A serious question about the state of intersectional feminism
Emily Shire at the Daily Beast notes that the celebrity hijab-wearer and activist Linda Sarsour called Jake Tapper of CNN part of the alt-right.
The woman widely considered the face of January’s Women’s March and the larger intersectional resistance movement against the Trump administration took aim at a journalist from the news network the President has all but declared war on because Tapper raised a serious question about the state of intersectional feminism.
Monday afternoon, he retweeted a message from the Women’s March celebrating the birthday of the “revolutionary” Assata Shakur. The warm illustration of Shakur against a pink-to-purple background didn’t mention her conviction for murdering state trooper Werner Foerster when he pulled over a car with Shakur and two other members of the Black Liberation Army. Shakur escaped prison and fled to Cuba, which granted her asylum. As The Daily Beast’s Michael Daly noted in a 2014 report, “The FBI continued to consider her [Shakur] so dangerous that it offered the $1 million reward in 2005 and put her on the Most Wanted Terrorists List” in 2013.
So Tapper called out the Women’s March and specifically mentioned Sarsour and the Chicago Dyke March — the group that proudly expelled marchers for carrying flags with Stars of David in a gesture that many (including me) have criticized as blatantly anti-Semitic — for throwing their support behind Shakur: “Shakur is a cop-killer fugitive in Cuba. This, ugly sentiments from @lsarsour & @dykemarchchi …Any progressives out there condemning this?”
Sarsour tweeted back that Tapper “joins the ranks of the alt-right to target me online. Welcome to the party.”
That’s a bad and stupid thing for her to say. It’s not alt-right for progressives to take issue with, for instance, celebrating a convicted murderer. [Updating to add: But see Steamshovelmama @ 6 for reasons to think the conviction is unsafe.]
It’s always pissed me off that Sarsour was the face of the Women’s March…hijab and all. Hijab is not in any way progressive or a symbol of left-wing values.
This is the left’s version of Trump’s favorite bogeyman, “fake news.” Sarsour, like Trump, cheaply and falsely defames those who raise legitimate concerns or report non-favorable information about her.
There is a real alt-right, and people do share fake news, sometimes with violent ramifications (the Comet Ping Pong pizza shooting is proof of that). This is something else.
Sarsour challenged Tapper to “please share my ‘ugly’ sentiments? Unapologetically Muslim? Unapologetically Palestinian? Pro-immigrant? Pro-justice? Shame.” Tapper responded by reminding the internet that Sarsour had attacked anti-female genital mutilation activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, saying she wished she could “take [her] vagina away” and that she didn’t “deserve to be [a] wom[a]n.”
Very social justice, much progressive.
But it’s ok because Shakur is the victim of an injustice. So says HJ Hornbeck at FTB, anyway.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/reprobate/2017/07/20/who-watches-the-social-justice-activists/
Sarsour and her in-your-face hijab has annoyed me since Day 1. And her BS mentioned here suggests she’s quite the piece of work. With friends like that, who needs enemies?
But she has done one thing for me and that’s clarified why intersectionality is making me increasingly irritable.
It’s about the intersection of multiple pressures, and yet it’s always women reminding themselves of other groups’ problems. Gays and blacks and Muslims, especially male ones, don’t support feminists because it’s important to remember all oppressions. But feminists get jumped on for not remembering gay or black or Muslim priorities in every sentence.
And that, I’ve finally realized is my problem with Sarsour and her hyperleftism. The enemy of my capitalist enemy is my bosom buddy. Except when it’s feminism.
“Hijab is not in any way progressive or a symbol of left-wing values.”
Agreed. It’s not like I made the rules up. Islam says quite clearly what it’s for. If humans want to demonstrably lower suffering in the world, by just a little make the hijab voluntary or lose it altogether. Like wearing a bloody cross around one’s neck. A worthless sign of ignorance and prejudice but last I checked no one can be punished to death for not wearing one.
I have no time for Sarsour at all, though I don’t care one way or the other about the hijab. It’s a headscarf. Woman wants to wear a headscarf, makes no odds to me. It’s not a burka or a face veil, it doesn’t prevent you doing things (or make doing things more dangerous) as a burka does, or deny a woman’s public individuality and personality as any of the face veils do.
Complaining about Assata Shakur though… I actually think she may have a point. Alt-right isn’t the right term, I don’t think, but there is a strong rope of institutionalised racism that impossible to disentangle from Shakur’s story. Convicted murderer, yes. Actually guilty… maybe not.
The conviction of Assata Shakur was less than safe. My background is medical and the medical evidence worries me. Now, I am not an expert, but my independent opinion concurs with the expert medical testimony given at her trial, that it is highly unlikely that she was physically able to shoot Werner Foester. The lack of gunshot residue found on her hands also adds to the theory she was there but did not do the shooting.
This has to be placed against the known activities of the FBI – the COINTELPRO and NEWKILL programmes that targeted black activists. So I’m pretty uncomfortable with, “She was convicted, therefore we shouldn’t celebrate her.” Shakur was charged seven times. In all but the last trial, charges were dismissed (three times), or she was aquitted (twice, plus one hung jury followed by an aquittal) which, given how keen the FBI was to get her behind bars, suggests a… certain paucity of hard evidence.
Her treatment post-conviction was appalling. Not to mention pre-trial things like being shackled to her bed when her lawyer visited (what? She’s Hannibal Lector or something?)
And naming her a “domestic terrorist” based on one conviction that many of us find a bit on the dodgy side… really? Even assuming she did kill Werner Foester, shooting one cop – appalling an act as that is – really doesn’t qualify as terrorism.
So, yeah, I have no real issues with celebrating her as a revolutionary black political figure. Her autobiography is pretty interesting too.
quixote: as I like to put it – “the enemy of my enemy might be my friend, is possibly my ally but could easily be just another enemy”.
I think it’s a more accurate aphorism than the usually-quoted one, if slightly less catchy.
@Graham Douglas:
Vetinari put it a bit more eloquently: “The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy.
Vetinari (by which I mean Pterry) had a way of getting to the heart of the matter.
“Intersectionality”. No surprise. Sarsour is a nasty piece of work. As for the hijab, I doffed it at 16. Some time ago on this blog I compared it to the Confederate Flag. Salute it if you like.
This reminds me of the right’s constant conflation of whichever things they happen to dislike, such as calling atheism and islam the same thing, or calling Bernie Sanders a communist. The logic appears to be ‘I dislike this person’ and ‘I dislike this group’ and concluding ‘this person is therefore a member of that group’.
Holms, yes, I love their convoluted conflations, but then I would, what with being one of those Marxist, Communist, Leninist, socialist, liberal, authoritarian atheists.
“the conviction is unsafe”
Can someone please enlighten me as to the (new to me) meaning of this usage of “safe”? Does it just mean “correct” or “just”? Appearing as it does in the context of intersectionality, where “unsafe” has come to mean “hurts my feelings” it’s a bit puzzling.
I’ve heard it (she admits sheepishly) in UK cop shows – including ones that go way back. Nothing to do with the jargon of the trigger-warning types; it just means not unsafe, with unsafe meaning vulnerable to being overturned.
To be exact, I recall hearing only “unsafe” about cases in which new evidence has turned up, which can include evidence of police or prosecutorial misconduct. I haven’t heard “safe” used; I don’t know if it’s really what legal people say or not. But I got SSmama’s meaning.
I watch a lot of UK cop & lawyer shows…
Then you’d know, Ophelia, that the opposite of ‘unsafe’ is ‘bang to rights’. ;-)