fJennifer has 12 post(s)

This conversation about Muslim women is as relevant now as it was 15 years ago, specifically because as a culture we still have no more understanding about Muslim women and the terror of their presence. Terror may seem excessive, but burqas on the beach seem to be an issue in the current French presidential elections which makes it seem like maybe it is us and not them that are we should be afraid of. Additionally, it has become common for some women to joke about the seclusion a burqa would provide, as if they would finally know what it feels like to walk down the street without being harassed.

The veiled woman has variations and although looking at it as a uniform, worker versus housewife, may seem oppressive, most women follow some sort uniform whether business casual or high fashion. To encourage or require a Muslim woman to unveil for her ‘comfort’ also known as our comfort seems equally reductive because issues of equality are more deeply rooted than clothing and remaining focused on clothes is like expecting a band aid to heal a broken bone. Abu-Lughod presents an excellent question when discussing liberating Afghan women, what do we do if liberation means something different to them, and when our need to fix things out weighs our understanding.

Our superiority driven desires to ‘save’ people is patronizing, but more than that it often seems like a short cut. If you can’t be bothered to do the work of learning about a culture and/or what your role in it is, but you can open a door to Westernize someone you are removing that person’s agency. It is only another role of expectations that the person had nothing to do with assuming, but is now left with the responsibility of maintaining. I agree in it being more valuable to shift the focus to demilitarizing and peacekeeping, but there is so much money to be made in a perpetual war state that I can’t imagine how it will change.

Sexual citizenship is implicitly described throughout Cabezas’ essay, focusing primarily on women’s sexual and individual agency. When including human rights Cabezas includes police harassment and the assumptions placed on women for existing in their own country, if they are found close to high traffic tourist areas their promiscuity is either innocent or deviant depending on skin tone. Interestingly, the women referenced in her essay all seem to independently find their way into liaisons with tourists fluidly and earnestly. The reality is that any woman in tourist specific hospitality is propositioned regularly, due to the nature of the industry you must be approachable, engaging and knowledgeable. Cuba and the Dominican Republic are both small enough islands that anyone who has lived there for a short amount of time could become well acquainted with the area, making them an asset to an international tourist who desires a local experience.

Many impoverished women have fine-tuned their ears to finding additional avenues of income, whether that is an extra shift at your place of employment or a part-time side job. For women comfortable with their sexualities and a sense of adventure, an international liaison likely begins innocently and likely without any hopes for more than an all-expenses paid week or long weekend. Unpredictable to the women are the tourists, some arriving with the intention of picking up a local companion for their vacation and others open to permanent relationships. The reality is that an economically viable partner is enough motivation for any woman in extreme poverty to risk jail or state ordered rehabilitation, especially when the economy is providing few alternatives for social mobility. This is not a promise, but a potential outcome like winning a lottery that, at the very least, provides a short relief from financial struggle.

Although there are mentions of men in the business of sexual tourism the stigmatization and economic peril are not the same for men which is why the core of the essay does not focus on their story. The ambiguous categorization of sexual tourism alludes to an evolving perspective of female sexuality, however the racial and class specific repercussions re-emphasize the old capitalist order. The privileged class are happy to share their wealth if they don’t have to share their status.

Ferguson relates property to the description of the heteronormative patriarchal family that anyone alive in America can identify with as the social standard, one that you are expected to assimilate to or a the very least you are trying to achieve. The family or tribe has a presumed division of labor, working husband, wifely housework, and children providing gender specific maintenance such as lawn mowing or sibling child care.

Capital is illustrated as the person as a commodity, primarily as an unskilled wage slave. The hierarchy of capital is skilled workers, unskilled workers, women and then children, with success measured as finding a way to profit using the least skill at the lowest price point. Capital also behaves differently in relation to involvement from the state, if the state is involved then capital will appease the state by perpetuating heteronormative roles. However, capital only has interest in profit so when the state is not a factor race and gender have no influence over cheap labor for profit.

The relationship between property and capital becomes most interesting when Ferguson adds prostitution, in part due to the dehumanizing effect and literal collaboration of property and capital, but also because it is entirely queered by the disassociation from gender and race. Prostitution is an obvious branch of capital because the value of it is outside of the heteronormative boundaries and threatens the nature of the boundaries. This disruption is especially threatening because it provides a mobility for a class of people that are not deemed worthy of mobility, a side note that could provide insight to why Western society protects the john and not the prostitute.

When “queer of color” is considered as part of the analysis the representation of disempowerment becomes clear and Marx’s critiques of capital and property relations as universal ideals evolves into an emblem of the separation of order and refinement from poverty and degradation. The racialization of heteronormative capitalism has normalized this as universal and desirable. Queer of color analysis also attempts to explain the emergence of drag queen prostitutes and their place in the working class struggle as surplus laborers. Additionally, queer of color becomes most important in historical terms when color and/or queer sociologists were excluded from contributing their work, acknowledging this work separately is necessary to highlight the previously exclusionary practices of an imperfect discipline.

Cathy Cohen argues an excellent point for what holds back real action in any movement. The major issues are rooted in privilege and divisive behavior linked to sexual identity. The topic of privilege is an interesting one because it covers a lot of ground and highlights the vulnerabilities in many marginalized groups. Simply being marginalized is not enough to behave inclusively, many people find their personal struggle enough and do not wish to associate with people that will further ostracize them from a mainstream community, examples of this would be butch gay men, feminine lesbians and heterosexual non whites. The risk in this attitude is the perpetuation of oppressive behavior is sometimes for the purpose of changing ideas from inside. Another risk is that if you have the unfortunate luck of exile from your marginalized community for being too deviant you may not have the resources to succeed on your own. Radical change takes a huge exchange of energy to create movement and deviants passing under the radar as heteronormative do a disservice to all communities under the thumb of oppression.
Secondly, the issue of radical queerness for the sake of radical queerness is also a massive energy cost, but with almost no return on it’s investment. While it does have a place, it also distracts from what is at the root of queer activism. To be queer is to not subscribe to the dominant ideals of Western culture, specifically the nuclear family, but also opposition to marriage and could possibly include refusal to work in a traditional labor market or live in a house/apartment. Like the feminist movement, inclusivity is a necessity and disassociating from subgroup because the racial or gender privileges of a heteronormative society soften the edge of not quite fitting in. At the end of the day, if you are not one of them you are not one of them and until we are all free no one is free. For real radical change to occur in queer activism it has to be about more than about sexuality, including fringe society as a whole, and work with marginalized leaders to make more than just footnotes about queer politics.

Outsiders contribute to our understanding of society and culture through a perspective only possible when one is given access to somewhere, all parties involved understand, you don’t belong. Sociologically, outsiders maintain an objective impossible for someone personally invested and because the outsider is not usually considered a potential threat they are often granted a different kind of confidence, with a clear view of insider privilege. When specifically looking at the Black woman’s perspective we also consider the myriad of stereotypes associated with Black women, both positive and negative, and remember that all Black women are aware of these images every day of their lives. Arguing that all people are stereotyped would downplay the dehumanizing effect of the Black woman stereotypes and the efforts she must engage in to achieve self-value when surrounded by people who might easily replace you with another ‘other’. The act of self-definition is as much of a rejection of the status quo as it is a necessary assertion of human autonomy that anchors the Black female survival.

The stigma attached to Black femaleness provides a direct line to inescapable oppressive attitudes. Collectively self-redefining the values of Black women’s culture provides a creative multilayer expression of class, race and gender in the face of oppression. The importance of the interpersonal relationships of Black women with each other, their children and community work are examples of social and cultural structures that assist in relieving some of the pressure of oppression. The activism in the form of daily behavior encouragingly rejecting objectification is significant and provides an analytical response to perceptions of political and economic choice that seem out of reach for reasons outside of your control. In the field of Sociology this translates into an ability to see ‘normal’ for the anomaly it is and provides more meaningful and critical observations for social theory regarding generalizations.

‘Human rights’ is a polite term for discussing heterosexism, like the way that women fight for equality while refusing to associate with feminism. It is a specification of vocabulary that is imperative and seemingly offensive to the privileged gender, without addressing androcentrism it is impossible to analyze gender differences in human rights as human rights. Heterosexism is so ingrained in our culture that Peterson and Parisi discuss the psychoanalytical and linguistic effects of the binary identities, most interestingly the male specific needs such as men leading the people and women giving birth to the people. The grouping of hierarchical roles further emphasizes the heterosexism in the separation of male and female, encouraging male bonding and discouraging female grouping beyond the mother-daughter perpetuation of oppression which assists in normalizing this behavior for the state.

This ‘masculinism’ of the early state formation goes beyond gender roles to include control of female education and reproductive rights as well as female sexual behavior, with the invention of writing transforming at the same time the influence on human history is profound. Materially women are not synonymous with citizens in definitions of early political rights, separating male and female in the public sphere of the state. Conceptually this denigrates rights of women to the private sphere, in subordination to male self-determination and completely dismissing female agency. Internationally this division is more obvious because most law making is still made by men which continues the state’s complicity in gender inequalities, the female irrationality stereotype persists often keeping women from challenging the status quo in the public arena. By the state’s denial of female personhood private abuses of power are normalized, domestic abuse and sexual assaults are widely underreported because the trauma of reporting is often worse than the initial victimization.

Marginalization in the home translates into the workplace through unequal pay, denial of equal credit and less job security during layoffs. Denial of heterosexism leaves women with the weight of invisible contributions to the state without adequate protection from exploitation by the state. Without looking at heterosexism as it applies to human rights we cannot create a path for feminine independence from masculine dependence, state dependence or female competition for agency and how it applies to all people categorized as other.

At the base of a compulsively heterosexual society is the absence of female choice, not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that the act of choosing is entirely dismissed as a choice when made by a woman. The dismissal of female choice, Rich explains, is the model of control and exploitation of women. Many generations of women have been raised to be economically dependent on men through marriage or work place sexualization. Still today, when in the work place women are often held to higher standards of service than men, male colleagues are have expectations of physical and emotional access to female colleagues, or women risk perpetually passed up for higher levels of employment. These ideas begin early in adolescence, teenage girls are told that the penis has a mind of it’s own and cannot be controlled the same way that female impulses can be, perhaps because female impulses aren’t considered real without an equally magnetic male impulse. Similarity many women have been raised to associate love with control of male behavior, incessantly consciously or unconsciously self-sexualizing themselves for the male gaze. If a ‘sexualized’ woman is sexually assaulted or raped the man cannot be held responsible, due to the uncontrollable penis and her physical display of availability.
Not mentioned in Rich’s work is how this conditioning of female sexuality also attempts to demoralize female friendships, but I do think it ties into the persistent idea of women only depending on each other to spite men. If women are in constant competition to control men for economic stability and not fighting for our own interests and education then we continue to support the invalidation of our own ability to make choices. Additionally, with the erasure of lesbian history from feminist theory we have no point of reference. Female camaraderie is rarely separated from the erotic and due to the deviant associations many women don’t know the empowerment found in these relationships. Further, to dismiss the lesbian existence from female history is to disregard the continuing lack of privilege in relation to men, culturally and economically, which is specific to women because homosexual men can retain a respectable bachelor status at any age without social repercussions. Rich makes a clear argument that to really analyze gender equality is to also normalize all female relationships and their varying levels of intimacy.

The assumptions based on sex and sexuality have only expanded since the publishing of Rubin’s work. From my experience the biggest issue we still face as a society is the idea that sexual liberation is for the benefit of heterosexual men. This theory is a constant battle and many men and women who consider themselves progressive struggle to overcome the stigma. Heterosexual men who identify as liberal continue to place judgements on women who express sexuality freely, whether deeming them “not worth the chase” or expecting the woman to prove her loyalty before beginning a monogamous relationship. Additionally, many of these same men who consider themselves open minded do not often mix with gay men, either as friends or support gay businesses, as if to say that love is love if you keep it to yourself.

I would suggest that this heterosexual male perspective is typical of Western culture and rarely unchallenged since wild women and gay men are often deemed as untrustworthy, not deserving of protection and characterized as aggressors when unsupervised. Many women and gay men are underpaid, often living in unsafe neighborhoods and with little access to health care. Community health centers are consistently at risk for harassment, lost leases or loss of government funding when states find the communities too unsavory for public money. Furthermore, sex laws that demonize violent sex crimes in the same manner as consensual sex acts suggest that the acts of consent are the same as any sex act imposed without consent. This perpetuates a hierarchy that sexual delinquents, rapists and child molesters, are the same as monogamous homosexual couples or promiscuous adults, like vegetables and fruits on a food pyramid. These ideas make discussions about human rights issues impossible because anyone who fits into a sexually deviant category, whether with or without consent, is not viewed as human in the consciousness of society.

In chapter one, Federici describes the breakdown of women’s autonomy with the rise of capitalism by elaborating on the shift from self-sufficiency to wage labor that occurred in the middle ages. As the wages increased for the peasants and profits decreased the state had to step in to rebalance the diminishing wealth of the ruling class. Although European society was moving towards a cooperative egalitarian economy, the economy would not be able to sustain itself and the hierarchy. Due to this circumstance the ruling class had to find a way to eliminate competition and manipulate people to work in undesirable conditions, without exploitive labor workers’ would be able to resist and the wealthy would lose their power. Women were essentially driven out of the labor-force, allowed only the lowest paid jobs, by the promotion of witch-hunts or imprisonment until eventually transitioning to unpaid housewife and further dependent on men. Additionally, if a woman was without children and attempted to resist the economic conditions she would be risking physical and sexual violence.

Assisting in further exploitation was the rise of the slave trade, through buying humans or convicting them of crimes and shipping them to other colonies. The revived practice was necessary to make up for the decimated native population that could not withstand the abusive labor practices. Despite the extreme poverty and death, the sexual and racial divides were not easy to overcome. The denial of communal property by landowners was purposeful to control the food supply as well as dependent on the ruling class for wages and housing. The transition to a global capitalist system was filled with starvation, further land privatization and attacks on collective gatherings. Eventually the state intervenes again when the capitalist economic system becomes clearly unstable, not to abolish it like the egalitarian society, but to establish public assistance as a balance for cheap labor, profit margins and social control of the disenfranchised.

Kessler provides many factors that impact the way the medical community explains biological gender to parents of intersex children. The physicians base their assessments of gender ambiguous children on theories that gender must be determined by eighteen months, without this announcement the child’s community won’t know how to treat the baby. Based on the social constructs of gender that the parents are assumed to uphold, the physicians are under extreme pressure to clearly determine a gender and saving the family from potential embarrassment of a boy playing with a doll or a girl playing with a truck. This theory of malleability is rooted in the plasticity of children and gender, not a fluidity of gender as if putting a dog in a cat suit would change its bark to a meow.

The major psychological issues of castration far out-weigh vaginal reconstructive surgery so it is not uncommon to construct an aesthetically appropriate penis and hope for the best, especially if the parents have a preference to raise a boy over a girl. If the child can pass as male with believable genitalia then it is best for the child to be raised that way, otherwise you risk raising a tomboy and further obscuring gender norms. The physicians and parents aren’t the only factors, birth certificates need to be filled out for the state with a definitive gender, an assignment often must be made before any hormonal testing can determine a biological gender. The most disturbing idea of this reality is that a team of people, if the determination of the natural gender takes too long, are deciding what opportunities will be provided for this baby before it can recognize faces, tastes or smells and under the preference of social factors over biological. If the child struggles with the management decision in adolescence then, miraculously, the child is treated as if it was not an abnormality, which it isn’t, and that gender is not as clearly defined in biology as it is demanded to be in society. Ultimately, if a gender preference did not exist in Western society then fluidity of gender would be more acceptable and physicians could focus on the health of the baby and not concern themselves with what toys it will be bought for birthday parties.