Why Are Radical Feminists As Helpful to Oppressed Muslim Women As a Screen Door on a Submarine?

Today's radical feminists arrived at the party after the excitement was over. Women had already achieved the right to vote, the right to own property, and virtually all the other equal rights women under Islam could sorely use right now--long before today's radical feminists arrived on the scene. The women who won those rights were nothing like today's pampered "radicals."

But there is still time for these "legends in their own minds" to achieve something great for women--but they refuse! I am referring of course to the largest group of genuinely oppressed women in the entire world--women suffering and dying under the oppression of Islam. Why won't the radical princesses help them?

Sommers: I am becoming involved in the struggle of Islamic women to secure their basic rights. The United States of America is not a patriarchy--but places like Yemen, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia certainly are. There are broadly two sorts of women’s rights movements in the Muslim world. One is led by observant religious women who are trying to find sources of liberation inside their own religion. The other, much smaller, is led by women who are non-religious and who want to bring the Enlightenment to their societies. I sympathize with both groups and I believe that American equity feminism has a lot to offer both.

But remember, the American feminist establishment is currently dominated by gender feminist radicals. They believe that America is, in its way, as oppressive as any Muslim country. So most of their effort is taken up with “liberating” American women (especially college women) from the ravages of patriarchy. That leaves them almost no time to help oppressed women in other countries.

Even if they want to help Islamic women--their antipathy to traditional religion makes them useless to religious Muslim women. Their animus towards men, feminine beauty, and romance will alienate vast numbers of liberated, Enlightenment feminists in the Muslim world. (Their rejection of the free market capitalism helps no one.) Conservative, moderate and libertarian American women are going to have to find an appropriate and sympathetic way to make common cause with Muslim women--but we will have to work around the feminist establishment to help them--not with it. Anyway, I am planning to write a long essay or a short book to sort this out.

Chapin: I still consult both of those books along with your articles on the subject quite regularly. Have times changed over the course of the last decade? Do you think that the radical feminist (or gender feminist) viewpoint is no longer as dominant among our elites and the media as it once was?

Sommers: As I said, journalists are no longer under the spell of orthodox feminists. In fact, no one seems to find what they have to say all that relevant or appealing. But hapless college students can’t escape them. Ardent, fire-breathing true believers are ubiquitous on the modern campus. They describe American society as a “patriarchy,” and they inveigh against capitalism. They see President George W. Bush as more of a threat than Osama Bin Laden. That worldview is not dominant in the media--nor almost anywhere else that you can name. The one exception is the feminist classroom.

Source.

Pampered radical princesses sit on their thrones inside the castles of Women's Studies, on all large university campuses. They rule mercilessly over their students, and anyone else unfortunate enough to fall under their power. In the real world, they would be laughed at, if not for the many journalists who still willingly consume the excrement flowing out of the sewer drains of the castles.

For a humorous look at what happens when the Vagina Monologues meets the Penis Monologues, read this report.
If you are a student, you'd best follow the lead of the radical princesses--and don't you dare think or do anything at all that could be construed as politically incorrect. The modern university is in no mood for intellectual diversity.