Ayaan Hirsi Ali bonfires the vanities:

We’ve become so focused on microaggressions in America that we have lost sight of the macroaggressions happening to women around the world.

In my latest book, Prey, I argue that the modern-day feminist movement in the West does not take seriously the concerns of women in working-class communities, many of whom have immigrant backgrounds, and who face a steady rise of sexual harassment and assault on the streets of their own neighbourhoods.

In today’s perverse American culture, however, more attention is devoted to the use of preferred gender pronouns than to the plight of women whose most basic rights — to education, personal autonomy, the right to be present in a public space — are either removed or under serious threat.

That’s not exactly the feminist movement though – it’s part of the feminist movement along with part of the left. There still are some of us feminists (and lefties) who despise the whole idea of “preferred pronouns.”

What will now happen to the women of Afghanistan? When asked if women’s rights will be respected, the Taliban governor of the Andar district in Ghazni province, Mawlavey Kamiil, said: “We assure this to people all over the world, especially the people of Afghanistan: Islam has given rights to everyone equally. Women have their own rights. How much Islam has given rights to women, we will give them that much.” Similarly, a member of the Taliban’s cultural commission, Enamullah Samangani, has promised that women “should be in the government structure according to Sharia law”.

This caveat is important: women will only have the rights afforded to them by Islam. Under orthodox Sharia law, women can inherit property but not at the same level as men (generally half as much); women can testify in court but their testimony is not equal to a man’s word; women have a right to divorce under specific circumstances but not a unilateral right (as men have); a male guardian is essential for a woman; a woman can have one husband whereas a man can have up to four wives.

Yet the texts of Sharia law do not fully capture the brutal reality of daily life for women under a regime like the Taliban’s. In the last period of Taliban rule, which ended with the invasion of 2001, women were forced to wear the burka when outside, if they were allowed to leave the house at all. They were not educated in any meaningful sense (other than, in some cases, the most basic religious education). They were forced into marriages (often as young girls) with men who used them as chattels. Brutal punishments for small transgressions made women little better than slaves.

Yes, the “modernised” Taliban has done some media training, but we should not be fooled. The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan will be governed by the same draconian Sharia law as the Taliban regime of the past. Reports are already emerging of girls being taken as child brides, with the Taliban “ordering local religious leaders to give them a list of girls over 15 years of age and widows under 45” to marry their fighters.

Women’s faces are being whitewashed from billboards throughout Kabul. Women in Kandahar have been told not to return to their jobs at Azizi Bank, and that instead “male relatives could take their place”. In a small village in the Faryan province, the Taliban knocked on doors and demanded to be fed. If women protested, they were beaten and even killed.

And nobody asked what their pronouns are.