So Sam Harris has fallen afoul of the great Fematheist machine. One botched joke and the pitchforks come out.
Sigh.
I could get worked up about this, I suppose. I mean, the usual poisonous fools are coming out to prance. But honestly, I can’t bring myself to care. For that matter, why should anyone at all give a tinker’s damn what feminists say or feel?
Now, I am emphatically not saying ‘Why should we give a damn about women’s rights?’. I’m not a woman, but like many men I was born of one, and hope to settle down with one, so I have a vested interest in defending women’s rights and emancipation. Furthermore, the Achilles’ Heel of Islam is its treatment of women – women’s emancipation is an extremely important subject, perhaps the most important one of our age.
It’s just – what the hell does feminism have to do with that?
Here and in other fora, I have written about the skyrocketing increase in domestic violence in Britain, the rapes in the US armed forces (not technically a women’s only issue – there are more male victims than females, though females are at higher risk) and so forth. I have yet to see feminism play any role in dealing with any of that.
My experience of feminism has been that it’s about irresponsibility, promiscuity and abortion. Secondary characteristics can include hating men and bigotry towards transsexuals.
So, once again, for those of us who genuine believe in women’s emancipation, why should we give a tinker’s damn about feminism? Feminism is a private little roleplaying club for Western, well off, educated women who get together and tell each other they’re Destroying The Patriarchy! (TM) Nothing wrong with a little roleplay; I’m partial to Dungeons & Dragons myself.
But just in the same way we’d get worried about seeing someone charging down mainstreet with a sword in one had yelling that he was going to Fight The Zombie, I don’t see why we shouldn’t feel the same way when feminists get their rpg salons mixed up with the real world.
Not least because feminists are not just no help in women’s emancipation, they actively oppose it. For example, how do many British feminists solve the problem of Having It All? Why by grossly exploiting and oppressing illegal immigrant maids and nannies! Anyone remember the feminists rallying around the rapist war-criminal Bill Clinton? Well, one of the things that Clinton did was to greenlight the Rwandan genocide, and that ended up turning the Congo into the rape centre of this planet.
So in none too subtle a way, feminists are all about exploiting and oppressing poor women and women from, y’know, brown places.
And, as absolutely everyone who has been paying attention knows, feminists are either completely useless when it comes to opposing Islamic misogyny or worse still, actively supporting of Islamic misogyny. Go read Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Anne Marie Walters on how they get treated by feminists. Go look at Naomi Wolf getting the hots for the burka, or Germaine Greer defending FGM.
Pope Myers has been waddling about in his white knight armour, wailing about Sam Harris, and we all know how much use he is when it comes to Islam.
I was wondering how people could be this pathetic, and then I came across the following from Camels & Hammers. It is well worth the read, especially about the stereotype threat. Basically, this is a finding that shows if you tell people that their group is not good at something, they find it harder. That stereotyping causes people to confirm to the stereotypes.
Well, that’s certainly worth knowing. Feminists stereotype men as sexists and women as helpless victims, so they should take a lot of responsibility for their spread of sexism and their disempowerment of women.
(I think that this is why we have “Women Against Feminism”. Most women are better than feminists, and they don’t want to be helpless and they don’t want to hate half of mankind – their fathers, brothers and sons)
Actually, what this guy is arguing is that Sam Harris’ words may have been unintentionally disempowering. That feminists would just love to get something done with their lives, but then they read Sam Harris’ unintentional lines and, darn it, are completely disempowered.
I could make a lot of arguments about this, but I’m going to cut straight to the prussian way:
If you are so weak and helpless that you are wrecked by the words of someone who wasn’t even trying, then you were never going to succeed at anything in the first place, and don’t deserve to.
If feminists are rendered into helpless frothing balls of anger by someone just not being as feminist as they, then what the hell good will they be against a real threat?
If they are more incensed by Sam Harris praising Malala than by the Taliban putting a bullet in her head, then what conceivable use will they ever be?
What, in short, is the point of them?
When a real threat comes, you can expect them to fold instantly. Benson will be driving herself to the FGM clinic, Watson will pull on the nearest burka and scurry into the kitchen – and Myers will be teaching and preaching creationism at the first sign of a serious threat.
For the rest of us, we should just understand this and move on. I appreciate why Sam Harris is troubled, but he shouldn’t be.
It doesn’t matter what they think.
