Tuesday, June 5, 2012

A Retort to "The Muslims Are Worse"

The other day, I read a blogpost by an antifeminist Christian woman who claimed that for a woman to wear pretty much anything other than a full-length dress was to "assault" men with sexual provocation. Some male commenters chimed in to "assert as men" that she was absolutely correct.

So, like, just put us in burqas already!

In my travels on Internet, anti-feminists and anti-LGBT people often say, "You know, women and LGBT people in Muslim countries have it So Much Worse."

Wanna know what I hear when people make that statement while simultaneously bemoaning the Leftist Feminist Homo Agenda in the US?

"You know, women and LGBT people in Muslim countries have to So Much Worse. And gawd, why can't it be like that here? So unfair!"

 Like, you know that if we take our eye off the ball for 2 seconds, they'd institute the fundamentalist Christian version of Sharia law in the US if they could.

The most important differences between religious fundamentalist, absolute beliefs that are used to justify misogynistic, homophobic, and gender policing policies are those of degree. For, from a substantive standpoint, if someone is telling me that I'm a horrible, sinful person for being gay or that my role as a woman is to be submissive, it is of no consequence to me which godly "authority" or "holy book" or "doctrine" or "teaching" this judgment purportedly stems. The specifics, to me, are of equal absurdity.

I am an equal-opportunity dismisser of fundamentalism. It just so happens that here, in the US, it is primarily Christians who seek to deny me equal rights and who have posed the biggest threats to my human dignity.

That's why the strategy of fundamentalist Christians trying to build themselves up by diverting our attention from their own aggression and onto Other People's doesn't really work for me.

I'll be the judge of who the prime assholes to me, in my life, are, thankyouverymuch.

1 comment:

MC said...

Well stated, thank you.