Sunday, November 23, 2014

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: American Feminism Focuses on Trivial BS

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: American Feminism Focuses on Trivial BS

Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows what real feminism is about. As a vocal critic of the treatment of women in Muslim countries, she has risked her life.

According to a new report from Ashe Schow at the Washington Examiner, Hirsi Ali is unimpressed with American feminism:

Hirsi Ali slams feminism’s ‘trivial BS’

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a harsh critic of Islam’s treatment of women, said Wednesday that modern American feminism is focused on “trivial bullshit” and needs to be reclaimed.

Speaking at the Independent Women’s Forum Women of Valor dinner, where she received an award for courage, Hirsi Ali reminded her audience of how far feminism has strayed from its original purpose.

“I want you to remember that once upon a time, feminists fought for the access — basic right — access of girls to education,” she said…

“Feminists in this country and in the West fought against that and won the battle,” she added.

But now, Hirsi Ali said, feminism has taken that victory and squandered it.

“What we are now doing with the victory, and I agree with you if you condemn that and I condemn whole-heartedly the trivial bullshit it is to go after a man who makes a scientific breakthrough and all that we as women — organized women — do is to fret about his shirt?” Hirsi Ali said, referring to the controversy generated by the shirt featuring cartoons of scantily-clad women worn by the scientist who helped land a robot on a comet. “We must reclaim and retake feminism from our fellow idiotic women.”

Hirsi Ali may not be alone in her views.

Lizzie Crocker of the Daily Beast recently wrote:

Feminism Has Gone Too Far

An Oxford University debate was canceled, and certain subjects declared off-limits: why are feminists policing what is said about women and women’s bodies?

Two male journalists, one conservative and one contrarian, were to debate abortion at Oxford University earlier this week. The event was sponsored by a student pro-life group and had all the ingredients to provoke an impassioned campus protest: two men, both right-leaning, debating an issue not often debated in England. And what do they know about terminating a pregnancy anyway?

It’s a fair question, one that could have been put to either journalist in a spirited debate (the very thing we expect to happen within the walls of a university). Or better yet, instead of wasting an evening listening to two men do battle over who controls a woman’s uterus, the aggrieved, pro-choice student could have simply skipped the event altogether.

But for those who were offended that someone with a penis might discuss abortion at all, opting to skip the event wasn’t enough. After the student union Women’s Campaign (WomCam) urged the Oxford Students of Life to cancel the event and demanded an apology for attempting to stage the debate, the university called it off entirely, a move critics slammed as a grave restriction of free speech.

To any American feminists who want to criticize Hirsi Ali:

I dare you to walk a mile in her shoes.




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