So here’s the strangest response I’ve seen so far to the massacre in Norway. On Sofiastry, an antifeminist blog that seems to be broadly sympathetic to the “alt” (that is, the “intellectually” racist) right, blogger Sofia complains that feminist bloggers – she cites me and Hugo Schwyzer – are talking about the blatant anti-feminism and misogyny of mass murderer Anders Breivik. “The mendacious corollary they are trying to construct,” she writes, falling into the purple prose Alt-Righters seem drawn to like flies on bullshit, “is that all those opposed to feminist principles must be in league with all sorts of unsavory radicals.”
As I’ve already noted, this is not actually true; Sofia is being, well, mendacious. Yes, I pointed out the similarities between Breivik’s noxious misogynistic beliefs and, well, the noxious misogynistic beliefs of an embarrassingly large number of antifeminists and MRAs. But at no point did I (or, for that matter, Hugo) suggest that these people supported his despicable actions.
After purporting to be shocked – shocked! – that anyone would connect Breivik with the antifeminists of the world, Sofia offers an appreciation of sorts for Breivik’s awful manifesto. Waxing pompous yet again, she writes:
[A]lthough his actions were cruel beyond belief, and committed by a delusional, psychopath driven by his delusions of political grandeur, there is lucidity and sense in much of what he writes. He never seemed to explicitly advocated for a genocide of Muslims within Europe, but superficially claimed that he just wanted to sustain European culture.
So, let’s weigh Breivik’s pros and cons here. CON: He murdered 76 people in cold blood, motivated by a hateful ideology. PRO: He didn’t explicitly call for actual genocide?
Here’s where it gets weird. Really weird.
I feel that Breivik is being tried for more than his cruelty within the feminist community. The fact that he belongs to the privileged group of the white male makes him hate-worthy along with every other privileged white male who might sympathize with his ideology, even if they don’t happen to be psychotic. Breivik exemplifies White Men, even though Osama Bin Laden to the very same liberal ideologues did not represent Every Muslim.
It’s another symptom of our culture that feels it is OK to hold white men to higher standards of political correctness, self-flagellation and martyrdom whilst simultaneously relentlessly berating and mocking them on a cultural level.
Yep, that’s right. We hate Breivik … because he’s a white dude.
She continues on in this vein:
The subtle manifestations of an anti-white male agenda could be expounded upon for some time, even in the sexual sphere. In porn, the genre of cuckolding usually involves black men fucking white women to the dismay of her white husband. Something tells me this wouldn’t be acceptable if a black man were to stand helplessly by while a white male was sexually coercive with a black female.
Somehow we started off talking about mass murder and ended up talking about … cuckolding porn?
What. The. Fuck?
Hindu what is the official language of India?
I know that English is the lingua franca (having replaced Persian), but after English what is the language everyone in India should use?
What about China?
This is mono-culturalism: the culture of Saudi Arabia being exported all over the world.
Hey, you know what’s funny? Turns out you can just research this shit!
Here’s the incidence of the Hijab, a style of dress that’s been in existence for over a millenium, supposedly exported by the second most popular evangelizing religion in human history, with a billion current adherents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hijab_world2.png
And here is the incidence of McDonalds, an American restaurant started in 1940s making mediocre hamburgers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:McDonaldsWorldLocations.svg
If you compare the two, you’ll see that the USA is *killing* at the exporting-monoculture game. In fact (though I can’t find enough data to support this claim right now) I’ll bet that in non-Muslim-majority countries, more people wear or have worn McDonalds employee uniforms than wear or have worn the full burqa. (India, admittedly, is certainly an exception.) Hijab incidence is fairly strongly confined to the original region of the Caliphate; American cultural influence is neigh-perfectly global. (Northern Africa appears to be a weak spot.)
Inasmuch as the increase in hijab in western countries demonstrates an increase in antifeminist values among young Muslim women, I oppose those currents of change. But if you want someone to win the world’s monoculture battle, hands down it is the USA. (Whether that’s a good thing is another discussion.) We make so little nowadays, but we damn well still set standards. An entire generation in China is growing up in blue jeans.
Nobinayamu | July 26, 2011 at 11:36 pm
Everyone doesn’t have to look alike, but a young woman choosing to dress differently than her family is evidence of “arabization”.
Got it.
—
Nope, you didn’t get it. She’s not Saudi. She’s a Britsh Muslim of Indian descent. Indian Muslims have never dressed like Saudis. Indian Muslims have distinctive sub-continental dress that does the job perfectly of covering up their sexy bits as per the imperatives of Islam. There’s also nothing wrong with a good ol simple long skirt, long sleeved shirt and head scarf if “modest dress” and covering your hair is important for you.
This black ninja darth vardar covering the face thing is a recent trend pimped from Saudi fundamentalists with a clear agenda behind it.
Again, if you’re in the US you’ve got nothing to worry about. Its the UK and other small European countries that have the problem of unassimilated fundamentalist Muslim living off the government dole to deal with. American Muslims are moderate, integrated doctors, engineers, belly-dancers and other working, tax-paying people who do not want to convert the entire female population of the United States to niqab wearing barefoot and pregnant house slaves.
Ha! Ha! Futtrelle’s getting beat by a girl!
That just puts him on par w/ every single other troll that’s shown up here xD
well every single troll xD I guess I mean.. he’s not a troll xD (or IS he! O: )
“I’ll bet that in non-Muslim-majority countries, more people wear or have worn McDonalds employee uniforms than wear or have worn the full burqa. (India, admittedly, is certainly an exception.)”
Erl, I was saddened to see that my country qualifies as a place where burqa wearing is “quite common”.
We Indians prefer our own fast food to MacDonald’s horrible attempts at aloo tikki burgers. There’s no immediate or even long-term future “threat” of an American hegemonic takeoer, but we have been suffering the effects of Islamic cultural imperialism and terrorism for a full millenium already.
Pecunium, Farsee (Persian) was NEVER lingua franca in India or the broader South Asia. We have dozens of officially recognized languages (state languages) and hundreds of local dialects. In North India Hindi is lingua franca for a small number of states but not all, and Hindi is not general known in the South. There is no offical national language of India. Too difficult to decide what it should be.
People speak their state’s language and in the North they speak their state’s language plus Hindi. If an English speaking North Indian goes to South India and doesn’t know any South Indian languages, she will speak in English with the knowers of English in South India, otherwise communication will be difficult.
In the big cities many people know English.
The worst location I have ever seen a McDonald’s is in Prague at the foot of the St Charles bridge. Prague is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe:
http://www.myczechrepublic.com/prague/sightseeing/charles_bridge.html
So imagine walking towards the castle to your left but as soon as you get off the bridge to you sharp left is McDonald’s with the golden arches and all.
It’s a huge eye sore. However I except that business runs that way and if the city was stupid enough to cater to stupid Americans who would travel to Prague only to fuel up on a big macs then more power to them.
So if I can except that, I can certainly except an individuals choice to dress in ultra conservative Moslem dress yes?
“So if I can except that, I can certainly except an individuals choice to dress in ultra conservative Moslem dress yes?”
You can, but I can’t.
Because being from India I know the patterns of how Islamic fundamentalism gains hegemony in a culture.
Indo-British Muslim women choosing to identify culturally with Saudi Arabia instead of either India or Britain is a worrying sign of things to come.
Don’t say I never warned you!
Hindu,
I do know where you are coming from but let’s get real here about fast food and India. Americanization is effecting India, while obesity rates are no where near American rates I certainly have heard news reports out of India by local broadcasters that the growing middle class is becoming increasingly hooked on an American diet and is starting to show health effects.
You also know that being a stance Hindu supporter it makes it hard for you to be impartial right?
“To quote Buffy: “Oh my god, are you twelve?””
You quote Buffy.
Are YOU twelve?
Hindu
There is nothing to warn me about. If you were to study European history you would understand that in the greater picture Christians and Moslems have gone back and forth and in the end right now southern Europeans are darker skinned then northern. (that is a VERY condensed version)
Southern Spain was under Moslem rule for about 700 years. It’s now very much Catholic.
How did that happen? When you look at the big picture we seem small yes?
evilwhitemaleempire
Buffy was a really entertaining show and very well written. Your comment showed more about your maturity level then the person you were attacking. Do you know that looking back?
And Hindu
I’m an atheist. I do believe that if fundamentalist Christians or Islamic’s were to take over Canada and set up death camps for those that opposed them my family would be on the initial list. I also believe that the chances of either of those happening are next to none but also 50/50 regarding which religion would do so. .
I do understand that in your country fundamentalist Christians are not a threat but Islam is, so I do have some empathy for your feelings.
But we still have the obligation to treat individuals as individuals regardless. I could for instance attack your religion for it’s lack of individualism regarding the chaste system which relies not only on birth right and family name but also skin tone. Why is it that the higher chaste is lighter skinned?
Hindu
A close friend of mines parents married outside of their caste. (sorry that I wrote chaste before, stupid typo). She was from a higher caste and very light skinned, he was from a lower and darker.
I know you know what happened regarding relationships with the in-laws. If not you’re not from India.
Thanks kave!
I too stand by quoting Buffy as a sign of intelligence or at least of the ability to appreciate good TV (and good TV is pretty rare!).
Making a ‘got beat up by a girl’ joke – so much fail. I thought bringing up Buffy, a girl who beat up lots of people, was quite relevant in the context.
Briefly on topic: Do a bunch of feminists hate whiteness?
A question that can only be asked if you are stupid enough to A: Care about feminists, and B: not notice the number of racefails that feminism, like the wider culture, has had and will continue to have had.
Re: Muslims wanting Sharia Law in european countries:
Unsubstantiated. What I’ve seen evidence for is that muslims in european countries frequently, but do not always, want arbitration services that cater to their religion. This is not identical to Sharia Law. Arbitration is a voluntary service for civil disputes confined to the bounds of the law itself in that country. True, that service is likely to be involuntary socially, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from permitting Jewish arbitration services that operate on the same principles with a different (But equally misogynist) holy book. Sharia Law is criminal, and civil law.
I’ve never seen a call to permit Sharia Law for immigrants from those in power, only the arbitration services. But I’ve seen a lot of people pretend that an arbitration service is equivalent to actual Sharia Law, and that teh muslin wanted to use their barbaric criminal law, and that those were the requests they were making and expecting honored as an aggregate. Any claims that TEH MUSLIN want actual Sharia Law will need to be substantiated before being taken seriously.
Kave, I don’t know what you mean by “staunch Hindu supporter”. Hinduism is a culture with many differing religions, philosophies, traditions and even its own ancient homegrown “Hindu atheism” that qualifies as one of the Six Philosophical Schools of Hindu Thought.
There is no reason why a Hindu cannot be impartial. If anyone can be impartial, it is a Hindu, and HINDU specifically. Indeed the impartiality, liberal ethos and open-mindedness to foreign cultures and religions is world famous in Hindus. And unfortunately its one of the reasons our region of the world has been invaded, raped and plundered as much as it has.
I’m here to warn you. Not all ideologies are as liberal and nice as your’s Kave. The freedom you extend to others, some of them will use it to gain control over you and then take YOUR freedoms away.
As far as Indians getting fat and diabetes – Most middle-class Indians are not getting fat from pigging out at western fast food joints but from eating too much of our own unhealthy Indian food and not exercising. India does not have a fitness culture, aside from yoga-asanas, which most Indians don’t do! The western fast food joints are to be found primarily in the major metros. What explains the obesity in our towns and villages?
I agree that Hindu’s are very much an all encompassing religion and so complex and multifaceted that I really can’t consider myself to even have brushed the surface of understanding .
But when you decide to make your username Hindu you have decided to draw a line in the sand of what is right and wrong. Forgive me for not taking you at your word that Moslem’s are the enemy.
Kave, I don’t know where you get this idea that higher castes are lighter skinned than lower castes. In India MOST of us are dark (even if we don’t like to admit that). Caste and skin tone are not linked. For every light skinned high caste person and every dark skinned low caste person, there is the opposite combination.
Nothing is wrong with caste. It is basically just tribe or a tribal designation, and it is a way to pass down regional culture through the generations. What IS wrong however is DISCRIMINATION based on caste. I oppose that as much as I oppose the niqab on non-Saudi women!
We have reservations (affirmative action laws) in India for all our minorities and traditionally oppressed groups.
I myself am from a low caste background, and quite proud of it. My family wants me to marry within my caste so that we can preserve our traditions but I will marry whom I chose. Maybe even you 😉
Hindu: There is no offical national language of India. Too difficult to decide what it should be.
My point exactly.
Compare it to this comment.
This doesn’t mean that everyone has to look the same or worship the same, it means that there are some basic cultural and civic standards that everyone should ideally follow for the smooth functioning of society.
1. The most fundamental is language. Learn the language. Of course you can keep your native tongue and speak it at home and pass it on to your children as a second language too.
So… which is it?
Now, about Persion, and it’s dialects, and it’s history in India.
From The Last Lingua Franca, English Until the Return of Babel (Nicholas Ostler, 2010 Walker and Company, New York)
One of the best documented areas for Persian use was Mugahl India, from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries this was the main area where Persion texts were being written, many of them translated from Sanskrit on the one hand, and Arabic in the other. This prominence of Persian in India was not unnoticed in in Persian’s homeland and even inspired a defeatist verse by the poet Ali Quli Salim of Teheran:
Absent in Iran’s land any means to reach perfection:
Till it came toward India Henna had no colors(pp 105-106)
Since all these areas [Karnatka, Tamil, Nadu, Kerala, and Mysore]had been under Muslim governments their adminstration had been conducted in Persian. This continued under British control. The language had long been familar from its use in the [British East INdia] Company since its first contact with India in 1611-12, though in practice mostly through the mediation of some bilingual agent, the banyan or dobash. (p 193).
So yes, Persian was a lingua franca in India.
Rutee: While the Bible is certainly misogynist in many aspects, Judaism isn’t as misogynist as Islam.
Hrmn… I said that ill.
I was thinking of the fundamentalist streams in each of them. The variety in both makes any statement that sweeping patently false.
I said the holy book was, and I’d stick to that.
Pecunium, India not having an official national language is in conflict with my statement about immigrants assimilating by learning the language of their new home, how?
By lingua franca you mean a language spoken by the Muslim leaders and elites in Mughal-Indian royal courts?
Can not the sub-altern speak?
“But when you decide to make your username Hindu you have decided to draw a line in the sand of what is right and wrong.”
I made my username HINDU because I’m proud of my culture.
“Forgive me for not taking you at your word that Moslem’s are the enemy.”
I never said that.