Boobs, Butts, and Burqas
The Politics and Presentation of Women's Bodies
Mammoplasty: Designing Women
- What/who creates and perpetuates women's body modification?
- Who exercises the power? Women, Society, or both?
- Feminist critique: society imposing beauty standards on women (Foucault)
- False Consciousness: women believe they have agency to do what the "want" but are unaware of where "what they want" comes from.
- versus free will
- Male Gaze: objectifies women based on their desires
- has been critiqued for taking agency away from women
- highlights the importance of looking and being seen in social construction
- pornography exemplifies male gaze, in particular in terms of sexuality.
- lesbianism in male pornography
- Opposing approaches are too simple (Foucault)
- Cosmetic Surgery both reifies and constitutes hegemonic femininity
- women are not forced to undergo cosmetic surgery, rather then internalize as natural and normal the standards of beauty that are pervasive in hegemonic culture (Gramsci)
- cosmetic surgery becomes a technique of feminization located at the intersection between agency and subordination---women actively and passively create themselves
- Self-reported motivations:
- representing oneself accurately
- makeup, diet, injections, exercise, plastic surgery, body shaping clothing
- expressing self worth
- increasing social opportunities
- fashion
- the female gaze: other women and the regimen of beauty
- women are always measuring themselves against other women
- medicalization of procedures
- women tried to match what they perceived to be male gaze (what men want)
Covering the Body: The Burqa (et.al.)
Women in cultures that have prescribed clothing which hides their bodies, hair and even faces, often view this practice in different ways than the West.
- Meaning is modesty and self esteem rather than oppression and invisibility.
- Symbols like the veil, in public, can be controversial, because their function is to be a visual reminder to us about collective values and the interpretation of religious meaning.
- Symbols in the late modern age
- symbols worn on the human body have given rise to debates highly charged with emotion: there was a time when our society viewed the wearing of trousers by women as an act of transgression and even today it remains a taboo in ultra-orthodox Jewish circles.
- The long hair worn by male followers of the hippie movement was an in-your-face protest against the bourgeois small-mindedness of their parents’ generation.
- Not to mention the circumcision practiced in Judaism and Islam, which has remained decidedly controversial for centuries.
- There are heated debates over clothing, hairstyles and body-reshaping that people choose for their personal look, although the styles of tattoos and provocatively ripped trousers have been quietly and steadily spreading.
Religious symbols in public
- Argument against face covering: It is a core value in secular culture that a person should show his or her face, thereby assuming responsibility and making it possible for others to address them; but their dignity is still maintained, so also their vulnerability. If people cannot be identified, then you cannot have a civil society.
- No symbol is more emblematic of the tension between East and West, and between assimilation and tradition, than the burqa, a full-face veil worn by Muslim women to preserve modesty. The garment has come under fire in recent years, being banned in a number of countries across Europe.
- Proponents of banning the burqa argue the need for security and cultural cohesion, while human rights advocates say this is discrimination and a violation of religious freedom. Should the West embrace the burqa as part of its guarantee of religious freedom, or does it have the right to restrict dress that it feels antithetical to its cultural values?
Below, we’ll explore three arguments for banning the burqa, and three arguments against a ban.
The burqa should be banned.
- The veil is sexist.
The veil can be seen by some as sexist in two directions. While assuming men to be fundamentally incapable of controlling their sexual appetites, the veil instils real gender inequality by placing the onus of checking male impropriety solely upon women, for whom the consequences are great. Veils, like the burqa and niqab, which obscure the face, prevent the women who wear them from full participation in society. She cannot eat or dine in public. She cannot be easily heard by others, and without faces to remember, she is easily forgotten. The sum of these factors is the overall diminishment of female personhood, a notion that has no place in societies that place a premium on equality in general and gender equality in particular.
Muslims oppose the burqa too.
- Even in Muslim majority countries, many view the burqa as unwelcome encroachment of Saudi-brand, ultra-conservative Islam.
The burqa endangers Muslim women.
- While anti-Muslim hate crimes have dropped in recent years in ten of America’s largest cities --- safety overrides the necessity to dress according to one’s cultural mores.
Restricting religious dress is a violation of civil liberties.
- Contrary to popular belief, Muslim women in the West and the East alike (Saudi Arabia and Iran notwithstanding) choose the veil as a religious prerogative.
A burqa ban will only fuel extremism.
- Banning symbols associated with extremism does not necessarily combat extremism.
Live and let live.
- Wearing a burqa is no more harmful than wearing a Marilynn Manson shirt.
Bottom Lines: As the East and West draw ever closer, governments will continue to be challenged to rethink the delicate balance between secularism and religious freedom. It is a question of values and ultimately, we must choose which value gets priority over another. If given the choice to create policy, what would you choose?
FEMALE and MALE CIRCUMCISION
Female circumcision, is the partial or total cutting away of the external female genitalia, has been practiced for centuries in parts of Africa, generally as one element of a rite of passage preparing young girls for womanhood and marriage.
- Despite the risks, its practitioners look on it as an integral part of their cultural and ethnic identity, and some perceive it as a religious obligation.
- Opponents of female genital cutting, however, emphasize that the practice is detrimental to women's health and well-being. Some consider female circumcision a ritualized form of child abuse and violence against women, a violation of human rights.
The debate over female circumcision is relatively recent.
- The practice was rarely spoken of in Africa and little known in the West until the second half of this century. In the 1950s and 1960s.
- African activists and medical practitioners brought the health consequences of female circumcision to the attention of international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO).
- During the following decade, the widespread silence surrounding female circumcision was broken. After African women's organizations met in Dakar, Senegal, in 1984 to discuss female circumcision and other detrimental cultural practices, the Inter African Committee Against Harmful Traditional Practices (IAC) was formed.
- In addition, other African women's networks and organizations that had focused primarily on such issues as reproductive health, women's rights and legal justice became involved in working against the practice. Such groups as Mandalaeo Ya Wanawake in Kenya, NOW in Nigeria and New Woman in Egypt now include the elimination of female circumcision among their goals.
- the emphasis in discussions of female circumcision shifted to encompass women's human and reproductive rights as well as their health. International consensus statements and treaties such as the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child began to include language applicable to female circumcision. These documents, however, did not directly mention the practice, focusing instead on broad categories such as detrimental practices, violence and rights violations.
- With shifts in emphasis came new language:
- Although activists and clinicians continued to refer to female circumcision when working directly with women in the community, policy statements and other documents began to use the term "female genital mutilation."
- threat to women's reproductive health and a violation of their human rights.
- the Platform specifically called on governments to "enact and enforce legislation against the perpetrators of practices and acts of violence against women, such as female genital mutilation...."
- Fauziya Kassindja, a 17-year-old woman from Togo, focused public attention in the United States on female circumcision. More important, her case was instrumental in redefining the practice as gender-based violence that could be grounds for the granting of political asylum in the US.
PREVALENCE
- Female circumcision is currently practiced in at least 28 countries stretching across the center of Africa north of the equator; it is not found in southern Africa or in the Arabic-speaking nations of North Africa, with the exception of Egypt. Female circumcision occurs among Muslims, Christians, animists and one Jewish sect, although no religion requires it.
TYPES OF CIRCUMCISION
Although circumcision may be performed during infancy, during adolescence or even during a woman's first pregnancy, the procedure is usually carried out on girls between ages four and 12. The operation is generally performed by a traditional birth attendant or an exciseuse, an elder village woman.
There are three basic types of genital excision, although practices vary widely.
- In the first type, clitoridectomy, part or all of the clitoris is amputated-appears to be by far the most common procedure
- in the second (often referred to as excision), both the clitoris and the labia minora are removed.
- Infibulation, the third type, is the most severe: After excision of the clitoris and the labia minora, the labia majora are cut or scraped away to create raw surfaces, which are held in contact until they heal, either by stitching the edges of the wound or by tying the legs together. As the wounds heal, scar tissue joins the labia and covers the urethra and most of the vaginal orifice, leaving an opening that may be as small as a matchstick for the passage of urine and menstrual blood. (about 15%, most notably in Somalia and Sudan)
CONSEQUENCES OF EXCISION
- The inability to pass urine because of pain, swelling and inflammation following the operation may lead to urinary tract infection. A woman may suffer from abscesses and pain from damaged nerve endings long after the initial wound has healed.
- Infibulation is particularly likely to cause long-term health problems. Because the urethral opening is covered, repeated urinary tract infections are common, and stones may form in the urethra and bladder because of obstruction and infection. If the opening is very small, menstrual flow may be blocked, leading to reproductive tract infections and lowered fertility or sterility. One early study estimated that 20-25% of cases of sterility in northern Sudan can be linked to infibulation.
- Without deinfibulation before childbirth, obstructed labor may occur, causing life-threatening complications for both mother and infant. Because birthrates are high in many countries where infibulation is practiced, a woman's infibulation scar may be cut and resewn many times during her reproductive years.
- The amputation of the clitoris and other sensitive tissue reduces a woman's ability to experience sexual pleasure. For infibulated women, the consummation of marriage is likely to be painful because of the small vaginal opening and the lack of elasticity in the scar tissue that forms it. Tearing and bleeding may occur, or the infibulation scar may have to be cut open to allow penetration.
- Infibulation may make intercourse unsatisfying for men as well as women: In Sudan, for example, one study found that infibulated women are almost twice as likely as other women to have lower fertility and more than twice as likely to be divorced. Thus, a practice that is justified as making girls marriageable and safeguarding their fertility may actually increase the risk of marital dissolution and subfertility.
SOCIAL CONTEXT
Female circumcision is an integral part of the societies that practice it, where patriarchal authority and control of female sexuality and fertility are givens.
- In communities where a person's place in society is determined by lineage traced through fathers, female circumcision reduces the uncertainty surrounding paternity by discouraging or preventing women's sexual activity outside of marriage.
- Although the societies that practice circumcision vary in many ways, most girls receive little education and are valued primarily for their future role as sources of labor and producers of children.
- In some communities, the prospective husband's family pays a brideprice to the family of the bride, giving his family the right to her labor and her children; she herself has no right to or control over either.
- A girl's virginity may be considered essential to her family's ability to arrange her marriage and receive a brideprice, as well as to family honor.
In many cultures, considerable social pressure is brought to bear on families who resist conforming to the tradition of female circumcision.
- Among the Samburu of Kenya, who consider uncircumcised girls unclean, promiscuous and immature, girls are generally circumcised at age 14 or 15, usually just before they are married.
- A girl with a younger brother may undergo circumcision if she remains unmarried by her late teens, since custom dictates that a boy with an uncircumcised older sister may not be initiated into the warrior class.
- Girls' desires to conform to peer norms may make them eager to undergo circumcision, since those who remain uncut may be teased and looked down on by their age mates.
- In addition, the ritual cutting is often embedded in ceremonies in which the girls are feted and showered with presents and their families are honored.
- Those who resist may be cut by force. If they remain uncircumcised and their families are therefore unable to arrange a marriage, they may be cast out without any means for survival.
Many girls accept circumcision as a necessary, and even natural, part of life, and adopt the rationales given for its existence.
- preservation of virginity before marriage,
- fidelity after marriage,
- enhancement of the husband's sexual pleasure,
- enhancement of fertility,
- prevention of infant and child mortality,
- cleanliness and religious requirements,
- tradition is by far the most commonly mentioned reason
women themselves are involved in perpetuating the practice of female genital cutting. Data show that men are slightly more likely than women to favor discontinuation, and that men who believe the practice should be stopped are about twice as likely as their female counterparts to cite medical complications and lack of sexual satisfaction as reasons and are less than half as likely as women to prefer infibulation.
WORKING FOR CHANGE
Efforts to eliminate female circumcision have often been unsuccessful because opponents of the practice ignored its social and economic context. In some cases, external intervention has strengthened the resolve of communities to continue their genital cutting rituals as a way of resisting what they perceive as cultural imperialism.
- During the era of colonial rule in Africa, some governments attempted to ban female circumcision and met with resistance.
- In Sudan, when a law banning infibulation was about to be proclaimed in 1946, many parents rushed to midwives to have their daughters infibulated in case it should become impossible later on.
- When some midwives were arrested for performing circumcision, anti-colonial protests broke out.
- fearing a massive nationalist revolt such as those that had occurred in Egypt and Kenya, eventually the British let the law go unenforced.
- Calls to action by Western feminists and human rights activists have provoked similar negative reactions.
- African women have perceived many of these efforts as condescending and derogatory toward their culture. In the words of one infibulated Somali woman, "If Somali women change, it will be a change done by us, among us. When they order us to stop, tell us what we must do, it is offensive to the black person or the Muslim person who believes in circumcision. To advise is good, but not to order."
- one anthropologist observed, "African women are...depicted as aberrant, while intact Western women have their sexuality affirmed as the norm."
- Western women also subject themselves to medically unnecessary, hazardous procedures, such as cosmetic surgery and the insertion of breast implants, to increase their sexual desirability.(critique from African women).
- The strong reactions against depictions of cultures practicing female circumcision as savage, violent and abusive of women and children have led to new ways of approaching the issue.
PROSPECTS FOR THE FUTURE
Despite the overall lack of change in the percentages of girls who undergo circumcision, changes in attitudes and practices seem to be occurring in some countries.
- This view is born out by the DHS data: In most countries, women with higher levels of education and those who have income of their own are less likely than other women to have been circumcised and are also less likely to have had their daughters circumcised.
- Laws and restrictions imposed from outside have been largely unsuccessful and have often led to abuses and endangered women's lives.
- practitioners forced undergroud work in unsafe conditions (think illegal abortion) or those who take advantage of families desperately seeking specialists (unqualified).
- also working without the full meaning imparted through ritual and the proper support system for surgery and healing.
- As Toubia comments, "this one violation of women's rights cannot [be abolished] without placing it firmly within the context of efforts to address the social and economic injustice women face the world over. If women are to be considered as equal and responsible members of society, no aspect of their physical, psychological or sexual integrity can be compromised."
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