Feminism and Multculturalism

 “One can be  a feminist, or one can be a multiculturalist, but on cannot be both.”

-attributed in various forms to various people

 

The recent disaster in Afghanistan might have gotten people thinking about validity of the above quote. It is not literally true. People can and do hold all sorts of contradictory notions simultaneously. What is actually meant is that one cannot consistently be both a feminist and a multiculturalist, and that is true. The term “feminist” is used in a number of ways including simply denoting any woman who votes with the Democrats.  However the relevant meaning in this  context is a person who believes that each woman has an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and should have the same legal rights and political authority as men. “Multiculturalist” also is used in various ways, even sometimes meaning only a preson favoring the uncontroversial idea that people should learn the characteristics of different cultures and appreciate the accomplishments of people in them. However the relevant meaning is one who rejects the notion of universally valid principles and norms and believes that people’s actions and ideas should be judged and considered only in terms of their culture’s accepted practices and beliefs, with one culture’s notions of what is right or morally desirable  no more valid than another’s. 

 A consistent feminist would say that the treatment women will be getting and the conditions they will be facing in Afghanistan under the Taliban are wrong, while a conistent multiculturalist would say that they are manifestations of traditional Islamic culture in that country and that condemnation of the Taliban for them is wrong (and probably racist to boot, these days). I and I think most libertarians and liberals and a good many conservatives side with the feminists. A person in Afghanistan or North Korea or China has the same rights as one in Zurich or Kansas City, and seriously violating them is a crime wherever it happens and whoever does it. I think many or most leftists agree with the multiculturalists. They have an incentive. Doing so provides an easy way to avoid criticizing the savagery  of communist states past and present (and some non-communist savages who hate America as much as they do) while being outraged and every real or imagined fault of the United States past or present