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Feminism is no longer about gender equality

The injustices that the women of the Middle East and parts of Africa currently suffer are not that different from that which women historically endured in the west. These feminist movements outside the West are just beginning and are merely in their First-wave Feminism phase, thus they are pure in their egalitarian pursuits. My augment however is that Western Feminism has evolved far beyond these budding movements from the goal of gender equality to exclusively female advocacy. Hence the motion: "Feminism in NO LONGER about gender equality". Western Feminism not only fails to be equal to men, but it also fails its sisters suffering outside of the West. "Feminists are tied up in knots by multiculturalism and find it very hard to pass judgment on non-Western cultures. They are far more comfortable finding fault with American society for minor inequities (the exclusion of women from the Augusta National Golf Club, the "underrepresentation" of women on faculties of engineering) than criticizing heinous practices beyond our shores. The occasional feminist scholar who takes the women's movement to task for neglecting the plight of foreigners is ignored or ruled out of order. Take psychology professor Phyllis Chesler. She has been a tireless and eloquent champion of the rights of women for more than four decades. Unlike her tongue-tied colleagues in the academy, she does not hesitate to speak out against Muslim mistreatment of women. In a recent book, The Death of Feminism, she attributes the feminist establishment's unwillingness to take on Islamic sexism to its support of "an isolationist and America-blaming position." [...] The sisterhood has rewarded her with excommunication. A 2006 profile in the Village Voice reports that, among academic feminists, "Chesler arouses the vitriol reserved for traitors." "The Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) has been intelligently fighting the mistreatment of women in the Muslim world for several years. In 1997, in a heroic effort to expose the crimes of the Taliban, [...] created a vital national campaign complete with rallies, petitions, and fundraisers. The FMF, working with human rights groups, helped to persuade the United States and the United Nations to deny formal recognition to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. It helped convince the oil company UNOCAL not to build a pipeline across Afghanistan, and it brought the oppression of women living under radical Islamic law into clear relief for all the world to see." "It was a good example of what can be achieved when a women's group seriously seeks to address the mistreatment of women outside the United States." However, this was criticized by the other feminists as "imperial feminism." (Christina Hoff Sommers - The Subjection of Islamic Women: http://www.weeklystandard.com...) Western Feminism has proven itself useless and counter-productive in many respects, but most of all a failure to be equal.