Oh my, it’s no wonder the chicks at Ms. hate the iFeminists. How would you feel if a site actually told people how insane you are? I mean, they hate me and I am fairly balanced in my criticism. Anyway, it finally took a MeFi thread to get me to hit the site. Here are some quotes from iFeminists.net…
ifeminists.com – editorial – Spanish Muslim Cleric on Rules For Wife-Beating
“On pages 86-87, Mustafa states: ‘The [wife-]beating must never be in exaggerated, blind anger, in order to avoid serious harm [to the woman].’ He adds, ‘It is forbidden to beat her on the sensitive parts of her body, such as the face, breast, abdomen, and head. Instead, she should be beaten on the arms and legs,’ using a ‘rod that must not be stiff, but slim and lightweight so that no wounds, scars, or bruises are caused.’ Similarly, ‘[the blows] must not be hard.’”
ifeminists.com – editorial – Naomi Wolf- Power Feminist or Victim Feminist
“And as Wolf’s own account makes clear, victim feminism isn’t a list of articles of belief. It is a kit of tools, moves, and poses that can be used, instrumentally or opportunistically, by women who do not subscribe to any justificatory doctrines of female moral superiority and male moral inferiority, or female passivity and male aggression, or unabated patriarchal domination of American women in every walk of life, in 1993 or 2004.
Wolf has told us she doesn’t believe the justifications. Unfortunately, she hasn’t set down the tools. Her New York magazine article leaves little doubt about her willingness to play the victim role, so she can seek power through powerlessness.
Let’s begin with the way that Wolf describes her life as an undergraduate at Yale: “I also knew that there was an atmosphere at Yale in which female students were expected to be sociable with male professors. I had discussed with my friends the pressure to be charming but still seen as serious.” In speeches that she gave for several years, referring to an unnamed male professor’s crude move on her: “I describe what the transgression did to me–devastated my sense of being valuable to Yale as a student, rather than as a pawn of powerful men.” Isn’t she telling the reader that she saw herself as a pawn, well before Harold Bloom, drunk on Amontillado, supposedly pushed his face too close to hers, issued an oracularly loopy come-on, and put his hand on her thigh?”
[ snip ]
“It’s time for an inventory of what happened, assuming that Naomi Wolf’s story is semi-accurate. A 19-year-old female student has deified a male professor. She has gone to great lengths to attract his attention. Despite her intelligence and her self-proclaimed expertise at handling men (an unwanted hand on the thigh is no big deal, she insists), she has let him invite himself to a candlelight dinner at her place. She has gotten drunk with him. She is so drunk, and so grossed out to discover that the deity is an ugly, out-of-shape, 53-year-old man who finds her body of much more pressing interest than her poetry, that she vomits on the spot. (In her first published account of the incident, in which Bloom was given another name, she declared that her poetry manuscript was “the most important gift I had ever given any man.”) Witnessing her reaction, the (former?) deity remarks that she is a “deeply troubled girl,” and hastily departs.”
ifeminists.com – editorial – Women Lose When Feminists Bash
“From there it only got worse. By the 1970s, feminists had lapsed into an orgy of male-bashing. Men were stereotyped as insensitive, controlling, sexual harassers, batterers, and rapists. Eventually the phrase “male-dominated” became a short-hand expression for anything that was wrong with society.
But it was husbands and fathers who were targeted for the vilest attacks. Feminists set out to destroy the “Father Knows Best” image. Hard-working hubbies were denounced as domineering, abusers, deadbeats, and another all-purpose smear, patriarchal oppressors.”