What do you make of those "women-respecting" classes and tests for immigrants?

LacklustreFriend · 2019-12-18T00:17:50+00:00

It's just a small part of a bigger question of who should be allowed to migrate into a given country and what it means to be a citizen of a country. Who gets to decide what 'culture' is representive or appropriate of the country of immigration? Honestly I don't really have a good answer myself. There's a balance to be struck between ensuring new citizens have respect for the existing culture and creating harmonious neighbours, and prescribing a static culture for country.

As for "respecting women" questions specifically, I feel there a huge amount of irony. Intersectional feminism has made a large point trying to stop 'Western cultural imperialism' but I guess cultural imperialism is okay as long it ascribes to feminism.

mtcapri · 2019-12-18T00:22:41+00:00

Thoughts on the video:

A lot of the tension in these classes is based on the fact that Western European (in this case Norwegian) culture is being presented as better than Islamic culture. Now, with respect to content of women's place in society, I 100% agree that it is better, but the presentation is necessarily going to create strong emotional resistance if it doesn't take great pains to avoid demonizing Islamic culture generally. I don't really know how you get around that, but it seems to me measures could be taken, which likely weren't, judging from some of the responses from the students.
At one point, a male student points out that cultural understanding (a) takes time and (b) is a two-way street. While I have little doubt he means to defend the treatment of women in Islamic culture, taken at face value, his comment is undeniably true. These "classes" might be more effective if they took the form of group discussions between Islamic people and Europeans, rather than a lecture-like format (a mixer at a church is actually featured at the end of the video, and the reporter comments that they're likely to be more effective at integrating and educating people).
At one point, the interviewer points out to the teacher that Muslim men might feel stigmatized in her class, and the teacher acknowledges this, laughs, and says "they need that." The interviewer asks for confirmation, "they need to feel stigmatized," and the interviewer confirms, "yes." This is absolutely not an acceptable attitude to take IMO, and it accurately reflects feminist attitudes towards men in general—a big part of the reason I'm so critical of feminism. It fails to separate female anger from it's lessons and rhetoric.

The "extreme vetting" test in Australia is stupid. Super-easy to pass for anyone who just wants to get into the country; it does nothing to achieve it's aims, and is really just a Conservative's effort to keep immigrants out.

GaborFrame · 2019-12-17T23:37:07+00:00

Mixed. Educating people about the culture that they live in sounds like a good thing (obviously, both women and men), but that "political questionnaire" is pretty weird.

serpentineeyelash · 2019-12-19T02:44:54+00:00

I think I'm opposed to these classes, or at least the way in which they're being done.

As an atheist and non-traditionalist, I do think Islam (or at least variants thereof) can promote some very problematic attitudes - including murderous attitudes towards ex-Muslims, gay men, and adulterers of both sexes; in extreme cases terrorism against the entire non-Muslim world; and traditional gender roles for both women and men. But judging from the media reports, these classes focus on men's attitudes toward women while ignoring the other half of the equation, women's attitudes toward men. That focus is telling.

The Guardian video's editing feels a tad manipulative with lots of rapid-fire cutaways, so what are presented as direct responses may have been said at different times. Parts of the video seem to evoke sympathy with the immigrants, other parts seem to evoke sympathy with the Norwegian female teacher, so I'm not sure which angle the Guardian is going for.

0:57: I take the crime statistics with a grain of salt, since we know crime statistics are biased against racial minorities and against men.

1:37: Obviously, Western countries are not treating men equally.

2:01: The men make a good counterargument: Both cultures are misunderstanding the other culture based on its female clothing norms and other gender attitudes. I'm reminded of this cartoon.

3:08: My understanding of traditionalist cultures is that the obligation of sex in marriage goes both ways, and there is an obligation for the husband to provide for his wife. Judging from what is shown here, the classes seem unconcerned with the obligations that traditional cultures place on husbands.

3:29: There's not much context given here. Why exactly did the woman hit the man? Was it acceptable for her to be violent towards a man for misunderstanding the cultural norms? Maybe it was reasonable for him to be "in shock".

3:47: This is a pretty typical feminist attitude, that men need to be shamed into compliance. These men should not be stigmatized for having been socialized into a different culture.

4:41: They are pretty much forced to attend these classes by the threat of cutting off welfare benefits or denying citizenship. It's hard not to notice the parallels with the classes forced on men (but not women) in abusive relationships, regardless of whether the man is the abuser or abused or both. In this case both sexes are made to attend, but only men are blamed for the traditional culture.

5:08: A Muslim woman says "Our men don't abuse us."

6:38: It's interesting that the examples he chooses to bring up are also true in Western countries - kindergarten teachers being mostly women and construction workers being mostly men.

7:03: I notice his argument for gender inequality is not that it's better for men. His argument is that it's better for women.

9:22: This Muslim woman says she doesn't even want Western women's freedoms. This illustrates there's no point in lecturing the men and not the women.

Oh, and the guy proposing the Australian test is the only member of his political party who got elected, so his proposal is unlikely to happen.

Title	What do you make of those "women-respecting" classes and tests for immigrants?
Author	Thin-Ant
Upvotes	7
Comments	13
Date	December 17, 2019 9:04 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/ec1yt7/what_do_you_make_of_those_womenrespecting_classes/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/what-do-you-make-of-those-women-respecting-classes.1064285 https://theredarchive.com/post/1064285

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