I grew up in the 1970s when the Women’s Liberation movement was in it’s infancy and was fighting for legitimate issues. That was the time when women were demanding equal pay for equal work and demanding access to careers typically dominated by men. I worked with women who had been forced to quit their jobs when they started showing in their pregnancy. As surprising as this seems now, pregnant women were discriminated against and forced out of their jobs. As if being pregnant was somehow an embarrassing condition. When pregnant I couldn’t receive sick pay for sickness that the company considered to be related to my pregnancy.
Times have changed. Women have made great progress. But I see three serious problems with the Women’s movement in its current form: failure to defend women’s rights worldwide — especially in the Islamic world, failure to recognize and respond effectively to negative messages about women in the modern culture, failure to embrace and legitimize women choosing the traditional role of marriage and motherhood.
I don’t want to spend much time explaining the need to defend women’s rights in the Muslim world because it should be obvious. Child marriages, female genital mutilation, polygamy, forced wearing of the hijab or niqab, forced gender separation, honor killing, the inability to work, drive, or get adequate medical care, the inability to divorce an abusive husband, lack of equal access to education, and more all plague the Islamic world. For every well-meaning feminist who writes an article about how liberated she feels wearing a hijab, a million, maybe half a billion women suffer the blight of male supremacy codified in Islam. The treatment of women in the Islamic world is not compatible with Western ideas of human rights, democracy, and equality. It’s stunning to me that feminists aren’t the leading voice in the West defending Muslim women. Maybe it’s because the perpetrators aren’t Christian, white males.
The second failure is the inability to adequately criticize the contemporary culture’s messages about women. We have two young men living with us. One obsessively listens to the most vile gangsta rap. The other has a bit more varied musical taste, mainly heavy metal and hard rock, but he still listens to rap. As a woman I am utterly offended by the message in most rap. It is derogatory, demeaning, and nasty to women. Women are called bitches and whores. The messages are very often about sex, money, and violence, not love. Women are to be used and if they get too demanding, dumped to get another one less demanding. Women exist to meet men’s needs — mainly sexual — instead of being respected, protected and loved.
Both the young men living with us have a problem with authority. Problems with authority are fairly common these days, but I sense something beyond that with the two of them. I think that they are annoyed by the fact I am female and I have authority over them. I’m not surprised. Both of their mothers failed them and neither of them have had a strong female in their life. That is why I despair all the more about the negative messages concerning women in contemporary music. How can men have a healthy attitude about women when these negative messages are drummed into their heads all day long? I’ve asked girls why they listen to awful music that denigrates women. Their answer is so simplistic: it doesn’t bother them because they aren’t talking about them, they are talking about another woman. I responded that yes that may be true but it still influences how men think about women. Nope, they just don’t get it. It’s almost as if they are happy that a woman is being disrespected as long as it’s not them personally. Females are probably equally likely as males to call other women bitches and whores. We’ve gotten to the point where girls fight against girls to win the affection of boys who think they aren’t worth much more than sex.
Fast forward ten years, maybe even just five years. How are these girls going to grow up to be healthy, responsible, capable wives and mothers? They will most likely be mothers — alone and poor, still competing for the next man that comes along to give them some attention. And the men? They trot from woman to woman, whichever one has the most money, shelter, or sex to offer him. Rarely is it about love, and even more rare, is there any sense of responsibility or commitment to the women they’ve had sex with or the children they’ve produced.
We’ve come a long way baby haven’t we!! We can have irresponsible sex as easily as a man and then have an abortion if we don’t want to be a mother. We can cuss and fight and drink and take drugs just like a man. We can go to war. We can do darn near anything a man can do. But are we better off? Are we happier? Are our children happier? Are we more prosperous? Do we have more power in our personal lives?
I don’t get the feminist assault against marriage. Who has more power — Elin Nordegren or Tiger’s mistresses? Who has more ability to influence Tiger’s future behavior — Elin or the mistresses? Do women not understand that marriage gives them both power and influence? Without question marriage provides the best environment to raise children. It provides the best possibility for prosperity and security for the whole family. So why does it seem modern feminists are against marriage and consider it as an oppressive institution? Are women really liberated by being the unmarried sexual partners of men? Are they liberated because they can get an abortion and dispose of any unwanted children conceived? Why can’t feminists fight the real problems in our culture rather than being distracted with “womyn”, “herstory” and other silly issues like armpit hair, or addressing God as a male versus a female.
