On 11/4/06, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On reflection, I realized who fits Yoshie's caricature of the "male Western leftist" who wants to save Muslim women while being indifferent to family leave in the US: Barbara Bergmann, the "dean" of feminist economists in the US. She is frightened at the seepage of debased Southern gender relations into the US through immigration, and opposes parental leave, because it damages the career prospects of women. Of course she's neither male nor a leftist, but those are just details...
The Bergmann tendency no doubt exists among feminists in the West, where Islamophobia and anti-immigrant xenophobia are rampant. But the more common tendency among US feminists is to worry more about rape, incest, child abuse, etc. than parental leaves, public child care, universal health care, old age pensions, etc. What they are drawn to is women as victims, just like male leftists drawn to women as victims, except male leftists appear more drawn to third-world women as victims than Western women as victims. Both of them tend to like sexy, titillating topics, which parental leaves and the like aren't. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
