A Universal Doctrine of Women’s Rights.

A must read from Phyllis Chessler and Marcia Pappas.

FROM PAJAMASMEDIA.COM:

A Universal Doctrine of Women’s Rights.
Posted By Phyllis Chesler On March 24, 2009 @ 6:30 am

By Phyllis Chesler and Marcia Pappas

It is time for feminists, both women and men, of all faiths, and of no faith, to stand together for a woman’s right not to be murdered in the name of family honor. Indeed, we welcome men and women of all faiths, including Islam, to stand with us against female genital mutilation/castration, forced veiling, child marriage, arranged marriage, polygamy, and “honorcide,” and in favor of a woman’s right to live as a westerner in the West without being threatened and beaten for refusing to wear hijab, wanting to have non-Muslim friends, wear makeup, attend college, drive her own car, or end an abusive marriage. Muslim and Sikh women have been honor murdered in North America for all these alleged crimes against their religion and their culture.

Here are some specific examples of how American feminist leaders have addressed the problems of Third World women, including Muslim women, both here and abroad. While there are exceptions, most feminists seem to feel more comfortable criticizing their own government. They hesitate to criticize foreign, Third World governments, lest they be demonized as “crusaders” or “politically incorrect racists.”

In the 1980s, feminists respected Alice Walker’s brave stand against female genital cutting/mutilation. Walker, a feminist-”womanist,” focused on perpetrators who were usually women of color, in the Middle East and Africa, who were savagely mutilating their own daughters and granddaughters to render them “marriageable” for men. As an African-American legend, perhaps Walker was viewed as morally “entitled” to criticize foreign, including African, sexism. (Walker finally published her book about this, Warrior Marks, in 1993). In the 1990s, NOW national and state Presidents also spoke out against female genital cutting/mutilation.

Today, sadly something has changed. The unspoken politics of racism among the feminist intelligentsia, and among feminist philanthropists is as follows: If the victims are women of color, especially if they are Arabs, definitely if they are Palestinians, or Muslims, their suffering and their deaths matter—but only if their abusers and murderers are white, European, American, or Israeli. If dark-skinned Africans or Muslims of color gang-rape, kidnap, sexually enslave, bury alive, immolate or stone women of color, including Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims, (in the West Bank and Gaza, in Afghanistan, Iran, Algeria, Sudan, Somalia), or if one Muslim denomination (Sunni) blows up the other, (Shiaa) in Pakistan and Iraq, it is simply not politically correct to say so. Muslim-on-Muslim crimes do not count in the same way that white European or American-on-Muslim crimes seem to matter.

This is the party line in our universities, in our mainstream media, at the United Nations and in international human rights organizations.

Why are Second and Third Wave feminists buying into this? Why are feminists sacrificing so many women to the dangerous ideology of “cultural relativism,” a belief system in which concerns about sexism are always trumped by concerns about racism? The authors are not saying that racism does not exist, that it does not matter, that it must not be addressed. We are saying that women are affected by both. And when a man or a woman seeks to objectify, abuse or murder women, they should be called out on it, no matter what their skin-color or gender may be.
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