I am feminist, Praise Allah!

So, in my first entry of this blog I confessed my immature actions on a mommy website. The things I learned from that experience were an excellent reaffirmation of my feminist beliefs. I even learned more about them. Through my self-assigned studies I discovered a blog by this guy http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/the_natural_basis_for_inequali.php some anthropologist who reminds us, after a VERY LONG demonstration of how we use naturalistic models to explain certain human behaviors and traits, that we can not use these models to justify any form of injustice or inequality with unfair consequences.

I also did my research on the feminist movement in the middle east and through this I experienced yet another reaffirmation. As I always suspected, world peace is in the hands of woman. She is the only one who can unlock that door, but right now man is acting like a spoiled brat with his back pinned up against the door, blocking the keyhole. One thing I knew for certain during my antagonizing of a couple of western idiots on that mommy website forum noted in this blog's very first entry is that Muslim women have actually had more 'power' and 'freedom' than Christian and sometimes even Jewish women throughout history. Here's an interesting excerpt from an essay written by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea:

Some observers have recently suggested that the outrage against Islam in the Christian medieval world had much to do with the revolutionary -- for the time -- Muslim pronouncements about women. What kind of religion would allow women to inherit? According to medieval thought, women were not capable of handling money. Economic rights like inheritance were not granted to women in England until the Married Women's Property Act in the mid-19th century. Until 1970, in some states in America, daughters still did not automatically inherit, particularly if valuable assets like farmland were at stake. Unless the father specifically designated his daughter as heir, and if there no brothers, the land passed to the nearest male relative. Muslim women have had better rights since 632 AD.

Here is a link to the full essay:

http://www.crescentlife.com/thisthat/feminist%20muslims/islamic_feminism_finds_a_different_voice.htm

Interesting, but what about the jihab? Well, it is something to be misunderstood by a western non-religious woman such as myself. I should not be expected to understand how that would feel to have different social positions in life, even something as trivial as how I dress. In my mind, there shouldn't be any inequality. The laws of decency in a western society, such as America, should be equal for both men and women. For example, our nude torsos should be given equal opportunity as a man's nude torso. Obviously, a person who thinks like this cannot possibly think Muslim women who veil themselves are anything but 'oppressed, baby making machines'. Right? Well, here's a wildflower of epic proportions for you... if she lived like that in the western world, that would be all she represented. Sorry, but its true. At least in my fantasy land it is. But in the realm of womanhood, the Islamic feminist movement, even amongst women of clergy and those that wear the jihab, is what I believe will be the key to world peace, specifically starting with peace in the middle east. But the womans movement in the Middle East as explained in that article, is largely being perpetrated through religious means. For example, women are currently fighting cases where their rights are threatened by misinterpretations of ancient religious texts. They are using these texts to win their cases. They are playing the game! They know how the system works in Islam. They know how cultures work in the Middle East. This is a region that does not know the concept of seperation of church and state. It doesn't have to. Even in the West most people believe in basically the same Abrahamic described deity as they do in the Middle East, and many politicians wield their beliefs when representing themselves during the work of governing. But the liberal west feels that religion should play no role in legal governing, so the religious actions of feminists comes off as being barely visible to anyone, even those with interest in Peace, from the western world.

I have no problem seeing it for what it really is; women learning to play the game to gain their rightful place in their communities and to protect her vested interests in them. That sounds like I'm accusing the woman of Islam of being sneaky or devious about her endeavours for high religious status, which the jihab mainly represents, but I'm not. She is literally just now learning to play this game. The literacy rate among women in most ME countries in the late 1960s early 1970s was roughly 2%. Now its over 50% with at least half of all university students in the middle east being women. Women in america can't even boast that yet, by the way. (Latest figures show approximately 42/58 women to men ratio.) But what Middle Eastern women have figured out what to do is appeal to Man's sensibilities in regards to religious beliefs. Middle Eastern Muslim practices are largely impartial in terms of legal rights between the 2 sexes. But that's only when they are not the extremist versions of Muslim practice that, in these tumultuous times, mimmic the perceptions of Western aggression towards Muslims. At one time, in the early days of Christianity, Muslims were immediately denoted as heretics by the earliest Crusading Christians. It was God's will to exterminate them if they could not be converted. These are the most fundamental origins of the mistrust and misunderstanding that still exists between Muslim cultures and Christian and Jewish cultures. This extremism doesn't exist everywhere in the Middle East, of course. Shia movements, for example, certainly exhibit more liberal views to women therefore are also more conducive to medeating towards Peace. Christian and Jewish women are no where near being able to 'quiet' their men the way the woman of Islam is, we still have so much to learn, myself included.

So, another little side project I assigned myself was to make a 'feminist' ad video to the backdrop of a cool 90s all girl hardcore punk band, L7. I worked all last weekend on it. Its pretty stupid and trite, but the music kicks ass and I had a lot of fun learning how to use Windows Movie Maker. Here's the video for you to enjoy: FUEL MY FIRE

My two oldest boys (my husband and my 14 year old) teased me all weekend because of this silly little project. "Oh mom's going through another one of her lets-hate-men-and-become-a-lesbian phases again!" Of course they joke (they think they're funny, its kinda cute), because they know me and know I don't hate men and am not interested in being a lesbian. One cool thing about the people I share this flimsy house with is we all have a terrific sense of humor. To us, humor is serious business! We may be the only ones that find ourselves funny, but that works for us....

Anyway, after working on this for a few days and finally getting it uploaded to youtube, the day after I published it was VERY discouraging. I discovered my audio had been yanked from my 'video' on youtube. My audio file was being blocked by every video hosting site I could find. It wasn't passing through their copyright filters which is total BS!! It doesn't violate copyright laws regarding music. Its just their robotic filters that block it. Youtube's pretty cool, though. They let you dispute it and they review your material to make sure, but until you pass their process, they don't let you play the copyrighted audio. I could've left the video up until the dispute was resolved, but it was so stupid without the hardcore song!! I was so mad I just yanked it off of there and said "OH FUCKING FORGET IT!" LOL

My husband seemed to think its the copy of the song I was using. It was the .wmv version converted directly from the original artist's CD. I didn't think he was right, and still don't know for sure. He decided to use his limewire account (which he hates to use because he got in a little trouble using them once) and he found a regular .mp3 copy and downloaded it for me. He thinks it doesn't have copyright codes and was certain would pass the filters. (He was wrong, but it was still so sweet that he even tried). He doesn't know how to use Windows Movie Maker though, so when he decided to test his theory he enlisted the help of my 14 year old son, Vlad. Vlad is an inspiration to me. He makes videos like this as a hobby and has for several years. Both of us got into making machinima videos of our video game play. He was also a video editor for his Jr High news program for 2 years so he's very proficient at this kind of stuff (more-so than I anyway :P).

So he pulls up the video on my pc to swap out the audio and he decided to watch it in full and critique it. How nice. (pfft!) I was at work during this time that these two boys of mine decided to jump in and surprise me with some help. I had a relatively light day. Just had a few appointments in the morning and was home by 1-ish. I come home to find them working together on my video. At first I was ticked off because I thought they were doing something rude to it as a joke. Which was probably their first idea, I'm sure. But instead my son 'fixed' it for me. He added more images that were really cool and did an awesome job at lining up quick flashes of pictures to go along with a drum roll. I can't do stuff like that very well. Compared to me he's a pro! I was so proud of both my boys for setting aside their manly sensibilities (crude boyish sense of humor) to help me finish my 'lesbian ad campaign' as they call it. (If you go to the video you'll see a poster by the name of Sharpmuffin who left a nice little comment. Yeah, that's Vlad. Haha) Also, if you go to that video link I provided earlier in this post you will see that the video is in fact up and running, but that's only because I learned how to play the game. When I disputed the copyright claim I didn't copy and paste the Copyright Laws into the proper sections of the dispute form at first. Once I figured out where to place the exact verbage, my video was able to go live. With the help of my little men, we got our feminism video uploaded for all the world (with internet access) to see.

This story was so awe-inspiring to me... I don't know which this is, art imitating life or life imitating art... that whole concept confuses me, but it always happens to me (whichever one is the correct description). I also don't know if I'm just some fruitcake that goes around treating every little thing that happens to me as though it has symbolic meaning or if every little thing that happens to me really does have symbolic meaning... honestly, it really doesn't matter. Either way, its very enjoyable.