Immoral equivalence is standard feminist fare, pretending things are as bad for women in the United States as they are in some of the most vicious, violent, backwards misogynistic cesspools in the world. Michael Barone expressed it as essentially the logical end of multiculturalism (emphasis added):
“Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures are morally equal, except ours, which is worse.”
Academe’s favorite feminist, Eve Ensler, whose purported brilliance is an effective shibboleth1 for true academic feminism, has been a reliable font of immoral equivalence. Her “The Vagina Monologues” used to include a monologue about a girl repressed by the Taliban; she replaced it after 9/11 and started campaigning that “Afghanistan Is Everywhere.” She also practiced the subtler art of false comparison, equating legal violence against women in the Middle East (clitorectomies, honor killings, punishing the raped for “adultery”) with illegal violence against women in the U.S. (rape, sexual assault, kidnapping).
As the promotion for her play “The Good Body” put it (emphasis added):
Whether undergoing botox injections or living beneath burkhas, women of all cultures and backgrounds feel compelled to change the way they look in order to fit in.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who unlike some daffy conceptual artist ought to know better, shamefully practiced some immoral equivalence this week:
Clinton said women in the Middle East — even in the United States — must fight for their rights:
“Now, we know that young woman in Tunisia and her peers across the region already are facing extremists who will try to strip their rights, curb their participation, limit their ability to make choices for themselves. Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies.”
Clinton’s apparent reference to the “reproductive rights” controversy involving a Georgetown University law student was met with applause.
I imagine the women of Tunisia would gladly trade their oppression for the American “equivalent” oppression of having a co-pay for birth control pharmaceuticals or whatever it is.
Note
1. Should you let on that you find shouting the word “vagina” or “interrogating your stomach” to be highly risible, let alone laughably ineffective ways to end male hegemony, you would be permanently exposed as a critically nondoctrinaire feminist and therefore, of course, a tool of said hegemony.
