This week I want to concentrate on some controversies from within various movements that focus on women and women's issues. And on issues within the coalition known as the women's movement. To do this, I will reverse the usual format, and cover the news first, giving myself more room to discuss one particular case, that of Brandeis University and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
In the News
Sandra Fluke is running for the California State Senate.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Cecily McMillan's sentence was given this past week. She was sentenced to three months in jail, with credit for the two weeks she's already spent in jail, plus five years probation and community service, though I've also seen a $5000 fine mentioned. The Guardian reports on the sentencing here:
http://www.theguardian.com/...
And change.org claims that the petitions, including theirs, seeking justice for McMillan may likely have influenced the sentence, given that she could have got up to seven years, and this law-and-order judge might have been much more severe. I tend to agree.
http://www.change.org/...
And I think we must continue to keep the kidnapped girls in Nigeria in the forefront. There's been a lot less about it this week; CNN should be obsessing about this rather than missing airliners. Here's some discussion about why they and others are not:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
In what is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs, Danielle discusses how we internalize social attitudes, and how the very idea of consent gets corrupted in the process.
http://oneblackgirlmanywords.blogspot.com/...
And here's an action item from Amnesty International - a victim of a gang rape was then marched by her rapists to the police and accused by them of adultery, and faces caning.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/...
A Tale of Two Controversies
I have never really considered myself a feminist, just a woman concerned with social justice. I don't know much of the scholarship on feminist issues - nor the scholars. When I read this post on One Black Girl, So Many Words, I am embarrassed to say I had not heard of bell hooks; I listened to the referenced panel discussion (fascinating), but don't feel qualified to discuss much of it, except to say that I agree with Danielle that women should not have to choose between styles of feminism. I hope some of our black readers will have more to say about this.
http://oneblackgirlmanywords.blogspot.com/...
Then there is the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brandeis University.
If you don't know the story, Brandeis announced that it planned to present an honorary degree to Hirsi Ali. A few weeks later, after pressure from faculty and Muslim student groups, it retracted the invitation. The faculty letter is here:
https://docs.google.com/...
Here are a couple of decent articles about these events:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://www.newrepublic.com/...
I first heard of Hirsi Ali when she was elected to the Dutch Parliament in 2003; she served from 2003 until 2006. Her story is compelling. She grew up in Somalia, underwent genital mutilation when she was five years old, fought back about an arranged marriage. She witnessed abuse at home. When she could, she left for Europe, and later the US.
She is strongly opposed to what she calls "Islam as it is" which is what she calls it when she debates with other Muslims. She herself no longer practices Islam. She fights for women, being a very public voice for protecting Muslim women and girls from what she suffered, from being beaten and otherwise abused by their husbands. I can understand why Brandeis first decided to honor her.
But she also has stood against Islam itself, finding these practices an inherent part of the religion, calling it a religion of violence. Here is an interesting debate with Tariq Ramadan:
She has also taken part in discussions with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other anti-religion atheists. (Not all atheists are anti-religion.) And I think that she belongs with this group more than any other. She has suffered greatly from religious practices, and it shapes her thought. But I think she also has taken advantage of the anti-Muslim feeling in this country, and some of her strongest comments speak to this.
Fox news has picked up the Brandeis story much more than any other media outlet, showing her as a victim of political correctness and the liberal bias in higher education. Megan Kelley interviewed her here:
Her response to this was also published by Time:
http://time.com/...
What do I think? I remain ambivalent; this article comes closest to my feelings about the woman and the incident:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
What do you think?