Comment by coolestuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coolestuk | Hacker News Reader

The author seems more intent on Dawkins-bashing than anything else. What else can explain his deliberate mis-reading of Dawkins missive. "As is typical of hatemongers, Dawkins is careful not to name his target directly: instead, he works with insinuation -- though that said, calling the victim "Muslima" is particularly crass." Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee.

Two specific laws were passed in Britain in the last 25 years outlawing FGM. Yet there has not been one conviction. A report recently pointed out that there may be as many as 100,000 victims. http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/05/14/female-genital-mut...

Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two. The only person to mount a campaign on it is the novelist Ruth Rendell.

When the female "Equalities Minister" recently appeared on the BBC's premiere news programme defending the status quo (along with a muslim man), it was an array of young muslim women accusing the authorities of racism and sexism in not bringing prosecutions.

It really is an appalling state of affairs. And in the last 20 years, FGM has barely been mentioned by British media. I would guess that the total number of stories in the last decade is no more than 20.

When I've brought the issue up with socialist feminists they claim that it is racist to get involved.

So, I think Dawkins has a point. And from my observations of Dawkins he seems to be far more concerned to offend christians than muslims.

"Feminists have remained virtually silent on this matter for the past decade or two."

No they didn't. It's a common subject in blogs, forums and such less-visible mediums. But if you think it's easy to get into the media with that, you're wrong -- you will be called out on racism, possibly with good reasons -- even I, if faced with a mainstream article that focuses on FGM, would grow suspicious, since when the media cares about women this much?

> you will be called out on racism, possibly with good reasons

Unless you assume all races/cultures are at the epitome of human development, there has to be changes, which will be unpleasant - that's how humans develop. What would be the "possibly good reasons" for being called out on racism? Just because it is part of some culture/race doesn't grant it legibility.

Only it has absolutely nothing to do with race. Culture, sure, to some extent, but it's not like the western cultures treat women well -- and if a TV show just focuses on FGM it does start sound like a conspicuously neat excuse to bash certain races, most of whom would never want to have anything to do with that crap, at the same time providing men with a neat way of dismissing their own sexism as "not proper sexism".

So yeah, unless it's either a victim or an established feminist who was doing both this and intersectionality of gender and race oppression advocacy, I will suspect bringing up FGM is just a racist way to silence feminist.

> but it's not like the western cultures treat women well

It doesn't make any difference - at all. If I am a wife beater, that doesn't validate your wife beating.

> and if a TV show just focuses on FGM

I missed the part where anyone mentioned media exclusively focused on FGM.

> neat excuse to bash certain races,

Say I start a TV show whose sole purpose is to bash a certain race which does FGM. I have no altruistic motives. I am driven by hate.

So fucking what? How does any of it make FGM sacred, so much as anyone saying something against it is a racist?

> at the same time providing men with a neat way of dismissing their own sexism as "not proper sexism".

Good thing that there are more than 1 bullet points for defining sexism. Besides, I have never seen anyone come up with an excuse that a certain tribe in a different part of the world treats their wives as a commodity, hence I can ask you to make a sandwich and that won't be sexism. If there are people who make this argument, they would already be doing it. Things worse than FGM exist in different parts of world. Those things didn't give anyone excuse for their sexism - FGM won't either. Your concerns are imaginary.

> unless it's either a victim or an established feminist who was doing both this and intersectionality of gender and race oppression advocacy, I will suspect bringing up FGM is just a racist way to silence feminist.

That is ridiculous. Unless you were among the civilians bombed by the drone, I will suspect this is your excuse for bashing US. See how absurd that is? And for the third time, my dishonesty doesn't automatically make you genuine.

Imagine an ad. A woman buys a car, comes back home, shows it to her husband, which takes them for a ride. The woman says: "Hey, isn't that nice for the price tag?". The guy thinks a bit, then at the first turn, violently drops the woman out of the car, and says, grinning ear to ear while he thoroughly enjoys the moment: "Now, that's perfect".

This ad would not stand a single second before a horde of people would yell at how sexist this is and the media would bathe in the scandal.

Yet it's been a few years the exact opposite ad[0] airs in France, daily. That's not the only one, there are a shitload of ads that market men as inherently stupid and worthless fools (at best), yet the CSA[1] regularly bans content that would be subject to doubtful interpretations of women status. It turns out in some cases that animals just seem to deserve better protection than men.

I'm not quite sure the solution to sexism is glorifying women while vilifying men (which just reads like more sexism — i.e differentiating statuses between genders — either way). We are different in a few ways for sure, just not better or worse, but can't we just all finally see each other as, you know, human beings, and respect each other as such?

[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oCt-xb_ecg

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_sup%C3%A9rieur_de_l%27a...

When will people stand up for white men :c

I don't think anybody's suggesting that Dawkins called Skepchick "Muslima".

I bet I've listened to discussions of FGM on Womans Hour on radio4 at least twenty times in the last half decade.

Edit: Just to be clear, I'm not saying it currently receives enough attention.

>Dawkins does not call Skepchick "muslima"; he addresses the missive to some "muslima" to ironically point out that there are women who suffer far worse sexism than being asked if they'd like a cup of coffee. Reading comprehension problem. He is not saying that Dawkins called Skepchick muslima.

He is saying that Dawkins conjured the made up _victim of Islam_ "muslima", to hypocritically (with "crocodile tears") pretend to defend her plight against the minor plight of Skepchick.

That said, the accusations against Islam (and "pro" muslima) are BS stereotypes that only someone fed and informed on Islam by western media can come up with (including blatant misinformation, like attributing the practice of FGM to Islam).

Full disclosure: I work in a muslim country, and have visited several others.

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