Beyond the Matrix: Political Activist Phyllis Chesler

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Bryant (October 2018)

 

Dr. Phyllis Chesler is a noted American Jewish feminist and is considered one of the founders of the women’s movement. She is a noted psychotherapist and expert witness on crimes of violence against women and children. She has veered away from traditional feminism with the rise of cultural relativism and has adopted a politically incorrect variant—the history of that development is the subject of her latest book, A Politically Incorrect Feminist.

 

But there are more threads to the story of her development. There is her incredible memoir captured in her 2013 book, An American Bride in Kabul, about a young rebellious Brooklyn Jewish woman who left her Orthodox background and at college, met and married the debonair son of an Afghan diplomat—only to be imprisoned in the polygamous household of her in-laws in Kabul, Afghanistan and then threatened with death if she did not convert to Islam. She was released by her father-in-law to return to the US after falling ill, welcomed home by her distressed parents. The marriage was eventually dissolved. It was her introduction to Islamic gender apartheid and worse, honor shame killing in tribal cultures. The experience was an existential one that formed the basis of her lifelong pursuit of justice for violence against women in custody, employment and civil rights matters. See our January 2014 New English Review, “An American Feminist Fighting Sharia: an interview with Dr. Phyllis Chesler,” and our review of An American Bride…”Flight from an Afghan Seraglio.”

 

Her feminist activism which started in 1967 came to national prominence in 1972 with her bestselling book, Women and Madness. She has been active in the Women of the Wall movement regarding women’s worship rights at the Kotel in Jerusalem. She has also been active in developing torah commentary on women’s issues. Chesler was one of the earliest Jewish activists warning about The New Antisemitism with her 2005 book on the subject concerned about the deligitimization and demonization of the Jewish nation of Israel in the West. Her 2013 book, An American Bride in Kabul received a National Jewish Book Award. More recent books by Chesler include Gender Islamic Apartheid: Exposing a Veiled War against Women  (2017), A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing (2018) and the aforementioned A Politically Incorrect Feminist published on July 28, 2018. 

 

This Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix interview with her by Jerry Gordon and Rod Bryant  was prompted in part by an interview with the sibling of a victim in a Houston, Texas multiple honor killing trial. The trial held in the Harris County district court resulted in a death sentence for the murderer, a Jordanian émigré. See: A Harrowing Tale of Honor Killings.

 

Chesler discusses in this interview her transformative Afghan experience, how the women’s movement has been taken over by cultural relativism perpetrated by academic leftists, even propounded in court cases for justifying violence. Cultural relativism in the women’s movement has also given rise to anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian Sharia Islamic law advocates prominent among the Washington and National Women’s March organizers. She addresses the toll of violence against women within families, especially evident in the dynamics of honor killings. She also provides insight into her latest work on both her own and other leaders in the women’s movement, who helped to found it and like her have now been considered politically incorrect.

 

What follows is an interview with Dr. Phyllis Chesler.

 

Rod: Your book An American Bride in Kabul won a National Jewish Book award. How did your experience as a young Jewish woman married to a son of an Afghan diplomat define gender Islamic apartheid?

 

the paranoia, the thought control, the control of women, the horrifying ladies in burkas on the streets which we see more and more in the West—follow me here now. I had a career as a politically incorrect feminist for many decades after this. I became politically incorrect quite accidentally when I started saying inconvenient truths in the twenty-first century having to do with the rise of anti-Semitism, with the nature of Israel hatred, the cognitive war—especially against the troops and against the West. I found that my lessons in Kabul were invaluable. It was a very expensive education. I nearly died there. When westerners travel to the far wild east, they get sick, they die, they are kidnapped, they are sold into harems, and they get diseases which I got. You pick up dysentery, you pick up malaria, and you pick up hepatitis. I got two of those three so that also was the price of such adventure.

 

Rod: You coined the term, politically incorrect feminist. Does that fairly describe you?

 

Phyllis: In the second wave of the feminist movement in which I was privileged to be alive and be a pioneer, there was always an honorable feminist minority on certain issues. For example, I may have been considered politically correct by the world but in feminist inner circles the fact that I was an abolitionist and opposed prostitution and pornography made me politically incorrect.

 

Jerry: Phyllis you are the author of the best selling 1972 book called Women and Madness that gave rise to women empowerment in studies and academia in the West. How has the rise of multi-cultural relativism changed the women’s movement and your involvement in it?

 

Phyllis: I was and remain in favor of multi-cultural diversity and I’m a Universalist. I believe in human rights for all—

 

Phyllis: I think that the campuses have become indoctrinated, for example, anthropology which is the most relativist and the most Western self hating of disciplines. They have prevailed and so people find it very difficult to risk giving up their friends, their social world, their funding and their jobs and being popular and safe by saying “hey the emperor is naked”. The emperor is naked. An apple is not an orange. You know, there is reality, not everything is subjective. There is no objective reality, logic, science, reason, and the best of the West is out the window. Very hard to argue with it.

 

 

—Rod: How many feminists or do you think former feminists are being disenfranchised with this sort of new progressive sort of politicized feminist movement?

 

 

Rod: Do you think that there is any possibility of a revival of true feminism and that people will finally realize this is leading them to no place good?

 

Jerry: Do you believe that Islamic Sharia law is a violation of both the U.S. and international human rights and do you consider accommodation of Islamic law by our courts a danger to civil rights including those of women in the west?

 

Jerry: You will be pleased, Phyllis, that I was involved with a successful episode in Florida to get a law passed to essentially provide those protections—particularly for Muslim mothers and children rights.

 

Jerry: Phyllis, your 2018 book, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killings addresses a rising problem in America. We recently interviewed the relative of a victim of an honor killing by a Jordanian émigré convicted in a trial in Houston, Texas and sentenced to death. Why is Islamic honor killing of concern here in the West and why are Muslim families involved?

 

 

Rod: One of the family members in the final interview right after the sentencing phase in Houston said this is significant not just the fact that we got a guilty verdict but we also have the death penalty. This is going to stand as a landmark decision that could help change how people, politicians and law enforcement agencies should look at honor killings.

 

Jerry:  I once interviewed a beautiful young girl of Pakistani legacy who live in Ohio. Her parents were both physicians. She described how, among the five sisters, she was considered the most unruly and was battered by her siblings at the direction of her father. She escaped. She converted and ran away. Her story was indicative that violence is endemic to the traditions in these communities and yet remains undiscovered until a tragedy like the one is Houston.

 

Rod: How revealing is your latest book, A Politically Incorrect Feminist about the women’s movement issues and leading figures?

 

Phyllis: Thank you, gentlemen.

 

Rod: Thank you and shalom.

 

Listen to the Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix interview with Dr. Phyllis Chesler.

 

 

 

______________________________________
Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review and author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016. He is co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast