Lordy – I’m surprised again. I’m so easily surprised – I must be very naïve.
In watching the UN video I saw the list of other CFI videos, and in the list I saw the videoof Robin Elisabeth Cornwell’s talk at Women in Secularism 2. I missed that talk because of having to catch a plane, so I’ve started watching it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDwkY7pw3HM
You know, there’s a theory that it’s Cornwell who wrote Dear Muslima, and that Dawkins just posted it so that it would be as if god had posted it (and so it turned out). This video could be Exhibit One for that claim.
At about 11:45 she gets onto the subject of “victimhood.” She talks about pop culture and Oprah and the elevation (emphasis hers) on victimhood, and speculates that Christianity is a major source of this elevation, via the idea of prayer and the passivity it inculcates. “It’s pure bollocks,” she exclaims, as if she were a medium for Dawkins. She says she doesn’t know about you but she wants to scream: “get off your knees and do something about it!” She pauses for applause so a few people oblige, tepidly.
Then she gets into it. Don’t misunderstand, she warns, there is such a thing as adversity.
…some situations are horrible and the word ‘victim’ is appropriate – but let’s not fall into the cultural relativism trap, and assume that all adversity is the same. It isn’t. What is faced by women and men under Islamicist [sic] is far greater than the discomfort of some inappropriate sexist remark.
Two people applauded.
I stopped there for the present, because I can take only so much at a time. More later.
Anyway, that theory that she wrote Dear Muslima? Yeah.