Response to 12/7 Readings

After reading the two opening chapters of Enloe's book, I think I really appreciate the later chapters even more. The way she sets up the entire set of essays with describing first her own experience, the lack of natural curiosity in the world and finally the surprise that so many local and global events cause in her mind and in others'. Although people have the tendency to hear bad news and think "Well here we go again...nothing is ever going to change", I agree with what Maria mentioned in her post: that people do not care enough to take action to bring about change largely due to laziness. The system of patriarchy that almost entirely defines our society will not change unless people genuinely try and change it. As Enloe discusses the overwhelming presence of patriarchy, I was reminded of one of our first readings of the semester by Johnson. Enloe describes how important it is to be a curious feminist instead of simply a complacent one, and I believe this idea should apply to everything we do. Maybe many of the issues that have existed in the world for centuries could start be solved by a shift from laziness and ignorance into one of curiosity and action. By asking questions about everything we hear in the news, from friends, from colleagues, we can start to make a difference in how we perceive the world around us and thereby potentially be more effective in our attempts at change.

Response to 12/7 Readings

After beginning the Enloe 'Being Curious about our Lack of Feminist Curiousity,' I was immediately reminded of a thought I had a couple classes back.  When we were talking about soldiers and how they can get away with multitudes of human rights violations, I realized how easy it had been for me and most of society to ignore these acts and violations.  It is easier to pretend that these soldiers, ones who are supposed to protect you etc, are actually heroes and saviors.  They would never commit evil or violate human rights.  You don't want to know what they are actually doing because it creates a sense of fear, urgency, anger which you would overwise not have.  You do not want to lose your sense of 'safety.'  And it is a hell of a lot easier to not have to deal with those feelings.  I  think that is one of the main causes of this 'lack of feminist curiousity.'  Its almost a laziness.  We already have so much going on in our lives...so many feminist issues on the 'home front' that we don't want to extend our feelings and efforts to reach all other important issues.  Yet, we cannot just ignore things because we want life to be easier. 

Newsflash #3: The Right to a Legal Abortion

In his NYTimes article titled “Thai Police Find 2,000 Illegally Aborted Fetuses”, Seth Mydans describes how police found at least 2,000 fetuses from illegal abortion clinics hidden at a Buddhist temple in Thailand. Mydans describes how Thailand is a Buddhist country with a generally conservative viewpoint on sexual matters but also with a thriving sex industry. Although birth control is largely available, young adults and teens are not well informed on the subject. Following the discovery of the fetuses, the local police found 20 clinics in the area that were performing illegal and dangerous abortions. One woman, who was arrested for delivering the fetuses, admitted that she was raising eight children who had survived the procedure. She is quoted saying, “if the kids won’t die, there’s no need to kill them” (Mydans). Mydans explains how this uncovering of thousands of aborted fetuses has lead to calls for stronger laws against illegal abortions and Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has maintained his position that the current legislation was “flexible enough” (Mydans). Abortions in Thailand, however, are only legal in instances of rape, incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger. Under Thai law, performing illegal abortions is punishable with up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 baht (~$330 USD). There are no laws allowing abortions in the first trimester as we have here in the United States, and therefore abortions are very hard to come by in Thailand legally. Even though forms of birth control are legal and available, most young people in the nation are misinformed and do not know the facts surrounding sex and pregnancy. The Public Health Ministry has recently ordered a nation crackdown on clinics that currently perform illegal abortions in response to demands for strengthening anti-abortion laws.

Another article on the discovery of the fetuses goes into further detail surrounding the potential changing of Thai abortion laws. Although religion is often cited as the main driving force of conservatism in Thailand, Phramaha Vudhijaya Vajiramedhi is a leader of the faith who thinks it “might be time to take a new approach”. He argues that even though Buddhism is fundamentally opposed to any type of killing, “we need to adjust the old-fashioned way of teaching morality. We can’t just say that abortion is a sin, abortion is bad karma. We need to understand that when a woman decides to have an abortion, it has something to do with a lack of sex education or she might have problems at home”. He explains that if Thailand refuses to legalize abortion, they must do something to address to problem of sexual education. The conflicting ideas surrounding sex and abortion rights in Thailand are resulting in confusions among many students and teenagers, leading to tens of thousands of dangerous illegal abortions being performed each year. As Judith Arcana describes in her article “Abortion is a Motherhood Issue”, the rights to abortion in Thailand should be taken out of the hands of the male-dominated government and instead left up to the discretion of the mothers.

The issues surrounding illegal abortion and lack of adequate sexual education in Thailand are clearly raising concern in the Buddhist nation. The cause for such great numbers of illegally performed abortions, however, is due to the strict legislation against legally performed abortions. The government’s control over the rights of women goes against many of the laws enacted in the United States and other nations. In her article “Abortion is a Motherhood Issue”, Arcana argues that abortion is often discussed as a separate topic from mothering when they actually should be linked. She describes how “choosing to abort a child is a profoundly made life choice for that child…we have accepted that responsibility – many of us have even accepted eternal damnation – because we believe that the choice we are making is the best one for ourselves and our babies” (226). Although Thailand is a very conservative Buddhist country, steps must be taken in order to facilitate women’s well-being if they do become pregnant out of wedlock and/or increase the knowledge and education surrounding safe sex and birth control. Arcana argues that long ago all people knew that matters of life and death of unborn children belonged in the hands of the mothers; however our current forms of government seek to limit that control. In Thailand especially, the government is primarily run by middle-aged and middle-class men who rarely if ever actually deal with the issue of abortion. As described in the BBC article, Noi (not her real name) discovered she was pregnant at the age of 17 and was told by her boyfriend that she must get an abortion or else he would leave her. She refused and is now raising the child on her own. With no child support laws or legislation to support and protect single mothers, it seems unfathomable that abortion laws would be created by men in a country where the men have no legal responsibility to the children they help produce. In addition, unmarried women with children like Noi have difficulty finding jobs in such a conservative society that frowns upon children out of wedlock. The double standards that exist surrounding the topic of abortion and single mothers in Thailand and almost everywhere else in the world are reason enough to take a step back and re-evaluate anti-abortion laws. Arcana suggests that “we need to speak of our abortions, not in the atmosphere of shame and guilt created by the spiritual and emotional terrorism of the contemporary anti-abortion movement, but in open recognition of our joy or sadness, our regret or relief – in conscious acceptance of the responsibility of our choice” (227). Her ides should be applied to Thai views on abortion as well, focusing on the rights of the individual mother as opposed to the conservative nature of society.

In 1973, the famous US court case Roe v. Wade overturned a Texas interpretation of abortion law and made abortion legal in the US in the pregnant mother’s first trimester. This court case, however, legalized abortion on the basis of the woman’s right to privacy instead of on the grounds of the morality or legality of abortion itself. After the Thai police found over 2,000 illegally aborted fetuses, questions must have been raised regarding the woman’s right to choose to have a legal abortion performed instead of having to go out and find it illegally. According to Harvey, official statistics suggest that around 300,000 abortions are carried out each year with the vast majority being performed illegally. When young women become pregnant, they are often ignorant about sexual matters in the first place so their first instinct is to panic. They try to get rid of the child in any way they can including “walk[ing] into things deliberately, fall[ing] down the stairs, get[ting] a friend to kick them in the tummy, all because they do not know what to do” (Harvey). The court case that lead to the legalization of abortion in the United States lead to a large increase in legal abortions that are overall much safer for both the mother and the fetus. As mentioned in the NYTimes article, illegally performed abortions do not always kill the children. As shown by the woman who admitted to raising eight babies who did not die in the abortion procedure, illegally performed abortions can end up very dangerous for both the mother and the child. Back-alley abortions are much riskier; however young women who have no other alternative will still choose to have one done as opposed to living ostracized in her community for having a child.

Although many of the local and international newspapers are largely framing the debate surrounding Thai women’s right to abortion as a strictly religious issue, women’s rights also need to largely be taken into account. Whether it is increasing access to birth control and sexual education or legalizing abortion, women must no longer bear the grunt of pre-marital sex. As illustrated by Noi, Thai men clearly aren’t always held to their fatherly responsibilities and yet the women are forced to have the child or find an alternative form of illegal abortion procedure. The discussion that is beginning to occur in Thailand as a result of the newly found buried fetuses is a much needed debate surrounding the role of sex in such a conservative Buddhist society. Although Thailand is a very Buddhist country, it also has a thriving sex industry including many open-air bars “with names that leave little to the imagination: ‘Red Lips’, Pretty Girls’, Spanky’s”. The contradictions between the growing liberalization of sexuality and the traditional Buddhist views have resulted in large amounts of confusion throughout society. Without the legalization of abortion or the proper sex education for young men and women, young Thai girls will continue to seek alternative, illegal and dangerous ways of terminating their pregnancies. As Phramaha Vajiramedhi says, “if you don’t want legal abortion, you have to have a better system to look after the women who go through with the pregnancy” (Harvey).

Response to 12/2 Readings

In reading the articles for tomorrow, I could not help but think about my NewsFlash topic (suicides by fire of Afghan women).  We entered Afghanistan to 'help' Muslim women yet, as my article states, these 'fire suicides' have actually risen by almost 20% in the past couple years.  Furthermore, by entering Afghanistan, Afghan men could see American occupation as demasculinizing and thus they overpower women in order to reaffirm their masculinity.  Ultimately, it seems to me, we are making the situation worse for Afghan women.

Furthermore, as Abu-Lughod says, we shouldn't say we need to help these women.  What do we know of their culture, their feelings, their identities.  We assume everyone wants to be like us.  All women want the same things American women have because "America is the best country."  We cannot keep assuming this.  The rest of the world is slowly growing to strongly resent us because of America's superiority complex.  It is not up to us to save the world and reign over 'lesser countries' until they fit our idea of a perfect nation.  That is colonialism, no matter how we try to disguise it.  America needs to back off and allow other countries to live as they choose.  Although, I do think countries who have power and money should step in when human rights are being violating, they should not stay and continue influencing other countries.  It's a thin line.  When do you help (for human rights issues) and when should you stay out and mind your own business?

12/2 Summary Post

In her chapter titled "Updating the Gendered Empire", Cynthia Enloe discusses the role of women both in in war and in post-war societies. She begins with pointing out that many feminist historians have actually given us fresh and detailed accounts of how women and notions of femininity were originally pressed into our society by early empire-builders. Topics that would have previously been considered human interest stories largely surrounding the lives of women should not be considered as serious commentaries on foreign policies. Although the empire builders might have all been men, they were, as Enloe points out, "men who thought (and worried) a lot about women" (271). She continues by describing a meeting in the 1980s in which a group of native Canadian women of the Innu community brought together dozens of women to discuss the effects that a NATO air force base was having on their lives. This conversation surrounded how unequal international power relations between masculine governments depend on unequal relationships between men and women and also on global ideas about where women will be and where they should stay. The results of this conference pointed out five important political realities: (1) women are intimately engaged in the little noticed daily workings of those unequal international military alliances (2) women's roles in these large structures of international power are far from uniform (3) every one of these women is where she is on the global map due to dominant ideas of femininity (4) many women are privately ambivalent about the complicit roles they play in these unequal international power structures and (5) the women are still counted upon by foreign policy-makers to keep playing their supportive, or at least passive, roles.

She continues by describing how the roles of masculinity and femininity are determined both by the powers in charge and by the imperial powers. Empires are created out of unequal alliances between the ambitious imperialists and the local actors who believe they will be able to gain from supporting the outsiders. She claims that "the military strategy that the Bush administration adopted to conduct its invasion [of Afghanistan] has hobbled, not facilitated, the genuine liberation of most of Afghanistan's women and girls" (283). The differing and rival forms of masculinity in Afghanistan are necessary for the investigation of contemporary American expansionism. This contest is often called one between the "warlords" and the "neckties". The warlords' ability to control women in their provinces and act as the guardians of true Afghan femininity is a crucial component of their ability to raise and mobilize armies. The neckties' on the other hand see themselves as builders of a new centralized state, a political structure based on laws and budgets instead of on guns and armed road blocks. This contest, however, simply makes women into mere symbols, subordinates, admirers or spectators.

Enloe continues by discussing how Afghan women are largely left out of the process of constitution writing and therefore will face a set of laws that potentially continues and enhances the male dominance of society and government. The only individuals who are able to change things in the government are those she calls "closed-door" bargainers, who gain their influence and power through public support, access to weapons and armed men, economic resources and credibility in the eyes of the foreign men who are orchestrating the bargaining. Women, however, have none of these aids and are therefore largely left out of the government system once again. She describes how "women's liberation in any country rarely follows a simple path onward and upward" and feminist progress needs to have staying power. She concludes by pointing out that there is a never ending temptation for women who live outside of war-torn areas to not know what should really be focused on in the feminist struggle. Although the crafting of expansive, cohesive politic influence is tricky, founders must keep gender in mind when forming new government. Masculinity has always been necessary in empire-building but instead these masculinzed political cultures need to be investigated while paying serious attention to women. The only way to ensure that extreme masculinity can be avoided is by paying close attention to women's experiences, actions and ideas.

In her paper "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others", Lila Abu-Lughod questions the US argument that part of justification of the "War on Terrorism" is the saving of the Afghan women. Instead of acknowledging differences between cultures, we seek to "save" others. Lughod discusses how Americans view the veil as oppressive and against basic human rights; however this is not at all the case. We must instead work with people of different cultures in situations that we "recognize as always subject to historical transformation" and we need to think of our own responsibilities to address injustice. Abu-Lughod stresses that we must first accept the limits of "cultural relativism" before trying to change societies in order to save them.

In her article "Whose Security", Charlotte Bunch argues that the perception created by President Bush and the Western media that almost all American support Bush's militaristic threats is not at all true. Feminists have actually been opposed to Bush's actions from the beginning but it is clear that they do not have very much impact on US foreign policy, which is military and corporate driven. Bush used Afghan women's rights to rally support for war but he has done nothing to sustain this commitment to women. She points out that other countries resent the US for our reactions to 9/11 and "this resentment stems in part from the fact that 9/11 is not seen as a defining moment for the rest of the world". She argues that we must also not accept the idea that our government had no other choice but to declare war. 9/11 has actually increased many problems feminists had already been dealing with including (1) growing global and national inequities (2) the rise of extremist expression of religious and/or nationalist fundamentalisms that threaten progress on women's rights (3) the escalation of racist and sexist violence and terrorism in daily life that is acompanied by economic exploitation and trafikking of women and (4) an increase in militarism, wars, conflicts and terrorism that affects or targets civilians, largely women and children in deadly ways. The efforts to promote human security were actually hindered by 9/11 due to the rise in masculine warrior tendencies. She ends her article by saying that the "excuse of 9/11 has been used not only to curtail human rights in the United States but also around the world". The US "commitment to human rights" actually helps legitimize the abuses of governments that have never actually accepted these standards. Despite women's attempts, they are still not respected or largely listened to in major human rights organizations. Women have changed many aspects of life in recent history but women's activism must be both local and global in order to truly succeed.

News Flash: The Fiery Suicides of Afghan Women

The New York Times article Of Afghan Wives, a Desperate, Fiery WayOut, written by Alissa J. Rubin, illuminates the distressing situation of many Afghan women.  Often in Afghanistan, women in abusive relationships, who are suffering with mental diseases such as depression, or in other troublesome situations will try and escape their sorrows through a painful suicide.  These women set themselves on fire, hoping to elude life rather than deal with their agonizing reality.  This self-inflicted violence is attributed to each woman’s situations in Afghanistan which often times are situations of domestic violence, poverty, and unhappy, arranged marriages.  Thus, like most violence against women, these are ‘sticky situations.’  The suicide is seen as an escape because there is usually no other alternative route for these women.  These suicides can be attributed to Afghan male attitudes towards power and violence, a lack of other alternative escape routes, and the overall inferior position of women in the Afghan societal structure. 

Male power and ideas of masculinity and dominance in Afghanistan are linked to and can be the catalysts of these ‘fiery suicides.’  Many of the Afghan women who commit these ‘fiery escapes’ are suffering from abusive relationships at home.  About 45% of Afghan women are married before they turn 18.  These marriages are usually arranged and often the girls are given in marriage as compensation for a family debt.  These women are thus often viewed and treated as slaves.  They are condemned to a life of servitude and often, to a life of abuse as well.  This can happen because in an arranged marriage, there is usually no love or sometimes even no prior relationship present before the marriage.  Therefore, the husband and his family will often treat their new ‘family member’ as an inferior and make her feel powerless and worthless.  Abuse often also results from this and can be committed by all family members.  “Violence in the lives of Afghanistan’s women comes from everywhere: from her father or brother, from her husband, from her father-in-law, from her mother-in-law and sister-in-law.”  The Afghan women are seen as instruments for keeping house and producing children.  “Her primary job is to serve her husband’s family.  Outside that world, she is an outcast.”  These women are not given the opportunity to receive educations, to hold jobs, or to make an income.  They are in helpless situations where they are made powerless and ultimately hopeless.  This situation parallels Betty Friedan’s argument in the Feminine Mystique.  The Afghan women could be simplified as dissatisfied housewives who feel isolated and yearn for something more.  These women are silenced, cut off from their families, and have no voice in this patriarchal society.  Their domestic life is their fate.  Unlike with Betty Friedan and American women in the late 1900s, however, these Afghan women cannot rebel against their lifestyles.  “It is shameful to admit to troubles at home.”  Oppressed women are supposed to put on a good face and not complain.  Furthermore, their religion and their society dictate that these women do not have a choice.  They cannot leave these situations or complain about them.  Their abuse is to a degree accepted and celebrated as it is not condemned or deemed wrong by society.  It is generally accepted that men can do whatever they want to their wives.  Their wives are their property.  This ideology is a way to keep men in powerful and dominant positions in society.  The women are given from one man (their father) to another (their husband) as property.  Thus, the women have no say and no rights.  This allows for unchallenged male authority.  Men project their own inadequacies on women in cruel and unusual ways.  They beat, debase, and abuse them in order to prove their own masculinity.  Male entitlement and patriarchal oppression allows dreadful acts such as honor killings and suicide by fire to occur at an astonishing rate.  Thus, these situations are ultimately generated to keep Afghan men in powerful and authoritative positions in society.  Furthermore, with the war in Afghanistan, Afghan men could feel demasculinated or overpowered by American troops.  Thus, in order to reaffirm their manhood and regain a sense of superiority and power, Afghan men overpower and subjugate women to whatever they please.

In these situations, Afghan women turn to suicide because they believe it to be their only chance of escape from agonizing lives.  These women believe they have no other possible ‘escape routes.’  Similar to other situations of domestic violence, it is extremely hard to get out of a violent relationship.  Often these women live in poverty and thus do not have the financial capacity to leave their spouse.  Also, if they have children, they need money in order to leave safely with their children and still be able to provide housing and food.  These women have to keep their children safe which can often be improbable if they left their spouse.  Furthermore, many times the abusive spouse makes the abused spouse dependent on him.  In Afghan society, it is extremely frowned upon for a woman to leave her husband and return to her own family.  She also is often forbidden from seeing her own immediate family once she moves into her husband’s house.  Thus, she becomes dependent on her husband as she is cut off from any outside support and family.  Furthermore, most of these women are not allowed an income.  Thus, they are extremely dependent monetarily on their husbands and ultimately cannot leave the relationship due to this dependency and reliance.  In the Islamic country of Afghanistan, it is generally interpreted from the Qur’an that men have the power of life and death over their wives.  Thus, religious literature and principles can be construed to dictate that these women cannot leave their husbands or, if they do, they deserve to be heavily punished or killed.  Social stigma also keeps these women in these appalling relationships.  In Afghanistan, women who leave their husbands are seen as tarnished or ‘marked.’  “Returned runaways are often shot or stabbed in honor killings because the families fear they have spent time unchaperoned with a man.  Women and girls are stoned to death.  Those who burn themselves but survive are often relegated to grinding Cinderella existences while their husbands marry other, untainted women.”  Often, burn cases will be “homicides masquerading as suicides.”  Several cases have been documented where “women were beaten by their husbands or in-laws, lost consciousness and awoke in the hospital to find themselves burned because they had been shoved in an oven or set on fire.”  These women live in constant fear and apprehension.  They have no control over their lives or their situations.  If they try to leave and make a better life for themselves, they could be killed or marked as a tainted, fouled woman.  These Afghan women are trapped in unfortunate situations of which there seems to be no escape except for death.

These situations are accepted and almost conventional in Afghan society for appalling reasons.  Women are viewed as subservient; an inferior gender.  Society by and large believes that these women are supposed to do exactly as men say, no questions asked.  These women are given at young ages in arranged marriages and are supposed to accept and even be thankful for this life.  They are put in extreme situations where they are belittled, beaten, and abused by their in-laws for years.  They are not supposed to complain and cannot easily escape to new realities or lives because Afghan women have severely limited options.  Furthermore, as previously stated, their faith and religion can be interpreted to ordain that they follow this lifestyle.  In the Qur’an, it states in Sura 4:34 “men have authority over women because God has made one superior to the other, and because men spend their wealth to maintain them.  Good women are obedient.  They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them.  As for those among you who fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them.”  One could infer that Islam preaches that violence towards noncompliant women is the appropriate punishment.  Honor killings are carried out with an astonishing frequency.  These killings occur when a woman has been disobedient or has sexually misbehaved and they are carried out by male family members who usually avoid sentencing or penalties.  Killers who are found guilty typically receive only a couple months in jail and are regarded as champions or heroes.  Honor killings include murders of women who have been raped and thus ‘tarnished’ even though the sexual act was forced upon them.  There have also been documented scenarios of girls killed because they went for walks without asking their father’s permission.  These women have absolutely no rights or respect in society.  Anything they do without male permission is penalized.  These women are surrounded by a massive ‘birdcage.’  They are valued only for their ‘slave labor,’ sex, and as progenitors of children.  They are treated as property and until attitudes change, ‘fiery suicides’ will continue to occur with a frightening frequency and an even more frightening societal acceptance. 

The fiery suicides of Afghan women are appalling and sickening.  These women feel as if their lives are so miserable and painful that their only escape is to set themselves on fire.  Women are forced into these situations due to the superior attitude of men, their lack of alternative escapes, and their own position in society.  Change can only occur if Afghan views on female equality and decency change.  However, it has become an extremely accepted and established belief that women can and should be treated with disdain and violence.  Thus, to change this custom and ideology, the youth has to be educated on gender equality.  Change has to start from the bottom up. 

Short Response to 11/30 Readings

After first reading the two chapters in Enloe's book "The Curious Feminist", in which she describes how militarized rape occurs primarily due to the psychological and social construction of masculinity, I began to think a lot about the motivations and motives for rape. Enloe discusses at length the life of Borislav Herak, who she describes as "an ordinary man" (99) who ended up raping 16 women, some of whom were killed afterward. She describes how he was never actively involved in politics prior to the beginning of war in 1991, when he fled to the mountains of Sarajevo and was taken into one of the semi-autonomous militias that was formed with the goal of pursuing ethnic Serbian territorial control. She describes how the military men were simply trained to perform orders no matter what they were, from rape to murder. Enloe includes the transcript of an interview with Herak in which he describes how he was told to go and rape young women and followed the orders simply because he had been trained to. This interview reminded me of a book I read freshman year called "The Banality of Evil" by Hannah Arendt. In her book on the Holocaust, Arendt argues that the great evils in history were not committed by fanatics or psychopaths but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated in the actions with the view that they were normal. As she talks about in the second chapter, the US outlaws and looks down upon rape of American soldiers and local women; however the strippers and prostitutes who are paid to sleep with the American soldiers are not "worthy of our sympathy". The fact that our government turns a blind eye to or even supports these forms of prostitution for our male American soldiers shows the underlying social implications of a male dominated society that encourages hyper masculinity overcoming and controlling females.

The two NYTimes articles we read also support many of Enloe's arguments. It is clear that sexual assault and rape are still very common in our troops today since both of these articles were written in 2009. Even though women are proving themselves as soldiers out in the battlefield, they feel safer outside fighting than they do travelling to use the bathroom. The fact that women are more likely to be raped than killed in the armed forces is a clear sign that steps need to be taken to protect them.