A rather dire warning from a woman who was once an Iranian judge... until the revolution of 1979, after which she found herself promoted to "secretary."
There's no doubt that the Arab Spring movements have much to concern us. There's also no doubt that, when the existing social contract expires, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," as Mao Zedong rather rightly noted.
What that means is that we have to sort out who is going to have the guns and convince them that female political power is in their interests. How to do that? If it cannot be done, then there will be no rights for women in these societies for a long time to come -- until the new "social treaty" stabilizes, enough for a gentler kind of evolution of thought to take place. That is the kind of thing that takes generations, not revolutions: think how many generations were needed here.
...we have to sort out who is going to have the guns and convince them that female political power is in their interests.
ReplyDeleteIn all liklihood, it will be the same ones who have the guns *now*, and, for the most part, they appear to be of the same stripe as those who "promoted" Ms. Ebadi.
Don't hold your breath waiting for the current administration to do much of anything, other than working on its re-election campaign...
My only hope is that a culture that ignores half its mental resources will fade away and die, outcompeted, like the Nazis, who chased off or slaughtered their brilliant Jews.
ReplyDeleteThat's possible, but cultural stagnation is also a highly likely result of ignoring your mental resources -- indeed, cultural regression is the story of Islam from circa 1150 (when the major Christian victories happened in Spain) or 1200 (in the East, when the Mongols came) until the present day. The loss of the intellectual resources of the Andalusian schools and the Baghdad/Persian schools was just what made things worse, and then kept things from getting better.
ReplyDelete"My only hope is that a culture that ignores half its mental resources will fade away and die, outcompeted, like the Nazis, who chased off or slaughtered their brilliant Jews."
ReplyDeleteTex, I'd be willing to bet the culture would fade, and fast, if only the culture allowed their women folk to drive --drive to the nearest airport or ocean ports where passage elsewhere might be booked-- or move about without escort.
Otherwise, and with oil and opium resources, the culture seems quite content to live as their 7th century forebearers lived.
The Islamic culture marginalizes it's women by restrictive clothing and limited access to civic and public activities. Western culture marginalizes it's women with unlimited expectations of rights without consequences. In both cases, women are not responsible or accountable for much of anything. In both cases, women are treated and expected to behave more as a delicate, spoiled and moderately retarded houseplant than a fully functioning human. The violence against women act is a perfect example of protecting western women from themselves. I mean, if women were trusted to make good partner decisions they wouldn't need that law. So, now they should have guns? May I suggest we re-examine that, 'give houseplants rights without accountability' thing first? Then, maybe we can lecture the other barbarians.
ReplyDeleteWe have a VAWA discussion a couple of posts up. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest. I can see a couple of principled arguments against it, but I'm not sure that some special protection for women from violence isn't necessary and proper.
ReplyDeleteIn general we all agree that women shouldn't be subject to violence. If a woman makes a bad partner decision and her partner undertakes to kill her in public and in front of you, most any man would step in to stop it.