Two Things

The first is at Pandagon, where Amanda wrote about Huckabee:

McCain has the Republican nomination, but Huckabee’s continuing ability to win certain states is still a major story. Now that he can’t get the nomination and the schadenfreude pleasure is over, it’s time for us to very carefully examine why an out-and-out ayatollah is so fucking popular in this great, modern nation.

That's saying, pretty explicitly, this Christian is so misogynist he's a misogynist as a Muslim.

The other is at The F-Word, a British site. This one probably needs some background. A while back The Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Church of England, the official religion of Britain) gave a speech where he discussed the role that Sharia law could take within civil law in the British legal system. If you're interested in what he said I'm guess it's a good idea to read it, rather than a summary, because to say the British Press frothed at the mouth in response to what he said is a vast understatement.* I was shocked at the response on the F-Word. The author of the post said that she wasn't going to comment, because she didn't know much about Sharia law, and then said that she thought this anecdote was relevant:

A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a woman who works in an advocacy role for Muslim women in an area that, quite independently of the Bishop of Rochester, she described as a ‘no-go area’ for non-Muslims. Her clients were women in the process of being sectioned into mental health units in the NHS. This woman, who for obvious reasons begged not to be identified, told me: ‘The men get tired of their wives. Or bored. Or maybe the wife objects to her daughter being forced into a marriage she doesn’t want. Or maybe she starts wearing western clothes.There can be many reasons. The women are sent for asssessment to a hospital. The GP referring them is Muslim. The psychiatrist assessing them is Muslim and male. I have sat in these assessments where the psychiatrist will not look the woman patient in the eye because she is a woman. Can you imagine! A psychiatrist refusing to look his patient in the eye? The woman speaks little or no English. She is sectioned. She is divorced. There are lots of these women in there, locked up in these hospitals. Why don’t you people write about this?’

Posting that story, in the context that she did, implies that the central fact here, is the religion of those involved. It treats these sorts of events as a horror which only occur in another culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Families with connections to the medical establishment have been able to do all sorts of things to women by claiming they're mad(a famous example is Rosemary Kennedy, but it's not as if she's alone). Why didn't the f-word present this story in that context?

I think it's offensive when white feminists create an 'other', which is the . I think it is a vile misuse of feminism when the other they chose serves imperialist goals, as islamophobia so clearly does.

But I also find it mystifying. Feminist bloggers stare down the vile misogyny of the culture that we live in everyday. I don't understand why any feminist blogger would need to invent an 'other', or how she could escape from the fact that her culture hates her.

* I'm personally too lazy to read what he said. I can see the arguments in favour in allowing people to pick the framework they use to decide civil matters. But I think limiting those choices to frameworks based on different religions prioritises religion in a way that I believe is totally unacceptable. In Britain, (or the US, or NZ) it would also leave all those without religion still suck with a framework that is based on Christianity. I don't think the solution to a legal framework based on one religion is to say 'we'll let other religions have an influence in some parts of that framework'. Although I'm willing to be convinced if people want to argue about that issue in the comments.