I'm still digesting this (because really I'm meant to be studying right now), particularly the challenge to western feminists.
Democracy is the best chance for women. Or if that sounds too naive, too pro-western perhaps, then let's put it this way. The absence of democracy is seldom good news for women. Or, to get down to bedrock, if women can't vote for women, then they haven't got many weapons to fight with when they seek justice.My own view, which I'm ready to hear contested, is that this is the main reason why some feminists in the west have been so slow to get behind those women in the world's all too numerous tyrannies who have to risk their lives to say anything.
It's just too clear a proof that men have a natural advantage when it comes to the application of violence. When you say that women have little chance against men if it comes to a physical battle, you are conceding that there really might be an intractable difference between the genders after all.
Ideological feminists in the West were for a long time reluctant to concede this, because they preferred to believe that there was no real difference, and that all female handicaps were imposed by social stereotyping that could be reversed by argument. But this belief was really possible only in a society where the powers of argument had a preponderance over the powers of violence.
And since many western feminists are still convinced that the social stereotyping of the West is the product of fundamental flaws within liberal democracy itself, they have a tendency to believe that undemocratic societies are somehow valuable in the opposition they offer to the free countries which the feminists are so keen to characterise as not free enough.
I have to pick my words carefully here, because this is the touchiest theme I have ever tackled in these broadcasts, but I do think it's high time to say that if feminist ideologists find liberal democracy unfriendly, they might consider that the absence of liberal democracy is a lot less friendly still.
Helping to give me courage, here, finally, is that quite a lot of women are already saying it. But they tend not to be western pundits. They tend to be women out there, in the thick of a real battle not just an argument. Why their bravery doesn't shame more of our feminist pundits I hesitate to say. It certainly shames me.
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Last year the excellent Australian feminist journalist Pamela Bone finally died of cancer, but while she was still fighting it she published, in 2005, in response to what she regarded as the thunderous silence that had greeted the stand taken by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an article called "Where are the western feminists?" What Pamela Bone meant was, that she was amazed why so many of her colleagues couldn't see, or didn't want to see, that democracy was the best hope for women.
Are his theories about why western feminists haven't done more for others right? I suspect some of it is to do with a failure to get to grips with cultural relativism, perhaps a fear of the shadow of colonialism. But who knows?
I didn't realise comments broke when I upgraded the backend software a while ago, but hopefully I'll fix that next weekend. In the meantime, if you have comments (or a source for the original article, "Where are the western feminists?" by Pamela Bone, presumably published in The Age newspaper) I'd love to hear them on twitter - @antiminke.
Update - I found it, as 'The silence of the feminists', Pamela Bone, The Age, Feb 2005:
The great silence by left-leaning Western feminists, and other large parts of the left, to human rights abuses carried out in the name of Islam is, to see it as its kindest, caused by an overdeveloped sense of tolerance or cultural relativism. But it is also part of the new anti-Americanism. Look at American Christian fundamentalism, they say.Dislike of George Bush's foreign policy has led to an automatic support of those perceived to be his enemies. Paradoxically, this leaves the left defending people who hold beliefs that condone what the left has long fought against: misogyny, homophobia, capital punishment, suppression of freedom of speech. The recent reaffirmation by Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie has been met by virtual silence; as has the torture and murder in Iraq of a man who would be presumed to be one of the left's own - Hadi Salih, the international officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The hard left these days is soft on fascism, or at least Islamofascism.
The religious right in America would, if it could, wind back access to abortion and some other women's rights. But as far as I am aware, no Christian fundamentalist in the US has suggested banning women from driving cars, or travelling without their husbands' permission, or forcing them to cover their faces. Contrary to popular opinion, one is not the same as the other.
It does not take a lot of courage for people living in Western democracies to criticise aspects of their culture that need criticising (indeed, it sometimes takes more courage to defend the culture). It takes a great deal of courage for people living in totalitarian states to speak out against the injustices done in the name of their religion or culture. The problem with politely ignoring abuses of human rights because "it's their culture" is that it lets down the brave liberals and democrats and human rights defenders who are trying to change things that so badly need to change for the welfare of women and men in their own communities and in the world.
Stephen Lewis writes in the Independent: The UN has let down the world's women. Now let's put that right
I have had I have had the privilege of working for 25 years internationally, including being Canada's UN representative in the 1980s. The most lamentable and heart-breaking dimension of multilateralism I have seen is the absence of any serious focus on gender throughout the UN system....
For me, the struggle for gender equality has become the most important struggle on the planet; the continuing marginalisation of 52 per cent of the world's population is simply unacceptable. So we're now engaged in an effort to create a new international agency for women, a fascinating undertaking that I hope will engage Parliamentarians in the House of Commons and House of Lords because of the UK's extraordinary influence in the multilateral system.
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Everyone knows what's happening in these areas about women's vulnerability but there is never a consistent voice to bring it to the attention of the world community, to continue to hammer it home, to demand action from government. So the emergence and creation of a women's agency I think would be a Godsend internationally and would overcome the record of the United Nations on gender.
If you're in the UK, you can write to your MP to ask them to support an to call on the UN General Assembly to 'back the reforms that will create a UN Agency for Women with the resources, authority and mandate to unlock women's potential'.
The Guardian on 'Burlesque laid bare':
Contemporary burlesque has ceased to be subversive; it is now just another part of our own modern, sexed-up "culture of consolation". Tired of fighting for equal pay, reproductive freedom and the right to walk down a dark street without fear, tired of being judged for what we look like rather than what we do, today's young women can be forgiven for wanting to play with the small amount of power we have. But stripping of any kind can only offer passive, cringing empowerment at best. The sexual power-play of burlesque strikes no great blows for feminism. All it does is make us feel, for the space of a three-minute striptease, a little bit better about the hand we've been dealt.
This article has neatly nailed some of my issues with burlesque - not the empowering, home-made, subversive burlesque I first discovered, that took lived experience, inverted, challenged it and held it up for inspection, much as a really good drag king does - but the stone-cold unsexiness of the cold, dead eyes of Dita Von Teese.
Monbiot in the Guardian, today:
Two weeks ago a momentous event occurred: the beginning of the world's first evacuation of an entire people as a result of manmade global warming. It has been marked so far by one blog post for the Ecologist and an article in the Solomon Times*. Where is everyone?...
Their numbers might be small, but this is the event that foreshadows the likely mass displacement of people from coastal cities and low-lying regions as a result of rising sea levels. The disaster has begun, but so far hardly anyone has noticed.
Climate change is real, it's happening now - but we can still prevent it. Do your bit at home, but also hassle companies and governments to sort it out.
A useful summary from the Guardian, presumably prompted by Ghent's going vegetarian on Thursdays. (Yay Ghent). Can vegetarians save the world?
The breakthrough came in 2006 when the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published a study, Livestock's Long Shadow, showing that the livestock industry is responsible for a staggering 18% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is only the beginning of the story. In 2008, Brazil announced that in the 12 months to July it had lost 12,000 sq km (3m acres) of the Amazon rainforest, mainly to cattle ranchers and soy producers supplying European markets with animal feed. There is water scarcity in large parts of the world, yet livestock-rearing can use up to 200 times more water a kilogram (2.2lbs) of meat produced than is used in growing wheat. Given the volatile global food prices, it seems foolhardy to divert 1.2bn tonnes of fodder - including cereals - to fuel global meat consumption, which has increased by more than two and half times since 1970....
In September 2008, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a vegetarian himself, called on people to take personal responsibility for the impacts of their consumption.
"Give up meat for one day [a week] initially, and decrease it from there," he said. "In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity."
So that should knock the 'but vegetarians eat soy and soy is evil' thing on the head - most of that soy goes for animal feed.
I do tend to assume that vegetarians try to eat local and seasonal where possible - I read one piece that said simply going veggie isn't the answer - well, der. Hopefully people smart enough to change their lifestyle to try and reduce the effects of human-created climate change will also read up and check the air miles of their fruit and veg.
The perspective of a 'food historian' is useful.
Towards the end of the 18th century, two consecutive bad harvests in Europe created shortages. There was a huge public clamour for the wealthy to cut down on their meat consumption in order to leave more grain for the poor. The idea that meat was a cruel profligacy became current, and led Percy Bysshe Shelley to declare that the carnivorous rich literally monopolised land and food by taking more of it than they needed. "The use of animal flesh," he said, "directly militates with this equality of the rights of man."
Y'know, just in case you thought I had. I've just been really really busy with other things. Summer soon come, and then I'll be back to ranting away.
As reported by the BBC, etc.
Belgian city plans 'veggie' days
The Belgian city of Ghent is about to become the first in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week.Starting this week there will be a regular weekly meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councillors will opt for vegetarian meals.
Ghent means to recognise the impact of livestock on the environment.
The UN says livestock is responsible for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, hence Ghent's declaration of a weekly "veggie day".
Public officials and politicians will be the first to give up meat for a day.
I've never been to Ghent. I'm definitely going to go now, and I guess I'd better make it a long weekend so I can be there on a Thursday. And I guess it'll be easy to find something vegetarian to eat when I'm there. The Guardian reports:
Every restaurant in the city is to guarantee a vegetarian dish on the menu, with some going fully vegetarian every Thursday. From September, the city's schools are to make a meat-free meal the "default" option every Thursday, although parents can insist on meat for their children. At least one hospital wants to join in.