Author: Ophelia Benson

Sneer sneer sneer sneer.

The tendency to lump together Muslim females in exile who have rather unsavoury views about Islam makes the voices of moderate females difficult to hear…Male exiles from the faith do not seem to attract the same sympathetic open-armed treatment as the damsel in distress…The most prominent of the “refuseniks”, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and Wafa Sultan have caused a stir for allegedly being “brave enough” to criticise Islam and nail their colours to the west’s mast of values.

Interesting scare quotes on ‘brave enough’ – since all three women mentioned receive regular (and sincere) death threats. What exactly is Nesrine Malik expressing incredulity about, one wonders?

Wafa Sultan’s debut on al-Jazeera , where she bleated hysterically about the irredeemable retardation of the Islamic faith…[I]n marketing oneself as a Crusader speaking on behalf of the mute Muslim millions…[M]edia-courting one-woman-roadshows pitting themselves against the Muslim world do little more than create western media darlings…I should have a natural synergy with these women but I am appalled at how cavalierly they have appropriated the very limited opportunity to capture attention and raise awareness…

Aw – diddums – did the bad nasty talkative women grab your chance to ‘capture’ media attention? Well no wonder you have such a nasty way with words, then. No wonder you’re so full of sneers. Poor poor you.

Their personal histories exhibit a disturbing ruthless tendency to twist half-truths into a media-friendly tale of woe…This chameleonism offends me. Their abuse of the religion and its mores is unconstructive and gratuitous…when voices are heard, it is a tragic waste that they are pitched at a hysterical shriek supporting an irreconcilable “clash of civilisations” paradigm. What do these enlightened, brave souls hope to achieve?…[T]hey have robbed the Muslim woman of her independence and free will, pigeonholing and victimising her as a “Caged Virgin”…[T]elegenic articulate women cynically exploiting the naivety and polarisation of a terrorised post-9/11 world.

Unsavoury views, “brave,” bleated hysterically, Crusader, media-courting, cavalierly, ruthless, abuse, gratuitous, hysterical shriek, victimizing, telegenic, cynical. Nesrine Malik has a taste for shameless vituperation, and sexist vituperation at that. Sexist vituperation coming from women is doubly disgusting.

Wait wait wait wait – I don’t get it. I think this is exactly backward.

Clinton has benefited from a favorable gender dynamic that won’t exist in the fall. (In the Democratic primary, female voters have outnumbered males by nearly three to two.) Clinton’s claim to being a tough, tested potential commander-in-chief has gone almost unchallenged. Obama could reply that being First Lady doesn’t qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief, but he won’t quite say that, because feminists are an important chunk of the Democratic electorate. John McCain wouldn’t be so reluctant.

…What? Why is it supposed to be ‘feminist’ to think that being a first lady does qualify you to serve as commander-in-chief? What the hell is feminist about that? What is feminist about thinking ‘I am married to an important man’ is a qualification? That’s not feminist, it’s anti-feminist. Feminist is running on your own merits, not someone else’s. Parlaying wifehood into a career is not my idea of feminist. Using family connections and second-hand fame is not my idea of feminist. Riding on coat-tails is not my idea of feminist. Clinton is doubtless qualified, but the nepotism question makes her one of the last people in the country who should have tried for this particular job. I don’t feel one bit ’empowered’ as a woman by the fact that another woman is trying to use her marital arrangement as an elevator to the top.

Steven Pinker notes that Bush’s Council on Bioethics has put out a 555-page report called Human Dignity and Bioethics.

This collection of essays is the culmination of a long effort by the Council to place dignity at the center of bioethics. The general feeling is that, even if a new technology would improve life and health and decrease suffering and waste, it might have to be rejected, or even outlawed, if it affronted human dignity.

Yes where have we heard that before…from the archbishop of Canterbury, from the pope, from lots of meddlesome priests.

The problem is that “dignity” is a squishy, subjective notion, hardly up to the heavyweight moral demands assigned to it. The bioethicist Ruth Macklin, who had been fed up with loose talk about dignity intended to squelch research and therapy, threw down the gauntlet in a 2003 editorial, “Dignity Is a Useless Concept.”…Once you recognize the principle of autonomy, Macklin argued, “dignity” adds nothing.

Just what I said! Last November. Twice.

Macklin of course says it much much better.

To invoke the concept of dignity without clarifying its meaning is to use a mere slogan…Why, then, do so many articles and reports appeal to human dignity, as if it means something over and above respect for persons or for their autonomy? A possible explanation is the many religious sources that refer to human dignity, especially but not exclusively in Roman Catholic writings. However, this religious source cannot explain how and why dignity has crept into the secular literature in medical ethics.

Well, maybe it can, actually; words and concepts can cross borders.

Pinker goes on.

Goaded by Macklin’s essay, the Council acknowledged the need to put dignity on a firmer conceptual foundation. This volume of 28 essays and commentaries by Council members and invited contributors is their deliverable…And what it reveals should alarm anyone concerned with American biomedicine and its promise to improve human welfare. For this government-sponsored bioethics does not want medical practice to maximize health and flourishing; it considers that quest to be a bad thing, not a good thing.

Just like the archbishops and cardinals. Never mind what the research could do to end horrible diseases, instead focus on the threat to ‘human dignity’ of research on cells in a petri dish.

Although the Dignity report presents itself as a scholarly deliberation of universal moral concerns, it springs from a movement to impose a radical political agenda, fed by fervent religious impulses, onto American biomedicine.

And then he goes into the details. It’s infuriating stuff; don’t miss it.

The last paragraph makes the obvious and devastating point.

Theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.

Exactly.