When do feminists need to back off?

So a friend made an interesting post this morning about Saudi women now being able to legally ride bicycles.

Um, yeah...just the thought that riding a bike is a social advancement for some women in the world...wow.

But....what if some women didn't want to ride bikes?  Like...seriously...felt it went against their religion, their propriety, whatever?  Obviously that doesn't mean it should be illegal for any willing woman to ride a bike, but there's a point I'm trying to make.  Sometimes, from our "advanced" position, women like me can't fathom a woman who willingly, knowingly, makes the decision to submit, to honor her religion, her family, her husband, by being subservient.

Some feminists simply cannot wrap their minds around this one.

I think we've all seen this cartoon by now, so let's examine it:

I've had this general concept floating around in my head for quite some time, years in fact.  I grew up in a home that was more gender equal than they would dare admit.  My father picked us up from school, cooked most of our meals, did a lot of cleaning, and was never the "macho" type.  My mother had a great career, worked late evenings, had her fair share of meetings while Dad stayed home with us, and wasn't "feminine" in this new Botoxed and bleached version of the word. She's classically beautiful with modest style, minimal makeup, and simple clothes. Yet she was, and is, a minister's wife and has no problem slipping into that subservient role, even as a woman with a graduate degree, retired from a very successful career, with hobbies and interests all her own.  What?

Perhaps, and I'm coming to the realization more and more, perhaps this is a different plane of enlightenment.  There are women who know about gender roles, who know the history of oppression behind them, and yet, from an informed place, make the conscious decision to follow religious (or just personal/societal) customs, subjugate themselves to their husband's (or religion's) control.  Mind. Blowing.

So let's explore this phenomenon.

As a feminist pretty much surrounded (by choice) by feminists in the 21st century, I'm constantly looking out for the oppressed woman, doing my best to help them find their voice.  What if....their voice has been found but they don't want to be heard? Make sense?  What if they are happy, fulfilled, and satisfied being the subservient in the relationship, or by being a homemaker?

I recently had an embarrassing and shameful experience. After a woman who has repeatedly trolled my posts, articles, etc. with comments about gays made the comment, "Gay is a choice. That. Is. All.", I blasted her (that I don't regret), I copied her comment and reposted it (still, no regrets), but I made the observation about a "housewife" having the qualifications to make such a statement on the psychological state of all gays. Here I call myself a feminist, and I shame a woman for choosing to be a housewife.

That's embarrassing.  And wrong, wrong, wrong.  I do NOT regret making her comment public, I don't agree with her comment, but I was wrong to place this societal name-tag of "housewife" as a shameful thing.  For all I know, she does have a PhD; her status as a housewife doesn't preclude that possibility.  So I engaged in the ultimate oppressive language, particularly from one woman to another, and that was wrong.

So when we, educated, liberal, outspoken Western females, look at cultures in which a woman's place in the religious and home life has been set by hundreds, sometimes thousands of years of tradition, can we back off and respect the women who knowingly make the decision to fulfill their roles in their culture?  To admit that we can't conceptualize ourselves in such a lifestyle but still respect their decisions?

Recently the city of Paris attempted to outlaw burqas [purportedly for security reasons], and some Muslim women staunchly refused and protested the law because they asserted it was their chosen religious right to wear their burqas. Western women couldn't wrap our brains around the fact that these women weren't oppressed, forced kicking and screaming into their burqas, but put them on every day reverently and solemnly as an assertion of their religious right.  Sure, sure, there are women who don't want to wear them and shouldn't be forced to, but we have to understand that, just as many American women who follow conservative Christian teaching succumb to the authority of their husbands and male religious leaders, there are women in every culture and religion who knowingly submit.

So at what point are we in a post-feminist society? Will there ever be such a thing? So long as Middle Eastern cultures do force women into submission, so long as the Congo is using rape as a weapon of war, so long as fundamentalist Christian men are beating their wives behind closed doors and churches remain silent to the abuse epidemic, so long as rape victims are being blamed on college campuses, then we still need to push for full female equality.  I don't think we are anywhere near a post-feminist society, not even close.  But I think we do need to take a step back and observe that some women make a conscious, informed decision to follow certain cultural and/or religious traditions which we perceive as too submissive, and that that's ok.

Throw in your thoughts, observations, etc.  Feedback always, always welcome and loved.
~m