How to Spot “Love Myths”

Welcome to the final part of my series on egalitarian sexual relationships, in which I finally get around to discussing the “relationship” part of sexual relationships. Feel free to check out the first and second parts of this series, for a discussion of how to apply leftist and feminist principles to sexual acts themselves.
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Introduction

Our culture is full of what I term “love myths”, claims about romantic relationships that I view as incorrect or unhealthy. This post will be addressing five common love myths.

While I am a bitter, single person, what I say is not intended as an argument against romantic relationships, in fact I favour loving egalitarian relationships over promiscuity and other loveless sexual activities (which apparently makes me a horrible prude). However, if criticisms of ideas and behaviours offend you, feel free to not read this post (or anything I write).

Myth 1: You Should Not Think Too Much About Love

Mainstream culture often tells us that we should not (or cannot) apply rational thinking (or any kind of thinking) to love, because “love is irrational”. The idea is an appealing one, because many people think that being “rational” and “scientific”, means being cold-hearted and uncaring.

I think of myself as a rationalist. I aim to use rational arguments and evidence to gain an accurate understanding of real world. I then use this knowledge to come up with ways to improve the world. Other people (e.g. capitalists) use reason to figure out the best way to exploit others for the sake of gaining money and power. I do not view these people as “too rational”, rather they are too selfish. The culture has some funny ideas about rationality. These misconceptions are addressed in this brilliant speech by Julia Galef, so I recommend watching it if you have any concerns regarding rationality or its application in our daily lives.

The issue of applying rationality to love may be discussed further in another post. For now I will point out that though people preach against applying rational thinking to love, they nonetheless do so. Debates regarding “shipping” are an example of this. These debates involve evaluating fictional couples to determine whether they should be endorsed instead of alternative romantic pairings. Such debates are common in fan communities and while they sometimes inspire anger, they usually involve the use of rational arguments. If love were immune to rational thinking, people would not be debating it to the degree that they do.

In a post responding to pro-BDSM arguments, I claimed that the things we are told not to think about (such as love) are the things we, as radicals, should think about the most. This is because the notion that it is wrong to think critically about a particular concept or institution protects it from criticism and conceals any broader social trends behind it. If an idea or institution can only survive by closing itself off from rational criticism, then it is unlikely to be worthy of respect. This is true of our culture’s notion of “love”, which brings me to the next myth.

Myth 2: "True Love" Means Being Obsessed With Someone

There are many books, films and television shows in which a character declares that they “cannot live without him/her” and this is seen as the epitome of “true love”. Characters usually make these statements after knowing their romantic partner for a few days at most and learning nothing about them except how pretty and superficially charming they are. This myth is related to the first one, for it implies that if someone is thinking clearly and making sound (non-suicidal) decisions, then they cannot really be “in love.” This myth has obvious dangers. It encourages people to neglect all aspects of their lives that do not revolve around their “true love”, including their jobs, education, friends, families, hobbies and communities.

However, my main concern regarding this myth is that is encourages power inequalities within relationships. The more dependent one person is on another, the more power the latter has over the former. This clearly occurs in workplaces, where employees consent to exploitative conditions, because they depend upon their bosses for their incomes.

I would argue that obsessive “love” (or rather infatuation) creates emotional dependence, which has a similar, weakening effect. All other things being equal, those who believe that they will experience depression, craziness, “emptiness” or suicidal tendencies without their “true love” will have more difficultly leaving the relationship than those who simply enjoy spending time with their partner. This makes those who mistake obsessive infatuation for love vulnerable to abuse, though perhaps not quite as vulnerable as those who depend on their partners for things they literally need to survive, like food and housing. Nonetheless, the obsessive love “ideal” is clearly contrary to the formation of genuinely loving, egalitarian relationships.

Myth 3: Love Is All about Trust (or “Good Women Trust Men”)

In the previously mentioned post on BDSM, I stated that women are expected to love and trust men blindly and this trust is believed to be essential for relationships. The message that trust is inherently praiseworthy (whether there is good reason to exercise it or not) and that people (particularly women) are obligated to trust others is so common that some might wonder how I could possibly disagree with it. Allow me to explain.

I have previously argued that instead of shoving “trust” down women’s throats, we should encourage men to earn women’s trust. This requires men to be honest, fulfil their commitments whenever possible and avoiding activities which suggest that one is obsessed with sex or dissatisfied with their current partner (e.g. sexually harassing random women). People (including men) who behave this way will naturally receive trust from their partners and thus do not need to demand it. Our culture encourages women to trust their male partners even when they know little about them or have reasons to believe that they are not worthy of trust (e.g. when a man has a history of behaving aggressively towards women). I am not anti-trust, but I do criticise those who demand blind (non-evidence supported) trust.

The demand is similar to the religious notion that faith (believing in the existence and moral goodness of a god or similar being, no matter what) is vitreous. In fact there is a Bible passage (Ephesians 5:22-24) that compares a wife’s relationship to her husband with the relationship which is said to exist between religious believers and their god. The passage claims that both should involve submission (no surprises there). I do not think it is a coincidence that blind trust is preached alongside subservience, in both religious and romantic contexts.  After all, if you believe that a particular being is always right and always has your best interests in mind, even when there is reason to think otherwise, you are more likely to mindlessly obey their orders, or in other words, submit to them.

I do not believe that this kind of unthinking trust is an expression of good character, nor is it ever merited. While there are people whom I regard as generally intelligent and morally good, I do not automatically believe everything they say and obey their every instruction. Belief and trust should be earned, not demanded, and such trust should not lead one to believe that others are infallible. 

Myth 4: Women Have "Unrealistic Expectations"

Unlike the other myths discussed so far, this one is blatantly conservative and does not sound particularly romantic. It is often employed by supposedly rebellious people (usually men) who chide romantic comedies, along with the infamous Twilight series, for raising women’s expectations of men to “unrealistically high” standards. While this myth may seem to counter the idea that women should view men as perfect gods (which was discussed in the previous section) the end result is the same. Women who buy into it subordinate themselves to abusive or otherwise unpleasant men.

According to those who make this argument, the problem with Edward Cullen and similar characters is not that their appearance, wealth, physical strength and superficial charm are emphasised over any admirable personality traits they (may) have. Nor are their aggressive, dominating behaviours considered a problem. Those who make the “unrealistic standards” argument actually think that such characters are “unrealistic”, because they are not as sex-crazed, emotionless or uncaring as a “real man” is encouraged to be in our culture (see this brief video by Anita Sarkeesian for an explanation of the difference between feminist and anti-feminist critiques of Edward’s character).

It is indeed unrealistic for a non-royal woman to believe that her future partner will be a prince (or the modern day version of that, a capitalist) or that he will be physically flawless, speak in perfect, poetic prose and have zero annoying traits. However, what women need are not lower standards, but better standards. Our culture needs to stop focussing on surface level traits and discuss what really matters in a relationship. Those who wish to be in romantic relationships (with men or women) should be encouraged to seek out partners who will treat them like equals, avoid the use of physical aggression and develop emotional attachments, which are based on inner human characteristics (i.e. their thoughts, feelings, personality traits, etc.) Whatever anti-feminists may say, these are reasonable standards to measure men against.

Myth 5: Love Is All About Sacrifice

This myth is also somewhat conservative. It may seem like a healthy, realistic alternative to the belief that love is always wonderful and will magically solve every problem a woman has, but in reality it is just another way of getting women to shut up and submit. In fact, it further inflates the importance of romantic love in the lives of women, by implying that love is so inherently valuable that any suffering associated with it is worthwhile.

No relationship is perfect and minor sacrifices, such as having to sit through a boring (yet non-traumatising) film or television show may be justified, but often the sacrifices expected from women are more substantial. Women who accept this myth often give up their jobs, have more children than they want to, leave homes they prefer to stay in (or, alternatively, remain at home when they would rather be travelling) and abandon any ambitions they had prior to entering into the marriage or relationship. Thus the outcome of this myth is similar to that of the (rather liberal) obsessive love ideal discussed above. 

I think the amount of sacrifice required for love can be minimised if men and women decide, before they enter into a serious relationship, what they want from that relationship and choose their partners accordingly. For example, those with a strong desire to travel should avoid dating those who prefer to stay in one place. Furthermore, some of the sacrifices which are supposedly an inherent part of love are in fact a result of capitalists wanting more control over their workers. Fewer workers would be sacrificing their jobs for the sack of love if capitalists did not demand actions which are known to harm romantic relationships, such as working longer hours or moving to another town. Though it is clear that men are not expected to make nearly as many love-related sacrifices as women are, it seems that the group which is least willing to make sacrifices for the sake of love is the capitalist class.

Like several of the other myths I have discussed, this myth may encourage women to tolerate abuse. The idea that love consists of, or is caused by, experiences of pain and sacrifice is promoted in many fictional works (I may one day write about the presence of this idea in the Hunger Games series) and by conservative Christianity (through the Jesus narrative, which focuses on a bloody human sacrifice) and by liberal practices, including BDSM. Call me crazy, but I think loving someone means wanting to limit the amount of sacrifices they must make in order to be with you. If you truly loved someone, you would not deliberately put them in danger of pain or injury, nor would you try to take things from them. 

Conclusion

I hope this post and the previous two have helped readers understand what it means to have egalitarian sex lives and relationships. Now that I have pointed out these love myths, you will probably see them everywhere you go. I encourage readers to critique them whenever they occur in media, books or conversations. Who knows, we might just be able to raise people’s conscious and perhaps even make them think.
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I wanted to post this third part of the series last month, but it ended up being a lot longer than I had expected. I had to cut many parts from it, which may be used in further posts. I hope you enjoyed this post anyway. Let me know what I should write next.

Why Mainstream Feminism is Corporate Feminism

I have deleted the link to the liberals’ hate list (originally located on my last post) after a woman featured on the list stated that the link should not be shared. My blog is not very popular at the moment so I doubt I was generating much views for the hateful (how ironic) liberals, but I wish to respect the wishes of women targeted by the site. Feel free to share links to my blog on friendly sites.
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Introduction 

This post will add to the economics-related arguments I made in the last post. The term “mainstream feminism” in the title is merely another way of saying “liberal feminism”, since the tenants of liberal feminism are more in line with the status quo than those of radical feminism. The use of the word “corporate” in place of “bourgeois” was also a way of avoiding repetition.

Thus this article can be thought of as the conclusion to a three part discussion of how race and class are related to feminism, which began with this article. The current article will mostly focus on how liberal feminism favours those with more wealth and excludes women who have not managed to pull themselves up by their bra straps.

1. It is Opposed to “Classism” rather than Class Divisions

While radical leftists argue for the abolition of all class divisions and all power inequalities, liberal feminists advocate for an end to “classism”. In a previous post I stated that the term does not adequately describe why capitalism is harmful or oppressive. I also said that I would include a critique of the term “classism” in a future post. Well, here it is.

If I understand liberish correctly, the term “classism” refers to prejudices which are based on economic class. The first problem with this term is that, when defined in such a way, it implies that the oppressed masses are not allowed to have negative feelings towards the wealthy capitalists who rule over them, but I am going to be charitable and assume that “classism” refers mostly to the snobbish attitudes of rich people towards poor people. Even so, the term is a weak critique of capitalism, because it assumes that social disapproval is the worst problem faced by poor people. The term fails to condemn poverty itself. In fact liberals often assume that labelling a particular group as “exploited” or “victims” is itself a form of prejudice (they apply this reasoning to prostituted women, women who conform to femininity and people with disabilities.) Thus ideologies which advocate for the abolition of classes (e.g. socialism, communism and anarchism) would have to be deemed “classist” by liberals.

The term “classism” implies that poverty is yet another “empowering choice” that people make and that we should stop disapproving of those who make it. In reality, poverty is rarely a choice and even if it were it is still generally harmful to people’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Furthermore, the division of society into classes creates a sitution in which workers and poor people have to subordinate themselves to governments and corporations and have  little control over what is produced within their society and how it is distributed. Thus they are unable to make decisions about how energy is produced, what kind of food is available to them, what conditions people should labour under and whether or not children should be taught that boys ought to be violent and dominating, while girls ought to be submissive and obsess over their physical appearances.

Those who truly value liberty, equality and democracy and want the problems discussed above to be solved should favour an end to class divisions, not just an end to “classism”. This is not to say that poor and working class people do not experience prejudice, nor do I wish to imply that hateful feelings towards such people are not a problem. What I oppose is the notion that prejudice is the only problem that lower class people face and the assumption that class divisions are just a natural part of how the world is and yet another neutral identity that people should embrace and feel pride in, rather than a brutal hierarchy which needs to be abolished.

2. It Promotes Expensive Means of “Empowerment” 

Liberal feminists believe that “empowerment” (as they call it) mostly comes, not from banding together to form a political movement which takes to the street and demands change, but from consuming products that radical feminists have been criticising since the 1960s, including make-up, high heels and even breast implants, along with other forms of plastic surgery. This liberal path to empowerment is not one which poorer women can follow, unless they go into debt or forego spending money on more important things (like food, rent and healthcare.)

Breast implants alone cost between 10,000 – 15,000 Australian dollars and that’s not even including the costs of regular checkups or any corrective surgeries which may be needed if the original surgery goes wrong. One could buy a new car with that amount of money or pay for half of a university degree (at least until Tony Abbot’s policies raise the price of tertiary education to multiple times its current cost) or buy between 200 and 300 copies of the latest radical feminist literature. Any of those options would be a better use of one’s money, yes, even the last one.

The economic cost of make-up and fancy clothes may seem trivial by comparison. However, since fashions are constantly changing and make-up is used regularly, the total cost of such prettification accumulates over time. Throughout their lives, most women will spend thousands of dollars on such methods of prettification. The only women that are actually empowered by such practices, and the viewpoints that justify their use, are those few who are part of the capitalist class and profit from the sale of these products. Most women do not gain more social or political power by consuming such products and thus are not truly empowered by them.

The type of “sexual liberation” and “sexual subversion” advocated by liberals can also be expensive. In my view, a genuinely subversive sexuality would be one which challenges the belief that sexiness consists of one person dominating another. Instead the liberal version of “sexual subversion” reinforces this belief through the use of whips, chains and nipple torture devices. Obviously, these objects are not naturally part of either male or female bodies. They must be manufactured and are thus a source of profit for businesses. If there ever was a time when BDSM was a threat to capitalism, it is long over. Now companies that sell BDSM equipment are generating additional profit due to the success of Fifty Shades of Grey and the growing popularity of BDSM practices.
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Within walking distance of my home, sits a BDSM sex shop named after an aristocrat (that tells me more than I need to know about which class the BDSM community admires.) I will not reveal the actual name of the shop or the website I used to learn about its products lest I generate more publicity and hence income for it. I will tell you that a whip from that place will cost you 80 dollars (in US money.) A complete set of restraints costs 160 dollars. The “deluxe” set costs 245 dollars. Dressing up like a sexualised Hitler costs 450 dollar. Showing complete disrespect for survivors of the Holocaust and their families is probably priceless in the owners’ minds. 

In case you think the Nazi costumes and the rib crushing corsets (which cost even more than the Hitler costume) are optional, BDSM events usually have dress codes which mandate that attendants turn up in BDSM-related outfits. One is not required to dress like a fascist, but turn up wearing ordinary clothes with two digit price tags and they will kick you out for being too “vanilla-looking.” They might as well stick a “no Jews or poor people allowed” sign above the doors to their events.

3. It Celebrates the Rich and Successful

When trying to determine whether a piece of media is “feminist” or not, liberals look for “strong female characters” or strong real-life individuals who overcome social barriers to become successful. They believe that individual success stories, whether real or fictional, will inspire other individuals who watch them to live out their own American Dreams. This notion of female empowerment is clearly very capitalistic and in line with the dominant narratives about how the goal of the individual should be to advance their own status in a hierarchical world. The individual empowerment narrative is used to defend hierarchial orders by asserting that they pose no real harm and that anyone can overcome them, unless of course they are “weak” or “not inspired enough”.  

Among the women who are celebrated by liberal feminists for being “inspiring” are celebrities who have the superficial appearance of being empowered, such as Pink, Lilly Allen, Katy Perry and most of all Beyoncé. To my knowledge none of these women have sung about the need for women to form a movement to fight oppression and Katy Perry has explicitly distanced herself from feminism in her interviews (which does not really bother me because women who know nothing about feminism have no right to claim they represent it) and continues to have little understanding of what it means.

These “empowered” female celebrities sing about their personal success and not about the need for women as a group to fight against oppressive social structures. Songs such as “Stupid Girls” by Pink and “Hard out Here” by Lilly Allen attack less empowered women for supposedly being stupid, the former even goes so far as to mock women suffering from eating disorders. Then you have the song “Independent Women” by Beyoncé, which does not explicitly attack anyone, but which implies that women who are strong, independent and, most of all, rich, belong to some superior breed of women and that women who are not making their own money (and lots of it) do not. In fact the importance of an individual becoming rich or powerful or both, is a common theme in these supposedly “feminist” songs and liberals who claim they are “anti-capitalist” eat it right up.

The celebration of rich, successful individuals is taken to extremes in the case of “empowered sex workers”. Like the celebrities discussed above, these “sex workers” (as they call themselves) brag about how wealthy they are and how much expensive and totally unnecessary junk they can afford to buy. They assume, without question, that wealth, consumerism and prettiness should be the centre of a woman’s existence. Thus they reinforce all kinds of nasty stereotypes about prostituted women and women in general. 

Unlike strong female celebrities, self-proclaimed "sex workers" do not even try to argue that they earned their money through their own efforts. They blatantly claim that they are being paid excessive amounts of money to have orgasms and be physically attractive. These women do not represent the majority of women in prostitution and I doubt they are even representing their own experiences in their entirety. They use their own success to justify the exploitation of other prostituted women throughout both the first and third world and perpetuate an industry that harms these "weak" women. Self-proclaimed "sex workers" speak as if such women barely exist and are mostly an invention of "oppressive" sex negatives. Their contempt for the "non-empowered" is clear.

Conclusion

The reason I am complaining about the way in which liberal feminism excludes poor people and celebrates the rich is not because I want in. Rather, the fact that they came up with their brand of “empowerment” without taking into account the fact that not everybody can afford to follow it constitutes further evidence that the liberal feminist ideology does not truly represent the interests of the oppressed of the world, regardless of the intentions of its proponents.

If liberals really want to stand up for the oppressed of the world they need to recognise that not everyone chooses to be in the situation that they are in economically or in terms of work and not everybody “likes it”. They also need to recognise the difference between an inner sense of “identity” and a social role imposed onto people as part of a hierarchical system. So long as they continue to push the paradoxical view that being dominated economically, socially or sexually can somehow be a form of freedom and individuality, they cannot claim to be fighting for a better, more egalitarian world. 

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That concludes my critique of liberal feminism’s approach to race and class issues. Such themes will be discussed again in the future, but for now I would like to address other issues, such as how to distinguish liberal feminists from true radicals.

Why Cultural Relativism is Racist

NOWSA 2014 is over. Thankfully, I was in London for part of it. I do not think I could have been any further away from their discussions of “feminist pornography”, “gender-fluidity” and [insert pretentious, academic term for a concept that is actually pretty simple here]. I wrote this post back in July, while I was in Paris, where I had to walk through an onslaught of expensive clothing in order to get to anything I needed, but I was still happy to be away from university for a week (I told my parents that the semester started in August, haha.) 

This post was originally going to be part of an upcoming post, but since it references current events I wanted to get it out before it became really outdated. Enjoy! 

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Introduction

One of the organisers of NOWSA 2014 bragged about making it “the most intersectional one yet”, what I assume the organiser meant is that the conference featured more non-whites and transgender organisers/speakers and involved discussions of race, disability and just about everything except for the problems that women face as a result of being women. Liberals claim that they (unlike all those nasty anti-pornography, anti-BDSM, “white” feminists) are the true opponents of racism and what they term “ethnocentrism”. They argue for something called “cultural relativism”, the notion that all cultural practices ought to be “respected” (which really means that they ought to be blindly praised and never criticised, no matter how much harm they cause to women.)

As the title implies, my aim in this article is to convince you that cultural relativism is in fact a racist, pro-West viewpoint. This post builds upon an idea that I brought up in the comment section of this article. My next article will also be based on it. Feel free to check it out before you continue reading and I should probably give Heretic some credit for mentioning that non-Westerns generally are not big fans of the sex industry and the “sex-positivity” that goes along with it.

1. It Makes Non-White People Seem Like Aliens

Liberals promote the view that nobody who has grown up in the West can ever hope to understand a non-Western culture, at least not without studying it at university for years and giving up thousands of dollars in the process, how convenient, right?

While there are indeed a wide variety of cultures in the world, there are certain patterns as well. The oppression of women is one. Most class-divided societies have some kind of mechanism through which to oppress women. Often this takes the form of a beauty practice like foot-binding or neck rings (which deform women’s collarbones in order to make their necks appear longer) or breast implants or any of the other hundred or so beauty practices that are promoted in the West. Perhaps we are not that different after all. 

Class-divided cultures tend to have supernatural and pseudoscientific beliefs that justify the division of humanity into classes. Judaism, Christianity and Islam claim that there exists a single god who commands the existence of a hierarchical society in which some people are enslaved to others. Hinduism and Buddhism claim that the world is a place of punishment that people are sent to (through reincarnation) if they fail to reach Nirvana and thus making life better for the poor and oppressed would defeat the whole purpose of their existence on Earth. Then you have the so-called “scientists” who argued that black people’s brains were naturally smaller than white people’s and that blacks were thus suited to the role of being slaves. While ruling classes have used all kinds of different ideological mechanisms to keep the oppressed in their place (thus creating that “cultural diversity” thing liberals are so fond of) all cultures which are the product of an economic system that divides people into classes are fundamentally about the same thing, maintaining that class division. 

Cultural relativists ignore these patterns in favour of a narrative that makes non-Western cultures seem so different to the culture of the West that those who belong to the former might as well be aliens. Of course they do not call them aliens, but they do go out of their way to emphasise how different non-whites are to white people and how incapable whites are of understanding non-white people. They also denounce any attempt to point out the similarities between people of different ethnic backgrounds. In doing so, cultural relativists set up a false contrast between the cultures in which women are oppressed by various traditional beauty practices and the Western world in which women are supposedly treated like equals. Then they attack Westerners for wanting to impose their “egalitarianism” onto other cultures which refuse to accept the “Western” notion that women ought to be treated like equals. This whole narrative is of course dependent on the (false) assumption that the West does not do the oppressive things that non-Western societies do. So tell me, who are the racists now?

2. It Makes Non-White Groups Seem Internally Homogenous

If the argument I put forward above is correct, it follows from this that all cultures ought to be subject to political critique. While it is clear that white people are capable of critiquing the cultures they grew up in and being part of movements that challenge Western cultural practices, cultural relativists assume that all non-whites are blind followers of their cultures. Thus criticising a non-white person’s culture is deemed to be highly offensive, because there is absolutely no way that they could be criticising it themselves, right? Non-whites are too dumb for that. 

In case I did not make myself clear enough, that last comment was sarcastic. Non-whites are in fact capable of critiquing the cultures they grew up in, just as white people do. Hence there are radical leftist movements all over the world as well as secularist and moderate religious movements that seek to combat Muslim extremism. There are even feminist movements that fight against the enforcement of harmful cultural practices such as burqa-wearing and female genital mutilation. Cultural relativists ignore the existence of such movements and instead assume that every racial group has some kind of uniform culture that had existed for thousands of years before white people came along and messed things up. White people (or rather, a group of rich, powerful men who claim to speak up on behalf of ordinary white people and sometimes enlist their help in order to impose oppression) have messed things up for non-whites, but not in the way liberals think they have. I will have more to say about that in the next section.

3. It Ignores The Role Of The West In International Affairs

In order to defend practices such as burqa-wearing and female genital mutilation, cultural relativists represent such practices as a natural part of non-Western cultures. Cultural relativists would have us all believe that Arab women have been wearing burqas since the beginning of time. In reality, the Arab world was once the site of intellectual progress and religious tolerance, at least compared to medieval Europe (in which strict adherence to Catholicism was insisted upon.) As I said above, class divided societies tend to have cultures and ideologies that reinforce the status quo and these cultures ought to be critiqued on that basis. The Arabic world of the middle ages should not be exempt from such critique, but the religious extremism and violent misogyny of some Islamic countries in the modern era is at least in part due to the policies of the West. It is not purely a product of traditional Arabic or Muslim culture.

A timely example of this phenomenon is Israel’s recent attack on Gaza. Over 1800 Palestinians (most of them civilians) have lost their lives during the attack and many more had their homes destroyed by bombs. Israel’s occupation of Palestine has been going on since 1967, inspiring much of the contempt for the West that exists within the Middle East and causing the people of Palestine and the surrounding Arab nations to turn to Islamic extremists who promise protection from the influences of the West (which is not to say that anyone struggling to liberate Palestine is automatically an Islamic extremist.)

Another source of contempt is the understandable disgust many in the Arabic world feel towards Western culture. Traditional religion is seen as a means of maintaining order and morality in a world increasingly dominated by the shallow, amoral thinking of the West, and yes, ironic as it is, the very people who are pushing cultural relativism (liberal feminists) are part of the problem. If a group of Muslim extremists, or perhaps even some more moderate Muslims who have not yet totally bought into Western ideology, were to encounter a group of liberal feminists who insisted on “cultural relativism”, “sexual liberation” and the supposed “right to be sexy” the Muslims would see these liberals as an example of everything that is wrong with the West and, to some extent, they would be right.

There are of course numerous other causes of the growth of religious fundamentalism in the Middle East and the conflict between the Arab and Western worlds, including the fact that the US government provided economic backing to extreme Muslim groups during their fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, even though more secular resistance groups existed. If you wish to investigate the issue further, I am sure you will find plenty of people who know way more about the topic than I do. Noam Chomsky is the first person who comes to mind. For now, I think my point has been made. Culture is an ever-changing thing and at this point in history many harmful changes are being perpetuated by the actions of the West. While cultural relativists present themselves as critics of the West and Western centrism, their viewpoint ultimately winds up justifying the harms that the West causes throughout the world.

Conclusion

I hope I have convinced you that cultural relativism is actually a racist worldview that makes the West out to be far better than actually is. Instead of challenging the conservative view that the West is some sort of beacon of enlightenment for the rest of the world to follow, cultural relativists instead try to convince us that there is nothing particularly good about enlightenment and that we only think it is good because we grew up in the “enlightened” West, thus reinforcing the view that the West is in fact enlightened. Instead of encouraging us to see the oppressive nature of our own culture, cultural relativists tell us to be just as uncritical towards other cultures as we are towards our own, thereby ensuring that Western culture remains uncriticised. I daresay that it is not the interests of women or non-Westerns that are being served by this fake and (ironically) highly westernised, anti-racism.
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I would like to offer my condolences to the hundreds of Gaza residents who lost family members during the time that I spent writing this article and I would like them to know that the actions of the Israel government do not represent the desires of all ethnic Jews.

This same article has been posted on my other blog, which I do not use as often nowadays. The other blog deals with my non-feminism related views. Feel free to check it out if you have the time.