What is sex segregation? Link
A taboo is something you are supposed not to talk about. But if you insist you might be intellectually well rewarded precisely because of this.
The deeper the taboo the more invisible are the signs for the untrained eye¨, and the more resistance you may expect. But if you know what to look for, it’s there, almost unavoidable in its self-explanatory appearance when you look above your cultural filter.
Sex segregation has three main theoretical channels in today’s world: Psychoanalysis, which preaches sexual openness and fundamentalist religions e.g. Islam, which preaches the opposite, and feminism, which consists as a variety of variances of these. All three are basically reactionary movements against secular modernity and inevitably vanishing sex roles in practical life, but whereas psychoanalysis and feminism both emerged simultaneously in the late 19th Century entrance into modernity, Islam is of a special interest because it combines the “classical” sex segregation (i e the practical outcome of social institutions at hand) with the modern sex segregation (i e the artificial construction of an institution aimed for the conservation of vanishing sex roles in a fast changing dynamic modern world). In this view Muslim/Islamic feminism is just an extension of Middle Age fundamentalism, although totally out of sync with the practical reality. But that's no problem for it because its main purpose is not in the best interest of women but rather political.
Islam isn’t the product of the timid and peace loving Muslims but of its inherited violent and expansionistic birth. No matter how peaceful the majority of the believers are, the violent message from the Middle Ages will remain its real power and action potential. So what is (the non-personal institution of) Islam defending or fighting for? Political power, of course, wrapped in sex segregation (fundamentalist/feminist). And because political Islam doesn't follow nation borders it's anti-democratic, and because it's global and dogmatic, it's also totalitarian. In contrast to the idea of "negative" human rights Islam imposes "positive" rights (Sharia etc) in accordance with how those in power positions happen to interpret Koran.
Why do you call yourself a feminist, Judith Butler?
Peter Klevius
www.klevius.info
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