Make a Difference

Category: Gender (Page 7 of 7)

Ann Coulter And Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Find common ground in their concerns about Obama’s speech to the Islamic world in Cairo.

I wrote  a few days ago that the big omission from that speech was any reference to the real reasons for the foundation of the state of Israel, and any truthful relating of the history of Israel.

There were some good and brave things in Obama’s speech, and they should be recognised and honoured. But that does not mean that the speech should be immune from criticism, and in some respects it was a  major opportunity lost.

Ann Coulter responded with her typically ascerbic insight:

Obama bravely told the Cairo audience that 9/11 was a very nasty thing for Muslims to do to us, but on the other hand, they are victims of colonization.

Except we didn’t colonize them. The French and the British did. So why are Arabs flying planes into our buildings and not the Arc de Triomphe? (And gosh, haven’t the Arabs done a lot with the Middle East since the French and the British left!)

In another sharks-to-kittens comparison, Obama said, “Now let me be clear, issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam.” No, he said, “the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life.”

So on one hand, 12-year-old girls are stoned to death for the crime of being raped in Muslim countries. But on the other hand, we still don’t have enough female firefighters here in America.

Delusionally, Obama bragged about his multiculti worldview, saying, “I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal.” In Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries, women “choose” to cover their heads on pain of losing them.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali also points out that it is not simply being polite, but a massive untruth, to claim a moral equivalence between the treatment of women in Islamic societies and the roles and choices available to women in the West.

Obama, she says, should speak the truth to Islam:

That poor girl in Qatif, Saudi Arabia, who, after seven men raped her, was sentenced to flogging, had succumbed to the novel idea of flirting by mobile phone. In Saudi Arabia, every Friday, cruel and unusual punishment is perpetrated, far worse than anything John Adams saw in his time. The hands of those suspected of stealing — mostly poor, immigrant workers — are amputated.

The more one is dark-skinned in Saudi Arabia, the bleaker his circumstances, not to mention hers. For in Saudi Arabia, black is still considered to be inferior. Men and women convicted of adultery, apostasy, treason and other “offences” are beheaded. Thousands of women are rotting in Saudi jails, waiting to be flogged, or are flogged daily for acts such as mingling with men, improper attire, fornication and virtual relationships on the internet and mobile phones.

Promotion of literacy for girls, which the President wants to help pursue, is a noble cause. But, unless sharia laws are repealed, more girls will find themselves in flogging pens rather than rising up the career ladder.

Women Are Cool, And Betterer Than Men

From Quadrant Online:

From the editorial of Island magazine, Autumn 2009 edition:

Ruth Sunderland discusses the gender issues she feels are being ignored in the endless analysis of our current economic crisis. She writes: ‘This mess was made by men’ and goes on to argue that women should be vitally involved in the development of solutions. In this issue of Island I have invited activists and radical thinkers, Susan Hawthorne and Ariel Salleh, to engage in a conversation about this very dilemma. It seems timely for us to listen seriously to those who think outside the square, especially when it is clearly inside-the-square thinking which has precipitated these disasters.

Extracts from “Thinking Beyond, Thinking Deep” by Susan Hawthorne and Ariel Salleh in Island magazine, Autumn 2009 (not available online):

… in a time of global warming it’s crucial to spell out the links between ecology and women, North and South.

Australian commitments under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism may cause Indonesian women to lose their communal livelihood as forests are turned into externally financed carbon sinks. This kind of policy is neocolonial and regressive.

The European study on men’s consumption choices causing more global warming than women’s, reminds me of very fine US research by Pat Hynes in which she found that when men spend, they buy luxuries – cigarettes, alcohol, petrol, pornography and women’s bodies for their individual use. Whereas when women spend they buy survival goods – food, shelter, medicines and schooling for themselves, their children and others who depend on them, including male partners.

This, of course, is why women’s personal items, fashion, perfume, make up etc, typically occupy seven times more space in shopping malls and retail centres than men’s personal items. And women don’t drink, smoke or drive.

Gluing Breasts To Men

And tying penises to women, doesn’t make a man a woman, nor a woman a man.

Andrew Bolt has made some rightly alarmed comments about an Australian court that pretends to help a confused 17 year old girl by ruling she is entitled to have her breasts cut off.

This article from the Sydney Morning Herald tells the story of two people who, confused about their gender as teens, demanded gender re-assignment surgery. Both regretted that decision deeply, and came to feel lasting anger towards the people who allowed their mutilation to proceed.

Teenagers have not yet fully developed their identity, their sense of responsibility, their ability to assess risk and long term consequences. That is why we have laws prohibiting them from drinking, from having sex, from gambling. These laws protect them from abuse, from outcomes and harm which they may not have the ability to foresee.

Yet a court can say that those same teenagers have the right to decide about irreversible mutilating surgery which leaves them neither male nor female.

The Desire for a Sex Change, an article by Dr Richard Fitzgibbons, draws on medical and psychiatric research and catholic theology to explain why gender re-assignment surgery has not been and cannot be a satisfactory solution to what is a psychological problem.

Life Is Hard

From memory, those are the opening words of M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Travelled.

It is true, of course. And the more you try to achieve, the truer it seems to be.

Rambling for a minute. When I was a teenager I remember reading a story about a woman in the US who had sued her local men’s baseball team. They had discriminated against her by refusing to let her join. She won. It was America, after all.

After playing two games, she was struck and slightly injured by a fast pitch. She promptly sued the club again, this time for failing to take account of the fact that she was a woman, and therefore had slower reaction times. Even at the age of fourteen, this struck me as the perfect example of the women’s movement in practice.

Feminists want to be treated like men, but when they are treated like men, they complain bitterly.

Men are competitive. They constantly test each other. And it is not hard to understand why. If you are going out hunting mammoth, or fighting the Viet Cong, or trying to win a critical contract for your firm, you need to know that the person next to you can take the strain. This is the purpose of ‘hazing.’

Testing gives you confidence in your own strength, and that of your fellows. While hazing can sometimes  trip over into bullying, it is not a bad thing in itself. I would not be confident on a battlefield with a buddy who burst into tears if someone laughed at the ladders in her stockings, or who complained about breaking a nail while on basic training.

Women (again generalising) test each other in different ways. When they choose to place themselves in a predominantly male environment, the prestigious world of garbage collection, for example, and are treated by men as those men treat one another, women often seem to interpret this as being picked on, belittled, put down. In fact, it should be taken as a compliment. The male workers are assuming that she can be one of them, that she can work on an equal basis.

This interpretation of equal treatment as unfair can be particularly evident in the workplace.

Again, to ramble for a minute, I worked in a bookshop where some books were stacked on high shelves. To reach them for customers or to restock, staff had to stand on a small step ladder. The female staff refused to do this, because people would be able to see their knickers. The same applied to changing lightbulbs, dusting, etc.

When I suggested that they knew this was part of the job, and that they should therefore dress appropriately, either wearing pants or longer skirts, I was berated for assuming the right to tell them what to wear.

Feminists tell women they do not, cannot succeed, because they face constant unfair discrimination. In fact, women who can do the job, and are willing to make the sacrifices (physical discomfort, repeated rejection, long hours, etc) that are needed, can do, and do do, as well as men.

Efforts to to achieve equality in employment at executive levels for women and minority groups by forcing employers to hire less qualified or able women, blacks, or whoever, only make the situation worse. People hired under such schemes will be the object of annoyance and frustration, and the knowledge that they have not genuinely earned their jobs reinforces rather than mitigates negative stereotypes.

It is not liberating or empowering for women to be told that they will never succeed because they face insurmountable obstacles of injustice and discrimination. The truth is, as Penny Vincenzi points out in this article, it is not an imaginary glass ceiling that holds women back from the top positions, it is not working as hard, not working as long, or simply not being good at their jobs.

Life is not fair. Work is not fair. Just stop whining and get on with it, and you will do as well as anyone with your commitment and abilities. That is the liberating truth.

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