Feminists regard reproductive rights as one of the central tenets of equality between women and men. Reproductive rights roughly mean that any woman should have the right to abort the fetus she is carrying whenever she so chooses. A woman, so the argument goes, should be just as free of having to carry a fetus as every man is. I am not in this essay going to argue against this view as such. Rather, I have to ask myself is this view rightly considered one of the central tenets of equality between women and men. Or a more poignant question might be: Are American feminists more than a little narcissitic.
What prompts me to ask that question are headlines like the following: “Taliban Blamed for Acid Attack on Afghan Schoolgirls” and “Acid attack keeps Afghan girls away from school”.
What is rather intriguing here is that one has not heard a peep out of American feminists. No protests. Not even a sense of profound moral outrage. Of course, I understand all too well that these sorts of things are happening outside of the United States. But the geographical location of where these morbid acts of violence are occurring cannot possibly be the explanation for the lack of concern on the part of American feminists. Or so it is if what they are really concerned about is equality for all women. There are times in life when the only option that we have is to express our moral outrage over the occurrence of an egregious wrongdoing. And surely that is precisely what we should do.
This is why it is so difficult to understand why there has been such deafening silence on the part of American feminists. While it is not always clear what concern should have moral priority over another, surely Muslim girls being attacked for attending school should be one of the top concerns of any committed feminist. Or to put the point another way, when the considerable freedoms that American women enjoy are contrasted with the very little freedom that women, in places like Afghanistan have, one might have thought that American feminists would want to keep front and center the harsh mistreatment of women in places like Afghanistan.
If ever there was a moment for NOW to take public stance against the mistreatment of women, one would have thought that the horrendous mistreatment of Muslim girls in Afghanistan would be such a moment. Disturbingly, a brief Google search using the key words “NOW, mistreatment of Afghanistan girls” did not turn up any statements by NOW on the subject matter.
No doubt a more extensive search would turn up statements by NOW concerning the matter. But that truth, if it is a truth, speaks to my very point. Acid attacks by men on Afghanistan girls going to school should have precipitated a wealth of concern on the part of NOW—so much so that a most basic Google search would have turned up concerns on the part of NOW regarding the matter.
The silence on the part of NOW is stupefying. The silence on the part of feminists generally is stupefying. Whatever the reason for this silence might be: If that silence is about respect for differences, then what we have is most despicable form of hypocrisy. For whatever respect for differences might amount to: Such respect most surely excludes causing grave physical harm to another.
I believe in giving credit where credit is due. In this regard, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, in her blog essay “Feminists Should Go Where They are Needed,” deserves enormous credit for both drawing attention to the plight of Afghanistan women and criticizing feminists for their silence. One does not have to hold Laura Schlessinger’s views regarding abortion in order to see that there is something woefully incongruous with feminists making endless noise about women having the right to have an abortion whenever while remaining deafeningly silent regard the horrors against women that are going on in Afghanistan.
It suffices, surely, that the girls in Afghanistan who are being so brutally mistreated have few people to speak in a public way on their behalf. If one allows for the sake of argument that the American communication market is the largest in the world, then it follows from that simple truth that using that market to speak against the wrongs taking place in Afghanistan would, at the very least, be a good thing.
There is, then, a very real sense in which the silence of American feminist constitutes aiding and abetting the enemy. There are many ways to facilitate the wrong done by another. And one way to do that is to show no moral outrage at all in the face of that wrong. This is because nothing emboldens wrong like the knowledge that no one will speak against it.
As I noted in my forthcoming essay “Atrocities: The Psychology of Justice versus Evil,” relatively few whites lynched blacks. However, the whites who did lynch blacks could count on those whites who would never lift a finger to lynch a black to be absolutely silent about those doing the lynching. That silence aided and abetted the evil of lynching blacks.
It is this entire constellation of considerations that get me to the conclusion the American feminism is much more narcissistic than it is committed to the equality of women. And if that is the case, then the charge of hypocrisy also has more plausibility than one might have first thought.
I do not for a moment assume that the situation for women in the United States is perfect. No, I make the ever so modest assumption that the plight of women in the United States is vastly superior to the plight of women in Afghanistan—so much so that American feminists can well afford to take up the concerns of Afghanistan women.
