The Savage Republican

For years, feminists have claimed to "speak" for the women of America. I have a couple of posts already, showing where these so-called "spokeswomen" have fallen flat in their defense of "womens rights". Well in honor of the "International Day of the Woman", Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review interviewed Phyllis Chesler, a feminist who authored a book called "The Death of Feminism". Ms Chesler has some stunning things to say about the feminist leadership in America.

"Feminists, as well as women, have some terrifying external enemies. For example, Islamists oppose the ideals of dignity and equality for women by their practice of gender apartheid. This is a system which includes some, if not all, of the following human-rights violations: female genital mutilation, veiling and hijab, purdah, normalized daughter- and wife-beating, arranged (child) marriage, often to first cousins, polygamy, honor murder, the imprisonment, torture, beheading, stoning to death, and hanging of rape victims, suspected prostitutes, and feminist dissidents — especially in Iran today.
Such Islamist misogynists have many Western allies and apologists... Among them are many academic and establishment feminists who are also apologists for Islamic religious and gender apartheid and for the international trafficking in women and girls. In this, they are feminism's worst enemies. For example, many academic feminists fear that any serious critique of veiling, purdah, or polygamy might be slandered as "racist." They are right. These days, telling the truth about indigenous Islamic barbarism towards women and men is quickly branded as "politically incorrect" and dismissed as "racist" and "imperialist" arrogance. It requires real courage and clarity to stay this particular course of truth-telling. While some feminists did sound the alarm about the Taliban, they did not rescue Afghan women physically, personally, militarily, or economically. In addition, feminists have not focused on the right to motherhood, but primarily on the right to abortion; they have not focused on creating a strong feminist foreign policy, but primarily on the rights of gays and lesbians. Personal sexual freedom and identity politics have trumped universal human rights."

Emphasis above is mine. I said here that it appeared that NOW was only concerned with the rights of left leaning, pro-abortion women. I am apparently not the only one who feels this way.

There are many eye-opening quotes in this interview that every woman in America (and anyone who loves women) should read. However, there are just a couple more that I would like to specifically point out.

Lopez: Did you actually get grief from feminist for writing about the "gender cleaning" of women in Sudan?

Chesler: Yes, I did. When I sent one such piece around, certain left feminists told me that they did not even want to read what I had written because they did not "approve" of my writing for conservative publications. Not even if my pro-woman pieces were solicited and welcomed in conservative quarters and totally censored in left-liberal mainstream quarters. I had a similar problem when I wrote about the refusal of Lukas Moodyson, the brilliant Swedish filmmaker, to allow his film against trafficking (Lilya-4-ever), to be shown at a feminist anti-trafficking conference in Israel. While he allowed the film to be shown in every country on earth where brothels, pimps, and traffickers flourished, he refused to allow anti-trafficking Israelis to show the film once because he disapproved of Israel's military policies. I wrote a piece about censorship and prejudice and about the demonization of Israel which was immediately rejected by the New York and L.A. Times. I published it in Frontpage Magazine and within 48 hours Moodyson reversed his decision and allowed the Israeli feminists to show his film. The fact that my piece got some immediate positive results did not matter. All that mattered was that I had published it in a so-called "right-wing rag."
In addition, as I write in The Death of Feminism, the level of anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda and intolerance towards all those who do not kow-tow to it is fairly monumental on many feminist list-serv groups. If one does not believe that America "deserved" 9/11; if one does not view America as the true "terrorist"; if one does not believe that Arabs and Muslims are being persecuted in America for "racist" reasons; and if one does not simultaneously believe that the Jews are "imagining" or "exaggerating" anti-Semitism — then one is not welcome on such list-serv groups. In fact, I was literally "purged," Stalinist-style from one such group for my various pro-America and pro-Israel "Thought Crimes." It was a most instructive experience. "

Again, emphasis is mine. These are the same people that lecture Christians about tolerance!

Lastly...

"Lopez: To what extent is there easy common ground on the Right and the Left as far as a new feminism goes?

Chesler: Perhaps such categories as "left" and "right" are no longer useful. I write about this at length in The Death of Feminism. On the other hand, the "Left" is aggressively secular and anti-religious; considers pornography to be "protected" hate speech; considers prostitution and trafficking to be forms of "sex work" which should be de-criminalized or legalized; views paternal sole-custody of children as the feminist solution to the problems that mothers have when they juggle child care and career responsibilities; believes that men and women are actually the "same"; has absolutely no foreign policy except that of opposing whatever President Bush and America do or ever have done — they really might as well be French; and has no universal feminist policy vis-à-vis jihadic Islam and its Muslim victims. The "right" has opposite views on these subjects. Although some "right-wingers" have diverse views on abortion, civil rights for gay people, the role of multi-national corporations in a time of war, the importance of intellectual and ideological diversity; the dangers of appeasing the Islam, etc. there are few "left wingers" who are at all diverse on their issues. If I am wrong — I hope they start saying so quickly, loudly, and proudly."

Please take the time to read this interview. Ms. Chesler has been through much in her life....much that has helped shape these views. You need to understand what she has been through in order to understand these views. It is my fervent hope that women everywhere start rethinking the conventional wisdom about the feminist movement. The feminist movement no longer represents women! It is time that women woke up to this fact!