I dont see how

Most of the world treated women pretty badly for most of the time. The exact nature varied, but in almost every society that passed Hunting-Gathering in favor of Agriculture or Herding, women had solidly second class status.

Womens “liberation” – aka an incomplete but still massive improvement in the status of women relative to men – has occured only in a few areas. These areas happen to be “clustered” in Europe and East Asia, for reasons almost entirely economic and social and NOT AT ALL on account of any ethnic, religious, or inherent cultural superiorty.

Women’s Equality is not a “western”, “christian”, or “european” thing and more than Writing. But, like writing, it does not appear in every culture at the same time. It is not “eurocentric” to point out that “modern” womens liberation (aka. equal voting, property, and legal rights) happened first in countries that are “European”/”Western” any more than it is Sumeriocentric to say that a complete writing system first occured in Sumeria (as far as wel can tell).

No one would think saying such a thing “impugns” the Chinese or the MesoAmericans – both of whom later invented writing on their own – nor does it insult the cultures within the Sumerian sphere of influence who “copied” the idea after seeing how useful it was. Nor does it insult those who invented, thousands of years earlier, simple pictographics systems which, although useful and better than nothing, do not compose a COMPLETE writing system like the Sumerians were able to invent.

Sadly, because of politics, a person has a hard time stating an obvious fact – that large areas of the “muslim world” still have significant cultural continuity over the last millenium and have NOT experienced whatever combination of social and economic forces will eventually produce womens liberation therein – without people jumping up to object to some illusory “bias” on the part of the speaker. Its not bias. It does NOT imply that we should “invade” them – Womens Lib is not helped by wars..EVER. It does NOT imply that we are “better” than them. It does NOT imply that they cannot do it on their own or that they “need us to help them” – although only an idiot would deny that cultures always advance faster when exposed to outside ideas than when left to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

There is a reason that the most advanced cultures always occue on the major trade-routes – because exposure to foreign ideas stimulates creativity and change. Of course, every culture has its conservatives, who are definitionaly opposed to change. Their anger is a sign that things are moving in the right direction, and the idea that we can best “help” women in other cultures by witholding all criticism, lest we antagonise the reactionaries, is a red-herring that will make things WORSE for the women in those cultures.

that idiot Hirsi Ali as an example – BAD example. She is not trying to fix her society. She moved to the west and is merely trying to demonize it for her own aggrandizement.

If she lived in Somalia and said the things she says, she would be killed. She has a killing fatwa on her head.

Think about that when you call her an “idiot”.

Same logic.

Like male privilege and white privilege, there is this thing called first world privilege. It colors your relationships with grassroots organizations in third world countries. And you get into a lot of misunderstandings and you learn a lot about it as you experience these discussions. But the problem is when I try to explain these things to first world people who are, well, a bit oblivious, and they tend to think that their own good itnentions and the developed nature of their society gives them a sort of carte blanche in their dealings with 3rd world problems. Not you, Galoise Blonde, I certainly don’t know you and you probably are not like this at all, but it is a sort of privilege thing, and sometimes it gets a bit tricky trying to break through it or make people aware of it.

Well, no. I’ve decided that seeing as I am just about the only white woman in the group that I’m just going to be my own sweet self. There is nothing about my western brand feminism that trumps their own perceptions; they do have voices of their own, and if they disagree they’ll tell me. If there were more white people then yeah, its time to start looking at who’s talking and who’s listening. But we are friends, and work together as such.

Beet, you want to make a distinction between single-issues and general reshaping of society, but I think this another delicate distinction that doesn’t stack up so much in practice. Say for example, Turkey works harder to turn public opinion on HK in the practising areas, and it becomes unnacceptable. The benefits would be more than lives saved I suggest, but a greater freedom of interaction between sexes, the possibility of casual MF friendships, and therefore, greater debate between men and women, and that is a good recipe for a societal change. UN stats say 5000 HK victims per year, but who can count the number of women, men, girls and boys who live lives circumscribed by fear? Getting the vote was a single issue in one sense, and a general reshaping of society in another. It’s not one or the other. The whole is made of the parts.

I say things like what she was saying in her article to Western feminists all the time and I often get the straw man argument that was mentioned in the above post (the false dichotomy and the “blanketly declare” stuff) – no one says that, what we keep saying is that there are 3rd world feminists already working and they need to be listened to, not saved/rescued.

Also the commenter who said that once 3rd world feminists start working they are seen as neo-imperial and mentions that idiot Hirsi Ali as an example – BAD example. She is not trying to fix her society. She moved to the west and is merely trying to demonize it for her own aggrandizement.

It is true that patriarchs the world over try to paint their local feminists as having alien ideas or as not being true to their culture etc. – of course they will use whatever stupid argumetn they can – the point is that those feminists continue to do the best they can. And they need moral support from feminists in the west of course, but they definitely don’t need white knights.

Jill, you say that white western feminists need to put their own house in order, but I don’t see why, living in a multicultural society, I need to ‘put my own house in order’ before I can help my friends with theirs.

I wasn’t saying that Western feminists shouldn’t be allies and helpers to women around the world. We’re in a privileged position; of course we should help other women where and when we can, and we don’t have to have our own houses perfectly in order to do so. I was just arguing that we shouldn’t be imposing our feminism on women in developing nations, as if they didn’t have voices of their own.

Does that make sense? I realize the distinction is a bit narrow, but I do think that there is a lot of value in feminists of all backgrounds working together.

However, I disagree strongly with those who blanketly declare that ALL western commentary on “women in islam” objectively helps the “neo-imperialists”.

Did anyone say that?

It is a false idchotomy – there is NOTHING stopping us from addressing equality here AND doing what we can to help others.

Well, yeah. That was my point — that whenever feminists do address issues in the U.S., the response is “But look at how much worse it is there.” They create the dichotomy. I was never arguing that we shouldn’t do anything about the situation of women world-wide, I was just saying that we have to let women everywhere speak for themselves, even if their version of feminism doesn’t fit exactly into our mold.