More on Feckless Feminists

I should trademark that, because it sounds good. The word "feckless" is what the Christina Hoff Sommers called American feminists in her recent piece. She singled out Katha Pollitt as one of those feckless belly-button-focused feminists. Yes, the same Katha Pollitt whose most recent column in the Nation magazine is on the videotaped stoning of a young woman in Iraq and on the lack of women's rights in that country in general. Pollitt points out that the American invasion has made things worse for the women of that country, both because the general lawlessness allows crimes against women to take place pretty openly and because the occupation has strengthened the hands of all those political participants who really don't like women to exist outside the house. Religious extremism flourishes and the number of honor killings is on the rise.

Now the American invasion was carried out by people in Sommers' own political party, and some of them justified the invasion as a way to improve the position of women in Iraq. But oddly, it is just the American feminists who are responsible for women all over the world. Not the governments of countries and certainly not Republican anti-feminist women.