To Defend or Not to Defend

Oops, it totally slipped my mind that I even have this thing.



The Rolling Stones - Indian Girl

The Stones feature way too heavily on here, sorry. They just have a ton of good songs. Anyway, I think I'm mostly going to pass on the news and politics for this post and point out some things that I think are of cultural/social significance. First of all, I saw an interesting article titled "The dos and don'ts of defending Muslim women." The author has apparently experienced a lot of prejudice and arrogance in the way some people have spoken to and about Muslim women, often in perhaps well-meaning but misguided attempts to defend them. She makes a few interesting points that I will admit I hadn't really thought about...but then again, I'm not a woman or a Muslim (for those of you still confused), so it's hard for me to make any sort of informed or thoughtful comment on women (I have enough trouble as it is making thoughtful comments to them), Islam, or any combination of the two that would actually come from real experience.

She touches on the clothing issue, which has been sort of a hot-button lately, especially with all the legislation and proposed legislation in France which I've mentioned here. I also thought this bit was rather insightful:

Liberation is not a cookie-cutter deal. It looks different to every single woman in the world, and Muslim women are no different. There are Muslim women for whom liberation looks like a miniskirt, or a headscarf, or a university degree, or a well-paying job, or a husband, or a house, or debt wiped clean, or a divorce, or a reliable source of clean water, or opportunities for her children, or different combinations of these, etc. Forcing one model of liberation on anyone isn’t liberating; it’s just as oppressive as other paternalist or patriarchal forces in a Muslim woman’s life.

Damn, good call. So yeah, give the whole article a read-through if it interests you at all. I also found an interesting article about that movie Bruno (can't find the umlaut button on my keyboard, sorry) that came out recently. My first impression was that it seems to use extremely exaggerated gay stereotypes to poke fun at homophobia. I haven't seen the film, but the impression I've gotten is that while it definitely calls out homophobia, it still plays off of the cliches about homosexuals, so maybe it's a double-edged sword and actually still hurtful to homosexuals in some way? I don't know; the whole thing just doesn't seem very nicecore. It just makes me uncomfortable because somewhere, someone's feelings are being hurt. Anyway, this article I mentioned can be found here in the Huffington Post, and the author claims that the movie is actually a huge stride forward for homosexuals. She makes some very good points, and it's an interesting perspective so I recommend that one as well.

I found some more sexist commercials and unfortunate Fox News clips in my exploring, but I'm starting to feel like putting non-nicecore stuff up here is actually sort of counterproductive. And anyway, you don't need me to go and find that stuff for you, you're all sitting on mountains of it every day. More news and whatnot tomorrow, hopefully!