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

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

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.

Unless, of course, it's convenient to do so, when suddenly the evil headscarf is top of the agenda. How many winsome pictures of little Afghan girls going to school in Kabul have we seen in the last year? How many, conversely, of little girls sobbing in pain in Egypt, where over 90% of women still undergo female genital mutilation? Few things make me more incensed than the hypocritical adoption of supposedly feminist agendas to legitimate right-wing wars. The direct link between poverty, repression and the abuse of women are also rarely commented upon. Take honour killings: where the rule of law doesn't prevail, women are more likely to be murdered, as systems of tribal honour become the only means of keeping order.

But sadly, in part I agree with you. Much oppression is structural - perhaps most - but individual men still make individually abusive choices. That said, I'm not sure the word "nazi" is either accurate or useful in this context.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

90%! Christ, I didn't know that!

Nazi? Well I was trying to be provocative. But I think I'll stand by it. The oppression of women by men is a colossal evil that has been going on for all recorded history- and we're largely blind to it. We don't have a language to pin it down. The 70s terms of abuse- chauvinist, patriarchal- have been defused and turned into joke words. And so one reaches into a depleted arsenal for terms that will still deliver a sting.