The structure of this book — 16 essays of varying quality — makes it a mixed experience. The author, a Stanford professor, opens with a well documented piece at odds with the curious idea that women have some common cause with the multiculturalist boosters. Ms. Okin outlines some notable examples of gender-specific oppression along with her suggestion that yes, multiculturalism is harmful to women. The scholarship is welcome but passion is lacking.
What follows is a series of essays in response to the ideas of the first piece. The selections range from thoughtful to stilted academic. A few reveal an intellectual maneuvering apparently designed to avoid the topic at hand — women's continuing oppression. Some Islamic writers seem content to dump Moslem misogyny at the feet of “culture,” as if that were an acceptable excuse for a major religion sanctioning practices like mutilation, slavery and murder. (But there was no Islamic hue and cry against the “fatwah” murder edict toward Salman Rushdie, one should recall.) A Jewish man goes to embarrassing length to discuss male circumcision — where is Dr. Freud when you need him?!
The Nation columnist Katha Pollitt remarks in her opening that, “coming in late to this debate,” she had a “hard time understanding how anyone could find these arguments controversial.” She further declares that the very nature of feminism challenges traditional culture.
Of course, no one questions the underlying concept around the sort of “diversity” currently being imported through Washington's absurd preference for cultures vastly different from our own. Would it be shocking to suggest that some cultures are a better fit than others? Would you be happy living in a village in Pakistan? How about relocating to Khartoum? Probably not, but Washington creates the parallel situation through its emphasis on “diversity” in immigration categories. The State Department invites thousands annually from cultures as foreign as these to enter our society as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It is profoundly unnatural, and only arrogant American exceptionalism continues this damaging program.
— by Brenda Walker
For a longer version of this review, see Multiculturalism's Dark Heritage Toward Women in The Social Contract.
Also, the series of articles that became the book is available at the Boston Review. including Prof. Okin's introductory piece.
