[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: The New Macho: Feminism

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The New Macho: Feminism

July 29, 2004
 By BARBARA EHRENREICH 



 

The Dems couldn't be more butch if they took to wearing
codpieces. Every daily convention theme contains the words
"strength" or "strong," and even Hillary has been relegated
to the role of wife. The idea, according to the pundits, is
that with more than half of the voters still favoring Bush
as the guy to beat bin Laden, Kerry needs to show that he's
macho enough to whup the terrorists. Of course, everyone
knows that the macho approach is notably less effective
than pixie dust - otherwise, we wouldn't be holding our
political conventions under total lockdowns. 

Well, I've been reading bin Ladin - Carmen, that is, not
her brother-in-law Osama (she spells the last name with an
"i") - and I'd like to present a brand-new approach to
terrorism, one that turns out to be a lot more consistent
with traditional Democratic values. First, let's stop
calling the enemy "terrorism," which is like saying we're
fighting "bombings." Terrorism is only a method; the enemy
is an extremist Islamic insurgency whose appeal lies in its
claim to represent the Muslim masses against a bullying
superpower. 

But as Carmen bin Ladin urgently reminds us in "Inside the
Kingdom," one glaring moral flaw in this insurgency, quite
apart from its methods, is that it aims to push one-half of
those masses down to a status only slightly above that of
domestic animals. While Osama was getting pumped up for
jihad, Carmen was getting up her nerve to walk across the
street in a residential neighborhood in Jeddah - fully
veiled but unescorted by a male, something that is illegal
for a woman in Saudi Arabia. Eventually she left the
kingdom and got a divorce because she didn't want her
daughters to grow up in a place where women are kept
"locked in and breeding." 

So here in one word is my new counterterrorism strategy for
Kerry: feminism. Or, if that's too incendiary, try the
phrase "human rights for women." I don't mean just a few
opportunistic references to women, like those that
accompanied the war on the Taliban and were quietly dropped
by the Bush administration when that war was abandoned and
Afghan women were locked back into their burkas. I'm
talking about a sustained and serious effort. 

So John and John: Announce plans to pour dollars into
girls' education in places like Pakistan, where the
high-end estimate for female literacy is 26 percent, and
scholarships for women seeking higher education in nations
that typically discourage it. (Secular education for the
boys wouldn't hurt either.) Expand the grounds for asylum
to all women fleeing gender totalitarianism, wherever it
springs up. Reverse the Bush policies on global family
planning, which condemn 78,000 women yearly to death in
makeshift abortions. Lead the global battle against the
traffic in women. 

I'm not expecting these measures alone to incite a feminist
insurgency within the Islamist one. Carmen bin Ladin found
her rich Saudi sisters-in-law sunk in bovine passivity, and
some of the more spirited young women in the Muslim world
have been adopting the head scarf as a gesture of defiance
toward American imperialism. We're going to need a thorough
foreign policy makeover - from Afghanistan to Israel -
before we have the credibility to stand up for anyone's
human rights. You can't play the gender card with dirty
hands. 

If Kerry were to embrace a feminist strategy against the
insurgency, he'd have to start by addressing our own dismal
record on women's rights. He'd be pushing for the immediate
ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which has been
ratified by 169 countries but remains stalled in the
Senate. He'd be threatening to break off relations with
Saudi Arabia until it acknowledges the humanity of women.
And he'd be thundering about the shortage of women in the
U.S. Senate and the House, an internationally embarrassing
14 percent. We should be aiming for at least 25 percent
representation, the same target the Transitional
Administrative Law of Iraq has set for the federal assembly
there. 

In my dreams, you say, and you're probably right. Maybe
Kerry will surprise me in his speech tonight, but it looks
as if the Democrats are too frightened of being labeled
"girlie men" by the party of Schwarzenegger to do what has
to be done. If you want to beat Osama, you've got to start
by listening to Carmen. 

Thomas L. Friedman is on leave until October, writing a
book. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/opinion/29ehre.html?ex=1092117225&ei=1&en=00cba0b15aede530


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