Yes, I came back from France...yes I haven't posted as promised....give me a few more days to settle my life down. For now, I thought this was worth a few laughs. One of the biggest problems with Wikipedia:
Wow...I did not expect him to actually do it. Scotty Libby will now spend no time in jail. I think Keith Olbermann says it best:
Quick update, how fast the time goes
0 Comments Published by Alex on Thursday, June 28, 2007 at 6:40 AM.
So, I admit? I am in France now and I have been for a solid month and yet I did not update. Why? Incredibly busy. I promise pictures of chateux and the French countryside when I return. For now, I just wanted to drop a note on here for anyone who actually still reads this thing aplogizing for the silence.
Il faut que je m'en aille!
Il faut que je m'en aille!
Something that's definitely on my 'to read' list: The Gospel of Judas.
I hope this won't be my last post before France. I'm hoping for a longer one. However, I will TRY to blog from France (et en francaise, j'espere).
I hope this won't be my last post before France. I'm hoping for a longer one. However, I will TRY to blog from France (et en francaise, j'espere).
Labels: ancient history, classical studies, classics, history, reading list, the history of christianity
What is it about really terrible bands who make really terrible music making really fantastic music videos. Case in point, Nickleback's 'If Everyone Cared' and Linkin Park's new one 'What I've Done':
Labels: american foreign policy, criticism of america, music, politics, social justice
American Feminism and Islamic Countries
0 Comments Published by Alex on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 at 2:36 PM.
A friend of mine sent me a link to a a story in the weekly standard about American Feminism's response (or lack thereof as the author would claim) to the oppression of women in Islamic countries. I suggest reading the entire article, though I'll quote from it here. I'd also ask people to keep in mind that the author of this article is a repeated critic of feminism (often using arguments of gender essentialism like in her book The War against Boys) as well as a harsh critic of psychological therapy (she apparently thinks it makes us 'weak'). So you can imagine how she might not be on my 'favourite person list', but I'll try and approach this with a fresh attitude.
There are various problems that become apparent as one gets further and further along in the article. One that doesn't take too long is a great hostility towards Islam in general (well, it IS a neo-conservative magazine, I don't suppose that should be surprising). For example, the very first thing Sommers says:
I say this is hostile towards Islam because Sommers does not bother with distinctions here. She simple says 'Muslim societies', not 'Muslim theocracies' or 'radical Islamic states', just merely 'Muslim societies' (as though its a general rule that the Islamic faith is anti-woman, anti-freedom, etc). She DOES say 'especially Arab nations and Iran', which makes me wonder which Arab nations she's talking about (and I know why she picked on Iran instead of any other country, as that's the favourite next target for neo-conservatives). If by 'Arab nations' she means places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, this reeks of the neo-conservative tendency to lump all nations in the Middle East into being 'Arab'. The Afghans are not 'Arab'. They are 'Afghani'. It's a little nit-picky of me; but, especially when you are writing an article that addresses aspects of culture, you need to comprehend this distinction.
She goes on to criticize American feminist groups for not rising up and helping women in Islamic countries to become free from the oppression of their state. She blames anti-Americanism, which boggles my mind and seems to come from nowhere. I'm not quite sure what she is trying to say. Even if these women's groups are anti-American, does that immediately make them pro-anti-American-Muslim-theocracies? Sounds like a 'you're with us (in every way shape or form imaginable) or you're with the terrorists' attitude (again, neo-conservative magazine, so not surprising, and probably what she was going for).
There are a few things wrong with this, but let's take some of her article point by point. She says:
A quick mention of 9/11 is standard for this type of magazine (that doesn't really go anywhere or say anything...so are you saying that Sept. 11th made feminists LESS interested in oppression in theocratic Muslim countries? and what are you implying with that statement?). Also, calling the condition of Muslim women 'the most pressing women's issue of our age' is stretching to hyperbole, and it's exactly that sort of rhetoric that makes nothing get done. The explanation (of American feminists not making this a priority) that seems the most logical for me at first is that, well, they are American feminists, and they will probably deal with American issues. We can't exactly 'heal the world' if we still have some bones to mend.
But let's move on to her explanations.
Well, like I said before. I don't know where antagonism towards the US comes in here. But the rest actually seems accurate. Feminists are agnostic about marriage and family because, in the West, both have traditionally been methods of suppressing and oppressing women. The same applies to traditional religion. With femininity, we are wary of it because we recognize that it is socially constructed. This brings up an interesting point, though. You cannot use American feminism in Islamic countries. It just won't work. You need a different method, because the historical and cultural elements that are affecting practices over there are different. In terms of food (I'm hungry at the moment), it's sort of like cooking a soup and a stew the same way. You'll either come out with good soup and bad stew or bad soup and good stew. This goes to a crux of something that is wrong with neo-conservatism, but more on that later.
So when Sommers criticizes the feminist response to Nussbaum's article, she attacks them for ignoring the complaints of her philosophy. However, people like Spivak are correct when they say we have to be careful lest we get into a 'civilizing mission'. The problem comes when we view Islamic countries as pre-modern or 'barbaric' (a term that Sommers uses over and over again, which is interesting when you consider it's history...). We have to avoid the White Man's Burden attitude, this idea that we, by virtue of our high-minded modern ideals, must spread our ideology across the globe. We need to work for feminism that works in an Islamic society (and this is what most feminists on this topic actually suggest). Eventually we might reach a cultural consensus, but until then, proposing all the advances women have in this country to a country like Iran or Saudi Arabia is silly, and simply will not happen. Sommers seems to be advocating that feminism take up the American torch to light freedom across the globe. It's the same sort of misguided ideology that's landed us in Iraq at the moment.
Sommers also criticizes the discourse in western feminism that equates oppressive states. She quotes some passages from articles that might be considered controversial (out of context, of course), so that it seems as though feminists are equating practices in Mid-East and the West. Then she says:
Well...no. You see, the feminist philosophy that Sommers is referencing here is the idea that these oppressive acts all come from a similar oppressive ideology between the two cultures she's discussing. Limiting the knowledge of sex does tremendous psychological damage to an individual, and it is a very serious thing. Sommers, who obviously disagrees with this point and many of the things that feminists fight for in the US today, is using the 'there are more important things' excuse to deflect attention away from the inequality in our country and to make feminists look like heartless witches at the same time. This is an argument that applies to our most irrational emotions, and her saying that feminist philosophy 'defies logic, common sense, and basic decency' manages at the same time to reverse what is an is not logically sound (as opposed to being driven by pure emotion) and makes a moral pronouncement as fact ('basic decency'). The fact that we have a society that causes women to hate their bodies if they do not match an unattainable ideal is serious, and we should not just ignore such problems because something judged as 'worse' is happening elsewhere. All of these things are horrible, and all should be dealt with, by different groups (which is what seems to be happening...). NOW should not, once again, not give up its fights to pass this 'torch of freedom' on.
The article suffers from a lot of this reasoning, as though the ideology behind women seeking genital surgery does not share its vein with that which forces genital mutilation. Our point is that both need to be stopped, and that we need to realize that, in a lot of ways, we are not 'better' than a society that has brutal practices, because we have our own form of brutality (albeit self-inflicted). Sommers also seems to think that rape is 'rare':
Actually, rape is quite common, any University study on the frequency of sexual assault will show you that. Also, rape victims often receive harsher social ostracization than the rapists themselves. Rape victims are still viewed in this country as women who 'deserved' or 'asked' for it. The most common defense in a rape case is a defamation of the victims character that 'proves' that she's a 'whore'. They might not be expected to kill themselves, but it's still horribly wrong and should be fought against. Sommers has this minimizing qualities throughout the article. Like when she discusses NOW's work to educate about and prevent eating disorders:
Besides the meaningless pejorative, the idea that 'serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women' is in the typical neo-conservative fashion of stating a random idea as though it is a solid fact. She forgets that the commonly quoted numbers are all reported cases of eating disorders (just like reported rapes she talked about earlier and reported domestic violence that she talks about later). Plus, the common way of clinically diagnosing anorexia depends upon a person's body weight (which is particularly awful because it's not based upon the behaviors but the actual success of those behaviors). Sommers would rather repeat the rhetoric that's getting us into the trouble in the first place, talking about 'healthy' eating, a 'higher' rate of obesity, and how indulging every now and again is not OK.
Sommers ends by again criticizing feminists for equating treatment of women in radical Islamic countries with the position of women here in the United States, but this is exactly what she wishes to do when she wants our feminist organizations to champion women's rights in those countries. This goes back to one of the biggest problems of neo-conservatism.
One of the largest tenants of neo-conservatism is this idea that we can somehow spread American democracy and freedom throughout the world. The problem is that these are American ideologies, and they simply do not work outside of the context of American society. One of the main reasons why our 'mission' in Iraq failed was the insistence that somehow democracy would just be this magic pill that turned the country around, when in fact the culture was so rooted in sectarian divisionism that this simple would not happen overnight. It took America one hundred years and a civil war to work out the largest kinks in our republic, and we still haven't perfected it. Likewise, it's taken the feminist movement just as long to get where it is today, and we still have a LOT of things to work on in our country before every feminist group can go to other countries and pass on this 'torch'.
I agree that we SHOULD be doing something within their cultural context to help women in these countries, especially countries like Saudi Arabia. I agree that we should stand up and denounce a country that hangs gay people; however, does that mean I should completely ignore the inequalities I face here? The key is everybody getting involved at different levels. And, on a personal level, I would say that Sommers' use of the plight of women in Islamic theocracies in order to 1) grind her axe with American feminism and 2) promote her 'we must carry the torch' neo-conservative ideology is rather disturbing and even a little shameful. American feminism has a lot of problems; but a focus on the problems in America is not one of them.
There are various problems that become apparent as one gets further and further along in the article. One that doesn't take too long is a great hostility towards Islam in general (well, it IS a neo-conservative magazine, I don't suppose that should be surprising). For example, the very first thing Sommers says:
The subjection of women in Muslim societies--especially in Arab nations and in Iran--is today very much in the public eye.
I say this is hostile towards Islam because Sommers does not bother with distinctions here. She simple says 'Muslim societies', not 'Muslim theocracies' or 'radical Islamic states', just merely 'Muslim societies' (as though its a general rule that the Islamic faith is anti-woman, anti-freedom, etc). She DOES say 'especially Arab nations and Iran', which makes me wonder which Arab nations she's talking about (and I know why she picked on Iran instead of any other country, as that's the favourite next target for neo-conservatives). If by 'Arab nations' she means places like Pakistan and Afghanistan, this reeks of the neo-conservative tendency to lump all nations in the Middle East into being 'Arab'. The Afghans are not 'Arab'. They are 'Afghani'. It's a little nit-picky of me; but, especially when you are writing an article that addresses aspects of culture, you need to comprehend this distinction.
She goes on to criticize American feminist groups for not rising up and helping women in Islamic countries to become free from the oppression of their state. She blames anti-Americanism, which boggles my mind and seems to come from nowhere. I'm not quite sure what she is trying to say. Even if these women's groups are anti-American, does that immediately make them pro-anti-American-Muslim-theocracies? Sounds like a 'you're with us (in every way shape or form imaginable) or you're with the terrorists' attitude (again, neo-conservative magazine, so not surprising, and probably what she was going for).
There are a few things wrong with this, but let's take some of her article point by point. She says:
It is not that American feminists are indifferent to the predicament of Muslim women. Nor do they completely ignore it. For a brief period before September 11, 2001, many women's groups protested the brutalities of the Taliban. But they have never organized a full-scale mobilization against gender oppression in the Muslim world. The condition of Muslim women may be the most pressing women's issue of our age, but for many contemporary American feminists it is not a high priority. Why not?
A quick mention of 9/11 is standard for this type of magazine (that doesn't really go anywhere or say anything...so are you saying that Sept. 11th made feminists LESS interested in oppression in theocratic Muslim countries? and what are you implying with that statement?). Also, calling the condition of Muslim women 'the most pressing women's issue of our age' is stretching to hyperbole, and it's exactly that sort of rhetoric that makes nothing get done. The explanation (of American feminists not making this a priority) that seems the most logical for me at first is that, well, they are American feminists, and they will probably deal with American issues. We can't exactly 'heal the world' if we still have some bones to mend.
But let's move on to her explanations.
That worldview is--by tendency and sometimes emphatically--antagonistic toward the United States, agnostic about marriage and family, hostile to traditional religion, and wary of femininity. The contrast with Islamic feminism could hardly be greater.
Well, like I said before. I don't know where antagonism towards the US comes in here. But the rest actually seems accurate. Feminists are agnostic about marriage and family because, in the West, both have traditionally been methods of suppressing and oppressing women. The same applies to traditional religion. With femininity, we are wary of it because we recognize that it is socially constructed. This brings up an interesting point, though. You cannot use American feminism in Islamic countries. It just won't work. You need a different method, because the historical and cultural elements that are affecting practices over there are different. In terms of food (I'm hungry at the moment), it's sort of like cooking a soup and a stew the same way. You'll either come out with good soup and bad stew or bad soup and good stew. This goes to a crux of something that is wrong with neo-conservatism, but more on that later.
So when Sommers criticizes the feminist response to Nussbaum's article, she attacks them for ignoring the complaints of her philosophy. However, people like Spivak are correct when they say we have to be careful lest we get into a 'civilizing mission'. The problem comes when we view Islamic countries as pre-modern or 'barbaric' (a term that Sommers uses over and over again, which is interesting when you consider it's history...). We have to avoid the White Man's Burden attitude, this idea that we, by virtue of our high-minded modern ideals, must spread our ideology across the globe. We need to work for feminism that works in an Islamic society (and this is what most feminists on this topic actually suggest). Eventually we might reach a cultural consensus, but until then, proposing all the advances women have in this country to a country like Iran or Saudi Arabia is silly, and simply will not happen. Sommers seems to be advocating that feminism take up the American torch to light freedom across the globe. It's the same sort of misguided ideology that's landed us in Iraq at the moment.
Sommers also criticizes the discourse in western feminism that equates oppressive states. She quotes some passages from articles that might be considered controversial (out of context, of course), so that it seems as though feminists are equating practices in Mid-East and the West. Then she says:
Pollitt casually places "limiting young people's access to accurate information about sex" and opposing abortion on the same plane as throwing acid in women's faces and stoning them to death. Her hostility to the United States renders her incapable of distinguishing between private American groups that stigmatize gays and foreign governments that hang them. She has embraced a feminist philosophy that collapses moral categories in ways that defy logic, common sense, and basic decency.
Well...no. You see, the feminist philosophy that Sommers is referencing here is the idea that these oppressive acts all come from a similar oppressive ideology between the two cultures she's discussing. Limiting the knowledge of sex does tremendous psychological damage to an individual, and it is a very serious thing. Sommers, who obviously disagrees with this point and many of the things that feminists fight for in the US today, is using the 'there are more important things' excuse to deflect attention away from the inequality in our country and to make feminists look like heartless witches at the same time. This is an argument that applies to our most irrational emotions, and her saying that feminist philosophy 'defies logic, common sense, and basic decency' manages at the same time to reverse what is an is not logically sound (as opposed to being driven by pure emotion) and makes a moral pronouncement as fact ('basic decency'). The fact that we have a society that causes women to hate their bodies if they do not match an unattainable ideal is serious, and we should not just ignore such problems because something judged as 'worse' is happening elsewhere. All of these things are horrible, and all should be dealt with, by different groups (which is what seems to be happening...). NOW should not, once again, not give up its fights to pass this 'torch of freedom' on.
The article suffers from a lot of this reasoning, as though the ideology behind women seeking genital surgery does not share its vein with that which forces genital mutilation. Our point is that both need to be stopped, and that we need to realize that, in a lot of ways, we are not 'better' than a society that has brutal practices, because we have our own form of brutality (albeit self-inflicted). Sommers also seems to think that rape is 'rare':
Given her capacity for conceptual confusion, it is perhaps not surprising that Ensler cites "gang rape in a suburban high school parking lot" to show how women in America are menaced. Yes, that is an atrocity. But it happens rarely, and America's allegedly "misogynist" culture reacts to it with revulsion and severe punishments.
Actually, rape is quite common, any University study on the frequency of sexual assault will show you that. Also, rape victims often receive harsher social ostracization than the rapists themselves. Rape victims are still viewed in this country as women who 'deserved' or 'asked' for it. The most common defense in a rape case is a defamation of the victims character that 'proves' that she's a 'whore'. They might not be expected to kill themselves, but it's still horribly wrong and should be fought against. Sommers has this minimizing qualities throughout the article. Like when she discusses NOW's work to educate about and prevent eating disorders:
This is pathetic. To be sure, serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women. But much larger numbers suffer because poor eating habits and inactivity render them overweight, even obese. NOW should not be encouraging college girls to indulge themselves in ways detrimental to their well-being. Nor should it be using the language of human rights in discussing the weight problems of American women.
Besides the meaningless pejorative, the idea that 'serious eating disorders afflict a small percentage of women' is in the typical neo-conservative fashion of stating a random idea as though it is a solid fact. She forgets that the commonly quoted numbers are all reported cases of eating disorders (just like reported rapes she talked about earlier and reported domestic violence that she talks about later). Plus, the common way of clinically diagnosing anorexia depends upon a person's body weight (which is particularly awful because it's not based upon the behaviors but the actual success of those behaviors). Sommers would rather repeat the rhetoric that's getting us into the trouble in the first place, talking about 'healthy' eating, a 'higher' rate of obesity, and how indulging every now and again is not OK.
Sommers ends by again criticizing feminists for equating treatment of women in radical Islamic countries with the position of women here in the United States, but this is exactly what she wishes to do when she wants our feminist organizations to champion women's rights in those countries. This goes back to one of the biggest problems of neo-conservatism.
One of the largest tenants of neo-conservatism is this idea that we can somehow spread American democracy and freedom throughout the world. The problem is that these are American ideologies, and they simply do not work outside of the context of American society. One of the main reasons why our 'mission' in Iraq failed was the insistence that somehow democracy would just be this magic pill that turned the country around, when in fact the culture was so rooted in sectarian divisionism that this simple would not happen overnight. It took America one hundred years and a civil war to work out the largest kinks in our republic, and we still haven't perfected it. Likewise, it's taken the feminist movement just as long to get where it is today, and we still have a LOT of things to work on in our country before every feminist group can go to other countries and pass on this 'torch'.
I agree that we SHOULD be doing something within their cultural context to help women in these countries, especially countries like Saudi Arabia. I agree that we should stand up and denounce a country that hangs gay people; however, does that mean I should completely ignore the inequalities I face here? The key is everybody getting involved at different levels. And, on a personal level, I would say that Sommers' use of the plight of women in Islamic theocracies in order to 1) grind her axe with American feminism and 2) promote her 'we must carry the torch' neo-conservative ideology is rather disturbing and even a little shameful. American feminism has a lot of problems; but a focus on the problems in America is not one of them.
Labels: culture, feminism, islam, multiculturalism, neo-conservatism, queer, the weekly standard, theocracy, women's rights
More on Going to a Town and Atheism
0 Comments Published by Alex on Saturday, May 12, 2007 at 12:37 AM.
So I hope that you go the chance to view Rufus Wainwright's new music video, which I posted below. As is typical of him, the video is visually stunning and the song is deep and gripping. This song is actually more straightforward than we're used to getting from Wainwright (he's said so himself in an audio commentary on his Myspace page). His songs have a tendency to grow on a person after listening to them over and over (it took me several times listening to 'Grey Gardens' before the melody drilled itself into me and I finally started to 'get it'). He also says that 'Going to Town' shouldn't be confused with a diatribe against America. It's 'a break up song'. And I think this is a wonderful way to describe the tone I had perceived throughout it. While there are brave moments which might be considered slaps to the face ('After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood...'), listening to them again reveals a very sad tone. Most especially the line 'You took advantage of a world that loved you well' encapsulates a feeling of let-down more than anger. And it really is true. The majority of the world really did/does love America. We're a symbol of freedom, democracy and, most importantly, discourse (or at least we used to be). I get this feeling that we just don't talk anymore.
Which brings me to YouTube, and the surprising amount of discussion I have seen going on there since I finally started exploring the community. It reminds me of the old USENET system (heh heh...the 'old' usenet system...) and the long and surprisingly informative discussions that would occur on there. For all the trolls that prowled, there was a lot of well thought out posts on these message boards.
So, I'd like to take a quick look at one or two of the debates that have caught my eye recently and specifically one of the YouTubers who seems to have a great production quality in his videos as well as well written monologues. These debates centre on two very important philosophical and scientific questions: The existence of God and evolution. Now, I remember growing up in rural Alabama, arguing till I was blue in the face that (1) the theory of evolution presented the most probable account of the origin of life and (2) that evolution and God were not mutually exclusive. I still believed in God at the time, though I still don't find the two as logically opposed. More on that later.
In any case, a YouTuber named Firefly515 posted a video asking Atheists on YouTube to respond to certain questions he had regarding their beliefs. A fresh YouTuber screennamed Albert10110 responded eloquently with his own video. Albert10110 calls himself Al in his videos, and since typing 10110 over and over again will get tedious, I'll just refer to him this way from now on.
So here is Al's video. If you want to see Firefly's original video, follow the link on Al's video's YouTube page. It's just easier that way. I feel that Al's video is important because the arguments that Firefly uses have been used for as long as these discussions have been openly going on. It's refreshing for those of us who have seen Pascal's Wager (among other things) get thrown around time and time again to see them called out in a clear and concise manner.
And again, a few months later, and his most recent video, where he debunks another YouTube user's 'proof' that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Of course, these are the same bodies of 'evidence' that have been floating around the internet in places like Answers in Genesis, which have been swiftly and consistently debunked at one of my favourite sites growing up, Talk.Origins. However, Al takes them on once again, step by step. There's no need to include a link to the original video, as Al uses clips from it in his own video:
Keep an eye out for Al in the future. I'd really like to see him handle some more of the topics surrounding these issues. If you'd like to see the rest of his videos, check out his YouTube site.
That's all for now.
Which brings me to YouTube, and the surprising amount of discussion I have seen going on there since I finally started exploring the community. It reminds me of the old USENET system (heh heh...the 'old' usenet system...) and the long and surprisingly informative discussions that would occur on there. For all the trolls that prowled, there was a lot of well thought out posts on these message boards.
So, I'd like to take a quick look at one or two of the debates that have caught my eye recently and specifically one of the YouTubers who seems to have a great production quality in his videos as well as well written monologues. These debates centre on two very important philosophical and scientific questions: The existence of God and evolution. Now, I remember growing up in rural Alabama, arguing till I was blue in the face that (1) the theory of evolution presented the most probable account of the origin of life and (2) that evolution and God were not mutually exclusive. I still believed in God at the time, though I still don't find the two as logically opposed. More on that later.
In any case, a YouTuber named Firefly515 posted a video asking Atheists on YouTube to respond to certain questions he had regarding their beliefs. A fresh YouTuber screennamed Albert10110 responded eloquently with his own video. Albert10110 calls himself Al in his videos, and since typing 10110 over and over again will get tedious, I'll just refer to him this way from now on.
So here is Al's video. If you want to see Firefly's original video, follow the link on Al's video's YouTube page. It's just easier that way. I feel that Al's video is important because the arguments that Firefly uses have been used for as long as these discussions have been openly going on. It's refreshing for those of us who have seen Pascal's Wager (among other things) get thrown around time and time again to see them called out in a clear and concise manner.
And again, a few months later, and his most recent video, where he debunks another YouTube user's 'proof' that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Of course, these are the same bodies of 'evidence' that have been floating around the internet in places like Answers in Genesis, which have been swiftly and consistently debunked at one of my favourite sites growing up, Talk.Origins. However, Al takes them on once again, step by step. There's no need to include a link to the original video, as Al uses clips from it in his own video:
Keep an eye out for Al in the future. I'd really like to see him handle some more of the topics surrounding these issues. If you'd like to see the rest of his videos, check out his YouTube site.
That's all for now.
Labels: Atheism, Creationism, criticism of america, Evolution, Religion, Rufus Wainwright, Science
