Preachy France Gets Hypocritical

[Fittisize]

Yes, Fittisize, and I'm sure Chinese women who had had their feet crushed in childhood to fit into those miniscule shoes had all kinds of excuses for why it was okay, that's the best way for them to be, etc... it's all lies that have been programmed into them in order to keep them obedient. Don't fall for it!

I've never talked to any Chinese women on the topic before, but I do know it's wrong to conflate the two issues, just as is the implication from that quote that veiled Muslim women are "programmed" and harbour zero free will of their own.

What do you think, that we should be absolutely culturally relative? If the Aztecs were still around, would you be defending their right to conduct mass human sacrifices or something? Some things are wrong, and sexism is one of those things!

Again with the hyperbole! Obviously that's something I wouldn't be defending, but chances are, if the Aztecs were still around, they wouldn't still be conducting mass human sacrifices. I guess we'll never know though, because the entire civilization was wiped off the face of the Earth. Oh well! Clearly the Conquistadors were more socially progressive.

I don't think we should just accept that and say "That's fine". We should, instead, do what we can to give their women opportunities, give them educations, let (or make) them actually see where they are going...

Overall, I think that things right now are moving in positive directions. In much of the Middle East the status of women is slowly improving. Western pressure, I think, helps that along.

Never did I say that we should sit back and say "That's fine," I just don't advocate Western superiority over other cultures. I especially don't subscribe to the imperialistic notion of "making" anybody do anything. To "make" Muslim women see where "they" are going is more like making them see where YOU want them to go. There's a powerful, growing branch of Muslim feminisim that's separate from the Western ideology. Believe it or not, it's quite possible that universally advocating Western values in places that are clearly non-Western does a lot of harm. It's also possible that women in the Middle East have brains and the capacity to fight within their own system on their own terms.

Yeah, so why should we try to do anything? Just give up, improving conditions is hopeless... except it isn't, and that doesn't actually reflect today's world. Europe seems conflicted about whether to resist or give in to this stuff, but some, at least, resist it...

Again, that's not what I'm saying. I'm advocating for action against sexist societies, I just don't think that the actions taken in France are the right way to go about it.

Islam is also much more conservative in other extremely important ways too, like how it it resists accepting the concept of freedom of speech (see things like the death threats to the Danish cartoonist, or the murder of the Dutch filmmaker).

You know that's not Islam, just like extremists murdering abortion doctors in America isn't Christianity.

There is a more liberal wing of Islam, after all.

Yes indeed. Some of its participants are even veiled.

I don't really know what else to say. I wish you would have read my above post a bit more closely before acusing me of being a sympathizer of sexist, extremist cultures who thinks oppression of women is okay. I made it clear that I believe in the exact opposite. The situation is far more complicated than simply believing that everything about Islam is ass-backward and oppressive and that The West has all the answers to everybody's problems.