This is a CNN video report. There’s a link to the fuller report below it. It is a remarkable story about which one would want to know more. Just how, for example, do everyday gender roles, presumably so entrenched in these peoples’ background, get replaced, if they do? Can a group with members known as terrorists actually be fighting for feminist values?
(The tensions in the story are so unresolved, it may remind you of a BBC April 1st production.)
More detail are in the story entitled: “Female fighters: We won’t stand for male dominance.”
Addition: There seemed to me originally two remarkable things about the CNN story. First, it seems pretty unusual for a group of men to say that they need to include and empower women to solve the problems they want to address. Secondly, the CNN report seems bizarre since it appears to be reporting on what it thinks of as ‘feminist terrorists’ without any recognition that there could be a problem with that. There’s a air of BBC surrealism about it, or at least it seems to me.
Still, since philosophers often like to think about questions which they don’t think they can answer, it might be a good idea to recognize that anything like ‘the truth’ about such groups is extremely difficult to ascertain. That’s not just because of the cultural difference, but also because of the fact that inbetween me/us and them stands a body of highly political and conflicting opinions.
Feminist Philosophers 