Cartoons, more
A friend sent this in reponse to my posts about the Fury of the Cartoon.
Stanley Fish says...
I say...
Yes, protest. Demonstrate. Draw cartoons of the Danish editor hanged from the rafters by his shoelaces. Be mad, get people to get that disrespect by indifference (as Fish points out) is hardly real respect or care. I support that completely. But, recognize that a cartoon is a very small thing, a blip on a Westerner's radar, and letting it fade off into in the History of Ignored and Therefore Forgotten Ideas will kill it most efficiently. Understand that the terrorists and jihadis ARE giving people the impression the Islam is a religion supportive of violence and revenge and terror. Understand that your inaction against the terrorists implicates you in their perversion of your religion. Understand that you the offended party also have an adult responsibility to understand the context in which the cartoon was created, and to understand that offensive language and images are not violations of human rights. In other words, grow a skin. Calls for beheadings, burning buildings, escalating an already horrid situation over a cartoon strikes me as a disproportionate response. On the logic of this response (I am offended and therefore permitted to commit and call for criminal action) my offense at the stoning of women in Mecca during the hajj, and at "honor killings" generally allows me, morally, to call for the murder of men who commit these offenses, and possibly to kill them or people they know.
Now, here's my problem. I'm NOT upset that these people are angry or offended or galled (as Fish is -- though his indictment of all liberalism is going too far -- what would he put in the place of the liberalism (small L) that he himself practices?). I was pretty pissed off when the Taliban blew up the Buddhas a few years ago. They destroyed, not satirized, Destroyed, EXPLODED, images central to the Buddhist faith, and works of religious art that had existed there for hundreds of years before the Muslims ever moved into that region in the expansions of their empire. Gone, forever. And then they celebrated. And the world went, "Ah, that's a shame. So sad that they blew up the statues." Was I offended, oh yes. So, the feeling of offense at stupidity and indifference is not the problem I have. I have a problem with the shape, tone, and actions of the response. I have a problem with what I consider a disorder of proportion and priority in those cultures.
I have a problem with people who want to be treated with kid gloves while treating others with cheese graters.
And I will continue to do so. So, am I one of those disinterested liberals Fish excoriates. No. Am I interested in principle over people? No.
Reactions to verbal offense that are this out of proportion are reactions of fear and insecurity. Should the peoples of the Middle East feel insecure these days? Yes. There are world bodies and a superpower interested in changing significant parts of their social and economic organization and changing the power relations in the region permanently. Is this frightening, yes. It's much more immediate and frightening than a cartoon. The occupation of Iraq is something to demonstrate over. I'm not seeing those demonstrations. I'm seeing terrorist action in Iraq. So terrorism is OK, but cartoons are the source of all evil?
C'mon. I would like to think that there are some people who can think living in the Middle East. Though, they're not getting much press.
But, please. I am disrespected by indifference every day of my life. I live in a world where members of my gender are killed daily for being women (basically), are trafficked as slaves for the sexual use of men to the tune of 5 billion dollars a year, about which most of the world is doing Not A Damn Thing, and where my politics and beliefs are disrespected on a regular basis by world leaders and news announcers and cartoonists and Stanely Fish, and where my very person is understood as a commodity. I am offended that every time I go outside I have to keep an eye on my surroundings and be ready to out talk the sexist asshole at the coffee shop who's going to insult me for not flirting with him because in his mind it is my duty to flirt with him and that every time I go on a date or spend time alone with a man that I have to be alert to the possiblitiy of rape because the statistics advise me to be so and you never can tell. Most of this alertness is low-level, almost subconscious, but it's there because I am not an idiot. I am offended that three of my friends are survivors of sexual abuse by men who were charged with caring for them, and that four of my friends are survivors of domestic violence, and that those numbers are not out of proportion with the rest of the thus-far-not-molested female population of the US. I am offended by just about the whole world because I firmly believe in the promotion of the dignity of women. I'm pissed that women who exercised free speech were stoned with cobblestones and tortured in jail in the US while demonstrating the get the vote for women. I could use all that history (that is, all of history) as an excuse for violent action. And yet, astonishingly, in the face of those daily reminders that I am still not quite as human as you are in the eyes of my own and other cultures, I do not set the local XXX movie store on fire. Amazing. The restraint I demonstrate on a daily basis. Why?
Because I hold everyone to standards of what I believe to be rational adult behavior. Because as a post-modern Humanist and radical feminist I should hold myself to those standards.
I don't make exceptions for the injured feelings of people who are not presently under military attack. And be sure, we are talking about hurt feelings here. And that is all. There is no material threat to Islam or to Jordan as a nation (for instance) in a cartoon that would have been forgotten in a day had this insanity not errupted. Feeling hurt or insulted is not a breach of human rights.
The "logic" they're using is the same as that of an abusive husband. "My stew is too cold, you must not respect me if my stew is too cold, so I will beat you for twenty minutes until you remember to keep my stew warm." It is the logic of someone who lives in fear that he is not respected like a king at all times because other people might do or think differently than he does, or have a will of their own. It's stupid in the house, and it's just as stupid on in a geopolitical context. No matter who's doing it.
All that shit people slung at the French and the Germans for not going into Iraq with us had that same kind of thinking in it, and I was just as pissed about that.
Was the cartoon in good taste? No. It was rude and unkind and about the equivalent of school yard name calling. Many cartoons are. That's why they're funny. But, the cartoon did not set anything on fire. The cartoon does not kill women and broadcast their murder on national television during is most sacred of religious festivals.
Boycott the Dane's products. As people have. That's a fine response. It's legal, it's effective, and no body gets injured. (Shit, I wish whole masses of people would boycott Haliburton and friends.) And, well, it might get the apology that good-hearted and just-minded Muslims deserve. Though the apology will not be coming from Al Qaeda or the Taliban.