My Feminism.

There's a debate going on between Umar Lee and Ali Eteraz about feminism, and its threat to Islam, the family, and virtue.  It's pretty scary, if you ask me.  Here's Lee:

Wh[at] many refer to [...] as First Wave, I call [...] Organic Feminism, because this was a faith-based initiative that did not seek to rebel against the natural roles of women as mothers and wives and the keepers of societal virtue, rather it sought to protect women in those roles and allow them to branch out. Organic Feminism is what is needed in the Muslim World where it can work to end the mistreatment of women and cultural practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and “honor” killings while reinforcing the commitment of women to their Lord and family and the natural biological, mental and physical differences that exist between the sexes. Rather than creating hatred and animosity between the sexes, which is what has happened with feminism in the West. Organic Feminism can reconcile the sexes and create better men, who are not in touch with their feminine side (as the only femini[ne] side a man needs to be in touch with is that of his mother, sisters, and wife), but rather back in touch with the compassion which has been placed in them by Ar-Rahman.

Well, I agree that men's compassion is not "feminine."  But when you start talking about "the natural roles of women as mothers and wives and the keepers of societal virtue" and the "natural biological, mental and physical differences that exist between the sexes," I break out in a cold sweat.  Alarm bells should go off whenever you hear the word "natural" applied to some quality of human beings (whether by a Darwinian atheist or a traditionalist)*, but "mental" is the word that really scares me:  the assumption that women's biological role completely conditions our brains.  That way lies a different and inferior education and the burial of women's talents in the nurturing of sons, through whom alone those talents may find vicarious expression.  (A mother like that can be pretty emasculating, on the one hand, or create a monster, on the other.)  That's where we came from.  Let's go higher around the spiral, by all means, not back down it.

*[I'm not saying that there's nothing "natural" about us, but that a prominent aspect of our nature is its elasticity, and that the use of the word "natural" always has a cultural agenda behind it, whether it's the scientist saying we can't rise above our evolved biological urges, or the traditionalist who would dispute that but on the other hand assert that when it comes to women, biology is destiny.  You could just as easily say that if you share the species' fabulous furrowed cortex with the male, it's "natural" to seek to use it, and that only male power and survival necessity have restricted women's uses of it.] 

Eteraz, while paying due respect to Islamic tradition (a difficult balancing act with his postmodern humanism, to say the least), has a lot of complicated thoughts about this, concluding:

[T]he idea popular among some Muslims that by treating women as our spiritual equals, letting women into the public sphere, and wanting to share with our women a relationship that is completely devoid of a power relation might emasculate a man, or leads to a man turning into a woman, is insulting to me as a man. Emasculation does not occur between men and women, but between men and men. I’d recommend not sweating what other dudes think. That is real masculinity.

This prompted me to comment and to try to define "my feminism" in a few words:

“Spiritual equals.”  That’s the essence.

You can diagram human being as a triangle. Spirit is the point at the top, it is one. Bodies are the two points at the base: they are opposites. Soul fills in the triangle. The closer to the bottom — the body and physical life — the more different the souls of men and women are*. The closer to the top — spirit — the more alike they become. That’s why you can have a violent jealous fight with someone of the opposite sex, or an exquisite conversation.

Tradition tends to put women at the bottom of the triangle, confined in the world of matter and physical urges and necessities, and men at the top. Ultimately, that will be discovered to be just plain wrong, an artifact of the power and fear of men.

*[And of course even there they're not totally different.  The two points meet in the middle:  the senses, the memory of infancy, the awareness of death.]

Comments

[tamarika]

The person to read is Ayaan Hirsi Ali about all this.

The second one is Christopher Hitchens: God is Not Great.

There is no debate. All this mumbo jumbo does is justify injustice towards women. And it starts with the premise that God is male, privileged, dominant. It is called a Patriarchal system. It is bad for all women and all men.

[Tom Strong]

Mmm. I love those claims that feminism "created animosity and hatred between the sexes." As if everything between the sexes was all hunky-dory before those uppity feminists came along.

[Dan]

Feminist ideology has become so strongly embedded in our law and culture that it seems to me that modern American culture is more of "matriarchy" than it is a "patriarchy." What demands of the women's movement were not met almost instantly? Demand for abortion was first made in the late 1960s and a universal "right" to abortion was granted by early 1973. Legal guarantee of equal treatment in the work place was granted immediately, and without controversy. Sexual harassment laws were demanded and immediately granted.

Feminism is an ideology that seems to acknowledge only rights -- and not obligations. Like nearly everyone, I have nothing against granting women their legitimate right to participate fully in work life. But I insist that women have obligations too, and in particular, the obligation to provide motherly nurture to their childern, before and after birth. The commandment to love cannot be enacted into secular law. But it is nonetheless the first and greatest of all obligations. My problem with most versions of feminism is that they do not recognize this.

[amba]

Dan,

Do you think the legalization (and cultural normalization) of abortion was just a capitulation to feminist demands, or might it have had something to do with men's (at least as much as women's) wish for consequence-free sexual freedom?

I suspect that selfless service to men and children had been demanded of women for so long that (like men who felt harnessed to supporting families) they wanted to try out the "joys" of selfishness -- joys which, in reality, are limited in their joyfulness and in excess, have now palled for many of those who tried them. It is not necessary to make women go back to being glorified servants to strike a better balance. Jesus said to love thy neighbor "as thyself," not "instead of thyself."

[Dan]

Abortion unquestionably serves the interests of philandering men. This is a fact that illustrates the incoherency of modern feminism, which, like Playboy magazine, posits the legalization of abortion as a good thing.

Who is talking about "making" women do anything? Society cannot make women do anything that they don't want to do. The issue is what women should do, for themselves and for others.

Jesus's conception of love is one entirely of giving and sacrifice. It is impossible to read the Gospels as promoting the self idolization that is so prevalent in feminist and "New Age" thinking. Jesus did say love your neighbor as yourself, but it is very evident from the context that what he means is: do not distinguish between yourself and others when it comes to love, tear down the separation between your "I" and others, renounce yourself to join with others. Jesus also said: "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." John 15:12-13.

[Dave Schuler]

Feminism of whatever stripe presents no challenge to Islam whatever. None. Nada.

But it would be fatal to traditional societies and many people living in such societies conflate Islam with “what we've been doing for as long as anybody can remember”