablity to think itself out of the Islamic straitjacket which constrains it to no rational purpose.
Brava Phyllis! You have hit the nail on the head.
And I say this as one who is a radical feminist and who’s political opinions mostly swing left.
34. Mike2:
[27. MiamaMan:
I believe that if you will read Ruvy’s post you will see that he delineates between the pre and post 1648 eras. Sholem Asch wrote a wonderful book about the Chmielmnicki Cossack rebellion and its aftermath called “Kidush ha-Shem”.]
Yes, Mike, I read Ruvy’s post, and yes you and Ruvy are right. In between trying to raise a contemporary issue, I lost sight of the historicity of his post, and that is my mistake. My apologies to him, and to you my thanks for pointing out my error.
One minor caveat, Dr. Chesler. You mention that you were taken aback when Wolf reacted to a political disagreement as if it were a personal attack.
I was never much of a leftist but one of many reasons why I have long since not been one at all is that to the left political disagreements *are* personal attacks. The personality is inextricably emmeshed in, based upon, a political stance. The political opinion–better to say a political attitude is struck–as a means of displaying one’s personality and exhibiting one’s goodness, virtue, and moral superiority.
In a sense disagreeing with her politically is like criticizing her fashion sense–it’s something that she sees as self-expression.
Remember it was feminism that contributed the line “the personal is the political.” Of course another name for a society in which the personal is political is “totalitarian.”
I think part of the thin-skinnedness that’s showing is that … her whole feminism was just rotten to the core the whole time, and as she ages it’s becoming obvious. So she fights harder and gets more and more dippy as the years pass. I’ve seen a lot of that, especially this past year, where a lot of women’s feminism was revealed as a big radical pose that collapsed at the first sign of having to put muscle into it. Push came to shove, and they folded like card tables.
Note that I’m not saying that their complaints weren’t about legitimate things. What I’m saying is that their supposed concern for them wasn’t legitimate. They were posing. And since their posing becomes more and more obvious as they age, they have to get more and more outlandish to cover it up.
Is it unfair that women are subjected to a harder standard of aging? You bet it is. Is it unfair that — contrary to the evidence of my lying eyes — women are falsely believed to age worse than men? Of course. Is it unfair that a multi-zillion dollar industry exists that will try to brainwash us into this? It sure is.
Wolf outlined all of this brilliantly in her first book. But as she’s aging, she’s starting to realize that SHE BELIEVES ALL OF IT. She has been successfully brainwashed to think that HER crow’s feet are the end of the world. She is probably terrified of gaining one ounce. She dyes her hair. All that stuff that she said was evil — she does it, probably a lot more of it than most women. As time passes, signs will become obvious that she’s taken surgical steps, I’m convinced
I’m not talking about just putting on some makeup or a nice dress. I’m talking about full-on, panicky warfare against the mark of every passing second. She’s not just concerned about looking good — she is terrified of every birthday.
She’s finding out that it was easier for her to complain about these things before she had to go through them herself. Then, it got hard. And so she caved. So now she talks about being un-free to age and how wonderful it would be to be free of the male gaze … while also going on and on and ON about how HAWTTT and SEXXX-AY she is and how porny one scarf and an utterly unremarkable salwar kameez set maked her feel.
But she hates to age! But she wrote a book all about it! And she wants to be free of the male gaze! But hey guys, I’m still hot, don’t forget!
She catalogued the unfairness brilliantly, but standing up against it got too hard. That’s basically it. So now she’s tying herself into knots to justify how she could possibly have written such a scathing (and accurate!) indictment of the beauty myth as a young woman while at the same time having fallen into it hook, line and sinker. Only the most torturous “logic” is going to serve that purpose — and if she has to chuck a few countries full of women into the volcano to manage it, then tough sh*t for them, eh? Naomi needs to stay in denial, and for her to accomplish that, they need to stay in virtual prison.
So it’s unfair that women are judged far more harshly as we age? Hey Naomi, here’s an idea. RESIST THE MESSAGE. Fight back. Those women can’t choose not to wear a body bag. YOU CAN CHOOSE WHAT YOU WEAR. Try chinos and a cardigan sweater with a pair of loafers once in a while. There really is a halfway point between hooker-wear and a burqa, believe it or not.
Walk around outside without freaking makeup once in a while. Learn what your face actually looks like. All that stuff I stupidly thought you MEANT in your first book? TRY BELIEVING IT!!!!!!! I do. I’m not trying to say makeup is evil; I wear it sometimes when I go to classical music concerts along with nice dresses and heels. But it’s not f*cking oxygen! You won’t get stoned for wearing it OR not wearing it, and if a few hot young guys start ogling the chick behind you instead of you, the world won’t come to a g*ddamned end, okay?
And not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve seen pictures of you, and I know what I look like when I dress up, and for the vast majority of my adult life, I’ve looked better. I still do. That’s right — the resident Hottt, Sexx-ay Feministe comes in second to someone else.
If you would let yourself age without acting like a panicked trophy wife for once, you’d find out that actually, aging is pretty damn cool for women. Grey hair means that people start looking at you instead of staring at you. It means other women finally take you off their shit list for once. It means people listen to your words instead of just watching the mouth they come out of. It means men start telling you what they think instead of what they think you want to hear.
Why don’t you go back and read your first book and actually pay attention this time. Instead of WHINING that the patriarchy makes you hate your aging self, STOP HATING. Instead of surreptitiously checking out botox surgery, STOP PANICKING OVER YOUR CROW’S FEET. Leave the freaking Miss Clairol on the supermarket counter. That’s the aging with dignity that escapes you.
Or else you can do what you’re doing now — panic and run in circles because you’ve found out that your feminism is no match for your patriarchal conditioning and neeeeeed for male validation, argue yourself in knots to avoid admitting it, and if a few million women have to get smacked in the head with tire chains for showing an ankle, that’s just the price that has to be paid for you to stay in denial.
And it’s not even going to work. Because we all age. Eventually, you will be a *gasp!* old woman. COPE.
In conclusion, I’m sick and f*cking tired of finding out that all the women who inspired me to take this sh*t seriously, all the women who said and wrote that stuff, didn’t believe it half as much as I did (and I still do, so don’t expect me on the other side of ANY nonexistent “fence” any time soon). It turns out I’m a better feminist than any of you g*ddamned lying bullsh*t artists. You who outlined the beauty myth so perfectly, and then revealed yourself as having fallen for it like an undignified grasping sucker. Gloria Steinem, who talked a great game about how women will change the nature of power, and who then said that Sarah Palin wasn’t even a real woman. Ellie Smeal, who sat there behind some ignorant, stupid, unqualified brainless jackass-in-chief getting sworn in who flipped off on global f*cking television the first female candidate for president in the history of this nation, not to mention a woman who was FAR better qualified than he. I’ve watched you all turn into appeasers and collaborators one by one. I saw you rip your masks off and reveal yourselves as absolutely no better than the worst *sshole sexist b*stards you spent the past four decades pinning down.
Wolf: The Beauty Myth sucks! Gimme that Botox!
Steinem: Sexual humiliation is always wrong! Some women ask to be humiliated (as long as their name is Palin)!
Smeal: Women matter! Sucking up to men is vital, because they’re more important!
I mean, if even the women who claim to fight hardest for other women stand revealed as THIS, what the hell hope is there for US much less women in worse-off places?
BTW, just to make sure this part of the message comes across: hair dye, makeup, and nice clothing are not evil. I use or have used them all at one point or another.
But outlining the full power of the beauty myth, falling for it, and then making dangerous public statements that will be used to justify effective lifelong prison sentences for millions of women to maintain one’s denial?
Yup, that sure is.
Whoops, sorry about messing up on that whole avoid-profanity thing.
I’ll be better in the future. I tend to treat “f*ck” like “very” when I get snarked off.
#48 should be a headline post on PJM.
“Is it unfair that women are subjected to a harder standard of aging? You bet it is. Is it unfair that — contrary to the evidence of my lying eyes — women are falsely believed to age worse than men? Of course. ”
There is a simple reason why women as they age fall shorter of aesthetic standards than men:
Natural selection.
Our “aesthetic standard” is strongly coupled to our perception of the individual’s capacity for reproduction.
Whereas men retain their reproductivity well into their 70′s, women don’t.
That’s how merciless nature is.
Instead of denying this, we should work hard to UN-couple our estimation of an individual’s WORTH from his or her LOOKS.
ALL humans are equal, “ugly” or not.
Salon.com, 5/9, comes out squarely, on..Naomi Wolf’s side:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/09/05/veil_debate/index.html
One of the clever misconstructions Tracy Clark-Fory does in this piece, is to give “equal summary” of both positions Naomi Wolf supposedly had.
But, the lines quoted,
“I do not mean to dismiss the many women leaders in the Muslim world who regard veiling as a means of controlling women. Choice is everything. But Westerners should recognise that when a woman in France or Britain chooses a veil, it is not necessarily a sign of her repression.”
are only 2 or 3 out of 60+lines on Naomi’s part.
By doing this clever manipulation, Tracy can say that Naomi has made a “colossal caveat” against forced veiling.
She has not done so, and Tracy is being dishonest in portraying Naomi in this way.
Oh, arild, stuff it. Anybody with half a brain, ability to reason and deduce Islamic movement to the fundamental basics of “Al Dar-Islam” knows the end goal of Islam leads to oppression of women. The veiled women’s very presence in those western countries is what makes them “non-oppressed”. Therefore, the existence of their veil is not only a political statement but one that says “I’m an ingrate and gullible, too.”
Think I am wrong? Take a look at all the nations who have reach complete maturity or near-complete maturity of “Al Dar-Islam”. You people are arguing a mute point, fluffing hot air in under the auspices of humanity’s sake or religion dogma, for that matter. I do hope that women in islam could reach some sort of life without oppression as there will always be gullible people but truly, “It’s the religion, stupid.”
“Anybody with half a brain, ability to reason and deduce Islamic movement to the fundamental basics of “Al Dar-Islam” knows the end goal of Islam leads to oppression of women.”
Which shows that Naomi Wolf doesn’t possess even half a brain.
I just discovered your writings for the first time when I read your excellent, excellent article about the plight of veiled Arab women in response to that fool Naomi Wolf’s liberal claptrap. Thank you for being a voice of reason in the politically correct world we are stuck in. It just boggles my mind that liberals are so pro-Islam, the religion embraced by people who are not interested in any desire to “COEXIST” (like the popular liberal bumper sticker which displays a bunch of religious symbols) but who want us dead & gone. Yet they deride and ridicule any open display of Christianity, the faith upon which our Nation was founded. And don’t get me started on the conundrum of Jews who support Democrats who back the Palestinians instead of the Israelis. BTW, I am Christian & I am very pro-Israel.
There’s a line from an old Sinead Conner (there’s a blast from the past) which always comes to mind when I hear the latest liberal nonsense: “They’ve got a sorry case of the Emperor’s New Clothes.” How can otherwise intelligent people be so blind in so many areas? How does one justify admiration for truly evil tyrants like Castro & Chavez? How can an impressive, intelligent black woman like Condi Rice have held a high position in the White House for so many years yet not receive a fraction of the adulation and fawning that have greeted Michelle Obama for doing not much more than wearing expensive sneakers and baring toned arms? How can someone be so pro-abortion yet want to fight for the “rights” of a convicted murderer/rapist on death row? How does one clamor for “free healthcare for all,” when not only is not free, but the huge jump in taxes to support socialized medicine is going to further burden the already struggling middle class & small businesses? How do does one look at Nancy Pelosi and think, What a perfect person to put in a power position, yet Sarah Palin is someone to be reviled & mocked?? OK, OK, I’m getting a bit carried away. Let me just finish by telling you how much I admire your intelligence & fortitude – keep up the good fight! Thanks for letting me speak my mind – a freedom which Obama & his czars haven’t eradicated – yet.
What has always amazed me is that more people in the free West are not outraged at the basest of degradations under Islam, for both women AND men, namely that none of them can freely choose their faith. That so many are forced into Islam, with all the ramifications that entails for this life and the next, it is perhaps the only possible thing the West should fight for in the so-called Islamic world. Half the people getting all worked up over the veil regardless of which side they are on, may not have the slightest care about the real issue of freedom of conscience.
Everything has a beginning and the chaderi is no exception. Muslim men who uses religion to enforce this on Muslim women is because they are unable to coop with independent beautiful intelligent females. I never trust people who say that they are conveying upon us the will of GOD because it always matches theirs own will and desires.
The birth of the chaderi probably goes like this.
“She had beauty and intelligence…”
“Those of us defending women’s rights are defending much much more” . . . beautifully put, Lorna. To defend an imaginary “zone of hotness” draped women purportedly experience with their husbands, using it to justify mass state-oppression of women, is to reduce women to mindless sexual beings with alarming efficiency. Wolf is the product of a women’s studies mentality that find liberation only in sexual expression.
Quick reply — arild, you’re dreaming if you think men retain virility into their 70s. Sorry, but it just isn’t the case no matter how much men want to believe it. Virility drops like a rock with age. It’s the best kept secret in the Western world. But if you think that by saying it over and over you can make it true, more power to you. Let me know how that works out for you.
Islam is a social disease that manifests itself in a society. The affected society becomes incapable of functioning properly, or moving forward, and wallows in self-created violence.
Leftist multiculturalists allow political dogma to override the facts.
Leftist feminists who allow multiculturalist dogma to override real misogyny in the Muslim only shed a light on the corruptness of their ideas.
Janis:
“Quick reply — arild, you’re dreaming if you think men retain virility into their 70s. Sorry, but it just isn’t the case no matter how much men want to believe it. ”
A much-needed correction, Janis. Thank you!