Western Feminists

Western feminists love Oprah! Why? Because Oprah takes all the money she makes from bringing women to tears every week and builds schools and implements methods of birth control and contributes food to people in need in Third World countries. Western feminists want to play the heroic Americans, rushing in from a plane and bringing women’s rights with them. The controversy with Western feminism is that these women have the Western blinders over their eyes. Because we are Americans and we are the super-power of the world, our way of living must be right. When Western feminists go over and tell women living in an entirely different culture that being hit by their husband is wrong and they shouldn’t stand for it, this causes a problem. Third World countries will never fully change or accept Western ideas when these ideas are being shoved down their throats. As a feminist, I would certainly expect to do have some general idea of what is acceptable in the culture, who we can talk to about making changes, and leaving the decision to the leaders. For example, we shouldn’t be running around communities telling women to take birth control, we should go to the leaders of the community and explain why birth control has worked for us and see what they think. Western feminism is also controversial because some view it as hypocritical. We worry about poverty stricken women without the ability to take care of their children in a Third World country, yet we ignore these same problems taking place in the U.S.