Jonathan and Richard discuss the many "Waves" of Feminism, from the Suffragettes to Margaret Sanger to postmodern theorists of gender and pornography. They also examine feminism's effect on men, and whether the world needs another hero.

Richard T. Ford's new article, Rights Gone Wrong, laments the Alinskyite strategy increasingly deployed by White males of forcing the Civil Rights hustle to live up to its own rhetoric. He drips with contempt for his fellow males, appealing to his warped notion of "common sense". For him, common sense boils down to the unspoken premise of the Civil Rights Movement: It's a weapon to bludgeon White males. It's inappropriate and nonsensical to apply the statutes as written, because the intention is the opposite of what's written. It's a fig leaf of universal rhetoric over the giant throbbing obscenity of anti-White and anti-male zero-sum identity politics.

Ford's leopard-print thong is in a bunch because a man alleged sexual discrimination in a Mother's Day contest. Of course he was sexually discriminated against for being a man, it was a Mother's Day contest. Ford echoes the popular sentiment which is that the man should shut up and "man-up". In a sane world, I would concur. However, there's only one way to fight a social and legal system which is half-retarded and throws the retarded half in your lap: go full retard. There's nothing wrong with ladies' nights and Congressional Black Caucuses, but when the system sanctions fairness for thee and retardation for me, I have a moral obligation to support what this gentleman had the foresight and courage to do.

He was defeated, of course...

I have often pondered how it impacted the average Gen-Xer to hit puberty at the very moment when the AIDS epidemic became a ubiquitous media sensation.

I do know how this ironic sequential syncronicity affected me personally, though I am in no sense a paradigmatic “X-Man.” In my adolescent mind, as a teenager in the '80s, sex and certain death came to be inextricably intertwined in ways they had never before been associated in human history. To have sexual intercourse was to make oneself vulnerable to a dread plague that viciously ate away at your insides until you perished in horrific pain. You didn’t get better, and there was no cure.

Due to this grim set of circumstances, sexual abstinence assumed an allure for me that wasn’t merely motivated by a concern for physical health and well-being, but by plainly psychic considerations as well. For as much as we were always sternly lectured by our betters not to view the HIV virus as karmic retribution for moral misdeeds—i.e., the result of junkies, sexual perverts, and other “unclean” people reaping what they sowed as a result of their lifestyle choices—it was nevertheless hard to avoid drawing such primal inferences when one glimpsed the wasted-away visage and corpse-like form of some poor bastard enduring the final stages of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Of course, this reaction was severely overblown on my part. Not because AIDS wasn’t a terrible disease—it was, and it still is. But most of the noise we heard concerning HIV wasn’t so much concerned with encouraging compassion for its victims, but rather with politicizing their misery in order to agitate for social change. To this end, it became necessary for radical organizations like ACT UP to send out strident and often contradictory messages in an effort to “educate”— which is to say, indoctrinate—Middle Americans inclined towards more conservative sexual morays. “AIDS is not a gay disease,” the ACT UPers would loudly insist, while simultaneously attacking those who feared the possibility of transmission as latent “homophobes,” an implicit admission that homosexual contact did indeed correlate with incidences of HIV-positivity. And while widespread terror of contracting the virus was derided by activist-types as a loathsome byproduct of the hoi palloi’s shameful “ignorance,” these same activists weren’t above exploiting the common man’s supposedly unfounded fear in an effort to promote “safe sex,” that is, contraception, another brave new innovation of the post-1960s age which had always previously been regarded as a low and disreputable practice. 

The topic of women on the Right has led to many a heated discussion, and it is one that commentators on the Left have gleefully joined in their efforts to promote their cause and discourage opposition.

One of the favourite tropes of the Left is that its opponents offer women nothing except serial pregnancy and household chores. Another is that their opponents are angry, hate-filled, pension-age misogynists. Yet another is that, because of the above, none but a tiny minority of deluded, sociopathic women support them.

The implication is that the Left offers women emancipation; that proponents of the Left are happy, loving, youthful people with enlightened attitudes; and that, because of the above, the sane majority of women support them.

But—is this true?

And if all or at least some of it is true, is it true without qualifications?

So far no one has pointed the electron microscope toward women on the Left.

This is an omission that needs correcting, for in a culture that is materially dominated and regulated by the ideological Left, and/or where the cultural hegemony has been defined by the ideology of the Left, the topic is certainly worthy of investigation.

While often taken for a nihilist, I am no atheist. And even if I were inclined towards upholding theological nullification, I would hold no candle for the likes of Richard Dawkins, who, in his non-scientific writings, strikes me not as a thoughtful doubter but a smug, arrogant egotist more concerned with self-promotion and the attainment of cult-of-personality status than the disinterested pursuit of truth for its own sake.

Given his unlikeable personality, and some generally loathsome propensities, I find myself thoroughly surprised at my current desire to defend Dawkins against those of his own camp who have turned against him in an ideologically-driven snit recently. But then, an overarching concern with opposing the Zeitgeist’s smelly little orthodoxies at every turn can make for strange bedfellows sometimes.

I suppose, however, that it isn’t really Dawkins with whom I sympathize in this silly little controversy involving a silly little feminist blogger and her hapless, dorky would-be elevator-wooer in the aftermath of what was certainly a silly little atheist conference filled with hapless and dorky attendees in Dublin last month. I’ll certainly roll my eyes if Dawkins bows to pressure and perpetrates a Tracy Morgan-esque craven apology for being such a wretched “sexist,” or whatever they’re saying he is. But ultimately, it’s none of my concern what Dawkins does, or doesn’t do. However he elects to respond, verily, he has his reward.

No, for me the truly galling aspect of the “elevator-gate” pseudo-scandal only becomes apparent when one reads between the lines, and considers what is being said and left unsaid in the reportage of what should have been a non-event.

As we all know by now, “Skepchick,” a young, bespectacled, sour-faced female-supremacist, was invited to speak at the World Atheist Convention, a godless gathering at a hotel in Dublin, Ireland. (Goddess only knows why she was invited, and I’m frankly uninterested in speculating; I’ve never claimed to understand the rhetorical tastes of atheists, feminists, or atheist-feminists.) After her speech, at 4 a.m., whilst taking the elevator up to her room, Skeptical-chicky was awkwardly propositioned by a man she apparently regarded as an unappealing nerd. She turned down his advances, and he meekly relented, in good beta-male fashion, exited the elevator, and slunk away to his room for a heavy date with his right hand.

Spoiled, bitchy womanist princess puts horny, harmless dork in his place.

End of story, right?

Wrong.

Ramzpaul:

Jaenelle instigated an epic firestorm with her recent article, "Where are All the Women?" Whether her position is correct or incorrect, she deserves credit for stepping up and starting the discussion. She's correct that the overt hostility toward women in some circles is an impediment to progress and she's also correct that women are generally less inclined—both by nature and nurture - to be a bit less politically vocal and comfortable with the concomitant competitiveness and hostility that comes with it.

Unfortunately, she leaves one with the impression that Women,  the identity group, are boycotting the good fight for our people and our future until a list of conditions are met. If a cause is both righteous and existential, then those who are awakened to the necessity of that cause have a moral obligation to fight for it regardless of what challenges they face from either their enemies or their "allies". To take up dissident political work is to be goaded into arena by spectators who are content to clap and cheer as the lion chases you in circles. It's not easy, but matter how off-putting some creeper bellowing about how you ought to shut up and make babies can be, it's not that guy's fault if women fail to do their part.

One might conclude if one didn't know better that Jaenelle is liable to run off and whimper on Morris Dees' gaudy red velvet sofa if we men didn't "shape up".

Her own actions contradict that interpretation. Jaenelle has been at the forefront of public advocacy, tirelessly working to organize and mobilize real world White Advocacy. As a co-founder of Hoosier Nation, she's played a pivotal role in building one of the most active and effective activist workshops in America from scratch. As the sole proprietor of Lighthouse Literature, she's doing as much as anybody to help spread the ideas behind our movement. She's faced down the illegal immigrant protesters and "antifa" thugs on the statehouse steps, choked on pepper spray, been kicked out of venues after bricks were thrown through the plate-glass windows,  had credible threats on both herself and her loved ones, and paid for much of that experience out of her own purse.

The real question is the very opposite of Jaenelle's. Men are the ones more or less absent from the struggle to preserve our White American heritage and way of life. Sure, there are relatively few women involved in the so-called "movement". But this struggle shouldn't be defined in terms of the "stuckment", but in on who is out in the real world struggling for White American interests and goals. By that standard, most hobbyists (and women are generally not hobbyists) who call themselves pro-White would barely qualify at all, and the vast army of moms, wives, and sisters keeping America segregated one neighborhood at a time would qualify.

Our enemies are quick to confirm that "racism" in America has taken on a softer, more subtle, more insidious tone. In other words, it's become more feminine. America's women are the ones putting their kids in "good schools", bothering the Homeowner's Association about all the cars parked next door until the Mexicans are forced out of the neighborhood, lobbying for zoning policies that prohibit lime green houses with purple shutters, championing the fascist zero-tolerance and anti-drug policies that make excellent proxies for race, and smirking warmly when their real estate clients propose to move into "that" neighborhood.

Had White America's women faltered to the extent that we men have in the past century, there would be nothing left for us to preserve. Where are all the men at? Had our women not found hundreds of millions of clever little ways to resist the federal government's tyrannical social engineering campaign, America would be a Brazilian circus by now. Had they contented themselves with bestowing grandiose titles upon themselves in the humid confines of their parents' basements and calling it "pro-White", we would all be hosed.

Steve Sailer has demonstrated that the phenomenon of "White Flight"—the first thing our opponents point to when attempting to name examples of Whites acting in their group interests - is driven almost exclusively by women of child-bearing age. Even the most confidently pro-White men find themselves going for the cheaper apartments that are closer to the office. Even the most liberal soccer moms find themselves going  for the lily-white subdivision. If, as Jaenelle suggested and many commenters put in more blunt terms, the men's work is overt political struggle and the women's work is practical local and familial toiling, then there's no contest.

Our birth rate is hovering below replacement-rate, now. Feminists are a big part of the problem. Heidi Beirich is still stomping around college campuses in search of "racism". There's much more that women can do to help, and I hope Jaenelle fleshes out her proposal for more female-friendly outreach and advocacy options. As a society, both sexes are failing to measure up to the legacy we inherited from our forefathers and pioneer mothers. If we're to earn the rich inheritance we've been entrusted with, both men and women must stop playing by the enemy's rules and thinking of our separate genders as competing identity groups. We must start thinking of ourselves as complementary halves of a singular tribe joined in a united front against the globalists and their third world minions.

The Daily Mail reported the other day that British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron is studying the possibility of imposing compulsory quotas for women in company boardrooms—a demand previously made by Labour’s Harriet Harman, and previously derided by the Conservatives while in opposition. Apparently, Mr. Cameron is drawing inspiration from Scandinavian countries, where companies are required by law to ensure that at least 40% of board members are women.

No mention has been made of exactly how this will improve operational efficiency, the quality of products and customer service, or profitability.

I have no problem with women in boardrooms if they are there for the right reasons—meaning, they are the most skilled persons for the job not currently employed elsewhere. But I do have a problem with the government, which knows nothing about my company’s needs, telling me whom I must hire and whom I must promote, to what positions, and how soon.

Having long known management consultants whose clients have been either among the industry leaders nationwide or prestigious multinationals (indeed, one of the consultants, now retired, worked for one of the latter), one certainly cannot dismiss the famed glass ceiling for women in management as pure feminist agitprop: although this is less the case nowadays, there has been, and there still is, a tendency among some to take women less seriously in corporate environments, and this has inevitably impacted on promotions. (If executive women are sometimes unpleasant, masculine, and abrasive, it owes as much to the need to be heard and be taken seriously as it owes to feminism. This would be consistent with social identity theory, which predicts that in conflict situations competing groups will grow to resemble each other, even if ingroup members’ perceptions of the outgroup come increasingly to exaggerate ingroup-outgroup differences, real or perceived. In a male-dominated environment, women competing for resources, and equipped with an adversarial group identity by the feminists, will inevitably adopt male tactics and characteristics.)

Having said this, however, and with the caveat that mediocrity and incompetence abound all the way up and down the corporate ladder, irrespective of sex, there are also women who do not deserve to be taken seriously, who are hypersensitive, and / or who, found lacking in efficacy and / or industry, exploit equality legislation to obtain undeserved advantage. And, more importantly, there are also many women who do not dream of being ball-busting executives: indeed, many are content to have economic autonomy, while others would rather be at home looking after their families.

The underlying assumption with quotas is that (a) every person has the same potential to do a job as well as any other given the same opportunities; and (b) when a person who is not a member of a protected category is not successful with a job application it is always unjustified, unless another member of a protected category has been successful instead.

Mr. Cameron’s brand of feminism cannot accept that women may tend to order their priorities differently from men, and that his may have contributed proportionally to different outcomes vis-à-vis the corporate ladder. As usual, inequality of outcome is equated simplistically with inequality of opportunity.

Were it not because the imposition of quotas is a zero sum game, where every person who is favoured by the quota system is another person who is displaced in turn, I would be thinking that this is not about equalising outcomes, but about maximising tax revenues: after all, more women in senior executive positions means more women in the high income tax bracket.

What is certain is that any quota system will result in less qualified women displacing better qualified men. Definitely not in every case, as there are many very talented women out there and many incumbents who do not deserve to be where they are, but it will definitely happen. And where this happens, the quality of the decision making at boardroom level will be lower, which will impact negatively on the entire organisation, and even the consumer.

Any quota system will also impact negatively on women, as those attaining boardroom positions will fall immediately under suspicion of being there because of the quota system rather than because of professional merit. You can well imagine the rage and frustration of a genuinely deserving woman executive—one who probably had to strain to be taken seriously—in the presence of sceptical male colleagues who will now, in addition, have reason to see her as an affirmative action beneficiary, rather than a fully qualified partner. And, in addition to undermining this women’s authority at the boardroom level, quotas will also undermine their authority among those directly below them, for the better-qualified men who were passed over for promotion will certainly not take their new woman bosses seriously. Some men, demoralised, may engage in passive aggression and reduce their output, possibly going on strike by doing exactly no more and no less than what they are paid to do, interpreting instructions literally and keeping strictly to the 9 to 5 schedule, even, or especially, when there is a crisis. Some may take a page from Hermann Melville’s novella, Bartleby, the Scrivener, and practice outright passive resistance. Other men, infuriated, may work double-time actively to undermine their new woman bosses.

Aware of this, women executives, whether at boardroom level or on their way there, will certainly notice and act accordingly. Quotas are likely to exacerbate an antagonistic climate of competitive nastiness.

This will be far from helpful when organisations are already rife with all manner of intriguers, sycophants, back-stabbers, opportunists, hypocrisy, deception, bruised egos, pettiness, and personal hatreds; and where there are plenty of free-loaders, time-servers, gossips, and blunderers who rise purely because of their adeptness at blame transferring and gluteal osculation.

As usual, feminism, rather than reconciling the sexes in a spirit of teamwork, drives a wedge between them and sets them at war with each other. This is not how the alternative Right would approach matters of sex and gender: over here we view the sexes as complementary, each endowed with their own unique skills and ways of doing and seeing things, but ultimately working in concert. Feminism is all about us-versus-them; it is a force of destruction and revenge, not a constructive effort towards synergistic harmony between the sexes.

And there is also the matter of free association. Supposedly, we enjoy it in our democratic society. In reality, we are often denied it: millions of people we do not want around us are imported or allowed in, with government collusion or sanction, and settled in our communities, making them, the high streets, and the transport system, far more unpleasant than it needs to be. And now, as employers, should Mr. Cameron go ahead with Labour’s idea, and should less-qualified women be promoted over better-qualified men to meet minimum government quotas, we will have to suffer annoying, odious, incompetent partners and directors on the boards of our companies, holding positions of immense responsibility, being paid large sums of money, and causing more headaches than it is worth, rather than the persons we would have chosen on the basis of merit, talent, and personality.

And what next? Previous experience suggests this is to be thin end of a wedge, which will open the way for further, and even more unpleasant, impositions; more quotas, to ensure the full spectrum of colour, creed, gender, age, IQ, disability, HIV status, and sexual orientation is uniformly represented in every area of private and professional life, irrespective of relevance or merit, without the option to choose whom we would rather work or associate with. So much for meritocracy and free association.

Perhaps the response will be greater automation, and the dispensing with of humans whenever possible, for fear of whom one may be forced to work alongside with. Perhaps the response will be emigration: many companies, fed up with the previous Labour government’s predatory tax code, relocated their businesses out of the United Kingdom, in favour of more fiscally amenable pastures. Perhaps the response will be outward compliance, followed by subterfuges and workarounds—subtle psychological warfare to force resignation of affirmative action beneficiaries in hopes that another, better candidate will fill their positions. Or perhaps the response will be a call for more women in coalmines, construction, and oil drills.

Personally, I would prefer a system and a culture based on merit and teamwork, where men and women contribute with their own unique perspectives and approaches to action in the effort solve the different problems in life. Whatever the wrongs of the past, quotas is not the solution.

Well before Labour’s seizure of power in 1997, I knew Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would be trouble. Even my most pessimistic forecasts were eventually exceeded by the dynamic duo. And now, in the six months following 13 years of heavy-handed Labour government, with the nation groaning under the iron heel of that miserable party, it is clear that under David Cameron’s coalition we are in for yet more of the same.

A few months back, Entertainment Weekly published a feminist screed, 'The Social Network's Woman Problem'. In it, columnist Jennifer Armstrong, reviewing The Social Network, concedes that women generally aren't interested in computer science and that they don't feature prominently in the true-life story that inspired the movie. While she grudgingly admits that it wouldn't be appropriate to lie about events, she sniffs that, "[I]f this were fiction, the snubs would be inexcusable."

How refreshing! Here we have an admission that the female computer gurus are largely fictional, but that writers have a moral obligation to depict an inverted world that corroborates egalitarian gender fantasies. It would be inexcusable for gender egalitarians to suggest that males are the primary drivers of technological innovation.

Ironically, Larry Summers, the same former Harvard President who shooed the Winklevoss twins out his office in the movie would probably shoo Armstrong out as well. Back in 2005 he ignited a firestorm of feminist outrage with his frank attribution of the “underrepresentation” of women in science and engineering to “upbringing, genetics and time spent on child-rearing.”

And how did the Ivy League audience respond to the suggestion that gender differences in academic and professional outcomes owed to something other than victimization and systemic White male bigotry?

"I felt I was going to be sick," said Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who listened to part of Summers's speech Friday at a session on the progress of women in academia organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. She walked out in what she described as a physical sense of disgust.

"My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," she said. "I was extremely upset." 

One lady in attendance angrily declared that, "That's the kind of insidious, destructive, un-thought-through attitude that causes a lot of harm. It's one thing for an ordinary person to shoot his mouth off like that, but quite another for a top educational leader."

Note the parallel with Armstrong’s position: that there's an empirical world of ordinary people who accept gender realities, and an intellectual one that must uphold a standard of reality denial.

Summers' remarks were correct: While there are always exceptions, women are on the whole less naturally gifted than men in science and technology. This is not to say that on the whole they are inferior to men; they simply tend to excel in different areas. The paradox underlying contemporary feminism is that feminists esteem traditional male roles more than traditional female ones, eager to achieve female equality at wage slavery, computer programming, and athleticism, while contemptuous of their natural areas of excellence, such as sociability, multitasking, organising, and holding a family together in times of crisis. Are the latter not important too?

We only need to watch the role that women play in this movie, how they are treated, to see what feminism has accomplished in the last 50 years. Zuckerberg and pals publicly humiliate them, liken them to farm animals, and use them as disposable sex toys. Armstrong describes these depictions of women as "50s-level sexist", but women in the 50s didn't act like the women in The Social Network, and neither were they treated like the women in that film. Their behavior and treatment in the movie is fully contemporary.

She and countless other feminists prefer to reside in fiction. The current degree to which women are "empowered" is unsustainable. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that their pensions and 401k plans will be raided or devalued in the coming decades, leaving them at the mercy of the families and community networks their careers left them too busy to create.

 The illusions they cling to are comfortable, while reality is anything but: They're not sexually liberating themselves—they're forfeiting the leverage nature gave them in the battle of the sexes to a subset of slick pick-up artists. Their barren wombs are not about "family planning", they're about not planning to have a family. Their careers are not making them independent, dependence is simply being transferred from husbands and fathers to Big Brother. That's well and good for their personal interests as long as the economy is strong, the government is solvent, and the pensions are well-funded. But are those safe bets?

Women around the world already envied their Western counterparts’ unusual freedom and autonomy well before feminism screamed for more. The greater freedom and autonomy traditionally enjoyed by Western women makes our society very attractive, but the current social model isn't sustainable. Like the mythical Icarus, feminists have been tempted to push the limits to breaking point and are setting all women up for a devastating fall. Feminists aren't the only ones in the West casting aside tradition in favor of illusory short-term gains, but of all the groups doing so, they have the most to lose in the long run. The continuing population replacement in the West by non-White Third World immigrants suggest that the White and Western cultural context that feminism depends on will give way to a Third Worldish social model that will rob women of their freedom... among much else.

Tradition isn’t regression and it doesn't mean a repetition of past excesses and injustices. It means working toward balancing the need for individual expression with the need to play a role in something greater than the self: in the family, the community, and the nation. It means having the humility to know your weaknesses and the wisdom to play on your strengths. We don't need fantasies about women developing virtual social network applications. We need women developing real-world families and community networks. That's the real social network problem.

A correspondent recently complained about the tendency of generic conservatives to adopt "Islam oppresses women" as a major reason for opposing Muslim assertiveness and expansion. Doesn't that approach (he asked) play into a feminist analysis of society, and end by supporting feminist solutions generally? And as a factual matter, can it really be true that Muslim society is fundamentally a system whereby men oppress women? Doesn't it have other more basic problems, and wouldn't there be more give and take on that particular point?

I'm sympathetic with such concerns. The "Muslims oppress women" theme tends to merge opposition to violent jihad and the spread of Islam in the West into a general crusade for global liberation understood in a left/liberal sense. It easily turns into "religion oppresses women" and "tradition oppresses women" unless there's a focus on the specific nature of Islam, which there never is.

More basically, though, the Muslim treatment of women is their problem. Why should we get involved in their problems, when we've got our own and can't do much about theirs anyway? I'd prefer "Muslims engage in terrorism" and "Muslims are anti-Western" as themes, where "Western" refers to something more specific and complex than universal principles of freedom, equality, and scientific rationalism. I suppose "we don't want to be Muslim" should be part of the mix, and the position of women is part of that, but it's not as if relations between the sexes are in great shape in the West, so it's odd to put it first and foremost.

We do need to know what we're dealing with, so we should discuss the merits. On that point I'd say women are unquestionably at a disadvantage in Islam. Men can have several wives, and they can divorce at will. So the bond between man and woman is weaker and less balanced, and there is less mutual trust and more use of force than in traditional Western society.

Principles like that have some effect on day-to-day life, and a big effect on the likelihood of the kind of extreme situation that makes the news. So there are a lot more honor killings and stonings for adultery in Muslim societies, just as there are more babies who get their skulls punctured and brains sucked out in liberal societies.

General principles don't determine everything though, and in any event there are also general Islamic principles requiring fair treatment and whatnot. On the whole, people are people, life is mostly particular events, domestic ill-feeling is no fun, and women know how to get their way even if men are supposedly in charge. So I don't think the "generalized system of sexist abuse" theory holds water. How could such a system be maintained in household after household century after century over whole continents? Why would so many people go to such an effort?

I know something about life among at least some Muslims, since I spent a couple of years before all the unpleasantness began as a Peace Corps math teacher at a government boarding school in a small village in Afghanistan.

(The school where I taught, in Helmand Province, has since become Forward Operations Base Delhi. You can see a row of classrooms I taught in at around 1:40 in this video.)

There weren't many polygamous marriages where I was, and a lot of them had to do with special situations (your brother dies so you've got a second wife all of a sudden). And there were few or no divorces. There really can't be: at the crudest level, bride price might be 5 years salary for a schoolteacher, and the woman's family isn't going to be pleased if you toss her aside, so basically you make a go of what you've got.

It was hard for a single foreign man to observe family relations directly, but you could pick up this and that. Girls went around freely in public until they were 12 or so, and fathers seemed no less attached to them than to boys. There was one teacher--a very intelligent man who had studied in America and spoke excellent English--who notoriously beat his wife, and people looked down on that. There was another who was reputedly a great lover, and the women would giggle and tell stories behind the scenes.

Mostly the bits and pieces I heard about sounded like normal domestic life--A's wife had worry B about the children, C's wife wanted some sort of fancy cloth so he picked it up for her, etc. The most respected of the teachers, who everyone called "Father," had a much younger wife people called "Mother" who went around without a veil and did what she wanted. She was a very spirited woman, and nobody messed with her.

So far as I could tell, a lot of the differences had to do with the nature of the society rather than Islam as such. The two are connected, but it's complicated. Maybe it's something of a chicken-and-egg problem--Islam catches on in societies to which it's adapted. Or maybe the nature of the pre-Islamic society makes a big difference in how Islam turns out. Others will have to say.

The women didn't have much public presence where I was, but that didn't mean what people here would expect. There's less public life in Muslim countries. The classic Middle Eastern city was a bazaar and some palaces, mosques, and barracks in the public sphere, and also walled quarters where people lived among their own and ran their own affairs.

The family was generally a unit of production as well as consumption, so the idea of "career" was mostly irrelevant. That's still largely true, by the way. Career depends on large formal organizations, and such things don't work well in the radically divided societies you find in the Middle East and Central Asia. People are mostly farmers, artisans, or shopkeepers, and the ideal is having enough to live on so you can sit at home drinking tea.

I remember a guy in Kashmir (another Muslim region) asking me--very tentatively, he didn't want to seem like a fool who takes everything he hears seriously--whether it was true that in the West people didn't think it was enough to have money to live on and hang with their friends but also wanted to work as a positive good thing.

So the basic idea has always been that everything's behind walls, with extended families living together in compounds, and outsiders only admitted to the relatively small public areas. Behind the scenes, which is where everything took place, the women were much freer and certainly part of what was going on. There was also lots of to and fro through back doors into other compounds. The images of imprisonment you get in the West aren't at all accurate.

I suppose another influence leading to the absence of women from public life was the possibility of abduction. It's expensive to get a wife, so why not steal one? That can be a real possibility in a radically divided society without much public order in which everything takes place in walled quarters and compounds and there's more emphasis on arbitrary fortune than free choice anyway. That's not the sort of thing that's a big current issue, but I think it had a role in how the system developed and the possibility still has an influence somewhere in the background.

A problem with the whole picture is that the way of life doesn't transplant to all settings. It doesn't work at all in a bureaucratic and industrial society in which people live in small apartments in large buildings and make their livings as operatives and functionaries in big organizations. So traditional Muslims in the West have problems and modernization runs into problems in Muslim countries. I have no doubt that one result is increased conflict and violence.

Whether the Muslims will be able to pick and choose among aspects of modernity and come up with something that works for them I don't know. If they want to convert to Catholicism I'd be glad to send them a catechism or even explain why it's a good idea, but if they want to do their Islamic thing I can't help them.

Converting them to liberalism--by force or any other way--doesn't seem to be the answer. We in the West have our own problems, and we're in no position to straighten other people out. Let the Muslims have a go at it where they run things and let's leave each other alone. Each should mind his own business, barring extraordinary circumstances, and maintain boundaries for the sake of peace.