The New Feminism: Breaking the Multicultural Relativism Taboo
March 3, 2009
by Artemis March PhD
|The following is the opinion of the author, and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The New Agenda.
When American feminists have broken their silence about the beheading of Aasiya Hassan, their reactions have tended to emphasize the commonalities in male violence against women across cultures and caution that it not distract our focus from this bigger picture. But in dismissing the importance of making distinctions among the cultural contexts in which such violence take place, are they playing into the hands of the politically correct crowd who don’t want us to talk about this subject at all?
What are the challenges for feminists as we try to navigate not only honor killings (as this beheading appears to be) taking place on American soil, but also the complex issues to which they open? Do they not point in two directions at once—the commonalities in male violence against women and their socio-cultural specificity? I suggest it is both/and, not either/or.
Assuredly, male degradation of and violence toward women is of pandemic proportions, and we must raise awareness and outrage in order to make unacceptable all forms of male violence against women (VAW). The media routinely erase that reality by locating the problem in the personal failings and pathology of individual men. But when at least one in three women in this country can expect to be sexually and/or physically assaulted during their lifetimes, some on a repeated or ongoing basis (as is often the case with the sexual abuse of girlchildren and the battery of women), it should be obvious that such behavior is neither exceptional nor deviant. If we are to change this behavior, we must first recognize that male violence against women is built into the structure of our asymmetrical sex/gender system even when it is not acted on.
(For the record, its structural nature in no way diminishes the accountability of men for their abusive and violent behavior toward women. It merely identifies the primary level at which the problem must be addressed.)
Yes, there are common denominators driving all male violence toward women. Male entitlement to appropriate, use, degrade, and discard women is part of that gendered structure, as is women’s de facto status as object, property, possession. Male entitlement is fed by a pornified misogyny which has innumerable channels of distribution, especially in our multi-media age.
Despite commonalities among all forms of male violence against women, we ought not simply disappear honor killings into the general VAW category by dismissing the importance of making distinctions that derive from their cultural or religious context. Why not?
Context Matters. When we say that male violence is all the same, we bypass the fact that it is informed by, and expressed through, specific cultural, societal, and religious contexts. Understanding behavior in its cultural context is one of the principles drilled into social scientists and ethnographers—with good reason. As Violet Socks writes in her February 19 TNA post, “We can’t stop honor killings unless we know why they happen—and I mean exactly why they happen. What are the social and religious codes at work there?” We cannot change what we do not understand, and we cannot understand something that we don’t discuss openly and honestly.
In her comments at TNA to Amy Siskind’s February 21 Daily Beast post, attorney Elizabeth Kates suggests one aspect of how this plays out. She has observed that the common thread among Western batterers is their “focus on themselves.” An individual sense of grievance and victimization is used to justify his behavior to himself while maintaining a belief in his own personal goodness. The honor killer, by contrast, does not feel he has to justify his behavior. He can perceive himself as a “neutral actor” doing something that in his social world is seen as “objectively necessary.” We need to understand such differences in order to address each of them effectively.
I would add that what Kates is pointing to in both instances is not reducible to psychological causation. She is pointing to sociological phenomena that manifest themselves through the structuring of men’s psyches and behaviors in their respective cultures. “Social structure” is not visible as such, but it is real, and it is powerful.
Drawing the Line. Second, If we lump honor killings in with all VAW, we beg the question of the exportation of Sharia Law to non-Muslim countries. (Most, not all, honor killings in the U.S. are committed by Muslims.) Not only are honor killings migrating to many parts of the world, but so also are demands for a dual legal system that accepts and glorifies rather than punishes the perpetrators. As we observe this process in Europe, we can be sure that these demands for a double standard in our laws are coming to a neighborhood near you.
This is a critical question for Americans, for women, for feminists—a question few of us ever dreamed we would be thinking about a decade or so ago during which only one American feminist voice, Phyllis Chesler, stands out for calling our attention to Islamic gender apartheid and its migration.
Sharia Law makes no apologies for absolute male entitlement to subjugate women and to punish them for infractions or alleged infractions of the shame-honor system—the social structure governing gender relations and sexual relations in Islamic and some other cultures. We need to gain clarity in our own minds and be able to articulate where the line must be drawn when religious fundamentalists, Islamic or otherwise, claim the right to practice behaviors that are antithetical to the premises on which we operate (at least in theory and in aspiration) and lead to harm against others—specifically against women.
- We need to draw a line when respect or tolerance for other cultures and religions turns into accepting practices which harm women.
- We cannot accept a dual legal system or cultural practices that subordinate or erase the rights of women to self-determination and bodily integrity.
The rubber meets the road here, folks.
Breaking the MCR Taboo. So what stops us from having absolute clarity that we will not accept a double standard or dual system of laws, and that we must have free and open discussion about Islamic shame-honor systems and their consequences? The politically correct orthodoxies of multicultural relativism (MCR) that have infused the consciousness of progressives—including most progressive/Leftist feminists.
Multiculturalism was intended as an antidote to racism and imperialism. Its relativism accepts all cultures as equal—especially if they have ever been colonized, and its people are people of color. Sounds good on first hearing. But here’s the catch. Subscribers to MCR enforce their orthodoxy by attacking as “racist” anyone who criticizes men of color or their male-dominated cultures.
MCR has two fatal flaws. It eschews standards for truth and ethical judgment—something we see reflected every day in the mainstream media, most of whom have abdicated the search for truth and holding public figures accountable to those standards. Edward R. Murrow would roll over in his grave at this abdication, and by the pretensions of one its most flagrant violators to co-opt his sign-off line.
The second fatal flaw is that it blocks women and their male allies from challenging the women-harming practices of non-Western, patriarchal cultures, including the shame-honor system that organizes gender relations in Islamic and some other societies. Toeing the MCR line not only means that race and ethnicity always trump gender, but also stifles feminists’ speaking out vigorously and unequivocally on behalf of women.
The new feminism must not unwittingly align with the politically correct thinking fostered and enforced by the Left, including Leftist feminists. Sweeping honor killings into generalized VAW falls right into that trap.
To stay out of the trap, we cannot be intimidated and silenced by the fear of being called “racist” or “anti-Islamic.” Being pro-women is not anti-anything-else. We must break multicultural relativism’s silencing taboo or it will break us.
The New Feminism—a Third Way. There is a way out of the self-defeating relativism that leaves women behind and subjugated. The new feminism must stand on the higher moral ground of universal human rights—formulated so as to include abuses specific to women, both in war and in peace. With firm ground under our feet, we can see the limits of relativism, and insist that women’s right to full humanity override all claims that legitimate men’s entitlement to subjugate women. Two cardinal principles would be that:
- Women’s rights to self-determination and bodily integrity are universal human rights.
- Our rights to self-determination and bodily integrity must always trump cultural and religious practices that harm women. Our rights cannot be subordinated to any brand of female subjugation.
Standing by this position reflects the new feminism’s being a creature of neither the Left nor the Right. The old feminism was demonized, caricatured, and ridiculed by the far Right, while establishment feminists allowed themselves to be incorporated into the Democratic Party. Women’s interests have not been well served by the male-centered priorities of either the Left or the Right. The new feminism must reinvent itself from its own roots, its own priorities, and its own perspectives, creating a Third Way.
© 2009 by Artemis March, PhD
This is an important article, in my opinion. We all need to think in a new direction, and Artemis has framed one up very well indeed.
Truly, a new feminism has to have a new agenda. With this sort of thinking and discussion, The New Agenda opens further new possibilities. Thank you.
Does anyone remember the movie “Not Without My Daughter”? I used to work in an adult ed program where most of our students were women and many were involved in abusive relationships. I remember another teacher from Armenia wanted to play this movie for our students and I hesitated. Totally PC was I, I was afraid that the movie would offend our arabic students and would also stereotype arabs for our latina students. My fellow-teacher insisted, I gulped and we watched the movie.
Well, after the viewing a woman from Morocco spoke up and thanked us for showing this. She said this is exactly what it is like, being a woman in a muslim society. She said it is what she has experienced and what her sisters and friends have experienced and rarely did she have the chance to talk about it.
This changed me and I realized that my PC-ness was actually working to shut up women like my student from Morocco. By not allowing for any sense of critical reflection on her culture/ religion I was suppressing her. Fortunately, my older and wiser colleague changed this dynamic in my classroom and I will never forget this.
Great article Artemis. As you said, we can be supportive of womens’ rights without being anti- a particular culture. VAW in all of its forms must stop.
I’m really sorry to be dense, but I need help understanding this. I have no background in sociology or academic feminism, so the concepts are flying over my head. I remember during the campaign, Tucker Carlson was talking about Hillary’s campaign and said something like, “the one thing we learned from the Lorena Bobbit case is that women have tremendous anger toward men.” I thought that was an outrageous generalization. But you’re saying that generalizations like that are a two-edged sword? That we have to examine both the specific case and the broader cultural impications? I do get your final bold bullet points, though, and those are very powerful. Thanks for the post.
You are exactly right! Congrats for your article
“Women’s rights to self-determination and bodily integrity are universal human rights.”
“Our rights to self-determination and bodily integrity must always trump cultural and religious practices that harm women. Our rights cannot be subordinated to any brand of female subjugation.”
Very powerful and true. We all need to internalize these statements and educate anyone who tries to offer political correctness or multicultural relativism as an argument.
Any civilized human being would have to agree to these statements. PC and MCR cannot argue with those truths.
Wonderful post Artemis! I appreciate your perspective. I totally agree with your comments:
This one minute video, “No One Can Take Away Your Human Rights”, says a lot. You can view it here: http://www.youthforhumanrights.....a30_h.html
Here’s another one minute video, We Are All Born Free and Equal” — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixjACBvv2mE
To see the other great Youth for Human Rights one-minute videos, go here: http://www.youthforhumanrights.....index.html
Share them with your daughters and sons.
Thanks for this excellent article. My question is not arguing your points. still, I am puzzled why the perpetrator of the beheading in New York State was accused of 2nd degree murder and not immediately arrested.
should we contribute this double standard to MCR or PC? or is there a link between Western and Middle Eastern women misogynists?
Excellent article! It reminds me of something I heard a radio host say last week. He said he felt the country was “communicatively constipated” and that we have gotten so partisan and reactive with our “talking points” that we can’t even have a conversation about issues anymore without rancor. I think it is crucial that we be able to discuss issues like this one without resorting to the tactics of “winning the argument” by shutting it down, rather than hearing each others points and opinions. This article is a good opening for the discussion. Isn’t is frightening that now we have to have a conversation about why and how to have a conversation? Sometimes irony is just not funny.
This is a fabulous article. Thank you. We need to keep this one front and center.
My pet peeve is how political correctness is used to silence and distract women. We saw this in the primary, speak out about sexism and a dozen people accused you of racism. Speak out about the horrors being perpetrated against women under the guise of Islam and a dozen people jump up to lecture you about religious tolerance.
Women are not just another issue on a list of worthy causes, we’re half the human race. And if we were recognized as being worthy of full human rights, all these other issues probably would resolve themselves.
If this isn’t the opinion of the New Agenda, it should be!
“Tucker Carlson was talking about Hillary’s campaign and said something like, “the one thing we learned from the Lorena Bobbit case is that women have tremendous anger toward men.” I thought that was an outrageous generalization.”
Some generalizations are actually blatant sexism. “Women have tremendous anger toward men” because a woman got fed up with abuse and cut off her husband’s penis? If we were to apply the same ruler to men, what would we call their subjugation, murder, beatings, and rape of innocent women? Tremendous anger?
What that man was doing is called sexism and what he was using it was to de-validate and devalue a woman. She is running against barack obama because she just hates men! She doesn’t actually have a point; she just hates men!
So we need to recognize sexism when we see it, which is a certain type of generalization.
Not all generalizations are the same. Not all of them are absurd with ulterior motives, like sexism and racism. Not all are as repugnant in their falseness and treachery.
Good article!
“the one thing we learned from the Lorena Bobbit case is that women have tremendous anger toward men.”
He’s also playing on men’s irrational castration fears when it comes to women in power.
Thank You, Thank You!
Very good points in this article!
Marille,
How soon a person is arrested depends on how sure the police are that he is the guilty party.
Whether the crime is labeled ’1st’ or ’2nd’ degree murder is a separate issue. I haven’t followed the details, but it’s hard to imagine why this was not labeled ’1st degree’!
Excellent piece, Artemis. You have clearly illustrated this issue. Getting as close as we can to the sources of violence against women is imperative to solving the problem.
I think the murder laws in some states prevent you from charging first degree murder unless a cop, fireman, or judge was killed. Or it involved multiple murders. There has to be special circumstances.
But I hear you, domestic violence in my state is usually charged as 4th degree assault which drives me crazy because it is the same charge you would get for spitting on a public official’s shoe or something. I want the charges to match the degree of violence used, but that’s not how the laws are set up.
I hope some feminist lawyer will write up something about this case, but for the moment here are some interesting references.
http://legal-dictionary.thefre.....ree+murder
Dr. March, it seems that YOU are the one attempting to paint this as an “either/or” issue. Why the need to frame Hassan’s murder as an “honor killing” when the motive doesn’t appear any different from that of any other man in the U.S. (or anywhere else) toward a partner who is ending a relationship against his wishes? If anyone is guilty of cultural relativism, it is you. As for so-called political correctness, I don’t see any feminist suggesting that Mr. Hassan should be treated any differently from any other man who murders his wife. What political correctness are you talking about? Feminists talk about the commonality of male violence because there IS a commonality in its occurence and the way it is tolerated (albeit to varying degrees) across the world.
Your whole article is a strawman. Progressive feminists were the ONLY people decrying the brutal oppression of women in the Middle East prior to the neocons needing a justification to invade.
“In her comments at TNA to Amy Siskind’s February 21 Daily Beast post, attorney Elizabeth Kates suggests one aspect of how this plays out. She has observed that the common thread among Western batterers is their “focus on themselves.” An individual sense of grievance and victimization is used to justify his behavior to himself while maintaining a belief in his own personal goodness. The honor killer, by contrast, does not feel he has to justify his behavior. He can perceive himself as a “neutral actor” doing something that in his social world is seen as “objectively necessary.” We need to understand such differences in order to address each of them effectively.”
Talk about cultural relativism! Let’s just pretend that American men who murder their wives are acting out of individual pathology. Let’s act like this “common thread” of perceived grievance and victimization is purely coincidental and not the inevitable end result of a culture that prizes macho “rugged individualism”.
You provided an excellent and thought provoking article. Thank you.
I have to wonder if more effort needs to be spent understanding and trying to change our own culture here in the U.S. Through great effort and cost, both in lives and treasure, this culture first eliminated and then successfully defined race based slavery as abhorrent.
It is my understanding, however, that during every day that the U.S. has existed we have accepted, if not actually condoned, and allowed underground gender based slavery. It is difficult for me to believe that our culture can even come close to gender equality while it allows girlchildren facing dire circumstances to be enslaved, used, abused and killed before they reach adulthood.
In effect, our leaders continue to wink, nod and perhaps hand out a free pass to the local brothel whenever this subject is brought up. This acceptance of gender based slavery and abuse is bedrock. I think this must be changed and gender based slavery successfully defined as abhorrent before full gender equality can be possible.
[...] evening, another feminist joined this debate: Artemis March, in the pages of The New Agenda in a piece titled: “The New [...]
[...] Editor’s Note: Reprinted from The New Agenda. [...]
Thanks for sharing your story, Ali. Sometimes when we take a risk, we create an opening that touches the silence in others, enables connection and validation, and emboldens us and them to stand up and take more risks. That is the organic process of real change.
“we can be sure that these demands for a double standard in our laws are coming to a neighborhood near you. ”
I would say some of the double standard has been here and fully entrenched for a long time – arranged marriages/dowries.
Al Qu’ran : Surah An-Nissa (11) ~
“Allah commands you concerning your children, the share of male is equal to the share of two females…………”
(34)~
“Men are incharge over women, because Allah has made one of them excel over another, and because men have expended their wealth over them, so the virtuous women are submissive, they keep watch in the absence of husband as Allah commanded to watch. And as to those women whose disobedience you fear, then admonish them and sleep apart from them, and beat them (lightly), then if they come under your command, then seek not any way of excess against them. Undoubtedly, Allah is Exalted, Great. “
This is an excellent article and so very true. Honor killings and female mulitilation by males must stop.
Yes, addressing the common cultural components that enable violence against women is absolutely necessary.
In addition, I would like to see the New Feminism get real about the fact that culture — any culture — is only part of the explanation for why humans behave as they do. The other part — the third rail, apparently, judging from the reception to this idea by traditional feminists — is biology. While there’s no perfect algorithm for the proportion nature or nurture plays in behavior, or which takes precedence in which instances, current science based on extensive study of twins raised separately suggests something like a 50-50 contribution overall. Bottom line: the answer to why one in three women is brutalized, and what we should do to stop it, cannot be gotten to by examining nurture alone. We need to consider nature as well.
Concerns that a biological basis for violence against women will “let men off the hook” for their actions are unfounded.
For example, people today rise above tribalism and suspicion of “the other” expressed as racism — instincts that were selected for in our evolutionary history because they protected small bands of early humans from contamination or conquest by unrelated and possibly hostile groups. Even though many societies inculcate their members to accept everyone, the instinct to notice and react to “difference” remains and will reassert itself (particularly when externally exploited) without constant societal vigilance. This is true even though individual susceptibility to racism varies. Numerous experiments bear this out, where kids are split into groups by eye or hair color, then placed in competition for some resource, resulting in angry feuding and denunciations of the “other” group. Some societies make a conscious choice to counteract nature — humans’ instinctual tribalism — through nurture — actively affirming acceptance of every color, language, style of dress, etc., and carefully monitoring and proscribing attempts at divisiveness.
In the same way, should science confirm in humans (as is observed in many other mammals) that males are predisposed to possess and control females in an attempt to regulate paternity, so that his and only his genetic line benefits from his care and resources (the explanation for everything from jealousy to cruelty toward step-children), and that this powerful sex drive is sometimes expressed in verbal/physical violence towards women, we still get to decide, as some societies already have, that it’s NOT OK and should be curtailed. The difference is that instead of settling for one-dimensional prohibitions and blame-based punishments, most of which presume men who attempt to exert control over women are ignorant or just bad, our understanding would be holistic and more likely lead to solutions not yet entertained.
*****A
Most interesting discussion regarding male violence toward a woman partner.
Another aspect of the issue is how women might respond.
We know from the Department of Justice Statistics, a high percentage of women deaths are committed by spouses, ex-spouses, and boy friends. My own experience tells me a woman who is financially independent can make choices unavailable to a woman without financial means. Young women should be encouraged early on to seek out an education and occupations permitting them to support themselves and children –preferably BEFORE intimate attachments. While not a guarantee of their safety from such violence, financial independence will make safety more possible: a woman can remove herself and her children from the home and knowledge of her financial independence will encourage rational independent thinking re: her situation.
The DOJ statistics show a decline in female deaths by an intimate partner after 1990. Might an in-depth examination of these statistics might show higher levels of female education and/or higher levels of financial independence resulting from education and job opportunities? Do the DOJ stats parallel influences of the women’s movement?
[...] Chesler has been writing about this for years, most recently, in The Death of Feminism. Recently, Artemis March has supported this point of view in a very good position paper of her own on the [...]
[...] Chesler has been writing about this for years, most recently, in The Death of Feminism. Recently, Artemis March has supported this point of view in a very good position paper of her own on the [...]
This blog rocks! I gotta say, that I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks,
A definite great read..
-Bill-Bartmann
Artemis: Are you the person I knew in Boston? IF so, please email me. I’m coming for a visit about my new book and want you to come to one of my presentations.
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