Stacey, as usual you have written about a problem with concision, insight, and by any objective measure, fairness. You are unfortunately correct in anticipating that some progressives have an atavistic aversion to accurate critiques of barbaric Middle Eastern practices. This of a piece with those progressives who hate Israel, passionately promote Palestinian independence, but are silent, or worse ignorant, that ethnic Kurds are the largest group of stateless people in the world right now; where's the progressive outrage over Kurds? It's frankly depressing the way so many progressives become "nuanced" faced with the abuse of women in the Middle East and Africa, but condemn conservatives for their inability to see nuance about abortion or gun control. Is it any wonder why it's so hard to resolve social issues? If progressives struggle to be internally consistent then it's next to impossible for those who don't even respect intellectual engagement like progressives do. People suck, it's sadly just a matter of how much given people suck.
EXACTLY. And I don't get it. At all. In our lefty lust for multiculturalism, which I wholeheartedly embrace, we appear to willfully blind ourselves to some SERIOUS problems in Arabic countries. To me, most of these problems can be chalked up to religious excess, but no matter where they come from, progressives refuse to discuss the obvious hypocrisy. Thank you for seeing that. I feel pretty marooned out here sometimes shouting into the wind.
Jun 16, 2022·edited Jun 17, 2022Liked by Stacey Eskelin
You're welcome, yes, you can feel pretty isolated among your own kind, when you defy an orthodoxy. What our side seems not to grasp is that when we engage in these internally inconsistent arguments the Right sees this and seizes upon it to discredit the entire progressive project. The ability to maintain philosophical consistency is a constant struggle. The overwhelming majority of people, including progressives, can't do it. And it's depressingly sobering to realize that.
And I wish so much that I could confidently claim that it's not going to be a rout; but truth is, I can't. I hope for the best, but I fear that you're prescient.
"Arab culture is a lot of amazing and beautiful things"- absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I adore the Arab world. I remember standing in the town center in Aleppo, Syria, one morning. I closed my eyes...and nothing I heard, smelled, or felt was familiar. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've been fortunate to have had in my life.
That said, it's impossible for me to ignore the non-Quranic reality that women are property in the Arab world. There's no religious justification for it, and those who use the Quran to justify reducing women to "less than" are bastardizing Islam. You don't have to like it, but it's the truth.
Women. Are. Not. Property.
Women are dying because men benefit from it- politically and economically. As long as that continues to be the case, it's unlikely that much will change. Since men make the rules in the Arab world, they have little incentive to do right by women.
This isn't about "cultural relativism," or "ethnocentrism;" it's about men treating women like chattel because they have economic and political incentives to do so. Sadly, the West continues to implicitly support this. Until Western countries make it clear that foreign aid is tied to equal rights and equal opportunities for women, the status quo will remain as is.
This isn't the West "dictating" to the Arab world. It's the West making it clear that if they want our aid and assistance, we will not continue to implicitly fund the subjugation of women.
Everything you just said, Jack. I'm just sick and tired of the way we lefties gloss over the "unpleasant" realities of women being ritually castrated and sadistically brutalized. SICK OF IT. Why isn't this more often a topic of discussion? It's telling that this article, out of all the articles I wrote this week, received the fewest views. I can only draw two conclusions: either very few people care, or people feel too helpless to even engage. Who knows anymore?
BTW, I would kill for the opportunity to smell Aleppo. Or see it. Or even look at it through a window.
I've gotten into trouble for this as well with some of my lefty friends. But facts do not negotiate, and neither do I.
There are ethical *F*A*C*T*S*.
Full stop.
Anyone disagreeing with that statement is either engaged in a blatant act of self-contradiction or, if fully sincere, is altogether outside any pretense of rational discourse.
FGM is *factually*, *objectively* *E*V*I*L*.
I will die before I retreat one step from this statement. If you genuinely disagree, then we can have our seconds agree on which green and which dawn we meet -- sabres or pistols, at your discretion. Code Duello will be observed.
But it goes deeper than "just" FGM. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King laid the philosophical foundations for distinguishing between Just and Unjust laws in his magnificent Letter from a Birmingham Jail. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/letter-birmingham-jail Does the law single out one group for "special" treatment? Is the law equal in word but unequal in application? Then the law is unjust in either word, or application, or both. Traffic laws are Just in-so-far as they are equitably applied. Requiring a permit to march and protest is Just, provided it is applied equally to white supremacists and BLM activists. A law requiring black children attend underfunded schools is Unjust at the start. Etc.
Laws requiring special dress codes for women, when men suffer under no such burden, ARE INHERENTLY UNJUST. Men in Muslim nations are NOT held to strict, inviolable dress codes of any kind. They are permitted to wear traditional Arabic attire or go with more Western forms. Women enjoy NO SUCH LIBERTIES. Thus, BY DEFINITION, the hijab, the burka, are inherently UNJUST.
Consider, by comparison, cultural groups like the Amish, the Mennonite, or Orthodox Jews. The men in these groups also have significant dress codes imposed upon them. I would not be personally thrilled to live under those rules, but the people who do live so by their own choice, and the laws per se cannot be denounced as Unjust. (In addition, the Amish (maybe the Mennonites as well, I do not know) require a year of "wild time" of their youth, a "Rumspringa," before they make an adult commitment to the Amish way of life.)
Evil is evil, regardless of the culture. The Shoah was objectively evil, and saying so is not a denunciation of Christianity (even as most organized Christian groups at the place and time, including the Pope and the Catholic church, fully cooperated with it.)
And, just by the bye, saying that some values are genuinely objective, does not in the least imply that they all line up in a simple way (such as the way number line up) such that they are always and everywhere simply and objectively comparable. There are simple mathematical situations where A < X and B < X, while A > Y and B > Y, yet A and B are not directly comparable; neither is less or more or even equal to the other. (Bet you didn't realize that a grasp of basic mathematical relationships had an ethical import, did you?)
Finally: thank you Stacey for using the term "personhood." I could probably do an ex tempore rant on why that is important.
Hand to God, Gares, I got chills reading this. It is so flawless in its logic and execution, I seriously wonder if you shouldn't lift it, word for word, and send it out on your own blog. You've REALLY got something. I am 100% here for it.
Stacey, as usual you have written about a problem with concision, insight, and by any objective measure, fairness. You are unfortunately correct in anticipating that some progressives have an atavistic aversion to accurate critiques of barbaric Middle Eastern practices. This of a piece with those progressives who hate Israel, passionately promote Palestinian independence, but are silent, or worse ignorant, that ethnic Kurds are the largest group of stateless people in the world right now; where's the progressive outrage over Kurds? It's frankly depressing the way so many progressives become "nuanced" faced with the abuse of women in the Middle East and Africa, but condemn conservatives for their inability to see nuance about abortion or gun control. Is it any wonder why it's so hard to resolve social issues? If progressives struggle to be internally consistent then it's next to impossible for those who don't even respect intellectual engagement like progressives do. People suck, it's sadly just a matter of how much given people suck.
EXACTLY. And I don't get it. At all. In our lefty lust for multiculturalism, which I wholeheartedly embrace, we appear to willfully blind ourselves to some SERIOUS problems in Arabic countries. To me, most of these problems can be chalked up to religious excess, but no matter where they come from, progressives refuse to discuss the obvious hypocrisy. Thank you for seeing that. I feel pretty marooned out here sometimes shouting into the wind.
You're welcome, yes, you can feel pretty isolated among your own kind, when you defy an orthodoxy. What our side seems not to grasp is that when we engage in these internally inconsistent arguments the Right sees this and seizes upon it to discredit the entire progressive project. The ability to maintain philosophical consistency is a constant struggle. The overwhelming majority of people, including progressives, can't do it. And it's depressingly sobering to realize that.
We're going to get shellacked in November. I can feel it coming. And it's so so depressing.
And I wish so much that I could confidently claim that it's not going to be a rout; but truth is, I can't. I hope for the best, but I fear that you're prescient.
"Arab culture is a lot of amazing and beautiful things"- absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I adore the Arab world. I remember standing in the town center in Aleppo, Syria, one morning. I closed my eyes...and nothing I heard, smelled, or felt was familiar. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've been fortunate to have had in my life.
That said, it's impossible for me to ignore the non-Quranic reality that women are property in the Arab world. There's no religious justification for it, and those who use the Quran to justify reducing women to "less than" are bastardizing Islam. You don't have to like it, but it's the truth.
Women. Are. Not. Property.
Women are dying because men benefit from it- politically and economically. As long as that continues to be the case, it's unlikely that much will change. Since men make the rules in the Arab world, they have little incentive to do right by women.
This isn't about "cultural relativism," or "ethnocentrism;" it's about men treating women like chattel because they have economic and political incentives to do so. Sadly, the West continues to implicitly support this. Until Western countries make it clear that foreign aid is tied to equal rights and equal opportunities for women, the status quo will remain as is.
This isn't the West "dictating" to the Arab world. It's the West making it clear that if they want our aid and assistance, we will not continue to implicitly fund the subjugation of women.
Period. End of Story. Any questions?
Everything you just said, Jack. I'm just sick and tired of the way we lefties gloss over the "unpleasant" realities of women being ritually castrated and sadistically brutalized. SICK OF IT. Why isn't this more often a topic of discussion? It's telling that this article, out of all the articles I wrote this week, received the fewest views. I can only draw two conclusions: either very few people care, or people feel too helpless to even engage. Who knows anymore?
BTW, I would kill for the opportunity to smell Aleppo. Or see it. Or even look at it through a window.
I've gotten into trouble for this as well with some of my lefty friends. But facts do not negotiate, and neither do I.
There are ethical *F*A*C*T*S*.
Full stop.
Anyone disagreeing with that statement is either engaged in a blatant act of self-contradiction or, if fully sincere, is altogether outside any pretense of rational discourse.
FGM is *factually*, *objectively* *E*V*I*L*.
I will die before I retreat one step from this statement. If you genuinely disagree, then we can have our seconds agree on which green and which dawn we meet -- sabres or pistols, at your discretion. Code Duello will be observed.
But it goes deeper than "just" FGM. The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King laid the philosophical foundations for distinguishing between Just and Unjust laws in his magnificent Letter from a Birmingham Jail. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/letter-birmingham-jail Does the law single out one group for "special" treatment? Is the law equal in word but unequal in application? Then the law is unjust in either word, or application, or both. Traffic laws are Just in-so-far as they are equitably applied. Requiring a permit to march and protest is Just, provided it is applied equally to white supremacists and BLM activists. A law requiring black children attend underfunded schools is Unjust at the start. Etc.
Laws requiring special dress codes for women, when men suffer under no such burden, ARE INHERENTLY UNJUST. Men in Muslim nations are NOT held to strict, inviolable dress codes of any kind. They are permitted to wear traditional Arabic attire or go with more Western forms. Women enjoy NO SUCH LIBERTIES. Thus, BY DEFINITION, the hijab, the burka, are inherently UNJUST.
Consider, by comparison, cultural groups like the Amish, the Mennonite, or Orthodox Jews. The men in these groups also have significant dress codes imposed upon them. I would not be personally thrilled to live under those rules, but the people who do live so by their own choice, and the laws per se cannot be denounced as Unjust. (In addition, the Amish (maybe the Mennonites as well, I do not know) require a year of "wild time" of their youth, a "Rumspringa," before they make an adult commitment to the Amish way of life.)
Evil is evil, regardless of the culture. The Shoah was objectively evil, and saying so is not a denunciation of Christianity (even as most organized Christian groups at the place and time, including the Pope and the Catholic church, fully cooperated with it.)
And, just by the bye, saying that some values are genuinely objective, does not in the least imply that they all line up in a simple way (such as the way number line up) such that they are always and everywhere simply and objectively comparable. There are simple mathematical situations where A < X and B < X, while A > Y and B > Y, yet A and B are not directly comparable; neither is less or more or even equal to the other. (Bet you didn't realize that a grasp of basic mathematical relationships had an ethical import, did you?)
Finally: thank you Stacey for using the term "personhood." I could probably do an ex tempore rant on why that is important.
Hand to God, Gares, I got chills reading this. It is so flawless in its logic and execution, I seriously wonder if you shouldn't lift it, word for word, and send it out on your own blog. You've REALLY got something. I am 100% here for it.
In short, that was just fucking brilliant.