In the West and especially in the United Kingdom, International Women’s Day on March 8th is a bit of a joke. What should be a day to celebrate women’s achievements and call for greater equality in those parts of the world where there is none, is in the UK instead a day for middle class Leftist women, who already have masses of advantages in our society, to whine about ‘muh oppression’. It’s become a day for rich women with a sense of self entitlement to bitch about non-existent problems such as the gender pay gap and, to make outrageous and unrealistic demands such as gender parity on the boards of blue chip companies. For me though what bothers me the most is that for Western Feminists, International Women’s Day has morphed into a day when these rich feminists wrapped up in their first world problems, do their best to ignore the uncomfortable truth about the plight of women trapped in societies dominated by gyno-hatred, places like Pakistan.
In Pakistan, International Women’s Day is a completely different beast to what it is in the UK. There the issues that Pakistani women are trying to deal with are not relatively minor ones or false ones like the Gender Pay Gap, but are matters of life and death. The issues that Pakistani women face from the misogynistic culture that Islam has created there are legion. They include marital and non marital rape, forced marriage, enforced servitude, forced conversion to Islam, poverty, lack of basic rights and women being treated by Pakistani Islamic society as having the same social value as a piece of livestock. It’s the sort of society that would send many Western Feminists screaming and running for their safe spaces.
In Pakistan it seems that even holding an International Women’s Day march, something that goes virtually unremarked in the West, is dangerous. Such events inevitably attract a violent reaction from Muslim men who hold a hard-line view of a woman’s place in Pakistani and Islamic society. This year’s experience for those marking International Women’s Day has been no exception. According to Fox News (h/t ROP) IWD events in Pakistan were attacked by Islamists throwing rocks and shoes.
Fox News said:
Islamists in Pakistan’s capital Sunday hurled stones, shoes, and other objects at people participating in International Women’s Day marches.
The event, joined by both men and women in Islamabad, was one of dozens held around the world to commemorate the cultural and political achievements of women.
The Red Mosque brigade, consisting of conservative elements and a Taliban-affiliated religious party, staged a counter protest across the marchers’ venue, Reuters reported, citing District Deputy Commissioner Hamza Shafqaat.
Authorities held off the Islamists as they tried to attack the Women’s Day marchers, police official Mazhar Niazi said.
Some allegedly threw stones, bricks, sticks, and shoes at the marchers. Niazi said no arrests were made, but a criminal case is pending for those who violated the law.
Rallies were held in other cities in Pakistan, despite petitions filed in court seeking to stop them. The opposition was stirred in part by controversy over the slogan, “My Body, My Choice,” used in last year’s march.
When I see how the demonstrators for women’s rights are suffering at the hands of Muslim men, it makes the sorts of problems that western feminists whine and moan about seem paltry by comparison. These women and their male allies in Pakistan, risk much to call for the seventh century position of women in Pakistan to be brought into line with these more civilised times. They have to face an opposition that is harsh, violent and uncompromising, something western feminists never have to face in the modern West.
I have no argument with equity feminism, nobody with the required competences should be denied an employment opportunity or a particular position in society because they are a woman or a man, for me that’s a basic requirement for a decent society. However the Western intersectional feminists have gone beyond equity and have become a bit of a cult that catastrophises comparatively very minor issues, indulges in pointless navel gazing and too often ignores the plight of women in places like Pakistan. I’d like to think that one day Western feminists will turn their attention to the horrific plight of women in places like Pakistan and help them to rise from their pit of despair, but after observing Western feminists for a number of years, I will not hold my breath waiting for them to do so.
