This is the same Chris Hitchens who ridiculed the idea that American health plans that cover Viagra should also cover birth control for women. The same Hitchens that wrote an article about how unfunny women are, and how they can't do comedy.

And while I'm sure Hitchens cares for women and supports their intellectual growth and economic advancement --in a very gentlemanly, proper and paternalistic way, mind you-- his article reminds me of nothing so much as the sudden concern for the rights of Afghan women that the Bush administration developed in the days following the 9/11 attacks.

It's interesting how these folks suddenly discover how much they really care about women and their rights and liberties when such caring can be used as a pretext to justify their own jihads against the jihadists.

But then, going on hysterically about all the different and gruesome ways in which the Islamofascists would gut your daughter if they could get her hands on her serves as a useful distraction from broader questions about how stupidly, hamfistedly, incompetently and criminally the response to 9/11 was handled by the Bush administration and its boosters (vis. Mr. Hitchens) and how their actions have served only to fuel the rage of the Islamofacists, provide them with much needed propagandistic cover, and swell their ranks with followers who are appalled at the criminal actions of the criminals at the head of the US and UK governments.

What does viagra have to do with birth control, and why should covering one necessitate covering the other? Personally, I think birth control is more important, but that doesn't mean the two are ethical equivalents. One could compare the coverage given broken arms and broken finger nails and make as much sense. Unless, of course, one just wishes to "fuel the rage" between men and women.

Regardless, thinking that women "can't do comedy" or that Viagra and Birth Control are not ethical equivalents doesn't indicate a lack of "caring" for women.

The only criticism here is to wonder why female victims are any worse than male victims.

"Fuel the rage".

Certainly their rage has been fueled. However, wars don't seem to bug them as much as books and cartoons.

"provide them with much needed propagandistic cover"

This is the funniest one yet. Yeah, Islamists had nothing to go on until Afghanistan and Iraq. That's an embarrassingly ignorant statement. "Much needed" indeed.

You're an idiot. Hitchens has always cared for women, and probably in whatever "progressive" Feminist Theory class way you would prefer him to. What a stupid post yours is.

People seem to forget that Hitchens always has been and remains a leftist. The reason he is now hated on the left is because he has spent his time since 9/11 showing what unprincipled cowards leftists really are when really faced with the Real Enemy, Islamofascism. They're completely AWOL.

Spot on! I totally agree with Hitchens and you relative to the real enemy of liberals. I consider myself a liberal Democrat, I'm a women with a liberal voting record. I have wondered aloud, vigorously and often "Where are the liberals and their outrage over the treatment of women in Islam?!" The Berkeley, California crowd, to take one example is a vocal, active group who runs to support every liberal cause there is, yet they are horribly conflating disgust for, yes I'll say it, "Islamofacism" with "racism" or "religious intolerance". I am sorry but the cover of religion or freedom of religion, no longer applies when the thought system/collection of medieval beliefs and ideas calls for anhilation of everyone and everything that does not conform to said thought system. Sorry, you no longer get protection by naming your hate speech, incitements to violence, INtolerance, and misogynistic mutilation and murder "religion". Game over. Yet liberals still want protection for the people perpetrating said "religion" because, I believe, for the most part they are brown people. The same liberals will go on for daaaaaaaays about the White Christian fundamentalists idiotic beliefs and their intolerance blah blah blah.....they have nothing but furious digust for those fundies, but the brown fundies? Oh MUST be tolerant, after all they are a minority religion blah blah blah.... I'm over it! I'm sick of it! Liberals are absolutely MIA when it comes to criticism of the WORST case of fundamentalist fascism!

I'm afraid your argument disappears up it's own you-know-what. If someone expresses a concern about discrimination against a certain group, in this case Hitchen's concern for women, does it mean that person has to love everything and anything about that group and can't make any criticisms of it? Of course not.

I don't love everything and anything about men, but I don't believe they should be denied equal human rights and freedoms. Same goes for any race or religion. But I do get very angry when someone tries to deny me my equal human rights, as Moslems do to women.

Who knows what Christopher Hitchen's motives really are, but at least he has the courage to draw attention to mysogny. That's more than I can say for a lot of people, whether on the Right or the Left. The politically-correct paralysed brigade need to wake up. Why are religious rights more important than the human rights of half the world's population?

So what would you have people do, let the Islamists do what they like?

So what would you have people do? Let the Islamists do what they like, or just ask them politely to stop being so nast?

Yes, I wonder if his infatuation with Ayaab Hirsi Ali has anything to do with his sudden 'concern' for women's rights and dignity. This is the same man who said in his 'Women Aren't Funny' piece that the only funny women are "Dykes, Jews or Butch" and are merely 'emulating' men, and that when a woman belly laughs it's a gesture of submission, her open mouth waiting for penis.

(Does Mr. Hitchens remember the title of Ali's film? Submission doesn't seem to bother him unless the woman talking about how wrong it is is "captivating" and beautiful.)

Even more sickening is his assertion that feminist have been 'silent' on the issue of the treatment of women in Islam and the Taliban. After YEARS of feminists, including groups like The Fund For the Feminist Majority, campaigning tirelessly to raise awareness of the rise of the Taliban and it's horrible reversal of what little freedom women had in these countries, Mr. Hitchens can ignorantly dismiss all our blood, sweat and tears over this issue with a few strikes on his keyboard. Who listens to feminsts anyway, we're a bunch shrill, strident, 'stone-faced Amazons" who complain about our human rights being violated only because we 'hate men'.

I first heard of the Taliban through feminist groups many years before all this concern. The documentary "Beneath The Veil" was ignored for years until the war effort suddenly became all about ending the violent oppression of women. That faded quickly, didn't it?

Your argument is a straw-man. Red-herring, I believe; although that seems confounded with ad hominem.

I agree with you completely that to support health-care coverage for Viagra while not supporting it for birth-control is terribly misogynistic.

However, if someone combines this misogynistic belief with concern about women's education, that simply makes him a hypocrite (and possibly an a**hole). It does not negate the importance of women's education. The birth control issue is a red herring to that debate, and the fact that the author is a hypocrite also, while a valid criticism in the personal sphere, does not negate the importance of women's education, or the validity of arguments based upon its importance.

FYI, personally (since that appears fundamental to your argument style) I also agree with you that the response to 9/11 was incompetent and criminal, due to the Bush administration and various, primarily Neo-Con (and Neo-Trotskyite) thinkers (including Hitchens). I was shocked at the idea of the Iraq War, horrified that PNAC had pushed for it years previous, and frightened at the apparent insanity latent in the American population that they would even consider letting this absurdity go through.

I did actually move to Canada shortly before the Iraq war started. I got a student visa for this purpose, refusing to even apply to a single American university that year, and stayed in Canada until it was clear a Democrat who has initially opposed the Iraq war was to be elected in 2008. I'm currently extremely angry at Obama for not pushing war crimes investigations against the Bush admin, and am for that reason (as well as culture shock -- coming back here I can't bear the comparative nastiness, dominance-orientation, and saccharine-sweet fake nice) planning to immigrate either back to Canada, or else to the UK (where large numbers of people bother to protest seriously), in the next few years.

That said, the destruction of girl's schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan (have you read _Three Cups of Tea_?) is an absolutely horrible thing, and it is too little talked about IMO, and anyone willing to mention it in print gets kudos from me. Also, for all that I am in favor of birth control--use it myself--being murdered and having your only chance at education destroyed is actually a much larger women's rights issue than birth control, IMO. (Unless white women's pressing rights issues count for more than brown women's, in which case, by all means, compare difficulty in getting birth control to being shut in home, actively denied the barest literacy, and murdered for going to school.)

Similarly, the issue of "what Islamofascists would do to your daughter if they could get their hands on her", while admittedly often used here as a way to use racist fears to distract away from Republican and Neo-Con incompetence, is nevertheless an actually important issue, especially if you have female relations in the Middle East for whom you care, and who are in no small part genuinely endangered by the Bush-and-Neo-Con-assisted Islamofascist increase in power.

My main point is less about the issues, than that you muddle them with so many fallacious conclusions that are extremely difficult to sort through. I agree with you on essentially all your basic points -- Hitch is a hypocrite, women have a right to birth control, Islamofascists-and-your-daught­er is used in the US mainly as a distraction, Bush and many in his admin are criminal and made the global danger from Islamofascism much worse -- but in drawing your conclusions something extremely strange happens, and you end up looking like you care more about a journalist's hypocrisy than about girls being forced into illiteracy, or the equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition pushing through the UN -- the closest thing we have for globally common government -- a absurdly totalitarian restriction that their beliefs are not to be criticized.

By the way, as far as what we should actually DO in Afghanistan and Pakistan (where so many girls can no longer go to school), IMO see Ted Rall. That's not linked to what I think are the main points in the Hitchens piece, but given your argument style, my gut is telling me I'm probably going to be attacked as itching for war escalation in Central Asia. For what it is worth, I'm not.