Oh yes we can
A comment by a woman on Jo Phoenix’s post Talking about Asian grooming gangs:
An interesting and thought provoking article. One thing I find missing is the observation that not all cultures and religions are the same regarding attitudes towards women and girls. All are bad in their own way, but men of Muslim heritage and Muslim countries do have particularly oppressive and offensive attitudes about women and girls. Just because a subject raises unpleasant issues and is difficult to discuss doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be discussed.
I would put that more cautiously by saying that countries where Islam is more or less mandatory train men (and plenty of women) to be suspicious and contemptuous of women. Some men resist, some people grow up in more liberal secular families, yadda yadda, but the bottom line is that Islam teaches that women are always potential whores and have to be hidden and controlled and bullied.
Jo Phoenix’s reply, I’m sorry to say, is not impressive.
Not sure I agree. This is a generalisation. Catholicism? The Magdalen Schools in Ireland and csa by priests? Fundamentalism is a problem. Look at the legacy of Christianity in many African countries. We cannot say that Islam – as a religion – is more or less oppressive than Christianity.
First of all, yes, Catholicism, and the Magdalen laundries, and rapey priests. Yes, for sure. But that doesn’t translate to “Islam is not all that bad.” Yes it is. Look at Iran. Look at Afghanistan. Look at Boko Haram in Nigeria. Look at Saudi Arabia. And yes, look at Pakistan. The fact that Catholicism also sucks does not make Islam benign. There are reformist Muslims of course but the Taliban doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention to them. Of course we can say that Islam – as a religion – (what else would it be?) – is more oppressive than Christianity. Try telling the girls and women thrown out of schools and universities by the Taliban that Christianity is just as bad.
She goes on:
The generalisation comes in when you say ‘men of Muslim heritage’ – do you mean all men of Muslim heritage – if so this is the same as saying men of black heritage are problematic.
Of course it isn’t. Black heritage is not a religion, it has no Mohammed, it has no Koran, thus it has no holy book that tells it women are sly rebellious lying whores and must be muffled and controlled. It is fair to say that some men of Muslim heritage reject the misogyny, and even resist Islamist rulers and “activists” – like the late Tarek Fatah for instance. It’s fair to say that and it’s good to promote them and their work. But one can do that without pretending that Islam as it is in the world today is a benign or even somewhat benign religion. Unless you think half of humanity is simply worthless, that won’t fly.
It bothers me because on the one hand I absolutely see what is concerning many liberal/left GC people: the rightward shift among “GC”, and the shift towards unthinking racist ideas is definitely a thing that is real and happening and scary. And there are countless examples of it. I think people are trying to address that, but failing to do so without falling into the pitfall of defending Islam wholesale and that kind of lefty-identity politics. I think many rightwing people are in fact being broadly racist but then doing a very good job redirecting the topic towards the terrible bits of islam whenever anyone tries to point out that they’re being broadly racist. It’s a bloody mess. I see the same overall structure playing out with homosexuals and anti-gay bigotry: some radical “GC”s find bad examples within the gay culture and then encourage everyone to use those as an excuse to hate gay men in general.
Only after submitting my comment did it occur to me that I started out with “on the one hand” but then I never got around to the other hand. sorry!
Show me one religion where women aren’t seen as inferior. There aren’t any. It’s one of the big lies of ALL religions. Then there’s all those indoctrinated people who can’t think their way out of their stupid and malevolent religious programming. Women are superior to men in a lot of ways, but that’s not even the point — how are any of these heirarchies, sex, race, religion, etc. useful? It’s all bullshit power dynamics that people can, but stubbornly won’t transcend. There has been some progress (in some cultures), but much of the world remains defiantly stagnant. Then there’s the wealthy who could use their vast finances to fund progressive endeavors and help improve things, but instead they spend billions on vanity projects. It’s bleak.
Hahahaha Arty I hate when that happens. Like opening a parenthesis and then forgetting to close it. Arrrgghh the twitching!!
I think it’s reasonable to ask the question, “Is Islamic doctrine uniquely worse than other monotheistic doctrines, or is it that Islam currently is applied as the governing principle in far more countries than other religions that makes it seem so?” For the most part, in the current era, even countries where a specific religion has an outsized influence still operate at a slight remove–Catholicism may be absurdly powerful in Central American politics, for instance, resulting in obscene anti-abortion laws, but there are other factions, malevolent and benevolent alike, that prevent them from simply installing the local bishop as El Presidente. The countries you talk about, Ophelia, are ones where the Koran (and a specific interpretation of it, at that) is the nation’s underlying document. The Christian nationalists in the U.S. certainly would love to oppress women more than they do right now, but they haven’t quite gotten the authority to strip them of the right to credit cards or the vote–yet.
I think that’s what Jo was getting at with her comment about ‘fundamentalism’ being the problem. But she’s failing to grapple with the fact that many of these immigrant communities are both isolated (in no small part due to the inherent racism of the host country; there’s a similar factor that slows Hispanic integration in the U.S., in comparison with other immigrant groups) AND recent (which means that they are more likely to hold onto the ideals of their country of origin, which are inherently anti-women). What’s needed is a strong set of policies which works to keep the people, while squeezing out the ideology.
If there is a ‘rightward shift’ of gc women (and men), I’d say based on my experience and observation that this is a direct result of the utter repudiation and repression of gc belief and activism within the left and progressive/liberal movements generally. Sure there are right wing people who are gc, but more often than not that stems from their support of traditional patriarchal gender roles and homophobia in the widest sense. Anyone with a vaguely liberal or progressive bent who has tried to even mention gc views as being worthy of discussion over the last few years has had a very unpleasant time of it.
The problem with the phrase “Rightward shift” is that it’s subjective, in the pedantic sense. It would apply to a shift away from Marxist Communism to Enlightenment Liberalism. It applies to anyone who peaks and says, “Oh, shit, wait. I’ve been supporting doing what with kids?” It applies to anyone who says, “Wait, different ways of knowing? Come again?” Anyone who realizes that something has gone too far is “guilty” of moving to the Right.
Is it that GC is moving to the right, or that what passes for progressivism in the west these days has become more and more questionable? I confess I may be an example of moving to the right (yet the Trumpian version is even scarier, and no, contra Kirk and his ilk I do not pine for feudalism). I like the concept of “luxury beliefs”: lefty beliefs that may be destructive to the poor while the rich can escape consequences.
Nullius, I partially agree with you, but I think much of what you’ve said is guilty of the very thing you’re saying is the problem. Yes, the path from left to right is a spectrum with every political and social philosophy we can think of in between. There are edge cases where at a practical level of action certain left and right groups become indistinguishable. but the examples you give could apply to a religious conservative who had engaged in conversion therapy for gay kids realising that was wrong (leftward shift); different ways of know (could be leftward or rightward, or indeed recognising that the universe has certain immutable facts whether you like it or not); or the fascist realising it’s gone to far (leftward). As you said in your first sentence, it’s about ones frame of reference. In the frame of the OP it’s pretty clear though.
I highly recommend this piece by Helen Pluckrose. Here’s a sample:
https://helenpluckrose.substack.com/p/yes-the-term-far-right-is-frequently-63d?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app
Rob, I have no quarrel with anything you say here. It is indeed true that “leftward” shift has the same subjectivity issue. Any shift away from theocratic dictatorship can accurately be called a shift toward communist oligarchy and every evil associated with the Left. Unfortunately, this sort of observation is trivial, as we can also say that literally any shift away from absolute Leftism is a shift toward every evil associated with the Right. This sort of thinking leads to the idea that leftward movement is always the wrong direction (when viewed from the right) and rightward movement is always wrong (when viewed from the left).
If moving rightward is seen as moving in the direction of racism, theocracy, or fascism, then perforce the only valid direction is to the left. All we can do is move further left. If there’s something wrong, it’s just because we’re not left enough. We’re committed to a quasi-religious spiral of extremism around the dream of Leftist utopia. And the mirror occurs when approached from the right, orbiting the Rightist mirage.
That’s not an end I find appealing, so I’d prefer to discard that mode of thought as inherently unhelpful.