Fox News' Faux Feminist Attacks Women on the Left Over Muhammad Teddy Bear

Posted by Lucinda Marshall, Feminist Peace Network at 7:16 AM on December 4, 2007.

This post, written by Lucinda Marshall, originally appeared on Feminist Peace Network

One of the most super cool things about being a feminist is that you get blamed for pretty much everything. Tammy Bruce's adorable little diatribe on Fox News condemning feminism because neither NOW or the Feminist Majority have issued statements about the teacher in Sudan who was incarcerated for naming a teddy bear Muhammed is a fine example of this toxic genre. According to Ms. Bruce (who refers to herself as an "authentic" feminist, so we assume she goes by Ms.),

"This is how depraved the American left has become. A little Muslim boy in Sudan shows more courage and conviction for a woman under fire than a bunch of women sitting in Washington, D.C., who preen themselves on being the premiere "advocates" for women.

It's been apparent for years that the American feminist establishment is nothing more than a shill for the shallow leftists in the Democrat party, wrapping themselves in the feminist label for convenience. Groups like NOW and Eleanor Smeal's Feminist Majority, also amazingly silent in the past five years about Islamic terrorism and violence against women, use women's issues as nothing more than slogans and chants in their efforts to gain political power."

Actually, numerous feminists around the world have indeed protested this outrage, but that isn't the point. It is not the responsibility of every feminist to protest every little misogynist thing-to suggest so is like asking us to plug the holes in the dam while a tsunami is hitting, not to mention if you want to work in an underfunded field, trust me this is it, we haven't even got close to the necessary resources. But far more importantly, the reality is that it is the responsibility of every person on earth to work to end this violence. (Gee, I could swear we covered this point last week relative to the Saudi gang rape case...)

Ms. Bruce goes on tothrow out this bit of ridiculously inaccurate spew,

"There have also been a few organizations since 2003 that have done astounding authentic feminist work for women and children around the world, and in Afghanistan and Iraq specifically. The American military, without even a passing "thank you" from so-called feminist leaders Smeal or Steinem or Gandy, have liberated over 53 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a good 25 million of those being women and children."

Maybe it is just me, but when children, especially girl children, can't go to school because it is too dangerous, when large numbers of children are malnourished, when women get attacked for walking by themselves or with a man who is not a relative, when women are at risk of honor killings, sexual assault (including by U.S. military personnel), and when women are forced to flee their homes and have no choice but to prostitute themselves to feed their families, what liberation are we talking about??

Ms. Bruce, with what can only be described as truly the epitome of misogynist arrogance, ends her diatribe by presuming to blame feminism for the failure of American foreign policy:

"If the Marines were taking their orders from those so-called feminists ( editor's note: gee, can you tell she understands the concept of feminism), the same women who support and laud Hillary Clinton, those now free people would still be enslaved. The official position of America regarding the suffering of women around the world would be the equivalent of NOW's ubiquitous "no position" position. It is the last appalling betrayal, and one that should condemn them to the dust heap of exposed hypocrites, pretenders and failures."

While Ms. Bruce is trying to convince us that these 2 episodes illustrate the failure of both feminism and the left and justify what she considers the liberation of women in Iraq and Afghanistan, she completely ignores the pandemics of sexual violence that are taking place in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Guatemala and Somalia, all stories that have been covered on Feminist Peace Network website and I might add, without the formidable budget that Fox News has at its disposal.

Tagged as: bruce, fox news, islam, feminism

Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network.