India – Douglas Ernst Blog

In America today, the modern liberal feminist has a strange problem on her hands — the United States is light years ahead of much of the rest of the world when it comes to women’s rights. Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice, Meg Whitman, Nancy Pelosi, Ruth Bater Ginsburg, Janet Yellen, Sonya Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Megyn Kelly, Sheryl Sandberg, Michelle Obama, and Melinda Gates barely scratch the surface of the endless list of female role models — living proof of just how much progress America has made since its inception. The tendency of the modern American feminist to inflate legitimate concerns into insurmountable obstacles often makes them look silly.

Take for instance, feminist Suey Park. After recently calling her out for seeing white boogeymen where they don’t exist it was then intimated online and in the comments section of this blog that I was racist. What I didn’t get a chance to do while discussing Ms. Park’s fears of “structural whiteness” was to zoom out to 30,000 feet. Pulling back allows readers to compare Ms. Park’s problems with those of women around the globe. It allows us to see if limited time and resources are being allocated properly.

An example of what the modern American liberal feminist spends her time talking about:

But I also saw a lot of pressure to dye my hair lighter, wear color contacts, to wear Abercrombie jeans, to wear Ugg boots and Northface and it was all these symbols to make me look more white but could never make me white enough, which was really frustrating, so of course I took that out on my body.

As an Asian American woman you’re told that you have to be smart and pretty to be heard. And you have to be exceptional, and of course people want us to be exceptional, so it was hard for me because I did struggle with math and science and I couldn’t live up to the ideals of what my sister could.

And now, off to India:

Ms. [Preeti] Dhaka’s training as one of the capital’s nearly 1,000 female investigators couldn’t insulate her from Indian traditions that often conspire against laws meant to enforce women’s rights. After a day of protest duty on New Year’s Eve, she wrote a despairing note: Her new husband, unhappy that her dowry hadn’t included a car, “tried to motivate me to die.” …

Pressuring a bride or her family for wedding gifts is against a 1961 law passed in an effort to end dowry abuses. The dowry tradition persists, with a woman’s family often giving lavish gifts to her fiancé’s family.

Dowry disputes remain a prevalent cause of violence against women, usually by husbands or in-laws who think a dowry was too small. According to government crime statistics, nearly one woman was killed every hour in India last year over dowries. In Delhi, “dowry comes a lot” in police complaints by women, says Ms. Insan. “In the village, the girls don’t come forward. They prefer to protect the home.” …

On Jan. 12, her body was discovered hanging by a scarf from a ceiling fan in her husband’s quarters, according to a police report.

Police charged Mr. Mund, his mother and his sister with harassing Ms. Dhaka into killing herself and inflicting cruelty on her. They are awaiting trial.

The dowry persists. It looks like for all the legitimate complaints about the British Empire, India could use some more “structural whiteness” when it comes to women’s rights. (I would replace “structural whiteness” with “Western Civilization,” but for the purposes of this blog post we’ll stick with feminist jargon.)

In America, “pressure” to “wear Ugg boots” makes it into fawning Washington Post pieces on upstart feminists. In India, women still die over dowry disputes.

In America, “structural whiteness” causes so much pressure to be “exceptional” that feminists have turned it into an issue; in the Middle East, Islamic clerics issue fatwas on the legitimacy of raping non-Muslims in Syria:

An Islamic cleric has cleared the path for rebels in Syria, who are trying to oust President Bashar Assad, to rape women, so long as they’re non-Sunni.

Salafi Sheikh Yasir al-Ajlawni, who hails from Jordan but who lived in Damascus for 17 years, sent a message via YouTube: It’s a “legitimate fatwa” for Muslims waging war against Mr. Assad and trying to put in place a Sharia government to “capture and have sex with” Alawites and other non-Sunni, non-Muslim women, Human Events reports. Mr. Assad is part of the Alawites sect.

Americans should always strive to form a more perfect union, but it is also important for us to acknowledge that the system of governance put in place by our founding fathers is exceptional. Liberal U.S. feminists struggle (in large part because they’ve formed coalitions with perpetual race-baiters) to admit the greatness of the American experiment and, as a result, the credibility of their own cause continues to take a hits.

Remember: In Suey Park's world, only white people can be racist. Have fun trying to build a movement on that line, Ms. Park. — Remember: In Suey Park’s world, only white people can be racist. Have fun trying to build a movement on that line, Ms. Park.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll think I’ll read up on Policymic’s “Top 28 Iconic Feminist Moments of 2013.” Beyonce made the list. Who knew that prancing around as a sex object now constitutes coming out as a “proud feminist.”