There has been, for some time, a growing concern on the insiduous erosion of women's rights across America - culturally and legally. Now the fear has extended to "economic constrains and restrictions" that will directly inhibit women socially and politically.
The debt ceiling debate that turned into a deficit reduction program, mostly initiated by the Right, will have a dramatic effect on women's economic welfare, health and family life. Women outnumber men when it comes to being aided by social services, and working (as social workers, managers and directors) in numerous social service programs across the US.
Women take care of children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled in numerous families across the US. They rely on government programs and aid to sustain themselves in a bad economy, and to help protect children and other vulnerable members in their families. As families face unemployment, divorce and unexpected social challenges (like illness, accident and aging) it is government programs, supported by tax-payers' money and other revenue, appropriately distributed, that sustains these families through the “bad times” - so they can be strong, productive and innovative to create the “good times”.
The political and religious Right in America, that constantly preaches family values and family cohesiveness, rarely sees the relationship between “economic health and family unity and happiness”. Research has indicated that fifty percent of divorces in the US occurs due to “financial stress, economic disparity, and money-related problems”. Couples who disagree on economic priorities vehemently, or fight constantly over how to pay their bills and manage their financial future, are likely to suffer from “marriage problems, marital conflict and/or domestic violence”.
In stead of a more thoughtful educated, research driven, approach to solving the complex correlation between “economic assistance, opportunity and family”, the Right in some communities across America is preaching for a pre-feminist traditional America. For example, there are religious and cultural conservative extremist groups that want men to take charge of their lives, as husbands or fathers, by insisting women stay home and be devoted wives and mothers – enhancing traditional male roles (as breadwinners and bosses). These groups also politically advocate for changes in existing laws that deny or limit social and judicial rights for women, wives and mothers. The laws these radical conservative male groups target are mostly laws that protect women and enhance their economic and social independence.
States like Iowa already make divorce very difficult for women, and battered women who wish to live in another State, or just move to another county within the same State, away from the perpetrator find it hard to keep custody of their children once they move. As many women struggle, more so than most men, to find a job, keep a job and earn enough to provide for themselves and their children, many divorced women and single mothers are placed in a bind by new or eroded laws that neither protect them, nor provide for their children adequately. Much like the pre-feminist era (which is not long ago), when women were forced to stay in abusive relationships, or return to it when no choice for sustenance existed outside one's marriage, the erosion of women's rights, even without the Sharia laws, is forcing women into traditional roles through legal control and emotional manipulation.
Laws that I myself advocated for, in States like Kansas and California, are being slowly eroded , and in some instances reversed all together. It is amusing that States that are enacting legislation to ban Muslim Sharia laws have some of the most conservative Christian family laws that limit or deny women's choices and rights.
Radical Right wing groups, once a minority and marginal, have also now, successfully, made it impossible for adult women, single or married, to get safe affordable abortion or pre and post natal care in many States across America.
Added to this growing sexism in many new enacted laws, many immigrant men, who mostly come with narrow economic agenda, are not helping the current social and political climate in the United States through their feudal and colonial conservative patriarchy - that they protect and promote in the name of “their history, heritage, culture and religion”.
Religious and cultural conservatism in many parts of the US are growing, partly because minority and immigrant men, who in an effort to overcome centuries of (racial, colonial and class-based) oppression and poverty, are demanding that their women and children follow traditional family roles and rules to maintain family unity and cohesiveness, and cultural purity and identity, amidst growing racism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. Can one blame minority and immigrant men for wanting to organize families along narrow patriarchal roles and rules - the only system they know, to deal with the growing racism and xenophobia in the United States, and that too amidst economic uncertainties and classicism? Efforts to better educate and enlighten these men, by minority feminists like myself, have been thwarted by elite men inside these communities, and racist men and women outside these communities. It is a new form of domestic imperialism.
Just as it was mostly Japanese Americans who were interned in the United States (their country) during World War II, not German immigrants, some of whom were openly supporting Hitler, there are certain minority and immigrant groups in the US who are being politically, socially, legally and financially targeted more so than others - and sometimes in insidious ways
It is not a coincidence that incarceration rate for African American men is higher in the US than for Anglo American men. African American men have been sentenced, and even executed, in many States for crimes they did not commit. They also receive long sentences for minor crimes, and more severe sentencing than Anglo men for similar offences. This problem is now extending to other minority groups like Latinos, Vietnamese, Combodians, Laotians...
Women like me who can take on leadership roles in many minority and immigrant communities are constantly sabotaged by men and women both outside and inside these communities. And the conservative media, parading around as a passionate critique of immigrants, minorities and Obama, only adds to mainstream fear "of the other", prejudice towards those who are different and various social injustices.
Added to this growing alliance between cultural conservatives and religious conservatives, we have many conservative political alliances brewing and develosping across the US.
For example, a long strong political alliance between American Conservatives and Israel is old news. This alliance has played a big role in American Middle East foreign policies, and has given Israel special powers over the American Congress. But what is not well covered in the media is the growing alliance between Conservative Christians and Zionists – mostly in Southern States like Florida.
This political merger between Christian Zionists and Zionists is motivated both by old Middle East foreign policies, and new fears and stereotypes about Muslims in America and, like Europe, Islamization of the United States.
Zionism is primarily a Jewish political movement that supports a separate and independent statehood for Jews - mostly to ensure Jewish self determination and Israeli security. The Jewish diaspora, primarily in Europe, that experienced social isolation, antisemitism and persecution (like the holocaust), advocated for a separate land for the Jewish people (for a diverse set of political, religious, cultural and social reasons), and helped to establish the state of Israel.
As Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, and has evolved through dialogue on a plethora of perspectives and reactions to them, there are secular Zionists who strongly favor a Jewish State for cultural and social reasons, rather than a political or religious one. They call their perspective Cultural Zionism.
Be it Cultural Zionism, General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism...they all believe in the legitimacy of a Jewish State, and the linking of the Jewish people to the current land of Israel.
Many conservative Christians of Europe and America, who believed in the importance of resurrecting and protecting Zion (the original and sacred land of the Jews), both to protect the Jewish people and for certain biblical reasons, became ardent Zionists too. They are known as Christian Zionists.
Notable early Christian supporters and advocates of Zionism include British Prime Ministers David L. George and Arthur Balfour, British Major General Orde Wingate and American President Woodrow Wilson. Christian Zionism, according to some American scholars, strengthened significantly after the Six Day War of 1967.
The bibilican reason for Zionism has to do with "dipensationalism". Dispensationalism is a 19th century evangelical movement, based on religious hermeneutic, that sees a series of important historical events, supposedly predicted in the bible itself, when God will appear or connect to human beings in different ways under different biblical covenants. All Dispensationalists believe in "premillennialism" (e.g. predictions for the end of the world) and "rapture" (e.g. second coming of Jesus). They also believe that a nation of Israel, not the same as the state of Israel, particularly Jerusalem, is critical for the return of Christ and for global Christendom. Some of these evangelical Christians fear the destruction of Jerusalem, hence support, like the early crusaders, a religious army to ensure the full protection of Jerusalem, the State of Israel (which currently rules it), and the concept of Zion as equally sacred and important for Christians as it is for conservative Jews. Their commitment to the concept of Zion extends to Israel - its protection, security, and many times its expansion that includes all of the Palestinian land.
Protestant rebellion and rejection of Catholicism also involves the passionate acceptance and support of "dispensationalism". Just as many American Protestants and other Christians, like the founder of Church of Latter Day Saints, religiously believe and politically support the return of Jews to the Holy Land, numerous Arab Christians publicly support Zionism too. US authors Nonie Darwish, former Muslim Magdi Allam, and Lebanese-born Christian US journalist Bridgitte Gabrielle believe in and support Zionism.
Many conservative Christians in Europe and America also link security of Israel with the survival of Western civilization. The Oslo shooter Brievik, who killed many labor organizers at a youth camp in July 2011, believed in European racial purity, cultural nationalism and the threat of Islamization of Europe. He also tied his beliefs to Christian Zionism and preservation of Western civilization.
Many ordinary social observers, not just Liberals, Progressives, Socialist Feminists, American Communists, Agnostics, Atheists and academics, are concerned about the rise of Conservative Christianity, Christian Zionism and Ultra-Right Zionism in the United States.
This merger is also causing reactive fundamentalism, extremism and conservatism on the other side. Muslims and Blacks, in particular, who are socially maimed by the American media, fear Right Wing cultural extremism, oppressive Conservative economic agendas and possible political persecution. This has given rise to a call for Black militantism and Muslim fundamentalism among some of their leaders.
With crude coarse cruel treatment of Obama by many Conservatives, and a pretentiously mainstream liberal media that attacks him while claiming to like him or objectively critique him, it is not just call for his Birth Certificate that has been worrisome and embarrassing for many Americans, but call for his ouster that borders on vitriol and hatred. The feeling among Blacks, and some Muslims, is that they must organize militantly.
With the debt ceiling discussion turned into a-dog-and-pony show about debt and deficit, the proposed cuts initiated by the Republicans, and passively signed on to by the Democrats, will not only increase the wealth gap in the United States, it will lead to a slow down in the economy – as no proposal for attracting investments and generating revenue have been made.
While debt and deficit, as large as the ones America carries, are a serious problem, lack of a third alternative, besides the Republican demand for deficit reduction without tax increases for the rich or cuts in defense spending, and the persistent Democratic defense of expanding entitlement programs (as it is), is crushing America on all sides.
The rich are doing well – very well, while the poor are being ignored or pushed further down. But the group that is sinking and shrinking the most is the middle class. They have nobody to represent them, and they have no way of addressing diverse needs in their communities, besides what workers in Wisconsin demanded.
In stead of supporting women of color like me, who understand many groups and concerns, and have gone in and out of many groups, with knowledge and understanding, I am attacked by the conservative Right and the provincial Left.
If Oklahoma bombing pushed many communities in the South and lower Midwest further to the Right – in fear of domestic terrorism, Sept 11 brought out American Conservatism in full force – in fear of international terrorism. Now the economic challenges of America, that will grow in the coming years, is persuading more and more Americans to embrace new kinds of sexism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia and classicism (where the middle class, especially educated professionals and immigrants, are attacked from both sides).
When America needs its smart strong women (Anglos and non-Anglos) the most, the growing social, cultural and political conservatism is adding another layer of sexism to women's lives. And it is not occurring with Sharia law as many American Christians and Jews worry.
The merger between cultural, social, religious and political conservatives is bringing in a kind of sexism one often sees in societies where multiculturalism does not exist, or does so without real integration: where men compete or combat with each other at the cost of women's rights and women's welfare. I had predicted this years ago in California and New York city. I had also worried about young uneducated provincial women buying into Conservative politics to remain loyal to men in their communities, religions and race in the US.
As some Southern scholars worry, these mergers of various Right groups usually target immigrants in some communities, Muslims in others, Blacks in some, Latinos in others, poor people in some, Progressives in others, Liberals in some and women in others...in the hope that American provincialism, nationalism, racial or religious purity will solve America's economic and social problems.
The tragedy is that men who are evolved, at least partly, borrow and follow the same narrow conservative Americanization...and devolve. This is also occuring in other parts of the world - unfortunately!
The debt ceiling debate that turned into a deficit reduction program, mostly initiated by the Right, will have a dramatic effect on women's economic welfare, health and family life. Women outnumber men when it comes to being aided by social services, and working (as social workers, managers and directors) in numerous social service programs across the US.
Women take care of children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled in numerous families across the US. They rely on government programs and aid to sustain themselves in a bad economy, and to help protect children and other vulnerable members in their families. As families face unemployment, divorce and unexpected social challenges (like illness, accident and aging) it is government programs, supported by tax-payers' money and other revenue, appropriately distributed, that sustains these families through the “bad times” - so they can be strong, productive and innovative to create the “good times”.
The political and religious Right in America, that constantly preaches family values and family cohesiveness, rarely sees the relationship between “economic health and family unity and happiness”. Research has indicated that fifty percent of divorces in the US occurs due to “financial stress, economic disparity, and money-related problems”. Couples who disagree on economic priorities vehemently, or fight constantly over how to pay their bills and manage their financial future, are likely to suffer from “marriage problems, marital conflict and/or domestic violence”.
In stead of a more thoughtful educated, research driven, approach to solving the complex correlation between “economic assistance, opportunity and family”, the Right in some communities across America is preaching for a pre-feminist traditional America. For example, there are religious and cultural conservative extremist groups that want men to take charge of their lives, as husbands or fathers, by insisting women stay home and be devoted wives and mothers – enhancing traditional male roles (as breadwinners and bosses). These groups also politically advocate for changes in existing laws that deny or limit social and judicial rights for women, wives and mothers. The laws these radical conservative male groups target are mostly laws that protect women and enhance their economic and social independence.
States like Iowa already make divorce very difficult for women, and battered women who wish to live in another State, or just move to another county within the same State, away from the perpetrator find it hard to keep custody of their children once they move. As many women struggle, more so than most men, to find a job, keep a job and earn enough to provide for themselves and their children, many divorced women and single mothers are placed in a bind by new or eroded laws that neither protect them, nor provide for their children adequately. Much like the pre-feminist era (which is not long ago), when women were forced to stay in abusive relationships, or return to it when no choice for sustenance existed outside one's marriage, the erosion of women's rights, even without the Sharia laws, is forcing women into traditional roles through legal control and emotional manipulation.
Laws that I myself advocated for, in States like Kansas and California, are being slowly eroded , and in some instances reversed all together. It is amusing that States that are enacting legislation to ban Muslim Sharia laws have some of the most conservative Christian family laws that limit or deny women's choices and rights.
Radical Right wing groups, once a minority and marginal, have also now, successfully, made it impossible for adult women, single or married, to get safe affordable abortion or pre and post natal care in many States across America.
Added to this growing sexism in many new enacted laws, many immigrant men, who mostly come with narrow economic agenda, are not helping the current social and political climate in the United States through their feudal and colonial conservative patriarchy - that they protect and promote in the name of “their history, heritage, culture and religion”.
Religious and cultural conservatism in many parts of the US are growing, partly because minority and immigrant men, who in an effort to overcome centuries of (racial, colonial and class-based) oppression and poverty, are demanding that their women and children follow traditional family roles and rules to maintain family unity and cohesiveness, and cultural purity and identity, amidst growing racism, ethnocentrism and xenophobia. Can one blame minority and immigrant men for wanting to organize families along narrow patriarchal roles and rules - the only system they know, to deal with the growing racism and xenophobia in the United States, and that too amidst economic uncertainties and classicism? Efforts to better educate and enlighten these men, by minority feminists like myself, have been thwarted by elite men inside these communities, and racist men and women outside these communities. It is a new form of domestic imperialism.
Just as it was mostly Japanese Americans who were interned in the United States (their country) during World War II, not German immigrants, some of whom were openly supporting Hitler, there are certain minority and immigrant groups in the US who are being politically, socially, legally and financially targeted more so than others - and sometimes in insidious ways
It is not a coincidence that incarceration rate for African American men is higher in the US than for Anglo American men. African American men have been sentenced, and even executed, in many States for crimes they did not commit. They also receive long sentences for minor crimes, and more severe sentencing than Anglo men for similar offences. This problem is now extending to other minority groups like Latinos, Vietnamese, Combodians, Laotians...
Women like me who can take on leadership roles in many minority and immigrant communities are constantly sabotaged by men and women both outside and inside these communities. And the conservative media, parading around as a passionate critique of immigrants, minorities and Obama, only adds to mainstream fear "of the other", prejudice towards those who are different and various social injustices.
Added to this growing alliance between cultural conservatives and religious conservatives, we have many conservative political alliances brewing and develosping across the US.
For example, a long strong political alliance between American Conservatives and Israel is old news. This alliance has played a big role in American Middle East foreign policies, and has given Israel special powers over the American Congress. But what is not well covered in the media is the growing alliance between Conservative Christians and Zionists – mostly in Southern States like Florida.
This political merger between Christian Zionists and Zionists is motivated both by old Middle East foreign policies, and new fears and stereotypes about Muslims in America and, like Europe, Islamization of the United States.
Zionism is primarily a Jewish political movement that supports a separate and independent statehood for Jews - mostly to ensure Jewish self determination and Israeli security. The Jewish diaspora, primarily in Europe, that experienced social isolation, antisemitism and persecution (like the holocaust), advocated for a separate land for the Jewish people (for a diverse set of political, religious, cultural and social reasons), and helped to establish the state of Israel.
As Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, and has evolved through dialogue on a plethora of perspectives and reactions to them, there are secular Zionists who strongly favor a Jewish State for cultural and social reasons, rather than a political or religious one. They call their perspective Cultural Zionism.
Be it Cultural Zionism, General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism...they all believe in the legitimacy of a Jewish State, and the linking of the Jewish people to the current land of Israel.
Many conservative Christians of Europe and America, who believed in the importance of resurrecting and protecting Zion (the original and sacred land of the Jews), both to protect the Jewish people and for certain biblical reasons, became ardent Zionists too. They are known as Christian Zionists.
Notable early Christian supporters and advocates of Zionism include British Prime Ministers David L. George and Arthur Balfour, British Major General Orde Wingate and American President Woodrow Wilson. Christian Zionism, according to some American scholars, strengthened significantly after the Six Day War of 1967.
The bibilican reason for Zionism has to do with "dipensationalism". Dispensationalism is a 19th century evangelical movement, based on religious hermeneutic, that sees a series of important historical events, supposedly predicted in the bible itself, when God will appear or connect to human beings in different ways under different biblical covenants. All Dispensationalists believe in "premillennialism" (e.g. predictions for the end of the world) and "rapture" (e.g. second coming of Jesus). They also believe that a nation of Israel, not the same as the state of Israel, particularly Jerusalem, is critical for the return of Christ and for global Christendom. Some of these evangelical Christians fear the destruction of Jerusalem, hence support, like the early crusaders, a religious army to ensure the full protection of Jerusalem, the State of Israel (which currently rules it), and the concept of Zion as equally sacred and important for Christians as it is for conservative Jews. Their commitment to the concept of Zion extends to Israel - its protection, security, and many times its expansion that includes all of the Palestinian land.
Protestant rebellion and rejection of Catholicism also involves the passionate acceptance and support of "dispensationalism". Just as many American Protestants and other Christians, like the founder of Church of Latter Day Saints, religiously believe and politically support the return of Jews to the Holy Land, numerous Arab Christians publicly support Zionism too. US authors Nonie Darwish, former Muslim Magdi Allam, and Lebanese-born Christian US journalist Bridgitte Gabrielle believe in and support Zionism.
Many conservative Christians in Europe and America also link security of Israel with the survival of Western civilization. The Oslo shooter Brievik, who killed many labor organizers at a youth camp in July 2011, believed in European racial purity, cultural nationalism and the threat of Islamization of Europe. He also tied his beliefs to Christian Zionism and preservation of Western civilization.
Many ordinary social observers, not just Liberals, Progressives, Socialist Feminists, American Communists, Agnostics, Atheists and academics, are concerned about the rise of Conservative Christianity, Christian Zionism and Ultra-Right Zionism in the United States.
This merger is also causing reactive fundamentalism, extremism and conservatism on the other side. Muslims and Blacks, in particular, who are socially maimed by the American media, fear Right Wing cultural extremism, oppressive Conservative economic agendas and possible political persecution. This has given rise to a call for Black militantism and Muslim fundamentalism among some of their leaders.
With crude coarse cruel treatment of Obama by many Conservatives, and a pretentiously mainstream liberal media that attacks him while claiming to like him or objectively critique him, it is not just call for his Birth Certificate that has been worrisome and embarrassing for many Americans, but call for his ouster that borders on vitriol and hatred. The feeling among Blacks, and some Muslims, is that they must organize militantly.
With the debt ceiling discussion turned into a-dog-and-pony show about debt and deficit, the proposed cuts initiated by the Republicans, and passively signed on to by the Democrats, will not only increase the wealth gap in the United States, it will lead to a slow down in the economy – as no proposal for attracting investments and generating revenue have been made.
While debt and deficit, as large as the ones America carries, are a serious problem, lack of a third alternative, besides the Republican demand for deficit reduction without tax increases for the rich or cuts in defense spending, and the persistent Democratic defense of expanding entitlement programs (as it is), is crushing America on all sides.
The rich are doing well – very well, while the poor are being ignored or pushed further down. But the group that is sinking and shrinking the most is the middle class. They have nobody to represent them, and they have no way of addressing diverse needs in their communities, besides what workers in Wisconsin demanded.
In stead of supporting women of color like me, who understand many groups and concerns, and have gone in and out of many groups, with knowledge and understanding, I am attacked by the conservative Right and the provincial Left.
If Oklahoma bombing pushed many communities in the South and lower Midwest further to the Right – in fear of domestic terrorism, Sept 11 brought out American Conservatism in full force – in fear of international terrorism. Now the economic challenges of America, that will grow in the coming years, is persuading more and more Americans to embrace new kinds of sexism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia and classicism (where the middle class, especially educated professionals and immigrants, are attacked from both sides).
When America needs its smart strong women (Anglos and non-Anglos) the most, the growing social, cultural and political conservatism is adding another layer of sexism to women's lives. And it is not occurring with Sharia law as many American Christians and Jews worry.
The merger between cultural, social, religious and political conservatives is bringing in a kind of sexism one often sees in societies where multiculturalism does not exist, or does so without real integration: where men compete or combat with each other at the cost of women's rights and women's welfare. I had predicted this years ago in California and New York city. I had also worried about young uneducated provincial women buying into Conservative politics to remain loyal to men in their communities, religions and race in the US.
As some Southern scholars worry, these mergers of various Right groups usually target immigrants in some communities, Muslims in others, Blacks in some, Latinos in others, poor people in some, Progressives in others, Liberals in some and women in others...in the hope that American provincialism, nationalism, racial or religious purity will solve America's economic and social problems.
The tragedy is that men who are evolved, at least partly, borrow and follow the same narrow conservative Americanization...and devolve. This is also occuring in other parts of the world - unfortunately!
