{"id":756,"date":"2013-04-21T16:57:46","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T06:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/?p=756"},"modified":"2013-04-21T17:20:03","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T07:20:03","slug":"launch-of-fitnah-movement-for-womens-liberation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/2013\/04\/21\/launch-of-fitnah-movement-for-womens-liberation\/","title":{"rendered":"Launch of Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over here you can find the new site for “Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation”<\/a>. Please consider signing up in support of it.<\/p>\n

Speaking for myself, I’m proud to be involved. I stand in support of freedom for women, gender equality, and secularism – the\u00a0values that the movement stands for. I stand against<\/em>\u00a0misogynist cultural, religious and moral laws and customs, compulsory veiling, sex apartheid, sex trafficking, and violence against women – the things that it opposes. I’m proud to make that statement along with the other establishing signatories, who would disagree among themselves about much else but are united on these fundamentals.<\/p>\n

Notice that there is nothing in the statement of what Fitnah is against that includes women’s voluntary choices about clothing – such as voluntary choices to wear\u00a0burqas and similar garments. Some signatories to the statement\u00a0would doubtless wish to see\u00a0certain form-enveloping garments banned, but the statement itself does not go that far, and I would not have signed it if it had.\u00a0It opposes “compulsory<\/em> veiling”.\u00a0Again, there is nothing in the statement that expresses opposition to pornography, erotica, or consensual prostitution, or to any other kind of freely chosen, consensual sex work. This is not an anti-sex or anti-sex-work declaration. Still, there seems to\u00a0be some doubt about the motives behind it\u00a0– at least as evidenced by some flak I recently\u00a0received on Twitter from a sex-workers’-rights quarter\u00a0– so let me just briefly point out that\u00a0the purpose is to oppose\u00a0actual, tangible oppression of women, especially in the name of\u00a0religion, and most specifically by Islamism or political Islam.<\/p>\n

That’s not to deny there might be some signatories who have goals that I’d disagree with, or even that some might seek\u00a0in some contexts to stretch the meaning of certain words, particularly the word “trafficking”. Indeed, I\u00a0imagine that the signatories would vary greatly among themselves on their goals, their interpretation of feminism, and many other things. But the general direction\u00a0of what is being talked about here is clear enough. The people behind it are ex-Muslims opposed to Islamism, the treatment of women by Sharia law, and the like.\u00a0Hence the strong\u00a0statement, “We are Islamism\u2019s worst fitnah!”<\/p>\n

But given the flak,\u00a0I should\u00a0state for the record that my understanding of “sex trafficking” is sex-related human trafficking. Human trafficking is\u00a0the buying and selling of human beings in violation of\u00a0the\u00a0rights of those human beings through such means as fraud, slavery, physical and economic coercion, etc. Human trafficking is not<\/em>\u00a0a synonym for people smuggling, which is often something sought by the people concerned (e.g. to flee persecution or war zones). In essence, human trafficking\u00a0involves trading people as commodities against their will.\u00a0Like many other terms, “trafficking”\u00a0can be abused by extending it more widely to cover things that I (for example)\u00a0don’t necessarily have a problem with\u00a0and don’t want to ban.<\/p>\n

All I can say is: don’t shy away from opposing a genuine evil just because some people take the expression for it and abuse it for other,\u00a0dubious causes. Sex trafficking as I’ve defined it is a real and large-scale evil in our contemporary world, and we can’t shy away from opposing it or naming it merely because some people would abuse the term. To be clear, you are not being “trafficked” merely because\u00a0you choose to\u00a0take up employment as a prostitute, a nude model, a stripper, a porn actor, etc.<\/p>\n

If anyone still<\/em> has a problem, here’s an undertaking.\u00a0If I ever see a declaration or manifesto\u00a0from the pro-sex movement that, on a straightforward\u00a0literal reading, I can\u00a0agree with in its entirety, I will be prepared to sign\u00a0it, just as I’ve\u00a0signed the Fitnah statement. It’s quite possible to be pro-sex, in the relevant sense, which includes supporting the\u00a0rights of sex workers,\u00a0as well as opposed to such enormities as sexual slavery.\u00a0This distinction\u00a0is pretty basic, so\u00a0let’s\u00a0not take an attitude that obscures it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over here you can find the new site for “Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation”. Please consider signing up in support of it. Speaking for myself, I’m proud to be involved. I stand in support of freedom for women, gender equality, and secularism – the\u00a0values that the movement stands for. I stand against\u00a0misogynist cultural, religious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[277,279,280,140,278],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements-2","tag-fitnah","tag-islamism","tag-oppression-of-women","tag-prostitution","tag-sex-trafficking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/hellfireclub\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}