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only by abandoning the ways of a native androc entric c ulture in favor of those of
another c ulture. It was never argued, for instanc e, even by the most ardent
nineteenth-c entury feminists, that European women c ould liberate themselves from
the oppressiveness of Victorian dress (designed to compel the female figure to the
ideal of frailt y and helplessness by means of suffoc at ing, rib-cracking stays, it must
surely rank among t he more c onst ric t ive fashions of relat ively recent times) only by
adopting the dress of some other culture. Nor has it ever been argued, whether in
Mary Wollstonec raft’s day, when European women had no rights, or in our own day
and even by the most radic al feminists, that bec ause male domination and injust ic e
to women have existed throughout the West's rec orded history, the only rec ourse
for Western women is to abandon Western c ulture and find themselves some other
c ulture. The idea seems absurd, and yet this is routinely how the matter of
improving the status of women is posed with respec t to women in Arab and other
non-West ern soc iet ies. Whet her t hose soc iet ies did or did not , will or will not ,
abandon the ways of one c ulture in favor of those of another is c ommonly
presented in Western-based lit erat ure as t he c rux of t he mat t er of progress for
women. To this day, the struggle against the veil and toward westernization and
the abandoning of backward and oppressive Arab Muslim ways (the agenda
propounded by Cromer and his like as the agenda to be pursued for Muslim
women) is st ill c ommonly t he framest ory wit hin whic h West ern-based studies of
Arab women, inc luding feminist studies, are presented.
The presumption underlying these ideas is that Western women may pursue
feminist goals by engaging c rit ic ally with and c hallenging and redefining their
c ultural heritage, but Muslim women c an pursue suc h goals only by setting aside
the ways of their c ulture for the nonandroc entric , non-misogynist ways (such is the
implic at ion) of t he West. And t he presumpt ion is, too, that Islamic c ultures and
religion are fundamentally inimic al to women in a way that Western c ultures and
religions are not, whereas (as I have argued) Islam and Arabic c ultures, no less
than the religions and c ultures of the West, are open to reinterpret at ion and
c hange. Moreover, the different histories of feminis m in the Western world and in
the Middle East suggest that the significant factors in Western societies that
permit t ed t he emergenc e of feminist voic es and polit ic al ac t ion in t hose soc ieties
somewhat before their emergence in the Middle East were not that Western
cultures were necessarily less androcentric or less misogynist than other societies
but t hat women in West ern soc iet ies were able t o draw on t he polit ic al voc abularies
and systems generated by ideas of democracy and the rights of the individual,
voc abularies and polit ic al syst ems developed by whit e male middle c lasses t o
safeguard their interests and not intended to be applic able to women. That women
in Western societies are the benefic iaries of t he polit ic al languages and inst it ut ions
of democ rac y and the rights of the individual is c ommonly assumed to be proof that
Western c ultures are less androc entric or misogynist than other c ultures, but
polit ic al voc abularies and polit ic al and c ivil right s are quit e dist inc t from t he c ult ural
and psyc hologic al messages, and the struc tures of psyc hologic al c ontrol,
permeating a soc iety. The notion that non-West ern women will improve t heir st at us
by adopting the culture, ways of dress, and so on of the West is based on a
confusion between these different spheres. Of course, Arab Muslim women need to
reject, just as Western women are trying to reject, the androcentrism of whatever
c ulture or tradition in whic h they find themselves, but that is quite different from
saying they need to adopt Western c ustoms, goals, and life-styles.
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