Can Women's Liberation Make It in the West?

Excerpted from a note posted by a Western woman teaching at the all-women university here in the UAE. Someone asked her if her students envied her the opportunities she has had.

“The short answer is no, for the most part they pitied me. In their worldview I was a pathetic single woman... away from her family... no husband... no children... what could possibly be worse than that?

…These women feel sorry for Western women as we are obviously the most mistreated women in the world as our men have no respect for us at all. That is shown by the fact that even our husbands touch us in public - gasp, even kiss us (something that in their culture shows that the woman is a prostitute). The men allow their wives and daughters to run the streets with no chaperon to protect them... thus it is obvious that they do not love or respect us at all.

….The reality was that none of them wanted my life any more than I wanted theirs.”


That is the reality of the supposed “abuse of women” in the Muslim or Arab world. The Western demand that Arab women change their lives is simply cultural imperialism in its rawest form.


Another poster, an Arab who had lived in the west, chimed in:

“Women in the west are nothing more than sexual objects, that’s why you see them in advertisements for everything from soap to sofas, because in reality the executives view them as just one more studio prop.”

Women’s liberation may yet come to the West.