hahaha. A disproportionate percentage of this violence is commited by ‘honky’ immigrants from the 3rd world (cuz Allah rox0rz their sox0rz).

The centers for battered women are filled with white women who are battered by their white hubbies, the society here ultimately drives those white cows back to their hubbies by giving them a hard time and that’s how we keep the divorce rates at bay.

The thesis is a generalized denouncement of Western blindness and racism using comments on this blog as a supporting example. My point, as others have made, is there’s a larger context, which does not involve a lack of awareness, caring or bigotry. Fewer comments may indicate deeper respect for an issue which is more loaded with issues of culture wars and nationalism than a Dove Ad disccussion. People may care deeply, but are trying to avoid flip comments which buy into how the right feigns concern over global women’s rights to demonize American feminists and foreign cultures.

An actual survey of comments which took into account both content and number on various topics on this blog might reveal readers are in now way “less outraged by ritual stonings” (which reminds me of right wing attacks on NOW). Backlash writing and commentary relies on “unscientific surveys”, impressions instead of reasoning, and questionable casual connections (which patriachs pass of as “masculine logic”). Again, I don’t think feminist critics need a higher standard, but when the topic is misrepresentations and presumptions it’s important.

For example, the mistake about goats for woman may seem like a picayune detail from our POV, but to someone within the culture it might seem a flippant, insulting error – “goats, cows, India, Malawi, whatever” – reflecting the “cavalier unfamiliarity with their strange, primitive ways” which readers are being urged to rise above. I understand it was meant as a one liner, but in this case it seems like indulging the same problem being criticized.

But yes, I got the goat thing wrong. It’s not India, it’s Malawi, and it’s not goats, it’s cows.

I admire your concern for the health of the debate, however. It thanks you for the flowers, waving to you weakly from its sickbed.

First, it misrepresents Ignacio Ramonet’s essay, which is titled “Violence begins at home” and starts with European stats because it’s in Le Monde and, as the title suggests, is encouraging self-examination, but it doesn’t stop there. A more honest blogger would have included the following excerpt: “Such violence is worldwide: it happens in all countries, on all continents and in all social, economic, religious and cultural groups…This violence – to which feminist groups have long drawn government attention – is so virulent globally that we must regard it as a major violation of human rights. It is a major issue of public health: not just the physical attacks, however murderous, but also psychological violence, threats and intimidation, and sexual brutality. In many cases all these forms of violence coincide.” Unlike American columnists, the observations are footnoted, and the cited references are decidedly non-Eurocentric.

Thus in order to support a highly dubious thesis about Eurocentricism in blogs, the blogger commits an act of reductivist misrepresentation. This sort of dishonest decontexualizing drives me crazy, because it undermines the health of the debate which follows.

And once you get beyond those who strive to be informed many Americans, left and right, make wrong assumptions about Europe on this issue. They stereotype EU countries as being more socialist sensual and thus more enlightened about gender (as if these things were that connected). This column is hardly perfect (for example, it expresses surprise that impoverished nothern countries have a higher rater of abuse than prosperous southern ones) but it is interesting how some stats go against type: “In Finland more than eight in every million women are killed in the home every year: the list runs on down through Norway (6.58), Luxembourg (5.56), Denmark (5.42) and Sweden (4.59). Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland in fact come at the bottom of the list.”

When it comes to stereotypes, both left and right also share a view of the “third world” as a parade of misogynist horror. This is not some unknown topic, but pop culture – “honor killings” and the sexism of non-white foreingers is regular fodder for prime time crime dramas. I’ve seen TONS of blogs and comments about this.

It’s sort of odd to read a feminist blog repeating what is very close to a right wing talking point used against feminists, “Yes there are problems here, but feminists are strangely silent about global issue X which proves they only care about wealthy whites” which is both untrue and sneakily racist. I mean, I could almost imagine Ann Coulter writing this: “Educated European honkys are whacking their fair share of wives and girlfriends. Dudes in Botswana are whacking them, too. Assholes in India are trading them for goats. Godbags in Saudi Arabia are throwing acid on them.” While India devalues women in many ways, that goats thing is more bigoted legend than common problem.

http://lefthook.org/Ground/Cheema052005.html

Sunya, first, I apologize for my very angry response to your comment. As NancyMc tried to tell me, your main point was the need to level power between men and women, a point I agree with. I still don’t agree that guns are the answer, but I’m forced to admit I don’t know of a better one to offer.

NancyMc, I apologize for being defensive when I should have been listening. But on that note, a clarification about my anecdote: it was not misunderstood gossip. I asked my girlfriend, out of curiousity, why she didn’t wear makeup. She heard from my asking that she should start wearing it. Communication is a tricky beast.

Chris, I apologize for not having responded at all. I agree that a dude shouldn’t be able to shoot his wife, drop the gun and cry that society is to blame. But what the Patriarchy amounts to is privilege, and whether you’re a Kennedy or a Cheney, an OJ or a Dubya, privilege does allow for behavior that would not ordinarily be condoned. When a slave owner rapes his slave, one finger should be pointed at the rapist, but the other nine must be pointed at the institution of slavery. And if one dude in mirrorshades is infiltrating peaceful protesters, nine fingers should be pointed at those what sent him in. This is, I suspect, why Twisty points at Patriarchy and not those who, women and men, thrive from its privilege, rather than any urge to play nice with the boys.

You have the higher ground in your arguments, and on that ground I agree with you. I will always discourage anyone from becoming their enemy in order to defeat him.

Both philosophically and in “real world” reality, I think we both would prefer pacifism to unending war. Our challenge is that the pacifists of the world are not taken seriously, and many cultures (including the Native Americans of this continent with whom I share blood) who took corporatists at their word, and trusted in “rule of law,” ended up obliterated.

Iraq wasn’t invaded because it had weapons of mass destruction; it was invaded because it didn’t. The demonstrable presence of such weapons is why North Korea is at the moment ignored … and why Iran is struggling to develop them as quickly as possible. The only obvious “immunity” from preemptive American invasion (which, you may recall, was Hitler’s crime) is to be forearmed.

In spite of how women are treated, women are not a separate culture that can be safely oblitered, but are integral and embedded in every culture … so rather than obliterated, women are marginalized (by no more than fiat, we simply say it is so) as somehow unimportant to the “real work” of “running the world.”

You, as a woman, are not taken seriously by your own liberal democratic culture. Once an issue is successfully labelled a “woman’s issue,” it is immediately consignd to the trivial and unimportant.

I think you’re going to have to be obstreperous for awhile, step on toes, live out loud, jostle elbows, boycott some things, ignore politicans that betray you and build your own political action committees (i.e., EMILY’s List), and in short, fight to be taken seriously. If that means you learn to do what boys do in dangerous circumstances and travel together in pairs or threes, then do it. If that means a few of you decide you want to be armed and poke a few boys in the eyes with their own stupid pointy sticks, I’ll applaud.

My job entails (much less now than in the past) visiting those smashed places where the idiot boys with their pointy-stick stupidity have been, and trying to clean up the messes.

I don’t want you to change. I just want you to win. It will be a better world for both boys and girls when you do.

/e