Reddit mentions of Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

I recommend "Headscarves and Hymens" by Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian feminist who explains the problem of hijab and sexism in Islam from an unequivocally leftist point of view. The book is short and reads well which is a plus: https://www.amazon.es/dp/0374536651/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_IQjUCbEVAV125

Another good feminist who advocates against hijab is Nawal El Saadawi. A classic leftist feminist, also Egyptian, has written novels and feminist work, anti FGM and anti hijab advocate. So when people accuse us of Islamophobia we can just point them toward the Muslim feminist authors who are at the front lines. More: https://theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/15/nawal-el-saadawi-egyptian-feminist

But /u/hitomieyes is talking specifically about dictionary definition feminism and how that fits with the Catholic worldview. The YouGov link that you provided above explicitly states that '11% of non-feminists are not feminists because they believe men and women are not equal'. That means that 89% of those surveyed think that men and women are equal, just that the current feminist movement is not achieving that. For example, there is a sizable secular radical feminist group that has currently undergone a schism about abortion inequality; half of whom believe that men should also have a form of 'termination rights,' as child support payments are mandatory if a woman chooses to go through with an abortion and is therefore not true equality, and about half of whom are vehemently anti-abortion because they believe that it unfairly targets poor and non-white women and enables sex-selective abortion, as seen in China during the years of the one child policy. Feminism is not cohesive about abortion, although currently there is a large narrative that suggests that it is. That narrative is also very Anglosphere-centric; there are a lot of feminists in many Nordic and East Asian countries that have very different perspectives on feminism, and I recommend looking into a more global perspective on the movement.


Secondly, many men and women have spoken out against hijabi practices in Muslim countries; when the Tehran protests were at a high point, an image of a woman removing her hijab in front of Iranian officials went viral. Many tweeted about it with the hashtag "#IStandWithHer, and the original tweet has been retweeted over 15,000 times and liked more than 32,000 times. The response among social media users was overwhelmingly positive. "This woman is brave," one woman wrote, while others called her a "real hero" and said "her bravery is to be admired." Look at writers like Mona Eltahawy, who explicitly defines herself as a feminist author based in Cairo and New York. She's written “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution.” and launched social media campaigns to draw attention to the sexual assault problem from an international perspective, sharing facebook posts and tweets that have since been retweeted thousands of times and in over half a dozen languages, including English, Indonesian, Arabic, Turkish, French, German, Spanish and Farsi.


FGM is also widely spoken against by some of the largest organisations on the planet; look at this document cosigned by WHO, the UN, and UNICEF that explicitly declares it a fundamental violation of human rights. In addition to that, there is a powerful grassroots movement, headed by the founder of the Desert Flower Foundation, Waris Dirie, that speaks out for the right to all women and additionally draws attention to the greater risk of migrant communities in Europe. Here are 16 of the most prominent charities against FGM.


There are dozens of feminist movements all over the globe that have a wide variety in their agenda, and simply because one small faction of that movement has garnered a lot of media attention does not mean that it is the sole focus of that movement. Additionally, one of the best things about the 'intersectionality' focus of third wave feminism, as pointed out by Eltahawy, means that movements focused on global rights like anti-hijab movements and FGM are getting more attention, especially on more private and grassroots platforms like social media. Regardless of your thoughts on the validity of the reasoning behind these protests, as I saw farther down thread that you align yourself with the alt-right on the political compass, many protests like the women's march, gun control march, anti-Brexit march, and counter-protest to Charlottesville began as organisations hosted primarily on social media before they garnered national news attention.

But one of the biggest overlaps between these converging feminist movements, between the domestic focus on a second sexual revolution headed by the Me Too campaign and a more international focus on women's right to bodily autonomy, as with the FGM counter measures, most feminists, as defined by Webster or the OED, or equalists, as has become the new terminology for those 89% of people who disagree with the specific term, as you pointed out above, is the frustration with the idea that women are somehow predisposed to not want to work or to becoming stay at home mothers. A lot of that is turning out to be untrue. In a slight majority of countries, parents are unhappier than their childfree counterparts.. There are entire groups designed to support women who hate motherhood. Some studies have found that there is a greater discrepancy in unhappiness in a marriage with children; women are more likely to be unhappy with the relationship after children. More women are also feeling empowered to enter careers that they might have been dissuaded from; more women are entering STEM fields and choosing academic tracks that enable them to succeed in those fields as early as ages 11 or 12. Rising in corporate fields has been slower, but still has noticeably shifted from 26% to 27.7%. We're also witnessing a faster level of greater parity in some of the world's fastest growing economies, most noticeably India.


To summarise, as I know this reply has gotten very long: yes, third wave feminism, as it is currently defined, is probably incompatible with your Catholic teachings. However, there are many, many components to the feminist movement, including advocacy for education and corporate advancement, the right not to want children, and the right to bodily autonomy. Users like /u/hitomieyes wish to draw attention to those areas of feminism that aren't incompatible with Catholic social teaching and carve themselves out a space where they are respected as equals and have ample opportunities for self-advancement without either prejudice or violating their morals. Given that the current third wave feminist movement started out primarily on twitter and instagram, including body positivity, Me Too, and the women's march, the rising trend of this more global perspective on feminism on social media shows great potential to exert a more powerful influence over perspectives on equality in the coming months or years.