Feminism and the Middle East

I'll be the first to admit that I can be a bit hard on feminism. This is not because I am opposed to the ultimate goal of feminism, but rather because I find the positions of the feminist movement wildly inconsistent and merely political. In my humble opinion, the movement has long since ceased to be about equality for the female gender and is now about the accumulation of political power. The silence of the feminist movement during the Clinton scandal was irritating, but the silence of the movement over atrocities committed against women in the Middle East is infuriating. To me, this is proof positive that the feminist movement is no longer about gender equality. Last week, I discussed how this applied to a year old story of a Palestinian woman who was almost murdered years ago because she became pregnant out of wedlock. Today, this column puts it in words I could only hope to.

Women are third rate citizens in certain parts of the Muslim world. Those women face miseries that American women of all generations have never faced. There should be rage on the part of feminists. Instead, there is silence. There is silence because Islamic fundamentalists are George W. Bush's enemies, and apparently even if your political enemy's physical enemy isn't your friend, you still don't wage your own just war against them.

I'm sure that my opinion on this is wide open to criticism from the feminist view point, but I don't really care. Out of political concerns, the feminist movement is selling its own ideals down the river. Once they find back the spines of the women who preceded them, they'll have proven me wrong. Until then, we'll watch as the legal domination of females by males seeps first into Canada, and then on into the United States, all because of politics.