Reflections Of A Good Nazi

[poliphilo]

It's only a hundred years or so since men in the West stopped regarding women as property.

Of course I'm talking Law here. In private lots of men still do regard women as property. We've learned to be shocked by slavery, by genocide, but the overwhelming horror of a set-up where one sex dominates and abuses the other hasn't quite hit us yet. We're recovering, we're in denial. The thing is too huge and we're all pretty much incriminated.

So when we sail into third world countries and beat them up for not being like us, we tend not to put women's rights very high on our agenda. Damn it all, you will have a democracy! But the burkha, female circumcision, forced marriage, the denial of education to women- these are all cultural phenomena and maybe it would be a little racist and imperialistic to criticise.

Where women are concerned all men are nazis. Some of us, perhaps, are good nazis.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't know the solution either. One thing I'm fairly sure is that you don't liberate people by sending your army in.

I place my hope in what we're doing now. The Web allows us to talk across cultural boundaries and circumvent censorship as never before.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I agree with the army bit. (With obvious exceptions; we apreciated good old Monty dropping by in '45...)

The Web allows us to talk across cultural boundaries...

Yes, but it still demands a certain affluency in that you cannot access the Web without certain hardware and a connection which might not be the top priority in a small budget... The Web mainly ties together well-off westerners!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's true- but access is spreading. A website that had a huge impact on me (pre 9/11) was the one belonging to RAWA- a women's group that documented the doings of the Taliban from inside Afghanistan.

I haven't visited it in years (shame on me) I really need to go see what they're talking about now.