For years now, newly arrived refugees have been contacting me. They write to tell me that they’ve lost nearly everybody they once knew. Their whole world is gone now. Some whisper over the phone. Others write long letters. They ask me how I’ve managed.
I am talking about ideological refugees from feminism, leftism, gay liberation, socialism, and progressivism.
Yesterday, I received a letter from someone in Berkeley. She tells me that, earlier this week, she was “overjoyed to see the feisty Tikvah students on the steps of Sproul Plaza giving out Israeli flags and t-shirts and dancing in circles,” and how afterwards, some “went to confront the theatre of the absurd, enacting the checkpoints.” Referring to the feminist movement in Berkeley, she asks: “Could you ever have believed it? From anti-patriarchy to pro-Hamas in a few decades?” Her letter continues:
That you exist and are doing this work means a great deal to me. So far, I have found ONE new friend who comes from the same Jewish lesbian feminist cultural lineage of the 1970s. Neither of us has many friends from the old days we can comfortably talk to anymore, although I still try. I thought I had the smartest bunch of women assembled for a lifetime but I was wrong.
Last night a friend of forty years came to visit me. She is especially dear to me because she is among a handful of people from that era with whom I can still talk. At best, the rest are frozen in amber, as they perpetually relive their own, long-ago moment in the sun. They have not evolved in history, they are relics; or, they have kept doing the same thing over and over again, thinking the same thoughts, focusing on the same issues. At worse, they have become Stalinized and “Palestinianized.” In either case, no honest conversation between us is possible. In 2005, five years ago (!), I wrote about this in The Death of Feminism; I doubt that many feminists read it.
Please understand: I am a sentimental and sociable woman and for such reasons, I might have continued to talk to the useful idiots who routinely demonize Israel and America, romanticize jihad and the Islamic Veil, and slander freedom fighters as “fascist Islamophobes.” Luckily, they condemned me. After years of kissing up, they shunned me, attacked my work, sullied my reputation—or they simply “disappeared” that work from their collective memories. They did not invite me to speak at conferences or at memorial services for feminists whom I’d once loved and with whom I’d worked for years. These conferences and funerals were all being filmed for the archives — and my fine feminist comrades needed to create a “revisionist” history, one in which no Zionists, no American patriots, no defenders of Western civilization could appear.
The power of anti-Zionism is a great mystery. Not only do feminists and gays hurt their own cause by embracing Islamists to fight Israel, but so do Palestinians. The only way for them to achieve independence is with Israel, not against it. The Arab world rejected an independent state in 1947, in 1967 (with the Three No’s of Khartoum), in 2001 (at Taba), in 2005 (by starting to send rockets from Gaza instead of recognizing that it was an independent mini-state), and is doing so today by refusing to accept the fact that every time one loses a war, one’s opportunities diminish. The biggest mystery of all is Iran, which, as I always say, does not like Arabs, hates Sunnis, and has no tangible quarrel with Israel.
Stuck in time is not a good place to be. Just wanted to let you know you are not alone. You really do rock Ms. Chesler.
This is such a moving piece. I bless you for it. May the Source of All Blessing give you strength, and courage, company in your struggle and comfort, and may your flame burn ever brighter.
I know these feelings so well. To be abandoned by friends because I had grown up politically. So painful. Still painful. Having to reinvent my self, my work, my life because of what I knew, what I had seen that others did not, could not, yet.
I believe we have to fight on both fronts, to keep ourselves open to the possibility that they will eventually hear what we are saying, or at least accept that we have our own authentic vision, which is no longer theirs. At the same time we must fight to defeat the totalitarian wave which they in their blindness are still serving.
I know where you’re coming from, Sister.
After years of kissing up, they shunned me, attacked my work, sullied my reputation—or they simply “disappeared” that work from their collective memories. They did not invite me to speak at conferences or at memorial services for feminists whom I’d once loved and with whom I’d worked for years. These conferences and funerals were all being filmed for the archives — and my fine feminist comrades needed to create a “revisionist” history, one in which no Zionists, no American patriots, no defenders of Western civilization could appear.
This is cruel and it goes far beyond holding different viewpoints. Now, most of time, other issues are considered more important than women’s equality. I believe women are diverse and other isues have to be taken into consideration: race, class, sexual orientation, disability. But I won’t include religion and culture. For me this is where the problem starts. While the first list does not pose problem, religion and culture do. Respecting other cultures and religions is the root cause of the major problem in feminist groups these days.
I am sorry for Phyllis. I have read some of her work before the “separation” and I can tell that more feminist than this you can’t find. Considering support of the palestinian cause a litmus test for feminist credential is, at best, misplaced.
I suspect in this case harsh words and acts happened and sweet memories can become bitter.
I have experienced, to a much lesser extent, similar things.
And yet, I believe some feminists are doing great things. The worst for me are the cultural relativists from academia and radical queers.
In my opinion these two groups are really the worst you can imagine.
Others are a bit better and usually people with whom you can speak even if you hold different views: feminists working to end violence against women, to secure reproductive rights, some mainstream gay/lesbian groups, women who do field work in developing countries, environmental feminists (but not Starhawk) and some others.
Secular feminists and muslim and ex-muslim feminists are for me the best.
Phyllis,
Such people are reminiscent of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Their egos will not let them advance beyond their earliest views, beyond the time when they “mattered”. Essentially they never grow up: growing up is growing out of the ego and into the true self. But in order for this to happen a part of us must die, and many do not want to experience this painful process.
George Jochnowitz 1:
“The biggest mystery of all is Iran, which, as I always say, does not like Arabs, hates Sunnis, and has no tangible quarrel with Israel.”
Believe it or not Ahmedinejad went all the way back to Persia’s glory days circa the 4th cen. BC to justify this – again a problem of ego, of being stuck in the past. (In the same way Saddam Hussein declared that he was the “son of Nebuchadnezzar” on every brick he used to rebuild Babylon; he believed he was going to recreate the Chaldean Empire of old.) Also, they (the leadership) hate America, we support Israel, and there’s the old saw; “the friend of my enemy is my enemy.”
What has always confused me is why leftists support regimes such as this. The only answer I can come up with is that they hate Western Civilization as vehemently and have as rigid and unbending (and bloodthirsty) an ideology as the Muslims; in these two areas they are soul mates; and apparently that trumps their vast and otherwise irreconcilable differences.
In a deeper sense, Phyllis, you haven’t “changed” but stayed true to yourself—always gutsy, courageous, out there, choosing the edgy issues and the silences because that’s where it’s at. The faux-feminists haven’t changed either; their feminist facade wore thin revealing who was there all along.
Unfortunately, these multicultural faux-feminists who throw women under the cultural and religious bus both claim the feminist mantle and are mistaken as such by many, giving feminism a bad name and hitching it to the wrong wagon. Feminism cannot be hitched to any wagon, all of which were created by men for men and have collectively taken us all and our planet to the edge of extinction. Real feminism and the global liberation of women is the only engine of transformation with a prayer of success.
You know, Phyliss, I decided to have a birthday gathering this year, and many of the names from earlier years aren’t on my short list. I am perfectly okay with that. I am thrilled with the many new feminist warriors emerging from the War on Hillary because they see the reality that the faux-feminists always refused to see. They don’t cave to the epithets that keep the faux-feminists in thrall to patriarchy.
Phyllis dear,
It was a blessing to be shunned. To have stayed inside, encircled by toxic thinking would have driven us to madness.
Dear Dr. Chessler,
Thanks so much for your column. I read it every day. It’s pretty bizarre what happened to women, and the troubling silence regarding the muslim colonization of America and the repercussions for women when that population hits critical mass and has a real influence as a voting bloc. You are the only person it seems who has voiced concern. The other high profile women in the media are quite mum about this, and along with the multi cultural academic feminists are asleep at the wheel. Thanks for doing what you do.
These people are delusional reality-denying ideologues, they’ve gone off the deep end long ago, like members of some crank religious cult, no longer rational or capable of critical thinking or analysis. They inhabit an alternate reality, far removed from the real world, a world where only rhetoric is real. These people really deserve to live in some Islamic sh*thole for a few years, not as tourists or the ”useful idiots” guests of Islamic totalitarians, but as members of any non-Islamic minority.
“Could you ever have believed it? From anti-patriarchy to pro-Hamas in a few decades?”
The obvious is always a surprise. The transition from one stupid, false hatred (of patriarchy) to another (of Jews) is a natural evolution. At least there really are Jews. Feminist ‘patriarchy’ is wholly delusional.
I’m glad to find there is a feminist who finally admits she is not human by not including her rights in those of humans. Are “women’s rights” above or below “animal rights” in your value system?
Grew up a little, didn’t you Phillys?
Think of all the damage you did when you were a young brat.
Logos: “What has always confused me is why leftists support regimes such as this.” Me too. Or why they support the Muslims at all. Here are three theories I’ve come up with:
1. They reflexively like whatever the right hates.
2. They believe in some kind of unity among the causes. That is, they believe that whatever helps one of their causes could not possibly hurt any of the others and that whoever supports one of their causes must support all of the others. So they promote Muslims, not realizing that they don’t support feminism and gay liberation, and that this support will hurt women and gays. (Likewise, they want gas to go to $5/gallon, not realizing this will hurt the poor.)
3. They believe that whoever is oppressed could not possibly be an oppressor. Accordingly, since Muslims have been oppressed by the West, they believe that Muslims could not possibly be oppressors of women and gays. (Likewise, they believe that blacks cannot be racists, not that they are seldom racists or that they should be excused if they are racists, but that they literally cannot be racists.)
Take your pick. Or invent your own.
The problem with acknowledging a real threat such as Islamic jihad is that you then have to summon up the courage to do something about it. Most leftists lack the courage to join the fight so they convince themselves that the threat is not real.
My old dad was an ACLU attorney in the 60s and 70s, even won a free speech appeal contra Dept. of Defense. By the time the 1990s rolled in, however, when I was in Operation Rescue, he had come to reject the ACLU. He helped me defeat the pro-abortion ACLU types that were trying to slap me with a R.I.C.O. suit. He passed away in 2001 and though he was still “liberal” he had thorough contempt for the grandstanding ACLU.
And I was a union activist in the 80s, did my first picketing with UAW and supported Solidarnosc when they were still under guns of KGB et al.
So, Ms. Chesler, yes, it does happen. Times change, we change, and if things go well, we navigate safely toward that which is true. Good.
I think that #10 Terry makes an important point. These feminists are ideologues; their world, the only world they inhabit, consists entirely of rhetoric and fictional images.
They reject the real world, with its warts and frailties, and prefer the utopian pristine fog of an ideology removed from reality. Any utopian ideology.
Therefore, they turn their back on the substantive feminist gains in the reality of the western world – again, because this reality is never as pristine as a rhetorical utopia. They have found that in the real world, women with power can be as abusive as men, that ‘reproductive rights’ are not as simple as a simple choice, that women with power can enslave and exploit other women, men and children.
This doesn’t fit their fictional world of If Only Women were In Power then peace and perfection would exist on Earth. So they flee back to rhetoric, in this case, the romantic Lawrence-of-Arabia rhetoric of Islamism, which somehow, they see as setting women on a pedestal rather than as enslaved and subservient.
They ignorantly now claim that the abuses carried out by modern women against women, men, children, are not caused by those free women but by ‘western culture’. By capitalism. Not by ‘women’ who are, in their fictional world, always perfect, good and noble.
The fact that women are, like men, frail psychological beings, can’t be accepted by these romantic ideologues. They prefer fiction to fact.
When I was a young girl, I read the feminist literature. I embraced the idea of feminist power. But I also fell in love and had children, some of whom were male. I realized that children cannot be pegged as one or the other but fall along a range of expectations that resemble a roll of the dice over a flip of the coin. Having young boys, raising them, was an education into the male psyche. Men can and should be both strong and tender. But the current feminism seeks to take away strength that men and women need to replace it with a smarmy mix of attitude and ideology. So the folks who are “cutting edge” are stuck parroting long disproven views because they know that is the only way they get attention. I would have so much more respect for the current crop of feminists if they would get out of the classroom and go to any of a number of patriarchal based nations that impose cruel and inhumane beliefs upon women and children. Go to Somolia, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan and make the case for treating women as equals. But sadly, that’s a hard job, and the advocates of modern feminism are much more comfortable in their ivory towers and at faculty mixers. By the way, I teach, so I know the lack of depth their convictions hold.
Neocomradess Ph. Chesler inspires several trite and stale moralistic observations, Dr. Bones, which I shall now undertake to bore you with:
(1) If you believe what she says, the little lady has awarded herself the Order of the Affix, First Class. Unlike most of her now mob, she is, personally and individually, NEO-.
Wally Wombschool and Cindy from Wasilla, by contrast, are only entired to wear the olive drab ribbon of the Second Class, because before the kiddies’ hormones urged them to their present political sentimentalities, they (the neokiddies, I mean, though the hormones too, naturally) did not exist. [1]
(2) Water remains thinner than blood, however, and still stubbornly refuses to run up hill. She who is a neodingbat today is not likely to have been much better than an Original Intent™ dingbat to begin with. For if the mere process of disloyalty/repentance/innovation/revolution/reconsideration [2] had of itself any tendency towards improvement, obviously those who have changed their coats not one time but a hundred would be the best of the best, guruettes and gurus indeed! But that is absurd . . . Q. E. D.
(3) The neocomradess is a little murky about her abandoned ideobuddies, who are somehow “frozen in amber … not evolved in history … relics” yet simultaneously “have become Stalinized and ‘Palestinianized’.” Even Fourth International or Stern Gang amber would have to thaw briefly to pull off that particular stunt. [3] But it is unreasonable to expect rigid Cartesian clarity from hormone-basers. Indeed their ability to hate their Party’s enemies for six dozen mutually contradictory reasons at once is part of their charm, _nicht wahr_?
Furthermore, Party ’n’ Ideology have accumulated such an awfully long Consolidated Enemies’ List [4] that a neocomrade would have to be an exceptionally anal-retentive Cartesian to avoid _communicatio idiomatum_ [http://tinyurl.com/yf56xnb] altogether, — _i.e._, occasionally revilin’ Neoënemy S.345 in terms that properly apply rather to Neoënemy D.014. One isolated neodingbat is plainly not up to scrupulous accuracy, and even the great collectivities of P&I dossier-watchers [like http://tinyurl.com/yhdtuap can be faulted at times.
(4) Like a great many other neojumblies, once Ph. Chesler had marked an epoch in _Weltgeschichte_ by decidin’ to run away to sea, she chose to travel with Western Sieve Lines, Inc., that preëminently respectable transportation firm — the most neorespectable at Wingnut City, at least. Of both amber and Stalinists, one may very truly say “the fate of Western civilization is far from their minds.” In addition to possessin’ a Christojudæan name unique amongst persons of notoriety, Lord Murdoch of Foxcuckooland owns _The Weekly Standard_ lock, stock, and barrel, and bigmanages the _Wall Street Jingo_. Whose neovanity pays the bills of _The New Criterion_ I do not know, but the neocriteria mongered by that lesser Party-’n’-Ideology organ are of secondary and specialized importance in any case, are they not?
QUITE LONG, HARDLY CLEAR, EDITED DOWN.
Left wing “feminism” was never about women but using women as agents of cultural/political destruction, ie – marxist foot soldiers. Many of us “got it” decades ago and understood the threat and the perversion. Feminism was just one head of the hydra and many of the useful idiots never understood the CONTEMPT the left had for women in general, as they do for minorities and others used to deconstruct Western culture. The left selected certain groups to be used as AGENTS OF THEIR OWN SUICIDE. They must have thought them to be very stupid and ignorant indeed. They have been proven wise in their selection. The Moslem population is just another useful tool to destroy the West. That’s is why the left defends and supports them so vigorously. Marxism devours everything in its path and its favored groups are the pathogens.
TO: SIOUX LADY, #12
Your post is confusing. Are you equating the natural rights of every human with the “rights” of animals? I shot an immature wild hog last week. I butchered it and ate it. I had no motivation except to kill for sport and enjoy a feast. Am I guilty, in your mind, of murder? Cannabalism? For that is surely what I would be guilty of had I done the same thing to a 10 year old human. I hope I did not misinterpret your post, as my intent is not to insult you.
Logos: What has always confused me is why leftists support regimes such as this.”
JFP: Me too. Or why they support the Muslims at all.
Here are three theories I’ve come up with:
1. They reflexively like whatever the right hates.
This strikes me as the #1 reason – the “near enemy” vs. “far enemy” distinction. They may not care for the misogyny of Islamic supremacism, but they also still see it as too distant to be a serious threat, so they are only too happy to ignore or even show solidarity with them so they can focus on what they see as the “near enemy” – straight white Christian male America. (See also Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who is still far more focused on Christian anti-Semitism than on the Muslim variety, again simply because the former is much closer at hand.)
Perhaps if both the right and the left stopped believing that they alone hold the “truth”, that they are “grown up”, that they “get it” we might make some progress as men, women and human beings. It is the arrogance of the true believers on both sides that is the enemy.
#17 ETAB.
I have to say that I have a lot of experience with ideologues, people who live in an imaginary world, where rhetoric is disconnnected from reality. I lived most of my life in an Arab/Muslim country & I can tell you that a great many Muslims live in a delusional state of denial, they cannot see the reality around them, they spout meaningless rhetoric about how good Islam is even when the evidence is all around them, the ignorance, oppression, injustice, poverty, they fool themselves with words, by blaming others (Jews, Americans, Westerners, imperialists, colonialism, depending on the enemy of the day), excuses, lies & fabrications, anything but accepting responsibility & always repeating that Islam is the solution when the reality is that Islam is the problem.
I recently made aliyah to Israel & guess what? Israeli leftists are no different, they live in never-neverland, empty rhetoric from some delusional alternate reality, they ignore (conveniently) all contradictory evidence, trust in unsupported assumptions, wishful thinking, and that endless mantra, ”peace, peace, peace” & like victims of some strange variant of Stockholm Syndrome, blame Israel in any & all circumstances, devoid of common sense & rational analysis, holding Israel to a standard of perfection that exists nowhere on Earth, these utopian totalitarians wallow in self-righteousness & a phoney moral superiority which is nothing but nauseating hypocrisy.
While the correct definition of “neo-con” is something like “a Jew who supported the Iraq invasion,” my favorite definition is “a liberal who recognizes that liberals are a greater threat to liberalism than conservatives.”
By that standard, I am a neo-con and proud of it.
Indeed.
And no God /Goddess “failed” (yes, I understand what you mean, I just want to take away the words from the totalitarians’ field and give them back to their true meaning).
Only the totalitarians ideologists failed, by showing their true colors.
God Who Is Infinite Love wants us free.
Hallelujah !
Shine on !
Studying philosophy all my life has taught me one great lesson: that political and social ideologies are always provisional and never completely true. Hence the 1960′s femimisn may have some truth but will pass just as similar fads have throughout history.
I am surprised that these feminists, who are stuck in the past, have not “reverted” to Islam and learnt Arabic;)
Psychologially-disturbed people seem to go from one fad to another.
Phyllis,
I will tell you the story of the day the feminist movement lost me. I was a mother with an infant, in law school, and headed for divorce. I was married to a man who had decided that it was just fine from him to live off me: he wasn’t interested in providing for his family, although he had the means to do it. I knew I couldn’t do it all, an that I should not have to do so. I left him, and never once had a moment of regret for leaving.
So I was working, and going to school, and I found myself in a doctor’s office one day, with a copy of Ms. magazine. I used to read Ms. every month, and this one had a cover article about child custody, so I settled in to read about the huge current effort to put in place a nation-wide set of state-adopted rules for child custody jurisdiction and maintenance. I’d learned all about it in my family law class, and thought it was great that Ms. would spread the word.
The article was nothing but a long, woeful diatribe about how helpless wives are when it comes to supporting their children. There was not one word about the really powerful new tools available to them.
This was a time when I needed all the strength, courage, fortitude and optimism that I could muster. I got rid of all my negative influences, and one of them was the Women’s Movement, which was still preoccupied with telling me how bad I have it, instead of giving me and others like me the real tools people of good will (men were still doing all the legislative voting at the time) had worked so hard to give us.
I never read Ms. magazine again.
I built a good life, and after that period of intense concentration and work, I turned my considerable energies to other causes.
The real feminists aren’t gone: they are just devoting their energies to more worthy organizations.
Thank you, and God bless you.
This is a joke site: http://www.dhmo.org. This is not: http://www.quitpalestine.org/
It’s a group of gays and lesbians organized as gays and lesbians who wholeheartedly support the Arabs against Israel. I think the term is “severe cognitive dissonance.” I’m not a psychologist but my guess is that these people are either hate-filled or in absolute denial. There are openly gay officers in the IDF, at least one gay member of the Knesset, and there’s a Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv every year.
I wonder how far a gay pride parade would get in Gaza or Cairo.
I was never much of a leftist and I stopped being one altogether in part because I realized that the authoritarianism to which leftism almost inevitably descends is not an anomaly, it’s inherent in the ideology. A fair amount of hard left ideology is power worship, especially the power to push other people around.
You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, I have heard. But where is the omelet? All I see are millions of broken eggshells.
In another context Lezlek Kolakowski said what I can only echo: “If that is left then hell, no, I am not left and do not wish to be.”
I’ve seen quite a few windbags in the PJM comments since I first stumbled on the site. Some few of these in the category of world class blowhards. However none have blown near as hard as JHM just did. You should set up a turbine and turn toward it when you do that. Two or three more like you and we could power the grid.
you need to explain this — what did you mean by this?
“They are also connected, for reasons of sentimentality and funding, to the less saintly, more “mean girl” kind of feminists.”
To pelaut, who wrote, “Grew up a little, didn’t you Phillys? Think of all the damage you did when you were a young brat.”
Have you actually read any of Phyllis’ work? Have you ever actually heard her speak? The answer to both cannot be anything other than a resounding “NO” or you would not have written anything so asinine. P.S. — You spelled her name wrong, too, idiot!
Dr. Chessler, this one is the best yet. I thank God for you. You are a voice of sanity in an insane world. Just recently I have felt that I can no longer speak to certain people on the left. God forbid they find out you don’t agree with them!
#32 Woodsman, I thought you were being very unkind to someone when I read your post, but upon reading JHM’s post, I changed my mind.
Oh dear, I spelled Dr. Chesler’s name wrong too. Forgive me!
Woodsman – Have to concur on the JHM poster. Far too obtuse and unintelligible to even be mildly entertaining like other garden variety trolls and cranks who cast their droppings here from time to time.
First let me say to #25 Terry in Eilat, I have lived here in Israel for almost thirty years and I thought I had seen the Left at it’s worst in America post Viet Nam until I lived here for awhile. I say this with all the love of Israel I have in my heart but in all my years I have never seen anyone more delusional, more ideologically driven, or more obtuse and in denial of reality than an Israeli Jewish Leftist. They are more Palestinian than the Palestinians, more anti Israel than the worst anti Semites, and what is worse, are usually among the best educated and wealthiest elites our nation has ever produced. Go figure!
And this goes for the feminazis of our own generation, these women in many cases are extremely well educated, largely well to do or better, and have very likely enjoyed all the really wonderful advantages that the industrialized West has to shower on those lucky enough to receive them. And yet so many of these feminazis seem to despise everything and everyone around them, and they inflict a special bitterness on anyone who dares to disagree with them. Indeed they are totally uncompromising and absolutely vicious in that regard. I used to agree with George Bernard Shaw when he posited that anyone who isn’t a Socialist at age twenty has no heart, but anyone who is still a Socialist at age fifty has no brain. I see now that ‘ol George was living in what was still a normal society which demanded that individuals take responsibility for themselves. Because nowadays, the feminazis start out young but unlike Shaw’s Socialists, they only get worse as they get older. In our day and age, there is only one bete noir, only one really monstrous entity, and that is the White Male and not just for the feminazis. Whether Black or Oriental, Hindu or Moslem, Hispanic or Polynesian, the White Male is the oppressor and the excuse for everyone else’s bad behavior.
And Heaven forbid you Phyllis or me Ken Besig should ever dare to disagree with this “fact,” at best we will be considered misguided and at worst enemies of humanity.
Phyllis, it looks like you have been placed in the latter category by your erstwhile comrades.
12 Sioux Lady
Not all feminists believe in hierarchies of rights. Whose rights are more important is not my way of viewing systemic change. I as a feminist believe the issues and their solutions are all connected. What is good for women is good for men is good for children is good for animals is good for the earth.
If children are not abused and bullied, there will be less terror in the world toward women. So evolution goes blurring, blending, merging, evolving and changing ….
The issues are connected in the way all things are.
The way the patriarchy domesticated animals as beasts of burden and exploitation is what happened to women when the males similarly “domesticated” women. As women are still domesticated in the Muslim and fundamentalist world. All abuse comes from greed, all solutions come from equalizing rights and opportunities such as women becoming arms trained in all women police units with the power to enforce domestic violence laws and guard DV shelters.
Animal rights, women’s rights, earth right, native species rights – the rising of one benefits all reducing abuse and pain on earth while increasing compassion.
Years ago, when Andrew Sullivan was still pro-Israel, he said that an organization named Queers for Palestine was analogous to being called “Turkeys for Thanksgiving.”
Feminism is all about extending women’s power and privileges in our matriarchal society, at the expense of the few men’s rights that remain.
Frozen in Amber…so aptly put.
As a refugee from Left-wing lesbian circles and the pro-Democrat gay/lesbian community in general, I can empathize with those mixed feelings of loss and exhilaration.
I think there are a lot more of us out there, women who have finally had their fill of the socialistic slosh masquerading as compassionate and progressive values.
And happy upcoming 70th birthday.
Something to remember is that grievances make great assets because they are an unchangeable past where you are forever in the right.
What is also worth remembering is that a vision of how things ought be can also provide a wonderful sense of moral perfection. The minute you start defending something real, such moral perfection is beyond you. Being so wrapped up in your vision splendid is a form of moral narcissism, where the convenience of your moral perfection becomes your reality principle.
But, just as it is rare for real narcissists to change (since they lack the motivation and awkward truths are blocked from consideration) so it is for such moral narcissists.
Leftists are more often than not misogynists (their REAL feelings come out about women every chance they can get as long as the female object of their hatred is not a fellow leftist).
For me, to embrace my femininity is to enjoy being a wife, homemaker, and mother to the fullest capacity my abilities allow; something the leftists eschew and routinely treat as ‘backwards’.
JHM (etc.) 19:
LSD? Or Friskys?
Moderator:
“QUITE LONG, HARDLY CLEAR,”
Yes, but it was fun, the way spinning around in circles was fun in childhood. You could have given us a few more “drops”. I was only just beginning to feel woozy.
Good article, Dr Chesler.
A perceptive take on this that I have heard is the strong element of adolescence in Leftist behaviour. There is much striking of rebellious attitudes that have no real integrity, but which appear brave and defiant. Ever since James Dean overreacted ridiculously to a spat with his father in ‘Rebel Without a Cause’, the left including many feminists have been seduced into sulky teenage tantrums.
I’m another recovering liberal, and can testify to the colossal pressure to conform in this silliness. In a way I can still see the attraction. Why take the world seriously with all the difficulty and suffering that entails, when you can freeload and claim it’s all the fault of the grownups?
Dear Phyllis,
Consider yourself blessed. By staying true to your feminist core and because of your unique perspective you have done so much more for women who suffer in oppressive cultures (many of whom are immigrating here as seen by the recent spate of honor murders). Women who haven’t grown up from “bra burning and “man bashing” to see the greater world of female suffering are a sorry lot indeed. I became of fan of yours several years ago when researching the oppression of gays and women in Muslim cultures. I devoured “Death of Feminism” and other books you have written – they spoke directly to what I was feeling. I couldn’t figure out why the feminists here (who are blessed with every advantage imaginable) weren’t screaming bloody murder for their sisters and brothers abroad. Alas, it seems that this issue didn’t fit with the orthodox constraints dictated by the elites – even if it contradicted their primary pursuit of female equality and gay rights.
You, Dear Phyllis, can look back on your 70 years with the pride of knowing you have been consistent in everything you stand for even if it resulted in the loss of friendship. I can guarantee the loss is theirs.
…have not evolved in history, they are relics; or, they have kept doing the same thing over and over again, thinking the same thoughts, focusing on the same issues.
A word in something Michelle Malkin wrote…a great word…
Gynosaur
After years of kissing up, they shunned me, attacked my work, sullied my reputation—or they simply “disappeared” that work from their collective memories…my fine feminist comrades needed to create a “revisionist” history, one in which no Zionists, no American patriots, no defenders of Western civilization could appear.
Maybe the important thing for them was holding minor, rock star notoriety in the olden days & they need to try to keep that structure in tact artificially. And/or they’re stuck, simply unable to evolve & mature the body of belief that made them famous, or infamous
I appreciate your candor and honest writing.
tehag 11:
Amen. Thank you for this. Well put.
the left has become increasingly bizarre, the women are scary stupid. they seem not to know or understand it is only democracy and the west that has released them. i suppose they just like supporting fascists and despots, war mongers and overlords to assuage their disappointment in learning how hard it is to have a job, for real.
Unless a feminist movement is established in the Islamic world it is not likely that it will have a reformation. It is going in the opposite direction, spiraling down into an increasingly delusional fundamentalism.
Excuse me, Dave R, but either someone “holds” the truth, or there is no truth — at all. Please be logical.
The “trick” is knowing what is truth, and so you have figures such as Herod who echos your conclusion: What is truth? as if to say there is none. When in fact: I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Ultimate reality resides in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Looking elsewhere for it is a fool’s errand.
Cordially, darcy
You are an inspiration and a strong voice when I am dispirited, Ms. Chesler. You have more friends than you could ever know. Thank you.
I am interested in Phyllis’s category of the refugee — the person without a country. For years I have said, half-jokingly, “When I have a problem that needs the help of a woman friend, I never go to a ‘feminist’.”
But this is of course to bifurcate my own relation to feminism. My ability to function as a whole person in professional life (as opposed to a truncated woman or a faux man) is owed in good part to the labors of feminists who changed the culture. I did not just profit from the labors of other women. At Stony Brook, SUNY, I taught a pioneering course, “Philosophic Foundations of Feminism” (in those early days, the audience filled an amphitheatre), and wrote one of the earliest articles to appear in a philosophical journal (“Feminism Without Contradictions,” in The Monist, Jan. 1973).
The liberty of women is a cause very dear to me. So of course I noticed when public feminists seemed to avert their gaze from real women. The old solidarity of women was based on a common sense of living lives partly concealed, talking to each other in code, but needing each other’s counsel: psychological, cosmetic, practical — the woman’s version of street smarts. We might disappear to each other, into our separate, fragile life arrangements, from which signals and signs of life were no longer sent — but that we were still there, trying to cope, was understood. Sometimes we would surface again later, when life grew kinder to our friendships.
When feminism came out as a public movement, this solidarity didn’t come out with it. Woman in the abstract was championed. Individual women, in their real vulnerability, weren’t. There was a dearth of feminine sympathy that was simply extraordinary to me.
Examples rush to mind — too many to tell. The one that most dramatized this phenomenon to me in a public way came in the wake of NBC’s interview with Juanita Broaddrick, and her credible account of a brutal rape at the hands (and teeth) of Bill Clinton when he was A.G. in Arkansas. I believed Juanita, as her battle-toughened interviewer, Lisa Meyers, evidently also did. So it seemed to me obvious that he (Clinton) could not be permitted to sit in the Oval Office even one more day! I wrote an Op Ed and sent it to every newspaper I could think of. No takers. I spoke to Juanita (an intelligent, candid and grounded woman) and, with her blessing, drew up a petition urging persons of good will to refrain from inviting this President to events not directly connected to his office — unless and until he could offer a credible alibi. I sent the petition to almost every feminist I knew or could think of at the time. I invited those who objected to my petition to draw up their own improved one. It was the uniformity that public feminists showed in turning their backs that told me how little they cared about real women.
Phyllis is outstanding in her determination to mark out the terrain where people who care about the liberty and the destiny of real women can rediscover their country.
Abigail L. Rosenthal
Professor of Philosophy Emerita
Brooklyn College of The City University of New York
I see the far-left and the far-right as extremely deluded human beings. The far-left chooses to believe that every problem in the world is caused by Jews, the same belief as al qaeda. I remember that only a few years ago when a terrible earthquake created havoc and chaos in Pakistan, the Pakistani president blamed the earthquake on Zionists…..it’s a sin that we Zionists haven’t threatened more earthquakes upon such zombie leaders.
The far-right chooses to believe the host of reasons given for our invasion of Iraq, even though not one of those reasons could stand up or even sit up in the light of day and ditto for Afghanistan.
It is sad that so many Americans, too afraid of standing up for what they believe and even more afraid of standing up for what they don’t believe, have allowed themselves to become such cowardly comformists.
I am with you, Phyllis.
Another terrific piece, Ms. Chesler. I had always enjoyed reading your pieces but didn’t know about your horrible experience in Afghanistan until just now. I’m sure a great book could be written compiling the many ghastly experiences of Western women who have been foolish enough to marry Muslim men and move to Islamic countries, promptly losing all their human rights.
About the cause of the bizarre feminist/fundamentalist alliance: besides the adolescent and reflexive anti-right elements of it, there is also a strong element of fashion or mindless trend-following. It isn’t enough for leftists to cite a specific grievance and then take satisfaction in that grievance (like female suffrage) being satisfied: there must – always – be a new grievance following it. In other words, even if society gives leftists what they want, because of the inherent nature of left-wing politics, there is a perpetual need for new causes and new grievances to whine over. To some extent this might be just because of advocacy organizations’ bureaucratic need to justify their existence. E.g., if women have higher educational achievement than men – and they do – why do the advocacy groups seeking higher education opportunities for women still exist?
The problem the left faces is that inevitably, some of these new causes are more morally dubious than the old ones, so in advocating them, while the left satisfies its own need to keep the great grievance machine rolling, it often loses the general public (and general elections). There are many examples of this. For example, the case for affirmative action is much weaker than the case for equal voting rights. The case for divorce laws weighted against males is much weaker than the case for opening most careers to women. The case for anti-pollution laws so extreme that the cost of enforcing the laws far outweighs the health benefits is much weaker than the case for basic pollution controls. And the case for actively supporting Islamic extremists against the US and Israel is far weaker (to put it mildly) than the case for, say, preventing Bosnian Muslims from being slaughtered by Serbs.
I believe that deep down, many leftists know this, just as they know that this self-generated extremism is actually destructive to their own cause. But their need to conform to the group, their need to follow the “cause du jour”, whatever that might be (and who decides this, anyway? Why does our media complain about Palestinians and not about, say, Chinese dissidents?), is so great that it overwhelms these practical considerations.
@19. JHM dba ‘Neocomradologist’: Before you can be witty, my friend, you must first be comprehensible.
@55. Shoshana Rubin: “The far-right chooses to believe the host of reasons given for our invasion of Iraq, even though not one of those reasons could stand up or even sit up in the light of day and ditto for Afghanistan.”
Of all the reasons given for removing Saddam Hussein, exactly one of them (that Iraq was concealing WMD) has been shown to be doubtful, and even this one has been not been definitively disproved (it remains a possibility that WMD were transported to Syria, or that stockpiles were concealed so well that they still have not been found, and may never be, now that Saddam is dead). As for the many other reasons, I am not aware of any new findings suggesting that Saddam was NOT a fascist megalomaniac, that he did NOT invade Iran and Kuwait, that he did NOT systematically violate the 1991 cease-fire agreement, that he did NOT attempt genocide against the Kurdish people, that he did NOT rape and torture his own people, that he did NOT flagrantly violate every human right worth naming. Are you aware of such findings? Please enlighten me.
And “ditto for Afghanistan”: So, presumably you believe that the Taliban did NOT protect Osama bin Laden as he conspired, successfully, to destroy the World Trade Center. IMHO, anyone who accepts this proposition is in a poor position to be calling other people “extremely deluded”.
but then again if you spoke out against out against the racism
and “pro-life” women hatred in the right wing you’d be shunned by your new friends just as fast.
johnyaya wrote “@19. JHM dba ‘Neocomradologist’: Before you can be witty, my friend, you must first be comprehensible.”
Ah, you truly hit the nail squarely on the head.
But maybe you have to be rational before you can be comprehensible…just an idea…
I read your Article and some of the Comments.
Phyllis Chesler’s Luck is that she went through an unlucky Experience, which opened you Eyes on Reality – the Afghanistan’s one. I think Truth-lovers always get to know It – often through (unexpected) Eyes-opening Experiences.
Women’s Rights are obviously Human Rights, which original Feminists asked to be extended to Females too (and not just to Males).
So called Patriarchal System means a Pyramid, where at the Top there are Males, and all around are Others and Things, meant to serve those at the Top.
This is unfair and unjust – and this has to be fought, that Males like it or not.
EDITED DOWN FOR LENGTH AND COMPREHENSIBILITY
The Lack of Solidarity among Women keep them from achieving their Human Rights – and “helps” them remaining the Pyramid’s Slaves. Once Men and Women will achieve full (Human) Recognition, then Gods and Goddesses will have won – ’till then, the Animal Part of Humanity will win.
Phillis Chesler is a Feminist, a Universal Human Rights Fighter, a brave Heart, a courageous Person, a shining Being, and I do not undervalue the huge Effort(s) she must do (have been doing) to still stand here Today fighting for Justice. Thanks to her (and to every rare One like her), and thank God (AND the Goddess) for her/them .
Welcome to freedom, welcome to the truth! Those in lock-step will never be free. Their “truth” is only mirrors and distortions. Calling veiled women in Islams bondage “freedom” is like calling Hitler’s death camps “health spas”.
To Johnayaya, #57.
Let’s go through the list:
“Of all the reasons given for removing Saddam Hussein, exactly one of them (that Iraq was concealing WMD) has been shown to be doubtful, and even this one has been not been definitively disproved (it remains a possibility that WMD were transported to Syria, or that stockpiles were concealed so well that they still have not been found, and may never be,”
That was the reason we invaded Iraq, because of the “Iraqi mushroom clouds looming on our horizon,” GWBush stated many times.
“now that Saddam is dead). As for the many other reasons, I am not aware of any new findings suggesting that Saddam was NOT a fascist megalomaniac, that he did NOT invade Iran and Kuwait, that he did NOT systematically violate the 1991 cease-fire agreement, that he did NOT attempt genocide against the Kurdish people, that he did NOT rape and torture his own people, that he did NOT flagrantly violate every human right worth naming. Are you aware of such findings? Please enlighten me.”
Saddam was a ruthless egomaniac as are the ruthless ‘leaders’ of all 22 ME nations and many others in Africa, Indonesia, Gaza and in some South American nations. As we are a nation that preaches small govt and wars of self-defense, does that mean we should invade every nation with horrible leaders?
With your kind of thinking and the big govt policies of Bush/Obama, no wonder we’re in a recession/depression. I suppose you think by having our troops in Yemen and Pakistan too, that is good for our nation!
The past and present policies of both parties in the ME are stupid, lazy and thoughtless. Do you think Reagan was smart to give nukes to Pakistan? Do you think our past administrations were smart to support and arm Iraq and Iran to the teeth?
Do you have a clue as to the reason why those so-called mass graves of Iraqis by Hussein were never embalmed by the US? Without embalming these so-called mass graves, how do we know whether the bodies were 10, 50 or 2000 years old? We don’t.
And of course, no Afghanis or Iraqis were responsible for 911 but according to the Bush/Obama policies, it is okay to invade both nations and murder thousands and thousands if not millions of innocent women, men and children; that this makes us safe.
As I said, you choose to be extremely deluded.
57. johnyaya, well said. Except that WMD HAS been found since just about the begining but the LSM refused to report it and even the govmnt down played it for who knows what reason. Sarin, mustard gas, yellow cake uranium and a host of weapons leaking unknown substances. Yes, I suspect that much was moved out of the country.
“They are in the trenches, drowning in female blood, and they do not look up to see the jihadists coming” People who deny the need to fight islamofacsim ‘over there’ do not realize that it is right here in America. Muslims here are getting bolder in carrying out sharia punishment on those (women) that violate it. The problem is that not only do they enforce their islamic/cultural laws on their own but they want to impose it on non-muslims as well. I suppose few people notice this probably because the average American doesn’t have much contact with Muslims who don’t hide their contempt for us non-muslim American women who brazenly go about our business, faces uncovered. I challenge those who don’t regularly find themselves in areas of their towns or cities where muslims congregate to go hang out and see what it is like. I live in a small town with a muslim population of about 500. Impossible not to notice, impossible to avoid. I’ve lived among other cultures (muslim included) where I was the minority and have never felt so uncomfortable as I do now right here in my own home town.
As for the feminist issues of this article, I have to say I have never called myself a feminist. I never could agree with the idea that ‘man’ bashing was going to elevate women’s status. So many such feminists (and others) back when I was a teen and even today still think that in order for one group to achieve 1st class status in society, that whoever they percieved as holding the 1st class spot had to step down. The idea of equality was highjacked by superiority. There is a feeling out there now that men who support ‘feminism’ are somehow wimps. If there are such men, it’s a case of poor self esteem where they let themselves be emasculated by the very type of feminists who betray the goddess we are talking about here. In my experience the most supportive men in my life are strong, secure, self confident men. My own father is such a man. He taught me self confidence, to believe I could do and be what ever I wanted. He already believed I was 1st class. How could I join those ‘mean girls’ that wanted him to be 2nd class? Clearly there are still ‘mean girl’ feminists out there and I suspect they find it easier to fight against those things that won’t result in their being beheaded for it.
Phyllis – I had my road to damascus moment during 1980 presidential election: In a two week span I saw Jerry Brown and met Ted Kennedy. Upon leaving Brown’s speech I felt sure that I had just listen to someone who had fried their brains with drugs. After meeting Ted Kennedy I was sure that I had shook the hand of the most single evil person in the world. Like you, I was despondent. My world view was shattered. It actually took me into Reagan’s second term before I rejected the democract party. The last democrat I voted for was Mark White (Texas gov – No pass no play got him my vote).
We have a little bitterness in the comments. It is not surprising and I deserve it myself as much as you do. For I to enabled the left by though and deed. Now I don’t believe that everyone commenting here was out on the streets doing the hard, hard work of grassroot recruiting and party building. Face it, we have the people in government that we have because the good, honest people of this country have not taken the time to get engaged in ensuring that we have better – we have given the mechanism of control of the government to the leftists without even a thought.
Hopefully we can use these transformative events, Phyllis’, mine, yours, to help our fellow citizen’s hearts and minds be redeemed from the bitter nothingness of the left. Hopefully a fraction will contact their local party chairs and offer a hand to help do the grunt work, it is not glamorous but it has to be done if we are going to save our national soul. But most of all you and I will do that grunt work to help party building.
And please remember two things: The Ronaldo Magnus dictum that you shall not speak ill of another republican; and, No litmus tests, the perfect candidate does not exist.
To Eva, thanks for helping me make my point even though I’m sure that wasn’t your intention.
The Bush/Obama ME policies were supposed to make us safer from Ishmael at home and according to your comment, we’re neither safer nor secure at home.
Shoshana Rubin 62:
“according to the Bush/Obama policies, it is okay to invade both nations and murder thousands and thousands if not millions of innocent women, men and children; that this makes us safe.”
Afghanistan and Iraq both have populations of about 30 million; so we have perhaps killed as much as 6 1/2 percent (again approximate: “millions” (plural) means at least 2 million, 2 million is about 6/12 percent of 30 million) of their civilian (“innocent”) populations? Yes – one of us is most definitely delusional.
@#62- Shoshanna-
While I’m somewhat sympathetic to your argument that perhaps we’ve wasted human and monetary resources in trying to “fix” the problem of third world despots, I can’t let stand your use of utterly false citations of events that never happened:
1. To classify Saddam as simply an “egomaniac” similar to other tinpot dictators on other continents is breathtaking in its moral equivalence and willful ignorance. He was in a special class reserved for sterlings like Stalin or Pol Pot. BTW, I’d love to have you name his South American equivalent.
2. Please cite directly where George Bush warned of “mushroom clouds” over the U.S., lest we fail to intervene in Iraq. He never said that and you know it.
3. When precisely and how did President Reagan “give nukes to Pakistan?”
4. When and how exactly did we “support and arm Iraq to the teeth” during Saddam’s reign?
5.Your question over the existence of Saddam’s mass graves is again willful dishonesty. Much has been documented before we ousted Saddam. Con Coughlin’s book on that regime spells out a lot.
Whether or not you think it was in our interests to effect regime change in Iraq, you torpedo your own arguments by attempting to sugar-coat the horrific nature of the evil that had gripped that country for thirty years.
To Mister H, that’s ok if you don’t agree with my arguments. I know that each one of my points is absolutely true and this is an opinion board so I don’t travel to this board with links but even if I did which I have in the past, citing many State Dept briefs and notes as well as those in the Intelligence bureaus and Pres Bush’s own speeches, I’ve found that very few of the cowardly comformists to a certain view will change their minds.
The insistence on thinking it was our job to oust Hussein and not the Saudi and Iranian regimes which are much worse than Hussein ever was, and it’s perfectly okay to murder children, men and women who had nothing to do with 911 reflects a dishonorable, immoral attitude at best.
We were not invited to any of these ME Islamic nations so why are native people who murder invaders terrorists? Would we be terrorists if foreigners invaded any of our 50 states? Of course not!
But if you’re truly interested in facts and truth instead of political machinations and cowardly manipulations that obviously work so well, do your own research.
63. Sorry, but I think you over-estimate Afghan Innocent Women and Children’s Situation, living under Taliban Rule.
And aren’t there Suicide-bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq, too, among Islamic Fellows only (Sunnis blowing up Shias or the other Way ’round)?
About Saddam, here an Article (alleged Relations between Islamic Terrorism, Russia and The USA): http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35568
I agree that Wars are horrible – but appearently there Sometimes is the Need to fight; better if there wasn’t.
As a Woman I do not want to submit to Islam’s Patriarchal Supremacist Totalitarian Dictatorship [whose Heaven is a Brothel where young Virgins are sexually (ab)used] – and I would like free/responsible and intelligent Men refusing it, too.
Shoshana, well I only helped your point partly, but your welcome. Neither administration’s policies have done enough. I don’t agree that our actions in Afghanistan don’t make us safer. I think they do; safer, just not safe. which is better than completly vulnerable like we were pre 9/11.
Naturally liberals won’t have the guts to do anything about muslim violence and intimidation here. Naturally if anyone asks the local cops to get muslims, who tend to hang out in groups around here, to ‘move along. No loitering here” they will be accused of profiling.
#68: Perhaps you don’t understand the difference between an argument and accusations. I wrote that your argument (“Is it our responsibility to oust bloody dictators?”) is a worthy one. What I found fault with is your series of false accusations (urban myths of the Daily Kos variety) which you of course failed to corroborate with any specifics. As the saying goes, you are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.
25. Terry, Eilat – Israel and and Ben in Israel – Kudos to you both. I live in a mostly Muslim nation and it is the same here. It seems that most local Muslims have no world view other than Israel and the “mistaken” America are the causes of world-wide turmoil. Many American ex-pats over here seem to be frozen in a post-60′s illusion of Western evils, as well. (Unfortunately many of these Americans work for the State Dept.)
All I can say is from the greatest humanitarian who ever lived, “Peace be to you,” and “love your neighbor.”
I found the “feminist” response to Sarah Palin hilariously illuminating.
After all, whatever her opinions, who could exemplify “feminism” more than she?
Alas, it wasn’t the right sort….
On the other hand, the “feminists” demonstrated that they could be as venal, shrill and irrational as any male of the species—perhaps more so—so maybe that’s considered a victory for “feminism”?….
@62. Shoshana Rubin:
“Of all the reasons given for removing Saddam Hussein, exactly one of them (that Iraq was concealing WMD) has been shown to be doubtful, and even this one has been not been definitively disproved (it remains a possibility that WMD were transported to Syria, or that stockpiles were concealed so well that they still have not been found, and may never be,”
>That was the reason we invaded Iraq, because of the “Iraqi mushroom clouds looming on our horizon,” GWBush stated many times.
I don’t think Bush used those words. You are probably thinking of Condi Rice saying “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/condoleezz164877.html However, even if Bush had said that, it would have been true. In 2003, it was clear that the sanctions policy for containing Saddam was failing (Iraq’s neighbors were flagrantly cheating on the sanctions). If the sanctions policy had fallen apart completely, there would have been nothing at all to prevent Saddam from restarting his WMD programs. Given Saddam’s obsession with military strength, and the undisputed fact that he had consistently sought WMD for the entire history of his regime, I believe that had he been left in power, that is precisely what would have happened. With the left-over expertise from the al-Tuwaitha site, and cooperation from Pakistan, North Korea or others, I don’t think it would have taken long. If Bush had listened to the left, Saddam might still be in power and might have already tested his first nuke. The very thought of this makes me shudder. Personally, I sleep better at night knowing that Saddam is dead and we are reading about free elections in Iraq right now instead of nuclear tests. Of course, you are free to disagree.
“now that Saddam is dead). As for the many other reasons, I am not aware of any new findings suggesting that Saddam was NOT a fascist megalomaniac, that he did NOT invade Iran and Kuwait, that he did NOT systematically violate the 1991 cease-fire agreement, that he did NOT attempt genocide against the Kurdish people, that he did NOT rape and torture his own people, that he did NOT flagrantly violate every human right worth naming. Are you aware of such findings? Please enlighten me.”
>Saddam was a ruthless egomaniac as are the ruthless ‘leaders’ of all 22 ME nations and many others in Africa, Indonesia, Gaza and in some South American nations.
Basically agree, although I’m not sure I would include Indonesia in this list. What’s your problem with Yudhoyono, a winner of two free and fair elections?
>As we are a nation that preaches small govt and wars of self-defense,
preaches small government: not often enough. And “small” militaries are great only if they never have to fight.
wars of self-defense: You are insinuating, I take it, that Gulf War II was not such a war. This raises a lot of issues. Briefly, it’s a matter of definition. Considering past Iraqi rhetoric, and the fact that Saddam initiated the confrontation with the West in 1991 by invading Kuwait, arguably Gulf War II does qualify. Even if it does not, the Saddam Hussein regime was a rogue state that deliberately exploited the international rules, which assume good will, to consolidate and expand Saddam’s “republic of fear”. How are the good to deal with the wicked? I would argue, not by naively pretending that a clearly wicked international actor is “good”, when everyone knows that he isn’t, and waiting patiently for him to develop his schemes. Such a policy will not lead to good results by anyone’s standards, including yours. E.g., World War II.
>does that mean we should invade every nation with horrible leaders?
No. But it does mean that when we do so, we do not need to beat ourselves up about it.
>With your kind of thinking and the big govt policies of Bush/Obama, no wonder we’re in a recession/depression.
EDITED DOWN, WAAAAAAY TOO LONG, NOT CERTAIN WHERE THIS IS GOING
To the editor:
You have my compassion. Having to read through some of these screeds posing as comments must be tortuous.
I think it was Christina Hoff Sommers who posited a distinction between the female supremacist and misandrist gender feminists and the equity feminists who are within the mainstream of American concepts about freedom and liberty (just as there’s a difference between race pimps like Jesse Jackson and those like MLK jr who framed the civil rights movement as calling America to affirm its best values).
77. It must be added that sometimes displaying “equity feminism” might be easier than displaying “supremacist and misandrist one”,
and that not always is the easier way the best way.
When it comes to matters like human rights of women in our past/present international (human) context,
maybe are uneasier ways the best ways.
HellenoChrisitan 78:
What on earth does “easier” have to do with anything?! Women should be equal under the law – that’s it. There’s nothing else to “gain”. (And it was gained with suffrage.) It’s wrong to divide the human race in half and place one sex above the other.
How does specifying our “human context” clarify things? What other “context” is there? Are we now to fight for the rights of female chimpanzees?
If the Bible were understood correctly there would be no need of Feminism, or even suffrage; and Feminism is a bankrupt ideology which has hanged itself with its own rope.
“The God That Failed” or “The Godless Who Failed”?
I suggest that we get rid of the leftist-moth-eaten word “feminist” and change it to “Concerned Women”. We need a fresh start in this area.
As a man, I’m concerned about the abuse of women around the world too. Under the old marxist era, I couldn’t be a “feminist”, only a male-leach on the movement.
In 1963, I was a participant in one of the first protests against Soviet anti-semitism. We were concerned with all those who were suffering under communism and its anti-semitism – men, women, children.
Today, I’m concerned about all who suffer under radical Islam – men, women, children, homosexuals, and others. I can’t be a “feminist” since I’m a guy. I can be a “Concerned male”, a human being, but there really is no name for me. OK. I’ll settle for “mensch” among friends, but the world is a bigger place and needs a better name for all who are concerned about the oppression of women.
Any other suggestions?
I am easily confused, I have been confused for ever over women who seem to worship those who would do them harm. It has always struck me as rather odd that women stand up and defend muslims and their religion. The muslims certainly have no respect for women, or for that matter most everybody else.
I lived through to 50′s and 60′s so I stayed confused as that era was big on psychotic and irrational.
I also found Jews that hated Jews and loved their oppressors, to be totally irrational. It seemed as though they wanted someone to wipe them out, begged for it. Israel was at least an example of Jews prepared to take on the world in the name of their right to exist, though I gather their are a bunch of Jew hating Jews even there.
Such an irrational and confusing world.
Rush had a great comment on who are commonly called feminists, environmentalists, gay liberationists, etc. – they are leftists first and foremost – feminism, environmentalism, gay liberationism, etc. are just their cover, their sheep’s clothing to hide their real attitudes. It appears the author is one of the few who can be considered a true feminist – truly interested in the welfare of women, not simply a man-hater or other leftist. And she has woken up to who her former “fellow travelers” really are.
I believe that had he been left in power, that is precisely what would have happened. With the left-over expertise from the al-Tuwaitha site, and cooperation from Pakistan, North Korea or others, I don’t think it would have taken long. If Bush had listened to the left, Saddam might still be in power and might have already tested his first nuke.
I came of age in the late 60′s. I never understood the feminists; I was always a tomboy and did what I wanted. I still don’t understand them. People that perceive themselves as victims are to be avoided at all costs. I do mostly enjoy your columns, though. Sorry you have sh**** friends, glad you figured it out.
Thats a nice article! I’m so pleased you thought to publish it.