THIS PAPER IS FORMATTED INCORRECTLY TO AVOID PLAGIARISM. PLEASE RESPECT MY INTELLECTUAL "PROPERTY". :)
Since seeing the reports, I have been engaged in dialogue on the internet and with friends and parishioners about this seemingly private matter for women turned into a political nightmare…the “private is political” has become real for me. On Friday evening I sent a letter to the editor of the local newspaper simply stating:
To all the male religious leaders who continue to speak about women's health issues without inviting any women to the table. Surely you could find woman to speak on our behalf. You make my life as a female priest that much harder. I am tired of apologizing for you and the oppression that you have created that is so often associated with "the church". Honor us. Honor our bodies, our minds, and our ability to speak for ourselves.
I have no idea if it will be published. I shared my concerns with the governing board of my church, as well as the Bishop (who is female), and luckily I got support from them. One woman simply said “thank you”. It was these events that lead me to my burning question for this module. How has patriarchy led to the control of and violence against women’s bodies? I believe that an overview of the writings of Laura Donaldson, Lee Maracle, M. Shawn Copeland, Paula Giddings, Elizabeth Martinez, Erica Gonzalez Martinez, Almas Sayeed, Bandana Purkayastha, and Amira Jarmakani can offer insight into how the epistemic violence of colonization and patriarchy, as well as cultural traditions, all play a role in a woman’s inability to claim rights to her own body.
To begin to understand what was happening at the Capitol Hill meeting on February 16, one really has to look at the issues around control and epistemic violence. Epistemic violence is defined by Laura Donaldson as “violating the most fundamental way that a person or people know themselves.” I believe that for women, epistemic violence takes away our identity and reduces us to merely sexual beings. I base that belief on the work done by the above named feminist writers who have struggled with the history of women and oppression. In writing about the devaluing of native women in Canada, Lee Maracle discusses how the oppression of patriarchy and epistemic violence has changed the way the native people relate to one another: “Racism and sexism are cultural beliefs that invade all aspects of our perception of ourselves.” She goes on to imagine a world where native women stop tolerating violence in their homes, and instead advocate for the right of dominion over their homes, children, gardens, rivers and villages. While the female body is not specifically mentioned in her list, the violence against women and children is. Given the context within which Maracle is writing, it can be inferred that the loss of power of native men by colonizers is what led to this violence to begin with.
Maracle is not alone in her view of how the female body is a landscape on which violence and oppression are acted out. In M. Shawn Copeland’s “Body, Representation, and Black Religious Discourse,” she explains how during the slave trade, the captains and crews of slave ships “judged black female bodies not only as reproductive and productive objects of commercial transaction, but also as opportunities on which to vent sexed aggression and power.” Copeland further explains that it is the myth that the black woman was promiscuous and incapable of chastity or modesty, which led to the belief that “neither the black woman’s body nor her life commanded authentic respect.” Highlighting more cultural myths about the female body, Paula Giddings writes that in the late 19th century, it was believed that the male sex drive needed to be controlled, and that control was to be found in a “good” woman who “did not tempt.” It was also during this time that Abele de Blasio did his research on steatopygia (excessive fat on the buttocks), which “represented the very root of female eroticism, immorality, and disease,” and was deemed a characteristic of prostitutes and black women.
However, these ideas are not exclusive to the native and black women’s communities. In “La Chicana,” Elizabeth Martinez writes “…the Chicana suffers from a triple oppression. She is oppressed by the forces of racism, imperialism and sexism.” She goes on to explain that “[s]exism includes both social structures and attitudes of male superiority that are rooted in those structures.” According to Martinez, the Chicana is expected to live within the confines that oppression and sexism have set for her; ideas about “virginity, false definitions of femininity and the double standard (one standard of sexual behavior for women, a different standard for men),” as well as serving as targets of violence by Chicano men who have been oppressed. For Erica Gonzalez Martinez, part of the oppression stems from the cultural tradition of marianismo, or the idea that “it is a woman’s duty to be subservient and submissive, not to make decisions for herself [using the Virgin Mary as a model].”
Similar to this line of reasoning, Asian-American and Muslim/Arab-American feminists point to the role of the family and tradition in the oppression of a woman’s ability to control her own body. In a touching reflection on her relationship with her father and his desire to arrange a marriage for her, Almas Sayeed illustrates the struggle between family, tradition and personal responsibility. Her father’s decision to begin a two-year marriage plan for her was not only troubling, but it also stirred up memories of previous conversations she had had with her parents over wearing hijab, shorts, or jewelry. “Veiling seemed to reinforce the fact that inequality between the sexes was a natural, inexplicable phenomenon that is impossible to overcome…[o]ur bodies became the sites to play out cultural and religious debates.” For Sayeed’s father, he was not only fulfilling his social obligation to secure his daughter’s future financial wellbeing, but it was the “proscribed role for women” to acquiesce to these social obligations.
Bandana Purkayastha’s research on South Asian Americans and the role of gender and choice of partners sheds light on “how the surveillance and scrutiny of female behaviors produces different forms and boundaries of ethnicity.” Her study results in pointing out three types of practices: the “essential-ethnicity group,” the “bounded-ethnicity group,” and the “pervious-ethnicity group.” For the “essential-ethnicity group” the expectation is that arranged marriages will be accepted. In the “bounded-ethnicity group” there is an attempt to “enforce strict scrutiny of females’ dating and sexual relationships” but the parameters of caste, religion, language, region of origin or class are not as strictly defined. Finally, for the “pervious-ethnicity group,” the “surveillance or scrutiny of female behaviors or absolute restrictions on out-marriages” does not exist.
For Arab-American women, oppression of their bodies is often tied up in the mythology of the veil. While the veil was intended to represent cultural and religious expressions of modesty, piety, or identity, “it has been appropriated and deployed…by colonialist and imperialist powers to justify domination… [it has been used as] a framing that constructs Arab and Muslim women as either hidden or revealed objects rather than thinking subjects.” As Jarmakani explains, “It is not simply that Arab American women are not seen…it is a matter of not being credited with the possibility of existence…Arab women are perceived to be silent and submissive…[and] not afforded the subjectivity of thinking, theorizing individuals.”
Given these various experiences of the oppression and epistemic violence on women and their bodies, it is no wonder Rep. Darrell Issa could not find a woman who was appropriate or qualified to speak on behalf of women’s health issues (she says sarcastically). When women’s bodies are treated as a commodity, as a location for all types of violence and as immoral, why should they be respected? When women are oppressed by patriarchy and epistemic violence, and therefore made to feel invisible, incapable of subjectivity or the ability to make decisions for herself, how can she speak up? Or as Simone de Beauvoir asked, “How can a human being in a woman’s situation attain fulfillment?”
For me the answers also come from feminist writers and theologians. Silko’s Yellow Woman is passionate, daring and strong in the face of catastrophe. Copeland’s belief that black religious discourse is to be “transformative discourse…push[ing] the congregation from its comfort zone…toward critical social action… [Critiquing] behaviors that demean and degrade the body… [while also promoting] healthy appreciation of the body.” Martinez’s belief that for Chicanas, “femininity has [not] always meant: weak, passive delicate-looking…[the] woman of La Raza is traditionally a fighter and revolutionary…[and] a worker.” Taking my cues from mujerista theology, women attain fulfillment through salvation liberation—thinking and acting to work for liberation and establish justice in concrete ways. It is here in these ideas and beliefs that I take solace and am empowered to stand up to the oppression of patriarchy and epistemic violence that have kept women silent about their bodies for so long. It is Adrienne Rich’s comment “Let us pay attention now…to women: let men and women make a conscious act of attention when women speak; let us insist on kinds of process which allow more women to speak” which resonates with me. It is my hope that if the question of “Where are the women?” is ever asked again, that the response will be “Right here”.
Bibliography
CNN. “Angry lawmakers challenge lineup at hearing: ‘Where are the women?’” Accessed February 19, 2012. http://articles.cnn.com.
Copeland, M. Shawn. “Body, Representation, and Black Religious Discourse.” In Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and and Kwok Pui-lan, 180-198. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Donaldson, Laura E. “The Breasts of Columbus.” In Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Pui-lan, 41-61. New York: Routledge, 2002.
de Beauvoir, Simone. “The Second Sex.” In Feminist Theory Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, 34-42. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Giddings, Paula. “The Last Taboo.” In Still Brave: The Evolution of Black Women’s Studies, edited by Stanlie M. James, Frances Smith Foster and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, 157-171. New York: The Feminist Press, 2009.
Isasi-Diaz, Ada Maria. Mujerista Theology. New York: Orbis Books, 2004.
Jarmakani, Amira. “Arab American Feminisms: Mobilizing the Politics of Invisibility.” In Arab and Arab American Feminisms, edited by Rabab Abdulhadi, Evelyn Alsultany, and Nadine Naber, 227-241. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2011.
Maracle, Lee. “Decolonizing Native Women.” In Make a Beautiful Way, edited by Barbara Alice Mann, 29-51. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Martinez, Elizabeth. “La Chicana.” In Feminist Theory Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, 43-45. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Martinez, Erica Gonzalez. “Dutiful Hijas.” In Colonize This! edited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman, 142-156. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2002.
Purkayastha, Bandana. Negotiating Ethnicity. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Rich, Adrienne. “Notes Toward a Politics of Location.” In The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle B. Freedman, 367-384. New York: The Modern Library, 2007.
Sayeed, Almas. “Chappals and Gym Shorts.” In Feminist Theory Reader, 2nd edition, edited by Carole R. McCann and Seung-kyung Kim, 270-275. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.