As someone who just recently learned the truth about the industry that feeds us, I truly believe that if people knew the truth, they would also feel the need to change the way they eat. In my opinion, it is the ignorance caused by an intentional veiling of the food system that keeps animal cruelty, ecological destruction, corporate greed and denial, and food safety failures going. Maybe this is hopeful thinking on my part. Maybe it's just my way of coping with the truly depressing facts. Maybe it's my way of maintaining my belief in the innate goodness of human kind. No matter the reason, it's something I'll hold on to tightly for as long as I can.
That being said, I've decided that it's time for me to share some sources of this knowledge with the ones I love. There is a very thin line between educating and sharing the truth and being perceived as aggressive and preachy, and I truly hope that I'm not crossing it by sharing this.
Articles
Meat and the Environment- Why Truly Going Green Means Cutting Out Meat
The Health Benefits of Going Vegan- Nutrition, Disease Prevention, and More
The Case Against Meat- Meat Based Diets are Bad for the Environment, Aggravate Global Hunger, Brutalize Animals and Compromise Our Health
Widespread Mistreatment of Workers in the Meat Processing Industry
Government Regulation is Failing Consumers
The True Cost of Factory Farming
What Humans Owe to Animals
Videos
Warning- These videos are very graphic and upsetting. They still bring me to tears. That being said, I'm glad that I watched them and I think it's important that people really know where their food is coming from. I completely agree with Paul McCartney, who says that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
Glass Walls
Meet Your Meat
(I want to make a note that this is the video that changed my mind. After viewing it, I made the decision that I couldn't morally justify contributing to this system of cruelty. It still makes me cry to watch it, but it reminds me why I've made the changes I have in my life.)
Chew on This- Reasons to be a Vegetarian (or Vegan)
45 Days in Hell: The Life and Death of a Broiler Chicken
The Reality of Egg Hatcheries
Battery Cage Egg Production
Fowl Play- A great movie on the truth behind eggs
On a lighter note,
"Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows"- A great question to ask yourself!
There are a few really great videos on this subject that you can rent as well. I highly suggest that everyone watch Food Inc. at least once. It's a well made movie which doesn't necessarily preach vegetarianism, but gives you a great inside look on the food production industry.
There are many more great sources of information on human consumption of meat and alternative lifestyles. Simply Google it! I hope that you will take the time to contemplate all of this a little further, and about the personal choices you make everyday.
I would NEVER tell someone else that they must become a vegetarian or a vegan, or that the personal decisions that they make about the way they live are wrong. It's a deeply personal decision that must be made on your own. That being said, I hope you know that there are plenty of resources if you have more questions or want to discuss all of this further. Once again, the Google has become my best friend when I have random questions on the topic. Furthermore, I'm always willing to sit down and have a talk on the subject. I am by no means an expert, but I love to share what I know and I'd love to help you find the resources you need to make informed choices that are right for you!
Foundations of Women's Studies- My Personal Feminist Stance and How it Can Be Used to Educate the Next Generation
My understanding of and approach to women’s studies are inseparable from my own experiences as a privileged white, upper-middle class, woman in a long-term heterosexual relationship. It is also influenced by my own hope to someday raise socially conscious, ally minded children in our deeply flawed society. This has lead to a construction of a feminist approach that borrows from liberal, post-colonial, radical, social construction and third-wave feminism as well as from feminist theorists who address the social issues of rape and compulsory heterosexuality. By considering all of these various approaches, I am better able to consider my own privilege within society and how to reject it while combating the continuing sources of inequality that surround me.
Many feminist theories, including liberal, social construction and post-modern, recognize the social-construction of gender as one of the key concepts that must be addressed when confronting oppression. These theories assert that gender is not based in biology, but is instead “constantly created and re-created out of human interaction, out of social life, and is the texture and order of that social life” (Night to His Day, 54). In the same way, sexuality and race are also socially constructed and used as ways of dividing labor and creating the pattern of domination and submission in all aspects of life. These societal constructions of clear cut categories of race, gender, and sexuality despite evidence for the presence of a wide-spectrum of genders and sexualities, their characteristic fluidity, and the lack of any biological evidence of racial categories forms the backbone of my theoretical approach to women’s studies.
In line with the assertion that gender, as well as race and sexuality, is a socially constructed phenomenon is the assertion that many of the sources of inequality in our society are tied to this construction. One such source of inequality, the gendered socialization of children, ensures that the dualistic categories of gender will continue through the generations. The process begins when children are very young and is so deeply integrated into the way we interact with infants that “Experimental studies have shown that adults respond differently to an infant depending on whether they are told it is a ‘girl’ or a ‘boy’” (Gender Inequality, 253). This gendering of children also involves the socialization of boys that encourages aggressive behavior and lack of emotion, a process recognized as a source of inequality by feminist studies of men (Gender Inequality, 218). Another main source of inequality is patriarchy in all of its forms in our society. As Radical feminism asserts, patriarchy is “a worldwide system of subordination of women by men through violence and sexual and emotional exploitation” (Gender Inequality, 118). Many of these same tools are used to create inequality based on race and sexuality, which are also socially constructed phenomena. Heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality, as described by lesbian feminism, are additional sources of inequality based on sexuality (Gender Inequality, 143), while the devaluation of women and men from subordinated racial ethnic groups functions as an additional source of inequality based on the flawed conception of race (Gender Inequality, 199).
In order to confront these sources of inequality in our society, strategies for change have been formed. In my own personal approach to women’s studies, I often focus on strategies for change that concentrate on raising children in a way that addresses these inequalities and helps them grow into advocates for change and equality. In order to combat the social construction of gender, liberal feminism calls for gender-neutral child rearing and education (Gender Inequality, 26). Truly combating the gender roles set out by society may also require some gender-specific rearing in order to fight constant social pressures. This may include encouraging empathy and emotional awareness in boys while discouraging aggression, and encouraging independence and self-respect in girls while discouraging subservience and other qualities that stem from the “cult of womanhood”. Some strategies of change for combating heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality include fighting homophobia wherever we encounter it, and providing children with examples of all types of love between all types of people through children’s literature, movies, and toys. Strategies for fighting the inequalities based on race also include recognizing the value of contributions made by those in subordinate societal groups, educational materials and structures which include knowledge created by individuals from varying backgrounds, recognizing and pointing out racism wherever it is found, and recognizing and rejecting unearned privileges brought on by race.
As I have previously stated, a great focus of my interest in women’s studies is how to use feminist theories to assist in raising socially aware children to be allies. The strategies of change that I previously set out are just the beginning of the discussion of how to go about doing this. Many feminist theorists and philosophers have addressed the subject of mothering as a feminist and fighting the continuing sources of oppression in our society by raising children who are aware of them and who know how to go about fighting them. It seems a logical conclusion that if we are to ensure that the fight against oppression will continue in the next generation, we must teach the next generation how to go about doing so. One focus of many theories about combating oppression through education and socialization is how feminist approaches can be used to combat the cycle of sexual violence for the next generation. By actively fighting the gender roles and values that contribute to the continuation of violence, we can help prepare the next generation to continue the fight against it.
One of the main sources of oppression that feminism, especially liberal and social construction feminism, is concerned with is the construction of gender, the oppression based on this socially constructed phenomenon, and the prevalence of gender roles in our society. One of the most disturbing consequences of this gendering process is the prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence in our society. In her article, Raising Girls in the Twenty-First Century, Emilie Buchwald asserts that “our culture will need both women and men who are strong, wise, and generous if the future is to be better than the present. The nurture and education of girls must emphasize the importance of their role in that future” (213). When considering our society as it stands today, this need becomes even clearer. We live in a country “where violence against women is so epidemic it is their leading cause of injury” and “nearly a third of all murdered women are killed by husbands, boyfriends and ex-partners” (Sklar, 279). We are all a part of a society in which a woman is beaten every three minutes, a woman is raped every five minutes, and little girl is molested every ten minutes (Shange, 387). When considering these facts, the immediate need to tackle the issue of sexual violence in our society becomes clear. Buchwald lays out a list of tools for raising girls who will grow up to be women that have the strength to fight against societies pressures and to fight against a culture of violence. She includes sharing with girls the resources that you used to help you deal with the challenges of growing up, giving them your attention and approval, encouraging fathers to become allies for change, teaching girls the truth about sex, teaching them their own strength as agents of change, helping them find women mentors and role models, finding ways for girls to play and work together, and teaching girls to be story- and media-critical (Buchwald, 221-229).
The importance of fighting gender-roles that play into sexual violence also applies to the education and socialization of boys. Feminist theories of men, in particular, focus on an analysis of masculinity and how it encourages aggressiveness and violence in men and boys (Gender Inequality, 219). Furthermore, they consider how the high value placed on these qualities and the devaluation of more “feminine qualities” contributes to the dominant position of men in our society. When considering how to combat the negative connotations of masculine roles in our society, it is once again helpful to consider how a change in the way we socialize boys will assist in the fight. The media that boys are exposed to plays a huge role in socializing them to value aggression and violence, especially since children learn by imitating those they admire. When we consider the fact that many boy’s role models are action-adventure stars, musicians with violent and degrading lyrics, and aggressive and violent sports stars, it is easy to see how boys may come to value these characteristics even if they aren’t directly taught to by caregivers (Miedzian, 164-165). According to Miedzian, the best tool to combat this aggression is to encourage nurturing and nonviolence as well as to teach responsible fathering skills (169). Miedzian suggests that the most effective intervention would be to introduce mandatory child-rearing classes into our school systems. She asserts that these programs would deter violence because “they encourage nurturing, caring, informed fathering; they make boys feel that empathy, sensitivity and caring are acceptable-even desirable- male qualities; and they strongly discourage child battering” (Miedzian, 170). Even if these programs were not implemented as an institutional tool, it would be advantageous for parents to take this type of education on in their own homes. By teaching your children how to value nurturing, empathy, and child care, you could help to deter the processes by which they put value in aggression and violence.
When considering how education and socialization can be used to deter sexual violence in the next generation, it is easy to see how similar strategies could be used to deter sexism, racism, and heterosexism. As a feminist and ally, I consider it my responsibility to pass these values on to the children that I help raise and educate, and the theories and strategies set out by feminist theorists and philosophers can assist me in this quest.
Works Cited
Buchwald, Emilie. “Raising Girls in the Twenty-First Century”. Transforming a Rape Culture. Ed. Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2005. Print.
Lorber, Judith. Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2005. Print.
Lorber, Judith. “’Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender”. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: Worth Publishers, 2004. 54-63. Print.
Miedzian, Myriam. “How Rape is Encouraged in American Boys and What We Can Do to Stop It”. Transforming a Rape Culture. Ed. Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Martha Roth. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2005. Print.
Shange, Ntozake. “With No Immediate Cause”. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: Worth Publishers, 2004. 54-63. Print.
Sklar, Holly. “Imagine a Country-2003”. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States. Ed. Paula S. Rothenberg. New York: Worth Publishers, 2004. 54-63. Print.
Feminist Philosophy- Loving Perception, Privilege-Cognizance, and Strong Objectivity in Child Socialization
Feminist philosophers have questioned the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of society since their field was first conceived. Much of the attention has been on the silenced voices of women and the devaluing of their stories in our society, but more recently, feminist philosophers have begun to take this idea even further by asserting the need for voices of all cultures and backgrounds in order to create a more complete view of the world. Whether arguing for the importance of privilege-cognizance, more complete ways of understanding those around us through loving-perception, or fighting for epistemologies that follow in the vein of feminist standpoint theories, these philosophers have fought for a more inclusive view of the world that includes the recognition of each individual’s societal standpoint. I propose that these powerful arguments point to the need to begin the emphasis on a more inclusionary base of knowledge and perception in the socialization and education of the next generation. If we are to seriously take on the charge of changing the way that we view the world and our places in it, we must dedicate ourselves to teaching “strong objectivity”, privilege-cognizance and “world-traveling” to the very youngest of society before the patterns of exclusionary and culture-blind thinking take hold in their minds.
As a white-woman from a rural, White, community in Minnesota, I was never encouraged to be critical of my privilege. To be honest, I don’t remember ever even considering my own whiteness until I began college and had the evidence of my privilege shoved in my face. I grew up in a town with very little racial diversity where outward racism is a way of life. Overt racism was the only kind of intolerance that I was aware of and I was taught to reject it from a very young age.
My parents were quite liberal for our town and taught me that race was simply a category that didn’t matter. I remember much of my young education about race focusing on the idea of “color-blindness”, an emphasis on looking past the differences of people to what made us all alike. While it is quite obvious that my parents and educators meant well by teaching me to think about racial and ethnic differences in this way, they missed the point. By attempting to argue for the equality of all people, it lead to the idea that all people were like me, and that any differences between us weren’t worth noting. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking devalues the important ways that people do differ and how these differences lead to new forms of knowledge and values. In truth, this way of approaching the differences between peoples in different societal placements leads to the erasure of only their perceptions and uniqueness while forcing them to adhere to mine.
There is a definite failure in this way of socializing and educating children, no matter how well meaning it is, and it all too often results in what Alison Bailey refers to as “privilege-evasive” scripts (Bailey, 349). While I was never directly taught by anyone to be afraid of people of color, I was. I could have told you that “those people” weren’t inherently bad, but in mind, that didn’t change the fact that “they” seemed to be committing all of the crimes. After all, it was their faces gracing my television screen every night on the news. Until about a year ago, I also would have fought you to the end about the concept of affirmative action. In my mind, it simply didn’t make sense that I should have to give something up to people that I had never wronged. The fact that the privileges that I lived with daily came at the expense of people of color never occurred to me. And despite my own deeply seeded ideas and feelings concerning people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, I thought that the affects of racism in our country were a thing of the past.
Looking back, I am deeply disturbed by the ways that I viewed the world and I realize the truth behind Bailey’s argument concerning racial scripts. “Racial scripts are internalized at an early age to the point where they are embedded almost to invisibility in our language, bodily reactions, feelings, behaviors and judgments” (Bailey, 349). Because I lived in a society where I was dominant and my own dominance was never pointed out to me, I had deeply internalized a belief in my own superiority. This arrogance leads to a deeply flawed view of the world and a lack of compassion or value for those forced into the margins of society. The issues with this way of viewing one’s place in the world leads to a need for a different way of approaching one’s privilege in the world and using it to effect change.
My own privilege-evasive, “whitely” script points out my own arrogant perception of the “Others” in our society. María Lugones states this truth so completely when she asserts that “part of racism is the internalization of the propriety of abuse without identification” (71). As a White woman living in a predominantly White “world”, I could easily ignore, use, or stereotype the “Outsiders” in the U.S. without feeling any loss or empathy for them. My behavior robbed them of self-worth but left me with no sense of guilt at doing so. María goes on to explain my behavior by asserting that, “being taught to perceive arrogantly is part of being taught to be a woman in both the U.S. and Argentina, it is part of being taught to be a White/Anglo woman in the U.S., and it is part of being taught to be a woman in both places to be both the agent and the object of arrogant perception” (Lugones, 70). If this is true, and I think that my own experience as well as the experiences of many other women would suggest that it is, then we must consider how to end the socialization that leads to arrogant perception and change it to what María refers to as loving perception.
Sandra Harding takes the argument against an objective, value free view of the world even further by capturing the way that it plays into the creation of knowledge in the modern sciences. She argues that there is no way to create knowledge outside of society, and therefore, knowledge will always be entrenched in the society that it comes from. Unfortunately, this leads to partial knowledge as only one view of the world, the view of the researchers to be specific, is taken into account when drawing conclusions from the results of any study. “The conception of value-free, impartial, dispassionate research is supposed to direct the identification of all social values and their elimination from the results of research, yet it has been operationalized to identify and eliminate only those social values and interests that differ among the researchers and critics who are regarded by the scientific community as competent to make such judgments” (Harding, 744). This is especially true in a system in which those who benefit the most from the current institutions are the ones that create the knowledge. When we call for inclusivity of knowledge, what we are really saying is, “’They (those people of color at the margins of the social order) are to be integrated with us (whites at the center), leaving us unchanged and the rightful heirs of the center of the culture. They are to give up their agendas and interests that conflict with ours in order to insert their contributions into the research, scholarship, or curriculum that has been structured to accommodate our agendas and interests” (Harding, 751). It follows in this vein of thought to conclude that objectivism is a flawed way of looking at the world and creating knowledge and that a new way of viewing scientific results and considering their implications must be conceived.
All three of these feminist philosophies demand that we reconsider the way that we socialize and educate members of our society from a very young age to think about one another in regards to racial and ethnic differences. After considering their arguments and how well they apply to my own experiences as a White woman who has lived most of her life blind to the continuing devaluation of the marginalized members of society and their contributions, it becomes quite clear that Bailey, Lugones, and Harding have all identified what seem to be truths about my flawed perception of the world. Our society fails those of us with privilege by allowing, and even encouraging us, to remain blind to our privilege and the injustice that surrounds us but leaves us unscathed. Assuming that I am not alone in this conclusion, and I truly doubt that I am, changes must be made in the socialization and education of the next generation so that they are not failed, and in turn, fail others, in the same ways that I have been.
Bailey provides a solution to the many flaws of privilege-evasive racial scripts by offering us the concept of privilege-cognizant racial scripts. “A key feature of privilege-cognizant standpoints is the choice to develop a critically reflective consciousness” (Bailey, 350). In order to take on these new ways of thinking about our privilege, we must become aware of it and recognize the ways that our actions play in to the continuing systems of white privilege. If we fail to play in to the roles that keep white privilege going, we are beginning the work of breaking this unjust system down. These new racial scripts can be considered “traitorous” according to Bailey. By forging traitorous scripts, we use the analysis of the “outsiders within”: the marginalized members of society that must live within it. These scripts will lead to choosing a new way of acting with our privilege by keeping our actions in line with a call for a more just society. “Traitors choose to try to understand the price at which privileges are gained; they are critical of the unearned privileges granted to them by white patriarchal cultures, and they take responsibility for them” (Bailey, 351). They actively choose to disrupt the ways in which they are given privilege and to fight the systems that continue the cycle of unearned advantages. Bailey goes on to lay out an action plan for those that hope to create a traitorous character and do their part in disrupting systems of privilege and oppression, and she does so through Lugones’ strategy of “world-traveling”.
María Lugones offers an alternative to our arrogant perception of others in the form of what she calls loving perception. She suggests that the way to be disloyal to arrogant perception is to instead perceive with love, and she suggests that the best way to begin this new kind of perception is through world traveling. Bailey explains this concept well by stating that, “Lugones believes that women’s failure to love one another stems from a failure to identify with women who inhabit worlds they do not share; it is a failure to see oneself in other women who are different” (Bailey, 352-253). World traveling is exactly what we fail to do when we perceive arrogantly. To travel to another woman’s world is to lose your own standpoint and replace it with that of the other woman. As a White woman, my privilege has meant never being forced to leave my own world as it is the “mainstream world”. Women from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, on the other hand, are constantly forced to leave the worlds in which they are at home to interact in a mainstream world that is often a very hostile place for them. Lugones, and Bailey in turn, suggest that by traveling to other’s worlds “we can understand what it is to be them and what it is to be ourselves in their eyes” (Lugones, 79). By knowing their worlds we will come to know them better, and this knowledge assists in loving them. Lugones makes the urgency of the need to take on world-traveling clear and describes it beautifully when she says, “We are fully dependent on each other for the possibility of being understood and without this understanding we are not intelligible, we do not make sense, we are not solid, visible, integrated, we are lacking. So traveling to each other’s ‘worlds’ would enable us to be through loving each other” (Lugones, 73). Therefore, if we hope to break down our arrogant perceptions as described by Lugones and our privilege-evasive scripts as described by Bailey, and replace them with loving-perception and traitorous scripts respectively, we must take on the work of world-traveling.
The solution to the failed practice of objectivity in epistemology as set out by Sandra Harding also emphasizes the importance of the individual’s place in society when considering their contributions. She calls for a rejection of objectivity and adherence to the concept of “strong objectivity” in its place. Strong objectivity is the conception of all knowledge coming from an individual or group of individuals who are immersed in a society that they can never be completely separated from. Therefore, the conclusions that they draw and the knowledge that they create will always be connected to their placement in society as well. It completely acknowledges our differences as individuals but remains different from subjectivity in that it requires a critical analysis of these differences and how they affect the knowledge we create. Harding goes on to state that this new way of creating knowledge will lead to greater recognition for the contributions of “outsiders”: those who have previously been excluded from the privileged positions in society. “It starts research in the perspective from the lives of the systematically oppressed, exploited, and dominated, those who have fewer interests in ignorance about how the social order actually works” (Harding, 748). Because these individuals are excluded from positions of power, they have no reason to hide what would be considered more objective truths. After all, the worst thing that new knowledge can do to those who are already oppressed is to keep them in their current state of oppression. When those in power are the ones creating knowledge, it directly benefits them to keep the systems of oppression in place. Therefore, a system in which the most privileged create the knowledge, such as the one our society functions with now, has much less reason to remain true and objective. Strong objectivity “starts thought in the lives of people who are unlikely to permit the denial of the interpretive core of all knowledge claims” (Harding, 748). What Harding is calling for is a new value system for knowledge that recognizes the value of the contributions made by the marginalized members of society.
Returning to the consideration of my own experiences as a White woman who has lived most of her life blind to her own privilege and who was socially conditioned to devalue the contributions and knowledge of the marginalized, it is easy to see how the realizations made by Bailey, Lugones, and Harding can explain how this social conditioning is a failure, and how the tools that they provide us can help to reverse these failures. Imagine a world in which the social conditioning that helped to create my ignorance no longer took place. If the next generation were to be educated and socialized in a new way, a way that considers all of these theories and the realizations that they present, we would no longer have to hope to reach them later in life to point out the flaws in their thinking. There would undoubtedly be other flaws in their conditioning that we would need to address, but they would at least be socialized and educated to have a more complete view of the world around them. They would start out life appreciating the value of the marginalized, and hopefully, working to free the oppressed and create a more just society. What if we conditioned our children to perceive with love, to travel to the worlds of others, to be privilege-cognizant traitors, and to recognize the value of strong-objectivity and knowledge created by the socially marginalized? It seems that this is the next step in using the revelations that Bailey, Harding, and Lugones have come to, and it would allow the next generation to start out on the right path. I only wish that my parents and community had had these tools to use in my education and socialization. However, now that I possess them and have begun to work with them myself, I can use them to help the next generation create a world that is more just.
Works Cited
Bailey, Alison. “Locating Traitorous Identities: Toward a View of Privilege-Cognizant White Character”. The Feminist Philosophy Reader. Ed. Alison Bailey and Christ Cuomo. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008. 344-355. Print.
Harding, Sandra. “’Strong Objectivity’ and Socially Situated Knowledge”. The Feminist Philosophy Reader. Ed. Alison Bailey and Christ Cuomo. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008. 741-756. Print.
Lugones, María. “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception”. The Feminist Philosophy Reader. Ed. Alison Bailey and Christ Cuomo. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008. 69-81. Print.
Foundations of Women's Studies- Analysis of Shirin Ebadi's Iran Awakening through Post-Colonial and Socialist Feminisms
Shirin Ebadi’s memoir, Iran Awakening, is a captivating tale of her experiences as a woman in Iran throughout its turbulent history. It provides the reader with a great amount of insight into what it truly means to be a woman in Iran and how Iran’s history has lead to the status of women there today. It is a perfect piece for analysis from the standpoints of both post-colonial feminism and socialist feminism. By analyzing Iran Awakening through both of these scopes, one can come away with an even more complex understanding of Ebadi’s life and the work that she has done for other Iranian women.
The theory of post-colonialism can easily be connected to Shirin Ebadi’s life and experiences as set out in Iran Awakening and provides us with a very apt framework for an analysis of her life. Post-colonial feminism, as presented in Lorber’s Gender Inequality, proposes that the sources of gender inequality include undermining women’s traditional economic resources through colonialism, the exploitation of women workers in post-colonial countries, and the lack of education for girls, among other things (86). Post-colonialist feminism asserts that all of these sources of inequality find their origination in colonialism and its after-affects, as well as in current economic globalization. This theory proposes that the best ways to address the oppressive aspects of the post-colonial world include educating girls in a way that fits the cultural context in which they live, and through grassroots organizing of women within communities (Lorber, 86). One of the greatest contributions of Post-colonial feminism to the greater feminist discourse is the concept that “human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights” (95). Many of these aspects of post-colonial feminism can be analyzed within Ebadi’s memoir.
The fact that Iran has, in fact, been continuously colonized or otherwise involved in colonial dynamics with other countries throughout history, the United States in particular, lends Iran Awakening to a post-colonial feminist analysis. One of the most disturbing examples of this that had a lasting impact on Iran was the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadegh. Driven by the fact that Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil, the United States directed a coup d’´etat that placed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power and sent the beloved Prime Minister to jail for 3 years (Ebadi 5-6). According to Ebadi, “it was a profoundly humiliating moment for Iranians, who watched the United States intervene in their politics as if their country were some annexed backwater, its leader to be installed or deposed at the whim of an American president and his CIA advisers” (Ebadi 5), and only “when the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and radicals took the American embassy hostage, did I see how the long arc of the coup had worked its way across our twentieth-century history” (Ebadi 13). As suggested by the latter of these quotes, the Islamic Revolution was in part a backlash against the Westernization and colonization of Iran by the United States. To Ebadi, this was made evident when soon after the revolution, she returned to Iran from a trip to the United States to discover that “the tie was deemed a symbol of the West’s evils, smelling of cologne signaled counterrevolutionary tendencies, and riding in the ministry car was evidence of class privilege” (Ebadi 41). However, the revolution did not assure that the dynamic of domination and submission in the relationship between the United States and Iran was erased. After Iran had made clear steps to show their rejection of the previous administration’s submission to the United States, the U.S. stepped in during Iran’s war with Iraq. They “even strengthened Iraq’s hand… the Reagan administration provided Iraq with satellite images of Iranian troop deployment” (Ebadi 77).
After the Islamic Revolution, the nation’s passionate dismissal of all things Western lead to the government’s use of an extremist interpretation of the Qur’an and the imposition of the Islamic penal code. The penal code “in short, turned the clock back fourteen hundred years, to the early days of Islam’s spread, the days when stoning women for adultery and chopping off the hands of thieves were considered appropriate sentences” (Ebadi 51). They also stated that “the value of a woman’s life was half that of a man” (Ebadi 51). Ebadi fought this statute for years, believing whole-heartedly, like post-colonial feminism, that women’s rights are human rights. One of her most memorable cases involving this principle was that of Leila Fathi. Despite her horrific death, her family was charged money for the execution of her murderers as their lives were worth more than hers, a ruling that left them homeless and desperate for justice to be served. (Ebadi 112-114). Not only does this part of the Islamic Penal Code violate the basic post-colonial feminist principle that women’s rights are human rights, but the institution of this code alone is yet a further sign of how the backlash against colonization can lead to the oppression of a country’s people. In their desperation to rid themselves of all Western influence, they instituted a pre-colonization penal code that ended up harming their own people. This is yet another horrible result of the colonization of Iran.
Socialist feminism provides us with another interesting perspective on Ebadi’s life and experiences. Socialist feminism finds sources of inequality in several aspects of society, including the accumulation of various advantages for men and the way that these advantages give men a great amount of social power and the ability to dominate women, and the accumulation of various disadvantages for women culminating in their second-class status (Lorber 63). It also carries much of the same theories as Marxist feminism, including the dual-systems theory (Lorber 47) and the concept of a reserve army of labor (Lorber 45). Ebadi’s life as relayed through Iran Awakening provides great experiences to be analyzed through these various aspects of socialist feminism.
Socialist feminism shares many of the same basic principles as post-colonial feminism and this becomes clear when attempting a socialist feminist analysis of Iran Awakening. While post-colonial feminism is concerned with women’s rights as human rights, socialist feminism restates this concept through its concern about the second-class citizenship of women. Therefore, through a socialist feminist analysis of Iran Awakening we must once again make note of the Islamic Penal Code and the case of Lelia Fathi. The Islamic Penal Code made it very clear that women were in fact second-class citizens in Iran and strongly asserted that their lives are worth less than the lives of men. This is troubling for socialist feminists, and so by fighting the statutes that guaranteed second-class citizenship for Iranian women, Ebadi was doing the work of socialist feminism.
The dual-systems theory of socialist feminism can clearly be applied to the life of Shirin Ebadi as she took part in both productive and reproductive labor. Despite the fact that she was a progressive woman with a career as an influential judge (productive labor), she was still responsible for the reproductive labor of taking care of her home and raising her children. In her own words, “there was no such thing as division of household responsibilities… as all the tasks, from cooking to cleaning to paperwork, were mine alone” (Ebadi 29). From a socialist feminist standpoint, this is a problematic fact and yet another way that women are kept within their role as second-class citizens. Perhaps most troubling is that a woman as well educated and intelligent as Ebadi would recognize this fact and simply accept that she “could not have everything” (Ebadi 29).
Iran Awakening also touches on the socialist feminist concept of women as a reserve army of labor. Ebadi, along with many other Iranian women, had been a supporter of the campaign against the shah’s regime and of the revolution, but once the revolution had been achieved, she was thrown to the sidelines and lost her equality as a human being. She was only an equal as long as they could use her support, and as soon as their need for her ended, her concerns were disregarded. Regarding the revolutionaries, Ebadi states “in their hierarchy of priorities, women’s rights would forever come last. It was simply never the right time to defend women’s rights” (Ebadi 56). “It took scarcely a month for me to realize that, in fact, I had willingly and enthusiastically participated in my own demise. I was a woman, and this revolution’s victory demanded my defeat” (Ebadi 38).
Iran Awakening contains a rich tapestry woven from the history of a country that has been forced into the submissive role in relationships with Western powers and from the struggles of those who are forced to submit even further within Iran due to their sex. Analysis through both post-colonial feminism and socialist feminism can lead to a better understanding of why this oppression has continued throughout the years, and how it continues to be inscribed upon the current politics of the country. Both provide the reader with unique insight into these issues, and both share the common belief that as long as women are second-class citizens and their rights are not seen as human rights, they will continue to suffer as the submissive members of a country attempting to recover from its own history of oppression.
Works Cited
Lorber, Judith. Gender Inequality: Feminist Theories and Politics. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company, 2005. Print.
Ebadi, Shirin. Iran Awakening. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007. Print.
Feminist Philosophy- Placing Myself Within Theory
As a white, middle-class woman, I have lived my life with a privilege that allowed me to consider myself as independent from race. This privilege has also allowed me to live oblivious to the women around me and their views of me. Rarely in my life have I been forced to enter a “world” in which I am the outsider because I have had the privilege of living in the “mainstream world”. In my life, this privilege has meant never being made to feel uncomfortable. Just as I have never been forced to examine my place in the world and in the minds of the women that surround me, I have never been forced to examine my gender. I have lived completely oblivious to my gender performance and the way that I am constantly constructing and reconstructing who I am as a woman. However, my realization of my gender performance came before my realization of my privilege within the mainstream “world”. These realizations leave me with the great task of deconstructing the ways that my mainstream privilege and my gender performance have played a part in my evolution as a person. I have also been left with the responsibility of using these realizations to better myself and to change the ways that I interact with other women.
María Lugones’ essay rung disturbingly accurate with me. For the majority of my life, I have remained completely oblivious to the experiences of the women around me. When I did choose to view them, and because of my privilege, it truly was a choice, it was with what Lugones refers to as “arrogant perception”. In her words, “being taught to perceive arrogantly is part of being taught to be a woman of a certain class in both the U.S. and Argentina, it is part of being taught to be a White/ Anglo woman in the U.S., and it is part of being taught to be a woman in both places to be both the agent and the object of arrogant perception” (70). Although I have always lived with the heartfelt belief that I was not racist, or at least not racist in a way that I was consciously aware of, Lugones forces me to realize that the way that I interact with women of other races and cultures is both arrogant and destructive. Lugones puts my racism into words perfectly and forces me to be aware of it when she states that she “could be seen as a being to be used by White/ Anglo men and women without the possibility of identification, i.e., without their act of attempting to graft my substance onto theirs… They could remain untouched, without any sense of loss” (71). I have lived my life not knowing the experiences of the women around me, or the way that they view my arrogant privilege and me without any sense of a void in my life. While this may partially be the result of my conditioning as a white woman, it remains my responsibility to correct this gross error.
Thankfully, Lugones also addresses how this arrogant perception can be corrected. In Lugones’ call for women to “world”-travel, I see a real possibility for much greater understanding between women of all races and cultural backgrounds. In my life, only one real experience of “world”- traveling comes to mind, and it took place while I was, in fact, physically world traveling as well. During the summer following my junior year of high school, I went on a trip to Spain with my Spanish teacher and about 20 other students. Before taking us to Spain, she explained to us that many Spanish people would view us in a negative light, and went on to explain that much of this had to do with our countries government at the time, as well as with the stereotypes that they held about Americans. She further explained that the young women in the group would most likely receive the most prejudice, and that this was because of the way that Anglo-American women were perceived in the media. Many Spanish women view Anglo-American women as promiscuous and tricky, and because of these stereotypes, many of them assumed that white, female tourists would come into their country seeing themselves as more attractive and desirable than the native women, and that we would take advantage of that. Anglo-American women also received a great amount of unwanted sexual attention from Spanish men because of these stereotypes. For the first time in my life, I was forced to see myself through the eyes of another group of people and to take the place of the outsider within their “worlds”. While in Spain, it was very evident that there was truth behind what my maestra said was true. The women in Spain often seemed hesitant to talk to us and, at times, frustrated with our presence in bars and clubs. At the same time, Spanish men would often be overly friendly with the female members of my group, and would attempt to buy them drink after drink with what seemed to be the assumption that the young women would continue to drink until they lost their inhibitions about interacting with the men. While this experience was very brief and probably not exactly the type of experience that Lugones is speaking about, it showed me a lot about how my place within my society had allowed me to remain unaware of the ways that others viewed me.
Now that I have the theory of Lugones to explain and illuminate what it was that I was experiencing when I traveled to Spain, I hope that I will be able to employ “world”-traveling as a more active part of my understanding of other women and their experiences. I also think that this kind of exercise also gives me an opportunity to learn a lot about myself. As Lugones says, “We are fully dependent on each other for the possibility of being understood and without this understanding we are not intelligible, we do not make sense, we are not solid, visible, integrated, we are lacking” (73). Who I am as an individual means nothing if I draw that definition from my own perception of myself. The only way to truly see who I am is through the eyes of others and my relationships with them. For example, I could think of myself as a great humanitarian, but unless those around me also perceive me that way, my own opinion means nothing about who I am in reality. I find this realization to be both exciting and intimidating in its implications. This knowledge forces me to see myself through the eyes of others and to act accordingly. It sets for me a goal of being perceived as the person that I like to think of myself as. This goal will require much “world”-traveling on my part, and a great amount of trial and error, but I truly believe that the goal of losing my arrogant perception is one that is worthwhile.
Just like my ignorance of my arrogant perception, I have lived most of my life oblivious to the fact that my gender is something that has been both imposed upon me by the dualistic society in which I live, and reinforced daily by my own actions. So much of who I am as a woman can be easily called into question by the theory that Judith Butler sets out for us. In her own words, my femininity “is an identity tenuously constituted in time- an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler, 97). While my everyday version of “woman” has rarely included things like make-up and styled hair, I never the less have continuously fed in to the image of what it is to be a woman. My love of embroidery, my passion for children, and the relaxation that I find in baking can all be seen as performative acts of my own version of femininity. Realizing the implications of gender as a social construct has led me to hours of internal debate about the authenticity of my own interests and supposedly individual choices. After all, do I love baking and caring for others because they truly appeal to my interests as an individual, or because they are ways that I can assert my gender role?
These questions have plagued me ever since I first came across the theory of gender as a social construction in a Lesbian Literature class. However, Butler causes me to look at the issue from a whole new angle. She states that, “Genders, then, can be neither true nor false, neither real nor apparent. And yet, one is compelled to live in a world in which genders constitute univocal signifiers, in which gender is stabilized, polarized, rendered discrete and intractable” (Butler, 105). Through this statement, Butler brought me to the realization that perhaps the authenticity of my gender or of my personal choices is not the point worth examining. Instead, she calls for a new way of viewing ourselves as individuals completely independent from gender.
However, her solution to the problem is not a clear call for actions to come. She admits the difficulty in finding a resolution to this complicated issue as, “we need to think a world in which acts, gestures, the visual body, the clothed body, the various physical attributes usually associated with gender, express nothing” (Butler, 106). Because of the complexity of the issue and the difficulty in envisioning a solution, I find it much harder to walk away from Butler’s piece with the kind of call to action that Lugones’ piece inspired. However, I like to think that my awareness of the social construction of gender will at least cause me to consider my own actions and choices much more carefully, and to always contemplate whether or not they are true to who I am as an individual independent from my gender. I also think that Butler has inspired in me a kind of rebellious attitude towards gender performance and the way that I live within my gender role. Perhaps her piece will inspire me to act a little more adventurously and with the conscious purpose of calling gender performance into question.
While both Lugones and Butler have awakened in me a new understanding of who I am in relation to the world around me and how I constantly construct and reconstruct the roles I hold in it, they have touched me in very different ways. The differences come from the complexities in the subjects and the way that the different authors approach the possibility of a solution. However, I wonder if it may also stem from my own beliefs about which form of oppression is more deeply rooted. Perhaps the reason that I struggle with a solution to the oppressive nature of socially constructed genders is because it is, in my opinion, a deeper and more complicated form of oppression than racial and cultural oppression. It may be that it seems so much harder to tackle because I often view racial and cultural oppression as stemming from sexual and gender role oppression. Either way, both articles have given me a lot to think about in terms of my own identity and the way that I see myself and my roles in the world.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” The Feminist Philosophy Reader. Ed. Alison Bailey and Chris Cuomo. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008. 97-107. Print.
Lugones, María. “Playfulness, “World”-Travelling, and Loving Perception.” The Feminist Philosophy Reader. Ed. Alison Bailey and Chris Cuomo. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2008. 69-81. Print.
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