We are living pretty weird times. We allegedly are crossing the feminism of the third wave, but apparently it's a wave that does nothing, but washing the other ones. Everything seems to fall apart, to be deconstructed until being demolished or distorted, in the best case. On the other hand some leftists and the cultural relativism dilute any clear message. Sometimes things really are black and white, no shades of gray. Sometimes you have to make precise spectral analyses. So in feminism sometimes things are clear. And painful. Patriarchy exists, destroy lives, minds, in every moment, even now. Women are taught to be slaves,to adapt as slaves, with more or less "rights". Any approach which doesn't go to the root of things, the existence of patriarchy, it's just a cosmetic measure. It's like you plug a hole in a dam, but you still remain in an inundated / flooded area .
It looks absolutely amazing, but there is feminism that accepts prostitution, calling prostitutes "sex workers". Well yes, and slaves are all kinds. Can illegal immigrant workers be called "workers in agriculture, construction" etc.. They work, but why do it? Like prostitutes, even if they are not forced by pimps, as well as women who are not kidnapped, but married to abusive men. They have sex with those men (without any pleasure ) and remain with them, they even have children fathered by these men, may have multiple abortions, but only because they have no choice. It's about survival forced by poverty. But survival in the Nazi or communist camps is still survival. And if there, people make survival strategies. But one can't say living like that it's a way of life. In dictatorships have to adapt. But one can't tell that dictatorship is a legitimate lifestyle. I'm saying it as a person who saw a communist dictatorship. Prostitution, and here I'd exclude luxury prostitution, although I am not sure about that, is not a lifestyle, it's a horrible way of survival. Many heterosexual relationships motivated by survival are prostitution too. If you say that these relationships are worthy alternative lifestyles, motivated by real choices, where the reward is more than survival, you commit a crime against the people who live like that.
Cultural relativism and blaming Eurocentrism (which I agree with to some extent) have absolutely horrible consequences such as oxymorons like Islamic or Christian feminism. Well then we can talk about feminist rape, why not? If there is feminist burqa, why not going farther?
It seems politically incorrect to say that the situation of women in Islam is unacceptable because it would hurt the feelings of Muslim women. I mean saying that rape is horrible hurts the feelings of raped women? Or what? I'm all for tolerance, but not until there is nothing left to claim.
As for Eurocentrism, it exists, is more prevalent than we think, it has deeper roots. Western science is not the only approach to knowledge and it developed in certain special conditions. But if a secular European white woman who cautions that women in Islam are living in an unacceptable way, that poor women often experience a form of prostitution and abuse, prostitution is a crime, she does not it because of Eurocentrism, contempt for other cultures or classism. Not all the time, anyway!
When we ask for something, we refer to something / someone who has more than us. When black slaves were talking about freedom, they use the whites's status as a reference system, the black liberation movement in the US uses the the social, economic, political status of whites as a reference system. What would have happened if Martin Luther King have accepted the lifestyle of blacks, meaning unemployment, lack of education, poverty and violence as a legitimate lifestyle, which is not allowed to talk about in order to avoid offending the feelings of those who live like that?
Western culture is not something extraordinary and whites are not extraordinary people. Europeans even less. But we cannot deny that the westerners have the highest social, economic status, they enjoy the most freedom and they have the best medicine. Things can change, but now this is case. Moreover, other cultures are more advanced in other respects. But when we ask for something,we demand something, when it comes to individual freedom, civil rights, health, we refer to the West. Sure, it's good to get more, but even so.
Saying that a white educated middle class woman does something disgusting when she tells Muslim women that their way of life is oppressive, the same the impoverished women trapped in abusive heterosexual relationships or prostitutes, she doesn't disregard any of them. She does it just because she doesn't consider that she, as a white and educated western women deserves more than other women. Just for that.
Some leftists, accepting the misery of poor people's lives in oppressive cultures, only perpetuate the conditions those people are living in, maintaining their privileges for themselves. What should do westerners, especially if they are doctors when encounter people living in traditional societies? Should they leave incantations and traditional medical practices like sex with virgins as a medicine against AIDS intact and not give them modern medicines because these medicines may offend them?
I am an educated white middle class woman who does not consider herself special and wants to get everything through individual merits, not because she's white, educated, or middle class. Any person with similar merits, wherever she/he is, deserves similar social and economic status. I still want a high SPF cream for myself. It's the only thing I feel entitled to have as a white person.
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