Another type of discrimination:Free Women

[Mariam]

well you may not know where i live, because i have a conflict with my belonging.
Thats not the issue, but let me say in brief that i live in the Middle East, and im sure you all know what is the Middle East.
The latest fashion "down" here is women's freedom.
You can say that women are discriminated in the east for so many reasons, but mainly religion and the muscaline society.Now and after the wide spread of what i call the fake-democracy, every body is talking about women liberation, as if it was a comic issue, or a cheap novel.
Im sure that women in the Middle east are not alone in this torment, all over the world women are treated as a low-class creature, espically when you are living in what is known as a third word country, even if she was the president!!
Even now as they say we are living in the golden era of democracy, women reached high possitios, but they are still discriminated in a way or another.
One simple livning example: Me!!
Im treated "down" here as an aline, not because i did something wrong, but because im a girl, and i spent alot of time reading, i talk about politics, i discuss philosophy, and i critisize the goverment.
So why are they calling for women's freedom, and somehow alienating them??
How are they supposed to free women??
Is it some kind of a joke??
Or as i think just another aspect of the fashionable democracy, the capitalist, imperialistic democracy??
Idont mean that women "down" here hasn't got any kind of rights, but why??
I once read a book about feminism, and it was foucesd on the idea of women as the origin of living, and this all changed with Frued... Why women are treated like this??
I find it annoying to claim liberating women, and at the same time treating them as if they were half-minded, or not complete human beings!!
What do you think people??
:!:

[TC]

uh yah of course we all agree. everyone who isn't a rightist in a conservative muslim state in the middle east, or a conservative evangelical or mormon state in the us, agrees.


The middle east is socially behind the rest of the world, including the third world (there are female presidents in latin america and asia its not just a first world phenomenon), because unlike the west and much of the third world which went through an industrial revolution that involved the whole of the population, which historically coorelated with gender equality as it brought women into the work force on equal terms in mass numbers...the middle east relies on oil exports rather than heavy industry for its economy, so it never created a large female work force so women never gained the economic status required to protect their interests.

[Mariam]

Thank you TragicClown..
Its not a matter of what party you belong to, the country you live in, what is your credo, or your ideology.Its about your existence as a woman.

...the middle east relies on oil exports rather than heavy industry for its economy, so it never created a large female work force so women never gained the economic status required to protect their interests.

It's true, but i dont think that women's respect is based on thier economic state, it's more than that...it's about being a human in the first place.

In the middle eas there are limits to one's thinking regardless of your gender.
Now..people are into the new fashion of liberalism, will it make any difference??

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Yes and no. Liberalism has brought more rights to women in the West. If Liberalism does take hold in the Middle East there probably will be some tangible benefits for women: the right to have a job, drive, not be forced to be under religious rule as much, etc. Maybe even some women political leaders. What it will not bring (and which it has not brought to the West) is what your post is about: viewing women as human beings, having men respect them as equals, etc. I think economic state does have a lot to do with the subjugation of women. In the patriarchal societies that dominate the earth today, women have traditionally been viewed as property. Although in the West liberalism has "dismissed" that and abstractly subscribed to the idea that women are equals, in practice women are still subjugated. Why is this so? I'm not sure, the subjugation of women is older than capitalism, older than many of our current cultural and economic practices. All of us here are fighting for the liberation of women, and all subjugated individuals. It would be great if we could get more discussion on the origins of women's oppression...

[Severian]

Originally posted by BattleOfTheCowshed@Mar 19 2006, 05:23 PM
Yes and no. Liberalism has brought more rights to women in the West. If Liberalism does take hold in the Middle East there probably will be some tangible benefits for women: the right to have a job, drive, not be forced to be under religious rule as much, etc.

"Liberalism" didn't bring rights to women in the West. Women fought for their rights.

The same is necessary elsewhere.

Meaningful progress is not going to come thanks to the capitalist class, which is no longer progressive. The oppressed and exploited have to fight for it.

A good article on the problems Adonis_Che is writing about:
Feminism as Imperialism

An excerpt:
The classic example of such a coloniser was Lord Cromer, British consul general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907, as described in Leila Ahmed's seminal Women and Gender in Islam. Cromer was convinced of the inferiority of Islamic religion and society, and had many critical things to say on the "mind of the Oriental". But his condemnation was most thunderous on the subject of how Islam treated women. It was Islam's degradation of women, its insistence on veiling and seclusion, which was the "fatal obstacle" to the Egyptian's "attainment of that elevation of thought and character which should accompany the introduction of Western civilisation," he said. The Egyptians should be "persuaded or forced" to become "civilised" by disposing of the veil.

And what did this forward-thinking, feminist-sounding veil-burner do when he got home to Britain? He founded and presided over the Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage, which tried, by any means possible, to stop women getting the vote.
....
The thieves of feminist language couldn't (and can't) even be bothered to pretend that they actually care about women in the colonised or bombed countries: in Egypt, Cromer actively ensured that women's status was not improved: he raised school fees (so preventing girls' education) and discouraged the training of women doctors.

[Mariam]

Thank you all people..
I agree that women are fighting for there rights every where, and under whatever ruling party or in any idelogical circumstances.
But i still dont believe that women's economic independence is as important as their intellectual independence and their indivisuality.
I read a book (a feminist arabic book), and it had alot of historical examples to verify the idea of women as the origin of any society, and it showed that the shift in women's situation has changed when Jews had diffrent ideas about women..
It's not a religios debate, thougt..
It gets really annoying when you go back and learn who were women treated in old dusty times. It started with women on top..then every thing collapsed regardless of any religion.
Could liberalism be the solution??
Thanks Severian for the article.
I'll read it first than you can have my reply.

[Mariam]

Ok..i read the article and let me quote this first:
"Indeed,many Muslim women are suspicious of weastren-style feminism for this very reason, a fact which it is crucial for feminists in the west to understand, before they do a Cromer and insist that the removal of veils is the route to all liberation."
I dont think that removing veils is a cricial condition to liberate women.
Veils are not meant to be barriers to women's minds, and it doesn't prevent their liberation according to Islam, maybe that's one of the most stereotyped issues about Islam.However, in Islam there's a variety of doctrines and each has it's own opinion, some see veils as an obligation, others as opption.
Commonly, i think eastren women should star looking for something unique, and stop aping the west.
Im not against whatever comes from the west, but im against that ready-made feminism.....the same feminism that Bush is using as a pretext to attack other countries.
Maybe women are counted as weapons of mass distruction!!
One more thing...i haven't found any thing about women's condition under a communist rule..any ideas.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Adonis_CHE@Mar 20 2006, 03:55 AM
But i still dont believe that women's economic independence is as important as their intellectual independence and their indivisuality.

The point is not so much which is more important, since they are not in conflict.

The point is, that economic independence makes everything else possible.

[redstar2000]

Women and Communism -- Speculations

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Originally posted by Severian+Mar 20 2006, 01:02 AM--> (Severian @ Mar 20 2006, 01:02 AM)

BattleOfTheCowshed

@Mar 19 2006, 05:23 PM
Yes and no. Liberalism has brought more rights to women in the West. If Liberalism does take hold in the Middle East there probably will be some tangible benefits for women: the right to have a job, drive, not be forced to be under religious rule as much, etc.

"Liberalism" didn't bring rights to women in the West. Women fought for their rights.

The same is necessary elsewhere.

Meaningful progress is not going to come thanks to the capitalist class, which is no longer progressive. The oppressed and exploited have to fight for it.

[/b]

To make myself clear: I wasn't trying to state that Liberalism magically brought more rights to Women or that they were granted by the bourgeoisie. Merely that Women fought for those rights during the same period of liberalization that occured in the US that brought about the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, etc. And if such a wide-spread Liberalizing movement ever took hold in the Middle East it is possible Women would be able to fight and achieve such gains. I agree with you that all the progressive achievements under capitalism have been brought about because of oppressed people FIGHTING .

[Mariam]

Ok...let me make this clear first..im not saying that women "from where i live", or in the gulf, the middle east, and the Islamic arab world, dont have any rights.
NO, they have alot of rights..learning, driving, working,and even voting,but it's still a paradox: Having rights, and feminist movements on one hand, the non-complete affirmation of those rights, and abusing women under the name of liberating them on the other hand.
There is still some thing like a look on men's faces when it comes about women's rights....let me tell you something...im not a fully independent indivisual(i mean idont have my own economic sorcues..right now idon't have a fils in my pocket!&#33, but i believe that i deserve to be respected for what i am, not for how much i've got.
Thank you redstar2000, it was usefull....
I think we should start thinking about women's condition, before establishing the society, women represent half of the society...maybe they will think of a feminist revolution and start killing men to revenge.