The Feminist West: Acute schizophrenia, left and right.

• Author: Young, Cathy
• Position: Columns

WITH ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISTS making war on the West, the left's schizoid relationship to feminism and multiculturalism has come into full view. If one regards respect for women's rights as good, it's very difficult to maintain the notion that all cultures are morally equal, considering that the United States is at war with what may be, in the words of The Village Voice, "the most misogynistic regime in history." Compared to Afghanistan under the Taliban, where women are forbidden to work or learn and have been subjected to an especially draconian dress code, the Ayatollah's Iran is a feminist utopia. (Indeed, the Taliban's treatment of women has been so horrendous as to obscure its very real atrocities against large numbers of men.) Of course, the U.S. did not go to war in Afghanistan to liberate the women. Still, one might assume that there would be little if any doubt as to where feminist sympathies would lie.

In some cases, however, the assumption would be wrong. At a conference in Canada in October, in a speech denouncing the West and the U.S. as the world's greatest source of evil, Prof. Sunera Thobani of the University of British Columbia dismissed "this talk about saving Afghani women," adding, "Those of us who have been colonized know what this saving means." Indeed, she asserted, "There will be no emancipation for women anywhere...until the Western domination of this planet is ended."

The Tanzanian-born Thombani isn't lone kook. She is a former head of Canada's National Action Committee on the Status of Women, and she delivered her rant at a large feminist conference that was mainstream enough to be attended by Canada's secretary of state for the status of women, Hedy Fry. Thobani received several standing ovations.

To be fair, Thobani's comments, which represent an almost perfect inversion of reality--feminism is a phenomenon of unquestionably Western origin, and gains in women's status in other parts of the world have been largely due to Western influence--are hardly typical of feminist attitudes. Women's groups in North America and Europe have done admirable work publicizing the oppression of women under the Taliban.

Still, even the more rational feminist left can't be entirely comfortable siding with the Western powers, particularly against enemies who are seen as the wretched of the earth. For that matter, it can't bring itself to admit that the West holds the moral high ground on anything, including women's issues. Few...