Stand up for women, you feminists

On a hot summer day in Brussels, a family sat next to me. We were on a train, in almost forty degrees, and the father, to endure the heat, wore short shorts, flip-flops, and a thin cotton shirt.

The mother and her three daughters weren't so lucky: their religion requires women to cover their bodies and heads, rain or shine. They endured.

More recently, at the September 17 demonstration in front of the National Assembly, five thousand migrants gathered to demand the "right to documents," "family reunification," the "release of immigrants detained in detention centers," and an end to discrimination.

I am purposely not entering into the debate on these claims – their analysis will be up to those who recognize their merit.

But I'll go into the demographics of the protesters I observed that afternoon, near the steps of the Assembly: of the five thousand people there, I only saw four or five migrant women, not counting those who carried megaphones to galvanize the crowd and who, given their fiery and traditional slogans, could only be part of the Western left-wing associations that organized the movement.

It's true that the newspaper Público featured a photo of a woman (with her head covered, of course) on the cover of an article about this demonstration, to anticipate potential stories like this. But, in truth, anyone who was there, or saw the images on television, knows that the number of immigrant women at that demonstration could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Just as I did on the Belgian train, I wondered: where are the feminists, the defenders of women's rights, in these two situations? Where is the left, tireless in its rhetoric but cowardly absent from the real consequences of multiculturalism?

No one asks why, among the five thousand immigrants from predominantly Islamic countries, there are almost no women? Where are they? Don't they exist? Or are they not allowed to go out and demand their rights? Don't these thousands of men have wives, sisters, and daughters? Or are they going to try to convince us that all of them, almost all of them, almost five thousand, are waiting for family reunification and that the fault lies with the inefficiency of the Portuguese state? Ubi sunt mulieres?

But not everything is bad: situations like these give us the opportunity to observe the almost schizophrenic dichotomy that the left is experiencing today.

On the one hand, she proclaims herself the lone champion of women, female emancipation and social justice.

But, on the other hand, when inequality presents itself in the guise of Islamic faith and through the conspicuous absence of women from public spaces, there is no longer oppression, there is "cultural difference"; there is no longer silence, there is "respect for difference." And thus, slowly, inequality gains the status of virtue.

For the left, to admit the hypothesis, to even dare to think that these women might simply want to go out into the street, have an opinion and not live hidden away because, centuries ago, someone declared them inferior and impure, is already proof and sufficient sentence of racism, xenophobia or intolerance.

Does the left truly believe that living like this is a free and informed choice for these women? Doesn't the left think, doesn't it doubt for a second, that perhaps they live in the shadows because their religion and culture force them to?

The left kneels before the idea that hiding women is religious freedom. It doesn't defend women, it defends dogma. And with this inconsistency, it digs its own grave, burying the truth and, with it, the voices of women.

Editorial note: The views expressed by the authors of the articles published in this column may not be fully shared by all members of Oficina da Liberdade and do not necessarily reflect the Oficina da Liberdade 's position on the topics discussed. Despite sharing a common view of the state, which they want to be small, and the world, which they want to be free, the members of Oficina da Liberdade and its guest authors do not always agree on the best way to get there.