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Notes -
Iran - US - Israel War Flareup
“Israel says it has launched attack on Iran, as explosions reported in Tehran”
“The US has begun Major Combat Operations in Iran” - Donald Trump (headline flashed up just now on my phone, no link yet)
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More to follow but thought I’d post quickly for any commenting.
The ultra feminists on hacker news are busy downvoting me after I pointed out that the way Iranian regime treat its women makes the regime the worse side compared to US and Israel. That is all one needs to know about the current situation honestly.
Probably because it's transparently a bad faith argument. I'm guessing neither you nor trump care that much how $arbitrary_regime treats women and even if you did, would never advocate for starting military action on any nation that basis. if you did care about the women, starting a war is obviously not the most productive way to fix that, nor is there any guarantee that the women will be better off afterwards.
So this war is not about the women and your attempt to collapse the whole issue into "better or worse for women" is a cheap rhetorical trick to paint your adversaries as hypocrites for opposing it.
Maybe the feminist angle is not what most right wingers really hate about Islam, but for me at least it is the main thing. I’m somewhat of a western chauvinist and one of the important ways the west is culturally superior is in how we treat our women. Islam’s treatment of women is barbaric and disgusting in and of itself because women are human beings, but it’s also disgusting to me because of how alien it is to my culture. I’m a basic women-are-people equality feminist (a right wing position these days I’m afraid). Maybe I’m not the modal right winger (I’m not that right wing), but while there could be some people from whom the feminist anti Islam line is bad faith, I assure you that it is a real motivating concern for some of us.
Yeah, that's a big element for me as well, plus the weird double standard; western rurals/conservatives having slightly-old-fashioned views about women and gays that they can't really enforce = disgusting bigots, but downright medieval attitudes enshrined in law and actual gay-bashing from slightly browner people is a-okay.
I actually find some Christian conservatives pretty off putting because of their views on women as well, however, I’m way more comfortable with them than with Muslims because Christianity is a much bigger tent and as far as I can tell the most distasteful Christian attitudes come from weird low church Christians who as far as I can tell are wrong about their religion. Meanwhile, I’ve read the Quran cover to cover and as far as I can tell ISIS is just mostly right about how to interpret their religion. Of course western Muslims lie to themselves and others about how bad it is (they translate “jihad” to “struggle” when translating the Quran which is obvious dishonesty because “jihad” is a word in English too), but the theological grounding for extremism is so strong in Islam that you can’t trust that a population of moderate Muslims won’t swing to extremism at some later date. The Middle East was way more chill about their religion 200 years ago, but the Quran says what it says, and it’s the revealed word of god.
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While we're inching closer every day, I don't think there's a major constituency for bombing Alabama yet.
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Calling it a "cheap rhetorical trick" is itself a cheap rhetorical trick to try to dodge a hypocrisy killshot. The alliance between Western feminist progressives and Islamic fundamentalists was always completely psychotic under any ideological framework other than "they just hate the West and don't believe any of their own bullshit". Rubbing their noses in it and taking the opportunity to diminish the extent that anyone takes progressive feminists seriously is points fairly scored.
Feminism is an instrumental criticism of fundamentalist Islam for American political conservatives. It is rightly seen as an instrumental criticism by people who disagree with American conservatism, but wrongly seen as 'not worth worrying about' by them. Women actually do have few rights under Islam.
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No, it's more like an attempt by you to satisfy yourself emotionally. To score points fairly you would have to distinguish between feminists who support fundamentalist Islam and feminists who do not, and you show no signs of wanting to do that even though I am sure you understand the distinction.
Yes, it's very emotionally satisfying to be proven correct.
Oh, I'm sorry, I must have missed that. Can you please point to the prominent progressive feminists who have been more critical of fundamentalist Islam than, say, the made-up, Iran-inspired Christian fundamentalists in the Handmaid's Tale?
Can you point to any who are showing any degree of hope for the current hostilities improving conditions for women in Iran? Or even a single progressive feminist who would rather see [women in Iran become more free plus Trump gets to count a win] than [thousands of women in Iran are massacred by their government, but Trump takes an L]?
Or if you don't like either of those framings, how would you care to distinguish those two groups? I am willing to be convinced that the latter exists. Make your case.
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So as long as I see feminists being fellow travellers for Hamas and for Iran, for Pakistani grooming gangs and Moroccan pickpockets, for shooters at the Bataclan and truck drivers at Christmas markets - it is a distinction without a difference. I have never heard a mea culpa from a feminist, about the Southport stabbings at a Taylor Swift concert. Even when girls are being killed and raped, they don't care because their overgrown mothering instinct sees brown people as babies who don't know what they're doing.
It's frankly insulting that you think that wordcel games like even matter in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary.
It's always 'but think on how it will affect the poor, innocent Muslims'. Norm Macdonald parodied this attitude thirty years ago, and your posture is exactly the thing he skewered. I don't know if you know this, but 'moderate' Islam is a spook. 'fundamentalist' Islam is just Islam, a liberal cope. We know it from the Muslims themselves that there is only one correct interpretation of the Quran and the Sunnah. The fact that feminists uncritically swallow lies about this is proof that no one should take them seriously.
Generally feminism is a class-interest movement for urban, educated, professional women in the west. That's why they don't tend to care very much about things like sexual assault in the military, third world oppression, grooming gangs, etc., but care a lot about college campuses or US men's only spaces.
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There is no world leadership of feminism, no feminist constitution. You are talking about feminism as if it is a monolith. This is simply not an accurate view of reality.
Men and women are different.
Different people have different interests [and different motivating factors], and vice versa.
Thus, the null hypothesis is that people who share the same biological conditions are going to act the same way. (Feminists already make this assumption when it comes to men having different interests, and they are correct.)
The extent to which this is true, whose interests happen to dominate, and if those interests should be dominant vary due to local conditions. There are some cultures where men and women have learned to get along, there are some that define themselves by actively refusing to, and there are some where the overriding concerns are more pedestrian, like "where's my next meal coming from?". Women in the 1st tend not to be feminist because they've figured out gynosupremacy is legitimately destructive, and women in the 3rd tend not to be feminist because failing to deal means you starve.
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And yet, feminists all remain on the same page; you would be hard-pressed to find any self-described "feminist" who is as critical of fundamentalist Islam as of the West. For that matter, I stuggle to think of any willing to publicly criticize Islam at all, and would expect them to be summarily excommunicated from the broader movement, even if it has no "Moma" with the formal authority to do so. Yes, crushedoranges actually does have an accurate view of reality.
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