27 Comments

1. SYD:

The vociferousness and rapidity of their responses makes clear, to me, that you have found an achilles heel.

All the more reason NOT to back down.

SYD

Sep 5, 2009 - 9:55 am 2. Don:

I may not agree with tons of stuff you say, Phyllis, But I admire your propensity to speak truth to power, way to be :: ))

Sep 5, 2009 - 10:48 am 3. David Thomson:

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Radical leftists like Naomi Wolf and the Salon.com crowd are more than willing to align themselves with the radical Muslims. This is a small price to pay in order to stick it good and hard to the “evil capitalist oppressors.” They are self-hating—and suicidal Westerners. Their rage is so intense that they conveniently overlook the harsh fact that they will be among the first victims of an Islamic extremist takeover.

Sep 5, 2009 - 10:53 am 4. Round Four in the Chesler-Wolf-Glazov-Salon Debate About the Islamic Veil « For Women’s Equality:

[...] [...]

Sep 5, 2009 - 10:59 am 5. FreeMeNow:

The Left has and contines to be divisive as usual. I hope you do not mind if I share my group’s (TMU)opinion of what needs to happen if women are to achieve parity. I tackle what I thought to be the hardest of the divisive questions between women however it may apply here as well. If we are ever going to succeed as women we are going to have to become a majority and stop this nonsense. Phyllis simply stated her opinion about how Naomi’s flippant attitude affects many women who are not romantically happy with the situation.

It reminds me of a war I wound up in over Favereau that one women thought was worth sending the laut to a battered woman’s shelter and i thought now and then 2 days later – my daughter was shot in the head by one such abuser of women.

Those of us who have worked in these realms know better Naomi! End this for the sake of womankind your feelings alone are not worth the lives of thousands of others!

The Majority United
for rights, laws, equality and freedom of choice for All Women

Hillary Clinton has been quoted as saying ‘women’s rights are human rights.’ If one accepts this statement as true then there needs to be a realigning of priorities for women’s groups. For quite awhile many women’s groups have slowly become political organizations with a platform similar to those of a political party. Yet by doing this (as some race-based groups have also done) they have narrowed their reach and effectiveness. By imposing a set of political standards on the membership of these groups and associations the implication is that if you are a woman there is the list of things you must believe. That’s not equality, and while their intentions may be good, these groups and associations that sum up a person by either gender or race are doing exactly the opposite of what was the original goal of said organization. Oddly enough the successes of these groups has rendered them irrelevant.

No place is this more evident than when addressing the issue of abortion for example. Many genuinely see abortion as the ‘taking of a life,’ and therefore feel obligated to speak out against it. They go up against those who perceive pro-lifers as trying to restrict the rights of women. This creates a tremendous clash. Yet this isn’t the stark issue that some have made it out to be. The reality is that some on the left and on the right have used rhetoric to help radicalize the debate, making it a huge wedge issue. True equality and freedom for women will exist when pro-choice translates to free-choice and each woman is free to make her own decision without having it imposed on her.

Therefore a modern effective woman’s group needs to depoliticize itself from conventional party politics and from automatically aligning with a particular party. Our rights and needs cannot be subordinated to any male-defined agenda as those agendas have always marginalized us. Women are free to believe in woman’s equality, and think abortion is wrong. Women are also free to believe that choice is their right. This holds for other issues too. It is up to the individual to decide where they stand on economics, foreign policy, and the like; it is not up to this group to determine the thoughts and beliefs of its members. This group is charged with standing up for women against sexist attacks regardless of political belief and/or background. It is the task of this group to stand up for the dignity and respect of women and to stand up human rights as a whole.

Thanks you for the opportunity to share my thoughts. As a formerly abused woman and the mother of two severly abused daughters- I earned the stripes to speak out about the abuse of women who do not speak out for themselves and then are found dead!
BJ

Sep 5, 2009 - 11:19 am 6. David W. Lincoln:

There is no room for dissent amongst those who
deem themselves to be dissidents. Thus it was, and thus it shall always be.

For the likes of those who demonize Phyllis, have become what they demonize.

Such is the high price for circular logic.

Sep 5, 2009 - 11:33 am 7. Isolden:

Keep fighting the good fight, Ms. Chesler; I’m behind you 100%!

Sep 5, 2009 - 12:40 pm 8. Chesler Challenges Salon’s Biased Coverage « NewsReal Blog:

[...] Phyllis Chesler is continuing her advocacy for Muslim women oppressed by radical Islam through rebutting Salon’s biased coverage of the debate between her, Naomi Wolf, and NewsReal: As we both know, [...]

Sep 5, 2009 - 1:01 pm 9. George Jochnowitz:

Jane Fonda, a good Islamomarxist, has joined a boycott of the Toronto festival honoring the 100th birthday of Tel Aviv (reported in Haaretz). Has she ever said anything about honor murders? Has she ever said anything about Darfur? Like all leftists (not to be confused with liberals), she puts anti-Zionism above anything else she might believe in.

Sep 5, 2009 - 1:17 pm 10. Judy, NYC:

that there should be a debate over the veil is the weird part. the veil itself, is of course, from bizarro world having nothing to do with femininity one way or the other. one could say the same of shetels. indeed, why aren’t they? if the writers at salon or the imbecile wolf had anything to write about of merit, it would require some work on their part. something which has gone out of fashion. on trend, is the elevation of these disgusting veiled blobs who support the low brained perpetrators of the most heinous and vile crimes against humanity.

Sep 5, 2009 - 1:31 pm 11. Reclass:

I haven’t yet read this book but I was pleasantly surprised that it was coming out of the Princeton University Press: Marnia Lazreg, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women.

Having read several reviews of the book, Ms. Lazreg appears to be raising an interesting point in claiming that arguments such as those forwarded by Naomi Wolf regarding the veil as a form of empowerment are seized by male intellectuals and used to justify reveiling women. The veil as a weapon of empowerment, she claims, “rest [s] on a dubious post-modernist conception of power according to which whatever a woman undertakes to do is liberating as long as she thinks that she is engaged in some form of ‘resistance’ or self-assertion, no matter how misguided.”

Has anybody read this book?

Sep 5, 2009 - 4:06 pm 12. Laura:

Suddenly feminists and liberals have found religion and find secular freedoms to be abhorent. These same feminists who have long declared Judeo-Christian values as being patriarchal and oppressive are now coming to the defense of the most misogynist culture and “religion” on earth. Feminism and liberalism in general continue to fall completely into disrepute as these movements are increasingly being exposed as being only about the destruction of America, Israel and western civilization.

I would love to see Naomi and Phyllis in a face to face debate. Unlike little Naomi playing dress-up in Morocco, Phyllis actually experienced life inside a muslim culture while she was married to an Afghan man and lived in Afghanistan. She knows of what she speaks.

Sep 5, 2009 - 6:45 pm 13. MiamaMan:

It always starts with words. Every horror of the 20th century was planted by one or another philosopher, writer, humanist. Whether Malthus on population, Marx writing silently in the Library of London or Nietzsche before losing his marbles after proclaiming the coming of the Übermensch and the death of God in “Thus Spake Zarathustra”, giving way to Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot.

That’s why it is so important to challenge today’s prophets of liberalism, the heralds of doom, haters of individualism, who, in their frustration, mental illness and depression, flock to mass movements, addicted to dehumanization, agents of an empty mechanical “change”, who disguise themselves as sheep by imitating the weak, the poor.

Sep 5, 2009 - 6:46 pm 14. Shoshana Rubin:

A few points-the key word that both Wolf and Salon are not focusing on is choice. One could make the valid point that Western whores have a choice of doing what they do and that would be correct. But do the vast majority of Muslim women living in Israel, Egypt, parts of Jordan, Saudi, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan have a choice what to wear? The answer is no.

I have tried to understand why so-called American feminists take the side of Muslims who choose to make human bombs out of their own children, human bombs that go off randomly, killing other humans including seculars, Muslims, Jews and Christians. By US feminists choosing to stand on the side of vicious mass murderers, is there a reason I should believe those feminists care about women?

I get the strong impression that the said feminists would stand with any murderers of color and against any white murderer. Weren’t they at one time against German Nazis? Perhaps if Hitler had chosen Nazis of color, the said feminists would have considered those Nazis to be victims instead of murderers.

But when Western feminists descended upon Israel to present Yasir Arafat with a prize for extending the ‘privilege’ of being a suicide bomber to women, I absolutely understood that they are not interested in improving the condition of women or men.

By standing with mass murderers and handing out prizes to them, thus enabling more mass murderers in the pipeline, choosing to become part and parcel of mass murders, anyone who agrees with Wolf or this silly, uncommitted-to-anything, not clever article by Salon, should have their head examined.

Sep 5, 2009 - 9:36 pm 15. David Thomson:

“I have tried to understand why so-called American feminists take the side of Muslims”

There has to be more discussion regarding the phony degrees of these feminists. They legitimately suffer from an inferiority complex—and deservingly so. The majority of left-wing women jumped aboard the affirmative action gravy train. This allowed them to obtain easy academic grades and lucrative careers. Such individuals inherently gravitate toward radical politics. They are motivated by guilt to embrace the plight of the so-called other victims of capitalism. Numerous feminists took advantage of the unearned benefits of the affirmative action policies that began in the mid 1960s. Well, what should one expect? Someone like the intellectually mediocre Naomi Wolf is the inevitable result. And she is not the worst example. The fatuous Congresswoman Diane Watson possesses a Ph.D. behind her name!

Sep 6, 2009 - 5:54 am 16. MiamaMan:

Anyone with decency, self-esteem, and common sense must challenge Islam. Notice I refrain from stating “radical Islam”, or Islamofacism, or other modern terms that try to better describe this so-called religion; all these terms, alas, all the horrors, are contained within Islam.

Whereas before, in the midst of other horrors like Nazism and communism, the brutal and backward character of Islam was somehow diluted to the view, now, with globalization, a spotlight shines over it. No more we cannot take sides. Make no mistake, the Dark Forces of Evil that were recently behind Hitler and communism has totally thrown their lot behind Islam, it is the duty, before it is too late, of all decent human beings, to fight this scourge.

Yesterday on Fox News they showed a troublesome piece about Islam and school textbooks where it was stated that in the US, of a population of over 300 millions, Islam only claims 1.8 million adepts, thus less than 1% of the total.

Friends, this is a most deceptive and dangerous approach. A palliative that will prove to undo a society that sleeps on the couches in front of their TVs and computers. A people that, historically, just want to be left alone to enjoy and prosper. Oh yes, we say, they are only a few. The problem is that they are vociferous, deceptive, organized, proselytizing, brutal, cruel, and want to impose Islam on the rest of us. Many of them have the large pockets of the Saudis behind, and now the energies of the Dark Ones. The Nazis were once a minority too, we can control them, they said. It is the duty of the still-majority to bring this dangerous group to heel now. As such, I finish quoting an excerpt from the book of Eric Hoffer “Reflections on the Human Condition”:

“It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority; what is abominates most is the dissent of the majority”.

And slime had they for mortar.
Genesis II

Sep 6, 2009 - 7:31 am 17. Fred:

Sarah Braasch’s account of her time in Morocco is much more realistic than Wolf’s. Here’s the link:
http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/2008/oct/braasch.php

Sep 6, 2009 - 8:26 am 18. Tina Trent:

Dave, as somebody with a Women’s Studies PhD. after my name, I have to say that you are probably more on the mark than you know.

Anti-intellectualism, militantly enforced self-loathing, and minority-identity-based superiority cults are the norm in women’s studies programs throughout the United States. Most troublingly, these programs do more to promote a false version of recent feminist history than feminism’s enemies — a consequence of unchecked sexism in the Left, I believe. The response to Phyllis Chesler is typical, and tragic, given what she has contributed to the actually transformative feminist politics she helped bring about.

How did this happen? As recently as the early 1980’s (and still today, in other parts of the world), women academics, journalists, politicians, and other applicants for policy and intellectual work were routinely discriminated against by precisely the same people who had championed civil rights for blacks. This nostalgia-based ethical incontinence — which, let’s face it, infects many on the right as well — perverted justice movements and thus political norms at a crucial historical crossroads.

So I guess it’s unsurprising that the feminist movement and feminist academia descended so quickly into decadence: like intellectuals under Stalin, you can best survive by making yourself both irrelevant and useful to the status quo. Thus, women’s studies conferences on the self-fulfillment of turning tricks and Salon articles on raping Sarah Palin or having orgasms while giving birth (the latter was the last day I could even stomach reading those pathetic court-monkeys).

There are many intelligent, accomplished people emerging from women’s studies programs — you can get an education anywhere; you can get a very good education by observing anti-intellectualism — but these people cannot impact the practice of women’s studies anymore, and they are never hired to teach. Such departments are spinning their own irrelevance, and the sooner the better. Movements change, and there is a new feminism emerging, despite the fact that we are embattled on many sides.

I have been pleasantly surprised to encounter readers of Pajamas Media — you can come to this site and discuss (traditionally) feminist subjects in challenging ways, and find, despite a few reflexively dismissive people, commitment to hearing people out. That simply does not exist in publications like Salon magazine, which will eventually sink under the weight of its unexamined prejudices and politics of self-loathing.

I’m glad Chesler’s fighting this fight — it takes a tremendous amount of backbone to spar in warped environs. And anyplace that calls Larry Flint a freedom fighter and Naomi Wolf a feminist intellectual is painfully warped.

Sep 6, 2009 - 11:06 am 19. Madashell:

Dear Ms. Chesler:

Thanks for reminding me why I stopped reading Salon long ago.

Sep 6, 2009 - 12:56 pm 20. toritto:

Dear Ms. Chesler;

I’m an old guy, closer to 70 than 60, who took one of your first classes during the evening at Richmond College back in the day.

If I recall there were only 3 males in your class and I’m not sure all of us made it to the end. I did.

You opened my eyes then and continue to do so today. My wife and I raised our daughters to take care of themselves.

Best Regards

P. S. You gave me an “A” – probably because I stuck it out and took my punching bag status with good grace.

Sep 6, 2009 - 3:26 pm 21. Omar:

Fred #17: I can second the recommendation on your Morroccan article. Very informative, a real eye-opener.

Sep 7, 2009 - 10:07 am 22. arild:

Over at Independent Women’s forum, Julie Gunlock penned the following excellent comment:
http://www.iwf.org/inkwell/show/21980.html

Sep 8, 2009 - 4:56 am 23. Calatrava:

Interesting to realize that Marx said:

“Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex.”

Portion of the left now denies, and even regrets, that Marx had ever said that!

Sep 8, 2009 - 9:32 am 24. Madashell:

NY Magazine, 2003 gives us another twisted Harlequin Romance brought to you by Naomi Wolf.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

“I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.”

Sep 8, 2009 - 7:06 pm 25. Ciardha:

There’s a huge difference between fauxgressives like Wolf, Huffington, etc… and real world liberal feminists like bloggers- Riverdaughter, Violet Socks, Annabelle, Blue Lyon, and myself, journalists like the late Molly Ivins, and the very much alive Helen Thomas, government officials like- former Secretary of State Albright, and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Wolf, Huffington,… all come from the white upper economic classes, their so called progressivism is quite shallow especially when it comes to economic class sensitivity and yes, feminism. (And honestly, I question their racial sensitivity and homosexual sensitivity as well- it’s more they’ve simply replaced the old negative stereotypes with positive stereotypes that are every bit as false, which is why they have such extreme verbal reactions when their mindsets are questioned- plus it’s only certain groups that they are “sensitive” about racism, they sure as heck aren’t sensitive about not making racist remarks againist Asians, Asian Americans or the peoples of the many Native American tribes. (I’ve witnessed that racism firsthand on places like Kos and Huffington. I am of mixed Scottish American and Native American ancestry and look Ameriasian- was even called a racial slur as a child because of that, so I’m aware on a persoanl level of racism directed toward Native Americans and Asian Americans. Last year the fauxgressive blogs let slurs against Asian Americans and Native Americans run freely because Asian Americans and Native Americans tended to back Hillary fairly strongly.

Real world liberal feminists grew up lower middle class or poor. We’ve experienced the sneering classism of the upper class fauxgressive feminists all our lives. We were a big core of the PUMA movement. What last year taught us is even a conservative Republican who grew up in the lower economic classes (Sarah Palin) is more a real world feminist than those fauxgressive feminists like Wolf. I don’t know if the conservative feminist women who we met and saw a sisterhood with in PUMA (we both wanted Hillary as our president, and shared many feminist ideals) will hold that in their hearts the way we liberal/progressive/leftist/socialist feminists are- the conservative feminists have gone back to their old political homes, but I’m hoping that working besides us real world left of center folks rid them of some of the stereotyped images they had of us left of center folks, the same way working along side them rid us real world left of center folks in PUMA of our stereotypes about all conservatives.

I despise fauxgressives like Wolf, Olbermann, Huffington, Markos, almost all the Air America hosts, etc… because they are as rife with misogyny as right wing media people like Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, Ingram, etc… These media blowhards on either side don’t represent the reality, they reinforce the stereotypical images one side paints the other with.

Ms. Wolf is a strange case- back in the day she wrote “Beauty Myth” she appeared to at least get the truth about the sexism in the Western world (not just the US, but western Europe as well) Something very odd seems to have happened when she got married and had a baby boy. Her intelligence and awareness seems to have been sucked away and she started writing fauxgressive drivel and in recent years even seems to have begun exhibiting mental illness- her paranoid essay about Sarah Palin and secret police squads last year being a prime example.

Sep 9, 2009 - 2:23 pm 26. Naomi Wolf finds support in Debate About Women’s Rights in the Muslim World « NewsReal Blog:

[...] here, and the other day Salon sided with Wolf here, prompting further rebuttals from Chesler here, and Glazov here. (And there are two feminists in support of Chesler [...]

Sep 9, 2009 - 4:01 pm 27. jay:

Can’t y’all just settle this dispute with a good old fashioned catfight?

Sep 10, 2009 - 6:23 am

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