Women's organizations
This is a pet peeve of mine--probably because there's a conservative variant wherein war supporters claim that human rights groups don't care about the regions of the world the war supporters would like to see bombed even though they do care, etc. But anyhow:
The National Council of Women's Organizations' most famous recent campaign was against the Augusta National Golf Club. The Web site of the National Organization for Women (I hate to pick on that group, but it's so easy) has space for issues of "non-sexist car insurance" and "network neutrality," but not the Saudi rape victim or the girl murdered last week in Canada for refusing to wear a hijab.
And indeed, Anne Applebaum is right. You have to go all the way back to October to find NOW denunciations of violence against women, and you'll have to jump into the recesses of earlier this month to find a NCWO event dedicated to raising money for beleaguered women in Africa.
And, if nationally-focused women's groups don't dedicate enough of their assets to international women's issues for Applebaum's taste, there's also the Women's Edge Coalition, which has worked passionately on behalf of just about all the issues Applebaum cares about, including the drafting and passage of the International Violence Against Women Act. And on and on.
In short, not every group can be everything to all causes. I personally would like it if endangered species activists would rededicate themselves to combating climate change, but, as it turns out, those people care about what they care about, and that's just how it is. And (also as it turns out) those people also care about climate change and do focus some of their energies on global warming awareness. Meanwhile the main reason ALL of these problems aren't just noticed and solved has less to do with insufficient advocacy (though that may be part of it) than with the fact that they're very, very complicated. That's just how things are.
Comments
Nicholas Kristof plays the same game at the NYTimes: He frequently chides national women's groups in his op-eds for not fighting, in a way which he notices, for causes he supports. Why doesn't NOW come out against the sex trade? etc.
He may have apologized at some point, but I stopped reading him when the Times went behind the wall--and I just haven't gone back yet.
So since Applebaum stole this from Emily Yoffe on Slate (TAPPED already destroyed her) can we get Applebaum fired for plagirism?
Applebaum's concern-trolling over NOW's failure to put the Saudi Arabia case on their front burner? How about the Bush Administration's complete and total silence on the matter?
OK, that piece is not only ignorant about the whole international issues thing, but she also approvingly cites anti-feminist and American Enterprise Institute (!) "scholar" Christina Hoff Sommers' contention that
Depending on what you think of as "sexual terror" (OMG, it came from a REAL women's studies textbook!), domestic violence IS more dangerous than actual terrorism to American women!
From http://www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/:
Sounds pretty g-d terrifying to me. Including 9/11, what's the 10 year average for how many women the "real" terrorists beaten, raped or killed?
Oh, and the second "action item" on NOW's website?
"Put Volunteer Attorneys to Work for Domestic Violence Survivors"
Why does Anne Applebaum care nothing about pedophiles? Or turnstile jumping? Or cat juggling?
I know no one who has been hurt or killed by a foreign terrorist.
The son of the next door neighbors of family friends murdered his girlfriend in a park.
A woman who worked for my father was run over by her ex-boyfriend. She is living with the resulting brain damage.
The nephews of my old babysitter robbed and murdered a man whom they lured to their apartment with the promise of sex.
A friend of my father was murdered in similar circumstances.
I was stalked and threatened with rape by an ex-boyfriend.
So my greatest fear should be . . . ?
This is the second column in two weeks that Applebaum has phoned in, with more than a little 'inspiration' from other pieces. Perhaps there are just too many Christmas parties for her to devote time to her work.
Cowalker, your greatest fear should be that some vapid dingbat writing for a once-great paper will find you to be inconsistent. Just don't ever state your opposition to anything without denouncing everything else in the universe that vaguely resembles the thing you're against and you'll be fine.
Nitpicker: Touche. That's French for "Hey, glad you're still pithy. Now start your blog back up, you lazy bastard."
Welcome Atriosers. Now, point of order. Who think Nitpicker should resume blogging?
I don't have access to a Lexis search database but I don't recall Applebaum's denunciation of the Taliban in the 90's.
As a direct result of inequalities found in their countries of origin, women from Ukraine, Moldova, Nigeria, the Dominican Republic, Burma, and Thailand are bought and sold, trafficked to work in forced prostitution,...
and from Applebaum "chirp, chirp, chirp"
"What we need as a model, in other words, is not the 1960s feminism we all remember but a globalized version of the 19th-century feminism we've nearly forgotten"
Who is this we she refers to? What exactly has she done to advance women's rights in the world? Anything? Except bitch that someone else isn't doing it exactly like she thinks it should be done?
Re NOW putting more of its efforts into domestic violence against women, it seems rather obvious that this is an arena where their efforts are more likely to bear fruit. You're much more likely to get results lobbying your Congresscritter than the Saudi monarchy, after all. And it's not as if NOW, NCWO, et al. are making excuses for the Saudis or the people who run the international sex trade.
Speaking of which, how come Applebaum, who's such an expert on all things formerly Soviet (as she will be happy to remind you in case you forget), doesn't devote her energies to discussing the enormous sex trade that has sprounted up in the former Soviet empire? Certain Czech towns bordering on Germany have become enormous brothels where women both native and from places like Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Russia, etc. supply day trippers with cut rate sexual services that cater to just about any taste?
Of course, if she didn't cover such a subject, she would have to adopt a more nuanced approach than she's previously shown herself capable of. Like maybe acknowledge that as awful as Communist rule was, at least certain abomonations produced by untramelled capitalism were unknown.
why don't Nick Kristoff and Ann Applebaum come out squarely against electroshock therapy for fetuses? what are they trying to hide?
We should email the Washington Post Ombudsman.
Hahahahahahahahahaha!
Sorry, I just wanted to see if I could say that with a straight face. FAIL.
Someday I would love to be rich enough to buy a paper like the post and then just start firing these idiots. Publicly. On the front page. In a big font.
So Anne Applebaum an expert in the former Soviet Union, eh? Is that "expert" as in Condoleezza Rice, who completely missed the collapse of the Soviet Union and believed that their economy was expanding at a phenomenal 4% a year when it was actually contracting? You mean THAT kind of expertise?
Yeah, I notice that Private Magazine and their related films are heavily peopled with East Europeans. Hey, why not? East Europeans look the same as Americans and West Europeans, it's only when they talk you can tell the difference.
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