I was actually going to stretch this small period of silence a bit longer until I received a Riz Kahn newsletter this morning. Running an erotic art museum for about 12 years, after being editor in chief of two Dutch skin magazines does not make me an expert on women or men and their sweaty, physical collusions in bedrooms, kitchens or airplanes, but I do like to think of myself as a man who is old enough to have an opinion about sex.
Of course I am no sexologist like Dr. Heba Kotb, a devout Muslim, whose message to the world in RK’s newsletter is as simple as it is complicated: “Have more sex!”.
Now, that is fine if you are convinced that people in general need encouragement to have sex. Or if you think that Muslims in particular need support. I have no statistics on that matter, but from my own experience I would say Muslims, male or female, are terrific lovers with an almost obsessive interest in sex. And best of all they do not drink, so if you follow up on that you can expect to have a real good time. Let’s be honest about it; half of Western society is tipsy if not completely wasted once they have worked up the courage to actually ‘get it done’.
So what is up with Dr. Heba Kotb? Rhetorical question. She is building a bridge between people, but she is also a sexologist who is willingly or unwillingly surfing that giant tidal wave caused by a grand majority of people who think that if there are no serious threats in The Middle East except the ones we created ourselves, we should still keep interfering. Why? Because the position of Muslim women is not what our Western feminists would like it to be. I am not kidding. The stack of articles written by women criticizing the position of Muslim women is five times bigger than The Koran, The Bible, Das Kapital or any other religious or political mandate. Most of these women obviously flirt with a liberation by brute force solution.
I have said it before and I am going to say it again; if Muslim women feel suppressed they should liberate themselves. No feminist, no woman and no man has the right to dictate what is good or bad for people whose culture they do not fully understand. Nobody needs a paternalistic attitude of the strong towards the weak. People, men and women alike have defied torture and death to liberate themselves all through the ages. Liberation comes from within, any other form of liberation is a decadent farce.
Feminism as we know it in the Western World has decayed to a philosophy based on hypocrisy. Young women today are handed more options and less responsibilities than young men. Some call it positive discrimination, which makes it sound like a relatively new problem, while in fact the idea is quite stale. Western men do not give a rat’s ass about their women or the positions they hold in society. Their (feminist) mothers have learned them to give women what they want, because if they did not comply punishment in the form of emotional blackmail (You are just like your father..) would follow instantly, resulting in the fact that a lot of men have grown absolutely numb as far as true intimacy is concerned. That refined knowledge of how effective emotional blackmail and backstabbing can be may very well explain why women proof to be such excellent political leaders in our ‘modern’ society, but will the mentality of our men ever really change? No, it won’t; they will just sit back with a beer waiting for the lights to dim and when the urge to have sex hits them any woman will do as long as she does not talk too much about (her) feelings.
This may be very well be the biggest difference between Muslim and Western men. Muslim men actually seem to care about their women and their families, maybe because the influence of fathers in their education was more prominent. Let’s forget about the common idea that Muslims exploit their women as house slaves, because we do the same. On top of that we expect our women to make a six figure income while taking care of the kids and the household at the same time. Feminism did not reach its goals in over thirty years. In fact the position of women with children has become worse than ever before. Women are told to be thankful for their jobs, their freedom (?) and their children but there are only 24 hours in a day. Nobody can manage all that and there is no relief in sight, because our male and female political leaders add to the madness by giving shining examples of how to enjoy a family life without taking part in both the emotional and practical responsibilities. Their efforts are limited to ‘Quality Time’. Quality Time for us or for their kids I often ask myself.
