In Defence of Reformed Patriarchy

Searching the net with the words ‘feminism’ and ‘Aliaa Magda El-mahdy” got little results apart from one blog post on Feministing. I would have expected not just the feminist blogosphere but the mainstream press to be lit up about this. Where are the voices of Kira Cohrane, Natasha Walter, Libby Purves, Lynne Segal – even Janet Street Porter, who was complaining about the lack of a sisterhood in the Mail recently?

I find their silence astonishingly remiss, just as I found their silence and lack of support for Marnie Pearce cowardly and shameful. Women like Aliaa Magda El-Mahdy are real feminist pioneers who are risking their lives for the furtherment of women’s rights in highly oppressive patriarchies.

We in the West - in reformed patriarchies - have the power to support these women, to lobby politically for female emancipation via the dissemination of rationalism and liberal values. I wonder if many feminists baulk at this task, because to be 'legitimate' feminists, they feel they must be critics of liberal democracy rather than focusing on the many positives. Many feminists still call for the end of patriarchy in all its forms, despite the fact that western patriarchy that has been reformed by the progression of feminism and liberal democratic values.

Aliaa Magda El-Mahdy and feminists like her abide in dangerous, unreformed patriarchies and need our help, not our silence and hypocrisy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2064267/Israeli-women-strip-support-nude-Egyptian-blogger-Aliaa-Elmahdy.html