Rescuing Women – The View of a Hard-Hearted Feminist

I don’t have much of an inclination to rescue Muslim women. Or any women, anywhere. Particularly not those in the United States. I admire efforts like these and might some day do similar useful work. At present, I live in a progressive and very prosperous part of the world and no pressing social issues demand my attention. I briefly did volunteer work for a gay rights organization, and I ran the AIDS marathon in December, raising money for the SF AIDS Foundation. I dole out change to the homeless and donate to a few charities now and then. I’m basically kind to people and try not to cause active harm. That’s my bit of contribution to society – beyond that, I’m barely even outraged by much, because, you know, what’s the fucking point? I can sit on my ass in my comfortable book-lined middle-class American living room and rage against the world and it doesn’t do any Bangladeshi the smallest bit of good. I might as well conserve my energy for something more useful.

When it comes to women’s issues – the only issues that ever provoked any degree of real anger in me – I’m getting less and less worked up. I still believe in the right things, mostly, I think. I believe women and men are equal and should have the same rights and responsibilities. Believing that in principle doesn’t mean I believe anyone should actually be doing anything about it unless their own rights, in their vicinity, are directly threatened. I might argue that only in such a case are our actions even worth the time we expend on them. This applies particularly to the West taking on the White Woman’s Burden and emancipating the women of the East.

I don’t think we owe Muslim women anything. And I don’t think they want our help. They make it abundantly clear every time they open their mouths on the issue. Those of them who agree with us leave their religion or their homelands and come live with us and live like us – i.e., they don’t wear a universally recognized symbol of women’s oppression on their heads. They don’t impose a chastity belt on their sexuality. They don’t defer to men – in anything. The rest of them don’t want liberation, and we should let them be.

Muslim women are not the victims of Muslim men. They mostly choose to belong to Muslim men. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be so incensed that we seek to inform them they don’t have to belong to anyone. They see it as imperialism. Fine. Muslims have always been touchy on the subject of learning from their betters, so let’s let them stew in their misery. They’ll get fed up soon enough and actually decide to do something about it – do something that doesn’t involve touting Islam as the solution to all their ills. As if anything could take them farther from freedom than an explicitly patriarchal religion.

I have an interest in helping people who show some inclination to help themselves. If there is absolutely no recognition of their responsibilities and no interest in self-development or even in self-preservation at a higher level than where the next meal is coming from – I’m sorry, I’m not much inclined to waste my energy on you. I see the relative courage of women in Bangladesh who struggle on minimal loans to establish businesses, and I compare with that the complete apathy of women in Red State America, voting for people taking away their rights, and yes, I’m inclined to do absolutely nothing about it. If my right to indiscriminately kill an unlimited number of fetuses was being threatened, you can bet your life I’d be doing something about it, even if I am ridiculously paranoid about getting pregnant, and so far, have managed to avoid it. So when women give up their rights so insouciantly, I think we should take them at their word, their vote.

After all, it’s voluntary. It’s a choice. If they weren’t able to vote, I might think there was a case for giving them the benefit of the doubt and fighting FOR them, just in case nefarious patriarchal elements were stealing these rights. But you know what? Many women don’t believe in the right to abortion, until they have to get one, and then they’re the exception – different from all those other sluts who have to ‘normally’ get abortions. And none of it really registers – they’re still anti-choice, at the end of the day, because in principle, it’s wrong, just like premarital sex is wrong. But they still do it – not ‘connecting,’ in the tradition of E.M. Forster.

And women not connecting are just as contemptible as men not connecting.

Yes, we can educate them to an extent. But nothing much changes for stupid people and nothing much ever will change for them – they either get their rights handed to them on a platter or they neglect and forfeit their rights. Eventually, if they suffer enough, something goes click in their tiny brains and they wake up and fight.

And so it goes.

No, this is not blaming women for society’s victimization of them – society cannot victimize fully equal and enfranchised members. Women, at some point, have to necessarily become simply “people.” I think they’ve reached this stage in most of the First World. They’re essentially to be held to the same standards as men. If “people get the government they deserve,” women, in today’s America get the government – and the laws – they deserve.

Red State America deserves to be anti-choice. They’ve made their bed, those traitors giving us leaders who are destroying this great country – let them bleed to death from self-administered abortions, just as our country is bleeding, dying.