Friday, September 19, 2014

Laurie Penny, the Face of Today's Feminism

According to The Daily Beast the latest and greatest feminist thinker is Laurie Penny. A British blogger and journalist, Penny, The Daily Beast says, doesn’t “give a damn if you like her politics. She does want to make you think.”

Naturally, one is curious to see what passes for thought in the newly resurgent feminist ecosphere.

So we turn to Laurie Penny’s recent column about Islamophobia. This great thinker has concluded that when Western men protest Islamic misogyny they are merely trying to cover up the horrific, institutional misogyny in the West.

She wrote in the Guardian:

Structural sexism does take place every day in our universities, as it does in our offices, shops and homes – and we should oppose it everywhere. But demanding that feminists of every race and faith drop all our campaigns and stand against "radical Islam" sounds more and more like white patriarchy trying to make excuses for itself: "If you think we're bad, just look at these guys."

Or this:

I am writing this as a white feminist infuriated by white men using dog-whistle Islamophobia to derail any discussion of structural sexism; as someone who has heard too many reactionaries tell me to shut up about rape culture and the pay gap and just be grateful I'm not in Saudi Arabia; as someone angered that so many Muslim feminists fighting for gender justice are forced to watch their truth, to paraphrase that fusty old racist Rudyard Kipling, "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools".

Let’s see. Compare female genital mutilation—widely practiced in Muslim Egypt—with the female pay gap—largely exaggerated for political purposes. To Laurie Penny, the two are comparable, that is, morally equivalent. 

The only reason that any white Western male would ever draw attention to the way Muslim women are living in the Muslim world is that he does not want to address the horrifying indignity of a pay gap that, when all aspects of the issue are factored in, is not really very large.

Or else, we might note the moral equivalence between the “grooming” of British girls by Muslim men in Rotherham, England with white men who make derogatory remarks about a woman’s physical appearance.

Apparently, Penny believes that the only reason anyone would be outraged about what happened in Rotherham is because he does not want to examine the vicious predatory sexism involved when he stares an instant too long at a woman’s….

What did Penny really think about what happened in Rotherham? She was happy to exonerate the Muslims who committed the atrocities against girls and women… because, to her mind, it was only about “scared, hurt kids.”

Shows you how much feminism really cares about women and girls. An ideologically-driven cult will always put ideas ahead of people.

Penny concludes:

We are the fools, if we believe that accepting aggressive distinctions between nice, safe western sexism and scary, heathen Muslim sexism is going to serve the interests of women. The people making these arguments don't care about women. They care about stoking controversy, attacking Muslims and shouting down feminists of all stripes.

Here, Penny gives the game away. She is the one who does not care about women. Surely, she does not care about the way women are treated in Muslim cultures. She believes that our interest in their living conditions is a diversion that prevents us from examining the rampant sexism in Western cultures.

Let’s note, for the record, that the virulently misogynist cultures in the Middle East have been fostering Islamist terrorism and that this terrorism has not only been brutalizing women to an alarming extent—witness the way ISIS has been treating women—but has been attacking Western civilization, through terrorism, threats and intimidation.

To that threat, Laurie Penny can only trot out her own mindless version of moral equivalence and attack Western civilization.

Perhaps they have different reasons, but Islamists and Laurie Penny have the same enemy. Who was it who said: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Ideology makes strange bedfellows.

If Penny wants to make us think she should start thinking herself.

9 comments:

Dennis said...

A feminist resurgence? If this is it I could not be happier. I suspect that most women are far too intelligent to be fooled by this drivel. This is a failed ideology looking to be important when history is about to consign them to the round file.
The more they alienate the more damage they do to themselves. Academe is facing lower rates of enrollment, higher chances of being sued by organizations like FIRE and a disrespect for their ideas, many of which could only survive in academe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeXBJ-Oejp4&feature=youtu.be
http://www.thefire.org/constitution-day-fire-mails-first-amendment-warning-300-colleges/
http://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/09/false_rape_accusations_why_must_be_pretend_they_never_happen.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/16/poll-most-americans-no-longer-think-a-college-education-is-very-important/
The fact that one can easily find information that denotes that feminism is gradually placing itself outside the mainstream of considered thought should give one pause in reading or listening to feminist diatribes.

Lastango said...

Mz. Penny is a skilled at agitprop, and at concealing the feminist/Marxist core structure of coercion, totalitarianism, brutality, hive-mind, and seizure of universal power -- achieved in concert with likeminded coalition partners. Especially in Europe, there is no more reliable political partner in the service of progressivist collectivism than the Islamists. The Islamists supply the burgeoning demographics, accompanied by a solid bloc-vote, and the indigenous leftist elite supplies the cultural acceptance.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

Feminism should not have incorporated. Feminism should not have marginalized more than half of the population, men and women. Feminism should not have aborted its future members. That should have been self-evident. They were ambitious, aggressive, and egotistical. They falsely claimed to pursue equalization, but were only competing with men of the same character, in order to dominate men and women. In short, they were fanatics, and were the cause of their own demise.

Sam L. said...

Navel-gazing requires tunnel vision, and Penny does that very, very well.

Prevented her from hearing about Boko Harum killing and enslaving girls.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

"She does want to make you think.”

About what? Penny offers nothing new here. More epithets about _____-phobia and how Western men are the scourge of the earth..

If she wants to prove her bona fides in the arena of courage, she can take her victimy tripe and outrage to the Middle East and see how long she lasts.

Attacks like these on Western Christendom are hilarious. What is Penny making us "think" about? She certainly isn't thinking.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Next week: what does Laurie Penny think of Roger Goodell?

David Foster said...

One thing that is very depressing is to see people react to the threat of ISIS...and of radical Islamic terrorism generally....by merely beating the drums for whatever ideological views they already have.

For example, one FB discussion thread on ISIS quickly turned into an accusations that war fever was being stoked to benefit Halliburton.

In another thread, someone mentioned a far-Left lawyer's organization that is accusing Obama of war crimes for selling Iron Dome systems to Israel. Someone in comments said, "Those people are getting even crazier than the extreme Right...naah, actually, nobody could be crazier than those people.

I'm reminded of Poul Anderson's SF story in which God stops the sun in order to send mankind a message...but the message people actually receive is simply the reinforcement of whatever beliefs they already had.

http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/36252.html

Kaiser Derden (aka TDL) said...

well she does make me think ...

I think she is an overeducated idiot with daddy issues who most likely looks like the south end of a north bound baboon ...