I think that just about sums it up, doesn't it? (I posted part of this as a comment at LP too.)
And despite what Paul Sheehan seems to be suggesting, misogyny and rape aren't limited to Middle Easten cultures or Muslims. What does a group of teenage boys urinating on and sexually molesting an innocent young girl, and then selling the DVD they'd filmed of the incident, say about certain elements of mainstream white culture? And do I have to mention Diane Brimble?
I'm not, for one second, claiming that many elements of Islamic culture and many Middle Eastern men (and women too) aren't severely repressive and bakcward when it comes to women's rights -- and I do think many of us in the West have come a helluva way from the days when it was okay to beat your wife with a rod as long as it was no thicker than your thumb.
But, as Paul Sheehan says, the charade is over: rape, violence against women and misogyny aren't just problems of some dark-skinned other who practises a funny religion. They're the problems of humanity.
Nor is this story cheery reading for those of us with a vested interest in gender equality:
The survey, conducted for the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, is part of a wider report, Two steps forward, one step backward. It found 40 per cent believed rape resulted from men's inability to control their need for sex, and half believed, despite the lack of evidence, that women falsified claims of domestic violence to gain a tactical advantage in custody battles.
Michael Flood, a researcher at La Trobe University and a contributor to the project, said: "Too many people believe men are uncontrollable sexual beasts and women are liars and temptresses." Men, especially from migrant communities and those with traditional views about gender roles, were more likely to have "violence-supportive" views.
...The rise from 9 per cent to 20 per cent in the numbers believing women are as likely as men to be perpetrators of domestic violence was an area where views had hardened, despite contrary evidence.
Dr Flood attributed the change to campaigns by men's rights groups. "Men and women are supposed to be equal so it is comforting to some to assume they are equal in assaulting their partners," he said. "But it is a myth."
The survey also showed one in four believed domestic violence could be excused if the perpetrator was genuinely remorseful.
One one hand, we have the Sheik equating women to meat and saying that men are like cats who can't control themselves. On the other hand, we have a study claiming that a substantial minority of the general Australian population thinking that men just can't control their need for sex and that's why they rape women.
It stems from a primitive, specifically pre-phenomenological perspective. A sophisticated perspective admits, "I have such and such a feeling, which comes from my appetites. It is my own feeling, specifically, and it is my own body and mind which creates this feeling. My feeling may be directed to an objecto 'out there' but it originates with me, and I am ultimately responsible for how I deal with it."
A much more unsophisticated -- primitive -- view does not factor in this element of understanding which comes from sophisticated phenomenology. To the unsophisticated primitive (as you rightly point out, dwelling in all "races"), if I feel something, it is because there is "something out there" forcing me to feel it. The reality that I am forced to feel something against my will is unquestioned. To feel an "external force" working upon one's thinking is to feel the only reality there is. Therefore, to feel lust for a woman is to feel her witchy-magnetic power acting over you and making you do stuff. Unsophisticated minds will not accept that it is not "her" who is causing this feeling, but one's own mental and emotional responses to her. They have no (or little) self reflexive capabilities. They don't analyse themselves as complex beings capable of controlling their wills, but instead move around "naturally".
--At lot of misogyny comes from male stupidity which has been naturalised as...well, "natural".
Posted by: Jennifer Cascadia Emphatic | October 27, 2006 at 02:07 PM
I think the title sums it up nicely!
Posted by: TimT | October 28, 2006 at 06:27 PM
Hey check this out, they're making 'Deport Hilaly' t-shirts now. Very amusing...I am tempted to buy one!
http://www.deporthilaly.com/
Posted by: Katie | January 16, 2007 at 08:43 AM