Maajid Nawaz LBC- feminists are abandoning ethnic minority women and their causes for first world problems

[crystalgall]

Anyone listening?

He cites a story about a 17tr old black Muslim girl who was forced into an apology by Muslim fundentalist men online for being filmed dancing in the streets (twerking) while wearing a hijab.

He suggests that no feminist outlet commented on the story and that in general feminists are focusing on first world issues (he mentions the transgender issue and then Emma Watsons boobs and the academic who made a joke and was then fired? I don't know that story) and not engaging in supporting ethnic minority women in this country enough.

[crystalgall]

Sorry was out.

His show was on at 1.30 ish. Will transcripts be out yet?

On another note he was horrified by the story and very very strongly condemned the men and radical
Islam and spoke at length about the treatment of the girl.

But he then turned to the idea about feminism and the need for more support for women like this above 'first world' problems. He made it a race issue by claiming that 'white' issues are more of a focus and feminism is letting down ethnic
Minority women.

[crystalgall]

I mean he was almost daily
Mail in his omg is this GB 2017/ What is this country coming to rhetoric. He called the online apology an Islamic inquisition and the first Of its kind in the U.K. He called it chilling and that it freezes the blood.

It was all a bit OTT tbh.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

What outrage? You are exaggerating. I asked if any one had seen any feminist commentators making a comment on this ? As mentioned I don't subscribe to any social media- I expect that is unusual on MN so I hadn't seen it so I would have missed it.

Apparently no one has seen any feminist commentator writing about it. I personally find it a surprising given the amount of feminist blogging and v blogging which is made on trans issues. It seems surprising that this event, with a million YouTube views and reports on mainstream media, still didn't provoke any feminist commentator to pen anything. Goodness knows there are 100s probably 1000s of MNetters who don't read the Mail but still post links to articles which offend them.

The majority of posts on this thread have been criticising him. Talk about shooting the messenger.

We still don't know what exactly he is supposed to have said that is critical of feminism. We do know that he was very critical of the men and other Muslim men who attacked her; he often is critical of Muslim men.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

He called the online apology an Islamic inquisition and the first Of its kind in the U.K. He called it chilling and that it freezes the blood

It was all a bit OTT tbh

Really? That is your reaction? I agree with him. I think it is absolutely outrageous this girl was forced to apologise.

[Bundesliga]

I agree with him as well and his outrage at her forced apology.

However he has zero remit to address white feminists and their "failed" agenda (whom ever they may be).

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

The first thought that came to my mind was that the reason he didn't criticise the abusive muslim men was because he would be accused of racism and Islamaphobia

He did on Facebook and he was accused of that.

Feminism is a political movement- he has as much right as I have to question it.

[Prawnofthepatriarchy]

One of the key messages I took home from yesterday's feminist event in Cheltenham was Maryam Namazie telling us that women must show solidarity across race and culture. We should not be deterred from speaking out on FGM and many other issues for fear of being accused of "white feminism". She said that "white feminism" was a tag used to divide women and to silence us.

[Bundesliga]

*If he wants to use his position to bring more attention to issues affecting ethnic minority women, that's great. Feminists of all ethnicities will applaud and support him.
What he doesn't get to do is to use it as an opportunity to demonstrate his manly superiority over those silly women and show us how he can do feminism better than us - he needs to look at the politics around his doing that.

I am entirely prepared to have my feminism critiqued by other women. But not by men who are oblivious to the privilege with which they speak.

[Bundesliga]

It would not be dissimilar to me, a white woman, telling black activists they are doing it wrong and tasking them with sorting out the problems that affect me.

[PlectrumElectrum]

But what is it that you are questioning lass? The lack of feminist moderation on social media?

[brasty]

Agreed OP. Most feminists are too scared to criticise Islamists, and that coerced apology was shocking.
As Maryam Namaze says about the veil - Don't tell me that woman chose to wear it, tell me what is right.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

But what is it that you are questioning lass? The lack of feminist moderation on social media?

I am not particularly questioning anything beyond the fact this man, discussed a rather frightening incident, which apparently has gone under the radar , and apparently, in doing so made a comment about mainstream feminism ignoring these issues, and the main subject of this thread has been criticism of him- not the incident he criticised.

There are countless threads on here about every mad utterance from transactivists but this appalling incident in Manchester wasn't picked up on by any of the feminist cheer leaders.

I do find the OP's subsequent criticism of him that his reaction was OTT very puzzling.

[PlectrumElectrum]

So who are the feminist cheer leaders you think should know about this & comment? If you don't use social media how do you know who has & hasn't commented?

[VestalVirgin]

And taking a story about a Muslim woman being treated badly by Muslim men and turning it into a story about feminists being crap stinks of patriarchy to me.

Indeed, indeed.

He doesn't get to tell women how to feminism. He can fight patriarchy himself, and do it better than feminism, if he wants to.

Perhaps feminists are focusing on "first world issues" because the women in misogynistic shithole countries do not dare be feminists, and feminists from other countries simply do not know what is happening there, because they do not want to travel there, because they do not want to be attacked by Muslim fundamentalist males.

Just a thought.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

So who are the feminist cheer leaders you think should know about this & comment?

If you don't use social media how do you know who has & hasn't commented?

As the OP didn't bother leaving any information about what she was talking about I googled it.

I found his Facebook page and articles on Breitbart , the Mail and The Record and similar. I found nothing from say Berns, Glosswitch, Everyday Sexism.

He cites a story about a 17tr old black Muslim girl who was forced into an apology by Muslim fundentalist men online for being filmed dancing in the streets (twerking) while wearing a hijab

The OP made no comment on or link to the incident- as if his making a criticism of feminism is more worthy of comment than the actual incident he was talking about.

He suggests that no feminist outlet commented on the story

And, given the Google results I got, he seems to be right- apart from this one which is more concerned in criticising him.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

And taking a story about a Muslim woman being treated badly by Muslim men and turning it into a story about feminists being crap stinks of patriarchy to me

Again shooting the messenger.

He made this comment today -he has been writing about it, and criticising Muslim men since it happened, yet the premise of this thread is to criticise him, without even mentioning the incident. And then to further criticise him for being OTT.

Maybe I'm not very good at Google but he is right- there seems to have been no feminist commentary on this.

[M0stlyBowlingHedgehog]

Okay, the incident (assuming it went down as described and I see no reason to doubt that) is appaling. However, I don't read Breitbart because it is not a news outlet, it is a propaganda website which distorts and fabricates news to push its own agenda. Nor do I read the Mail, because it has form for being "economical with the truth" as well. I regularly read the Guardian and Telegraph, and I haven't seen it covered in either of the latter.

Now in a sense the Guardian is as guilty as the Mail of being economical with the truth, particularly when it comes to any clash between women's rights and what it perceives as the risk of inflaming racism - it will under-report or selectively report to the point where its reporting does become a dangerously misleading distortion of the full picture (for instance its reporting of the attacks on women in Cologne, New Year 2016, where at one point it was understating the number of attacks by a factor of 10 relative to the Telegraph, the Washington Post and the Frankfurter Algemeine). But I haven't seen the Telegraph report this either.

So I'd like to ask how I can get outraged by something that I haven't seen reported by any reputable news outlet? Now I know about it, I agree it's appalling - but I repeat, how am I supposed to know about it if I'd have to trawl through the Mail to find it? (I refuse to give Breitbart the clicks).

Also, what's the betting that this is the classic bait and switch? If white feminists had commented on it, what's the betting someone would have jumped on us for being racist and not sufficiently intersectional, and not understanding different cultural frames of reference.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

Now I know about it, I agree it's appalling - but I repeat, how am I supposed to know about it if I'd have to trawl through the Mail to find it? (I refuse to give Breitbart the clicks)

Of course no one on MN ever sees anything that is reported on the Mail. Yeah right. There is a new thread in the last half hour referring to a Mail article. Mumsnet and FWR seem to have very little difficulty accessing the Daily Mail.

You are also ignoring my point the OP thought it was far more important to alert us that he was criticising feminists than tell us what he was actually talking about.

but I repeat, how am I supposed to know about it if I'd have to trawl through the Mail to find it?

I googled him and got his Facebook take on what happened if you can't bear the taint of the Mail.

I do not agree he is not entitled to be critical of feminism just because he is a man.

I am a woman and I think it is absurd that once this incident has been made known that a poster thinks the most important point is to complain about a man talking about feminism, yet completely ignore the incident he was talking about.

[M0stlyBowlingHedgehog]

Lass, I actually tend to agree with you on a lot of things. But here you're working yourself into a right lather over something that was not widely reported. How were we even supposed to know to google it in the first place if it wasn't reported in the reputable news outlets? It's all getting a bit Rumsfeldian and "unknown unknowns" here.

Now I do know about it I am quite in agreement with you that it's terrible. But what am I supposed to do? What sort of google search do you suggest I conduct on a daily basis? "Unmentioned news items from obscure sources that might possibly cause a feminist to be outraged"? I try to keep on top of the news - hence my subscriptions to the Telegraph and WP, but this one, for reasons I've explained, didn't hit my radar.

And I'm not the OP btw.

[TheCountessofFitzdotterel]

The op was asking for comments on the presenter's take on it, not the story. I am at a loss as to why Lass appears to be scolding us for discussing the point raised in the opening post, which is an interesting issue and worth discussing. Why didn't she just start her own thread about the initial incident rather than telling us off for not derailing this one?

[Bundesliga]

Yes, this is the whole point of the thread - the comments directed to feminists, not the story itself.

The story itself is appalling and a clear picture of misogyny and patriarchal oppression. It's appalling. I do follow quite a few activist news sites and have lots of friends who are acitivists - this did come across my radar but I just cannot remember through which source. And I've looked and can't find it.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

Why didn't she just start her own thread about the initial incident rather than telling us off for not derailing this one?

I am asking why the OP didn't think the incident was worth anything more than a mere aside?

I am querying why she thinks that is more important than criticising the journalist who brought it to our attention?

. He is not, according to posters on here, allowed to criticise feminists. I am a woman and I think he is absolutely correct and indeed this thread vindicates his position.

How were we even supposed to know to google it in the first place if it wasn't reported in the reputable news outlets?

How do the articles in the Mail critical of trans issues find their way on to MN and FWR? No one apparently reads the Mail.

The OP apparently could not Google the incident for more information, once it had come to her attention, as point scoring against a male journalist was more important.

And actually Countess , given what he wrote on Facebook and the reaction from the OP (OTT) and others, I think he was right in talking about the story and he is right about certain aspects of feminism. To approach this story in the way the OP did is the feminist equivalent of counting how many feminists can dance on a pin head. There, that is me responding to his take on the story.

[Bundesliga]

He directed comments to feminists criticising feminists.

A few people discuss his comments directed towards feminists on a feminist board.

The feminist board discussion is criticised for being wrong for discussing his comments directed towards feminists.

It's really quite absurd.

[LassWiTheDelicateAir]

"Scolding"- I wonder how many times I've seen comments on here that women are told off for being scolds and how dreadful that is.

But here you're working yourself into a right lather- maybe I should calm down?

I find this thread utterly bizarre- he brought the issue to the OP's attention who then goes on to prove his point by focusing on him rather than what happened.

[Bundesliga]

His comments to feminists were not about what happened! How can you not see that?

He criticised feminists for focusing on the wrong things.

(A few) Feminists are now discussing his criticism of feminists.

Is this hard to grasp? I genuinely am at a loss.

Or are you expecting a press release on "what happened"?

Feminists have been working tirelessly against slut shaming for years.