Well the latest citizen journalism of the blogosphere has come out of Egypt where according to witnesses “hundreds of men” took to the streets of downtown Cairo harassing, groping, sexually assaulting young women in large numbers. The police force did nothing to quell the violent assaults and have now denied any of it happened, as has the Government which seems to think this sort of thing being broadcasted worldwide is bad for business. The blogosphere has taken it up however, and as of now the only mainstream news source to have reported on it is the BBC.
An eye witness account has been translated and posted here.
While yesterday the attacks were just random, young men now formed human trains that approached a girl quickly and surrounded her completely and began groping parts of her body.
[…]
We were surprised to find a girl in her early twenties who had fainted on the ground, surrounded by a large number of youth who were groping parts of her body and taking off her clothes.I could not understand, or rather could not absorb, what was happening…the girl got up quickly and tried to run in any direction until she saw a Syrian restaurant called “el Madyafa” or something, and ran into it. The young men surrounded the restaurant and did not leave till one of them shouted, “There’s another girl in front of Miami!
Everyone ran towards Talaat Harb Street again. I found there a girl encircled by hundreds of men who were trying to grope her and rip off her clothes.
Contrary to what al-Hilali’s little “uncovered meat” and “cat” scenario might suggest, there was no discrimination between women who donned Islamic dress and those that didn’t.
The crowd did not disperse until the appearance of two girls wearing the Khaliji ebaya (loose outer garment worn by women from the Gulf) walking alone down the street. The young men surrounded them completely and a large number of them pressed against the girls and removed the veils they were wearing, and attempted to remove their ebayas, while 10 and 11 year old boys slipped inside the ebayas from beneath.
Photos of the attacks can be found here. They aren’t extremely clear but nonetheless the element of mob rule is clearly depicted.
Sandmonkey has a more complete account of the events. He attributes what happened as being sanctioned by the police and a complicit press. Apparently al-Jazeera was present and had footage of the assaults but “were forbidden to air it at the request of the egyptian authorities”. But the cat was let out of the bag (gawd, bad turn of phrase considering Hilali-gate) when as “part of a fluffy segment on Mona Al Shazly show talking about the Ramadan TV shows, … the girl’s first response to the question was: “What Television shows do you want to discuss, when egyptian girls are assaulted on the streets of Cairo while the police watched and did nothing?”
The interesting part of the story, for me, is not that it happened but that police, media and government are complicit in a cover-up so as not to tarnish Egypt’s reputation, it seems.
The actions of such a large swathe of young men seems to be a symptom of larger societal sexual repression and sexist oppression. Some have implied causation between a decrease in rapes in western societies and an increase in porn, and particularly internet porn consumption. That link, in my opinion, is ridiculous. I’ll get to that later as it’s a bit of a tangent but- if we look at the claim that rape rates have decreased by 85 per cent in the past three decades, wouldn’t it be logical to draw the conclusion that this is due to the social upheavals caused by both the women’s liberation and the sexual liberation movements. I’m not implying that rapists are all just sexually frustrated, as we know rape is a violent crime. But in a society where sexual repression and sexist oppression are intertwined and women are thought of as seductresses and satans then it’s hard to ignore that in the societies where sex is thought of as ‘dirty’, ’sinful’ etc there is some horrible consequences. Sons are given free reign whilst daughters are controlled and their bodies thought of as either ‘pieces of meat’ or precious jewels, women’s bodies are mystified and forbidden and property to only their fathers and husbands, something to be conquered.
As Egyptian blogger Forsoothsayer says:
I’m also of the opinion, of course, that if pre-marital sex were feasible, forget socially permitted, there would be less pent-up frustration. But then, who creates the laws that curtail privacy rights? Who are the people that condemn women who have extra-marital sex? Men. Men who then turn around and place the blame for their choices on women. People who have religious reasons for abstention from pre-marital sex will abstain regardless, but the law has no place in the bedrooms of the nation (Pierre Trudeau), and a hymen is not the same as a character reference.
Having said that, attitudes still prevail in western societies, to a lesser extent, that women are somehow responsible for rape and daughters are the ones being taught still that they must take responsibility to not get themselves raped. It’s drilled into our heads from birth. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, why aren’t sons taught with the same veracity that they musn’t ever rape someone, that they must respect women, and mistreating women is not a ‘manly’ thing to do.
Designated tangent area: Rape and porn
Now to get back to the topic of porn and decreases in rape statistics as cause and effect, the link is flimsy. James McConvill suggests that internet pornography ‘is probably one of the main factors contributing to a notable reduction in violent crime over the last decade.’
It’s important that he says that it has contributed to a reduction in the ‘last decade’ because as we know that is how long the internet has been around. However he then goes on to point out that the decrease has actually been occurring over “the past 25 years”. The basis for McConvill’s argument is a paper put out by Professor Anthony D’amato called Porn Up, Rape Down. McConvill ingloriously states that heck, porn should just be available in schools and public libraries since it’s so good for society:
Rather than parents and parliamentarians thinking about ways to “clean feed†households so that they become internet porn-free zones, maybe they should take the opposite approach and make internet pornography freely available not only in homes, but also in schools and public libraries. But why stop there?
If we are ditching regulation, perhaps it is time to seriously explore whether content ratings on pornographic films, magazines and other materials should also be removed. There should only be regulation if the benefits exceed the costs. Professor D’amato makes the important point in his paper that there is no evidence establishing a causal connection between a student’s exposure to pornography and any tendency to commit “anti-social actsâ€. So, if the only effect of consuming pornography is positive rather than negative, regulation has no place and should go away.
“Regulation…should just go away”. There’s an argument if ever I heard one. Never mind that the recent Werribee gang attack smacked of porn influences. Never mind that a lot of the porn is incredibly violent on the net and almost always misogynistic. This is what those teenagers are learning- how to mistreat women.
McConvill also states that the same correlation between decreased crime rates and porn has occurred in Australia too:
According to the Australian Crime and Safety Survey, regularly published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there has been a significant reduction in the number of victims of sexual assault since 1995, when the Internet first crept into our daily lives. The ABS statistics include both reported and non-reported incidents of sexual assault, which is important given that only one in five incidents of sexual assault are reported to police.
According to the ABS data, between 1995 and 2005, there was a drop from 0.6 per cent to 0.3 per cent of persons aged 18 years and over who were victims of at least one sexual assault. That is a 50 per cent reduction.
But as one commenter put it the ABS report also says this:
“Response rates for sexual assault in 2005 are lower than in previous years. This is most likely due to changes made to the survey methodology, which included combining the sexual assault questions with the main survey form, and some changes to the structure and wording of the screening questions. Due to the low response rates for sexual assault only limited data is available for 2005.”
Mr McConvill didn’t mention this fact, perhaps because it would mute his thunder.
And another commenter who does his/her research says this:
After reading the statistical paper that is the basis of D’Amato’s and therefore McConvill’s assertions, I can tell you that there is not very much truth in them, to say the very least. The relevant paper is here: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cv73_95.pdf
It says the following, specifically of the rape statistic:
“This finding should be regarded with extreme caution.”
It continues:
“Before the redesign in 1992 the survey did not ask respondents whether they had been victims of sexual assault other than rape or attempted rape. Some victims of these crimes may have reported such victimizations in response to questions about rape or other forms of violence. It is not possible to determine to what extent crimes now categorized as sexual assaults were included in the data as rape or attempted rape in earlier years. To the extent that this occurred, estimates of rape prior to the redesign would not be comparable to those since the redesign.”
That is, the correlation alleged by D’Amato is a statistical artifact due to the overhaul of the survey instrument in 1992, which coincided with the earliest dawning of the public internet access era; and its own promulgators stated that the basis of this artifact should be treated with extreme caution.
Of course many studies have found the opposite: that porn is very harmful to women and increases rates of assault. This website, for example, is a good resource for documenting the many ways in which porn harms women. Some points republished below:
- Areas with pornography outlets and sexually oriented businesses experience significantly higher sexual offenses and property crimes than areas without such businesses.
-
Clinical research shows that pornographic images create chemically encoded messages on the brain that can remain through adulthood. Human memory is formed in part by the release of the chemical epinephrine which, upon emotional arousal, leaves behind an imprint on the brain. (9)
- While spending three evenings watching sexually violent movies, male viewers became progressively less bothered by the raping and slashing. Compared to others who were not exposed to the films, the also, three days later, expressed less sympathy for domestic violence victims and they related the victims’ injuries as less severe. (10)
The sources for those statements can be found on the site. Okay that’s enough from me. Computer fatigue creeps in.
First time i have heard of the Egypt fiasco. It’s bloody horrible.
When you don’t have the dynamic of being able to have natural and illuminating interactions with the opposite sex without everything being laden with sexual subtext it definitely impoverishes human relationships.
Not seeing the other person as fully human but as a kind of means to an end -That’s definitely the danger in societies with excessive segregation and we’re still working on that here in the west too.
As the saying goes- Feminism is the radical notion that women are people! *gasp*
It sounds plausible to me that porn - internet or otherwise - has contributed to a reduction in rape. But I imagine the bigger impact of porn has been on reducing the demand for prostitution. Of course, none of this is provable or disprovable with any kind of study, just as one can’t prove that violent movies/tv eiher contribute to violence or have an effect in deferring violent desires - because they do both, simultaneously. The fundamenta paradox is that representation simultaneously defers and initiates (violent) desires. As long as new representations are continuously available, they may well succeed in deferring and mediating desire in relatively non-violent forms. But in some cases, they will not succeed and one representation will encourage its real-world simulation. Nonetheless, unless violence is breaking out all over, it is probably a safe guess that porn today does more to defer than actualize sexual violence. I am not so old, but I remember living in a wealthy western nation that was much more violent than it is now, 30 years ago, and porn less availabe - as boys we used to go petering about in the bush and find stashes of porn magazines, here and there - altogether a rougher scene, detached from hearth and home. i don’t particularly like porn, but I wouldn’t try to limit any but the more violent and disgusting forms. Representation is generally a good thing - indeed that is why it came into being.
One thing I don’t understand is why the violent forms of porn are accepted as fundamental to freedom of speech. Rape porn is horrible and I’m not sure whether it depicts actual or simulated rape but nobody is saying that child porn is fundamental to freedom of speech and those overly sensitive wowsers should just back off [except I think a pro-child pornigraphy group in the Netherlands I heard about on the grape vine].
My opinion is, if it’s harmful and violent it should be banned- of course the logistics of that are a bit more complicated with the internet but anyway. It would be nice if the porn industry reformed and did change its leaned on sexist and racist representations that seem to prevail. I don’t have a beef with porn that isn’t violent, sexist, racist or misogynistic - if it exists.
I’m sure the porn you had access to as a teenager was entirely different to the stuff boys can access now and if that’s how you are taught to think of women and sex in your formative adolescent years than I think that is ultimately harmful. I mean look at the Werribee thugs. To them, that young girl wasn’t human, she was something to be abused. They were making their own little porn video.
I’m not familiar with any serious arguments why violent porn should be considered fundamental to freedom of speech. I am a strong free speech advocate, but there are limits - in defamation and norms of public conduct - and the internet is semi-public space. I mean, there is no good argument for a police state to watch in every bedroom and email, but I can imagine no good argument for an inherent right to publish anything on the net. I wouldn’t want my children, if i had any, watching violent porn, or even what comes on tv nowadays, and parents cannot be solely responsible for what their children watch.
As for “If it’s harmful and violent it should be banned” - well, there have been many originally well-meaning tyrants who began with such simple ideas. Again, I don’t think you can prove most porn is generally harmful or violent. But even if something disgusting may plausibly contribute to social stability, by sating degraded minds, it doesn’t mean you have to like it or accept it in public places without local restrictions according to the democratic will - hyper-resentful rap music, e.g., has no inherent right to public space. It could be banned in public in a democracy; but the appeal to public common sense and the people’s right to self-rule must supercede the desire of some people to appear more high minded or expert than the rest of us. It is a question of how to ban something.
I don’t know who the Weribee thugs are. I have no doubt that some people act out violent representations. But the question is how many who are also immersed in these representations find some “cathartic” effectin them and don’t act out. There was probably very little porn in the totalitarian states that killed about 100 million dehumanized people in the twentieth century, and committed who knows how many rapes. Once a horrible act can be imagined, there is a strong case that its representation may actually act to defer its worldly realization. I mean, how many films are there nowadays depicting the Holocaust - does this make it less or more likely that something similar happens again? Can you argue that such films do not encourage violence simply because they address it with a certain moral seriousness, while porn simply indulges the desire to consume bodies? Porn does indeed seem to encourage that desire, but what is indulged, most usually, is masturbation, and not the consumption of another body. However, back in the good old days, say 100-200 years ago, when there was very little porn, prostitution was pervasive and many men visited brothels on a regular basis.
Another thought…
Porn is a form of the sacred; the basic message of the sacred is “look but don’t touch, desire but withdraw” - that is how desire, as opposed to biological appetite, is both initiated and deferred as a means of keeping social order in non-animalistic ways. There is something inherently mysterious in the sacred and in our esthetic rumination on it that must be respected as mystery. There is no accounting for taste. If I have an erotic desire to look at pictures of nubile white women, while I shun photos of blacks or men, would you accuse me and my porn of sexism and racism? Or alternatively, if I like pictures of white men giving it to black men, or vice versa, etc. etc….? I’m curious how you know what differences should be considered offensive, since there is no kind of porn that is a paradigm of innocent desire; it is all something less that a wholly ascetic reverence before true beauty.
To what extent are harmful fantasies sated and to what extent are they created or reinforced is I think what we have to look at here. If we want to prevent rape, letting rapists indulge their sickness by watching rape isn’t the best way to go about it in my opinion. Child predators might watch child porn and not be out abusing children. Is this an argument for legalising it? No, because they are watching actual harm, as are those who watch violent and misogynistic porn, and adding to a social ill.
Of course, I think the state should stay out of the nations bedrooms as far as possible (they criminalised dildos in Texas for Chrissakes) but I also think there’s some responsibility that needs to be taken. It would be nice if that was personal responsibility but we don’t live in a perfect world.
Link to Werribee sex assault background
I don’t think that all those who watch violent porn will act out what they jerk off to but I do think it reinforces very unhealthy images of women and sex, especially the teenagers who watch it for their sex education and they’re seeing double penetration, rape, women being called hos etc. It portrays sex as a hateful act, a way to take out your frustration on women.
I don’t think all porn should be banned, and I can’t dictate what turns people on but like I said, how much of what turns people on is socialised? how much is created and reinforced?
For example, take this blurb for a rape porn video:
“Men can achieve anything by force.” It reinforces the notion of male entitlement, of “wah, she won’t fuck me, well I’ll just rape the bitch then.”
To infer that this is preventing rape is extremely questionable to say the least.
Well, I think pretty much everything in porn is a social or cultural creation - desire, as opposed to appetite, is not natural - but that’s not an argument for social engineering.
I find your blurb revolting, However , it still seems to me as if we in the West live in a time when violent imagery has never been more common, while men have never been less violent or more feminine. Would you agree?
How many European mean have the nerve to stand up to theJihadist rapists in their midst?
If this is the case, that there is a correlation between rape and porn, it seems entirely plausible to me that it’s because of a desenstisation to rape. Women aren’t reporting it because it’s normalised to an extent (particularly in regards to date rape) - judges and lawyers and cops are watching porn and are less sympathetic to victims. Women aren’t the virginal innocents they used to be thought of back in the day and therefore it’s thought that rape isn’t as traumatic.
If rape is down in areas with high internet usage maybe it’s because everybody in law enforcement and all attitudes leading up to the crime are so desensitised to it they don’t take it seriously anymore.
Great work Anna- you traversed the dificult line of protecting the holy grail of free speech and libertarianism (hail) but understanding how censorship fits into this.
I agree that regulation should only be considered when a causual link to great harm- i.e. people dying (i.e. smoking) or are being violently assaulted/ raped. And we are not kowtowing to the censorship lobby in saying so. When will men get it that Humanity’s well-being and safety is more important than you getting your rocks off?
But true peers has a point in that (as even Freud) said humanity has its dark/shadow side- this finds expression through art and perhaps pornography, violence, wars.
Whilst we might all want males to be uber-enlightened perhaps we need to understand the fact that maybe at some subconscious level men just really hate women and seek to dominate them (through law, religion, commercial exploitation and other means.)
I really want to hold hands and say it isn’t true but we have to face reality- reality is that Weribee happens, egypt happens, hilali happens, and no-one cares.
*How many European mean have the nerve to stand up to the Jihadist rapists in their midst?* what the hell is this supposed to mean??? do you resort to muslim bashing when you have run out of arguments?
I was a bit confused by that statement too. Care to explain truepeers?
And I don’t take too much of what Freud said seriously. That man had some issues.
I do agree we don’t live in a perfect world but I just think as far as violent porn goes, if you are brought up in your adolescent years watching it and as you orgasm to it more and more you’re conditioning yourself to only find that a turn on- and I think it would spill over into your relationships and the way you view women [that’s what I meant about the socialisation aspect]- that’s where it’s different to violent movies- your brain isn’t being trained to associate those images with pleasure - it is in porn.
If violent porn weren’t available people might have to get a bit more creative and not immediately associate violence and power with sex and getting off.
*How many European mean have the nerve to stand up to the Jihadist rapists in their midst?* what the hell is this supposed to mean??? do you resort to muslim bashing when you have run out of arguments?
-alas, i am not likely ever to run out of arguments. What i mean is the idea that European men, in this age when violent imagery has never been more pervasive, are violent (as compared with any of their much more violent historical predecessors who had much less in the way of cultural wealth - i.e. access to all manner of representations) is simply wrong. It is totally ahistorical to think so.
Western men have never been more feminized, restrained, passive. No European men of the past would have put up with what is now going on in Europe - see here, e.g.. Of course the relatively great silence of feminists on this issue of rape as a method of Jihad -silence because they are more scared to be accused of Muslim bashing than of ignoring violence against women - is a moral failing, rooted in the silliness of a resentful ideology that teaches women that most men hate women. Every human being is full of resentment, yes indeed; but to suggest that the object of men’s resentment is disproportionately women, is silly.
My last point will be a bit confusing - why will a resentful ideology that men hate women cause feminists to ignore Jihadi rapists? Well aside from the general point that all resentment has a delusional quality - when you are feeling resentful you have to snap out of the feeling in order to reflect reasonably on the nature of resentment in general and the reality it obscures - what is at issue here is the reigning ideology of our time, one that seeks to reduce moral righteousness to the defense of victims. Given that Muslims have a victimary status in the West, even feminists trod quietly on the issue of Jihadists raping women, or “moderate Muslim” women defending Hilaly.
Anna wrote:
“judges and lawyers and cops are watching porn and are less sympathetic to victims. Women aren’t the virginal innocents they used to be thought of back in the day and therefore it’s thought that rape isn’t as traumatic.
If rape is down in areas with high internet usage maybe it’s because everybody in law enforcement and all attitudes leading up to the crime are so desensitised to it they don’t take it seriously anymore.”
-again, this strikes me as the opposite of the reality. Never before has victim status been more desirable (for winning public attention) and widely deferred to with the religiosity it is today. That’s not to say that every real victim is treated with a proper sympathy. But perhaps part of the problem is that in an age addicted to victimary thought, we degrade the status of victim precisely by constantly invoking it. Consequently some people grow cynical about any claim to victimhood and real victims are ignored.
Truepeers I urge you to read the last two weeks of blog posts if you think feministshave been silent on whaHilaly said. For you and that article to assert that feminists have been silent on this issue is patently false and downright pisses me off.
Rape is rape no matter who is the target or perpetrator, it is overwhelmingly a systematic terrorisation of women and to suggest that white men aren’t doing it is fucking hysterical if it wasn’t so fucked up.
>>link
Also see this article:
If I were raped today, I would not report it
anna, I never sad western men don’t rape - that’s obviously not true. (Why do you misconstrue what i am saying?) What i am arguing is that they have never been less violent, which is not to say non-violent.
I’m glad you have been up in arms about Hilaly. But I do think it is generally true that there is much tolerance for a fundamentally anti-woman religion among those who see themselves as liberals, the kind of people who defend “the right” of women to go fully covered in public. Do women have a right to enslave and dehumanize themselves and those with whom they interact? I don’t think so.
But then my ideas may not be familiar to you if you have been trained to think that “patriarchy” is a bad thing. I believe that feminism misconceives patiarchy as male dominance of women. That’s not what it is - women are physically dominated in all kinds of societies, matriarchal and patriarchal, with the possible exception of the present-day West. There has been, in the West, a progression towards treating women as full human persons, and thinking historically I root this in patriarchal or Judeo-Christian religion which has been generally a good thing for both men and women. It liberates both because what patriarchy is, essentially, is a rejection of more sacrificial, less rational, forms of religion. I wrote up some of my thoughts on these lines here.
Oh gawd.
Truepeers, all religion thinks of women as lesser beings. It is enshrined all the goddam religious books of the world. Even buddism says that women can’t reach enlightenment because they aren’t reincarnated high enough. Women can’t be ordained and that particular fight is playing itself out right now in the Anglican church in Australia. Catholics are telling women that they can’t use contraception and should just shoot out as many babies “as god gives them” and that their own life isn’t particularly important in this duty that’s been forced upon them by a patriarchal church.
“Do women have a right to enslave and dehumanize themselves and those with whom they interact?”
Do you have a right to decide that this is what they are in fact doing? That’s what the goddam patriarchy is - telling women what they are and aren’t supposed to do whilst ignoring what they have to say. Daddy knows best.
I’m not a fan of any religion but I don’t care if someone practices it if it doesn’t interfere with my life. I think that’s why you’ll find that western feminists aren’t as focused on Islam: Because it’s not an immediate threat to their bodily autonomy as you’ll find your little Judeo-Christian religions are.
And telling someone they can’t wear a scarf on their head is just as bad as telling them they have to.
The Judeo-christian tradition is responsible for the death of millions of women in heretic and witch trials by the way. So before you go throwing stones some introspection might be nice.
Anna, I think some of what you say is delusion - something from which we all suffer but which humanity is capable of slowly freeing itself, thanks in good part to patriarchal religion. So yes, I must admit that I am a patriarchal thinker, when i am thinking well, but that’s a good thing. It forces one to respect certain hard realities and not remain coddled in a world of fairies and demons. You decry witch trials without seeing that this is just what you are prosecuting. Men can be “witches” too!
Whatever the many failures of western churches historically to live up to your present high standards for equality, the question remains where do your high standards today come from? You will realize, surely, that they have few historical parallels, that women have always been relatively marginalized in culture, even in formally matriarchal cultures, at least until today?
So, are you seriously going to believe that your high standards for equality have been somehow pulled out of thin air (inhaled as spacedust?) the moment someone first conceived of feminism? Do you believe that feminism is a wholly creative and novel project in total differentiation from what came before? I hope you are not so naive.
If you trace seriously the origins of your own ideas, you will have to come to terms with figures like Jesus who made friends of women in ways most unusual for his times. He liked to hang out with prostitutes and publicans, e.g. - not because he loved sin - and he did speak against sin like, well, a patriarch - but because he preferred the humility of sinners to the self-righteousness of those who considered themselves more illumined than the rest of us. He was an egalitarian and your egalitarian impulses come from Christianity, in good part, though by no means wholly, like it or not.
Many churches have indeed failed to live up to Jesus’s model, but the core intellectual issue is where do our revelations originally come from, not who has failed to live up to them, which is all of us at some time or another.
Refrain from preaching in this space.
And I am not participating in witch trials. I don’t decry all men. I denounce the patriarchy which still rules women’s lives but the patriarchy harms some men too, as well as providing them an unparalleled platform of power. Those men that choose not to exploit their privileged position at the expense of women are true men in my opinion.
You seem to think that feminists just want to overthrow the patriarchy and institute a matriarchal alternative. Wrong. We just don’t want to be ruled over, dictated to and systematically oppressed and abused. Deal. Otherwise get off my discussion board.
Western men have never been “more feminised, restrained, passive,” uh what statistics have you used for this assertion? Talking to some gentle man-folk on the road? Please..
Feminists i.e. me and Anna have never been more vocal on the issue of rape and violence against women in whatever form it takes and by any perpetrator regardless of culture, religion or nationality- east or west. We can’t say the same for the howls of outrage coming from the uber right who seem to believe the violence against women is purely an underclass, violent, muslim phenomenon- better to blame underclass thugs than to look into your own gentrified souls.You betray your agenda by your selective highlighting of wrongs.
Sorry I do retract what i said earlier- i don’t think “men hate women” - but sometimes I wonder why do feminists face so much vitriol- people like you and Maximus go to so much trouble to ridicule and dismiss news that we are not making up- only reporting. Werribee is true, Hilali is true, Egypt is true- if you don’t hate women, if you care about human beings, if you are willing to be self-critical, if you are not completely insecure why not share this outrage? It has always been my opinion that feminism does liberate men and can allow for the true flowering of the male-female potential.
Your “Jihad” of rape is a truly disturbing term. It reflects the fear and hysteria which has become a regular part of our lives- those barbarous muslim hordes are gonna rape and pillage our women- let’s make war to save the honour of our fair damsels. This is not new- this is part of orientalist imagery of the past thousand years.
As far as i now- their is no concerted campaign by all Muslim men in the west to rape, pillage and destroy (somebody better give my brothers a memo). Although i am painfully aware of the criminal actions of people with muslim background- i think this has less to do with religion- and more to do with an terrible enculturation and socialisation process which encourages men to view women as entitlement or less than human (factors which contribute include family, culture, violent porn, economic marginalisation, desire for status, gang culture- all the complex and debateable reasons for crime.)
p.s- my speciality is religion and gender! This is a really good topic and yes traditionally women have been excluded from patriarchal readings of religion, their narratives excluded from literature, philosophy and academia. And yes this equality business is a recent phenomenon. In terms of Christianity and i know Islam- women played a huge role in its original stages- both Jesus and Muhammad loved women. (great men never have a problem with women)
i think post-modernism is powerful because its reclaiming these lost narratives in history.
We could also talk about women in pagan religions, wicca etc but thats a whole another post:)
Thanks Sarah.
And yes, let’s not forget those women-focused religions like paganism and wicca that were brutalised by christianity et al. They of course aren’t included in my statement that all religions think of women as lesser beings. I should have clarified and said all patriarchal religions - although that’s kind of self-evident.
For anyone interested BB has a much better post up than my attempt about the farcical notion that internet porn reduces rape.
Especially the point that these ’scientists’ only go off reported rape figures when in Australia this is how the rape statistics break down:
A third of sex assault matters take more that two years to complete, only 10 to 30 percent of sexual assaults are reported and according to the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research only 17 percent of reported rape cases end up in court and only 10 percent of reported rapes end in a conviction.
My last Hurrah beautiful people-
TP- You decry the liberal tolerance of what you describe as “profoundly anti-women” religions- firstly i contest that claim- when your knowledge of a huge, diverse and complex religious tradition is formed out of bullshit propaganda from the internet that reaffirms rather challenges your prejudices than you can’t espouse any expert knowledge.
It was actual liberal writers like Greer and “Sex and destiny” which showed such an intimate understanding of traditional societies it seemed it was written by a woman from the subcontinent- that first attracted this conservative muslim girl from the wilderness.
It was this liberal tolerance- that seemed to me the essence of spirituality- inclusion and respect for difference- and of understanding the complexity and variety of the world. So I’m still kind of free-floating in the this new terrain of western liberalism and feminism- but it feels like home.
Liberalism is interested in self-criticism, in empowering people to empower themselves (through choice) in reference to their own conception of themselves even if that’s very different from your own beliefs.
This is not easy and yes in liberal democratic societies this requires a constant navigation of competing rights and interests.
You seem to think that feminists just want to overthrow the patriarchy and institute a matriarchal alternative. Wrong. We just don’t want to be ruled over, dictated to and systematically oppressed and abused. Deal. Otherwise get off my discussion board.
-well, it’s not my mission to create more resentment than I attempt to dissipate and if I’ve failed here, I am sorry. So I will make one last comment, to clarify what I have been saying, should you be interested, and then I’ll be gone however you respond.
-I don’t think feminists want to re-institute a matriarchy; i rather tend to think they want to escape from it, but don’t really know how. When I was looking, about a decade ago, for writing by women on how women treat each other, including how feminist women treat each other, I found this a shockingly empty field - only a few brave souls have written on it, usually by way of a good-bye to instutionalized, academic, feminism. Instead, the overwhelming focus of “feminist” attention is on “the patriarchy” and in ways that, in my opinion, make no sense of what patriarchy is. The proposed alternative of a “third way” between patriarchal and matriarchal tendencies in our system of representations would have to take us into a discussion of Gnostic thinking. It’s a big topic i discuss at Covenant Zone and elsewhere. Generally, I don’t believe in the reality of third ways.
But I believe, with you, that our goal should be to defend the sacredness of every person, male or female. When I ask how we have evolved, historically, to the point where we can believe in the sacredness of everybody - instead of the sacred being some solitary king, vestal virgin, or what have you at the centre of a common communal attention - I have to give much credit to the role of patriarchal Judeo-Christian religions for these have had a decentralizing effect on our society that have allowed for the kinds of differentiation (via the detached, differentiated, individual’s moral conversation with God, conversations which monotheism detaches from worldly ethics and it’s ungodly compromises) on which the sacredness of each individual depends.
But to acknowledge that we are each sacred, each responsible for representing and providing a sacred centre that others may choose to emulate, or use in part, we have to acknowledge our responsibility to something greater or higher than ourselves. One cannot fall back on oneself and achieve much spiritually or intellectually. That’s just not how reality works, I can say from hard experience with depression and despair when i didn’t know how to believe in something higher. We must converse with something higher, to become morally grounded, a conversation detached from the worldly rituals of our tribes. You can call this conversation “patriarchal”, or not, but whatever you call it, it is a good thing.
On to Sarah’s comments:
Western men have never been “more feminised, restrained, passive,†uh what statistics have you used for this assertion? Talking to some gentle man-folk on the road? Please..
-some hypotheses are too general to be proven empirically, except by narrowing the terms of the argument to some specific point that can be counted. You could look at the murder rate for starters - a definite decrease in the west over the 20thC. But more generally, this is the kind of argument you will find convincing if you study a lot of history, I believe. Just in my short lifetime I have noticed the difference. Thirty years ago men fighting on the streets of my city was common - today it never happens except among gang members who don’t have the notion of a fair fight or manly honor of the kind that was behind the fights I commony saw in my childhood.
You betray your agenda by your selective highlighting of wrongs.
-come now, you haven’t a clue what I’ve gone on about over the course of my life. I came to this site because i followed a link to the Cairo rape story. It is true that at present I am focussed on Islam and Jiahd in my reading. But my life has been much more than that and I am not blind to rape elsewhere. But we all have to have an agenda, and there’s nothing wrong with that. We can’t be all things to all people and it’s not a convincing debating point to argue that we should be.
if you are not completely insecure why not share this outrage? I
- i do share it, though how I express outrage may be different from you. I do not want to act as if other people are qualitatively different from me. Their acts of evil may be quantitatively more or less than mine, but when i attack people like Jihadists, I keep it mind that ultimately I attack them from a faith in the truth that is common to all of humanity. I say they are evil because I know evil in myself. A secure sense of manhood must come through trials with such knowledge.
Your “Jihad†of rape is a truly disturbing term. It reflects the fear and hysteria which has become a regular part of our lives- those barbarous muslim hordes are gonna rape and pillage our women- let’s make war to save the honour of our fair damsels. This is not new- this is part of orientalist imagery of the past thousand years.
-you’re right it’s not new. With good reason. Rape has always been a common accompaniment of warfare, with some exceptions. It continues to be a common accompaniment of warfare today - there is much evidence of this. Just because you can find resentment of Islam in “orientalist” writing does not mean that “orientalism” was completely detached from reality, a pure construction of occidentocentric hate mongers. But this is not the time to go in depth on the relationship of text and reality, a question i am immersed in when I’m not going on about the Jihad. Come to my site, Covenant Zone, if you want to talk it up and explore the limits of postmodern understandings. Or better yet, go to the source of my understanding - http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu
here are a few of many available links on Jihad and rape, which you can write off as internet crap, or take somewhat seriously as you will; if only a fraction of what you can read about jihad and rpe is true, we should be worried:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=20646
http://kenlydell.typepad.com/islamic_evil/muslim_rape/index.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1227317/posts
TP- You decry the liberal tolerance of what you describe as “profoundly anti-women†religions- firstly i contest that claim- when your knowledge of a huge, diverse and complex religious tradition is formed out of bullshit propaganda from the internet that reaffirms rather challenges your prejudices than you can’t espouse any expert knowledge.
-first of all, I think the internet is a great thing, full of good stuff, as well as crap. To attack the internet because it is helping unmask the limits of our “expert” class suggests you want a truth more in service of centralized power than true human freedom, but this is to open a huge discussion for another time.
-my understanding of Islam has grown much the last five years. The more I know, the more i throw off my erstwhile ignorance that allowed me to fit Islam into a liberal world view. islam, whatever its strengths and weaknesses, is not compatible with liberalism - it fights against it, as so now do I fight against the untenability ofliberalism in the long run.
- I have read the Koran and some of the Hadiths - there is much there to suggest that Mohammed was not a “lover of women” of the kind i imagine you would like. The Islamic holy texts make clear that he engaged, among other things, in practices like rape as an extension of warfare. He took a Jewish woman as his slave after killing all her male relatives and slept with her the same night after the killing. Then there is the question of his child bride…
-but the question of what Islam “really” is is not at all straightforward. there are the core texts, the ostensible “revelation” of Mohammed’s. But how these play out in history is another matter. Islam is, in good part, the product of its relationships with the non-Islamic world as well as of relationships among groups within Islam. It would be folly to generalize too much about this.
But the claim that today Islam is anti-woman is not hard to defend. Just go to Pakistan, to Saudi, to Somalia, to London, to the suburbs of Paris - where, as elsewhere in Europe non_muslim women are increasinly afraid to go out uncovered - and look. You can say that that oppression of women is not Islam but is tribalism, or poverty, or the result of imperialist oppression, if you really want. But i think if you take a hard look at what the leaders of the Islamic world say about women, quoting Islamic texts, how they treat women, how they rape women and throw them in jail for supposedly encouraging the rapes - quoting Islamic pretexts - I just don’t think an honest person can say that Islam is not a big part of the oppression.
I am not saying all Muslims are this or that. I think most Muslims are decent people. I think Islam, as it is insitutionalized at present, is evil. Among other things, Islamic institutions are at war with the West and with the Global market economy that the West leads. If they win, don’t bank on them knowing how to feed anywhere near six billion people - hence the evil, whatever can be said in favor of Islam. Today, Islamic leaders are the symbolic leaders for all who resent Western modernity. This is a war that is real and in which we are all going to have to choose sides, pretty soon. And in this war, women are powerful symbols. Women in Islam today are encouraged/forced to cover themsleves as political symbols in this war, in contrast to the moral decadence of the west. While there are things to criticize about the west, treating women as walking incitements to rape is not the way to do it. I think women are beautiful and are meant by God and nature to be able to show their beauty without being deemed a threat to men or social order, not that I like pornographic extremes. Islam, as it exists today in the majority of its institutions, does not think women’s beauty should be on display. I don’t have the time to illustrate what should be an obvious point to anyone with honest eyes and ears. If you want, you can do your own research; but perhaps you will have to stop looking for evidence of what you want to believe. I have written too much already, but I spend time on the wonderful internet because i like people, men and women and want to help them gain more freedom, which is a lot easier said than done. All religions are not equal. There are fundamental human truths about which some know more than others. That’s my position; if you want to know the arguments that can prove this point, you are welcome to join me elsewhere.
Best wishes to all
Sorry truepeers, but isn’t it obvious that patriarchy is the fact that men rule the world. Women have gained more participation in the western world since feminism arose but still that participation is set by certain boundaries. Women in power are playing the game, playing by the rules, not setting their own rules. Even though there’s far from equal numbers in positions of power, even if there was, that power is meaningless if the ‘rules’ aren’t overhauled. If women have to act like men to have a chance in hell of being a world leader there’s not much of a difference - unless there was some stealthy sabotage from the inside. The fact remains that even though it’s better than what our foremothers had 100 years ago, women are still not fully represented in any of the world’s institutions, multinationals, governments, churches. Patriarchy isn’t only physical dominance, it’s a symbolic and institutionalised dominance.
The thing is, you too, suffer from the consequences of that*, albeit not as much, but you still seem to think it’s a good system, from the wars that are waged to the communities that are exploited by big business to the fact that your sister/aunt/daughter/wife/friend might die from a forced child birth or an illegal abortion if Christian religion continues to increase its role in supposedly ’secular’ governments.
[*you also benefit from it being the catch 22]