Latest / Infidels / Dissent Became Sin: How Feminism Turned on Muslim Women | Corinne Blackmer

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Dissent Became Sin: How Feminism Turned on Muslim Women | Corinne Blackmer · Infidels

• Richard Landes: We're here today with Corinne Blackmer, who is a professor of English and Judaic Studies at Southern. Corinne Blackmer: Connecticut. Richard Landes: Southern Connecticut State University. Who is a professor of English and Judaic Studies at Southern Connecticut State University? Now, Corinne, the reason that we're gathered to discuss this issue today is that we're dealing with the way that the feminist movement handled the fate of a whole range of people in the Muslim world, women primarily, but also homosexuals, various kinds of shall we say, what's the word? Corinne Blackmer: Freedom fighters. Richard Landes: Freedom fighters, marginalized and underrepresented people in those cultures. And so as you know Our friend Phyllis Chessler has documented a sort of massive betrayal of women in the Middle East and other, shall we say, sexual variants? what's your take on this? Corinne Blackmer: Well, here here's my take. I think from the beginning of the second wave of the women's movement in particular, I know far less about the i involved politics of the first wave of the women's movement, although I suspect things were better then. Richard Landes: Define define the second wave. Corinne Blackmer: Second wave of women women's movement came about in the late nineteen fifties, early sixties in response to a severe recruits of hatred of women in so-called liberal circles, where women ha came to be sort of demonized and a very, very severe sort of masculinist privilege arose. kind of in the way in anti censorship. We had a lot of pornography, a lot of blatant women hatred in and also the black community with the rise of like Afrocentrism. so this had not happened before and in response to this it sort of sparked the rise of the second wave of the women's movement against this kind of really virulent and very public woman hatred. And the second wave of the women's movement had enormous victories for women in the early years of it, perhaps only twenty years of the women's movement from the nineteen sixties to the nineteen eighties. With within the second wave of the women's movement, there was always this sort of problem with representation and the dissenting voices. for in for example, Betty Ferdan, who was a pioneer along with Phyllis Chessler in gay women access to professions, in ga representation, inclusion, accommodation, it was all across the board, Roe v. Wade, were attacked viciously. unnecessarily with unnecessary and kind of destructive viciousness for being Jewish. and also this happened particularly around representation of black women, the attack on white women. Again, there was a viciousness about it that was unnecessary. that i they could have just said, we need we're not being included here and they would have been included and recognized and respected. But became be This is a vicious attack. You're racist. You are, you know, you Jewish women don't understand it. And it was hateful. Okay, so that came into being and it wasn't necessary. so and then gay people, lesbians like me asked for representation and inclusion, but without the vitriol. Hey sisters, here we are, and we have this to add to the story. we wanted to be included in our project of liberation. so that happened. So and so but and that was a kind of a a good process but for for perhaps mixed until the eighties when things got strange and the women's movement became it it developed cancer. It was diagnosed, you know By some who are very observant, with a kind of a self-destructive vitriol, where you had now purity tests. You had this sort of and and it was all based around race and and and how the Jews had betrayed the women's movement. so the founding mothers were now viciously attacked by the by the end of the 80s. and there was some accommodation, there was a lot of demoralization within the women's movement. Women who had done incredible work about signal figures like Mary Wollstonecraft or in the American scene abolitionists were attacked for being white and having discussed black figures. and their scholarship was excellent. and because your spate now was a matter of you white women taking up black women's space. and it was that you know, on the one hand, I understood it, on the other hand, it was destructive. It was not the way. And you could tell even back then that it was predicated on a prior racism. Just and and unacknowledged racism within the black community against whites. okay, so that's the scenario. This is not applied to all black women for sure. But it is an element and it turns into anti-Semitism. Okay, by the nineties, the women's movement is kind of severely disabled, but it's still operant. You still have major critiques of genital mutilation, you still have major critiques of childbearage, of sharia law, and how they hurt women. and it is around two thousand that That is now defined. You have the emergence in that era, 2000, 2010, of Islamophobia as a trope. And the women's movement embraces it totally. And now it becomes taboo to critique anything about Islamic culture. so that and on top of that, okay, that that as a emergence, the second thing. that emerges is transsexual transgender ideology or gender ideology. and that happens a bit later. So what you have by the time you get to 2010, 2000 s 2015, a complete blackout, a women's movement that is really internally deeply disabled internally, that is no longer representing the interests of women. Either really in the United States or particularly certainly in the Third World, you have the reification of women in hijabs and how we have misinterpreted Muslim culture and that women actually have tremendous rights and we don't respect their cultural differences within those cultures. And so therefore, outside women's movement centers, you have the inclusion of women in hijabs and ongoing severe critique of white women and in particular Jewish women. Richard Landes: So so wait a minute, if I understand correctly, and I'm not sure I do because that's quite a genealogy you've given us, how is it that you have, as you pointed out, feminist critiques of genital mutilation and so on, all utterly appropriate. how is it that the D did that just disappear? The feminist no longer s talked about it because it was being critical of Islam and therefore Islamophobic? Corinne Blackmer: Yes, that's well it was worse than just it was just worse than just not talking about it. it was silencing them. let me give you another example. I have Richard Landes: Go ahead. Corinne Blackmer: a f a very good friend, her name is Massey Alinajad, and we invited her to Southern to speak. Now you well, I think everyone knows who Alinajad is, right? She isn't a major, prominent advocate for women's rights in Iran. and what she experienced over time, and she wrote this book called Windows My Hair about how the the insistent legal insistence that women wear a hijab in Iran was functioning as kind of the head of their oppress very, very systemic and very very horrible oppression of women. She all documented that her book and she she was when we first invited her a figure. But she was gaining prominence through her Instagram and Facebook accounts reporting from Iran. So invited her to campus. This was about ten years ago. ten, twelve years ago, excuse me. And she came with another Iranian activist named Roy Hazaki. And women's studies was asked to contribute to this event. And at that time they actually pitched in, I think, $300. and they made a contribution. they didn't attend, but they made a contribution. So we're still there on the edge. and and Hakaki and and Alina Jad have this amazing presentation at Southern. The next semester I assign a book by Ayan Hersi Ali again what's her name again Ayan Hersi Ali about the status of women In under Indo Islam and the incredible oppression and her story about having escaped Somalia and come to the Netherlands. And it's still okay. No one is telling me don't do it, or blackballing me for including her voice, which is a voice of critique of the status of women in under Islamic governments. Two years later, I put it on my Richard Landes: What year are we talking about now? What year? Corinne Blackmer: Huh? Well, no. I would say that I tried to teach Ayan Hersielli again about seven six or seven seven six or seven years ago. And I received major critique from women's studies not to do it, that she was Islamophobic and she supported Israel. And by that time That had become the grounds automatic to Richard Landes: Right. For cancelling. Corinne Blackmer: she to silence her, marginalize her, and demonize her, actually. The only places Ayan Hersey Ali can speak is conservative places. Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: she d she married w a very fine historian at right Richard Landes: Neil Show Neil Football. Corinne Blackmer: Neil Ferguson, and they appear on Hoover Institute. So and then I then Massei Alinijad was canceled from MSNBC and even CNN and can only appear on Fox News. So the right picked up women's rights in the problem of women's oppression in the Muslim world and it was no longer speakable in liberal media. Richard Landes: Wow. All right. So let me ask you a question that Corinne Blackmer: let me this first they orientalized or othered Muslim women that the left wing for this first move was that it represented the hijab was just a cultural difference. And that was the way they were. Richard Landes: Right. Okay. So now essentially what we're looking at is a situation, and you mentioned Ian here Siali, I actually have a couple of paragraphs in my book on the controversy of Brandeis in twenty fourteen. Corinne Blackmer: Yeah. yeah. Richard Landes: And and that was led by women's studies. And one of my questions to you is should we be Corinne Blackmer: Yeah. Richard Landes: distinguishing women and gender studies from feminism? Corinne Blackmer: Yeah, yeah, that's a good Yeah. At this point, yes. Richard Landes: So on the one right. So on the one hand that, but on the other hand, so here they are, they're turning on a black woman who was, you know, mutilated at birth, Corinne Blackmer: Yes. Richard Landes: who made it out, who made it to the West, who imbibed Western culture, ran for learned Dutch, ran for office in Holland. Corinne Blackmer: Yeah. Richard Landes: you know, is sort of like the poster girl of feminism and the gender studies people turn on her and and what I want to ask you is, you know it sounds like they're just taking orders from the misogynist Muslim men. Corinne Blackmer: Right, it does. it actually sounds and Iskap, that Jewish organization or certainly led by i is been trying to track down Qatari money in higher education in the United States. And either women's studies at some point I think we should and it should be looked into literally by you know our departments of investigation in the United States and ISCAP to track down at what point, if any, did women's studies literally become captured by Qatar? because there is this moment where prominent Muslim feminists, Ayon Hersia Ali, but there are many, many others, are exiled from the women's movement. And how they're represented is that they are and they're Islamophobic and they are pro-Israel and pro-Western. And that itself becomes a way of demonizing them. Ayon Herseli is completely demonized at this point. and other Muslim feminists, you're talking ha Afghan women are demonized. Are s they're not demonized, they're silenced, they can't speak. So all Richard Landes: So they're Corinne Blackmer: of that, yeah. Richard Landes: they're doing the work of the patriarchal misogynist Muslims. Corinne Blackmer: Absolutely. They're absolutely doing it. that is simply cultural difference. And everyone, everyone who the the the sin that Ayan Hersal Lee made was to say Western culture is good because it provides the foundations for women's liberation and that Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: women in the West don't have to have their genitals cut out. in their girlhood, don't have to wear itab, do not have to ascribe to any particular religious ideology in order not to be demonized, have freedom in their families and movement. She documents the what a woman, Islamic woman, has to do in Netherlands to escape from her family. It is amazing. She has to apply everything Go into this whole thing of subterfuge, acquire a new identity, and continue to hope that her brother won't track her down and kill her. This is the Netherlands. Richard Landes: All right. So yes, and it's throughout Europe, Corinne Blackmer: Yes. Richard Landes: and and in some places in the United States as well. So Corinne Blackmer: Yes, and Canada. Richard Landes: right. So so I I mean there's something bizarre here because you know, feminism and particularly by the eighties and nineties where you describe some of these internacene feuds, is very assertive with Western men. And yet and yet Corinne Blackmer: Yes. Yeah. Richard Landes: it just crumble before much worse than West Western men. Corinne Blackmer: Right, exactly. there's one I think there's one problem here, which exists Richard Landes: Yeah. Corinne Blackmer: in in American culture, a n unacknowledged problem in Western culture and Western feminism, and that is a very myopic view of the world. everything is about the United States and the West, and the Western world is not seen in a larger international context. For example, slavery. That kind of almost starts there. The West is seen as the chief demon about slavery. And they totally forget that it was the West that ended slavery, which had been and was a unbelievably well-entrenched international institution that covered most all cultures, including Native American cultures. And it persists in Arab cultures. And No one has ever really seriously investigated Arab slavery. you know, which d I think is that they still have slave markets in Mauritania. Richard Landes: Right, they're still are. Right. And and you know, we did a a day on the red green alliance at Durban in two thousand Corinne Blackmer: Mm. Yeah. Richard Landes: one. And one of the things about it was that here were people literally, as you say, demonizing the United States, demonizing Israel, the United States, because a hundred and fifty years ago they had slavery, and they're allying in their they're they're joining in their demonstrations with with people from countries where slavery is still being practiced. So all right, so we're dealing with Corinne Blackmer: Exactly. To me that's almost like the ground note of a Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: the failure to understand slavery in context. this has been you know s now called right wing. The minute you call someone right wing, you kind of dismiss them because you no longer have to deal with their what they're actually saying. the Thomas Sewell, the black ec economist and cultural historian. Richard Landes: culturalist. Corinne Blackmer: ha only has a voice through Hoover institution, maybe American Enterprise. So he's been only the right representatives. He's not seen as a central or cultural figure. he's just Richard Landes: Right. Same thing. Corinne Blackmer: now erased. says slavery has to be seen in an international context. And he does that. And and black response to slavery has to be seen in international context. And he provides so so many powerful arguments. He never he's not a feminist or anti feminist. He just he's a p a cultural historian of the concept of race in America and why there persists socioeconomic Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: disparity. he's demonic because he talks about the black family. So anyhow, it's a horrible situation. Black are Muslim women do not have a home within American academic femin so called feminism unless they support their governments. Richard Landes: So women's studies. Right. So now listen, y you know Benedict Beckeld? Corinne Blackmer: No. Richard Landes: He wrote a book called Oikophobia, which was a term that was coined by Roger Scruton, and essentially it means a loathing of your own homeland. Corinne Blackmer: yeah, that's yeah. Yep. Richard Landes: yeah. And and one of the striking things, and I think it was Well, certainly Phyllis, but also a woman named Patai, I forget her first name, Corinne Blackmer: Yes, yes, yes. Richard Landes: alerted me to this, that that in feminist circles the the oikophobia is just ferocious, that that their hatred of the culture that actually liberated them and gave them a voice is so powerful. Now, how do you explain that? Corinne Blackmer: There has been, I I you know what, I I need to study that more, think more about it. It is so prominent, almost I would I would call it like a feature of Western culture that has emerged since World War II, that is self-hating and that eats itself and that has contempt for the good things it has done. and that abandons them to this discourse of American imperialism, racism, and it it shuts down everything else. and it it's Richard Landes: you Corinne Blackmer: it's very harmful. I want to stop because you're hurting black people, you're hurting women in your country and worldwide, you're hurting gay people, you're hurting dis Richard Landes: Right. You're hurting all the scanning in some. Corinne Blackmer: political dissent in other countries. You are telling Muslim moderates. who want to reform Islam and Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: enter into the modern world to either they don't talk to them and they tell to shut up. So they've been marginalized. Richard Landes: Wow, so now wait a minute. Right. So i in a sense you're describing there was an famous article from the Frankfurt School called the authoritarian personality. And one of the Corinne Blackmer: yes. Yeah. Richard Landes: aspects of the authoritarian personality is that those who there's a tendency on the part of people who yield to the authoritarians to despise the weak. So that in a sense women Corinne Blackmer: yeah. Richard Landes: say to white men, and Jewish men. You have to treat me equally, you have to all those things that they demand and Western men accede and grant them these demands, which they feel are perfectly legitimate by their ideology, they actually have contempt for them. And for the authoritarians, the bullies, they show their submission. Corinne Blackmer: my God, that is so true. That is so very true. they in fact submit to them the minute the other side, the patriarchy, a very, very vicious, represent themselves as racially other. That's the ground note or the moment at which the this the language that's used to disable critique of them. So Muslim men are either not discussed, silenced, or they're or they are implicitly supported or allowed to be. you just don't Richard Landes: They're they're Corinne Blackmer: there are certain things you just don't discuss. You don't for example, recently the tragedy of the Iranian people who rose up against their government d and was led by By many prominent Iranian feminists, simply was not discussed. It was off the table. They weren't demonized, but they were not discussed. It did if it were if it wasn't about Israel, it wasn't speakable. So all Richard Landes: So it Corinne Blackmer: the Iranian women were betrayed, all of them. And Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: Iranian men who supported their women, betrayed. Richard Landes: Right. And and what we're looking at is literally a feminist movement that's been occupied by I call them sup supremacist Muslims. Their narrative and their obsession Corinne Blackmer: Yes, yeah. Richard Landes: with Israel is then colonizes the feminist movement. Corinne Blackmer: Right. If you walk into a women's studies movement, we're talking about now, you Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: know, September two thousand twenty six, here is the permissible objects racism in America, transphobia in America and Israel, which is if you eliminate Israel, you will create international freedom. Richard Landes: Right, right, right. Corinne Blackmer: that and and without and it is so idiotic that if you you they will no longer allow critique because you are you are s now I I actually asked them to to speak with me and they refused because they have now turned into a kind of a medieval monastic absolutist religion where Dis yeah it's a cult, and if you dissent, it's not dissent, it's sin. You but you are sinful, you're disqualified, you cannot, you are automatically excluded from the elect. It's a religion now, and it's a medieval religion of moral absolutism. They have decided that they are in possession possession of truth, capital T. And that truth is that Israel is a demon and the West is a demon and racism is a demon. That's where what they teach and where they stand. And the cre the investment interests of women has been replaced by their investment in trans people. Richard Landes: Wow. So if I understand correctly, i in some senses we're dealing with a religion you're saying it's a medieval religion and I Corinne Blackmer: Yes. Yes, yes. Richard Landes: would say the medieval religion that it has adopted is in fact jihadism. Corinne Blackmer: Yeah, you know, you almost yes, you would say that we're we'd have to go back to the kind of yes, the the invasion of Islam into Europe for a while via the Crusades maybe earlier, this kind of fundamental attack on the West, the the moment that Islam was stopped from advancing into the West, this perhaps adoption of jihadism. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Richard Landes: So we're reversing an eighth century victory of Charles Martel in central France in seven thirty-two, and now as we approach twenty thirty-two, we're literally looking at via the feminists, not just the feminists, but I think in some senses, it's the most puzzling and extraordinary case. Corinne Blackmer: Yes, yeah. Richard Landes: The importation of of a hostile enemy apocalyptic narrative of world conquest and Corinne Blackmer: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Okay, that is what has happened. You're absolutely right, Richard. Literally, what do we do? Right? Richard Landes: So what do we do? Yes, what do we do? Corinne Blackmer: well, I mean, I think that it is gonna be a difficult struggle because this anti Western adoption of Islam has now happened s very strongly in the left, and it ha by some voices on the right. it looks like it's creeping into Vance's discourse. Certainly Tucker Carlson is espousing a certain form of is adoption of authoritarianism and anti Semitism. Richard Landes: And the jihad narrative. Directly the jihadi narrative. And the same thing with what's her name? the conspiracy monger. never mind. Yeah. This Corinne Blackmer: there's so many of them. the Richard Landes: owen? Corinne Blackmer: yeah, I'm I'm trying Jasper Poor, Judith Butler, all the voices they're referring to here. for gay men I f it was like I think about eight years ago, Richard, give an example just to show what's going on. My wife and I particular were fundamentally opposed to And I was active in the fight against AIDS and then the fight for marriage equality. now my wife and I are Jewish and Zionist are excluded from LGBT movement altogether, demonized, excluded, attacked. Richard Landes: Wow. Corinne Blackmer: And so this has now spread to and I'm how do we fight it? How do we reach Richard Landes: And that's how we get that's how we get people who are, you know, gays for Palestine. Corinne Blackmer: Cruise Palestine, right. That's how you get it. This sort of why this need, this compulsive need to hate the Jews, and to hate Israel, to hate peace, to sacrifice Islamic people and convince them that they have to do all this stuff, or else they themselves are excluded and demonized. how do we fight it? Well, there's one w how do we do it? we have to this is the transmission and creation of knowledge has become a university wide problem. and I think that administrators need to put their foot down and insist upon diversity of perspective. insist upon an end to a university of ideological monoculture which has now threatened the mission of the university in the pursuit of knowledge. Maureen McKinnonis, who was recently appointed president of Yale University, has gone against all the other IVs and issued a letter, I think she did this over the summer in June or April and June, that we need to restore public trust because, of course, because of all this nonsense, the public no longer trusts higher education. so I think it's gonna be through those venues of Administrators saying no. My friend Andy Pessen, he and I are now regarded as a prophets. We put out this book many years ago on anti-Semitism and Contemporary American culture. he gave her a book on I'm trying to recall the title exactly, Betrayal of Humanities, the rise of Nazi ideology in German higher education, I believe was the title that book. And that's what we're looking at. We're looking at a university-wide system where the transmission of knowledge itself is being taken over to serve a fascistic foreign ideology. And apparently Richard Landes: No. Corinne Blackmer: it was reading that book that Maury McInnes went back to Yale Corp, at least this is the story, I can't verify this, to say enough. And she had put the brakes on this. The crazies, and in a very calm, deliberate fa fashion, she framed it as the universities need to regain the public trust. and a series of things she wanted Yale to do. But it's Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: all you know, she is her major concern is the adoption and verification of fascism at this point within the American University. So but she Richard Landes: Right. Corinne Blackmer: Mormy Kennis is the only person in the le in the IVs that's doing this. She's it. Richard Landes: Well, we hope that's an early flower of a coming spring. so actually Corinne Blackmer: Yes. Richard Landes: one of the things you're suggesting is that a combination of good ideas and things have gone too far can in fact produce a healthy Corinne Blackmer: Yeah. Richard Landes: response. All right. Corinne Blackmer: Absolutely. and and she will be a leading voice in saying there you can't produce knowledge in a in an ideological vacuum and we have to respond to the erosion of public trust in higher education. It's a it's a crisis. there was a post that appeared outside women's studies that erased Israel from the map of the Middle East. I wrote an email and it was addressed to several people, saying this needs to stop and we need to talk. That was a basic message email. In response, they told DEI they were gonna threaten me with legal action of the through titles seven and nine of Richard Landes: For harassing. For harassing. Corinne Blackmer: for harassment. Yeah. and it's still up, that poster is still up. and that they we they refuse to speak with us. They don't wanna talk to the other side. we are demons, period. That's what we come to. We Richard Landes: So you're you're describing an academia which has moved from its strength, which is a culture of dispute, into a culture of coerced consensus. Corinne Blackmer: Exactly. And AAUP, the union, only is outward facing the problem for the university is Trump. It's not any kind of internal Richard Landes: Yeah. Corinne Blackmer: problem, whereas the fact of the matter is that erosion of academic freedom is happening between academics. In the y the that to Trump is minor compared to the eros erosion of academ the denial of academic freedom amongst academics. Richard Landes: Well, let's hope that you and McKenna and other people who think and who speak get hurt. And that's part of the purpose of Infidel Awareness Corinne Blackmer: W Richard Landes: Month. So Corinne Blackmer: it is it is to be hoped. We have to fight this fight. it's late in the day. There's been a lot of damage done Richard Landes: With Corinne Blackmer: and hurt to women in Muslim lands. They're almost the spearhead of this vi of vicious attack. They've been viciously hurt. You know, Richard Landes: All right. Corinne Blackmer: Jewish women have a country, right? They don't. They don't. Yeah. Where they can anyway get heard. All right, Richard, thank you very, very much. for this. All right. Bye bye. Richard Landes: Thank you so much. Great. Thank you, Corinth.