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I am appalled that Wiscon has rescinded the invitation to Elizabeth Moon to be Guest of Honor.
It is rude to take back an invitation. There is no explanation on the web site, so those who are not on LJ, not web-savvy, may have no idea what is going on. I have only a partial idea of what has happened myself.
Frankly, if they had rescinded the invitation right away, it would be more understandable. But at this point, it looks like, after saying they would not rescind, they bowed to pressure from factions that are, in my humble opinion, bigoted themselves. There has been a disturbing trend in the last year or so, of labeling, verbally bullying, and silencing people whose opinions are different from a particular clique. I thought feminism was better than this.
More important, these are people claiming to be feminist who are silencing a woman’s voice. This is unforgivable. She posted a piece of writing, as is her right, that many people disagreed with, as is their right. Disagreeing with what another woman has said, fine. But what ever happened to the other part, “I will defend your right to say it”?
Moon is an older woman who has expressed views that are different from women a generation or two younger. I think that ageism is a significant part of this debacle. An older woman who has expressed thoughts that do not match up to younger women’s’ opinions is being silenced.
I am aghast that people who call themselves feminists seem to be defending Islam, the most misogynistic of the so-called great religions. This is the religion that mutilates young girls, brutally kills women found with men not their husbands, requires women to completely conceal themselves, and in general makes women’s lives hell. Not all Muslims do all these things, but these are typical and widespread actions. (By the way, while this might arguably be religious bias, it is not racism. These are people who would kill me if I lived in their countries, for being Queer and a Witch.)
The worst part about this is the silencing, stifling divergent opinions, and the name-calling, banning and worse for those who don’t agree with the clique. I feel threatened, I feel afraid to speak up about this, lest I also be cast into the outer darkness. I’ve decided to speak anyway. This has been going on for too long. A pressure group has been dictating the terms of the discourse, and anyone who differs is, ipso facto, wrong. This means dialog and the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis, cannot happen. As long as we are fighting among ourselves, we are doing our enemies’ work for them.
I am very sad to say I will not be attending Wiscon in 2011.
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October 22 2010, 03:49:54 UTC 1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 04:16:26 UTC 1 year ago
I am curious as to who the "we" and "ourselves" in this is meant to be, exactly.
October 22 2010, 04:45:27 UTC 1 year ago
October 22 2010, 09:09:02 UTC 1 year ago
Her feelings are hers. Her feeling that she feels threatened is hers and it is understandable given the responses in this very post. Are you calling her feelings inaccurate, trite, or are they offensive?
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October 22 2010, 04:53:06 UTC 1 year ago
No one is silencing Ms Moon. She is entitled to continue to speak and to write and many will listen and buy her books. But to be a GoH is for a community to say "yes, I will pay to honour you", and quite a lot of us simply don't see why we should pay to honour someone who makes our presence in her space conditional.
October 22 2010, 04:56:16 UTC 1 year ago
Have you seen this video?
Do watch to the end. Think about which set of people you'd like to be identified with. Would you stand to one side? Pastor Neimoller wrote:
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
It's as true as it ever was.
October 22 2010, 11:36:33 UTC 1 year ago
Re: Have you seen this video?
Thank you for sharing the video. I have family members who need to see it.1 year ago
October 22 2010, 04:56:33 UTC 1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 05:41:32 UTC 1 year ago
I agree that it is a rude action to rescind an offered honor. I'm sorry that the community was forced to take that action to protect its members and values, but I think it's the only thing we could have done given Moon's failure to engage productively. I bought my membership for Wiscon 2011 today.
October 22 2010, 05:42:53 UTC 1 year ago
From my understanding of the process, the various WisCon bodies wanted time to thoroughly talk amongst themselves. Hence the delayed decision.
Ms Moon still welcome to come to the con, I believe the agreement to pay for her flight and hotel is still in place even. She is not being silenced.
If you honestly believe the things you have said about Islam above, than it is possible that you would indeed be happier at another con. As, I suspect, would Ms Moon.
October 22 2010, 05:44:11 UTC 1 year ago
You know, that's really quite painfully obvious. Does it strike you in any way at all as a problem?
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Are you for real?
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October 22 2010, 07:16:55 UTC 1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 08:09:30 UTC 1 year ago
Nor, if you are concerned about repression against Muslin women, should you be so eager to exclude them from WISCON by honouring someone who insulted them and their beliefs.
I have loved Ms Moon's work for years. I admire her as a writer and enjoy her wit. It doesn't make her behaviour on this subject any more acceptable..
October 22 2010, 08:24:10 UTC 1 year ago
"Enemies" indicates a decision to view people in a fixed state of opposition, rather than as people you can debate and learn with, and possibly teach not to hate or harm. This is a disturbingly unforgiving mindset. Considering the apologist argument you are making for Moon, I am also somewhat unclear and unnerved as to how you draw the line between people who are entitled to their opinions and open debate, and people who are categorically wrong and bad. And that is what you're saying. Unless you qualify it straight off the bat, enemies aren't ideas, actions or prejudices; enemies are people you try to destroy.
October 22 2010, 09:48:57 UTC 1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 09:42:28 UTC 1 year ago
... wow. Got intersectionality? Might I suggest you read Sojourner Truth's speech to the 1851 Women's Convention? The Combahee River Collective Statement? Anything by Audre Lorde or bell hooks? White western feminists have, over and over, thrown women of color (and queer women, and trans women, and....) under the bus to achieve their political and cultural goals. I want feminism to be better than *that*. I hope we can learn from our past and do better now, for all women, not just the ones who are politically convenient. I hope women with some degree of privilege (myself included) can get better at checking our privilege and *listening* when women with multiple marginalized identities tell us we are failing to stand with them - and that we are humble and brave enough to have the integrity to follow through.
I am aghast that people who call themselves feminists seem to be defending Islam, the most misogynistic of the so-called great religions. This is the religion that mutilates young girls, brutally kills women found with men not their husbands, requires women to completely conceal themselves, and in general makes women’s lives hell.
For real? You are considerably uninformed, and that brush of yours is awfully broad. Taken point by point: Islam was actually the *first* of the major book-based religions to affirm that women had any rights at all. Check it out. Female genital mutilation is a regional/cultural practice, not a religious one. Some conservative Islamic governments punish adultery horribly, as you say, but that's different from "Islam" per se. Some sects of Islam require women to cover their hair or faces; others do not. Again, some conservative Islamic governments require it, but that's different. Also, some Islamic women, including some Islamic feminists, choose to cover their hair and/or dress modestly as a mark of cultural identity; some actually find it empowering, seeing it as freeing them from Western beauty standards, leaving them to be judged solely on their merits and achievements. That was a little hard for me to wrap my head around, but hey, stretching is good for you! (Also, as no one has made me empress of the universe, it is not my job to issue decrees on what is empowering or not.)
Good rule of thumb for those of us with some privilege, be it race, class, gender identity, orientation, religion, whatever: if you feel attacked by third wave feminism, take a few minutes to consider whether it was just self-defense. Stop trying to win, stop trying to be right, listen, and think. It's okay to screw up. It's not comfortable, but it's okay to screw up, apologize, and do better next time. It is not okay, and not consistent with Wiscon's mission, to actively refuse to listen to and learn from your fellow travelers on this here feminist highway when they tell you that you are being hurtful.
October 22 2010, 09:50:03 UTC 1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 12:06:57 UTC 1 year ago
1) Islam, at it's founding was a massive step ahead for women, not just in the region, but in terms of any other religious/gov't group. For one example, Mohammand's 1st wife and primary financial supporter was Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, with whom he was monogamous with until she died and grieved bitterly when she did, hardly the act of a misogynist. Possibly as a result, and in comparison with the other extant religions and governments in the region, Islam was created with massive protections for women, such as the ability to hold property and run businesses, relatively easy divorce, and so forth. Of course, compared to today, it's shite, but back then it was a massive move forward for the rights of women.
2) In point of fact, none of the horrors -- and they are very real and ugly horrors, I make no argument about that -- are to be found in the Qu'ran. They are, instead, older than Islam, and picked up by those who converted, but kept their older tribal traditions, and even spread them -- a key tracker in the case of veiling, esp. Veiling was known to the Arabs, but only became intertwined with seclusion of women as other cultures moved to the forefront of driving the growing Islamic Empire(s).
This is not an apologia for modern Islam. There's too many Feminist Islamic scholars, like Mernissi, who can document too many horrific acts in history, leading up to today, for me to make that statement, for just one point. Yet there's a lot people miss, and the conversation you want to have (and have not at all engaged in the comments) cannot happen until you get out of the basic lack of understanding of the religion you claim to denigrate.
(more to come)
October 22 2010, 17:11:08 UTC 1 year ago Edited: October 22 2010, 17:11:24 UTC
This. Seriously. This. It is so frustrating for me to see these posts and "discussions" based on such limited myths and hearsay about islam and islamic history. It must be driving seriously knowledgeable people batty.
I know this is just something I hallucinated, cause it involves a progressive muslim feminist, but did you catch this video interview about women and islam with mona elhatawy? She even (shock, gasp) criticizes saudi arabia. And we all know *that* never happens!
October 22 2010, 12:42:20 UTC 1 year ago
Wiscon, as a con, had a decision to make. As someone who initially (before Moon deleted and demeaned her commentators) supported confronting her, I had the good sense to listen to my Muslim commentators, who underlined to me that doing so just might be useless at best. and at worst, was asking them to carry the emotional pain of dealing with outright bigotry.
For that's what this is. Shading it as a "religious" difference, given the history of how the West has seen the Near East, is bullshit of the highest order. It's, again, about the Damn A-Rabs, and the same fears that popped up in the 70's, among many other times.
I mean, we're talking about Islam as this all-evil force, right? So why, in the guise of the Ottoman Caliphate in the 16th century, they take in the Jews fleeing the Reconquista? I mean, they did support the Reformation (yes, that Reformation) for largely political reasons, but they also sought to find connections between Islam and the Protestant movement, as well (for example, the emphasis on talking directly to God/Allah), hardly necessary for just making political trouble.
This isn't white-washing Islam -- the above happened at the same time as the most intense and depressing levels of female sequestering and removal from the public sphere in all Islamic history (yes, worse that the modern Saudi regime). It's pointing out that it's more complex, and more deep, than Moon or you want to acknowledge, or even seem to be aware of. Islam is not a monolithic religion, and to deal with it as such renders any point you make moot, and shows a bigotry and ignorance that is not in keeping with Wiscon tradition.
It is you, and Moon, not those of us actively discussing and dissecting these topics, who shows themselves to be a "clique". We didn't delete comments. We didn't post a screed and depend on a friend to respond, ignoring comments. We didn't call in the Tone Police on folks we disagreed with. We called her a bigot because what she said was bigoted, just as I'd be sexist if I said something about "all women" that depended on ancient gender stereotypes and/or what I overhead on the Nightly News.
October 22 2010, 13:09:44 UTC 1 year ago
If this is your feminism, I do not want it.
October 23 2010, 22:07:42 UTC 1 year ago
October 22 2010, 14:16:45 UTC 1 year ago
I can't even believe you. Are you saying we must celebrate every thing every single woman ever says?
October 22 2010, 14:48:10 UTC 1 year ago
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October 22 2010, 15:58:18 UTC 1 year ago
But honestly, I don't think it is rude to rescind an invitation to a guest who makes a point of insulting and adding to the danger faced by some of your other guests. I think doing so is the least a good host should be expected to do. WISCON's hospitality towards Muslim and immigrant identified fans has been very, very cold these past several weeks.
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