Boundless’s Heather Koerner sez: feminism is for silly girls! Thank God she grew out of that! Oh, and check out how the fascinating story of this remarkable Muslim woman can be used to add drama the story of the junior high mock election where she voted for Mondale.
My male classmates had taunted me that a woman, well, a woman just couldn’t be vice-president. She just couldn’t.
But as a pre-teen who could beat the pants off my male counterparts in math class and was wholly unimpressed with their flatulence jokes, I begged to differ. We were women, hear us roar. Her victory, I thought, would bring honor to all females and her defeat was a defeat for us all.
Looking back, I have to smile. I am thankful that Mondale and Ferraro were not elected. She does not, to put it mildly, advocate my political beliefs. I’ve realized that just because another human has ovaries, doesn’t mean we naturally share the same opinions or ideals.
But don’t take her word for it; let’s ask this Muslim! Or, let’s take some quotes from a Muslim woman and wrap them in a fresh steaming pile of WTF.
One of the latest lessons I’ve gotten came from an unexpected place — a secular article about a woman who grew up in a Muslim family in Mogadishu. In the article, Deroy Murdock profiles Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman with an amazing story. Ali now lives, writes and speaks in America, attempting to encourage the West to realize that its culture is, indeed, superior to militant Islam. As Murdock quotes her, “Human beings are equal; cultures are not.”
She particularly extends her appreciation to our culture’s treatment of women.
You go girl, my seventh-grade self might have said! We are still fighting for our equality, but we’re getting closer all the time.
But that’s not Ali’s point in Murdock’s article. Her point is simple: Here, a man holds a door open for a woman.
“When I first came to a Western country, I was astonished to find men who said, ‘Ladies first,’” Murdock quotes Ali. “I was amazed because I was born and raised in a culture that put me last because I was born a girl.”
Ayaan Ali is absolutely the perfect woman to be holding up as an example for Godly women to emulate. For example, she’s willing to say a lot of stuff The American Enterprise Institute, who are currently writing her paychecks, love to hear:
“A culture that holds the door open to her women is not equal to one that confines them behind walls and veils,” Ali continued. “A culture that encourages dating between young men and young women is not equal to a culture that flogs or stones a girl for falling in love. A culture where monogamy is an aspiration is not equal to a culture where a man can lawfully have four wives at once.”
She’s passed the door test (always, the damn doors with these people) and she really doesn’t like Islam anymore and so Heather is free to weave what was probably a masterful ass-kissing on Ali’s part into the much less interesting tapestry of her own sheltered life:
Unfortunately, not all women are as appreciative of an opened door as Ali. Some women, and men, link the impulse to open a door for a woman with the impulse to repress and abuse her. But Ali’s experience has taught her the exact opposite, and I think she is right: There is a difference between a culture where women are honored and a culture where women are chattel.
But, for me, it goes further than just “culture.” Many modern day feminists have tried to argue that they offer me honor while Christianity offers me chattel. But they’ve got it backwards. I only have to look around to see it. The hook-up culture, the abortion culture, the depiction of women in media — they’re all proof. It wouldn’t take me 10 seconds flipping the television to see that — though Ali is gracious enough to see the positives in our culture — there is plenty of chattel-like behavior towards women.
As a seventh-grade girl, I was incensed that someone would treat me differently because I was a female. Now, though, I take comfort in the fact that God commands my Christian brothers to treat me differently…Yes, some societies live that way, and it’s a shame. But that is not God’s way. God has given my husband the right, and the responsibility, to lead our family. But simply because I submit to an authority — as, in fact, all of us have to do — God doesn’t see me as inferior, as inadequate or unworthy. The true message of Christ is quite the opposite and it’s a beautiful thing.
Now I remember that every time my husband opens my door. It’s a small gesture, but it points to the larger truth.
Of course, to turn Ayaan Ali’s appreciation of getting a door held open into an ode to wifely submission may be, at best, a bit of a stretch. For it seems that while Ali is a controversial figure, one fact is perfectly clear: the woman has an enormous set of thatchers. A short list of her accomplishments include:
Running away from an arranged marriage
Lying to Dutch officials to get refugee status
Learning Dutch and getting a masters degree in political science before
Obtaining an elected position in Dutch parliament only to resign after
It was disclosed that she lied to get her citizenship but it was OK because the Dutch loved her so much that
The government bent over backwards to allow her to keep her citizenship but she went to America anyway to
Write her book
Oh, and somewhere in there she narrated the movie that got Vincent Van Gogh’s movie-director descendant killed, with a five-page death threat to her knifed into his chest.
And then she went back to the Netherlands, just because the cheap bastards would only pay for round-the-clock security when she was actually in the country, leading me to ask why the American Enterprise didn’t pick up the tab so she could stay in DC? I guess the Conservative Skinflint Uncle isn’t such a strawman after all.
So anyway, she’s a real Titus 2 woman, indeed. All of your biblical role models, your Rachels and Esthers, ended up renouncing their religion and talking smack about Islam and fighting for women’s rights until they needed bodyguards 24 hours a day. I think that we can safely assume that no matter how conservative Ali is, she’ll not be endorsing the following tripe anytime soon:
God’s balance, of course, is perfect. He commands that I be respected, but also that I respect. He commands that I be honored, but also that I honor. He commands that I submit to authority, but also commands that authority to submit to Him…
In seventh grade, and probably for years later, I would have told you that all patriarchal societies were the same — their only goal to puff men up in their own power. But not anymore.
In fact, that might be the exact opposite of her message. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes appreciating that a guy held the door for you instead of stoning you to death is not an endorsement of your western-flavored patriarchy.* Also, her political party back in Dutchlandia is soft on both drugs and fags, although they just love the free market. Or what passes for a free market economy in the Netherlands. Just letting you know. And this other post about female Muslim writers in the West, maybe that’s some good readin’.
*And keep in mind that her primary “West” experience is centered in the freakin’ Netherlands. What are the odds that in Heather Koerner’s country, a female African immigrant with Ali’s “polarizing” personality would make it as far in politics in America? Is Heather aware that the “West” encompasses a couple of continents, which is why we just don’t call it “America”?
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