Feminism Friday: that “why are Western feminists such cowards about atrocities in other countries?” lie

Shorter Pamela Bone: feminists are such cowardly hypocrites for being against FGM and rape in war whenever any culture does it instead of just specially castigating Islamic societies where such brutalities occur.

I posted over at Hoyden About Town a few days ago with more background to Bone’s article about how she bravely spoiled a literary evening by insisting on asking the keynote speaker, Professor Germaine Greer, a question about Darfur that had nothing to do with literature. I also noted how real live feminists are actually supporting and financing the efforts of grassroots organisations in cultures with traditionally oppressive traditions, to reform those traditions without having to reject the entirety of their culture, exactly along the lines of how abolitionists gradually persuaded Western societies that the Biblical verses traditionally used to support slavery could be set aside as incompatible with the larger tradition and without having to reject Christianity entirely.

Persuading people that rejecting harmful cultural traditions doesn’t mean having to reject cherished positive cultural traditions is the only way that has ever and will ever work when proposing great social change. (Well, that or bloody conquest which totally eradicates the traditional cultural hierarchy, but given the civilian casualty rate and forceful property acquisition habit in bloody conquest, how is that really going to help oppressed women rather than harming them more?)

Columnists such as Bone ignore the genocides and rapes of Rwanda and the Congo as they point to Darfur as some sort of particularly Islamic excess of brutality, just as they point to genital cutting in Egypt and ignore it in Burkina Faso. There is absolutely no need to especially denounce Islam qua Islam for practises which shared by many groups and which are oppressive to women no matter what religious/tribal/cultural justification is made for them.

Note: title changed as per Helen’s suggestion in comments.

Feminism Friday: SotBO (Statements of the bleedin’ obvious)

Rational people often assume that some opinions and judgements are so obviously part of their worldview that they really don’t need to be said. Unfortunately, some maliciously disruptive people take delight in assuming that if something has not been clearly stated then they are safe in assuming the worst of others, even when such assumptions are logically perverse and deliberately inflammatory.

It seems a transparently clear expectation that if a person already knows that one supports issues A and C and opposes issues X and Z, then they ought to conclude that one is likely to also oppose issue Y and also support issue B. Indeed, it is a textbook example of logical inference.

However, some folks, for ideological reasons, are so invested in performing a gloating gotcha dance that they ignore all the precepts of logical inference and triumphantly announce that they have caught one out, oh yes indeed, in not jumping through the denunciation hoops with sufficient spangles and spotlights that they couldn’t possibly miss it. Silly feminists, we forgot to drumroll the denunciations.

So, just for the benefit of ideologues (and you know who you are) here is a non-exhaustive list of things that feminists denounce/decry/despise: