ManicDDaily

A couple of articles in the New York Times today are enough to make a woman a feminist for the sake of bettering the world as a whole, and not simply the lot of women, (although since I am already a feminist, I may not be a good judge of that. )

One from Nicholas Kristof describes the situation among the poor in Africa where spending choices by fathers favor alcohol and cigarettes over anti-malarial mosquito netting and children’s tuition fees.  To combat this problem, micro-bankers are trying to put more money in women’s hands, as women tend to be more likely to spend money on the welfare of their children than on their personal habits or pleasures.

Another article by Deborah Solomon, portrays Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an ex-Muslim woman, the author of Nomad:  From Islam to America, and discusses the Islamic view of women as family property, only with the twist that women are property that is capable of devaluing itself (like silver that self-tarnishes, an oven that self-chars.)

To some degree, the articles discuss unpopular topics; some in the West are so anxious to compensate for cultural biases and depradations of the past (and present)  that they are reluctant to criticize, or even acknowledge, practices that are unjust and oppressive.  This, to my mind, is political correctness at its worst: when there is a pretense that all points of view are equally valid and that cultural norms (even those that are unjust to women and children) are somehow fine simply because they are foreign and/or tradiional.)

Here is a poem on the subject on honor killing.   It was inspired by an incident in the Middle East where a brother killed a sister suspected of dishonoring her family:

Honor killing

The knife slides in,
with force.
She is thinner than he has remembered,
her collarbone sharp as
a hook he thrashes upon.
Mind snags heart, but
cannot aim for breast,
only the knife can look past nipple.
Smaller than he’s remembered,
with too-soft skin that folds within
whites of eyes big as
blade.
He tries to think
of flame, the filmy body
of smoke, the dryness of
ash, but blood,
fountains,
in honor of
the righteous,
fountains.
Why has she made him,
righteous,
do this,
with force.