So what’s this Independent Women’s Forum that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was talking to when she called us idiots? Let’s ask Wikipedia.
The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) is a politically conservative American non-profit organization focused on policy issues of concern to women.[6][7] The IWF was founded by activist Rosalie Silberman to promote a “conservative alternative to feminist tenets” following the controversial Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas in 1992.[8]
The group advocates “equity feminism,” a term first used by IWF author Christina Hoff Sommers to distinguish “traditional, classically liberal, humanistic feminism” from “gender feminism”, which she claims opposes gender roles as well as patriarchy.[9] According to Sommers, the gender feminist view is “the prevailing ideology among contemporary feminist philosophers and leaders”[9] and “thrives on the myth that American women are the oppressed ‘second sex.'”[10] Sommers’ equity feminism has been described as anti-feminist by critics.[11]
In the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, the IWF took a vocal stance against Barack Obama on its website and in a series of political ads comparing the President to a dishonest boyfriend.[12]
I left all the links behind; you’ll have to go to the source if you want them.
Founded in 1992 by Rosalie Silberman, Anita K. Blair, and Barbara Olson,[8][13] the IWF grew out of the ad hoc group “Women for Judge Thomas,” created to defend Clarence Thomas against allegations of sexual harassment and other improprieties.
Oooookay I think that tells us all we need to know.
That just makes me feel dirty all over. You know, I really enjoyed her first book.
Funny you should mention Thomas, another black man who has dedicated his life to telling whitey there ain’t no such thing as racism who turns out to have a copiously documented history of sexual harassment that is widely known but rarely mentioned.
Anyone who asks why women didn’t step forward to accuse Cosby at the time should take a look at what the creeps did to Anita Hill.
You would think that given the money the GOP offers, they would have no shortage of minorities queuing up to sell their souls. But since the Southern strategy flip in favor of segregation they have only ever managed to get one token black house member elected to national office. All the other black Republicans are appointees. But if you are going to appoint someone why not choose someone who is not a rapist/harasser or whatever?
Something I saw on the Web relating to the Elm Guest House scandal the other night might explain the curious situation. It was about the role of the Whips office in the UK. A former whip explained that they would always lend a sympathetic ear to a member who came to them ‘in a jam’. It might be money or a pregnant mistress or an indiscretion with “little boys”. But they would make sure it got fixed because they knew that if the helped they would have the MPs vote for life.
Which got me thinking that the most efficient way to run such a scheme would be to favor selection of MPs who could be blackmailed. Which is about the only explanation I can suggest for the astonishing fact that the fast track to advancement in the Tory party under Thatcher was to be an accomplished pederast.
So maybe the reason they chose Thomas is that they knew they had the goods on him and any time he steps out of line they can destroy him. All he has to do is to show up, appoint clerks that they approve, sign the decisions and keep his moth shut. And if he does that they make him rich by passing money to him under the table through his wife’s seven digit ‘consulting’ work.
It actually gets even worse than just being a shill group started to cover for Clarence Thomas when he was accused of sexual harassment. They’ve opposed stuff like the Violence Against Women Act, funding for women’s shelters, and the like – basically anything that might help women out when facing a situation of gender injustice and even gender-related violence. The only thing that keeps them from being as awful as Concerned Women for America is that they’re not officially anti-choice.
Also, you’ve got to love the sheer gall of saying you support “equity feminism” while opposing any feminism that seeks to undermine patriarchy for equal rights. I’d love to corner Hoff-Sommers or Cathy Young and try to get them to rationalize that – I bet they’d bloviate for about 3500 words while saying nothing.
Just one question: How can you support feminist tenets and patriarchy at the same time? Isn’t that like breathing and being completely under water simultaneously?
They’re Independent. They’re Concerned. They love Freedom. And Family. And America. And Hard-working Americans. Opportunity. The gold standard. Meritocracy. State’s rights. Shirts’ rights. Responsible gun owners.
Okay, is there anything, other than being an atheist, that AHA is even remotely in the region of left of centre on?
Because there are at least a few commenters here who’ve blamed the leftists in their heads for pushing her into the arms of conservatism, by not being supportive or whatever. But on what concievable position would she and leftists have in common anyway?
I’m quite happy to have a rift between myself and her, thank you. I’m godless. She appears to worship economic, political, and sociological woo.
I support her right to free speech, and I was a little annoyed when people try to get her speaking events at colleges canceled. But other than that, no, I don’t think we have much common positions.
Brett @2,
Isn’t that the old distinction, though, the one between liberals and radicals?
As I recall, liberal feminism wanted to remove the legal barriers to equality between the sexes. An example would be the passage of the (U.S.) Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988, which prohibited states from requiring that women get a male relative’s signature to take out a business loan. (Yes, that was only in 1988.)
While liberal feminism looked at changing laws and the de jure status of women, radical feminism wanted to make more fundamental changes in people’s attitudes towards women and their de facto status in society. It sounds like these self-described “equity feminists” have accommodated themselves to (some of) the legal reforms won by liberal feminism, but don’t want society to change any more (or any more fundamentally) than that. They still want to police what women are allowed to do, just informally.
http://atheists.org/convention2015/speakers
Of course.
The smell of astroturf movement from the usual rightwing institutional suspects about feminism’s latest uptick in public profile is getting stronger.
@#3 brett says:
Ahhhhhhhh, I see that you used the Mike Nugent defense strategy. Pip-pip. Good job. However, I would hold out for a 20,000 word bloviation defense.
@Anthony K #6:
That story was concocted by Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself, perhaps with an assist from fellow mass-murder* advocate and close friend Sam Harris (I’m uncertain whether she honestly doesn’t understand that her advocacy of mass-murder of Muslims and anti-social libertarian economic policy are most likely what made any halfway-ethical organization reject her or whether she’s consciously lying). Professional douchebag Terry Firma quotes the relevant passages (and links the full Ayaan Hirsi Ali/Sam Harris piece) here (along with much scolding of liberals and quotation from another article that completely misses the point of social justice activism and instead thinks liberals like people on the sole basis of identity politics – as always, projection is the only mode of though these people have). I recommend clicking through only with AdBlock or a similar script blocker, to both deny Hemant’s accommodationist self any metered hits and because the Patheos approach to advertising makes the site almost unusable on any computer with less power than an upper-mid-range gaming PC.
Anyway, the short answer as far as I can tell is that there are a few kinds of feminist advocacy where Ayaan Hirsi Ali is likely in agreement with most liberal/leftist feminists (e.g. opposing genital cutting of assigned-female** infants/juveniles), but she’s at odds with many of us in far more ways.
*I consider wars of aggression to be mass-murder.
**I specify “assigned-female” because I’m unaware if she’s consistent with respect to gender and also opposes genital cutting of assigned-male or intersex infants/juveniles, and I won’t assume anything given the high proportion of people who are gender-inconsistent when it comes to the ethics of non-consensual genital cutting.