What is feminism?

[satindesire]

We take our comfort where we can. Christian afterlife-type comfort is especially useful when we cannot make real changes in this life, as is certainly often the case.

But it is even more especially useful to those who don't want us trying to make those changes.

The Taliban did not become so incredibly powerful in Afghanistan until the US started interfering in the government-- which had become pretty secular. Women held professions. Our invasion destroyed that infrastructure and left a religion-shaped void that begged to be filled.

I vote. I pay taxes, I recycle, I am a good citizen. I'm NOT one of those people and it kind of hurts that you'd imply that.

 

[WriterDom]

We take our comfort where we can. Christian afterlife-type comfort is especially useful when we cannot make real changes in this life, as is certainly often the case.

But it is even more especially useful to those who don't want us trying to make those changes.

The Taliban did not become so incredibly powerful in Afghanistan until the US started interfering in the government-- which had become pretty secular. Women held professions. Our invasion destroyed that infrastructure and left a religion-shaped void that begged to be filled.

What? The Taliban was the government before we invaded. A large part of it anyway. It's never been much more than a battlefield for rival tribes. Why Obama would vote AGAINST the surge in Iraq, and then surge here boggles the mind. All the Iraqis wanted is their country back. Afghanistan will always be a cesspool no matter how long we stay.

 

[satindesire]

What I don't understand is that just on the last page, people were defending Feminism against the strident shrill minority that gives Feminism a bad name, yet the minute Christianity is mentioned, it's jumped all over with NO sense of the same kind of logic.

God forbid we be tolerant of people's religions on this board. I'm not going to turn this into me defending my choices so let's just change the subject back to Feminism.

 

[00Syd]

Oh, please.


Yes, let's get back to feminism.

 

[intothewoods]

What I don't understand is that just on the last page, people were defending Feminism against the strident shrill minority that gives Feminism a bad name, yet the minute Christianity is mentioned, it's jumped all over with NO sense of the same kind of logic.

God forbid we be tolerant of people's religions on this board. I'm not going to turn this into me defending my choices so let's just change the subject back to Feminism.

I don't like religion-bashing, but I didn't get that impression.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I vote. I pay taxes, I recycle, I am a good citizen. I'm NOT one of those people and it kind of hurts that you'd imply that.

Nooooo! I'm so sorry! Not you, of course not!

I was referring to King James.. And Pat Robertson, and them types.

I'm so sorry it sounded like that!

 

[Thomasoir]

Oh, please.


Yes, let's get back to feminism.

To me feminism means:

1) Equal work means equal pay
2) Respect for women as people

 

[satindesire]

Nooooo! I'm so sorry! Not you, of course not!

I was referring to King James.. And Pat Robertson, and them types.

I'm so sorry it sounded like that!

Thank you Stella, for straightening me out. I was really sad and now I feel lots better.

I appreciate you very much.

 

[JMohegan]

What? The Taliban was the government before we invaded.

Ring the bells, WD. I agree with you this day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1569826.stm

Though Netzach is correct in saying we aided their rise to power in the first place.

 

[Keroin]

What I don't understand is that just on the last page, people were defending Feminism against the strident shrill minority that gives Feminism a bad name, yet the minute Christianity is mentioned, it's jumped all over with NO sense of the same kind of logic.

God forbid we be tolerant of people's religions on this board. I'm not going to turn this into me defending my choices so let's just change the subject back to Feminism.

And yet, I think religion is very relevant in a discussion of feminism, considering it has often been used as a tool to demonize our sex and keep us down.

Not singling out Christianity here, BTW.

 

[Etoile]

The Taliban did not become so incredibly powerful in Afghanistan until the US started interfering in the government-- which had become pretty secular. Women held professions. Our invasion destroyed that infrastructure and left a religion-shaped void that begged to be filled.

Bit of mixed-up history there...the Taliban took power in 1996 and immediately forbade women from working, etc. They began taking control in 1994, of their own accord; the US didn't really have anything to do with their rise to power. It could be argued that the US influenced Mullah Omar, but once they got going, boy, they did it all on their own. The invasion wasn't until 2001, and it ended the civil war that was going on there. I agree with you that removing the Taliban left a void - which they are working on filling back in themselves - but the invasion had nothing to do with the loss of rights of women, they had lost all rights long before that.

 

[JMohegan]

And yet, I think religion is very relevant in a discussion of feminism, considering it has often been used as a tool to demonize our sex and keep us down.

Not singling out Christianity here, BTW.

In a free and secular society, if a woman gives her allegiance to a church, mosque, or synagogue that refuses to ordain women, or demands that she defer to her husband, or insists that she cover her hair in public, then she is engaging in a form of self-subjugation. Her choice. If she doesn't like it, all she has to do is walk out.

 

[JMohegan]

They began taking control in 1994, of their own accord; the US didn't really have anything to do with their rise to power. It could be argued that the US influenced Mullah Omar, but once they got going, boy, they did it all on their own.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

"The U.S. says that all of its funds went to native Afghan rebels and denies that any of its funds were used to supply Osama bin Laden or foreign Arab mujahideen. Nonetheless, U.S. support for the native Afghan mujahideen contributed to the radical Islamization of Afghanistan as well as the weakening and near-disintegration of the Afghan state, which ultimately led to the Taliban takeover of most of the country in 1996."

 

[Etoile]

Ah, I see what you mean. I thought we were saying that the US helped the Taliban directly. I'm not sure that second sentence is very clear though, there is a LOT of explanation that needs to be done, and we all know how good Wikipedia is at that sort of thing. "US support did thus and so" well yes but how? It's one thing to quote Wikipedia, it's another thing to back it up...but now I see what was meant by the US contributing to the Taliban's rise to power. Not that "supporting the other guy" equates to "bringing someone to power" but I see where you were going.

 

[WriterDom]

Just because the Brits drew some lines doesn't mean a country like Afghanistan ever existed. The Taliban are Pashtuns. The ethnic group with twice as many over the boarder in Pakistan. You know, that area in Pakistan where only drones go because the Pakistan army has no interest in cleaning it out?

It's all pretty futile. What I see happening is the US and NATO brokering a deal with the Taliban to give some shared power on the condition that all foreign troops leave, then in a matter of time, the Taliban will once again be running the show.

The only other alternative is a never ending war where more and more coalition troops get killed. All politics aside, I see no right way to proceed. It's a little like holding a wolf by the ears. You don't like it, but you don't want to let go either.

 

[Etoile]

Just because the Brits drew some lines doesn't mean a country like Afghanistan ever existed.

The UN would beg to differ.

 

[WriterDom]

The UN would beg to differ.

The UN is about a useful as a limp dick. If Afghanistan is a functioning government then I guess it's about time we left there and let them run things.

 

[WriterDom]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/22/dancing-boys-of-afghanist_n_548428.html

As bad as the Taliban is, these are the people we are protecting. The clients of the Bacha Bazi boys. Their idea of fun night out is to go watch a 12 year old boy dress and dance like a girl then pay off his pimp for some good old fashioned sodomy under the Afghan stars.

I'm starting to agree with the 100 or so democrats who voted to stop the funding recently. Fuck these people. Either that or be ready to fight for 1000 years. These people are still fighting over which flavor of Islam is correct and that all started 1300 years ago.

 

[JMohegan]

Ah, I see what you mean. I thought we were saying that the US helped the Taliban directly. I'm not sure that second sentence is very clear though, there is a LOT of explanation that needs to be done, and we all know how good Wikipedia is at that sort of thing. "US support did thus and so" well yes but how? It's one thing to quote Wikipedia, it's another thing to back it up...but now I see what was meant by the US contributing to the Taliban's rise to power. Not that "supporting the other guy" equates to "bringing someone to power" but I see where you were going.

You want backup, here you go. Excerpts from Blowback, a 1996 Atlantic piece.


SIXTEEN years have passed since the CIA began providing weapons and funds -- eventually totaling more than $3 billion -- to a fratricidal alliance of seven Afghan resistance groups, none of whose leaders are by nature democratic, and all of which are fundamentalist in religion to some extent, autocratic in politics, and venomously anti-American. Washington's financial commitment to the jihad was exceeded only by Saudi Arabia's. At the time the jihad was getting under way there was no significant Islamist opposition movement in Saudi Arabia, and it apparently never occurred to the Saudi rulers, who feared the Soviets as much as Washington did, that the volunteers it sent might be converted by the jihad's ideology.
...

For more than a decade some 25,000 Islamic militants, from nearly thirty countries around the world, had streamed through Peshawar on their way to the jihad. They came, without passports and without names, from the Palestinian organization Hamas, from Egypt's AlGama'a al-Islamiya and Al-Jihad, from Algeria's Islamic Salvation Front, and from the Philippines' Moro Liberation Front. Five years after the jihad ended, a thousand or so remained, some in Peshawar itself, others encamped in the mountain passes of the ungovernable tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, planning and executing what investigators now believe were terrorist acts that have reached from Cairo to Algiers, Manila to Bangkok -- and to the streets of Islamabad. Riyadh, Peshawar, and New York.

"Even today you can sit at the Khyber Pass and see every color, every creed, every nationality, pass," a Western diplomat told me in Peshawar last spring. "These groups, in their wildest imagination, never would have met if there had been no jihad. For a Moro to get a Sting missile! To make contacts with Islamists from North Africa! The United States created a Moscow Central in Peshawar for these groups, and the consequences for all of us are astronomical."
....

Gulbaddin Hekmatyar was named Prime Minister of Afghanistan in 1992, when the puppet Communist government in Kabul finally fell. The fighting continued, now in the form of a fratricidal civil war in which Hekmatyar unleashed a deadly offensive against other factions of the mujahideen, using a formidable arsenal of arms -- all of them supplied by the United States and Saudi Arabia. (Ironically, Hekmatyar and the present leaders of the Afghan government, who among them have stockpiled some 500 "missing" Stinger anti-aircraft missiles supplied by the CIA, are now being challenged by a new and extremely fundamentalist Afghan student militia known as the Taliban, which grew out of the chaos left by the CIA's war. With the strong backing of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, it has managed to wrest control of nearly half of the country -- and several Stingers -- from the leaders of the jihad.)

 

[Netzach]

The Taliban didn't emerge until about 5 years after the Soviets left. Largely thanks to the Pakistanis. You can blame America for the defeat of the Russians I guess. In retrospect maybe we should have turned the other cheek. Godless beats radical Islam any day. At least the Russians understand M.A.D.

I think we should start dropping Marxist leaflets. We were so worried that we were willing to overlook anything and everything. Now it's biting at our ass and we're too stupid to remember where it came from. Thank God the radical Islamists aren't marxist and secular. We got exactly what we were angling for - crazy people with no regard for organized humanity on a power grab. Good going crusaders of the 80's.

 

[Netzach]

Bit of mixed-up history there...the Taliban took power in 1996 and immediately forbade women from working, etc. They began taking control in 1994, of their own accord; the US didn't really have anything to do with their rise to power. It could be argued that the US influenced Mullah Omar, but once they got going, boy, they did it all on their own. The invasion wasn't until 2001, and it ended the civil war that was going on there. I agree with you that removing the Taliban left a void - which they are working on filling back in themselves - but the invasion had nothing to do with the loss of rights of women, they had lost all rights long before that.

No one comes to power in a vacuum without influence and friends in high places. Do you really think these people fought the Russians off unaided?

 

[Netzach]

Things will change for Afghan women when the entire culture connects the concept of women as animals with the fact that the economy of the country is rocks and opium, and it didn't used to be that way for some reason.

 

[WriterDom]

I think we should start dropping Marxist leaflets. We were so worried that we were willing to overlook anything and everything. Now it's biting at our ass and we're too stupid to remember where it came from. Thank God the radical Islamists aren't marxist and secular. We got exactly what we were angling for - crazy people with no regard for organized humanity on a power grab. Good going crusaders of the 80's.

The Russians might have kept them occupied a lot longer without our help. Forever? I doubt it. The USSR probably still would have crumbled and crawled back to Pre WW2 Russia at some point. Leaving Afghanistan ripe for some form of radical Islam.

 

[Etoile]

The four decades involved here have me thoroughly confused, I think. How Afghanistan in 2010 is different from Afghanistan in 2000, 1990, and 1980. I'm all twisted. Gonna stop because it's 12:45am here in Tokyo and I am losing track of my argument.

 

[Tabea]

In a free and secular society, if a woman gives her allegiance to a church, mosque, or synagogue that refuses to ordain women, or demands that she defer to her husband, or insists that she cover her hair in public, then she is engaging in a form of self-subjugation. Her choice. If she doesn't like it, all she has to do is walk out.

I really don’t think it is that simple.

Many Arabs and Turks live in Germany. Forced marriages of young girls happen. There have been a few honour killings of women who wanted to live differently.

While the girls grow up they are constantly told by their families and religious leaders that the Western way of living is evil. Children believe their parents. Their free time is mostly spent with other Muslims who reinforce the ideas.
A Muslim friend has told me that she always feels watched by other Muslims. It is a parallel society.

Many girls agree to arranged marriages right after school and then there is pressure to get a baby. Because everybody around them lives the same way they don’t see it as a choice. They often go from the control of their fathers and brothers directly to the control of their husbands.
Living differently would likely mean no further contact to their relatives and to their friends. That is not a simple decision.