Forgive My Five-Day Silence–but I’m Busy Draining the Swamps

By Phyllis Chesler

I am draining the swamps, so to speak, clearing out the Augean stables, which were, and still remain, a Herculean task.

Energized by the new and amazing British-based group Feminists Against Antisemitism, I am working on a new book that I’ve tentatively titled “The Complete and Utter Palestinianization and Stalinization of American Feminism.” Only an insider can do this, especially someone who has not recanted her feminist ideals and has actually tried to live them for almost 60 years.

I cover the American reproductive-rights movement, the LGBT movements, the Goddess-worshipping/spiritual-healing movements, as well as the work of many Christian-liberation theologists. What more can I say about what has become of Women’s Studies (WS)–well, whatever there is, I’m saying it, but not happily. In 1970, I was a pioneer of WS and am horrified, daily, by what the professoriate is writing, teaching, and saying. (And that’s only when I can understand a word of what they write and say.) And then there are what currently pass for feminist organizations, feminist media, and faux-feminist activism. Yes, there is a strain of Black antisemitism running through all these feminist and faux-feminist movements, and I’ll note it in passing, but the subject deserves a book of its own, perhaps many books.

For the first time, I am also sharing my own experiences of antizionism and antisemitism among the feminist “icons.” It goes back to the early 1970s. There’s that–plus their damned support for Khomeini’s Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda. They were silent after 10/7, and silent they still remain. They and/or their students wear hijab or even niqab as anti-racist statements, even as the bravest of Iranian women are being shot down for daring to appear naked-faced and without head coverings. They and their students mount encampments for Gaza and against Israel and America.

Oh! If only Kafka were alive! Or Jonathan Swift! Or Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and in no particular order.

The punishment for speaking out about all this is not as grave as what happens when Muslim dissidents, ex-Muslims, Muslim women, and gays speak out. It provides a bracing and necessary perspective to the fates of feminists who speak out against the transgender cult or who still favor sex-based rights over and above identity-based rights–or who stand for universal human rights.

I hope to finish this work within six months–maybe sooner–or I will die trying, but I’ve no plans to do that. I am far too busy with other projects, all long underway.

I am copying here the latest invitation from Feminists Against Antisemitism. It’s about an upcoming Zoom meeting with feminists in Australia, a settler colonial nation-state if ever there was one, a state whose citizens project their own white guilt onto Israel only.

First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter