Do Regressive Leftists enable the Right? A view from Canada

January 8, 2017 • 1:30 pm

Over at the CBC News site, journalist Neil Macdonald, who considers himself a liberal and has nothing but opprobrium for the likes of Donald Trump, claims that Regressive Leftism (or “Illiberal Leftism”) is shooting itself in the foot. In his column “Advice for anxious liberals—tone down the snark,” Macdonald argues that, in Canada (and by implication, in the U.S. as well), the anti-free-speech rhetoric, hectoring, and absolute self-assurance of Leftist identity politics is turning people rightwards. I’ve gone back and forth on that, and am pretty sure that—with the exception of the excessive respect accorded to Islam by the Illiberal Left—it didn’t have much to do with electing Trump or other Republicans. But it’s still worth considering what Macdonald says, as I hate to see the Left riven by this kind of absolutist infighting. After all, we’re but twelve days away from at least four years of oppressively crazy conservatism in the U.S., and if we don’t hang together, by Heavens we’ll surely hang separately.

A few quotes from Macdonald’s piece (have a look at the two links as well):

At protests and over drinks and at dinner tables, liberals are arguing over the proper response. Some have for weeks been yelling through bullhorns that “Trump is not my president,” which is just loopy. If you’re an American, Donald Trump will be your president as of Jan. 20, and he and his elite billionaire friends will almost certainly, in the name of the common man, set about reducing the liberal china shop to a knee-high pile of crushed eggshell porcelain.

Others argue liberals must never flag, never give an inch. “We double down,” a friend defiantly declares.

Well. Certainly the rise of Trump nation, a bizarre place where anti-Semitic white supremacists comfortably cohabit with evangelical Christian conservatives and Jewish pro-Israel absolutists, is no reason for liberals to waver on values like protection of the most vulnerable among us, or helping those fleeing genocidal wars, or equality regardless of gender, sexuality or race, or curbs on the rapaciousness of unshackled capitalism.

But with all due respect to my earnest friends on the left, a bit of advice: stop being so damned irritating about it.

Particularly on campuses, the left has developed a prissy, hectoring self-righteousness, which is what happens when a bunch of people who think the same way get into the same room and congratulate one another endlessly on being right. (“Herds of independent thinkers,” as columnist and author Nat Hentoff so beautifully puts it).

Not only do they block out any opposing viewpoint, they begin to shout it down and censor it (because, you know, it’s wrong), and ultimately try to regulate it, writing rules and laws prohibiting its expression. Consult a few university speech codes — particularly those drafted by student unions — for elaboration.

To many social activists, free speech (except when it protects their speech) is just another tool of patriarchal suppression. All debate is just false equivalence.

And because any other viewpoint is patently valueless, perhaps even dangerous, they almost immediately go ad hominem, rather than engaging on the issue.

The last line is largely true, for the best weapon the Illiberal Left has is simply to call people racists, transphobes, and sexists without engaging their arguments. It’s effective because we’re all so sensitive to those slurs.

While I’m in favor of abortion on demand, and of respecting the wishes of transgender people to be called what they want (and use whatever restroom they want), there are serious discussions to be had about affirmative action, the notion of gender (feminism is being fractured that that issue), and, yes, abortion. (Consider, for instance, the flat claim that abortion is a “right”. You can’t do that without defining what you mean by the concept of “rights”.) And you simply can’t have those discussions if you begin calling your opponents names.

So while Macdonald is right to argue for ditching the ad hominems, I’m not sure how much they give succor to the right, as he claims:

But as the media repeated and amplified the story, which the media loves to do (nothing like lefty infighting to sell papers) you can bet a lot of non-urban Canadian conservatives were reading, just as they read the vicious attacks by progressives on Marie Henein, Jian Ghomeshi’s brilliant lawyer, for doing her job so well.

You can bet they’re listening closely every year at Halloween, when progressives reliably denounce as racist anyone allowing their children to dress up as a member of any other culture. Like, say, sending a little girl out dressed as Mulan.

Or when they’re denounced as Islamophobes for even discussing the question of why so many people who commit mass murder of innocents do it in the name of Allah. Or as transphobes for using the pronouns “he” or “she” without explicit permission. Or as homophobes for obeying their priest or imam. Or as some sort of uninclusive-o-phobe for uttering the phrase “Merry Christmas.”

There are millions of people out there who aren’t terribly interested in a lecture about the difference between “cisnormative” and “heteronormative,” and how both words supposedly describe something shameful.

Yes, we should stop being so damned irritating. No argument was ever won by name-calling.

h/t: Taskin

Hijab hijinks at Harvard

December 19, 2016 • 3:15 pm

I’m sorry to keep hearing about how my alma mater (for my Ph.D.), Harvard, is becoming more and more Regressive Left (I’m tired of using that word, so if readers have another, let me know.) They created social justice placemats, the President threatened to punish students on campus if they belonged to single-sex “finals clubs” off campus, and now we have the obligatory celebration of the hijab—and Islam as feminism—in a post at the Harvard Gazette, “Islamic studies scholar addresses myths and mores behind the veil.”

The scholar was Celene Ibrahim, an Islamic Studies Scholar-in-Residence and Co-Director of the Center for Inter-Religious and Communal Leadership Education at Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School, as well as a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis University. Her talk was at Harvard’s “Faculty of Arts and Sciences Diversity Dialogues”, and her purpose was to address and dispel stereotypes about Islam. The problem is that she whitewashed Islam, much as Karen Armstrong and Reza Aslan do. She told the crowd what they wanted to hear. Here are some of the things she said:

Ibrahim cited a 2011 Pew Research Center study that found “a median of 58 percent [of respondents] across four Western European countries, the U.S., and Russia, called Muslims ‘fanatical.’” She said the media shapes much of the American perception of Muslims as angry and oppressive.

Ibrahim acknowledged that while Muslim women are oppressed in some countries [JAC: that’s about all she said about that], Islamic theology is highly woman-affirming. “Muslim feminists often struggle … to reform misogynistic ideas, customs, and/or legal codes that don’t reflect the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad,” she said.

Well, I’ll decry those who call Muslims “fanatical” (though extremists ones are), but as for “women-affirming” theology, I’m not so sure about it. On what grounds are Muslim women “oppressed” in some countries? It’s the religious doctrine, stupid!. The Qur’an and hadith aren’t women-affirming, and, at any rate, whatever Muslim theology is now, it’s hardly pro-feminist. Even in Britain and the U.S., some Muslims are forced to wear the hijab by their families or peers, and of course there are all those Muslim-majority countries that hold attitudes like those shown below (taken from Pew’s “The World’s Muslims” study in 2013. First we get the percentage of people in Muslim-majority countries who favor making sharia the law of the land (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran were not surveyed!):

screen-shot-2016-12-19-at-2-39-58-pm

Then, among those who favor sharia as the law of the land, here are the data on women’s rights:

screen-shot-2016-12-19-at-2-39-13-pm

And here’s the kicker: when you see the plot below, remember that Saudi Arabia, Iran and Yemen were NOT surveyed, and those nations would surely fall in the “middle Eastern” group. If these people are inspired by a “highly woman-affirming philosophy”, somehow they’ve got it badly wrong!

I can’t help but see Ibrahim as a “useful idiot” for Regressives, by which I don’t mean she’s an idiot, but that she’s blinkered and primed to say exactly what liberals want to hear. What they want to hear is something to resolve their cognitive dissonance over a people supposedly both “brown” and “oppressed” (traditionally a repository of liberal sentiments) being at the same time in the thrall of a theology/ideology that is misogynistic, homophobic, oppressive, and barbaric. How do you resolve this? You trot out Muslims like Ibrahim, who will assure you that Islam is grossly misunderstood. And the Harvard Liberals, eager to hear this stuff, will buy palpably false statements like this:

In addition, [Ibrahim] said, in places like America, much of what Muslim women do is a matter of choice. “There is great diversity in the Muslim community,” she said. While some Westerners may assume that Muslim women who wear clothing that covers everything but their eyes, pray in gender-segregated spaces, or attend women-only athletic facilities are being forced into an unwanted modesty, “There are some spaces where gender segregation is appropriate,” Ibrahim said.

In places like America, where only a few percent of the population is Muslim! What about places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan and Egypt, and now, increasingly, Turkey? How much choice do those women have? And is a Muslim girl in America forced to wear a hijab at age six in a faith school (also in the UK) really exercising “choice”? Has Ibrahim thought about that? And where, exactly, are the spaces where gender segregation is appropriate? In mosques, many of which are so segregated in the US? Please tell us, Ms. Ibrahim! (Maybe she just means restrooms.)

And, of course, Ibrahim extols the hijab—meant to symbolize modesty and to protect women from arousing the hormones of males, who will be driven into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy, like spawning salmon, at the sight of a woman’s hair:

Ibrahim talked at length about the symbolic, religious, and practical purposes of the hijab, the headscarf worn by many, but not all, Muslim women. The headscarf is a symbol that has a certain power, she said.

“Wearing the headscarf is a matter of feminism, aesthetics, and solidarity for me,” she wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece earlier this year. “The hijab is fun and dignifying … it’s part of my morning routine.”

Feminism? The very garment symbolizes men’s control of women’s sexuality! Aesthetics? What is that about? And solidarity with whom? It’s like wearing a ball and chain on your head—one put there by men.

But of course the useful idiot was useful: the Harvard folks, eager to hear that Islam is really The Religion of Feminism, and is Grossly Misunderstood lapped it up Ibrahim’s spiel like a cat drinks cream:

Joshua Dunn, procurement administrator in the FAS Office of Administration and Finance, one of the more than 130 people who attended the dialogue at Radcliffe Institute’s Knafel Center, said Ibrahim “challenged me to think outside the box about what it must be like to a Muslim woman living in the U.S. … Certain customs might be a matter of perspective and we should not automatically view [them] as oppressive.”

“I thought she laid out a compelling vision of feminist ethics and the virtues of a pluralistic society that values all cultures and religious beliefs,” he said.

Dunn is clearly a man yearning for confirmation bias. The “certain customs might be a matter of perspective” blather is exactly the kind of cultural relativism that the Left must avoid. For it says that although it looks as if women are oppressed in many Muslim countries on religious grounds, well, that’s just a “matter of perspective.” We can always hire someone like Ibrahim to come in and tell us that we’re wrong: Islam is really feminist.

What a crock.

Celene Ibrahim leads a Diversity Dialogue titled Muslim Feminism. She guides guests on how to ensure that the workplace is a hospitable one for Muslim women. Beyond providing practical advice, Ibrahim helps guests to understand that being Muslim and being feminist are not mutually exclusive. Celene Ibrahim is pictured during the talk in the Knafel Center at Harvard University. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer — Celene Ibrahim leads a Diversity Dialogue titled Muslim Feminism. She guides guests on how to ensure that the workplace is a hospitable one for Muslim women. **Beyond providing practical advice, Ibrahim helps guests to understand that being Muslim and being feminist are not mutually exclusive.** Celene Ibrahim is pictured during the talk in the Knafel Center at Harvard University. Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer (Harvard’s caption, emphasis by JAC)

Teacher fired at ritzy British Columbia school after mentioning that he opposed abortion

December 12, 2016 • 9:45 am

This is a story that will chill you to the marrow, at least if you have any respect for due process, freedom of speech, and a loathing for the Regressive Left.

You can find two successive versions of the tale in the Vancouver Sun and the National Post, so it seems kosher to me. It’s about the hounding and then firing of an anonymous 44-year-old male teacher (we’ll call him “AT”) for making an innocuous comment in a class at a very ritzy and expensive private school in Vancouver, Fraser Academy. The school, which teaches students from grades 1-12 (tuition: $30,000 per year), specializes in students with “language-based learning disabilities”, but also seems thoroughly imbued with Regressive Leftism. As the Sun reports (my emphasis):

Before classes even started last fall, teachers underwent serious “gender training” given by QMUNITY, an organization for LGBTQQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, questioning and two-spirit) people. Teachers were told in no uncertain terms, for instance, that “no one is 100-per-cent male or female” and that everyone is somewhere on the “gender spectrum.”

Unsurprisingly, students at the school, where $30,000-a-year tuition buys small classes, regularly say “I’m so triggered” and are allowed to walk out of class.

The triggering event at issue occurred on November 24, and seems tame enough, but it mushroomed into a huge fracas that led to AT’s firing. AT describes what he said to a 12th-grade class unit on criminal law, vice, ethics, and morality (my emphasis):

“I was working my way through examples of how some people’s sense of personal ethics was more liberal than the letter of the law,” he said in an email.

For example, he told them, many people might roll through a stop sign on a deserted country road, deeming it morally acceptable, even if unlawful.

In other words, he said, in a pluralistic democracy, there’s often “a difference between people’s private morality and the law.

“I find abortion to be wrong,” he said, as another illustration of this gap, “but the law is often different from our personal opinions.”

That was it, the teacher said. “It was just a quick exemplar, nothing more. And we moved on.”

A little later, the class had a five-minute break, and when it resumed, several students didn’t return, among them a popular young woman who had gone to an administrator to complain that what the teacher said had “triggered” her such that she felt “unsafe” and that, in any case, he had no right to an opinion on the subject of abortion because he was a man.

There ensued a series of stressful meetings between the teacher, his bosses, and the student. AT was asked to show contrition in a meeting with the student and another teacher, but AT refused on the grounds that it would set a bad precedent. But he then apoligized to the student. That wasn’t good enough, even though he’d been recognized as an outstanding teacher at Fraser. He later met with his class and the boss to tender a public apology, knowing that his job was on the line. And he did apologize, but in the wrong way. Here’s AT’s account (my emphasis):

It was exactly the horror show [AT had] imagined: His boss sat among a crowd of students, ran through a list of what had gone wrong and “what I needed to do to change.” While most students appeared to be on his side, the offended girl was still furious.

He apologized specifically to her, but then made what was apparently a fatal error: He said he liked her, that she was a bright and engaging student, and said he’d told her father just that at a recent parent-teacher night.

She stormed out of the class in tears, and he was again castigated by his superiors, this time for having been “too personal” in his apologia.

On Nov. 30, he showed up at the school, was retrieved by an administrator and taken to the “head” of school, the private school equivalent of a principal.

He was told he “could no longer continue in the classroom,” and was offered a short-term medical disability top-up for employment insurance.

He was then escorted down the hall and off the premises.

Now remember that this is AT’s account; the school won’t comment on personnel issues and, according to the Post, Fraser has put its teachers under a gag order. Nevertheless. the school sent a public relations representative to the Post, but it was an off-the-record contact, so we have no information. But the Post‘s interviewed four ex-employees of Fraser, reporting that they complain about the lack of due process for teachers and “a querulous, autocratic, and unpredictable administration.” (Remember, these are ex-employees, but they are also the only ones free to speak given the gag order.)

The Post article gives several other stories of teachers fired for ridiculous things, including leaving the school Christmas party and eating on his own after a parent-teacher pizza party. This reminds me of the episode, recounted in The Gulag Archipelago, in which people stood up and applauded Stalin after a speech, and the applause went on for minutes, with everyone afraid to stop clapping first. And the one who did was arrested and sent to the gulag.

I’ll take AT’s story as true for the time being. I’m horrified by what happened to AT and by the power these easily-triggered students have over faculty. And remember that AT was a highly lauded teacher (he apparently now works for the Vancouver School System). The Offense Culture is now infecting both the US and Canada, and in some ways it’s worse in Canada.

No teacher should have been treated like that, and I fear for those students when they leave the cocoon of Fraser and enter the real world. Of course what the “real world” is becoming in Canada may be congenial to the coddled.

h/t: Cindy

Did “Anonymous” troll the Guardian with a fake op-ed?

November 30, 2016 • 9:00 am

Yesterday I posted about a very bizarre column in the Guardian in which a supposed Regressive Leftist, who didn’t give his name, groveled and apologized after he was nearly sucked into the malestrom of “racism”—i.e., criticism of Islam—by reading “alt-right” people like Sam Harris. It was an over-the-top piece, and you can read it by clicking the screenshot below:

Many people suspected that the piece was a joke on the part of the Guardian. I don’t believe that, for the paper has no history of publishing such stuff, and it cuts too close to the Guardian‘s Regressive Left (RL) bone. On the other hand, it could have been a Sokal-style hoax, with some person fooling the Guardian into publishing a column that was, in essence, a mockery of the RL. That is more likely, and in fact one person, a well known prankster called “Godfrey Elfwick” (known for his mockery of the Regressive Left and social justice warriors), has confessed to doing it. Many believe him. Here, for instance, is Elfwick’s confession and comments by, among others, Maajid Nawaz (go here to see the whole thread):

While I saw the piece as genuine as well as ridiculous, other Sam Harris haters thought it was great:

After some people questioned “Elfwick”‘s authorship, he sent a screenshot of his computer purporting to show that he wrote the piece on October 31, before it was published:

So was the whole thing a scam? Certainly in the sense that if Elfwick or some other hoaxer wrote the piece, they fooled the Guardian. But screenshots like the one above can be faked, and I’m still not sure the piece is a hoax, although it seems more likely.But surely the Guardian could have at least checked on the author, in which case they’d find that Godfrey Elfwick (for they surely knew his name, or else some other name they could have checked) was a well known troll.

Other people are already firmly convinced that Elfwick scammed the Guardian. I’m reserving judgment, for on the Guardian website there’s still no note that it was a hoax, and the piece is still up.

Regardless, what is clear is that if it was a hoax, it was perpetrated not by the Guardian but by an author like “Elfwick,” and second, if it was produced by a troll, the Guardian found the over-the-top RL confessional so to their liking that they bought it lock, stock and barrel.

h/t: Orli

The first X to do Y, where X represents a hijabi and Y represents a Miss Minnesota contestant

November 29, 2016 • 12:30 pm

We continue with the “first hijabi to do X” trope, which doesn’t celebrate Muslim achievements so much as the wearing of a garment that symbolizes misogyny and female oppression. One sees little approbation for the achievements of Muslim women themselves, which in times like these should be applauded; one sees instead approbation for only those women who wear The Scarf. And this time it’s a double whammy: we see a “historic” achievement of wearing both a hijab and a burkini—by a Muslim contestant in a beauty pageant. The touting, of course, is loudest in the Huffington Post; click on the screenshot to see the article:

PuffHo’s puffery:

Halima Aden advanced to the semifinals in this weekend’s Miss Minnesota USA pageant, becoming the first-ever contestant in the competition to wear a hijab and burkini.

The 19-year-old Somali-American teen from St. Cloud, Minnesota, wore a hijab throughout the pageant’s entire competition, which included rounds devoted to evening gowns and bathing suits. The pageant’s announcer said Aden was “making history” as she took to the stage wearing a burkini.

Earlier this month, Aden spoke with The Huffington Post about the upcoming competition, and how she hoped her presence in the pageant would serve as an inspiration for Muslim and Somali girls.

“Not seeing women that look like you in media in general and especially in beauty competitions sends the message that you’re not beautiful or you have to change the way you look to be considered beautiful,” Aden said. “And that’s not true.”

But wait! Isn’t the hijab supposed to be there to prevent men from noticing your beauty? Why wear that, as well as the body-covering burkini, in a beauty pageant? Shouldn’t hijabis avoid these pageants—in which women are paraded around like so many cattle before the prying eyes of men—like the plague? As Aden said in a short video piece at PuffHo, “For me to compete, it’s like opening doors for so many girls.” But what kind of doors? Doors to be noticed as beautiful? Well, that’s just what the hijab is supposed to prevent.

The whole notion of “beauty pageants” repels me, but doubly so when the women participating are wearing clothes to make them not be noticed as beautiful.

Here’s a tw**t showing the “big cheers” given to Aden. When I saw this, and heard the self-congratulatory clapping that often comes from regressives, I immediately thought of this couplet: a play on the last two lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s famous poem “Spring and Fall“:

Think about the women that you laud, for
It’s really yourself that you applaud for.

The Guardian publishes the ultimate abasement of the Left: an anonymous writer flagellates himself for criticizing Islam

November 29, 2016 • 8:30 am

Yesterday the Guardian, which is becoming increasingly worthless except as a source of levity, published a piece by an anonymous author: “‘Alt-right’ online poison nearly turned me into a racist.” When I first read it I thought it was a joke or a spoof, but knowing the Guardian’s penchant for regressive Leftism, of which this is a prime specimen, I decided it wasn’t a joke. You can be the judge; I’ll discuss it as if it were serious.

“Anonymous” first says that he was a liberal British white man of progressive sentiments who always found racism abhorrent. But then, against his will, he was sucked into a racist whirlpool: sent down the black “rabbit hole” of alt-rightism by going online after the Brexit “leave” vote. “Anonymous” avers that that his “liberal kneejerk reaction was to be shocked” when he encountered Sam Harris’s criticism of Islam, but the poor man then moved on to others on YouTube, including Milo Yiannopoulos. (As if Harris and Yiannopoulos were in any way comparable! I don’t even think they’ve interacted.) But even Milo was just a gateway drug to more toxic stuff: criticism of feminism, men’s rights activism, and so on. “Anonymous” saw himself becoming an alt-righter himself, and then one day he came to his senses:

For three months I watched this stuff grow steadily more fearful of Islam. “Not Muslims,” they would usually say, “individual Muslims are fine.” But Islam was presented as a “threat to western civilisation”. Fear-mongering content was presented in a compelling way by charismatic people who would distance themselves from the very movement of which they were a part.

. . . On one occasion I even, I am ashamed to admit, very diplomatically expressed negative sentiments on Islam to my wife. Nothing “overtly racist”, just some of the “innocuous” type of things the YouTubers had presented: “Islam isn’t compatible with western civilisation.”

She was taken aback: “Isn’t that a bit … rightwing?”

I justified it: “Well, I’m more a left-leaning centrist. PC culture has gone too far, we should be able to discuss these things without shutting down the conversation by calling people racist, or bigots.”

The indoctrination was complete.

Are you chuckling yet at the notion that criticism of religion is “right-wing” and a form of “indoctrination”? Well, hang on. For the author, after seeing the light, had to expiate his sins. As I think Peter Boghossian has noted, Regressive Leftism shares some of the traits of religion, including having the Original Sin of being a white male (or of criticizing Islam)—sins for which one must be deeply ashamed, confess to other Regressives, and then expiate by lashing oneself long and hard. And that’s the just what happened with “Anonymous”:

About a week before the US election, I heard one of these YouTubers use the phrase “red-pilled” – a term from the film The Matrix – in reference to people being awakened to the truth about the world and SJWs. Suddenly I thought: “This is exactly like a cult. What am I doing? I’m turning into an arsehole.”

I unsubscribed and unfollowed from everything, and told myself outright: “You’re becoming a racist. What you’re doing is turning you into a terrible, hateful person.” Until that moment I hadn’t even realised that “alt-right” was what I was becoming; I just thought I was a more open-minded person for tolerating these views.

It would take every swearword under the sun to describe how I now feel about tolerating such content and gradually accepting it as truth. I’ve spent every day since feeling shameful for being so blind and so easily coerced.

As you see, it’s deeply racist to vote “leave” on Brexit (a mistaken vote, I think, but not a racist one), criticize feminism, or ponder men’s rights. And it’s especially racist to criticize Islam.

What kind of world is that man living in, that he has to repudiate the idea (and lash himself for thinking) that “we should be able to discuss these things without shutting down the conversation by calling people racist, or bigots”? No, we must call these people racists and bigots. That, after all, is the ultimate weapon of the Regressive Leftist: the knowledge that other Leftists want to avoid at all costs being typed as a racist. If you use that word, they’ll more that likely shut up. But I’d like to know what’s racist about criticizing ideas.

But in the Church of Regressive Leftism, one can be forgiven, at least for a while, by confession. And so “anonymous” confessed to the Guardian‘s readers, and plans to confess to his wife:

. . . It’s clear this terrible ideology has now gone mainstream.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Online radicalisation of young white men. It’s here, it’s serious, and I was lucky to be able to snap out of it when I did. And if it can get somebody like me to swallow it – a lifelong liberal – I can’t imagine the damage it is doing overall.

It seemed so subtle – at no point did I think my casual and growing Islamophobia was genuine racism. The good news for me is that my journey toward the alt-right was mercifully brief: I never wanted to harm or abuse anybody verbally, it was all very low level – a creeping fear and bigotry that I won’t let infest me again. But I suspect you could, if you don’t catch it quickly, be guided into a much more overt and sinister hatred.

I haven’t yet told my wife that this happened, and I honestly don’t know how to. I need to apologise for what I said and tell her that I certainly don’t believe it. It is going to be a tough conversation and I’m not looking forward to it. I didn’t think this could happen to me. But it did and it will haunt me for a long time to come.

What a weenie!

Now does that sound like a joke to you? It would to normal people, but these people aren’t normal. Because of the cognitive dissonance they experience when two liberal values clash (concern for the underdog and concern for free speech and women’s rights), “anonymous” has been turned into a craven, sniveling joke who’s resolve his dissonance by throwing freedom of expression under the bus. The man can’t even distinguish between Sam Harris’s (and other people’s) criticism of Islam and the real Islamophobia that is bigotry against individual Muslims. Nor does he see that Muslims are not a race, but adherents to a particular faith, though of course their beliefs are diverse. Anonymous will confess to her wife (in a “tough conversation”; what kind of woman is that?) and say that it’s taboo to even consider that the tenets of Islam may be incompatible with Western civilization. Some thoughts must not be thought; some discussions must not be had. All that, of course, comes from fear that you’ll be branded a racist.

The article discredits itself, but the fact that the Guardian published it shows the dangers of Regressive Leftism. Those are the dangers of authoritarianism, of the suppression of free speech as “racist speech,” and the danger that, when these people get in positions of power, the Left will become afraid to discuss touchy issues lest they be branded racists and bigots.

Here’s some further expiation: “Anonymous” refused remuneration, probably as a further form of penance. Here’s the note at the end of his article:

“The first X to do Y”, where X represents a hijabi and Y represents a Canadian news anchor

November 26, 2016 • 1:45 pm

The burqa, the cloth sack that covers Muslim women from head to toe, represents one interpretation of Islam: preserving women’s modesty by hiding them from the gaze of men who, at the sight of one square inch of skin, would become uncontrollably lustful. It’s the sartorial equivalent of a ball and chain. Would we celebrate the first news anchor to appear on national television in such a sack? I don’t think so.

But when the sack is reduced to a headscarf in the form of a hijab, which represents the same idea (in this case, men are driven wild by the sight of hair), then a hijabi who does something for the first time becomes “courageous” or “empowered” or a “role model.” I see that as misguided, for all that is doing is celebrating a form of religiously mandated sex discrimination. Why should women clothe themselves to suppress the lust of men? Why don’t the men simply control their lust, and not burden the women with uncomfortable garments?

Indeed, what would be more courageous, more of a role model, and more empowering, would be the first Muslim woman to do something, regardless of what she wore. But that’s not the way it works. Such women, like the Muslim model Iman (married to the late Davie Bowie) aren’t seen as courageous or empowering, though they embrace exactly the same faith as do hijabis.

Now there’s one caveat here: with the likely rise of anti-Muslim sentiments in Trump’s America, and in Europe, those who wear the hijab are proclaiming themselves as Muslims, and so it may inspire Muslims in some way. But in the end what is being celebrated is both a headscarf and the repressive, misogynistic theology that inspires its wearing. Would we expect to see, for instance, an article extolling the first Jewish anchorman to wear a yarmulke on television? I don’t think so—and the yarmulke, while still a form of fairy-tale costume, is less a symbol of repression than a hijab.

So by all means celebrate the first Muslim woman to do something independent, bucking the norms of the faith, but let us not celebrate the scrap of cloth she wears on her head.

Case in point: Ginella Massa, a television reporter in Toronto who, according to the Regressive Leftist Guardian, filled in as an anchor for CTV News in Kitchener Ontario. She isn’t, as the headline says “Canada’s first hijab-clad anchor,” for it was a one-off appearance. But never mind; what bothers me is how everyone including the Guardian thinks this is wonderful:

Massa recognized the personal career strides she had made after stepping out of the anchor desk, but she said it took her editor to point out the larger significance.

“It wasn’t until my editor said, ‘Hey, great job! Was that a first for Canada? A woman in a hijab?’ And I said yes. And so I tweeted about it. As much as I knew it was important, I didn’t expect the reaction that I received. My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing for the last week,” Massa said.

“I’ve talked to many women who are journalists in the US who work behind the scenes and they’ve told me that they face multiple challenges trying to get on air,” said Massa. “They’ve been told because of their hijab, that’s not going to happen. That makes me really sad because they’re being held back by someone else’s idea of what the public can or cannot handle.”

Although the reaction to Massa’s anchor stint and reporting role has been mostly positive in Canada, she said she has received a handful of negative comments and Tweets.

Oy! A handful of negative comments and Tweets. I get that on a good day! This is not harassment, and, as expected in Canada, it’s not particularly courageous to appear on television wearing one. Those who prevent hijabis from advancing simply because of their scarf are, of course, exercising a prejudice, but this isn’t simply a celebration of overcoming that prejudice.

And would the Guardian go into paroxysms of joy about the same thing for the first woman anchor to wear a burqa? The first Jew to wear a yarmulke? Nope. Nor would they do it for the first non-hijabi Muslim to become an anchor, although there are plenty of them. Why the difference? Because the Left is celebrating the hijab itself, a symbol of oppression.

The last sentence of the Guardian piece is telling:

“But this is all the more reason in today’s climate to see positive images of Muslim women,” [Massa} said. “They are a symbol of Islam when they wear the hijab and that carries a powerful image. It’s so important to see positive images of us in the media.”

Yes, perhaps we need positive images of Muslim women, but not Muslim women succumbing to misogynistic theology. And don’t tell me that Massa chose to wear the hijab, for we don’t know that. I’m deeply dubious of people who say about others that they wear it by choice, and even about those who wear it themselves. There is social pressure to don the headscarf in families and Muslim communities, and before the Islamic revolution, many fewer women wore it in Iran, Afghanistan, or Egypt. That alone shows that it’s largely indoctrination rather than a personal decision.

It’s time to stop celebrating the first hijabi to do X, Y, or Z. It’s like celebrating the first Muslim woman to wear a burqa on television, or the first penitente to give the news while lashing himself for Jesus.

screen-shot-2016-11-26-at-1-18-02-pm — Ginella Massa (photo: AP)

h/t: Alexander H.

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