Ghandi, Aung San Su Kiy and other arseholes

So the Pankhursts and Millicent Garrett Fawcett were failures forgotten by history? And Martin Luther King? And Wilberforce/Pitt?

When someone makes supposedly "free" people live up to their ideals, they prove more than one thing! But there's an urge of some kind to say "We're awful and there's no hope", which I wish we could suppress. There have been good and bad things and people, and we ought to recognize them all.

TT - You're kind of missing the point.

There has been many forms of community participation throughout history. But political history (and have a think who gets to write that) erases things that don't tally with the White Western Blokes Do It Better theory.

As feminists we know that women and their contributions have constantly been erased from written history, yet there seems to be surprise when it happens to other groups too.

Note also, the groups most often help up as being unlike "civilised Westerners" are often the people most screwed over by the West, the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australasia being big examples of this.

In a discussion group like this we have to make a point quickly and simply, or nobody will read it.

It's so easy to say "racism", but I think that some kind of democratic system is the only fair one to run a state, rather than a tribe. Yes, if that's enlightened and we're western, we're the "enlightened west" which others may not be, but we hope they'll aspire to it--and now we're enlightened enough not to do it for them at gunpoint. If we have excluded others in the past, it's an obvious contradiction to the democratic system, which can lead to a change in the right direction. I think there was a particular horror in the South African racist progression, that the group known as "Cape Coloreds" were initially included as voters, and were disenfranchised in the 1950s. At least some of those people lived to see that decision reversed.

I don't see how you'll ever get around the drawback that unless there's public discussion of issues and a means for individuals to influence government, there will be groups who are oppressed and silenced. Ironically, if there's racism (and there is, in many parts of the world) there's no way under that system to bring any attention to it or to halt it, so I'd be careful about using the word "racist". Not that any system run by human beings will ever be perfect, but there are better and worse ones.

Interviewer: Mr Gandhi, what do you think about western civilisation?
Gandhi: Oh, what an excellent idea!

(I'm sure that never happened.)

TeiTetua - "Western Democratic Tradition" Tradition for who?

That is a gross over-simplification of just how some form of democracy came to be in the West, and erasing the different ways communities elsewhere in the world discussed things.

See, I'm sure you didn't mean to be racist, your post plays into the stereotype of the "enlightened West".

Not meaning to go off on a tangent. But this is from the gospel According to Mary Magdelene

--------------

3. Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things.

4. He questioned them about the Savior: Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?

5. Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?

6. Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot tempered.

7. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries.

TeiTetua

I am arguing that maybe women in those societies did not need a public forum to discuss feminist issues as they were few and far between?

That maybe it was acceptable in those days to give birth to Jesus without being married and it was only later on that it was converted to being a 'virgin' birth. Maybe it was why there were lots of Egyptian Queens (Hepsetput, Nefertiti etc). Maybe this why the yin and the yang are recognised equally in Chinese tradition?

Maybe in the last 1000 or so years there has been a slow change and women are now 'fighting' back?

India now is a hotch potch of ideas and ideals. The diversity is huge. The difference between the rich and poor, the difference between the literate and the illiterate, the difference between the 'eve teasers' and the men who respect women. We will need another thread to get to the bottom of that I think!

Iran, afganistan etc is slightly comparable to the witch burning era of the west I think.

An issue that comes to my mind when reading this conversation (and similar ones) is the problems in teaching history and current events to children, particularly the usage of role models. Kids enjoy role models (and argueably need additional role models alongside real life and popular culture with all the problems that often brings when using people/characters in popular culture as role models), but what would anyone recommend doing in tackling the difficult issues raised -- in that people often used as role models often have big flaws as well as how other people that could be used as 'people in history' and the like are often overlooked (particularly women as well as other under represented groups).

SiliBiliMili.

The Cathars for sure, the Gnostic were branded heretics in early Chrisianity.

It's one of those telling things that it was women who whitnessed the resurrection, Magdelene, Mary ... not sure of the other weren't given voice.

Would love to know the Druid attitude to women , but they're history is lost ( I believe )

It's in the western democratic tradition that anyone with a grievance (i.e. women) has the right to bring it out into the public forum. Then there can be a free debate and a political process, and that's how the suffrage movement and later feminists achieved some progress, and agitate for more.

In other societies, there's no such thing as a "public forum" and anyone who raises an issue that doesn't fit with tradition, or the current whims of the rulers, gets slapped down fairly quickly. So there are feminists in Iran and in Saudi Arabia; it's not clear that they really have a complete agenda, but they hardly get a chance to organize or speak, so it's a mystery.

There are feminists in India too, and there they can speak, but it's obvious that they have a huge weight of native tradition to push aside-a tradition which was reinforced rather than weakened by the national hero Mohandas Gandhi.

Anyone ever hear what they call sexual harassment in India? It's called "Eve teasing".

That's true mrgin, last 600/700 years?

I really am over simplifying and ignoring lots of other things.

The attempt to sideline Mary Magdelen happened a long way back I think. I'm sure you know there is the Gospel of Mary Magdelen, left out of the Bible after the council of Niche (?).

The Gnostics and Cathars held her in v high regard I believe, included her Gospel in their teachings, and had a very different take on Jesus, God and his teachings. Much more egalitarian.

Then the Catholic church wiped them all out as heretics and reduced Magdelen to a prostitute, rather than the woman who whitnessed the resurrection and whom Jesus confided in.

I would argue also that it's only in the west we see a greater deal made of 'feminist' causes. Is this because in other cultures, women are looked upon in high regard. So or example, in 'true' Islam, Muhammad recognised the role of women/business women, in Hinduism, both the male and the female deities are revered equally, In African cultures, the matriarch is the one who has more say on how a family is run and day to dealings?
Is it only the recent western history where the Mary Magdalens are wiped from history and women are burned as witches?

Fair enough. I regret posting about Hitler actually, because I do think its a bit of a distraction. It's just plainly not true that feminists would have to regard him positively or neutrally just on the grounds of his not having victimised women. I don't think anyone has said anything that would imply that they would have to feel that way about him. (And anyway, his fantasy image of the role of Aryan woman does make him an anti-feminist.)

oaty I understand what you are trying to say but also see wicketys point that people may have seen hitler differently had he not killed millions of Jews, ethnic minorities, gipsies etc.. He maybe would have been Inconsequential.

What I mean is, you have to abstract too much from hitler, to the point where you are left with something quite generic, to get to anything of value, and so I don't think there is a plausible alternative history in which, with no war, he would have been viewed positively by history.

I think you'd have to add "... and had he not systematically persecuted Jews in a manner whose logical conclusion was attempted extermination ..."

--It's a bit like saying "If a sabre-toothed tiger had feathers and a beak and was small and ate weed instead of flesh it would be a duck."

Sure he pursued full employment and public expenditure to resolve economic catastrophe but so did Roosevelt, without the murder and racial fantasy.

wickety that sounds so much like the situation in Zimbabwe with Robert Mugabe. I suppose one can say that power goes to their heads. They become detached from reality and good council once they reach a certain height.
Mao too started off with good intentions and carried on and on to destroy china.

But I'd say that western feminism does incorporate plenty of analysis that gives full weight to race and/or class and/or other sources of identity and conflict. The strand of feminism that I think gets called "critical race feminism" or "third wave feminism" does that very consciously, and there are also socialist feminisms that have the same sort of plurality of explanations and of self-identities for women. Feminism that makes gender the sole explanatory principle, the sole ultimate source of oppression, is I think a minority view, just part of a family of feminisms all of which share the same aims but come to different analyses. I hope we can keep sight of this rich diversity.

Oh, I'm fine with counter arguments Whatmeworry.

It is personal attack, sniping and veiled insults that I object to.

I don't really see what the point of your last sentence is - but it sounds like stirring and more attack to me.

Goodness me, that's quite a litany for women who just wanted to have a discussion on MN about something

Ah yes - come up with a very radical proposition, don't take counter arguments kindly, and then accuse everyone of victimising you because they dared to disagree. Then threaten to flounce a few times.

Tut Beachcomber, that's so MN RadFem Old Skool :)

Oaty, I agree with your first sentence - acknowledging someone as great even when their contribution to women's liberation doesn't mean women to the back of the queue (although in Gandhi's case I'd argue his contribution was far more positive on the whole than neutral).

I have to say though that I do struggle with western feminist analysis at times, as I'm starting to learn more about it. While women suffer under a patriarchy, at the same time i expect most posters come from a society built on colonialism. That is, they will - indirectly - be benefitting today from the suffering of other races in other countries who served under the British historically. A different sort of 'archy' i guess (someone help me out with the right words). I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this but I suppose it's about recognizing that a person can be both oppressor (indirectly) and oppressed. Another type of intersectionality perhaps.

Now, on the other hand, if you want to talk about white men who fought against their oppressors, how about William Wallace (Braveheart)? Or how about the men of the French Resistance in WW2, who undoubtedly did great things yet (according to the font of all knowledge, Wikipedia) at the same time were pretty silent on the Vichy regime's policy of returning women to the home and largely confined women to subordinate roles in the resistance movement?

So well said oatie