The translated trailer below does not even begin to do justice to the programme, which can be viewed at:
http://omroep.vara.nl/tvradiointernet_detail.jsp?maintopic=424&subtopic=4177&detail=321864
(It is in Dutch but many of the the interviews are conducted in English).
The documentary I believe demonstrates, in devastating fashion, that Hirsi Ali is an even bigger fraud than she is given credit for by people with genuine knowledge about the subjects she pontificates on. Why? Because she is an invented persona. you may know, her reputation is built on her purported suffering as an oppressed Islamic woman, forced marriage, and determination to escape not only this forced marriage but the purported consequence of leaving it - an honour killing at the hands of her shamed relatives.
Among the facts revealed by this documentary, that I can of course not independently verify:
- Apart from the occasional spat with her brother and sister during her youth, which are not discussed in the documentary, she never experienced civil/political conflict, whether in her native Somalia or anywhere else. Period.
- Her family are such Islamic fanatics that they sent her older brother to a Christian school in Nairobi. Ayaan herself was sent to a Muslim school, apparently for reasons of educational quality rather than religion. They were also not exactly suffering economically. Although the parents were divorces, mother and 3 children grew up in a spacious house in one of the best districts in Nairobi, the house is now inhabited by 3 families.
- Her mother was against her purportedly forced marriage, because she felt strongly that Ayaan should not get married before getting a university degree to protect her from the consequences of an eventual divorce.
- She claims she met her husband, a distant relative, on her wedding day. He claims they knew each other beforehand and were in love, or at least so he thought. He claims he would not have married her against her will. He also notes that rather than dragging her by the hair to Canada after the marriage he went there alone and sent her a ticket to join him some months later.
- She claims the whole reason she had to escape to Holland (her flight to Canada included a stopover in Germany whence she took a train to Amsterdam) was to escape her family and certain death at the hands of her shamed father etc. Yet the first thing she did was contact relatives in Amsterdam; she participated in a television documentary about refugees in the Netherlands very soon after arriving there; she was in regular contact with her father by phone and letter; and her husband in fact visited her at the asylum center and, rather than killing her like a lamb at Eid, agreed to a divorce.
- The documentary does not go beyond the facts, but my own provisional conclusion is that it was indeed an arranged marriage, arranged either by herself for opportunistic reasons or, perhaps, also with the collaboration of her 'husband', to escape Kenya and get to Europe - I suspect she would not have been able to obtain a visa to make the flight so easily if she did not have a marriage certificate to show the Canadian consulate in Nairobi. Her brother comes within the vicinity of stating this, but another thing that struck me is that he spoke very highly of her, while her parents refused to cooperate in the documentary because they did not want their words to be used against her. Not quite as aggrieved by their supposed "culture of shame" and her subsequent career as we have been led to believe.
- Given the sensitivity of the topic and anti-immigrant mood in the Netherlands I also felt the documentary was quite responsible in this respect, making it a main issue that she represents a party that has championed anti-immigrant measures; that the party leaders were apparently informed about the above or much of it and kept it under wraps; and that its government ministers have been expelling genuine refugees for precisely the kind of thing related above.
- To sum up, Hirsi Harisa whatever her name may be appears to have given "freedom of expression" an entirely new meaning...
Best,
M.
Zembla = Dutch television documentary programme produced by VARA (left of center) broadcasting organisation
VVD = Free People's Democracy, main liberal (i.e. right-wing) Dutch political party (currently governing coalition member)
News from Zembla: VVD Knew that Ayaan Hirsi Ali Invented her Escape Story
The VVD parliamentarian Ayaad Hirsi Ali is in actual fact named Ayaan Hirsi Magan. She falsified her date of birth upon arriving in the Netherlands and invented a story to obtain asylum here. She also tells a very different story about her marriage than her ex-husband, her brother, and an aunt who were present at her wedding. Hirsi Ali claims she was married off , others deny this. This and other issues are examined in the Zembla documentary The Holy Ayaan. Zembla conducted research in the Netherlands and Canada, went to Kenya and Somalia, and spoke with people who knew Ayaan well but have never before talked about her. Zembla discovered contradictions in Ayaan Hirsi Ali's life story.
Ayaan spent the first seven years of her life in Somalia. The Magan family left the country before the civil war began. Father Magan was an opposition leader against the dictator Siad Bare. After the family briefly lived in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, it moved to Nairobi (Kenya). There Ayaan and her family obtain refugee status. They live there twelve years. Ayaan's schooling is financed by the UN refugee organisation UNHCR.
In 1992 Ayaan arrives in The Netherlands via Germany. She has never been clear about her escape story: "I thought. 'if I tell the truth I will be sent back to Germany. Because the rules are very clear if you apply for asylum in The Netherlands: You first have a discussion with someone from Vluchtelingenwerk . The discussion thoroughly prepares you '."
By remaining silent about her background, she unjustly obtained a residency permit in The Netherlands. According to international agreements you can't obtain refugee status in two different countries. Yet Ayaan obtained this status in both Kenya and The Netherlands. Because Kenya was according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a safe country, Somali refugees who arrived from Kenya were supposed to be sent back to that country. . Ayaan Hirsi Ali to Zembla: "I invented the entire story. I also didn't state that my name is Ayaan Hirsi Magan, but that it is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I did not tell that I was born in 1969, but said I was born in 1967."
Ali states that she informed the VVD leadership about her invented story before she was presented by it as a candidate for parliament. The party confirms that this was not seen as a problem. <--- hmmmm, i wonder why????
getfiscal posted:the first paper i wrote for university in october 2000 was a proto-MRA screed about how second wave feminism was an attack on liberty, to my second wave feminist professor
i seen how you write and you've got moxie, kiddo. how'd ya like to join the big leauges? i got the perfect target market, all ya need is to sprinkle this baby with a few dead kids and blam!
gyrofry posted:what do you all think about MIM's position that all first world wimmin are members of the gender aristocracy and are actually male-gendered even if biologically otherwise
I think to understand what gender is, we must first state clearly the nature of its political source, partriarchy. Patriarchy is in its essence a breeding program. Most people vaguely understand eugenics as something that began as a pseudo-science in 19th century Europe, but it really began when patriarchal pastoralists invaded communities of productive women, enslaved them, and then breed them like their animals. Before this women were the primary producers of food and were the main source of inventions: pottery to store surplus and digging implements to till the earth. Contrary to myths of the alpha ape being the source of all human relations, the hunting performed by men was a marginal activity that provided for a small minority of subsistence needs. It was not productive of society, but dependent on it. It was not until they discovered the art of breeding that they were able to establish an independent existence from women, and eventually, by these means, come to dominate them. And so patriarchy began with women being spoils of war and then developed as men discovered more and more sophisticated arrangements of trading women, until this developed into modern patriarchal capitalism.
So if we accept this definition of partriarchy as a eugenics program, we can see that while gender and sex are different, they are related insofar as gender is mapped onto a politics of reproduction. This has the convenience of cutting through all kinds of postmodern claptrap in which gender can't be defined. So if we apply this definition to most of the first world, simultaneously experiencing vast material wealth and demographic collapse, we can come to couple conclusions: first, patriarchy is rapidly deteriorating on its own terms and second, as corollary to the first conclusion, women are no longer necessarily forced to breed. But wait a second here, if biological females are no longer breeding is it appropriate to still call them women? Maybe, if they redefined what it means to be a "woman" by means of an alternative breeding program. But this is NOT what women have done, they have simply inserted themselves into the role of men without seeking a change in the structure of society. And this of course includes breeding, whose locus has now shifted to the third world. So I would agree with this conclusion. Though really, this situation is short lived. The moment the inevitable resurgence of nationalism in the first world happens, all of these "men" will become "women" again.
discipline posted:cissexism.
i already talked to discipline about this but will mention here too, this is an awful terrible bullshit term and so is its retarded cousin, "cisgender". the most pathetic tenet of this Queer Theory Orthodoxy is the need to erase females as an oppressed sex class in order to highlight their own suffering. PATHETIC. to imply that some females are privileged simply by being born female and heterosexual s is lazy, self-centered, sexist thinking. (see, no need for any dumbass precursor, it's just plain ol' sexist!) it reveals transwomen once again fetishizing the aspects of womanhood that many of us females detest the most.
genetics are immanent, they are simply there. it is society (and the material conditions behind them) which determine their importance. reproduction is what gives it importance, and as marimite explains it is far from 'natural'. I fail to see how sex is any less arbitrary than gender except as a kind of political retreat.
gyrofry posted:arent genetics material conditions?
yes, in fact genetics themselves are subject to the class struggle. but thats a bit too radical for even most marxists.
tpaine posted:babyhueypnewton posted:gyrofry posted:arent genetics material conditions?
yes, in fact genetics themselves are subject to the class struggle. but thats a bit too radical for even most marxists.
is that what you thought after you ejaculated your genetics into that prostitute
ok i laughed
roseweird posted:as long as the term "transgender" exists within the white academy "cisgender" will exist within the white academy
sorry but once again, the black or white world of transtheory plays itself! people who would say they identify with the "gender assigned at birth" are not people who fit into concrete, easy to identify columns of masculinity or femininity for both their behaviors and bodies.
"Most of us are not walking, talking stereotypes. It is unusual for a person to both appear and behave in unmodified identification with their assigned gender at birth. For example, a female-born person might wear pink dresses and lots of makeup, but behave in an assertive, detached, and highly intellectual manner. Or a female-born person might appear very androgynous, without any feminine adornment at all, but express herself gently, quietly, and with graceful concern for those around her. What about a female who is aggressive and competitive in her professional life, but submissive and emotional in her personal life? Who decides whether an individual is sufficiently identified with to be considered “cis”? Or sufficiently non-identified with to be “trans”? “Cis” and “trans” do not describe discrete social classes from which political analysis can be extrapolated." ---http://liberationcollective.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/a-feminist-critique-of-cisgender/
tpaine posted:just say "this thing is shaped like a woman and calls itself a woman and is fucked over by capitalism in the following ways" and "this thing is shaped like a man and calls itself a woman and is fucked over by capitalism in the following ways" etc. who even cares anymore. what is this
tpaine, two women were assaulted and driven out of a conference this weekend by "transactivists". these people like to dox women and assault them in public leave this to the vagina havers/wanna be vagina-havers.
roseweird posted:the trans demographic is already usually supremely susceptible to advertising targeted at their chosen gender because transgender people are hyper-aware of gender targeting. if i had a dollar for every trans guy i met that uses axe... eat my shorts
I guess you could say that we do not know what we want, and yet we are responsible for what we are dee are are
SariBari posted:discipline posted:cissexism.
i already talked to discipline about this but will mention here too, this is an awful terrible bullshit term and so is its retarded cousin, "cisgender". the most pathetic tenet of this Queer Theory Orthodoxy is the need to erase females as an oppressed sex class in order to highlight their own suffering. PATHETIC. to imply that some females are privileged simply by being born female and heterosexual s is lazy, self-centered, sexist thinking. (see, no need for any dumbass precursor, it's just plain ol' sexist!) it reveals transwomen once again fetishizing the aspects of womanhood that many of us females detest the most.
The ability to outright dismissively ignore or rationalize away the significance and effect of one's own inborn privilege is itself a form of privilege! Holy cow dude
roseweird posted:babyhueypnewton posted:yes, in fact genetics themselves are subject to the class struggle. but thats a bit too radical for even most marxists.
this sounds interesting, go on
well i mean, how are genetics determined? through reproduction by human beings in society. genetics, personality, physical characteristics, these things all intersect with society because they are human characteristics, and man is social animal. physical and mental characteristics can be determined in general terms by general things like nutrition, climate, disease, war, but also specific things like height, baldness, penis size, etc. so genetics can determine politics, however it is politics which give these things meaning and can determine genetics. the mongol empire, the bubonic plague, primitive accumulation of Latin American and African gold and slaves, events resulting from class struggle change the fundamental genetics of the human race.
these two things reflect each other, one could even say it's a dialectic!1