If Afghan women are so free now that Western forces have driven out the Taliban, why are there so many of them killing themselves by self-immolation?
(or browse the Archives by date, category, tags etc)
get blog updates
Recent Comments
- Anecdotal on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Anecdotal on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Jeanne on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- April on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Argenti Aertheri on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- DonnaL on This Is What Happened to CeCe
- Azalea on The Annual Post About Sexist Super Bowl Commercials 2012
- Azalea on The Annual Post About Sexist Super Bowl Commercials 2012
- Drew on Prudie on “real” rape
- Iany on Pete Hoekstra is super racist, doesn’t understand the word “satire”
Most Commented Recent Posts
- An Asexual Map for Sex-Positive Feminism (138)
- Women refuses to give raped daughter EC, brags about it on internet. (129)
- Some Transformative Justice Links (127)
- Prudie on "real" rape (118)
- FNTT Season 8, Round 1: the REAL FEMINISTS edition (77)
- "Kill the Gays" Bill is Back in Uganda (74)
- Facts, myths, and blankety-blank lies about Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation (65)
- Shameless Self-Promotion Sunday (63)
- FNTT Season 8, Round 1: the Slutty Slut-Sluts edition (62)
- The Annual Post About Sexist Super Bowl Commercials 2012 (62)
Yes Means Yes!
Reproductive Health Matters
We’re in the Guardian
More of Feministe On
For wordpress.com support
just for you, a widget as requested
Sponsored By
Tried and Tested
The authors of this website have hand-selected these titles because we believe they may be of interest to a feminist audience.
Consider them for gifts to friends, family, or yourself! We do receive some income if you choose to order these titles based on our recommendations. All funds help support our costs to provide this space.
Consider them for gifts to friends, family, or yourself! We do receive some income if you choose to order these titles based on our recommendations. All funds help support our costs to provide this space.
holy shit. this is an awful lot like last week’s story about the gang-raped teenager sentenced to 90 lashes.
It fries me that American feminists get more agitated about preschool fat than legalized woman slaughter.
It fries me that American feminists get more agitated about preschool fat than legalized woman slaughter.
Uh, wtf dude? Read some of the posts around here first before making those kinds of assertions. We *can* hold more than one issue in our pretty little heads at once. Jill (in particular) provides some of the best coverage I’ve ever seen on the rights of non-American women.
I know, that’s why I started reading this blog. I was thinking more of the Salonheads and the 98 pages or whatever of comments on that article there. WTF indeed. What can you really say about women self-immolating in Afghanistan? It’s bad, and uh, it’s bad. What can you say about an annoying yuppie San Francisco mom totally freaked out about her daughter’s hoochie potential? Plenty, apparently.
I’m just tired of wealthy white entitled giggly girls writing fluff pieces and publishers passing that off as their nod to feminism. Meanwhile, serious shit goes down all over the world but all we’ve really got to say is “bummer, dude.” I include myself in that. It sucks.
To anyone who knows a whit about the situation in Afghanistan, this sort of thing was predictable as soon as we “liberated” Afghanistant from the Taliban and into the hands of the Northern Alliance. That is why it has always galled me when reactionaries say to us “why don’t you feminists like GWB, he ‘liberated’ all those women in Afganistan from the oppression of the Taliban?”
See, anyone who knows anything about the region knows that there are many women who actually support the institution of Sharia, for example. Why? Because in the rural and more “traditional” areas, the only viable alternative to tribal “law” is Sharia. And women do better, even under the most sexist interpretations of Sharia than they do under these so-called tribal laws which use “tribal traditions” as an excuse for some pretty hard-core oppression of women. So, those of us who paid a whit of attention to the situation in that part of the world knew that when the women of Afghanistan were “liberated” from the Taliban’s very real oppression, unless a secular, liberal society were to have been built there, the end result would be something as bad or worse than what the Taliban were doing (and frankly, and not to minimize the sexism involved by pointing out the, e.g., racism involved, some of the oppression of women was that women were easy targets for abuse when the real motivation was the settling of old scores against people from a different clan, tribe or ethnic group than the Taliban doing the oppression in a given district).
We went into Afghanistan thinking we were, among other things, liberating women. But we didn’t know enough about the various factions to know really whether we’d liberate anyone. It’s yet another example of how the cultural ignorance of we ‘Murkins is screwing things up for everyone, even when we think we’re doing something good …
I never bought the “we’re going to liberate the women!” liberal apologetic rationale. It was a macho retaliatory nightmare intended to give a bunch of underemployed and uneducated (read: disposable) men the chance to blow shit up. Had the US gov’t had an ounce of sympathy for women, they would have heard the reports from RAWA years earlier and perhaps backed UN and NGO-led investigations. I called bullshit then and I call bullshit now.
I would argue it’s always under the pretense of doing good that ‘Murkins screw over everyone – it’s just that you & I might not agree with what others call “doing good.” One of the worst challenges of imperialism is that it’s so easily disguised by reasons that can be pulled out of one’s ass and sound real good to a bunch of people preoccupied with what the neighbors are doing. Which is most Americans.
Pardon? Liberal? Who do you think was selling the war?
Well, no shit – but I heard many an avowed liberal at that time saying, “well, at least it’ll free the women.” I think it works the same way as women finding excuses for their abusive men – it’s easier than facing reality.
(Not to mention the sector, and I suspect not a small one, of liberals who found themselves freaked out, pissed off, and shockingly vengeful after 9-11. I expect the “free the women” rationale was very convenient for some liberals who had a “blow ‘em off the map” gut reaction and didn’t know what to do with it.)
M the pedagogue, what the hell are you talking about? Iraqi women had more rights then they do now; Afghani women are just as bad off or worse off now. Wasn’t anything liberal about it.
jesus christ! I’m not a conservative troll! Is it that hard to remember when those good liberal New Yorkers went all bloodthirsty? Shit, I do, and I was in California. I hope it’s not some weird kind of sacreligious to point out how your average middle-class Democratic voter isn’t exactly a radical, certainly not a radical feminist, nor particularly up-to-speed on politics and reality in the Muslim world.
Unfortunately, ginmar, making blanket statements about women in Iraq is just as pointless as thinking bombs would liberate women from the Taliban. It varies greatly from town to town, from family to family, and much of it depends on which sect is in power where. My uncle recently married an Iraqi woman who is hugely grateful to the US for putting Hussein out of power; most of her family was kidnapped, tortured, and executed by Hussein’s thugs. OK, so that fucks with my “things were better with Saddam” facile leftist position. Now, her father has just died because her remaining family was too afraid to bring him to the hospital – because it was run by another sect. Are things better? By what standard do you measure better? Well, her family is no longer on a goverment hit list. Then again, they’re afraid to go to the hospital. If one thing is generically true across Iraq, it’s that everything’s fucked up. Have you seen the pictures of the babies? Make sure to scroll all the way down.
My biggest concern is that Americans – on the right, left, in-between and extremities – are oh-so-willing to see, even expect, horrible treatment of women in Islamic nations, to the point of it being non-news. At the same time, we pretend that similar shit doesn’t happen here. When white girls get molested by a father-son tag team, you’ll only read about it Saturday, not during a “real news day.” When the same thing happens to girls of color, it doesn’t even make the news. It’s myopic arrogance and hypocrisy, and yes, the left is indicted in this as well. The war didn’t create murderous misogyny, but it did give a whole lot of psycho assholes an opportunity to practice just that. Who’s to blame? How about dueling patriarchal bloodthirsty fairy tales about male deities?
Who?
And you might recall a small loss of life in New York.
Who? Is that even a serious question? You don’t recall how quickly so many pacifists went nuclear the minute violence touched their lives instead of existing purely in the abstract?
Yeah, small, compared to living in constant mortal danger, like a good chunk of the rest of the world. Which is not to say that anyone’s individual suffering is less valid or less painful, before you go off on that. But there’s certainly an attitude that Americans are owed a life free of the bombs dropped so swiftly on other countries. What, exactly, is so offensive about pointing out the obvious problems with this thinking? Other than not being in awe of New Yorkers’ utter and unquestionable superiority? Because I’m not playing the “you had to be there” game. That’s not even the damn point, anyway. I think we all basically agree, so I don’t get what’s not clear here.
M, you might want to moderate your tone with me because I’ve seen a great many of those changes, towns, and bodies first hand. Pre-war Iraq was noticeably short of IEDS and VBIEDS, not to mention insurgents targetting unveiled women. Furthermore, it wasn’t liberals talking about mushroom clouds over New York. Who was that, again? And why are you so determined to blame it on liberals?
Furthermore, in the immediate wake of Sept. 11, there was a lot of candle-lighting and mourning going on. I don’t know where in hell you’re getting your bloodthirsty liberal bullshit from.
I didn’t say all. Did I say all? All I’m saying is that repeatedly, over and over again, following 9-11, WHILE the vigils were being televised, I heard statements like, “I’m a liberal, but,” and then rationale for shock & awe leveling of Afghanistan. Yes, many of those liberals just as quickly condemned the (re-? continued?)invasion of Iraq, but I recall being so surprised at how totally cool so many otherwise like-minded people were with blasting the living shit out of Afghanistan. You seriously don’t remember this? This completely did not happen around you? At all? Whatsoever?
to clarify:
1. Liberals did not start the war. Conservatives, as a segment of the American population, did not start the war. A scary-ass, greedy, racist, sexist, imperialist government death squad and their corporate backers did.
2. Not a few former liberals suggested that we should nuke Afghanistan. Less in public settings, more in private conversations. I’m not actually making this up.
3. These former liberals justified their hasty retreat from pacifism/no war/whatever by explaining: “Well my (insert friend/relative) was in the Twin Towers/died/saw it/etc) and so I think bombing is justified.” Obviously, people who call New York home made up the largest group of people who knew people in New York.
4. Such a reaction is based on a VALID emotion. Turning that into a course of action was stupid. Using that to justify the Iraq mess was criminal.
5. The inner ideological conflict between the “nuke ‘em” feelings and knowing better spurred SOME liberals to come up with bullshit but non-racist and non-revenge justifications for supporting the bombing of Afghanistan. “We’re freeing the women!” was a convenient one.
6. Human compassion has shown, over and over again, throughout history, serious limitations: of course any violence I experience is going to be the worst violence in the world – to me.
7. Nobody suggested we blow Kansas off the map because that’s where Timothy McVeigh was when he plotted the OK City bombing. White Americans get to be seen as individuals; a terrorist organization in a suspiciously brown country means the whole nation is guilty. WTF.
Therefore my whole stupid point – 8. Using personal suffering as a trump card over solution-based thinking gets us into big trouble, betrays lingering harbored racism, AND it’s not only bad guys on the right who do this. Is this so impossible to contemplate? It was the Clinton administration, after all, who kept up the embargo on Iraq that deprived so many of food & medicine. What I’m hearing is “how dare M suggest liberals are anything but right and good,” and I don’t think either of you (ginmar and zuzu) are suggesting that.
Other points that came out later:
1. Implying Iraq was maybe not utopia but pretty much ok before the current invasion is wildly simplistic, obscures the facts of lived experience of many women (and men and children), and is therefore not helpful.
2. War does not create misogyny; war is a symptom of misogyny, amplified through capitalism. Any time chaos & violence are the defining conditions of life in a place, women and children suffer the worst. I can’t think of a single instance in which this is not true.
so finally, I’m only asking that we keep in mind the implications of media coverage that reinscribes Muslim “otherness” by highlighting fucked up things happening to women. I don’t think we get these reports for pure feminist reasons. Fox News? MSNBC? No way. I think we get these reports because they can pass as faux-compassion journalism while appealing to the racist inclinations of Fuckhead Nation. It makes it easier for Americans to blame the also-victims – those being the men who are also subject to chaos and violence – while obscuring the US’s own role in perpetuating and exacerbating what was already happening. (“See! See! Those Allah-worshippers are a bunch of devilish psychos! Send more troops! Drop more bombs!”)
I’m not recreationally shit-stirring. So how can I make a peace offering? I dig ginmar’s comments on IBTP and this blog is great, too. Sorry if my web-fu isn’t as clean and subtle as it’s supposed to be. Net culture hasn’t really been my thing for the last several years.
Oh the irony. In 2000, the Taliban promised it would end the drug trade if the international community would rebuild the country’s infrastructure (which was destroyed by the Taliban). Today, Afghanistan is the largest supplier of heroin in the world, providing “90 per cent of the world’s illicit opium, mostly as heroin sent to Europe.” Its poppy farms generate $3.3 billion worth of opium.
which is to say, the Taliban are stronger than ever.
Re women’s day…
Um, M, do you have anything to back up your impressions or what? Because you sound just like Fox fucking news right now and I’m getting sick of it. The conservatives most definitely didstart and perpetuate the war, and you’re trying to blame it on the reaction of grief-stricken New Yorkers, for fuck’s sake. Christ, you’re long-winded. Come up with something concrete.
You’re also missing something. I served in Iraq. I talked to a great many Iraqis—hundreds, maybe. Don’t tell me about that country; don’t tell me what I know. You’re actively being patronizing now.
OK, have it your way. You’re not reading what I’m saying, so fuck it. You’re 100% and unquestionably right. You win. I made it all up just to anger you and derail the really interesting conversation that was happening before I posted – oh yeah, there was no conversation before I posted. But really I was just trying to piss you off. Whatever. There’s obviously no point in trying to clarify anything, so if it makes you feel better to go postal on straw arguments, have at it.
M, women are immolating themselves in Afghanistan, and you’re worried about your fee-fees?
I love the reference to going postal. Like getting pissed off at being patronized is the same as shooting one’s co-workers. And let’s blame the war on liberals and totally ignore the conservatives who started the war and who bear a suspicious resemblance to the conservatives who make womens’ lives so miserable everywhere. Yep, ebol liberals are far, far worse than conservatives. Jesus.
Guess I’m not cool enough – I have no idea what fee-fees mean.
Cool! more straw arguments! awesome! That’s GENIUS!
M: I agree with a fair amount of what you said (I’m a liberal who did buy into the “free the women” argument back when I was 12 or so and has now become a pacifist). But, if you want to be taken seriously, try sounding like you’re actually sane.
M, have you checked the stats on how New Yorkers voted in Congressional and Presidential elections after 9/11? Because your thesis suggests that bloodthirsty, vengeance-driven New Yorkers changed their politics to the right, when the actual figures suggest nothing of the kind. And do you remember just how unpopular the 2004 Republican Convention was with many of the locals?
I’ll give you one thing, yes, I do personally know one liberal (who’d grown up in NYC) who did want to bomb the hell out of Afghanistan after 9/11, and convinced herself the civilian casualties would be both minimal and acceptable. But you know what? She got over it. Because decent, reasonable people may make decisions out of emotion when they’re scared or angry, but they also have the guts and intellectual honesty to climb down when they decide that they’ve made a mistake. And judging by how blue New York went in 2004, it’s not improbable to postulate that she wasn’t alone.
Incidentally, leaving aside the morality or immorality of invading Afghanistan in the first place (and I’d argue that it’s more defensible than invading Iraq), a huge factor in the ongoing loss of life, and loss of rights for women, is the fact that Bush seems to have been suffering from a severe case of ADHD, first invading the country, and then buggering off to Iraq, leaving Afghanistan in a state of anarchy. And the anarchy thing was what had allowed the Taliban to gain power the first time around.