However, as usual, Margaret Wente is at it again. This time, with an article entitled "How the feminists betrayed feminism"

You have to pay to read it online, or pay to buy a copy. Luckily, a wonderful woman on the PAR-L listserv has excerpted parts of the print edition. Here is what she captured.

"If you are unaware of just how bad things have got,
you can also consult the experts at York University,
which is so feminist it even teaches feminist
geography. Just in time for IWD, a helpful press
release promises fresh insights on how women are being
oppressed by globalization, by cutbacks in health
care, by the male business establishment, and by
non-inclusive pedagogies, whatever those are. If you
want an update on 'anti-racist, post-colonial and
transnational feminisms,' York's the place for you. "

and

"The trouble with these experts is that almost every
claim they make is wrong. What impoverishment? What
rise in racism? Women in the West, even minority
women, have never been more economically and socially
equal than they are today. Oh, sure, we still get
stuck with the child-rearing and the dishes. But
feminists must concoct increasingly exquisite
grievances to make their case. The vast majority of
women can only dream of oppression as exquisite as
ours... Capitalism and globalization have done more to
empower oppressed women of the world than all the NGOs
on Earth."

But it's worse.

I don't even look at the title of ms. wente's editorials. i just see her stupid face by her column and i know to stay away.

Since they never publish letters I write, I'm going to copy it here, so that at least someone will read it

Dear Editor,
It's funny that Margaret Wente says western values aren't the problem in the feminist movement.

The International Women's Day march on Saturday is being led by hotel workers from UNITE HERE, who are fighting for fair contracts with their globalized, corporate employers -- hotels like the Hilton and the Sheraton.

Wente says that the real problems come from other countries where capitalism is the most liberating force for women.

Here in Toronto, immigrant women are the ones who are being most oppressed by their employers -- huge corporations that undervalue their work.

It seems that the workers at UNITE HERE are being targeted by the forces that Wente says don't exist: racism, impoverishment, economic and social inequality.

I think that Wente is a cheerleader in the USian war on terr'ism, and she will use anything she can get her hands on to keep arguing that anything we do to those primitive awful people over there, wherever, is perfectly justified.

Implicit in her arguments, as in those of Bush and Blair (and their spouses, famously), or any number of trolls who have turned up on babble, is that they all of them have spent their entire lives up to this point deeply concerned about the oppression of women and gays in developing countries.

And by gosh by golly, they really really don't want to be dropping bombs on all those primitive people, but they will do it anyway, no matter how much it hurts, so that they can save all those women and gays in those faraway places.

They've just been dragged into all this because they are such good people, never thinking of themselves, and they can't bear to think that anyone else doesn't have the great freedoms and privileges that we all know is our birthright in North America.

Ok. Everyone up and cheering?

ask the dunce about all the refugees from the agricultural collapse in the countryside going to work in sweatshops, getting slapped and harrassed by the supervisors workign for subcontractors to the multinationals.

ask the moron about the "incomes" (as opposed to mere food and shelter in the countryside) that are spent on inflated room and board provisions in zero-democracy free-enterprise zones.

If there has been a correlation between capitalism and feminism, it doesn't necessarily prove anything.

quote:

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It's funny that Margaret Wente says western values aren't the problem in the feminist movement.

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Jenn, not only that, my reading of Wente this morning was that she was either deliberately or stupidly misunderstanding exactly what Judy was saying.

When Judy writes: "The gains we have made are threatened by the increasing impoverishment of women . . . the rise of racism, militarism and the security state; the monopoly of men on power . . . and the continuing scourge of war and violence against women and children..." I'm pretty sure she was not writing -- exclusively -- about women in downtown Toronto and Halifax. I'm pretty sure she was mostly writing about women in Africa and Iraq and Afghanistan etc.

Although, of course, there are plenty of women in Canada and the U.S. who fit into Judy's picture also.

Sexism is rampant -- here as well as in other places -- but I don't think feminists are to be blamed for the wars, the violence, the lack of education of women etc. -- either here or in other places.

As feminists, I think we have always believed that until all women are liberated, none of us is liberated.

ETA: skdadl, I can only get the first few lines - for the entire set of 684 words, I have to register. As if.

[ 07 March 2006: Message edited by: brebis noire ]

Oh, well. I had an issue with this closing para as well:

quote:

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Ms. Rebick says she deplores the rise of militarism and the continuing scourge of war and violence against women and children. Well, who doesn't? Maybe she's referring to Congo and Darfur and other lands where tribal warlords run amok and millions of people are dead. On the other hand, maybe not. Those places don't count, because America didn't do it.

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I spend my evenings ploughing slowly through serious writing about places like Darfur, and it is really becoming embarrassing to think that Canadian newspapers still pay people to write that stupidly and viciously about what is happening in Darfur, just because being a smart-mouth sells newspapers in Canada.

Wente obviously doesn't know the first thing about colonial history in Sudan. She doesn't know how the central government in Khartoum has been organized for a century, or how easily the current government learned to imitate British policies towards the southern and western regions of the country. She doesn't know; she doesn't care; they aren't like her, so they are stupid and expendable.

Although much appreciated when they provide her with a cheap debating point.

No, honey: Sudan isn't one of the places that the U.S. raped. The Brits did that one.

[ 07 March 2006: Message edited by: jrootham ]

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Originally posted by thwap:
If ms wente was worth talking to, i'd tell her that it is only average incomes that have been going up in developing countries. globalization has created greater inequality.

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quote:

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Perhaps from her lofty perch on the Globe s editorial page Margaret Wente cannot see the one million people, mostly women and children living below the poverty line in Toronto. She has probably forgotten Mike Harris s 21 percent cut to welfare that forced hundreds of single mothers to seek minimium wage jobs to try and feed their children.
It is true that life is pretty good these days for women like Wente so good that they are blind to the suffering of women around them. The sisterhood across social class that made the womens movement strong in the 60s ane 70s is gone. Another reason for the decline of the womens movement in Canada.

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quote:

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Yet, when it comes to women who really are oppressed, Western feminists have nothing useful to say. How can we help Afghan girls whose schools are being burned down by the Taliban, or women in South Africa who endure one of the highest rape rates in the world? What about the unwanted female children of rural India whose parents let them starve, or the millions of African women suffering from HIV-AIDS because of the deeply sexist sex habits of the men? And how can we help the millions of Muslim women who live under the worst kind of gender apartheid?

Sorry. If you want answers, don't call York or Ms. Rebick. They'll just blame Western imperialism.

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Originally posted by deBeauxOs:
Weeks ago, Wente wrote a feature story about how she jumped the queue to get surgery for a state-of-the-art hip joint replacement. It left a really bad taste in my mouth, because although the pretext for this "article" in the G&M was 'how one woman stood up to the system, asserted her rights and got the health care she deserved', it was really just all about Margaret and how manipulative and deceitful she can be to get what she wants. Smug and self-righteous about it, too!!

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Oh, it was a lot worse than that. That 'feature' is also part of a series in the Readers Digest, attacking the Canadian health-care system. It appears as a series of articles - not as opinion pieces.

Now, you may not care what RD has to say about anything... i sure didn't, until i realized how insidious is its campaign to Americanize Canadian thought. A lot - i mean, a really very large number - of honest, decent, not-terribly-well-educated but not illiterate people read that mag. And they believe it!

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white rabbit: I can't think of anything I share in common with women like Wente, Amiel and Frum. I see these privileged women as being in denial. They share men's perspective of the world and they are rewarded for that. They can't identify with women who had abusive childhoods or those who were sexually assaulted.

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quote:

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deBeauxOs: because although the pretext for this "article" in the G&M was 'how one woman stood up to the system, asserted her rights and got the health care she deserved', it was really just all about Margaret and how manipulative and deceitful she can be to get what she wants. Smug and self-righteous about it, too!!

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It's seemed to me for some time that one of Wente's chief rhetorical strategies has been to say 'No one has the courage to say this but I.'

Wente's 'home truths' will challenge the 'received wisdom' of those the iconoclastic Wente will usually present as the high priests of the status quo.

Think a state-backed child care program is good for kids? Only Wente is willing to call a spade a spade.

Gang problems in Toronto? Only Wente is willing to cut through the PC foolishness.

The only problem is that, as the quotations from white rabbit and deBeauxOs show, Wente is almost never willing to admit her Diogenes act is being carried out from a point very far along the socio-economic equivalent of Archimedes' lever, out there where the influence is greatest.

Anyway, critical as I am of Wente in this post, I must thank her for her October, 2002 essay on the Bali bombing, because it showed me--as nothing else might have done--that Wente and other Globe columnists don't even share the same horizon of expectations as many Canadians, whatever false persona her columns may try to create.

Here, from my point of view, was the 'nut graf:

quote:

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As for the people of Bali, grieve for them, too. They're also blameless victims. Bali is one of the world's most special places, and the people (who are Hindu-animists) have retained their spiritual grace while adapting to modernity. Now this paradise is poisoned, and their tourist trade is wrecked. Please go there. They need us.

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The ordinary Canadian she regularly pretends to be in her columns?

You decide.

Edited to add this:

In my view, Wente's 'home truths' end up sounding a lot like 'condo' or 'mansion' truths.

[ 08 March 2006: Message edited by: sgm ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Ariel:
I would argue that Wente's column is part of a new anti-feminist trend that tells Western women that they have nothing to worry about anymore, and suggests that we should all suport the War on Terror as the "real" women's issue.

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All of Wente's collumns support the establishment status quo.

quote:

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Ms. Wente asks “What impoverishment?” “What racism?” do women of today face.
There is not a single country in the world today where women have the same opportunities as men, including Canada.
Almost 70% of the world’s poor are women. In Canada, too, women are more likely to be poor than men, and single mothers, as a group, are the most likely to face poverty.
Poverty is also more concentrated among people of colour, not only recent immigrants and Canadian-born descendents of visible minorities.
The Gender Equity Index (GEI), developed by Social Watch, documents how countries that implement active gender-equity policies are much closer to achieving gender equality than countries like Canada.
Australia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden rank high on the gender-equity list.
It is stunning that Canada, with its unrivalled record of federal fiscal surpluses for nine years running, failed to make it to the top of this list. But there is an explanation. Instead of investing our surpluses to give women the supports they need to make it on their own – like quality child care, affordable housing and education, and income supports – Canada’s governments chose to implement a record level of tax cuts.
Sadly, it was our governments, not our feminists, who betrayed women in Canada.

Armine Yalnizyan
Author, Social Watch Canada
Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

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quote:

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Originally posted by Toedancer:
I enjoyed Nancy Peckford's response to Vente's article. Nancy Peckford is the Director of Programs for FAFIA. I'm not sure if it was published anywhere else. This is where I found it.

http://dawn.thot.net/iwd_2006.html

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These right wing women who live charmed lives are whores to rich, powerful men. That's all.

I would never wish for something unpleasant to happen to them. But unfortunately, that's the only
thing that could open their eyes, and minds.

I agree with the upthread poster who says that Wente is not really interested in feminism. I was ambivalent when I read her column yesterday. Everything she says is obviously tripe, and I can hear my feminist friends and colleagues asking me why I even care. On the other hand, I think feminists are hurt badly by the kind of caricaturing Wente does of important social and political movements.

[ 08 March 2006: Message edited by: Khadija ]

quote:

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Dear Editor,

As a York Geographer whose work has been influenced by feminist principles and theory, I found Margaret Wente's broadside against feminism (March 7) to be both ludicrous and deeply offensive. Not only did she get some basic facts wrong (i.e., wealthy rather than poor women in India actually resort to female foeticide) but also displayed an enormous arrogance towards those who have sacrificed their lives for progressive social change.

In particular, Wente went out of her way to attack feminist geography as a subject, reflecting a willful ignorance of the immense contribution feminist theory has made to the field of geography. Her diatribe seemed to reflect a desperate need to settle political points rather than contribute anything substantive to the field or make sense of a complicated world where issues are rarely black or white. It is a credit to feminism that it has been able to grapple with the nuances of societal differences across the world, as opposed to prescribing to a one-size-fits-all model that echoes the abrasive and judgmental variety of false feminism that Wente seems to prefer.

That her column then takes on the air of an apologia for imperialism only further detracts from her already odious Western supremacist views that sees all other societies as inferior. As such, it seems that Wente wants to celebrate the inverse of International Women's Day by imposing her own prescription in an imperious manner, no matter how high the body count or how great the destruction carried out in the name of democracy, women's liberation, and the war against terrorism. Closer to home, she completely ignores the struggles of working women whose bread and butter issues are indeed feminist issues. At least she should have watched "North Country" to get some clue to what's happening out there!

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All three indeed sound like brave and independent women, and they indeed face possible danger merely for speaking out on behalf of women's and human rights. (Slight qualification in the third place: Van Gogh certainly did not deserve to be killed, but few deny that his take on Muslim culture in Europe was radical and racist; and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, his collegue, certainly does not deserve the death threats she is getting, but again she has become a poster-girl for right-wing Islamophobes.)

In any event, profiles of such women would always be welcome, except Wente has framed them competitively, as the "feminists of the most courageous kind." We should honour them, she says.

Well - don't we? Anyone present not honouring them? And it seems to me that in each case, considerable honours have been achieved.

As before there are two nasty implications: one, that women working for women's and human rights in this country are doing somehow less honourable work than these legislators and pundits; and two, by implication, of course, that the only oppressive patriarchs left in the world are Muslim men.

Once again, if someone could link to the full text, that would be good: on the Globe site, the column is behind the subscription wall.

[ 09 March 2006: Message edited by: skdadl ]

If her whole raison d'etre is transferring the pernicious American thought process to Canada, I'm sure Wente has a jolly laugh when the aggrieved bombard her with letters rife with statistics and facts. Liberals argue with statistics and facts - conservatives argue to the baser insecurities of the average person and they smile when they know how far statistics and facts bore their intended audience or are taken as lecturing to the ignorant masses.

You have to admit, her writing is an art form honed in the states by many inclusing Michelle Malkin, Cal Thomas, Robert Novak, et. al. She really ought to get together with Mark Steyn, her brother in arms, and combine their rhetoric into a mecha-Godzilla of capitalist triumphalism.

To argue against people like Wente with statistics is futile, IMO. I've seen the failure of such tactics down here. The average person would rather listen to Limbaugh thundering about nonsense than AL Franken patiently recounting statistics and facts until our ears glaze over.

I find columns like this infuriating in their arrogance, but that arrogance is speaking to the zeitgeist of the kind of people who read the Globe and then step over the undeserving on the way to their Bay Street jobs. The minions of the masters love this shit because it reinforces all of their smug prejudices - the world is as it should be - the rich are rich because they are righteous within the system and the poor are poor because they resist capitalism and have not agreed to their assimilation. People around the world must learn to submit to the Borg of the Bourse in order to learn and practise their rightful role. If they resist, they must regretfully suffer the consequences of building a better world. For the deserving.

An example of this kind of thinking from her column:

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Chinese girls who escape the serfdom of rural life to make goods for Wal-Mart are far freer and better off than their mothers ever were.

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Translated - its is better to be exploited by the grand daddy of all exploitative capitalism than it is to be exploited by the drudgery of collectivism. Tell me really Margaret, how this 'example' of your argument really is any better off? One goes from working as an agrarian to a working as a tool and that, of course, is a rise in station, eh? Perhaps one day your "Chinese girl" can aspire to be a forewoman (you would not say 'foreperson, of course), provided they don't muck up the system by trying to do anything evil like form a union.

long, long, sigh.

I always find it amazing that people like Wente who have probably known no deprivation in their entire lives can casually toss out references to "Chinese girls" as if they can ever really know what its like to be one. They are not real people to Wente, of course, they are tools, units, at best, human resources.

I would argue from the perspective that the global free market capitalism that is pushed by shills like Wente is really just another form of slavery. I think many progressives do argue that but dance carefully around (at least in the states) possibly being tagged as a 'socialist' or some other kind of 'red.'

I also think that as we revisit the late 19th century sweatshop floor writ global, that more people will be amenable to that appeal and it should be made proudly and with force. What the hell do we have to lose at this stage?

No doubt those women are courageous, but why is she singling out only repressive Muslim regimes and western Muslim fundamentalists? In Eastern Europe, feminists face great danger by fighting the trafficing of women, and abortion-rights and lgbt activists have faced violence and death threats from fundamentalist Catholics in Poland. There is a veritable war on women, particularly Aboriginal women, not only here but in Mexico and Guatemala...

When Judy and I were young activists, we certainly knew our comrades in (Western, European-culture, Catholic) Chile and Argentina were in far greater danger. But feminists and women fighting for "bread and butter issues" have certainly faced threats and danger. When I was in the leadership of a new union organising to fight for a first contract in a pink-collar ghetto, all of the members of the executive committee were arrested and we ran up against a lot of death threats and thuggery from "security guards"... The women supporting the Morganthaler Clinics and fighting for abortion rights were constantly badgered and threatened by prolifer goons...

Wente makes me utterly furious. And she does seem to be part of a trend - only spokeswomen for the powers-that-be among middle-aged women journalists, and only fluff-writers among the younger ones. Exceptions such as Heather Mallick are forced out...

[ 09 March 2006: Message edited by: lagatta ]