Which of These Women is a Feminist?

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On the left, Asma Jahangir. Here's her C.V., and here's an interview with her that appeared in the UN Chronicle.

On the right, a photo of a group of women from the ("Red Mosque"), a campus of sorts that includes the mosque as well as religious schools for both men and women, and that has become a center for pro-Islamist political action in Pakistan.

Jahangir wants Pakistan to recognize and support a secular version of human rights, particularly human rights for minorities and women. As she says in the linked interview, "cultural diversity does not mean inhuman treatment of other human beings."

Lal Masjid, including the women of Jamia Hafsa (a kind of women's seminary), want Pakistan to embrace Sharia, a specifically Islamic form of law, the particular tenets of which vary depending on who you ask; roughly, the idea is that the laws of a political state should be based in religious texts and religiously-based precedent.

Presumably to most of us it's obvious that Jahangir is in the right, and the women of Jamia Hafsa are in the wrong. It's pretty easy when you're standing outside of whatever the cultural/religious norms are to recognize that not everything that people with tits do is automatically feminist. It's a lot harder when the norms being criticized are norms you yourself hold.

Feminism isn't "all about choices." It's all about power and equality. Arguing for women's "right" to do things that perpetuate their lack of power or equality isn't feminist; it's using pseudo-feminist language to argue for women's continued status as second-class citizens.

Similarly, arguing for men's "right" to continue to be treated as individuals without regard to the social status or power of "men" as a class is usually anti-feminist: e.g., arguments about men getting "passed over" for jobs or promotions in favor of women, etc. If the situation is one where the job in question is "traditionally" a woman's job, then sure: argue away. But if we're talking about politicians or CEOs or college professors or scientists or construction workers, then nope--sorry.

Context matters. If you refuse to consider it, then you might as well go back to 'separate but equal." As Warren wrote in Brown v. Board of Education,
We must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.
because
Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
The court's finding at the time depended on a great deal of research and the integrity to realize that the way difference is interpreted matters.

Theories are all well and good, but at some point you have to look at what's actually happening. If it "just so happens" that women can't get contraception because it's prescription-only, or because some pharmacists and doctors "just happen" to have religious prejudices against it--but it doesn't "just happen" that men are subject to the same problems--then it just happens to be the fact that that's discriminatory. If it "just so happens" that women "choose" to wear heels and makeup because doing so increases their status, while men "happen" not to rely on signalling sexual availability/attractiveness in order to increase theirs, then that, too, is discriminatory.

If women's "choices" happen to perpetuate the idea that women are second-class citizens, then those choices aren't feminist.

Which ain't the fault of those women; we all make the decisions we have to make to live in the world. And for the record, there are defensible arguments that (say) nude pictures of oneself can be quite feminist in nature.

It's a question of context. As Diana York Blaine said in the interview linked immediately above, the focus has been on her boobs rather than her provocative editorial, and sees this "scandal," which she adeptly deconstructs on her site, as part of her feminist teachings.

Focusing on the nudity is part of the problem, people. Just like arguing for women to be "protected" from rape by covering themselves and staying out of public view--or by "not getting drunk with strangers" or whatever your preferred "how to not get raped" argument is--as if women "get" raped by some invisible force of nature.

You're not doing feminism any favors when you think it's all about what women do or don't do. Women aren't raised under rocks, and we're not brains on sticks. The world we live in, and the people we live in it with, have an effect on us. The real question ought to be, are you trying to change shit? Or are you just making a bunch of bullshit excuses to perpetuate your own comfortable status quo?

Bitch_PhD promises this will be her last post on this subject for the forseeable future.

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