Intersectional "feminists" are just like liberal feminists, except they spew more buzzwords. Anytime a discussion about how the hijab is misogynistic comes up they'll start whining about how it's somehow okay because it's their culture and if you think it is you're a "evil white western feminist". Like just because it isn't western means it isn't misogynistic. Something weebs and intersectional feminists have in common is their tendency to blame everything on westerners.
I've sperged about this topic in other A&H threads before, so feel free to stalk my post history if you're keen to know more. In a nutshell: those Muslim feminists have a point, but it's horrifically flimsy, and they seldom argue it well.
The logic that I've heard being repeated growing up in a first generation South Asian immigrant context is that if stripping down is considered liberating, then covering up should also be considered liberating as well. Whenever men (or women with internalised misogyny) criticise modest dress, what they're actually decrying is the fact that a woman is
choosing to cover herself up and consciously reject the notion that they're eye candy for men first and human beings second. The obligation for
both men
and women to follow modesty
is fundamentally written into the Qur'an itself. Furthermore, this sentiment is
not exclusive to Muslim women, either: Hindu, Sikh, Jain, and even South Indian Christian women all dress quite modestly, relative to secularised, Western women.
The problem I've always had with this sentiment is that this ideal is
not echoed in the motherland whatsoever. I can wax poetic about the beauty and majesty of the shithole that spawned my family, but the fact of the matter is that South Asia is
not a kind place to women whatsoever. More to the point: if the hellhole that my family came from was so fucking great, they never would've felt the need to emigrate in the first fucking place. That's a conversation for a different day and in a different thread, however. At the end of the day, I'm just a somewhat exceptional jack-off, and it damn sure ain't my place to tell chicks from a similar ethnic background to mine what is and isn't liberating. That said, it always unnerved me how seemingly no one else had pause for thought.
Furthermore, Muslim feminists rarely, if ever, argue their point well. The standard response to any criticisms of modesty in Islam is always "you don't understand, you're just a Western imperialist" or something to that effect. Aside from the general logic I mentioned earlier and defaulting to ad hominem attacks of neocolonialism/Western imperialism, these women almost
never bring up some genuinely uncomfortable facts that make even the staunchest critics of Islam pause for a moment. After the Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini actually enacted
a myriad of education reforms that sharply boosted female literacy rates across all of Iran. The Iranian government also has some of the most surprisingly robust family planning services in the Middle East... depending on the whims of the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard, that is. To put it short: during periods where population growth was trending upward year-on-year and the Iranian economy couldn't handle all the extra subsidies and shit they were giving out, they would launch sweeping educational campaigns for things like condoms, IUDs, contraceptive pills, and providing proper family planning services. Nowadays, birth rates are trending downward so the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard have reversed course on this. Needless to say, none of those talking points ever get brought up. It's not in vogue to defend rogue states unless they're Cuba, apparently.