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since you are nothing but sex objects . You would do well to concern
yourselves with your own problems , as we are far better off without
your interference .
This line of argument is distressing to Western women .
It
neatly
activates Western guilt; it contains enough truth to sting, and there
is really no adequate reply one could make . Thus , a handful of Ira–
nian women in chadors can silence an entire symposium by standing
up and insisting that fundamentalism is precisely what they as women
want and need. There is a lot to be said about these encounters, but
I will confine myself to two observations.
First, the notion that a woman is qualified to speak for all the
women of her population merely by virtue of coming from that part
of the world shows how undifferentiated the Western view still is . "A
Muslim woman was there and she said ..." would hardly be evi–
dence for anything, if that culture were not still so remote for us that
any emissary seems noteworthy .
Second, the cultural backlash currently being experienced in
many Third World societies is itself an important topic for social
science research . Unfortunately, it appears that a backlash of our
own is preventing this research from developing. In the process, self–
imposed taboos on the part of women researchers are contributing to
tacit value judgements as biased as the interventionism they oppose.
