by Onleilove Alston

Naomi Wolf author of The Beauty Myth discusses how images fueled by consumerism are used against women.  Wolf points out that the beauty myth becomes harsher  after times of political gain for women, thus distracting us from the cause of equality. As  Ecclesiastes 1:9 states “their is nothing new under the sun” because in the Song of Songs (a.k.a. Song of Solomon) we can hear the protest of a woman who does not fit into her society’s beauty myth:

“I am black but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, Like the tents of Kedar, Like the curtains of Solomon. “Do not stare at me because I am swarthy, For the sun has burned me.My mother’s sons were angry with me; they made me caretaker of the vineyards, But I have not taken care of my own vineyard.”

The unnamed love interest in this Biblical text does not fold under the beauty myth but stands up to it, affirming not only her beauty but her humanity. Colorism is one form of the beauty myth that is a common reality for women around the world; Dalits in India, the color caste system in African-American rap videos, and African women using deadly skin bleaching creams are just a few examples of this social ill.

This video was created by Kari Morris and Onleilove Alston based on scriptures from Song of Songs 1:5-6; 5:7; 8:6b and Music “‘Til We Reach That Day” taken from the Original Cast Album of RAGTIME.  In this video Kari and I wanted to feature women who may stand outside of the beauty myth yet convey a beauty that surpasses society’s norms, we also wanted to show the beauty of women doing justice because “charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). One way we can fear or reverence God is by being agents of justice in the world, which highlights a true beauty which is not temporal but eternal in value.

As we seek to be women of faith and justice how can we debunk the beauty myth in our own lives and communities? How can men be allies in this effort?

Kari Morris a graduate of  The Actors Studio and Union Theological Seminary is an  actor, writer,singer and executive producer of the film “Two”.

Onleilove Alston is a student at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University School of Social Work. She organizes with NY Faith & Justice and the Poverty Initiative. During the summer of 2008 she served at Sojourners as a Beatitudes Society Fellow. You can visit her blog- Esther’s Call

Facts
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.

By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.

The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.

The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.

The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.

The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.

They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.

They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.

The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.

The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.

The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.

The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.

President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.

The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.

Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.

Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and hus stimulate the economy of the state.

Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

        http://www.akidsheart.com/holidays/thanks/turkswap.htm

Turkey/Pig Swap Game VERY FRUSTRATING!

A PUMA versus a real feminist

Comment by Amy Siskind | 2009-11-15 22:31:08

Thanks Uppity.

I said it in January, and I’ll say it again – I would LOVE to square up one on one with Wolf on any station and discuss what her POV.

It would be great for CNN to show this video and then have an open discussion now wouldn’t it!

Absofuckinglutely. The Palin Agenda would be torn to pieces. Disgusting race hate versus a real feminist.

Amy what on earth is this if it is not sexist hate?

On November 12:

1651  Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexican mystic and author, was born.

1729  Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French explorer, was born.

1840 Auguste Rodin, French sculptor, was born.

1847 Sir James Young Simpson, a Scottish physician, was the first to use chloroform as an anaesthetic.

1866 Sun Yat-sen, the 1st President of the Republic of China was born.

1889 DeWitt Wallace, American magazine publisher, co-founder of  Readers Digest, was born.

1912 The frozen bodies of Robert Scott and his men were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

1912 Striking worker Fred Evans was seriously injured in a clash with police and strikebreakers during the bitter six-month-long dispute at the goldmining town of Waihi. He died the following day.

1918  Austria became a republic.

1929  Princess Grace of Monaco, was born.

1933 Hugh Gray took the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster.

The “Surgeon’s photo” (1934), later revealed as a hoax.

1934 Charles Manson, American cult leader, was born.

1936 The San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic

1942 The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal between Japanese and American forces began.

1943  Bjorn Waldegard, Swedish rally driver, was born.

1944  Booker T. Jones, American musician and songwriter (Booker T and the MG’s), was born.

1945 Neil Young, Canadian singer and musician, was born.

1958  A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completed the first ascent of The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

1962  Naomi Wolf, American author and feminist, was born.

1969 Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the My Lai story.

1970 The 1970 Bhola cyclone made landfall on the coast of East Pakistan becoming the deadliest tropical cyclone in history.

1970  Craig Parker, New Zealand actor, was born.

1990 Crown Prince Akihito was formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.

1990  Tim Berners-Lee published a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

This post is more of an afterthought.. when I wrote about “Penelope”, the film and about the highly over-rated ideals of beauty , I forgot to mention a book which I read way back in college and which stayed with me for a long time. I read that at a juncture when I was highly influenced by Feminism as a school of thought .From being a hard core feminist to believing in gender equality my opinions have undergone a sea change.

But that book - ”The Beauty Myth” ( Naomi Wolf’s highly controversial first work !!)  left quite an imprint on my mind. Naomi Wolf strongly recommends that normative standards of beauty need to be relaxed since they’ve compelled women to starve and sometimes disfigure themselves to look “beautiful” . The way she saw the” beauty myth” in context of work, religion, hunger, sex and violence was truly an eye-opener. For instance, if you go back in history women would wear corsets made of iron just to give the impression of a slender waist ( Obviously at the risk of disfiguring themselves !!)

Critics went on to say her statistics on the number of teenage girls dying due to anorexia were inflated !! Agreed, but the fact remains anorexia is a silent killer…  The book also set me thinking about companies in the business of beauty palm off “manufactured ideals of beauty “  to impressionable minds just to sell their products!! If were to look at it in the Indian context “Fair and Lovely” is the most striking instance I am sure the company that manufactures the cream is laughing all the way to the bank simply cashing in on the Indian psyche which seems to equate fair with beautiful..( How do we conveniently ignore the fact some of our most striking beauties are dusky :Sushmita Sen, Bipasha Basu, Lara Dutta) … Similarly over the counter slimming drugs are also doing booming business… At the cost of ruining their health several young girls fall prey to such marketing gimmicks…  What I could make of all this was : we women need to stop being self-critical and harsh on ourselves especially when it comes to physical appearance… Our weight / dress size shouldn’t  determine our self-worth !! We need to raise daughters with a healthy sense of self; those girls who  derive their sense of self from who they are and not how they look..  Physical beauty fades away ( yes it does despite those Botox shots and anti-ageing concoctions !) its your inner beauty ( very cliched and hackneyed term but can’t think of a better phrase yet !! ) that is eternal and lasts a lifetime….( i say all this at the risk of sounding very preachy.!!)

Hunter Baker is a sharp dude out of Houston Baptist University who just published a piece on the Salvo magazine website entitled “Facts Evasion: When it Comes to Sex, the Left Hates Science.” I commend the piece to you–it’s apologetically quite useful.  Hunter just published The End of Secularism, I might add, which will make you much smarter than you are now if you read it.

In Hunter’s article, he takes aim at the common misconception that the political left works from a scientific standpoint on matters of social policy while conservatives work from a merely ideological perspective.  His article makes several excellent points, and I’m going to block quote a big section of it because it is highly worth your time as a thoughtful Christian person engaging cultural matters for the glory of Christ:

How well does it work to encourage promiscuous sex accompanied by birth control pills and condom use? Ask an obstetrician-gynecologist about the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in young women. The rate is exceptionally high. We may well reap a demographic disaster of infertility down the road. Let’s pray that P. D. James, who wrote The Children of Men, is no prophet.

Abortions continue to be performed in huge numbers despite the past assurances of some on the left that modern birth control would eliminate the need for the grisly procedure. And of the children who are born, an alarmingly high number are born to single mothers. As a group, these children are substantially more likely to do poorly in school, abuse drugs, commit crimes, require governmental assistance, and serve time in jail—and to see the cycle repeated when they have children of their own.

Is it a scientific outlook that would maintain that this state of affairs is somehow conducive to human flourishing? Or would the evidence-driven observer be more likely to affirm that sex within marriage is far more advantageous to women than promiscuity? A more logical mind could also see very well that social support for traditional marriage would help with the recurring problem of convincing men to raise their offspring rather than simply siring them.

And let us dwell for a moment on the record of the secular left’s “rational” approach in the matter of procreation. In the case of the unborn child, for example, pro-choicers for a long time stubbornly clung to the notion that the child inside the womb was no more than a cluster of cells, undifferentiated tissue, and/or a tumor-like growth. They maintained this stance long after Lennart Nilsson’s landmark photos of fetuses were published in Life magazine in 1965, and even beyond the advent and regular use of ultrasound technology.

It has only been within the past decade, when major corporations began using images of unborn children in their advertising and parents began purchasing ultra-detailed images of their in utero babies, that supporters of broad abortion rights began to abandon the dehumanizing and, yes, anti-scientific language of the fetus as inert matter. Some years ago, the famed feminist Naomi Wolf broke ranks with her side just enough to plead for recognition of the humanity of the fetus, lest the battle be lost through a failure to acknowledge what is obvious to non-ideologues.

The whole piece is worth reading, and Baker’s chief argument is worth noting and using extensively.  We Christians are not behind the 8-ball when it comes to science.  We’re squarely in line with it.  To an extent that we too rarely cite, it is on our side.

Too often we operate culturally from a position of weakness instead of a position of strength.  Selections like this show us the importance of evaluating rhetoric and thinking clearly about science, faith, and the way in which the former, when handled well, serves the latter.

I watched this a year or so ago and I couldn’t believe how easy Naomi Wolf makes it to help convince people of some shady activity that the government has been playing with. I have here for you now two versions of “The End of America” one that I will post on here and another where you can actually watch the Professional Documentary in full. Enjoy

Peace
Simranjeet Singh
AiM: Kether1985

-> Watch The Full End Of America Here <-

In a stunning indictment of sweeping policy changes during the Bush years, best-selling author Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth) makes a chilling case that American democracy is under threat. Investigating parallels between our current situation and the rise of dictators and fascism in once-free societies, Wolf uncovers a number of deeply unsettling similarities-from the use of paramilitary groups and secret prisons to the targeted suspension of the rule of law. With this galvanizing call to arms based on her recent book, she urges regular citizens to take back our legacy of freedom and justice.

-> Watch The Full End Of America Here <-

“If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf’s newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.”

Naomi Wolf continues to bristle at the criticisms leveled at her by this blog and others, criticisms which she characterizes in a recent Huffington Post article as ”a small firestorm of distortion.” In that piece, Wolf writes about the examples of  “Muslim feminism” she encountered during her recent travels in Jordan. Women in that country, she says, were not looking to the West to save them, nor were they particularly worried about the veil:

“ They were too busy making egalitarian, modernist new worlds of their own, with an Arab, and often Islamic, imprimatur”.

As a prime example of a Muslim feminist fighting for oppressed women in Muslim lands, Wolf cites “Princess Rym Ali, sister-in-law of Queen Rania — the Chanel-wearing media star who is rebranding a more contemporary Jordan.”

I kid you not.  Here is how Wolf describes the place where she met the princess for her heart-to-heart talk about the fight for Muslim women’s rights:

“She met me in a leafy Amman suburb, in the palace that she shares with Prince Ali and their small children”.

When Wolf is not talking with princesses, she gets her insights from a boutique hotel owner whom she describes as:

“Martha Stewart meets Che Guevara, because, when not renovating the elegant public spaces of her hotel, she is suing Israeli generals for war crimes that she claims were committed against civilians in Gaza“.

Suing Israeli generals for trumped-up war-crime allegations in Gaza is Naomi Wolf’s idea of proving the bona fides of an Islamic feminist!

The only woman whom Naomi Wolf mentions in her Huffington Post article who can be taken serioiusly is an investigative journalist.   This brave woman, Rana Husseini, has received death threats for reporting on honor killings.

But honor killings, while horrible to be sure, are only the tip of the iceberg.   Islamic law stipulates a gender-segregated, patriarchal society in which women are treated as inferior beings. And that represents the mainstream of Islamic beliefs today, not a fringe extremist cult.

But don’t take my word for it. While Wolf prefers to get her insights about the plight of Muslim women primarily from princesses behind palace walls and from boutique hotel owners who sue Israeli generals in their spare time, I prefer to listen to the words of a woman who spent her first thirty years living the life of an average Muslim female in Egypt before emigrating to the United States.  Her name is Nonie Darwish, whose father was regarded in the Muslim world as a shahid (martyr) for giving up his life more than fifty years ago in the jihad against Israel.

Ms. Darwish has described in painstaking detail the daily hardships imposed on Muslim women as a direct consequence of Islamic law and mainstream customs in Muslim society, patterned after the Prophet Muhammad’s own life.  Here are just a few examples, taken from her book entitled Cruel and Usual Punishment: The terrifying global implications of Islamic Law:

• The Sharia marriage contract is a document “granting sexual intercourse rights to the male and giving him total control over his wife or wives”.
• A man is allowed up to four wives and can even enter into a temporary marriage contract to sanction a night of pleasure.
• The husband is free to beat any of his wives if they are disobedient.
• The husband can divorce his wives at will, but the wives are essentially stuck in loveless marriages at the pleasure of the husband they share. The wives’ shared husband is also favored in cases of custody of the children after the early years of childhood are over.
• Men are granted the privilege to seek sexual gratification with children.  Muhammad placed his private parts between the thighs of six year old Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage with her at age nine.  Iran’s supreme leader and founder of its Islamic revolution, Ayotollah Khomeini, declared that it was perfectly OK under Sharia for a man to sodomize a baby.

So here is some advice for Naomi Wolf.  Your critics have not distorted your views.  You have only proven your critics’ point by using a privileged Jordanian princess and a boutique hotel owner with a lawsuit against Israeli generals as your models of Muslim feminists. You should have been speaking with Muslim women who actually suffered under the yoke of Islamic law. In short, you are a shining example of why leftist feminists such as yourself cannot be taken seriously.

Naomi Wolf, Lucy Semiyan Mashua

I have a little follow-up to my run-in with Naomi Wolf over the sexiness of the burqa.

As our readers will be familiar, Wolf went on a political pilgrimage to Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt and found a thriving sexuality behind the veil.

I have been wondering ever since if Wolf was at all concerned about what state women’s vaginas were in within the sexual paradises that she visited and praised, seeing that the barbaric crime of female genital mutilation is perpetrated with high frequency in the areas she visited.

But not that a fellow traveler would care about anything like that.

Who does care is Lucy Semiyan Mashua, a freedom fighter from Kenya who survived several kinds of genital mutilation, slavery, child abuse, rape and torture. Today she is leading a new global campaign against female genital mutilation. Will you help? It might just take signing a petition. Please enter the fight by reading all about the new effort to save girls from this genocide.

Will Naomi Wolf join the battle? For instance, will she denounce the Islamic theology and teachings that lead to the mutilation of Muslim girls in Islamic countries?

Should we hold our breath?

It has become fashionable in recent years to argue that for many Muslim women, wearing the Chador or Burqa is liberating. Feminist icon Naomi Wolf, recounting a visit to the Muslim world, wrote a couple years ago:

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home. […]

Indeed, many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualising Western gaze. Many women said something like this: “When I wear Western clothes, men stare at me, objectify me, or I am always measuring myself against the standards of models in magazines, which are hard to live up to – and even harder as you get older, not to mention how tiring it can be to be on display all the time. When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual, not an object; I feel respected.” This may not be expressed in a traditional Western feminist set of images, but it is a recognisably Western feminist set of feelings.

It is easy to grasp why some Muslim women feel this way. To no longer feel the need to display oneself in a way that is pleasing to men is undoubtedly a relief.

However, it is a bit of a stretch to argue that such clothing is liberating, not oppressive. The need to cover themselves is itself a product of the repressive patriarchy from which they desire to escape.

Via the National Post,

But what exactly does it symbolize? Many say it stands for piety. No, that’s wrong, says Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Piety has little to do with it; the Koran doesn’t even mention the veil. In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.

It also establishes the wearer’s extreme distance from the rest of us. We recognize people by seeing their faces and we acknowledge their humanity by reading what their faces tell us. Without that information humans cannot come alive to each other. A woman wearing a mask is a woman declining to be human. Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction. Encouraging a woman to wear the burka is like offering her a portable isolation cell. (h/t to Butterflies and Wheels)

Lazreg, author of Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women, is right. A system of belief that forces women to hide themselves is barbarous and inhumane. Women who embrace the custom are making the best of a bad situation; they ought not be criticized for their decision. But feminists who praise it as liberating in the name of cultural tolerance are loosing sight of the conditions that give rise to the custom.

In France, President Sarkozy has called for banning the burqa.

In a speech at the Palace of Versailles, Mr Sarkozy said that the head-to-toe Islamic garment for women was not a symbol of religion but a sign of subservience for women.

“The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,” he told members of both parliamentary houses gathered for his speech.

He added: “It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.”

But this strikes me as wrong-headed as well. Women who choose to wear it are doing so for personal reasons. The burqa may be a symbol of repression, but it is a violation of their personal liberty to ignore those reasons and force woman to become symbols in a culture war they do not wish to fight.

We can oppose the burqa while granting the strategic role it plays in making a woman’s life livable.

Dwight Furrow is author of

Reviving the Left: The Need to Restore Liberal Values in America

For political commentary by Dwight Furrow visit: www.revivingliberalism.com

A French blog named Bivouac-ID decided to translate Jamie Glazov’s rebuttal to Naomi Wolf here.

The blog gave this sympathetic introduction, (translated by me with a free translation service):

A debate rages in the United States between the feminist left and right on the subject of the burka. The protagonists, Naomi Wolf on the left, and Phyllis Chesler as well as Jamie Glazov on the right, debate the question in their blogs. We translated Glazov’s latest post in response to Wolf.

Naomi Wolf is an author and a militant progressive feminist who is said to be particularly concerned about the status of women and minorities….

Phyllis Chesler is professor emeritus of psychology and of feminist studies in New York. In 1961, she married an Afghan and lived briefly in Kabul with the family of her father-in-law — a painful experience of abuse, violence and imprisonment that deeply affected her feminism vision.

Jamie Glazov, a Moscow-born Canadian whose parents were dissidents who fled the Soviet system in 1975, holds a PhD in history. He is the editor of Frontpage Magazine and the author of a recently published work on the alliance islamogauchiste: ”United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror.”

Non, Naomi Wolf, c’est vous qui devez des excuses

How cool is that?!

Naomi Wolf

No, the debate between Naomi Wolf and Phyllis Chesler isn’t dead yet.

Quick link summary for those just jumping in:

On August 31 Phyllis Chesler wrote a piece at Pajamas Media challenging an article Naomi Wolf wrote about veiled Muslim women for the Sydney Morning Herald. Jamie Glazov, FrontPage’s managing editor and a blogger for NewsReal, wrote a post in support of Chesler here. Wolf didn’t care for either Chesler or Glazov’s characterizations of her position. She left a comment demanding that David Horowitz, NewsReal’s Editor-In-Chief, remove Glazov’s blog. She also contacted Chesler. Glazov had an additional rebuttal here, Horowitz weighed in here, Robert Spencer commented here, and the other day Salon sided with Wolf here, prompting further rebuttals from Chesler here, and Glazov here. (And there are two feminists in support of Chesler here.)

Now to this summary one can add two defenses of Wolf and one somewhat neutral observer who takes some shots at both side:

AltMuslim claims that Wolf’s defense of the veil is “rational culture”:

Finally, there is an unusually vociferous face-off over the veil occurring in the blogosphere – but it’s not among Muslims. Celebrated author and activist Naomi Wolf (who we interviewed at the start of the economic crisis) penned an article entitled, “Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality” in which she documented her experiences in Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt. She found that in typical Muslim households, “It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling — toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.” There was “demureness and propriety” outside of the home, “but inside, women were as interested in allure, seduction and pleasure as women anywhere in the world.” When walking through a bazaar with a Pakistani-style shalwar kameez and headscarf (hardly a burqa), she “felt a novel sense of calm and serenity” and even, “in certain ways, free.” That was too much for conservative activist Phyllis Chesler, who is rallying the troops (including David Horowitz and Ann Coulter) to savage Wolf, saying that “most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice” about covering “and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families” (though Wolf had said along, “Choice is everything”). It’s a sign that women’s Islamic (or not) clothing – like the abortion issue in the US – is being appropriated as the battle ground in the ongoing culture wars between, let’s say, the rational and the irrational. May rational culture win.

A blogger named “DaisyDeadHead” comes down on Wolf’s side and takes some shots at Chesler and Horowitz:

It’s always a very nasty, immoral act to publish someone’s email. To me, a pretty LOW thing to do. Chesler takes the LOW ROAD, then. Automatically. And she brought her crew, too! That famous radical feminist David Horowitz has jumped into the fray. (Caution, extremely unpleasant and noxious link.) And Chesler responds to the Salon piece, angry, of course. (And we wonder why Second-Wavers have such bad reputations?)

“Unpleasant and noxious link”? Jeez. I wonder what Daisy would say about her fellow deadhead Ann Coulter’s joke about how burkhas aren’t “such a bad idea for liberal women.”

One of Daisy’s friends, Natalia Antonova, has some more measured commentary taking some shots at both sides. She admits that Wolf was out of line in her defense of the veil:

The problem with the Taliban is that they argue, via a barrel of a gun, that women are not human beings. I don’t believe it’s actually possible for an outsider to “demonize” the Taliban either, as they do a pretty good job of that themselves.

Of course, I agree with Wolf about the aspect of choice. I don’t care what Phyllis Chesler, or anyone else, feels about the veil, the burkini, the hot-pink catsuit I saw a woman wear on the bus today… You don’t get to tell anyone how to farking dress. I don’t care what you may think their reasons for dressing this or that way are.

Chesler’s attacks on Wolf framed the issue of “Burqa as ultimate feminist choice,” which was a smear tactic if I’ve ever seen one (could it be because I’ve experienced something very similar once upon a time?). Wolf may be a lot of things, but an idiot she is not.

Chesler does, however, have a point when she says that the Muslim world can be just as “debauched” as anything you’d ever see in the West; people just hide that sort of thing better, they don’t flaunt it, it’s all very surreptitious, but it happens. Closed societies deal with repression in all sorts of colourful ways. Considering the amount of so-called Muslim men that regularly tried to solicit sex from me while I was in Jordan, I just don’t buy Wolf’s insistence that society is somehow purer and human interaction is less explotative when most of the women are veiled. I found Wolf’s own wearing of shalwar kameez and headscarf in Morocco to be touching. Personally, I’ve worn the veil to escape sexual harassment, and no, it was not a “calming” or “serene” experience, it was an “oh crap, now I get to pretend to be someone else just for a scrap of respect around here” kind of experience.

So who’s going to jump in next? If you write a blog or article commenting  on this debate (or come across someone else who has) then please email it to me, NewsReal’s assistant managing editor at DavidSwindle AT Gmail Dot Com.

Ann Coulter briefly commented on Jamie Glazov’s rebuttal of Salon’s entry into the Wolf-Chesler-Glazov debate about the veil in the Muslim world

On September 5 Coulter again blogged in support of the Chesler-Glazov position, employing her satirical wit to strike at the leftist feminists who are acting as apologists for Islamofascist misogyny:

Salon Backs Burkas (which isn’t such a bad idea for liberal women) – Salon.com Enters Wolf-Chesler-Glazov Battle

Oh, would that joke have gotten under my skin back when I was still a leftist…

Naomi Wolf’s hysterical predictions about a fascist state developing under President Bush came to naught.  The presidential election went ahead as scheduled, although she warned us of the possibility of a suspended election.  The candidate she endorsed, Barack Obama, won.  Despite her warnings of rampant censorship and shut-downs, her beloved leftward leaning mainstream media remained in business, continuing to leak classified information that is helping the enemy.  The CIA interrogators who helped keep our country safe from another 9/11 attack may be prosecuted, just as Wolf has long wanted.

But this pseudo-intellectual who claims to be an expert on ‘closed societies’ does not let the truth get in the way of her hysteria.  She sees a new wave of fascism stirring in the Obama administration (not mentioning, of course, the socialistic policies that are actually becoming an Obama trademark). 

Wolf’s complaint is that Obama wants to continue holding a few of the most dangerous terrorist suspects now being detained at Guantanamo indefinitely.  As she put it back in July, “six months after he ordered an end to torture and CIA ‘black sites,’ and promised to close Guantánamo within a year, Obama seems to be re-branding Bush’s worst excesses.” (Emphasis added)

To a radical like Naomi Wolf, “worst excesses” mean actions to save American lives from the Islamic terrorists who truly are fascistic.  She would rather release even the most hardened, al Qaeda detainee than see him prevented from exercising his self-proclaimed right to freely express his hatred of America by killing us.

Despite Obama’s unconscionable release of Justice Department legal memos and reams of other documents that al Qaeda can now access on the Internet, Wolf complained that Obama should have done more.

“Obama has sought to suppress hundreds of photographs depicting sexual assault in US-run prisons” Wolf said.  She would add more fodder for the Islamo-fascists to use in recruiting more recruits to their cause. 

It’s bad enough that Naomi Wolf is in denial about the barbarity of Islamic law which justifies the debasement of women as a matter of course.   But she is also accusing all Americans of being torturers.  And she is perpetuating her discredited, hysterical scare tactics to frighten American citizens, or to shame them, about what our elected government is trying to do to protect the lives of American citizens – the first responsibility of government.

Several days ago, a magnificent crap storm erupted on the intertubes. Perhaps you heard a bunch of self-righteous blowhards screaming. It began with an op-ed piece Naomi Wolf wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald. The short piece focuses specifically on women’s sexuality and the link to women’s dress and some thoughts she had following a talk with Muslim women in Jordan, Morocco and Egypt. This is how I understood her position: Ms. Wolf could understand, coming from a highly sexualized culture, how dressing conservatively could feel freeing because she knew her ass and breasts weren’t being gawked at. That wearing a veil does not necessarily erase a woman’s sexuality, but it can keep it private. As opposed to Western cultures where billboards secrete sex.

That’s the essential gist of the article. It wasn’t about whether or not the veil or the burqa should be banned, it wasn’t about Islam, it wasn’t about the repression of women. It wasn’t even about the burqa. Nope, not at all. All I think Naomi Wolf intended to do in her article was get us to see the nuance behind women’s choice of dress and what society also expects of you. But a lot of people made the article about those things anyway. The conservative camp has been pulling out all the Straw Man and ad-hominem attacks they can muster.  It began with Phyllis Chesler, followed soon by Jamie Glazov. The gist of their argument is a broken record, hiccuping over and over that you can’t believe a woman who says “I choose this” when she lives in a country that will do her bodily harm if she chooses not. That’s not necessarily a bad point EXCEPT that wasn’t what the article was about. (Hellooooooo there, Mr. Straw Man!)  Never mind that they and most of their commenters tended to lump all Muslim women into one repressed, burqa-bearing camp.

BUT! This business about choice? They should say the exact same thing about Western cultures. And this is where Phyllis Chesler and Jamie Glazov and all there followers missed out. Ms. Wolf asks, “And are we blind to our own markers of the oppression and control of women?” This is what Ms. Wolf wanted us to consider. What about the clothes we’re expected to wear when we go out on Friday or Saturday night? Those high-heeled shoes. The super-tight dresses, skirts, jeans. The revealing tops. What about these almost-ass revealing shorts that 12 year-olds were wearing this summer?  Does that make us free? Getting away with showing more skin? What expectations lurk behind the choices?

Being a more conservative dresser myself, I understood what Naomi Wolf meant when she wrote about covering herself and feeling free. I do own some more revealing clothing, though. A particular piece, a tight, extreme-boob revealing red dress I bought on a whim and have never and probably won’t ever wear because I know that fire-engine red slip of fabric is going to draw attention. And I don’t feel comfortable with that kind of attention. So yes. I can choose between my slinky red dress and my relaxed jeans without getting stoned to death (Again, if you were preparing to yell at me, you missed the point). But sexualizing women in revealing outfits and heels is not necessarily better than covering them up with a veil.

More Reading:

Feminists Face of Over Veil Broadsheet

Salon. Com Enters Wolf-Chesler-Glazov Battle Jamie Gazov’s Newsrealblog

No, Thank You Naomi Wolf Cycads

Jamie Glazov’s recent dispute with feminist Naomi Wolf grew out of Wolf’s August 30th article in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Behind the Veil Lives a Thriving Muslim Sexuality.” In that piece, Wolf states that “[t]he Western Christian tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful.” She then informs us that Islam, by contrast, “never had that same kind of mind-body split” – and thus has traditionally allowed Muslims to “channel” their sexuality “into marriage and family life” in a manner that “is seen as a source of great blessing, sanctioned by God.”

This cheery view of the Muslim world, coupled with the dark depiction of the Christian West, is entirely a fabrication of Wolf’s imagination, an imagination whose musings are rooted in the leftist paradigm that divides the world ever-so-neatly between two distinct spheres: the evil West (especially America) on the one hand, and the far-more-noble, non-Western world on the other.

The lines of this dichotomy are clearly drawn by Wolf and her comrades on the Left: Capitalist America is the forum of a fevered struggle between the dominators and the dominated, the oppressors and the oppressed, the victimizers and the victims. Capitalism itself is cited as the cause of this barbarous arrangement, and, by logical extension, as the wellspring of innumerable social ills and vices—greed, racism, sexism, alienation, homophobia, imperialism, etc.

In the calculus of the Left, capitalism is the agent of tyranny and exploitation that targets a wide array of victim groups—blacks, Hispanics, women, homosexuals, immigrants and the poor, to name but a few. That is why according to the Left, the United States — the standard-bearer of all capitalist economies – can never seem to do anything right.

Surely you’ve noticed that on every social issue imaginable, leftists hold the U.S. to a far higher standard than they hold any other nation on earth. Any American imperfection, however slight, is magnified a thousandfold and is presented as evidence of our society’s inherent worthlessness — and, by necessity, of the need for its wholesale transformation. On the flip side, the flaws of other societies are not only judged mildly, but are themselves frequently attributed to corrupting American influences.

In his book United in Hate, Jamie Glazov explores in depth such widespread Islamist traits as “barbaric misogyny,” “the fear and hatred of women’s sexuality,” the “war on sexuality and private love,” “gender apartheid,” “male domination,” and genital mutilation.

But Naomi Wolf’s hatred of the West, coupled with her equally passionate adulation of the non-Western, non-Christian world, preclude her from being able to assess with any degree of objectivity Islam’s unsavory traditions regarding the status of women. Instead, she chooses to paint a smiley face on a custom (the wearing of the veil) that is emblematic of women’s historical and profound subjugation in the Islamic world. Moreover, she blithely dismisses all Western criticisms of that custom as nothing more than the ugly manifestations of Western intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and ethnocentrism.

Would Ms. Wolf even care if someone were to inform her that the Prophet Mohammed — who founded the Islamic faith and is viewed by believers as the embodiment of moral purity, divine wisdom, and human perfection – said quite plainly: “I have witnessed that most of the people in Hell are women” because they “swear too much and show no gratitude to [their] husbands”? How would Ms. Wolf rationalize away Mohammed’s assertion that he had “never come across anyone more lacking in intelligence, or ignorant of their religion, than women”? Can the “thriving Muslim sexuality” that allegedly lives “behind the veil” be adequately reconciled with Mohammed’s declarations that “the testimony of one man is equal to the testimony of two women,” or that it is permissible for a man to beat his disobedient wife, or that an adulteress “must be stoned to death” for her transgression? Has Ms. Wolf never heard that in Islam, a woman’s old age is considered a valid reason for her husband to divorce her?

All cultures are not equal. Nor is Western culture inferior to non-Western cultures. Yet those two sentences rank high among the notions against which leftists like Naomi Wolf have fought some of their fiercest battles, for decades.

Over at JihadWatch, the remarkable Robert Spencer brings a potent contribution to the debate about the veil in the Muslim world as only he can. Discussing the recent Salon article which defended Wolf, Spencer writes:

Clark-Flory goes on to excoriate Chesler, Horowitz and Glazov for their assorted sins against multiculturalist orthodoxy, and then concludes:

You might notice that as this conflagration spreads, more and more conservatives — many of whom do not identify as feminists — are rushing in to stoke the fire. As they do, the discussion becomes less about defending women’s rights and more about supporting their ongoing culture war. That reminds me of a line from Wolf’s essay: “Ideological battles are often waged with women’s bodies as their emblems, and Western Islamophobia is no exception.”

Yep. That’s what it’s all about: “Islamophobia.” This calls for a Thought Experiment!

Imagine a book of the Bible. Let’s call it the Book of Naomi. And imagine that the Book of Naomi likened a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you (to cultivate) so go to your tilth as ye will” (Naomi 2:223).

You can probably guess where Spencer is going to take this, but even if you can you simply must read it for yourself.

For further insight into these matters be sure and read Spencer’s many excellent books on the subject.

Here’s his most recent:

Salon Revises Feminist History

by Phyllis Chesler  – Pajamas Media –September 5, 2009

Round Four in the Chesler-Wolf-Glazov-Salon Debate About the Islamic Veil

I AM AWAY FROM MY DESK AND HAVE LIMITED EMAIL ACCESS. BUT HERE IS A NOTE I JUST SENT TO SARAH HEPOLA, THE EDITOR OF SALON’S BROADSHEET WHICH HAS JUST WEIGHED IN ON THE SIDE OF WOLF’S POSITION

Dear Sarah:

Hello. I am out of the country right now, have limited email access and can only be brief. In the interests of fairness, I hope you will publish this note.

I am not surprised that Salon’s Broadsheet (which you edit) has chosen to publish a biased piece on the issue of the Islamic veil–and one which does not identify me as the cofounder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969), cofounder of The National Women’s Health Network (1975), and the author of thirteen books, including WOMEN AND MADNESS (1972) and WOMAN’S INHUMANITY TO WOMAN (2002/2005), but only as the author of THE DEATH OF FEMINISM–without even its subtitle: WHAT’S NEXT IN THE STRUGGLE FOR WOMEN’S FREEDOM?

Newcomers might think I am a Jane-Come-Lately to feminism.

Read the complete original version of this item…

Feminism was born as movement to defend women’s rights in a “manly” world. Women couldn’t vote, manage their own money or receive education. Sufraggettes (for the opposed to this movement) or sufragists (as were known by supporters) were the first known modern movement in defense of women’s rights. Most of them also asked for less complicated attires: the new women found themselves much more comfortable in Coco Chanel’s dresses (elegant but simple and “casual“) than with meters and meters of fabric.

Looks like that now that revolution in clothing, is being critisized and considered not “feminist“. The “feminist” thing now is to wear a niqab or burqa, because then women are not objects to men’s eyes:

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes (sex seggregation!), I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling – toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.

…At home, in the context of marital intimacy, Victoria’s Secret, elegant fashion and skin care lotions abounded. The bridal videos that I was shown, with the sensuous dancing that the bride learns as part of what makes her a wonderful wife, and which she proudly displays for her bridegroom, suggested that sensuality was not alien to Muslim women. Rather, pleasure and sexuality, both male and female, should not be displayed promiscuously – and possibly destructively – for all to see.

Phyllis Chesler writes about this:

Most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice about wearing the chador, burqa, abaya, niqab, jilbab, or hijab (headscarf), and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families. Is Wolfe thoroughly unfamiliar with the news coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan on these very subjects? Has she forgotten the tragic, fiery deaths of those schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia who, in trying to flee their burning schoolhouse, were improperly veiled and who were beaten back by the all-powerful Saudi Morality Police?

It’s not only that, though. It’s interesting to note that she is an Al Gore’s former adviser, that is, politically she is sided on the democrat side. I wonder what this woman thinks of Hollywood films, publicity, etc. I would think that displaying sexuality (in some cases absolutely unnecesarily: woman nearly naked to sell youghourts…) would be her ideal and that conservatives supporting a less aggresive display of sexuality (i.e.: free porn on TV) could be considered as not “sexually liberated“. Sex within marriage, not before or with partners different to the married one, is ridiculed if it’s mantained by a Christian (specially Catholic). Well, I’m sure that in those cases she thinks that, of course, they have not a “healthy approach to sex“.

But if the women protesting about “men’s gaze” and supporting “sex channeled toward marriage and family” (whether they are free or not to choose it) are Muslims, dressed in a niqab/burqa or whatever, then they are liberated because they are “sexy” in their “marital intimacy“.

This article is worse than that mention though. It is like reading “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights“. Even if you’re writing an opinion piece, you must be at least neutral and balanced. And burqa/niqab is not only a dress, it’s a symbol. When you have guys like this one, defending beating your wife in an article titled “There must be violence against women“, with the subsequent defense of abuses made on women, it’s clear the robe is not only to protect women (or not mainly) but just to underline their character as a property (they even call the woman a toy) which belong to their husbands. The latter in exchange of protecting his investment, must also keep her apart from people who can damage that same investment. And lewd lookings from strangers are, of course, blamed on the women, not on the lewd looks’ owner. If she would have been burqa’d!

They forgot that also mystery plays an important role on sexuality and that sexual desire, both for men and women, begins in the mind. Thta’s why Muslim women can’t use high heels: they introduce on men’s head the idea of a sexy woman walking down the street, even if they actually hadn’t seen her. So, if they actually can’t see her, the sexual impulse in some cases can be even greater: that’s perhaps why there are so much women complaining about sexual abuses in Egypt, including hijab’d or veil’s wearers.

Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis,” said the report by the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights.

So, first, they convince the girls they are not going to be assaulted if they wear those garments, and after that, the harrassment ends being a national problem. Some feminists in Western countries have recognised this phenomenon, but instead of blaming the stalker, blame the stalked women, surprisingly agreeing with some of the most radical imams. Unni Wikan is one of those stupid human beings who support that idea:

Dr. Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. Wikan’s solution for the high incidence of Muslims raping Norwegian women (who are committing the crime of being unveiled) stresses neither punishment of the perpetrators nor repudiation of the Islamic theology that legitimizes such abuse of women. Rather, Wikan instructs Norwegian women to veil themselves.  “Norwegian women must understand that we live in a Multicultural society,” she states ” and adapt themselves to it.”

Of course, Wolf actually is not defending this harrassment, her vision being much more “idealised”:

When sexuality is kept private and directed in ways seen as sacred – and when one’s husband isn’t seeing his wife (or other women) half-naked all day long – one can feel great power and intensity when the headscarf or the chador comes off in the the home.

Sexual fantasies are varied: mystery bases a lot of them. Precisely, sexual taboos in Islamic societies make fantasies extremely attractive and the fact that the culture considers that women are inferior to men and basically sexually active, sinners, easies the idea of them being asking for sexual harrassment. If they don’t wear hijab/veil/… because they are demanding it (theory defended by more than one imam along the world, al Hilali for example). If they wear it, because they are also demanding it. A Saudi imam even demanded a one-eyed veil, because if a woman showed both eyes, that was, without doubt, sexually arousing.

Little Miss Attile points another obvious stupid reasoning:

Wolf:The Western Christian tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful. Islam and Judaism never had that same kind of mind-body split. So, in both cultures, sexuality channeled into marriage and family life is seen as a source of great blessing, sanctioned by God.

And she later comments about it:

I’d be interested in how “married sexuality” got to be sinful in the Christian tradition without making it into scripture. Or how Judaism is pro-sex, and led to Christianity, which is anti-sex, which led to Islam, which is also pro-sex. Does celebration of human sexuality skip a tradition within the world’s religions? Just askin’. And why do I get the feeling that Wolf has never read Song of Solomon—or listened to Frank Zappa’s “Catholic Girls”?

It’s interesting to note that Catholic countries such as Italy or Spain have an important tradition to paint nude women:

Goya's "Maja Desnuda" (Naked Maja)

There are other manifestations of culture (sculpture, dancing…) which have not any kind of “pious” nature.

That doesn’t mean that they supported a “free sex” attitude. But certainly I doubt that, being accurate, one can defend that sex in marriage was considered as sinful, except by some heretic branches from the Middle Ages, such as the Cathars. But if the birth of sons was the first end of matrimony, the consideration of sex as sinful would have been idiot and stupid, because they would have prevented them from fulfilling that first and main end.

The final point on the article is that Ms Wolf is not even familiar with the garments she has herself used or at least, with the differences between different Islamic attires. She is speaking about “veiled” women, but she has only used a shalwar kameez, not a niqab or a burqa. Something interesting if you happen to be writing about Islamic dress. In the link there are photos to show the differences. The shalwar kameez is more like the Indian Hindu dress.

There is also another aspect, she doesn’t mention: there are burqa-clad bandits and burqa-clad terrorists… Maybe they are also searching for their sexuality while robbing or committing suicide.

Lastly,even when she has seen his article contradicted, she is demanding an apology. Laughable.

Related:

1. Hijab in Islam, why Hijab is necessary? A very interesting link: the hijab in Muslims’ own words.
2. The Women of Islam, TIME.
3. Women’s Dress Code and Conduct: “A women is a object of concealment, thus when she emerges, Satan surreptitiously pursues her (and lays in wait to create his fitna for immorality)“.
4. The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam. Video. Warning:Graphic Images.
5. The Place of Women in Islam.