Sunday 8 September 2013

open letter to Feministe moderators

Dear Feministe moderators,

you have decided that "Gerry is definitely not welcome to throw around such bigoted stereotypes" on the Feministe blog.

A post was followed by a discussion that was fractious from all sides; I stated my belief that there’s no such thing as race, misogynist societies abet rape, and also wondered why we spent decades tackling our home-grown institutionalised misogyny before throwing it away by importing and proceeding to institutionalise other cultures’ misogyny.

Then I realised: you believe I am being "passive-aggressive" by linking to my blog (a standard practice) when commenting.

So what posts on my blog might you have objected to? The ones questioning "what’s the entertainment value in rape" and "since when was rape a freedom of speech issue"? Or maybe my investigation into porn and lads’ mags freely visible in newsagents in a Cambridge (England) major street?

It appears you object to the minority of posts on my blog that deal with Islamism and Jihad.

That’s your prerogative.

But I’d like to point out that opposing Islamism isn’t the same as opposing Muslims; for example, anti-Islamism appears throughout Benazir Bhutto’s autobiography, Daughter of the East. Muslims in the UK are increasingly finding their anti-Islamist voice, most noticeably when Ipswich Muslims took the initiative to join the English Defence League in processing to the town’s war memorial in remembrance of murdered soldier Drummer Lee Rigby.

I’m sad to see that you seem to subscribe to an anti-humanist view prevalent in some sectors of society, whereby you agitate for the freedoms of expression that allow you to make your point to be denied to those with whom you disagree. In the UK this is leaking outside the Islamism debate: now people who support fracking or badger culling are also being labelled "fascist".

I won’t darken your virtual door again. Have a good life.

Yours faithfully
Gerry Dorrian
300 words

No comments:

Post a Comment