Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies

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As we thought about this introduction, we were reminded of these two quotations, the first by Arundhati Roy, who describes herself as an “Indian novelist, activist, and world citizen,” and the second by American feminist activist and journalist Gloria Steinem. Roy opens us up to the transformative potential of social justice and solidarity by prompt- ing us to hold fast to the belief that another world is possible, that there are alternatives to inequalities that are deepening the new global world order. We have to keep alive visions of gender and economic justice; they can move us, inspire us, sustain us, and galvanize us as thinkers and activists, as global citizens and as members of local communities, working for change. Steinem’s words signal that the road ahead is not easy, that it involves a process of critical examination of many of our most taken-for-granted truths and belief systems about the world around us. It is through unlearning as much as learning that we begin to see how inequalities have been created and hence how they can be challenged and undone. Unlearning and learning are intertwined in a continual, connected

process: the unpacking of prior knowledge and assumptions is important in making space for new versions and visions of social realities.

This volume engages with these practices: unlearn- ing/learning and envisioning change. We aim to offer a broad selection of writings from a range of authors and perspectives to help introduce you to a field that is at the forefront of critical thinking about inequalities and social justice. This introduction provides students with an entry point to consider what gender and women’s studies involves, how it has changed in recent years, and why it continues to be a meaningful and socially relevant area of inquiry. In what follows, we focus mainly on gender and women’s studies in the North American context, which itself has been shaped by broader global shifts within both feminism and the political and eco- nomic landscape. We discuss some of the main goals and theoretical developments of gender and women’s studies, and highlight key features of this book. We conclude with some thoughts about the process of crit- ical thinking and how it might apply to your reading of the material in the text.

INTRODUCTION

Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.

—Arundhati Roy, War Talk (2003, p. 75)

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn. —Gloria Steinem, “‘Women’s Liberation’ Aims to Free Men, Too,” Washington Post (1970, p. 192)

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Gender and Women's Studies, Second Edition : Critical Terrain, edited by Margaret Hobbs, and Carla Rice, Canadian Scholars, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umanitoba/detail.action?docID=6318365. Created from umanitoba on 2020-10-19 22:04:15.

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2 Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

WHAT IS GENDER AND WOMEN’S STUDIES?

As students coming into gender and women’s studies introductory classes, you will have different ideas of what to expect. While some of you may have been introduced to gender and women’s studies perspec- tives through a course, extracurricular involvement at high school, conversations with family and friends, or social media and popular culture, for many of you this is your first conscious engagement with this field. You likely have many questions: What is this field variously called “women’s studies,” “women’s and gen- der studies,” “gender and women’s studies,” or other similar names? (For a brief discussion of the shift from women to gender in the title of many programs see Hobbs and Rice, 2011a.) How does what I learn here differ from and add to what I am studying in my other courses? How relevant is gender and women’s studies to my own life and to my future? Will these perspectives be useful to me in the workforce? Will the topics and approaches introduced in this class reflect or revise my understanding of local and global social relations and structures? How might my values and world view be enriched? What is feminism and do I have to be a feminist to take this course?

As you begin this journey, you should know that gender and women’s studies is not one thing. It is not one perspective or one analysis but many, expressed differently by scholars and activists whose ideas and approaches differ from one another, shaped by their own backgrounds, interests, training, experience, and understandings of the world. Not surprisingly, then, introductory courses in this field are also diverse. Some professors might choose to introduce you to the field through a few specific themes, perhaps highlighting gendered analyses of popular culture or recent writings from the “third wave” of feminism. Some might engage more with international contexts and others with North America, and some focus mainly on the present while others explore women’s historical experiences as well. Most introductory courses, however, aim for fairly

broad fare, taking you through gender and women’s studies across a range of themes, issues, and contexts.

Despite the differences in our approaches and perspectives, there is considerable overlap in what instructors in North American universities and col- leges are trying to accomplish as they introduce you to what has been, and continues to be, a powerfully influential and transformative field. A number of years ago, we conducted an informal survey of course outlines and website descriptions of introductory gender and women’s studies courses. The following list highlights some commonly shared goals guiding the teaching of entry-level courses in gender and women’s studies:

• To introduce students to women’s/gender studies as a broad, dynamic, interdisciplinary, and global field of inquiry, and to familiarize students with some of the major issues, debates, and approaches in gender and feminist scholarship and activism

• To complicate commonly presumed understand- ings of concepts like “women,” “sex,” “gender,” “race,” and “disability” by examining how these categories have been “constructed” (or created by society) and how they shape ideas and experiences of human difference

• To analyze and challenge hierarchical and inter- secting relations of power influenced by gender, sexuality, class, race, ethnicity, ability, and other categories of difference

• To understand how power relations are embedded in institutions and in everyday, taken-for-granted social relations, practices, and values

• To highlight affinities and differences among self-identified women and gender non-conforming people, both within North America and world- wide, and to analyze intersecting social, cultural, political, and economic systems that shape their lives and agency

• To explore the multiple pathways and forms of individual and collective resistance to injustice and inequities in the past and the present, and to

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Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies 3

analyze creative visions and strategies for change in local and global contexts

• To inspire and empower students to develop their knowledge of feminist scholarship and to engage critically in their communities at local, national, or global levels

• To develop students’ skills in critical thinking and analysis, reading, and writing, and to create classroom environments that support learners’ respectful debate and disagreement

These goals reflect a vision of gender and women’s studies grounded in knowledge that is continuously shifting as the field develops and its insights deepen. Feminist scholars in the past and present have explored how ideas about gender work at interpersonal and institutional levels to shape social relations and the lived experiences of diverse people. Their explorations of gender, in relation to other social categories of iden- tity and other axes of power, have been transforming the so-called traditional disciplines such as history, philosophy, politics, psychology, biology, and sociol- ogy, while also producing new syntheses of knowledge that we call interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary.

When women’s studies courses and programs emerged in North America in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of widespread protest against social and economic injustices, they joined other scholars—for example, in Canadian studies, Native studies, and labour studies—who were similarly interested in pressing beyond the limits of the older disciplines. Like these other interdisciplinary fields informed by critiques of social inequalities and visions of social justice, women’s studies aimed to understand social relations in order to change them. You will notice from the goals summarized above that the field continues to offer tools, wisdom, and perspectives enabling a critical engagement with the world and its power structures. At the same time, gender and women’s studies offers pathways through which we can better understand ourselves, our diverse experiences and identities, and our relationships with others in the wider world.

CURRENT TRENDS IN GENDER AND WOMEN’S STUDIES

Gender and women’s studies courses, and indeed this textbook, have been shaped in important ways by recent debates and new insights emerging from fem- inist scholarship. The ideas and the tools they suggest also come out of women’s and social justice movements, from diversely positioned and marginalized people and grassroots communities, locally and globally, at the forefront of feminist thought and action.

Below we describe four of these major trends that together are making gender and women’s studies perspectives more relevant than ever before in the critical task of understanding the world in which we live and the major challenges we face as a human community. This list is not exhaustive; there are many other trends shaping the field and the curriculum itself. Exciting feminist work is currently coming from disability studies, fat studies, and posthuman studies, and we anticipate that scholarship in these areas will significantly reshape gender and women’s studies over the next decade. In the meantime, it is important for instructors and students alike to reflect upon and engage with the following four distinct, though overlapping, trends:

1. The concept and practice of intersectionality 2. Queering gender and women’s studies 3. Indigenizing and decolonizing gender and

women’s studies 4. Globalizing, internationalizing, and transnation-

alizing gender and women’s studies

1. The Concept and Practice of Intersectionality

“Intersectionality” is a concept and an approach to understanding the lives and experiences of individuals and groups of people in their diversity and complexity. Emerging as a theoretically important and challenging term in feminist scholarship, intersectionality is often

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used to describe the idea that women, men, and gen- der variant people live multiple layered identities and simultaneously experience oppression and privilege. The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women explains an intersectional approach as attempting “to understand how multiple forces work together and interact to reinforce conditions of inequal- ity and social exclusion” (CRIAW, 2006, p. 5).

Intersectionality is not a new concept. The term itself was conceived in the early 1990s by African American feminists and critical race scholars Patricia Hill Collins (1990) and Kimberlé Crenshaw (1994), and the ideas associated with it have since been adapted, developed, and debated by feminist scholars, activists, and organizations in North America and elsewhere. Intersectionality critiques the limitations of perspec- tives that look narrowly at social relations through a gender lens alone, and encourages a wider view focused on the multiple components of identity and intersecting “axes” of power that constitute individuals’ experiences in the world (Karpinski, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 2006). Intersectional theories and methods work, for example, to explore the specific ways in which factors such as gender, sexuality, Indigeneity, class, race, disability, geography, refugee and/or immigrant status, size, and age interact to shape people’s social positioning. Such differences are also examined in the context of the larger social and political forces and institutions that create unequal access to power and privilege. Colonialism, capitalism, neo-liberalism, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and social welfare policies are all important examples. By examining the complex- ities and specificities of identities and social locations, intersectionality explores how women, men, and gender non-conforming people occupy many different and contradictory positions in social relations of power.

2. Queering Gender and Women’s Studies

Recent developments in gender, queer, and trans theory and activism across North America have placed a spotlight on gender and sexuality as socially

created constructs. In response, women’s studies, which initially placed women squarely—some say narrowly—in the centre of analysis, is broadening its focus, and engaging more fully with issues and explorations of masculinities, queer and sexuality studies, and “transfeminism.” At their heart, gen- der and queer theory involve critically analyzing the binary (either/or) categories of woman/man and femininity/masculinity by calling into question “the notion of two discrete tidily organized sexes and genders” (Scott-Dixon, 2006, p. 12). This rich theory base has arisen out of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans (GLBT) studies, itself a fairly new area of academic inquiry that seeks to understand and contextualize gendered and sexed bodies/identities and erotic desires and practices in different times and places (Meem et al., 2010; Stombler et al., 2010). GLBT studies, along with gender studies, has done much to explore sexual diversity, showing how dominant ideas and norms about sexuality, sexed bodies, and sexual practices and identities are not rooted naturally in the facts of biology, but are socially constructed in various ways by different soci- eties. Queer theory goes further, aiming not only to interrogate sexuality norms, but also to turn upside down the very idea of “the normal”; namely, “every- thing in the culture that has occupied a position of privilege, power, and normalcy, starting with het- erosexuality” (Bacon, 2006, p. 259). Adding another layer of nuance and complexity, transfeminism has emerged at the intersections of feminist and trans theory as a vibrant gender-inclusive field dedicated to ending the oppression of all gender crossing, gender diverse, gender non-conforming, and gen- der independent people (Scott-Dixon, 2006). At the same time, Indigenous thinkers who self-identify as “Two Spirit” and queer have worked to reclaim their bodies and erotic lives from colonial systems that attempted to impose sexist structures as well as sexual and gender norms onto Indigenous peoples as an integral part of colonization processes (Driskill et al., 2011).

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3. Indigenizing and Decolonizing Gender and Women’s Studies

The increased attention to decolonization and Indigenization in gender and women’s studies comes from the proliferation of Indigenous scholar- ship and activism, and the critique of the historical marginalization of Indigenous perspectives in much of North American feminist thought and practice. “Indigenizing” involves the integration of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into what counts as knowledge. As such, it goes well beyond the additive approach of writing Indigenous women in to existing Western theories, or squeezing their experiences into one or two classes in a gender and women’s studies course. Instead the challenge for gender and women’s studies teachers and students is to centre Indigeneity more fully by weaving it through and across studies of particular themes and issues; by valuing Indigenous knowledge forms; by analyzing colonialism and its continuing legacies for Indigenous women, men, and Two-Spirit and queer people; and by understanding the diversity of their lives and perspectives.

The closely related concept of “decolonizing” refers to the anti-colonial project of critiquing Western world views and challenging the oppressive power structures that they uphold. According to Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999), decolonizing, “once viewed as the formal process of handing over the instruments of government, is now recognized as a long-term process involving bureaucratic, cultural, linguistic, and psych- ological divesting of colonial power,” including in the academy (p. 98). For Davis (2010), decolonization of gender and women’s studies means displacing white, Western subjectivities from the centre of course texts and topics, and disrupting Eurocentric, First World privilege through an examination of colonial relations from the perspectives of colonized others. Indigenous feminists, including Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) (2011), Emma LaRocque (Métis) (2007), and Joyce Green (Ktunaxa/Cree- Scots Métis) (2007) see such anti-colonial feminist

approaches as critical to grasping urgent issues faced by Indigenous women today. For example, Sarah Hunt (Kwagiulth) (2016) argues that because sexual violence has been used as a weapon of colonialism to destroy and assimilate Indigenous peoples into a white, racist, sexist hierarchy, anti-violence and anti-colonial struggles cannot be separated if femin- ists hope to end violence against all women.

4. Globalizing, Internationalizing, and Transnationalizing Gender and Women’s Studies

These terms themselves, as well as the practices they entail, are the subject of considerable debate. Sometimes they are used interchangeably. Increasingly, however, the language of global feminism, and hence calls for “globalizing” the curriculum, is giving way to the pol- itics of “internationalizing” and/or “transnationaliz- ing.” For many, the term global in relation to feminism is too reminiscent of the condescension and denial of differences evident in past Western feminists’ schol- arly and activist approaches to women in the “Third World” (Grewal & Kaplan, 2006; Mohanty, 1991; Shohat, 2001). Internationalization is often employed as a broad umbrella term encompassing various prac- tices and methods, extending feminism’s focus beyond the Western world. Such endeavours, however, if not accompanied by a self-reflective critique of the limits of Western world views, can produce knowledge that reinforces, rather than challenges, dominant cultural stereotypes and misunderstandings.

Mohanty, for example, described three models for internationalizing gender and women’s studies. She critiqued the “feminist as tourist” approach, which simply adds “Third World” and Indigenous women into existing analytic frameworks, stereotyping them as either hapless victims or romantic heroines. The “feminist as explorer” model can be problematic by focusing on women’s lives in specific geographic contexts (through courses such as “Women in India,” “Third World Women,” etc.) without a sustained

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6 Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

analysis of structural power relations. Mohanty (2003) instead encouraged a third alternative approach, “feminist solidarity,” which recognizes differences and hierarchies of power within and across borders while building on affinities and common interests. Increasingly a transnational lens (as opposed to an international one) is promoted as a richer way to “teach students how to think about gender in a world whose boundaries have changed” (Kaplan & Grewal, 2002, p. 79). Transnational approaches emphasize the movement of money, labour, information, and culture across national borders; they draw out how histories of colonization and, more recently, global- ization structure inequalities; and they explore the possibilities for solidarity among women and social movements organizing across geographic boundaries. In a transnationalized gender and women’s studies curriculum, Canada and the United States can still be examined, but they are not centred (Mohanty in Dua & Trotz, 2002).

These theoretical and political shifts have chal- lenged gender and women’s studies to develop more nuanced theories and methods for understanding social relations and differences. Many instructors and students have taken up that challenge by becom- ing more inclusive of gender and queer theory (see Enke, 2012, in this volume); by better integrating Indigenous feminist thought, issues, and activism (St. Denis, 2007); by focusing on the gendered genesis and impacts of colonization and globalization in Canada and around the world (Mohanty, 2003); and by questioning their own positioning and implicated- ness in current conditions (Blyth, 2008; Dion, 2009). Most feminist educators believe that a sustained focus on sexism is still necessary in gender and women’s studies classrooms, especially in the face of deepening global gender inequities. At the same time, the theor- etical insights offered by gender and queer theory, Indigenous feminism, and transnational feminist thought and activism have led many to radically rethink the subject and focus of gender and women’s studies. In this book, we invite you to engage with

new knowledge and methods emerging from the field and contribute to conversations about the challenges we face in our local and global communities.

FEATURES OF THIS BOOK

Gender and Women’s Studies: Critical Terrain grew out of a familiar annual ritual for many introduc- tory course instructors: the quest to find the perfect text that will engage and inspire students while guiding them skillfully through the dizzying array of concepts, theories, issues, approaches, histories, and contexts that constitute contemporary feminist and gender scholarship. We have a confession: we have never really liked textbooks. As undergradu- ate students, we had many occasions to throw our textbooks against the wall—once we awoke from the snooze induced by boredom. What, then, are we doing collaborating on our own introductory textbook in gender and women’s studies?

Over time, we have come to appreciate how a textbook can help instructors and students navigate the dynamic and swiftly changing terrain of gender and women’s studies. A text provides students with a concrete tangible work that they can hold in their hands as a guide. At its best, it can provide intellectual glue that makes more readily apparent the themes and flow of the course, as well as the interconnections between topics and the context within which par- ticular pieces should be read. A textbook can include important learning and research aids such as guiding questions, relevant websites, and definitions of key terms. Textbooks that include a diversity of feminist authors introduce learners to multiple perspectives and current debates about topics related to women, gender, feminism, and social justice. We believe it is valuable for students, beginning in first year, to sharpen their analytic skills and develop their own positions in relation to a multiplicity of ideas and arguments.

Of course, the perfect text does not, and cannot, exist. Even with a more modest goal in mind, our

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own attempt at an introductory textbook has proved challenging, and certainly humbling. One of the most difficult parts of the process has been trimming to a reasonable size our initial wish list of wonderful feminist writings. By editing many pieces for length, we have been able to assemble a broadly representa- tive sampling of works. Critical Terrain contributes to the growing list of innovative texts on the North American market by offering what we hope you will find to be an appealing collection with several unique characteristics and tools for students and instructors. We present below some of the main features of both the first and second editions of this book. These were inspired by a wide reading of existing textbooks, an appreciation for both classic insights and new theoretical developments shaping the field, and a recognition of the diversity of readership.

• Multiplicity of disciplines and fields: Because gen- der and women’s studies is multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, we provide writings that give you, as students, exposure to feminist scholarship from across disciplines as well as within the newer interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary gender and women’s studies stream. Sociology, psychology, history, philosophy, Indigenous studies, litera- ture, cultural studies, biology, science studies, Canadian studies, political economy, and an- thropology are some of the areas represented in this text.

• Historical and contemporary contexts: Many gender and women’s studies texts lean heavily on pres- ent-day concerns and circumstances. We chose selections that balance contemporary analyses with historical ones. To address broader soci- ety’s historical amnesia, we aimed for readings that build a strong foundation in the history of women and other marginalized groups (such as Indigenous and racialized people, people with disabilities, and gender and sexual minorities).

• Diversity of authors: We think that it is import- ant to feature work by a broad range of authors

from various social, economic, and geographic identities and locations. Different viewpoints from diversely located writers can generate crit- ical debate about issues such as the relevance of gender and women’s studies, men’s relation- ship to feminism, gender and sexual minority and trans perspectives, gendered and racialized beauty ideals, impacts of globalization on women workers, and reproductive technologies. Thus, we highlight the richness of the literature and the diversity of gendered experiences, perspectives, and analyses. We include voices from the margins as well as the centre.

• Current and classic selections: While it can be tempting to showcase the newest writing that is stretching the boundaries of feminist ideas and actions, there is great value in revisiting some of the classic works. We have incorporated older and newer selections to honour the powerful contributions of multiple generations of femin- ist thinkers, to recognize the interconnectedness of the past and the present, and to acknowledge the indebtedness of contemporary insights to the work, knowledge, and struggle of those who came before.

• Canadian, North American, and Indigenous content: When we started thinking about this textbook, American collections dominated the market, but there are now an increasing number of Canadian- oriented contributions available. We believe that not just in Canadian, but also in North American classrooms, there should be some focus on Canada, partly to challenge commonly voiced assumptions that gender and other inequalities exist mainly beyond Canadian borders (over “there”). Consideration of the specificity of issues in Canada and North America provides you with critical perspectives on the immediate political, social, economic, and geographic context, where you can also begin to untangle the multiple and complex relations of power between “the West and the rest.” We have tried to integrate a focus

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8 Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

on Indigenous women and colonial histories within Canada and North America, not merely in a few separate sections of the book, but as sustained themes throughout. There is an exciting and growing body of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit women’s and Two-Spirit people’s writing, including work by Indigenous feminists, and in- corporating this work across the themes builds breadth and depth of understanding.

• Global/transnational content: Although it is use- ful to emphasize Canadian and North American specificity, we make links to broader global trends and to the diversity of gendered experiences within and between different parts of the world. We hope to encourage you to think about the local and the global as mutually constitutive. Analyses of global systems and institutions of power are introduced, and material by and about women in various locations is included. Throughout this volume, we try to avoid the “feminist as tourist model” so aptly critiqued by Mohanty (2003), where women from other countries are merely added in to existing Eurocentric frameworks. By foregrounding Canada and North America, we do not take up fully Mohanty’s challenge to in- ternationalize gender and women’s studies curric- ulum in accordance with the “feminist solidarity” model that she promoted. Yet our approach still draws on her insights and those of other trans- national feminist scholars.

• Multiple genres and styles: As instructors, we ap- preciate materials that vary genres and styles, ex- posing students to the numerous forms in which feminist ideas are created, sharpening learners’ skills at reading across disciplines, and celebrat- ing variety in ways of learning and knowing. In addition to standard scholarly articles, we include reports, news clips, fact sheets, website materials, short fiction, poetry, interviews, personal nar- ratives, and, unique to this second edition, ori- ginal artwork. Personal stories and creative works can teach different truths and move audiences in different ways, and often more intimately, than

straight scholarly pieces. Popular works by activ- ists or activist organizations ground the material in practice and let students in on strategies and debates from inside the ranks of social justice movements. We hope these works also inspire you to see the relevance of gender and women’s stud- ies, and generate ideas for action-oriented praxis.

• Tools and insights for education and action: To en- hance the learning process, we have included sev- eral teaching tools. Students and teachers will find useful learning aids in the form of textboxes, activist insights, illustrations and artwork, charts, lists, fact sheets, graphs, newspaper articles, maps, and activist campaign materials. We have chosen materials and teaching aids with attention to the wide variation in identities, ages, backgrounds, interests, literacy levels, and other academic skills among the student body. Instructors have access to a companion Teacher’s Guide with critical questions, teaching tips, and suggested classroom activities and assignments designed to deepen students’ reading and critical thinking skills.

• Balance of bad news/good news: Gender and wom- en’s studies instructors are well aware that students can be overwhelmed with the “bad news” about gendered and other socially created inequalities. This is particularly evident when we examine in- dicators such as growing disparities between the wealthy and the poor within and among nations in contemporary neo-liberal times. The optimism that fuelled second-wave feminists is not as acces- sible for a host of different reasons, yet we want to teach, learn about, and build on signs of hope. Throughout the reader, we highlight diverse ex- amples and case studies of resistance in order to dispel lingering myths about the supposed pow- erlessness of marginalized groups; to challenge gendered, classed, racialized, and ablest stereo- types; and to convey a sense of the vibrancy of human agency. Because organized and collective activism, as well as individual actions, can create change, we have included selections that intro- duce and analyze the limits and possibilities of

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Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies 9

resistance in its various forms. Many students and instructors yearn to explore and share ideas about what we can do—as individuals and in groups of our own making and choosing—to participate in social justice projects.

CRITICAL THINKING FOR CHANGE

As professors in gender and women’s studies for a combined 30-plus years, we believe that a grounding in the theories, methods, and values of our field is critically important in an historical moment marked in many ways by pessimism, uncertainty, and austerity. Feminism has made significant strides toward gender equality, yet feminist and justice movements in Canada and around the world have faced enormous challenges in recent decades—the rise of economic globalization and the neo-liberal erosion of social welfare, equality rights, and economic security for women, racialized people, people with disabilities, and the poor are only a few egregious examples of troubling trends. In 2004, well-known Canadian feminist Judy Rebick com- mented on some of these setbacks in Canada:

The triumph of neo-liberal/neo-conservative politics has dealt a mortal blow to a feminism that seeks economic and social equality. The gains we have made are threatened by the increasing impoverishment of women, even as a few climb the heights of corporate, pro- fessional and political success; by the shock- ing degradation of women in international sex slavery; the overwhelming burden of the double day; longer, rather than shorter, work times; the rise of racism, militarism and the security state; the monopoly of men on power; closer ties, especially military ties, with the United States; and the continuing scourge of war and violence against women and children. (Rebick, 2004, March 15)

Critical problems require critical thinking. The theor- ies, tools, and world views found in gender and wom- en’s studies build our capacities for thinking our way through pressing social problems and for beginning to imagine more just alternatives. Beyond introducing students to vitally important content, the field offers vibrant learning opportunities that teach critical thinking for both personal and social transformation.

But what, then, is critical thinking? Feminist the- orist and educator bell hooks writes that “thinking is an action” (2010, p. 7). Thinking is active because it involves asking questions and seeking answers in order to understand how the world works. hooks argues that students’ passion for knowledge often gets undermined when educational institutions value the consumption of information over the teaching of skills needed to think critically. People com- monly assume that being critical means responding negatively and often dismissively to others’ ideas. Critical engagement, however, does not mean just fault-finding. Instead it involves learning to think carefully and skillfully to analyze and evaluate the truth, value, and meaning of an idea or position. It is active and participatory. It is also hard work. Critical thinking is a process of discerning what is significant about an issue or topic; analyzing and evaluating other people’s thinking about it; ques- tioning the merit and consequences of different pos- itions, including our own; and working to create new knowledge (hooks, 2010). Critical thinking provides a way to expand our consciousness and strive for greater understanding across differences. Because of this, many progressive educators see it as a tool for fostering freedom, democracy, and equality (Freire, 2000, 2005; hooks, 2010).

Conversation is integral to critical thinking. hooks (2010) insists that dialogue enables students to find their voices, identify the issues that matter to them, discover new ways of seeing and knowing, and better remember the ideas exchanged in the classroom. As students taking gender and women’s studies, you have

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opportunities to engage in many kinds of conversations: with instructors, other students, and, importantly, with the authors of the texts you read. At the same time, like many learners in introductory classes, you may have come to university or college perplexed about how to read assigned texts, listen to lectures, or enter into conversations about what you have read and heard. We must remind ourselves that people engaged in conversation are not passive; rather we are alive, open, reflective, and reaching for understanding to deepen, strengthen, and communicate knowledge.

In any learning situation, teachers and students enter a relationship. Lecturers have significant respon- sibilities, but so too do students. The first is listening— again an active, participatory process. Listening does not mean you stop thinking. Rather it means striving to make meaning of the speaker’s message by working to digest and understand, and from there to analyze and reflect on what they are saying. At the same time, pausing to listen does not mean that you must agree with what is being said. Remember that teaching and learning are processes and that knowledge is always changing and evolving. As listeners, it is your respon- sibility to acknowledge what you are learning, but also what remains unclear, underdeveloped, or open to question. Careful listening can lead to well thought-out disagreement and dissent, which are vitally important to critical thinking.

A second set of responsibilities involves self- reflection, or examining your responses to others’ ideas and questioning how your preconceptions and social positioning may be implicated in your hearing. We each bring our personal histories, identities, social relationships, commitments, values, and politics to our listening. Rather than the common knee-jerk reaction of rejecting new ideas outright, particularly those that challenge dominant thought and the status quo, how can you take seriously unfamiliar ways of thinking? What do your immediate responses to these ideas teach you about yourself and, possibly, your own positional- ity? Your job is to look for points of connection that can

aid in meaning-making while opening yourself to the possibility that the new ideas and vantage points might actually change you. They might take you someplace else, to transport you to new understanding.

A third challenge is speaking up and articulat- ing your thoughts, ideas, and positions effectively and respectfully. While speaking in groups can be nerve-racking, finding your voice and figuring out how to use it is a valuable skill whether you continue in academe, pursue a professional degree, or directly enter the workforce. Both generosity and intellectual rigour are vital to creating an ethical space for sharing ideas and learning from each other. But how can you contribute to creating that space? Before and as you speak, keep reflecting: What is the point of my ques- tion or comment? You might also be thinking about your position in relation to the subject under discussion by asking yourself: Who am I in relationship to this topic? What do I bring that can give a unique perspec- tive on this topic? How does my position influence my understanding?

This brings us to the fourth challenge: critical reading. The core elements of critical thinking dis- cussed above are also foundational to critical reading. Engagement with written texts similarly demands listening, self-reflection, and even speaking, since you are entering into dialogue with the author. The Academic Skills Centre at our university encourages students to ask questions of the text, to respond to it and to evaluate it—in short, to “make it mean something to you” (Academic Skills Centre at Trent University, 2015; emphasis ours). Reading requires different approaches to understanding and meaning-making, depending on the type of text you are examining. As you look at each selection in this textbook, it is useful to consider first the genre of the work. Is it a scholarly article? A report by a government or community organization? A newspaper article? A work of art? A fictional short story? A poem? A personal narrative or an interview? A map, chart, or other kind of illustration? The specific questions you ask as an active reader might vary across

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Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies 11

genres. At the same time, there are some overarching questions that can guide you in your comprehension and interpretation. Here we outline eight points of entry involving probes intended to facilitate your reading as an active and interactive process.

QUESTIONS FOR CRITICAL READING

1. How and where does this selection fit into the parts and sections of this text and of your course? How does it relate to the main themes examined in this part and section?

2. Is the subject matter new to you, or do you have some familiarity with it?

3. What are the main ideas? How are these ideas presented? How do they relate to what is being addressed in this part of the textbook and in your class?

4. If you are reading a scholarly article, what is the central argument or thesis? What information is used as evidence to support the argument? Is the argument persuasive?

5. How might this selection relate to key concepts emphasized in this part of the textbook and in your class?

6. Is the piece trying to challenge and change dom- inant thinking about something, deepen and transform your understanding, encourage per- sonal reflection, and/or mobilize you to action?

7. Does the piece resonate with your own experi- ences and/or analyses of the issue or topic? Are there elements that you are questioning? What remains confusing, unclear, or underdeveloped?

8. Why is this piece significant? Why do you think it was included as one of your readings?

THE CRITICAL TERRAIN OF THIS BOOK

We have organized this book into six thematic parts. Within each part, there are between two and six sec- tions that develop the topics and address some key debates in feminist scholarship and activism.

Part 1: Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

Part 2: Constructions of Sex and Gender Part 3: Gendered Identities Part 4: Cultural Representations and Body Politics Part 5: Gendering Globalization, Migration,

and Activism Part 6: Organizing for Change

The second edition contains significant revisions to the table of contents. Of the 81 chapters, 43 are new to this edition. Of the 47 textboxes (called Snapshots and Soundwaves in this edition), 25 are newly added. Significantly the second edition features 10 works of activist art, along with a commissioned original artistic map by Indigenous disability-identified artist Vanessa Dion Fletcher (Lenape/Potawatomi). The overall structure of the book is generally the same, although we changed a few of the headings and added a new subsection on “Gender, Migration, and Citizenship.” We increased the content on contemporary activist movements (including Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, disability justice, and hashtag activism); trans and gender-queer identities and politics; and feminist disability perspectives. We also added material on Islamophobia and the politics of veiling, Indigenous sovereignty and cultural resurgence, intersex, and sex work as labour.

The “critical terrain” signalled in our title has multiple meanings for this volume and for the future of gender and women’s studies. Certainly the theor- etical trends we have outlined, and that are taken up throughout the book, constitute critical shifts in a field

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12 Introduction Mapping the Terrain of Gender and Women’s Studies

that is continuously being re-mapped. Marginalized peoples around the world are facing critical problems requiring critical thought and action by all of us as members of local and global communities. We are at a critical juncture where systems of power and political ideologies are heightening divisions between people, pushing certain groups further to the margins. In this context, feminism offers critical insights and tools for transforming landscapes of inequalities.

As we pass this book over to you, we hope that you will be informed, engaged, challenged, and inspired by the content and the range of selections. Each piece offers its unique wisdom, and we hope that you will discover your own treasures in these pages. We also hope you will attend to the diversity of voices, issues, identities, and perspectives, taking care to reflect on their meanings and their contributions to feminist critical thought and action. Finally we hope that this textbook facilitates your social justice consciousness as it also fosters your intellectual and creative cap- acities to appraise and envision different avenues for change. We invite you into the conversation, and like to imagine you discussing, sharing, and debating the ideas with others in various forums and contexts.

Note: Portions of this introduction were adapted from two articles: “Rethinking Women’s Studies: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and the Introductory Course,” published in Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal (2011a), and “Reading Women’s and Gender Studies in Canada: A Review of Recent Introductory Textbooks,” pub- lished in Canadian Woman Studies (2011b).

REFERENCES

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Blyth, Molly. (2008). “‘So, What’s a White Girl Like Me Doing in a Place Like This?’ Re-Thinking Pedagogical Practices in an Indigenous Context.” Resources for Feminist Research, 33(1/2), 63–80.

Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW). (2006). Intersectional Feminist Frameworks: An Emerging Vision. Ottawa, ON: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

Collins, Patricia Hill. (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1st ed.). Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. (1994). “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” In Martha Fineman & Roxanne Mykitiuk (Eds.), The Public Nature of Private Violence (pp. 93–118). New York, NY: Routledge.

Davis, Dawn Rae. (2010). “Unmirroring Pedagogies: Teaching with Intersectional and Transnational Methods in the Women and Gender Studies Classroom.” Feminist Formations, 22(1), 136–62.

Dion, Susan. (2009). Braiding Histories: Learning from Aboriginal Peoples’ Experiences and Perspectives. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Driskill, Qwo-Li, Heath Justice, Daniel, Miranda, Deborah A., & Tatonetti, Lisa. (2011). Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature. Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Dua, Ena, & Trotz, Alissa (Eds.). (2002). “Transnational Pedagogy: Doing Political Work in Women’s Studies. An Interview with Chandra Talpade Mohanty.” Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, 26(2) (Spring/Summer), 66–77.

Freire, Paulo. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York, NY: Continuum.

Freire, Paulo. (2005). Education for Critical Consciousness. New York, NY: Continuum.

Green, Joyce. (2007). “Taking Account of Aboriginal Feminism.” In Joyce Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (pp. 20–32). Black Point, NS: Fernwood.

Grewal, Inderpal, & Kaplan, Caren (Eds.). (2006). An Introduction to Women’s Studies: Gender in a Transnational World (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

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Hobbs, Margaret, & Rice, Carla. (2011a). “Rethinking Women’s Studies: Curriculum, Pedagogy, and the Introductory Course.” A Women’s Studies Journal, 35(2), 139–49.

Hobbs, Margaret, & Rice, Carla. (2011b). “Reading Women’s and Gender Studies in Canada: A Review of Recent Introductory Textbooks.” A Women’s Studies Journal, 29(1/2), 201–07.

hooks, bell. (2010). Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom. New York, NY: Routledge.

Hunt, Sarah. (2016). “Representing Colonial Violence: Trafficking, Sex Work, and the Violence of Law.” Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice, 37(2), 25–39.

Kaplan, Caren, & Grewal, Inderpal. (2002). “Transnational Practices and Interdisciplinary Feminist Scholarship: Refiguring Women’s and Gender Studies.” In Robyn Wiegman (Ed.), Women’s Studies on Its Own: A Next Wave Reader in Institutional Change (pp. 66–81). London, UK: Duke University Press.

Karpinski, Eva. (2007). “‘Copy, Cut, Paste’: A Reflection on Some Institutional Constraints of Teaching a Big Intro Course.” Resources for Feminist Research, 32(3/4), 44–53.

LaRocque, Emma. (2007). “Metis and Feminist: Ethical Reflections on Feminism, Human Rights, and Decolonization.” In Joyce Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (pp. 53–71). Black Point, NS: Fernwood.

Meem, Deborah, Gibson, Michelle, & Alexander, Jonathan (Eds.). (2010). Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (1991). “‘Under Western Eyes’: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” In Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo & Lourdes Torres (Eds.), Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism (pp. 51–80). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. (2003). “‘Under Western Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggles.” In Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Ed.), Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (pp. 221–51). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rebick, Judy. (2004, March 15). “We’ve Come Part Way, Baby: A New Opportunity Has Opened for the Women’s Movement.” rabble.ca. Retrieved from: http://rabble.ca/ news/weve-come-part-way-baby.

Roy, Arundhati. (2003). War Talk. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

Scott-Dixon, Krista (Ed.). (2006). Trans/forming Feminisms: Trans-Feminist Voices Speak Out. Toronto, ON: Sumach.

Shohat, Ella. (2001). “Area Studies, Transnationalism, and the Feminist Production of Knowledge.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 26(4), 1269–72.

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. (2011). Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books.

Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London, UK: Zed Books.

St. Denis, Verna. (2007). “Feminism Is for Everybody: Aboriginal Women, Feminism, and Diversity.” In Joyce Green (Ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (pp. 33–52). Black Point, NS: Fernwood.

Steinem, Gloria. (1970, June 7). “‘Women’s Liberation’ Aims to Free Men, Too.’” The Washington Post, 192.

Stombler, Mindy, Baunach, Dawn M., Burgess, Elisabeth O., Donnelly, Denise, Simonds, Wendy, & Windsor, Elroi J. (Eds.). (2010). Sex Matters: The Sexuality and Society Reader (3rd ed.). Toronto, ON: Allyn & Bacon.

Yuval-Davis, Nira. (2006). “Intersectionality and Feminist Politics.” European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(3), 193–209.

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PART 1 Foundations: Why Gender and

Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.

—bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2000, p. 110)

Part 1 addresses popular misconceptions and stereotypes about feminism, and discusses men’s engagements with feminism in contemporary North America. We review some markers of progress and continuing inequalities in Canada and the United States. The concept of “intersec- tionality” is introduced as a tool to understand diverse gendered experiences and the relations of women, men, and gender non-conforming people to systems of power and inequality.

Part 1A: This Is What a Feminist Looks Like This section introduces you to different ways in which feminism has been understood and practised in the past and present. The articles offer multiple definitions of feminism, exam- ine its history and relevance, and consider the many myths and stereotypes associated with the term.

Part 1B: Diversity and Intersectionality The second section examines social differences, in particular differences informed by gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, geography, histories of colonization and slavery, and embodiment. It also introduces the idea of intersectionality to understand/analyze how these social differences shape people’s lives.

Part 1C: Accounting for Inequalities In this section, we provide an overview of key markers of progress and continuing inequalities in the North American and global contexts. Issues introduced include the gender gap in political representation, income inequality, gendered and racialized labour markets, social programs, childcare, and women’s unpaid labour.

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Part 1A: This Is What a Feminist Looks Like

CHAPTER 1

Excerpts from Feminism Is for Everybody

bell hooks

bell hooks is a leading feminist theorist and cultural critic, whose work focuses on the interconnectedness of race, gender, culture, and class. The author of over 30 books, she has been recognized with numerous awards and has been named one of the most influential American thinkers by Publisher’s Weekly and the Atlantic Monthly, and one of the world’s top 100 visionaries by Utne Reader. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism and Feminism Is for Everybody (excerpted here) are among her most well-known books.

INTRODUCTION: COME CLOSER TO FEMINISM

Everywhere I go I proudly tell folks who want to know who I am and what I do that I am a writer, a feminist theorist, a cultural critic. I tell them I write about movies and popular culture, analyzing the message in the medium. Most people find this exciting and want to know more. Everyone goes to movies, watches tele- vision, glances through magazines, and everyone has thoughts about the messages they receive, about the images they look at. It is easy for the diverse public I encounter to understand what I do as a cultural critic, to understand my passion for writing (lots of folks want to write, and do). But feminist theory—that’s the place where the questions stop. Instead I tend to hear all about the evil of feminism and the bad feminists: how “they” hate men; how “they” want to go against nature—and god; how “they” are all lesbians; how

“they” are taking all the jobs and making the world hard for white men, who do not stand a chance.

When I ask these same folks about the feminist books or magazines they read, when I ask them about the feminist talks they have heard, about the feminist activists they know, they respond by letting me know that everything they know about feminism has come into their lives third hand, that they really have not come close enough to feminist movement to know what really happens, what it’s really about. Mostly they think feminism is a bunch of angry women who want to be like men. They do not even think about feminism as being about rights—about women gaining equal rights. When I talk about the feminism I know—up close and personal—they willingly listen, although when our conversations end, they are quick to tell me I am different, not like the “real” feminists who hate men, who are angry. I assure them I am as real and as radical a feminist as one can be, and if they

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Chapter 1 Excerpts from Feminism Is for Everybody 17

dare to come closer to feminism they will see it is not how they have imagined it.

* * * * *

I have wanted them to have an answer to the question “What is feminism?” that is rooted neither in fear or fantasy. I have wanted them to have this simple definition to read again and again so they know: “Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” I love this definition […] because it so clearly states that the movement is not about being anti-male. It makes it clear that the problem is sexism. And that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action. As a consequence, females can be just as sexist as men. And while that does not excuse or justify male domination, it does mean that it would be naive and wrongminded for feminist thinkers to see the movement as simplisti- cally being for women against men. To end patriarchy (another way of naming the institutionalized sexism) we need to be clear that we are all participants in perpetuating sexism until we change our minds and hearts, until we let go of sexist thought and action and replace it with feminist thought and action.

Males as a group have and do benefit the most from patriarchy, from the assumption that they are superior to females and should rule over us. But those benefits have come with a price. In return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they are required to dominate women, to exploit and oppress us, using violence if they must to keep patriarchy intact. Most men find it difficult to be patriarchs. Most men are disturbed by hatred and fear of women, by male vio- lence against women, even the men who perpetuate this violence. But they fear letting go of the benefits. They are not certain what will happen to the world they know most intimately if patriarchy changes. So they find it easier to passively support male domina- tion even when they know in their minds and hearts that it is wrong. Again and again men tell me they

have no idea what it is feminists want. I believe them. I believe in their capacity to change and grow. And I believe that if they knew more about feminism they would no longer fear it, for they would find in feminist movement the hope of their own release from the bondage of patriarchy.

It is for these men, young and old, and for all of us, that I have written this short handbook, the book I have spent more than 20 years longing for. I had to write it because I kept waiting for it to appear, and it did not. And without it there was no way to address the hordes of people in this nation who are daily bombarded with anti-feminist backlash, who are being told to hate and resist a movement that they know very little about. There should be so many little feminist primers, easy to read pamphlets and books, telling us all about feminism, that this book would be just another passionate voice speaking out on behalf of feminist politics. There should be billboards; ads in magazines; ads on buses, subways, trains; television commercials spreading the word, letting the world know more about feminism. We are not there yet. But this is what we must do to share feminism, to let the movement into everyone’s mind and heart. Feminist change has already touched all our lives in a positive way. And yet we lose sight of the positive when all we hear about feminism is negative.

When I began to resist male domination, to rebel against patriarchal thinking (and to oppose the strongest patriarchal voice in my life—my mother’s voice), I was still a teenager, suicidal, depressed, uncertain about how I would find meaning in my life and a place for myself. I needed feminism to give me a foundation of equality and justice to stand on. Mama has come around to feminist thinking. She sees me and all her daughters (we are six) living better lives because of feminist politics. She sees the promise and hope in feminist movement. It is that promise and hope that I want to share with you in this book, with everybody.

Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike

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18 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction. Imagine living in a world where we can all be who we are, a world of peace and possibility. Feminist revolution alone will not create such a world; we need to end racism, class elitism, imperialism. But it will make it possible for us to be fully self-actualized females and males able to create beloved community, to live together, realizing our dreams of freedom and justice, living the truth that we are all “created equal.” Come closer. See how feminism can touch and change your life and all our lives. Come closer and know firsthand what feminist movement is all about. Come closer and you will see: feminism is for everybody.

FEMINIST POLITICS: WHERE WE STAND

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. […]

As all advocates of feminist politics know, most people do not understand sexism, or if they do, they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunder- standing of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media. The feminism they hear about the most is portrayed by women who are primarily committed to gender equality—equal pay for equal work, and sometimes women and men sharing household chores and parenting. They see that these women are usually white and materially privileged. They know from mass media that women’s liberation focuses on the freedom to have abortions, to be lesbians, to challenge rape and domestic violence. Among these issues, masses of people agree with the idea of gender equity in the workplace—equal pay for equal work.

Since our society continues to be primarily a “Christian” culture, masses of people continue to believe that god has ordained that women be

subordinate to men in the domestic household. Even though masses of women have entered the workforce, even though many families are headed by women who are the sole breadwinners, the vision of domestic life which continues to dominate the nation’s imagina- tion is one in which the logic of male domination is intact, whether men are present in the home or not. The wrongminded notion of feminist movement which implied it was anti-male carried with it the wrongminded assumption that all female space would necessarily be an environment where patriarchy and sexist thinking would be absent. Many women, even those involved in feminist politics, chose to believe this as well.

There was indeed a great deal of anti-male sentiment among early feminist activists who were responding to male domination with anger. It was that anger at injustice that was the impetus for creating a women’s liberation movement. Early on most feminist activists (a majority of whom were white) had their consciousness raised about the nature of male domination when they were working in anti-classist and anti-racist settings with men who were telling the world about the importance of freedom while subordinating the women in their ranks. Whether it was white women working on behalf of socialism, black women working on behalf of civil rights and black liberation, or Native American women working for Indigenous rights, it was clear that men wanted to lead, and they wanted women to follow. Participating in these radical freedom struggles awakened the spirit of rebellion and resistance in progressive females and led them towards contemporary women’s liberation.

As contemporary feminism progressed, as women realized that males were not the only group in our society who supported sexist thinking and behavior— that females could be sexist as well—anti-male senti- ment no longer shaped the movement’s consciousness. The focus shifted to an all-out effort to create gender justice. But women could not band together to further feminism without confronting our sexist thinking. Sisterhood could not be powerful as long as women

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Chapter 1 Excerpts from Feminism Is for Everybody 19

were competitively at war with one another. Utopian visions of sisterhood based solely on the awareness of the reality that all women were in some way victimized by male domination were disrupted by discussions of class and race. Discussions of class dif- ferences occurred early on in contemporary feminism, preceding discussions of race. Diana Press published revolutionary insights about class divisions between women as early as the mid-’70s in their collection of essays Class and Feminism. These discussions did not trivialize the feminist insistence that “sisterhood is powerful,” they simply emphasized that we could only become sisters in struggle by confronting the ways women—through sex, class, and race—dominated and exploited other women, and created a political platform that would address these differences.

Even though individual black women were active in contemporary feminist movement from its incep- tion, they were not the individuals who became the “stars” of the movement, who attracted the attention of mass media. Often individual black women active in feminist movement were revolutionary feminists (like many white lesbians). They were already at odds with reformist feminists who resolutely wanted to project a vision of the movement as being solely about women gaining equality with men in the existing sys- tem. Even before race became a talked about issue in feminist circles it was clear to black women (and to their revolutionary allies in struggle) that they were never going to have equality within the existing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

From its earliest inception feminist movement was polarized. Reformist thinkers chose to emphasize gender equality. Revolutionary thinkers did not want simply to alter the existing system so that women would have more rights. We wanted to transform that system, to bring an end to patriarchy and sexism. Since patriarchal mass media was not interested in the more revolutionary vision, it never received attention in mainstream press. The vision of “women’s liberation” which captured and still holds the public imagination was the one representing women as wanting what men had. And this was the vision that was easier to

realize. Changes in our nation’s economy, economic depression, the loss of jobs, etc., made the climate ripe for our nation’s citizens to accept the notion of gender equality in the workforce. […]

Most women, especially privileged white women, ceased even to consider revolutionary feminist visions, once they began to gain economic power within the existing social structure. Ironically, revolutionary feminist thinking was most accepted and embraced in academic circles. In those circles the production of revolutionary feminist theory pro- gressed, but more often than not that theory was not made available to the public. It became and remains a privileged discourse available to those among us who are highly literate, well-educated, and usually materially privileged. […]

Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism. And the assumption pre- vailed that no matter what a woman’s politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be femin- ists without fundamentally challenging and changing themselves or the culture. […]

Feminist politics is losing momentum because feminist movement has lost clear definitions. We have those definitions. Let’s reclaim them. Let’s share them. Let’s start over. Let’s have T-shirts and bumper stickers and postcards and hip-hop music, television and radio commercials, ads everywhere and billboards, and all manner of printed material that tells the world about feminism. We can share the simple yet powerful message that feminism is a movement to end sexist oppression. Let’s start there. Let the movement begin again.

Source: hooks, bell. (2000). Excerpted from

“Introduction” and “Chapter 1: Feminist Politics.”

In Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

(pp. vii–x, 1–6). London, UK: Pluto Press.

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CHAPTER 2

What’s Feminism Done (For Me) Lately?

Victoria L. Bromley

Victoria L. Bromley is an award-winning teacher and former assistant professor at the Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at Carleton University. She is the author of Feminisms Matter: Debates, Theories, Activism and “Women’s Studies: Are We ‘Broad’ Enough?” published in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice.

We made it! We are equal. Feminism is no longer necessary. And, of course, feminism is dead. The struggle is over and we can put our concerns to rest. These are some of the tenets that we often hear. It makes us feel good to think that things are not as bad for women and other marginalized groups as they were in the past. Social commentary of this brand is often paired with the familiar preface for gender equality assertions: “I’m not a feminist but …” What follows is a laundry list of values or aspirations that most people can agree on, such as equal pay, women’s equal access to education, ending violence against women and children, women’s right to enter the professions of medicine or engineering, and women’s right to vote.

I’M NOT A FEMINIST BUT…

Feminism offers a way to see ourselves and the world anew. Fortified with feminist analyses, we can challenge

the negative images that bombard us every day and the bad things happening around us. It enables us to reject the bad stuff and move on to the good. The good is the stuff anyone can get behind, like equal rights, equal pay, environmental justice, and just plain old “I’m OK the way I am” and “I don’t have to change who I am for anybody.” These ideas are empowering.

I always ask my students during the first class, “How many of you are feminists?” About 10 per cent of students in my large first-year class usually claim this political identity. Yet I am always surprised by how many students look confused at my question. I commonly follow up with more acceptable questions such as how many of you believe in equal rights? Equal pay? Equal access to education? Reproductive free- dom? Accessible and affordable child-care? Ending violence against women? Invariably most students raise their hands and I welcome them to the idea that these beliefs might mean they are feminists.

Our reluctance to link feminism to social jus- tice issues is based on the negative stereotypes of

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Chapter 2 What’s Feminism Done (For Me) Lately? 21

feminists that dominate popular culture. Who wants to be seen as one of those card-carrying, angry, loud, man-hating “‘Feminazis”? Our reluctance to raise our hands and identify as feminists could also mean that we are not sure how others will interpret our version of feminism. Yes, there are many kinds of feminism, and we may not agree with everything other feminists say or do, so we keep quiet. But if feminism at its core includes both theory and prac- tice to end sexism and other systems of oppression, is rooted in social justice, and demands social change, how can we not speak out?

Oh, but we have been speaking out! Feminists have been raising their voices for years. Social change doesn’t happen easily. It is created through strug- gle, protest, and a commitment to a better world. It is rooted in concepts of social justice. Feminists have been very successful in making social change and achieving many of their goals. Unfortunately, many of the hard-fought struggles and important gains have become conventional common sense. I say unfortunately because such incredible successes make the significant changes in North American societies less visible. Many of the hard-won achieve- ments by women’s and other social movements now inform popular understandings of normal in North American culture. Most of us accept that with cit- izenship comes the right to vote regardless of one’s gender, race, class, or sexuality, and that equal pay is a good idea, at least in principle. We also think that equality and freedom from discrimination are important goals for any society. However, these seemingly common-sense notions were not always part of our collective consciousness. Consequently, we may take them for granted.

It is important to recognize that in the mid- twentieth century, the women’s movement emerged alongside many other social justice movements. All of these movements inspired each other, learned from each other, and created a wider context for social change and the questioning of many well-established customs, laws, and social practices

that fostered inequalities and oppressions. As a way to understand the past and to support future feminist activism, we will examine the many links between women’s movement and other social justice movements, including the peace movement, civil rights movement, Indian/Native rights movement, and gay/lesbian rights movement. The purpose here is to provide an understanding of where we were, how far we have come (at least in some ways), and what is at stake.

SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

In North America, the 1960s and 1970s were a per- iod of social and political upheaval that made people both hopeful for and fearful of change. In the United States, the government was preoccupied with the Cold War and defeating the Soviet Union. This inter- national focus affected domestic politics. Anti-war and peace movements were visible and vocal, with students and others protesting American involvement in the Vietnam War. The slogan “Make love not war” could be heard on the streets and in the news. Canada did not experience the same level of protest, and its international ambitions were not as intimately tied to victory in Vietnam as it was in the United States, but national debates still ensued, particularly as American draft resisters sought refuge across the border. The oil crisis also emerged in the 1970s. American reliance on oil laid the foundation for a new phase of U.S. imperialism and interventions in attempts to retain control over global oil reserves.

At the same time, the movement for civil rights in the United States was making race relations front-page news. African American students, with the support of local communities and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), sparked a movement to end racial segregation in the American South when they peacefully sat down at lunch counters reserved

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22 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

for whites and requested service. The first lunch counter sit-in was launched in Wichita, Kansas, in July 1958, and by August of that year, integration was achieved. […] Thousands of ordinary people protested everything from segregation on interstate buses to segregation in education and employment throughout the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, who articulated different ideas about how to bring white supremacy to an end, became the best-known spokesmen for that movement. White supremacy refers to the belief that white people are superior to all others, which has resulted in the sys- temic privileging of white people. Federal legislation, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, made racial segregation in schools, workplaces, and public facilities illegal and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race. It also made discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, or national origin illegal. The pass- ing of the 1965 National Voting Rights Act, which banned voter prerequisites and qualifications such as literacy tests, ended the legal disenfranchisement experienced by African Americans, women, and the poor. Making discrimination illegal, however, does not mean that racism ceases to operate. But it was the bravery and creativity of ordinary women and men that inspired the nation and encouraged other oppressed people to create their own movements.

Canada’s history of racial exclusion differs sharply from that of the United States. Canada’s experience of race relations is much less openly con- frontational, and the mass demonstrations, sit-ins, protests, and marches that marked the 1960s in the United States were less visible, although protests did occur. […] But slavery, segregation, and racism did happen and racism continues in Canada to this day. Exclusionary practices in Canada relied extensively on unwritten conventions and social attitudes rather than the formal legal structures used in the southern United States.

Viola Desmond—A Canadian Civil Rights Activist

It is perhaps fitting that the little-known hero of

Canadian civil rights fought her battle in Nova Scotia,

where segregation was socially, but not legally, sanc-

tioned. Often compared to Rosa Parks, who refused

to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus

in 1955, Viola Desmond had refused to give up her

seat in a New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, movie theatre

in 1946 (McNeil 2005, 65; Smith 2008, 17).

Viola Desmond requested a ticket for a main

floor house seat at the Roseland Theatre; however,

the white teller sold her a ticket for the designat-

ed black seating area in the balcony. The teller

apologized and explained that she was unable to

sell Desmond a main floor ticket. Nonetheless,

Viola Desmond took a main floor seat in protest

of the unlawful segregation policy of the Roseland

Theatre. The white theatre manager insisted that

Desmond move to the balcony, and when she re-

fused, the white police chief was called. Desmond

was dragged from the theatre and arrested.

Although the theatre imposed designated “white”

and “black” seating, the practice of segregation

was not based in law. Since Desmond could not be

prosecuted for sitting in a white-designated area,

the white police magistrate charged her with tax

evasion. Since the Roseland Theatre charged for-

ty cents for main floor seats, and thirty for balcony

seats, and Desmond was sold a balcony seat, she

was technically guilty of tax evasion on the differ-

ence between the two ticket prices, which amount-

ed to one cent in tax. Shocked and troubled by her

arrest and conviction, Viola Desmond launched an

appeal with the assistance of the newly organized

Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of

Coloured People (NSAACP), the black community,

and the black press (Backhouse 1999).

Their collective effort to challenge Desmond’s

conviction and end racial segregation in theatre

seating was defeated in 1947 when the Nova Scotia

continued

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Chapter 2 What’s Feminism Done (For Me) Lately? 23

Supreme Court dismissed the application for judi-

cial review. Viola Desmond continued to be an avid

anti-racism activist until she died in 1965, without

redress for her conviction.

In 2010, the Premier of Nova Scotia, Darrell

Dexter, offered a long overdue apology when Viola

Desmond was granted a posthumous pardon. At the

announcement ceremony, the first black Lieutenant

Governor of Nova Scotia, Mayann Francis, stated,

“It is only on rare occasions … that a society comes

together to undo the wrongs of the past” (Parliament

of Canada 2010). Efforts are underway to designate

a provincial holiday to honour Viola Desmond.1

Canadians often take pride in the romanticized history of the Underground Railroad, which brought many black people to Canada from the United States. Following the second Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 in the United States, which allowed free blacks, former, and escaped slaves to be re-enslaved, many African Americans fled to Canada. In the years following the American Civil War (1861–65), the majority of blacks returned to their communities in the United States, disappointed not to have found the freedom from racial oppression promised in Canada. Many Canadians are unaware of the long history of black people’s presence in Canada, which dates back to 1608 when the first named “negro” servant, Mathieu de Coste, was recorded in Nova Scotia. The first recorded black slave was Oliver le Jeune, who was brought from Madagascar to Quebec in 1632 (Winks 1997, 61). Black people came to Canada in various other ways as well. Following the American Revolution, Black Loyalists, many of whom were slaves who fought for the British, and were therefore seen as traitors to the newly established United States, were promised land and freedom by the British in Canada in 1783. The British also exiled some former slaves known as the Maroons, to Nova Scotia in 1796 (Winks 1997; Mensah 2010). This group of escapees had wreaked havoc on the British colony of Jamaica by raiding plantations and liberating slaves.

Native Americans were also actively protesting during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. […] The American Indian Movement (AIM) sought sov- ereignty over Native American lands and for Native peoples with a focus on treaty rights and the objective of preserving tradition and culture. AIM organized the Trail of Broken Treaties march on Washington in 1971, which offered a framework for negotiating tribal sovereignty within the federal system, and its members were key actors in the occupations of his- toric sites (Deloria and Lytle [1984] 1998; Ward and Vander Wall 1988). Many Aboriginal people living in Canada travelled to the United States to join AIM and support Native self-determination.

Like many Native American groups in the United States, Canadian First Nations, Métis, and Inuit are bound by land treaties and subject to the dictates of the Canadian government, rather than constituting self-determining nations. The descend- ants of those who lived in the area now known as Canada, prior to European contact, are referred to as First Nations peoples. The name signifies their status as one of Canada’s founding nations, together with English and French. Métis are Native peoples of mixed North American Aboriginal and European heritage, who self-identify as Métis. Inuit are Native peoples of northern Labrador, northern Quebec, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. Together, these three groups are understood as Aboriginal peoples of Canada. But not all Aboriginal groups ceded their lands to the Canadian government, and there are many ongoing disputes with federal and provincial governments over title and land rights. The revision of the 1876 Indian Act in 1951 allowed some traditional ceremonies, such as potlatch and pow-wows, to be practiced once again. The 1951 Act instituted changes to Indian Status, which deter- mined who was and who was not eligible to claim Indian Status. The 1951 revision ultimately excluded many women who were born with Indian Status and later lost their Status, as did their children and grandchildren, because they married a non-Indian.

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24 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

Conversely, non-Status Indian women who married Status Indian men became Status Indians. Native people actively challenged this sexist legislation since it prohibited non-Status Indians from having prop- erty on Indian Reserves. A Status Indian woman who married a non-Indian man and then later got divorced could not return to her reserve to live, as housing would no longer be available to her (Green 2001; Lawrence 2003; Moss 1990).

Protests and legal challenges led to the passage of Bill C-31 in 1985, which reinstated some women and children’s Indian Status. However, even with this bill’s revised calculations, Aboriginal people continue to be denied Status as they “marry out.” The federal government is therefore increasingly able to shrug off its responsibilities to Aboriginal people. The number of Status Indians will continue to decline as children of Status and non-Status relationships are eventually cut off.

All this history may seem unconnected to feminisms, and to some, perhaps a bit boring, but understanding the diversity of historical movements helps us to imagine this dynamic and socially and politically charged era. It was this environment that supported the development of new feminist thinking and the invigoration of women’s movement.

Imagine change brewing all around you, because the 1960s also witnessed the emergence of the gay rights movement. Like the peace movement, this movement emerged in the era of Cold War politics. This context was particularly important as governments of the day increased the state regulation and repression of homo- sexuality, guided by assumptions about “subversives” and deviant identities as vulnerable to blackmail and communist influences. These views dictated practices that resulted in the expulsion of gays and lesbians from the military and government institutions, as well as heightened policing of gay bars and social spaces in both Canada and the United States (Andersen 2006; Kinsman 1995, 2010; Smith 2008). […]

While gays and lesbians had been organizing in an ad hoc fashion around education, acceptance,

and the de-pathologization of homosexuality since the 1950s, the time was now ripe for concerted social change. Moved by the fervour of social movements in 1960s and 1970s, particularly the women’s and civil rights movements, in which gays and lesbians were already participating, gays and lesbians shifted their agenda to a more liberatory focus. […]

Gay liberation has been celebrated since 1970 across the United States and elsewhere, commonly in June to commemorate the Stonewall riots. Gay Pride parades and events attempt to make homosexuality more visible, celebrate diverse gay identities, and ultimately make homosexuality socially acceptable. In 2003, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Lawrence v. Texas held that states cannot criminalize consenting adults who engage in sodomy in the pri- vacy of their homes. In effect, Lawrence struck down all remaining state sodomy laws (Andersen 2006; Smith 2008). However, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans and queer people remain subject to legal and social regulation in many areas, including same-sex marriage, adoption, child custody, health care, and employment, among others.

In Canada, an amendment to the Criminal Code in 1969 repealed the sodomy laws to decriminalize consensual sex for those twenty-one years of age and over. Interestingly, this amendment was part of a package of legal reforms proposed in 1967 by then Minister of Justice Pierre Trudeau, which also included greater access to abortion and the relaxation of divorce laws. Pierre Trudeau introduced the bill into Parliament and made headlines with his legend- ary statement, “The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation” (Smith 2008).

Nonetheless, the unjust Toronto bathhouse raids of 1981 resulted in the arrest of close to 300 men on February 5. Targeting four of six popular gay bathhouses, Toronto police, together with the Ontario Attorney General’s Office, engaged in mas- sive raids, employing tactics to terrify and humiliate bathhouse patrons. Following the arrests, police con- tacted employers notifying them of their employees’

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Chapter 2 What’s Feminism Done (For Me) Lately? 25

arrests. As a result, many of the men arrested lost their jobs (Bérubé 2003). On February 6, the day after the first bathhouse raids, several thousand people marched on the Division 52 police station to protest the targeting of gays and lesbians by police. Weeks later, over 4,000 people gathered at Queen’s Park demanding an investigation into the raids. On March 6, gay and lesbian activists, including MP Svend Robinson, author Margaret Atwood, and Reverend Brent Hawkes (who went on a hunger strike until an independent investigation of the raids was initiated), gathered for a Gay Freedom Rally (CBC 2012; Thomas 2011). In the official inves- tigation that followed, police were condemned for their actions and the right to engage in consensual sex in private spaces was confirmed. It is reported that Operation Soap, as the raids were called, and the “policing” of the three subsequent protests, cost taxpayers an estimated $10 million. Pride Day was first celebrated in Toronto on June 28, 1981, with 1,500 participants, and is touted as North America’s largest Gay Pride parade, with more than one mil- lion people now attending the celebrations.

This brief summary paints a complex picture of social justice movements in the 1960s and 1970s. Women were active in all of these social justice movements and in the struggle for what was then being called wom- en’s liberation. While each movement was distinct, it offered the possibility of crossover participation and synergy on multiple issues. Synergy, where one issue is connected to other issues to bolster change at many levels, is evident in the struggle for Native women’s rights (see text box Synergy Among and Across Movements: The Case of Native Women’s Rights in Canada).

Women’s movement has never been homoge- neous or linear. A homogeneous movement would assume that all the women who participated were the same—they would look the same, think the same, act the same, and want the same results. However, the women who participated in “Women’s Liberation”

have always been of all races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, abilities, and classes. Not surprisingly, this diversity has brought a plethora of issues to the table and has resulted in multiple paths and many twists and turns complicating women’s movement. It has also resulted in conflicts, debates, and exclusions.

The process of trying to set priorities and frame a cohesive and unified agenda is where women’s move- ment gets its bad reputation as a white, middle-class movement. And, to some extent, this seemed like the case as the mainstream media created celebrities out of prominent white women such as Betty Friedan, who published The Feminine Mystique (1963) documenting women’s unhappiness as “the problem that has no name.” Gloria Steinem also became famous during this era, which put her in the position of speaking for all women, as well as Jane Fonda, who became the face of women’s involvement in the anti-war movement. […] While these women may have been the chosen darlings of the media, many more women of various backgrounds were working tirelessly, marching, advocating, and struggling for social change beyond the focus of the cameras.

WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IS COMPLEX, MULTIPLE, AND DIVERSE

[In the United States,] Betty Friedan was the co-founder of the National Organization for Women (NOW) along with the Reverend Pauli Murray, who was the first African American woman to become an Episcopal priest. This pair showed the diversity of women’s representation in the movement. As the co-founder of NOW, Friedan also participated in some of the ongoing conflicts, debates, and exclusions that plagued women’s movement, particularly in her notorious 1969 reference to lesbians as the “lavender menace.” Not until 1977 did NOW embrace lesbian rights as a fundamental feminist goal.

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26 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

While lesbians were active in the gay rights movement, many also claimed a feminist conscious- ness. Evidence of this synergy across movements is presented in the radical feminist Redstockings Manifesto (1969), which defined lesbianism as a pol- itical identity and a choice, which women should embrace. The Manifesto called on all women to unite in the struggle for liberation and all men to give up their male privilege and support women’s liberation as a goal of humanity. It promoted consciousness-raising to expose and eradicate patriarchy, which it argued was the root of women’s oppression.

Synergy Among and Across Movements: The Case of Native Women’s Rights in Canada

Aboriginal peoples have historically had a variety

of ways of organizing gendered relationships and

expectations that varied over time and in different

communities. With the creation of the Canadian

nation, Aboriginal women’s roles and status were

defined by laws and customs that were particular

to them but not created by them. In Canada, the

Indian Act governed Aboriginal Status, and when

Mary Two-Axe Early, Jeannette Lavell, Irene Bedard,

and Sandra Lovelace lost their Status and were

permanently banned from their ancestral lands,

like so many Status Indian women who married

non-Indians, they fought back. Loss of Status meant

that these women were no longer able to live, own

property, or be buried on their reserves. They were

prohibited from participating in reserve politics

through council meetings or elections, or having

any say in band decision-making.

Unwilling to accept the exile of any Aboriginal

women from their Native lands, in the 1950s Mary

Two-Axe Early began her life of activism and pro-

test, founding the organization Equal Rights for

Indian Women in 1969 (the forerunner to the na-

tional Indian Rights for Indian Women, founded in

1973). Recognizing the dynamic synergy of the time

and understanding the importance of the Royal

Commission on the Status of Women as a means

for change, Two-Axe Early presented a petition be-

fore the Commission, challenging the government to

rectify the loss of Native women’s Status under the

Indian Act. Spurred by the contradictions of living

on the reserve but not being able to inherit property

due to loss of Status, Two-Axe Early testified to the

Commission (Green 2001; Two-Axe Early 1994). Hers

was but one voice among the many Native women

who had lost their Indian Status through marriage.

Jeannette Lavell and Irene Bedard took their case

all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. They

claimed that the Indian Act was discriminatory under

the Canadian Bill of Rights (1960). Disappointingly,

the Court ruled in 1973 that the Indian Act was ex-

empt from the Canadian Bill of Rights (Bear 1991;

Lawrence and Anderson 2003; Moss 1990).

On the heels of this decision, Mary Two-

Axe Early, together with sixty other women from

Kahnewake, took their struggle for Native women’s

rights global. Two-Axe Early and the others attended

the United Nations’ First International Conference

on Women in Mexico City, which marked the

International Year of the Woman in 1975. However,

when they returned they found that the band council

had evicted them from their homes, following gov-

ernment legislation and using the Indian Act. With

heightened national and international publicity

around the plight of Native women, the band was

forced to withdraw their eviction notices, but the

issue of lndian Status remained unresolved (Gehl

2000; Lawrence and Anderson 2003).

Again taking sexist discrimination against

Native women global, Sandra Lovelace, a Maliseet

from the Tobique Reserve in New Brunswick who

lost her Status after marrying out, took her strug-

gle to the United Nations. Lovelace and her chil-

dren had been denied housing, health care, and

access to education on the Tobique Reserve.

Unwilling to be denied her birthright, Lovelace took

her challenge to the United Nations Human Rights

continued

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Chapter 2 What’s Feminism Done (For Me) Lately? 27

Committee in 1977. She argued that the Indian Act

violated Article 27 of the International Covenant

on Civil and Political Rights, which Canada had

ratified the year before. It took four years for the

United Nations to rule against the Canadian gov-

ernment. The 1981 ruling was a significant victory

for Aboriginal women in Canada, even if it was only

symbolic. While the United Nations ruled that the

Indian Act breeched Aboriginal women’s rights by

denying them Status, international agreements

and decisions by United Nations committees and

courts do not supersede the laws of sovereign

countries like Canada (Bear 1991; Gehl 2000;

Lawrence and Anderson 2003; Moss 1990; Two-

Axe Early 1994). […]

[In 2010] the government introduced Bill C-3, the

Gender Equality in Indian Registration Act, amend-

ing C-31; they claimed this would confer Status on

thousands of previously ineligible descendants of

Aboriginal women. The Native Women’s Association

of Canada (NWAC) argues that the bill fails to address

the issue of the privileging of men in the second-

generation cut-off for Indian Status. Consequently,

those who trace their heredity through maternal ties

will be denied Status if they were born prior to 1951,

whereas those who trace it through paternal ties will

be able to gain Status (NWAC 2012). […]

Aboriginal groups in Canada, including the Native

Women’s Association of Canada, the Métis National

Council, and the Chiefs of Ontario, are raising new

questions about Native identity that move beyond

the Status debates, arguing that as self-determining

nations, Aboriginal peoples have the right to define

who is and who is not an Indian, not the government

of Canada. They contend that Indian identity cannot

be measured by “blood quantity” as Indian Status cur-

rently attempts to do. Accordingly, Aboriginal people

are still in jeopardy of extinction under the Indian Act.

Instead, Native identity must be understood as the

outcome of a complex configuration of social, cultural,

and political forces (Chiefs of Ontario 2010; Hodgson-

Smith 2010; Lavell 2010; NWAC 2012).

There are multiple problems that arise from viewing patriarchy as the common oppressor of women. First, this view supposes that men are the targets of feminism, giving credit to the backlash. Second, it fails to recognize the intersections of race and class as culpable in the oppression of all people. Black feminists have argued that, unlike the suburban middle-class white women trapped in their homes of whom Friedan writes about, black women often found their homes a place of refuge from racism and solidarity with men. Working-class women activists have also raised issues of workplace oppression and the role of capitalism as implicated with patriarchy.

In Canada, women were participating in many of the same debates. In 1970, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women Report documented women’s inequality in Canada and offered recommendations for its eradication. Recommendations to all levels of government were made, such as the choice for women to work outside the home, the establishment of a uni- versal childcare program, joint parental responsibility for children, implementation of affirmative action pol- icies to overcome the discrimination against women, a commitment to publicly funded reproductive health care, and the establishment of a Committee on the Status of Women.

In response to the Report, the National Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) formed in 1971 as a national advocacy group. Like the public face of women’s movement suggests, NAC’s early leadership was white and middle class. This failure to be representative of the diversity of Canadian women fostered friction and dissention among NAC members. It was not until the 1990s that racialized women claimed their place as leaders of NAC. Under the leadership of Sunera Thobani (1993–96) and Joan Grant-Cummings (1996–2000), NAC expanded its focus to address both national and international concerns including racism, refugee issues, global trade, and United Nations programs for women. Unfortunately, NAC has suffered from economic woes. Federal government funding cuts, an end to

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28 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

funding for advocacy organizations, and widespread backlash against feminisms and women’s movement have stifled much of NAC’s advocacy work, and questions as to whether it still even exists abound.2 Other feminist organizations have jumped into the fray to support women’s movement; however, these too have suffered from slashed budgets and backlash.

ABORTION RIGHTS AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Prior to 1969, abortion was illegal in Canada. Many women who sought to terminate a pregnancy had back-street abortions, which were performed in non-medical settings and rarely by accredited doctors. In desperation, women put themselves through dan- gerous and painful processes to induce miscarriages. Some women threw themselves down flights of stairs, ingested toxic substances, or inserted objects into their cervixes. Such options for terminating an unwanted pregnancy could have devastating outcomes. With no legal access to birth control, single mothers were particularly stigmatized as “bad girls,” “loose women,” and certainly not the kind of gals that you would take home to meet your mother. While not all feminists were (or are) pro-choice, the issue of abortion has been an important issue for women’s movement.

Under such circumstances, we might assume that feminists and women activists would be thrilled when the Canadian government passed an abortion law in 1969. However, this legislation only partially legalized abortion. While the law served as the federal government’s response to emergency rooms flooded by women seeking treatment from botched abortions, feminists and women’s groups argued that the partial legalization of abortion was not enough. The law not only limited abortion procedures to accredited hospitals, prohibiting the establishment of women’s clinics, but worse, a woman would only be granted an abortion if it were approved by a Therapeutic Abortion Committee. Such committees consisted of

four doctors who would determine whether carry- ing the pregnancy to term would be detrimental to the woman’s health. Needless to say, this process took time. And time was something that pregnant women seldom had.

To protest the inadequacies of the law, seventeen activists took to the road in March 1970, with the goal of arriving in Ottawa on Mother’s Day, in what became known as the Abortion Caravan (Rebick 2005). What better day to reflect on the effects of pregnancy, both wanted and unwanted, than Mother’s Day? The caravan began its journey in Vancouver and travelled east across Canada. It stopped in cities and towns along the way to rally support for the full legal- ization of abortion. Women waved clothes hangers and bottles of drain cleaner to represent the dangers of illegal abortion and the narrow-sightedness of the new law. The caravan got a lot of press, especially for leaving a coffin on Prime Minister Trudeau’s doorstep to represent all the women who had died from illegal abortions. But this was nothing compared to the cov- erage that the thirty-five feminist abortion activists who chained themselves to chairs and demanded the legalization of abortion on demand received. These women activists so disrupted Parliament that it was forced to close (Sethna and Hewitt 2009).

These were just the first steps in the long and difficult struggle to the 1988 Morgentaler decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which struck down the 1969 law as unconstitutional. The issue of abortion galvanized women in Canada and made “a woman’s right to choose” a reality, with abortion clinics in almost every province.

Canada’s struggle for reproductive choice was fortified by the 1973 United States Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which made first-trimester abortions legal. It did so by recognizing that the right of women to make choices about bearing children is central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society. This landmark decision derived its author- ity from the United States Supreme Court decisions, beginning in the 1920s, that interpreted constitutional

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Chapter 2 What’s Feminism Done (For Me) Lately? 29

guarantees of liberty as the individual’s right to pri- vacy in decisions about childrearing, procreation, the use of contraception, and marriage.

Prior to Roe v. Wade, it is estimated that anywhere from 200,000 to 1.2 million illegal abortions were performed each year in the United States (Cates et al. 2003). Although determining the effects of illegal abortions and their subsequent complica- tions is difficult to calculate, it has been estimated that as many as 5,000 to 10,000 women died each year (NARAL). The historic verdict settling Roe v. Wade was the outcome of laborious work by women’s movement, supported by medical, public health, legal, and religious organizations. As we can see, women’s movement was as varied as the women and men who participated in it.

LIFE WITHOUT WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Can you imagine what your life would look like if wom- en’s movement had not been so successful? Without women’s movement, marriage would still be the crowning achievement of any young woman’s career. Convention would still demand that a woman take her husband’s name. No-fault divorce would be unheard of. A “broken home” due to divorce would be blamed on the woman’s inability to keep her marriage together, and it would still be a social stigma to be divorced or to come from a family where divorce occurred. Women, of course, would be wholly responsible for everything related to the home, except for any major decisions because those decisions would be the domain of men.

Sex, if you were having it, would only be per- mitted within marriage and then not necessarily a choice. Rape within marriage would not be a crime, but considered a man’s right of access to his wife. Unmarried women would be divided into those who do and those who don’t. And, if a baby resulted from doing it, the child would be stigmatized for life by its “illegitimacy.” Sexual pleasure would be a uniquely

male experience and women would still (secretly) be looking for the vaginal orgasm.

Fewer than half of women would work outside the home and they would earn, on average, just $0.52 for every dollar earned by a man. Women’s paid employment would be seen as temporary until their real careers of marriage and motherhood began. Women’s earnings would not be considered critical to family survival; rather, they would be thought of as “mad money” to be used by women haphazardly and according to their whims. As a result, women would be paid less, as their wages were not considered essential. “Help Wanted: Male” or “Help Wanted: Female” would divide classified ads in newspapers. Women would work predominantly as secretaries, nurses, teachers, domestics, and in other low-wage service jobs. Bosses could ask women if their hus- bands had given them permission to work, if they planned to have children, or if they intended to have more children. Women workers could be demoted or fired for getting pregnant; and sexual harassment on the job would be a regular occurrence with little recourse. The glass ceiling would be even more visible (Baumgardener and Richards 2010).

Since girls would be educated in “Home Economics” in high school, they’d be able to cook and sew, but changing the oil in their cars or fixing a faulty light switch would have to be left to the boys who took shop class. Of course, to ensure that boys could boil water and sew on a button when they left their mothers, they could take a class in “Bachelor Studies.” But once they were married, they could expect to rely on their wives for such menial tasks. Girls would be rewarded academically for their talents of sitting quietly and listening passively. Math and science would be the privileged domain of boys, even if a girl showed some promise or skill. Curriculum and academic testing would reflect boys’ experiences rather than girls’, and, if girls happened to show up in a textbook, they were likely to be insignificant characters. The phrase “boys will be boys” would be bantered around as if it could explain anything and everything that wasn’t quite right.

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There would be no Little League sports for girls and no mandate to ensure their physical education. If a girl “got herself pregnant,” she was the one who would get expelled from school. There would be no women’s studies programs, and the fields of critical race studies, sexuality studies, and queer studies would be even more unimaginable.

Gender inequality in medical treatment and research remains a problem. One example of how gender is ignored in the field of medicine is in the area of oral contraceptives. Why isn’t there an oral contraceptive for men? Well, apparently scientists are working on it. However, the male pill is still years away from approval (Goodman 2008). So, not only do men not have to take a pill but also women have to put up with the consequences of taking it. We can control our fertility with a little pill, but we have to deal with the side effects of weight gain, headaches, and the possible risks of cancer. Is this gender equality? I’m not advocat- ing for male contraceptives that risk men’s health and well-being; that certainly wouldn’t be the equality that feminists are looking for. What feminists want are safe contraceptives, whether for men or women. They want more research and better testing before contraceptives are marketed to ensure that they are safe.

Another place where gender plays an important role is in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. Did you know that heart disease is still thought of as a health risk predominantly for men? When women go to the emergency room fearing a heart attack, they could be sent home without treatment, since they don’t present with the same symptoms as men. Even when women have all the classic signs—chest pains, nausea, radiating pain in the left arm—cardiac tests can come back as “normal.” Indigestion, gall bladder problems, anxiety, or stress are the most common misdiagnoses. Women are made to feel embarrassed about making a big deal of their health concerns and pain. If you’re a woman under the age of fifty-five, you are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed when the problem is really heart disease (Pope et al. 2000). In 2005, only 8 per cent of family and 17 per cent of cardiologists

knew that more women die from heart disease than men each year (Mosca et al. 2005). More shockingly, women are five times more likely to die of heart disease than breast cancer and all other cancers combined (Lloyd-Jones et al. 2010).

Speaking of breast cancer, without pink ribbon campaigns spurred by women’s movement, awareness about breast cancer and funding for research might not exist. Some caution needs to be raised here, however. As corporations jump on the philanthropy bandwagon, accusations of pinkwashing grow. For feminist critics, pinkwashing refers to the ways in which businesses brand their products as support- ing the fight against breast cancer, as a means for boosting sales and ultimately revenues (King 2006; Landman 2008; Lubitow and Davis 2011; Pool 2011). In this competitive environment for donations, there is concern that a greater proportion of the money raised is allocated to fundraising than to research. And researchers are spending more time applying for funds, taking precious time away from their research, than ever before (Johnson 2011). While the manage- ment of breast cancer has improved considerably and success rates for remission are high, these results are not universal and women still die from this disease. Is this what success looks like?

Without the women’s movement, campaigns to end violence against women would be virtually unknown. Take Back the Night marches, the White Ribbon Campaign, and the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women would not be on the radar. Women would still be encouraged to stay in abusive marriages. There would be no women’s shelters for abused women and their children, and rape crisis lines and sexual assault centres would not exist. Even with women’s movement, these critical resources are underfunded and often on the verge of closing because of budget shortfalls.

As for finances, without women’s movement, mar- ried women would be unable to get a loan without their husbands co-signing, and their credit ratings would be tied to their husbands rather than to them. Single

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women would have difficulty renting an apartment, since landlords would want steady long-term renters and, after all, a single woman is bound to be married soon. If not married, what would women be doing living on their own? Landlords would need to worry about propriety, for the sake of the good tenants. The fear that single women are loose, that they could be having men over at all hours or even running a brothel would continue to be a widely held and dominant view.

The achievements of women’s movement are seldom discussed outside of the classroom, but they are considerable: pay equity; the recognition of unpaid work as real work; affirmative action policies; freedom from sexual harassment on the job; legislation to crim- inalize rape in marriage; women’s right to education in the professions (medicine, engineering, law, and business); and shared responsibility for parenting. Our failure to recognize and acknowledge the difficult struggles of the past, which made these accomplish- ments part of what we think of as normal, is the very reason that they may be in jeopardy in the future.

BACKLASH AGAINST FEMINISM AND WOMEN’S MOVEMENT

Backlash is a concept that has been discussed in feminist circles since the 1990s, when Susan Faludi wrote Backlash: The Undeclared War on Women (1991). Feminism, she argued, was being blamed for anything and everything, from high divorce rates, children’s failure in school, and job loss, to economic recession. Backlash is an aggressive and violent reaction to social changes that challenge the status quo. By status quo, I mean the power and privilege that dominate societies. Those who have it attempt to keep it at all costs, because they believe that they will be the losers if women’s equality becomes a reality. Just imagine, women’s movement is moving along, maybe under duress, but still moving forward and, suddenly, those with the most power who are benefiting from the way things are start to get scared. […]

Affirmative action policies, such as equity hiring policies, ensure that historically marginalized groups like women, racialized people, and those with disabil- ities, have an opportunity to participate. This means that some white guy doesn’t get the job that he previ- ously could have counted on simply because he is some white guy. Cries of “This is reverse discrimination!” can be heard everywhere. But were we concerned when a woman or person of colour was the one who did not get the job, even when their qualifications were equal or better than the white guy’s?

The highly publicized idea that women are already equal, and therefore that no one needs to be a feminist and there is no need for women’s movement, can easily be challenged. Just think about women’s earnings compared to men’s, or the epidemic of violence against women, or inadequacies in health research when men’s experience is the measure of treatment. Women are definitely not equal. And, if we have “been there and done that,” why do funding cuts continue to plague women’s advocacy organizations, shelters, and sexual assault centres? And why is the accessible and affordable childcare that was advocated for and recommended more than forty years ago by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada and by NOW in the United States still not a reality?

After more than 100 years of women’s movement, much work remains to be done. In answer to our demands for equity and social changes, feminists have been basically told “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” These clichés are borrowed when a task is too hard or will take too long to complete. However, if everyone used this excuse, then things would never change, and we already know that things are not fine the way they are. Yet “I’m not a feminist” still resonates with many.

CONCLUSION

We have seen in this chapter that the struggle for equality and social justice is a long and as yet unfinished battle. We explored the complex landscape

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32 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

of mid-twentieth century social justice movements— the peace movement, the civil rights movement, the Indian/Native rights movement, and the gay/lesbian rights movement—to show how these were intercon- nected with feminists and women’s movement. It is clear from these struggles that social change does not simply happen. The tremendous accomplishments and social change achieved by feminists and social justice activists required hard work, tough decisions, massive organizing, and innovative theorizing.

NOTES

1. On December 8, 2016, the federal government of Canada

announced that Viola Desmond will be featured on the new

$10 banknote to be released in 2018.

2. Editors’ update: the National Ad Hoc Committee on the

Status of Women (NAC) no longer formally exists.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 1

I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.

There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman.

I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it.

I want to be in charge, respected, in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of my life. Who wants to grow up?

When I drive to work, I listen to thuggish rap at a very loud volume, even though the lyrics are degrading to women and offend me to my core. The classic Ying Yang Twins song “Salt Shaker”? It’s amazing. “Bitch you

gotta shake it till your camel starts to hurt.” Poetry. (I am mortified by my music choices.) I care what people think.

Pink is my favourite colour. I used to say my favourite colour was black to be cool, but it is pink—all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I’m not doing it ironically. I once live-tweeted the September issue.

I love dresses. For years I pretended I hated them, but I don’t. Maxi dresses are one of the finest clothing items to become popular in recent memory. I have opinions on maxi dresses! I shave my legs! Again, this mortifies me. If I take issue with the unrealistic standards of beauty women are held to, I shouldn’t have a secret fondness for fashion and smooth calves, right?

I know nothing about cars. When I take my car to the mechanic, they are speaking a foreign language. I still call my father with questions about cars, and am not terribly interested in changing any of my car-related ignorance.

Despite what people think based on my writing, I very much like men. They’re interesting to me, and I mostly wish they’d be better about how they treat women so I wouldn’t have to call them out so often. And still, I put up with nonsense from unsuitable men even though I

BAD FEMINIST MANIFESTO

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, American Short Fiction, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, Difficult Women, and the New York Times bestselling books Bad Feminist and Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel.

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36 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

know better and can do better. I love diamonds and the excess of weddings. I consider certain domestic tasks as gendered, mostly all in my favour because I don’t care for chores—lawn care, bug killing and trash removal, for example, are men’s work.

Sometimes—a lot of the time, honestly—I totally fake “it” because it’s easier. I am a fan of orgasms, but they take time, and in many instances I don’t want to spend that time. All too often I don’t really like the guy enough to explain the calculus of my desire. Then I feel guilty because the sisterhood would not approve. I’m not even sure what the sisterhood is, but the idea of a sisterhood menaces me, quietly, reminding me of how bad a feminist I am.

I love babies, and I want to have one. I am willing to make certain compromises (not sacrifices) in order to do so—namely, maternity leave and slowing down at work to spend more time with my child, writing less so I can be more present in my life. I worry about dying alone, unmarried and childless, because I spent so much time pursuing my career and accumulating degrees. This kind of thinking keeps me up at night, but I pretend it doesn’t because I am supposed to be evolved. My success, such as it is, is supposed to be enough if I’m a good feminist. It is not enough. It is not even close. Because I have so many deeply held opinions about gender equality, I feel a lot of pressure to live up to certain ideals. I am supposed to be a good feminist who is having it all, doing it all. Really, though, I’m a woman in her 30s, struggling to accept herself and her credit score. For so long I told myself I was not this woman—utterly human and flawed. I worked overtime to be anything but this woman, and it was exhausting and unsustainable and even harder than simply embracing who I am.

Maybe I’m a bad feminist, but I am deeply commit- ted to the issues important to the feminist movement. I have strong opinions about misogyny, institutional

sexism that consistently places women at a disadvan- tage, the inequity in pay, the cult of beauty and thinness, the repeated attacks on reproductive freedom, violence against women, and on and on. I am as committed to fighting fiercely for equality as I am committed to dis- rupting the notion that there is an essential feminism.

At some point, I got it into my head that a feminist was a certain kind of woman. I bought into grossly inaccur- ate myths about who feminists are—militant, perfect in their politics and person, man-hating, humourless. I bought into these myths even though, intellectually, I know better. I’m not proud of this. I don’t want to buy into these myths any more.

Bad feminism seems the only way I can both embrace myself as a feminist and be myself, so I write. I chat- ter away on Twitter about everything that makes me angry and all the small things that bring me joy. I write blogposts about the meals I cook as I try to take better care of myself, and with each new entry I realize that I’m undestroying myself after years of allowing myself to stay damaged. The more I write, the more I put myself out into the world as a bad feminist but, I hope, a good woman—I am being open about who I am and who I was and where I have faltered and who I would like to become. No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman. I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.

Source: Gay, Roxane. (2014). Excerpted from Bad

Feminist: Essays. London, UK: Constable & Robinson.

Retrieved from The Guardian, August 2, 2014:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/

bad-feminist-roxane-gay-extract.

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I am a woman of my people I am an image and word warrior I am Anishinaabe I am a worker I am my language I am a daughter, aunt, sister I am water I am land I speak/act against violence against women, water,

children, land I speak/act with the ancestors and knowledge keepers

I remember when I decided to add kwe to Anishinaabe a few years ago and how much of a struggle it was at first. This struggle marks out some of the pathways I

have found to and from western feminisms and some- thing we could call Indigenous feminisms. Sharing this journey opens up a space for thinking about the contradictions that structure my relationship to the word and the analysis called feminism and to the identity called feminist.

Kwe means woman in my language and placing it attached to my identity as an Anishinaabe meant making it essential to my understanding of my cul- ture, as an entry point to myself. For some people, this is easy: they are comfortable having the world divided up between men and women, and thinking of women as essential in their capacity to bear children. I was always keenly aware of the oppressions that could be contained in defining women by their wombs. This

CHAPTER 3

Anishinaabe-kwe and/or Indigenous Feminist?

Wanda Nanibush

Wanda Nanibush is Anishinaabe-kwe from Beausoleil First Nation. She is the curator of Indigenous art at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). Nanibush has a Master’s degree in visual studies from the University of Toronto, where she has also taught graduate courses. She currently teaches at OCAD University. Her curatorial credits include Rita Letendre: Fire & Light (AGO, 2017); Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971–1989 (AGO, 2016); The Fifth World (Mendel Art Gallery, 2015); and Sovereign Acts (currently tour- ing). Her work has been included in publications such as Time, Temporality and Vio- lence in International Relations, and This Is an Honour Song: Twenty Years since the Blockades. Nanibush has published articles in Art in America, Canadian Art, and C Magazine, as well as over 15 catalogue essays on artists. She is currently completing two films and her first book, entitled Violence No More: The Rise of Indigenous Women.

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38 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

analysis came from watching many women in the many foster homes where I grew up in chained to kitchens, kids and caretaking. I saw men sit at tables, eat quickly and leave before the “mother” ever sat down. I saw girls and mothers cleaning houses on a regular basis while boys were exempt. It seemed to be a very thankless life. I saw menopause hit women with a desire for their own passions, life goals and leisure. I swore as a young girl that I wouldn’t enter a kitchen because it took up so much time and I wanted to read, write, dance and change the world.

I was in care with my brothers and nephews and nieces and eventually just one brother. I lived in homes with a lot of boys. I always say I was raised by my brothers. I was always more comfortable around boys and men. Some of that is my natural rejection of most femininity as a child and some of it comes from hearing how men speak about women. Respect as a woman seemed really hard to come by. I thought to myself, if I can’t have their respect as a woman then I could get it by being more like a man—by being smarter, stronger and need-less.

I remember a group of girls in my elementary school berating me for being too physical, too strong. I decided I would hang with the boys then. Boys always told you the truth and were quick to get over things. There is also a cultural element to this because I felt like the manipulation and passive aggressive behaviour young white girls enact was learned from their mothers and I knew it was a white thing. It had to do with the limited powers women had to exert in their lives. Passive aggression in some ways is suppressed desire for freedom. When I moved back to the reservation when I was 12, I realized my way of being a strong woman was acceptable and cultivated there. I no longer felt like a boyish girl because all the girls seemed this way, partly because femininity does not define womanhood or girlhood on the rez. […]

I had a baby when I was 20, on purpose, in order for my child’s spirit to speak to my mother’s spirit who had just died. When my mother died, I understood myself

as a woman in a new way. I saw my own oppressions and labour as a woman joining hers and my sister’s. I had to think about what kind of mother I wanted to be. Western thought taught me to challenge mother as my primary identity and Anishinaabe thought taught me to place children at the centre of our communities and worlds. I did both, raising my son to see me as a woman with desires and aspirations but also mothering him as the centre of the future of our people. I thought a lot about how he would be as a man.

When I added kwe to my identity, I began to see the diversity of constructions of women and started to seek alternatives within my own culture to western feminism. I have always been influenced by two westerners: Judith Butler and Emma Goldman. Butler because she challenges heterosexuality and understands how we perform and become women. Goldman because she had a keen sense of herself as a revolutionary individual and how to practice an anti-authoritarian ethic. As “Nish,” we raise our kids in anti-authoritarian ways and this is one connection to kwe. We let their spirits develop freely and without violence. Of course feminism becomes important when we think about the current state of violence against women and children in our communities today. As an analysis that understands patriarchy, it is important because colonialism enforced patriarchy in our communities where women had previously enjoyed equality or had more power than men.

In 2012, I decided to look at the work of Rebecca Belmore, who I felt could help me think through the meaning of kwe from outside of where I had been learning it, which was in the teachings of elders. I knew that my responsibility was to protect the earth, the water and the children. I understood that ways of being as a mother could be learned from our first mother, the earth. I was beginning to understand the type of power women have because they bear children and how that did not have to be a limit to our freedom. But these teachings, coupled with queer theory and the activism I embedded in my everyday life, weren’t great bedmates.

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Chapter 3 Anishinaabe-kwe and/or Indigenous Feminist? 39

Belmore’s solo exhibition was called KWE and examined the complicated and fertile relationship between Indigenous women, art and feminism. KWE asked, what does the cultural specificity of Anishinaabe add to or change when we consider the meanings of being and becoming a woman for an artist who does not do ceremony? Belmore’s artistic practice has always engaged the question of what it is to be an Anishinaabe- kwe artist here and now. The very real aspects of patri- archy and its embeddedness in both Indigenous and Canadian communities through colonialism, especially in terms of the violence against women, is the subject of much of Belmore’s work. As an Anishinaabe-kwe artist, she engages on multiple levels with her cultures, practices and stories on the role of women while keep- ing Indigenous self-determination central.

Belmore’s insightful and aesthetically beautiful critiques play with the patriarchal present, under- scoring the need for an understanding of colonialism within feminisms today. As a curator, I kept the meaning of KWE unspoken and let the work speak for itself. The underlying analysis of power in society whereby Indigenous women fall to the bottom of

any measures of health, wealth or protection is why many people see Belmore’s work as feminist. Her body and her sister’s body were present in almost every work. The presence of an Indigenous woman’s body pushes through stories of victimhood to resilience and strength, it pushes through the overwhelming denigration of stereotypes, and it pushes through its absence in reform and revolution narratives. Women’s work. As a child I hated that, but as a curator I under- stand it as fundamental to the meaning of kwe, and that the problem isn’t how much we do but its value and place in society. Anishinaabe culture allowed me to consider possibilities as yet unthought in the west and unpracticed in our societies today: more genders than two; accounting for and valuing women’s needs and labour based on their differences; the idea that a man can live as a woman; the idea that it doesn’t mat- ter who you sleep with but what responsibilities you take up; the idea that women can have power without becoming violent, aggressive, adversarial or colonial; the idea that differences mean an expansion of society and special powers in the individual; and that the spirit of the individual should never be crushed. I don’t call myself a feminist (identity statement) because Indigenous people have spent generations being named by others and I want control over my own naming, but I also think of Indigenous women as the earliest feminists and I value the analysis of western feminisms. Adding kwe to my identity captures all of these paths for me and, since I am comfortable with contradictions, it is unfinished in terms of where it will take me next.

Source: Nanibush, Wanda. (2017). “Anishinaabe-kwe

and/or Indigenous Feminist?” First published in C

Magazine, 132(Winter), 53–56.

Figure 3.1: Rebecca Belmore, KWE, 2012, Installation view, photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid. Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.

Source: Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 2

15 INDIGENOUS FEMINISTS TO KNOW, READ, AND LISTEN TO

Abaki Beck

Abaki Beck is a writer and activist whose writing has been published in Bitch Magazine, Aperture, and The Establishment, among other media. Beck has worked for the U.S. House of Representatives and conducted oral history research on Blackfeet food sover- eignty, and is currently in the field of urban planning and community development. Beck is the founder and editor of POC Online Classroom, a website that curates social justice readings, resources, and syllabi, and is also the co-editor of the Daughters of Violence zine. She is a mixed-race Indigenous person enrolled in the Blackfeet Nation of Montana.

I think it’s in all of our best interests to take on gender violence as a core resurgence project, a core decolonization project, a core of any Indigenous

mobilization … This begins for me by looking at how gender is conceptualized and actualized within Indigenous thought because it is colonialism that has

imposed an artificial gender binary in my nation. —Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Despite our profound contributions to our own communi- ties and the nation as a whole, Native American stories and voices have been long ignored by mainstream social culture. Native Americans—and Native American women, trans, and nonbinary folks in particular—face a unique set of oppressions, including the ongoing impacts of settler colonialism. Settler colonialism works to erase Indigenous people, both literally and culturally: from physical war and violence, to removal from lands, to forced assimilation. These histories continue to render Native Americans and Native issues nearly invisible to the national eye. Even within intersectional feminist

discussions and organizing, I find myself thinking, where are the radical Indigenous feminists? Why are our stories not valued and our voices not more amplified?

This erasure may lull us into believing that there simply aren’t Indigenous feminists who are as prolific as Audre Lorde or Gloria Anzaldúa. But this is far from the truth. From Sydney Freeland, a Navajo filmmaker who focuses on stories about trans communities, to Sarah Deer, a Muscogee (Creek) lawyer fighting violence against Native women, these activists, writers, creators, and scholars fight for justice for Indigenous people and for the voices of their communities.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 2 15 Indigenous Feminists to Know, Read, and Listen To 41

1. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg)

Leanne Simpson is an activist, scholar, writer, and poet. She was heavily involved with the Idle No More movement that raised awareness of treaty betrayals and environmental injustices impacting First Nations people. Her book Islands of Decolonial Love, a mixture of poetry and short stories, includes a powerful spoken word col- laboration with musicians that brings an interactive, multilayered perspective to her poems. She writes on critical topics such as decolonizing education by recog- nizing land as pedagogy, contemporary manifestations of colonial gender violence, and the connections between Black and Indigenous fights for justice. In addition to writ- ing, she has worked as an independent scholar for over a decade and lectures at universities across Canada.

2. LaDonna Brave Bull Allard (Standing Rock Sioux)

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard is an activist and tribal histor- ian who is a leader in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. In April 2016, she founded the Sacred Stone Camp on her land, which was the first resistance camp of the #NoDAPL movement and some of the closest tribally owned land to the construction site. Since the founding of the Sacred Stone Camp, thousands of water protectors camped and organized to prevent the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Because of activists like LaDonna, the #NoDAPL movement grew to be one of the most powerful and widely supported Indigenous rights movements in recent decades.

3. Audra Simpson (Mohawk)

Audra Simpson is a scholar and professor whose research focuses on the politics of recognition—particu- larly, the Kahnawà:ke Mohawk struggles in asserting their legal and cultural rights across settler-imposed bor- ders. Her book, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States, explores how Kahnawà:ke

Mohawks maintain their sovereignty through traditional governance and a rejection of both U.S. and Canadian cit- izenship. Her book was celebrated by Indigenous studies scholars as a critical addition to scholarship on tribal community and national identity. As an anthropologist, a field that is notorious for exploiting and thinking of Natives only in the past tense, Simpson pushes against these notions by centering on Native epistemologies.

4. Haunani Kay-Trask (Hawaiian)

Writer, educator, and activist Haunani Kay-Trask is a strong Hawaiian nationalist. She is an advocate for Indigenous Hawaiian rights and is vocal against the U.S. military pres- ence and the tourism industry in Hawaii. She is the author of several books of nonfiction and poetry. Her book, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii, explores the ongoing discrimination and denial of rights to Native Hawaiians. In the book, she analyzes Hawaiian activism against U.S. imperialism—from the advocacy of Ka Lahui Hawai’i, a Native Hawaiian self-governing organ- ization, to on-campus organizing by Indigenous students at the University of Hawaii.

5. Beatrice Medicine (Standing Rock Sioux)

Beatrice Medicine was one of the most prominent Native American female anthropologists, whose writing has focused particularly on Native women. Her book, The Hidden Half: Studies of Plains Indian Women (edited with Patricia Albers), was one of the first studies to cen- ter on the lives of Native American women specifically. In addition to working as a professor and scholar, she also served on the school board of her home reserva- tion and taught classes at Native American Educational Services in Chicago, Illinois, a college dedicated to edu- cating non-traditional students on community building. Because of her broad expertise and advocacy, she was often called as an expert witness in trials related to Native American issues, including the trial against activists who occupied Wounded Knee in 1973.

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42 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

6. Chrystos (Menominee)

Chrystos is a Two-Spirit poet and activist. Their poetry explores issues of colonialism, genocide, violence against Native people, queerness, street life, and more. Their work has been featured in various anthologies, including the renowned This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. They are the author of five poetry anthologies. Chrystos’s book Not Vanishing, published in 1998, was a best seller. Throughout their poetry, they often include clichés, plays on words, and rhymes as a refusal to sep- arate spoken word and oral tradition from poetry.

7. Winona LaDuke (White Earth Ojibwe)

Environmental activist and author Winona LaDuke is perhaps the most well-known name on this list. Winona LaDuke has founded two prominent organizations: Honor the Earth and the White Earth Land Recovery Project. Honor the Earth, which she cofounded with the Indigo Girls, raises awareness of and provides financial support to environmental justice issues in Native communities. The White Earth Land Recovery Project buys land for- merly owned by non-Natives on the White Earth Ojibwe Reservation and repurposes it to restore traditional land ownership and stewardship. Much of the work of this organization focuses on food sovereignty, including the preservation of wild rice fields. LaDuke also ran as Vice President on a Green Party ticket alongside Ralph Nader in 1996 and 2000.

8. Sarah Deer (Muscogee [Creek])

Sarah Deer is a lawyer, professor, and advocate who has worked for victims’ rights and sexual violence prevention for decades. She was an instrumental activist in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which expanded tribal jurisdiction to prosecute non-Native perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence.

Her book, The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America, is a collection of critical essays on violence against Native women. She provides a historical overview of the intersecting vio- lences that contribute to the high rates of sexual violence against Native Americans today, from the history of rape and sex trafficking of Indigenous people to the destruc- tion of tribal legal systems to protect their own citizens.

9. Beth Brant (Mohawk)

Beth Brant is one of the first prominent Native American lesbian writers. First published as part of Sinister Wisdom in 1984, the anthology Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by North American Indian Women, which she edited, was later published independently in 1988. This was the first anthology of Native American women’s writ- ing edited by a Native American woman. She went on to publish several poetry and essay collections on topics such as Mohawk identity, queerness, and feminism. She also edited an oral-history anthology of Mohawk elders titled I’ll Sing ‘til the Day I Die: Conversations with Tyendinaga Elders.

10. Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca)

Mishuana Goeman is a scholar and professor whose work focuses on settler colonialism, gender violence, and Native women’s cultural production. Her work provides a feminist perspective to colonial spatial definitions of Native land (national or reservation borders) and bodies, analyzing how colonialism attempts to impose a new spatial reality on Indigenous people. In her book Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations, she uses literature written by Native women to argue that women’s writing centering on Indigenous knowledge is essential to help define our nations outside of settler standards and to support ongoing decolonization efforts.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 2 15 Indigenous Feminists to Know, Read, and Listen To 43

11. Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee)

Suzan Shown Harjo is a policy advocate and writer. She served as the congressional liaison on Indian Affairs for President Jimmy Carter and, in the late 1980s, as the president of the National Congress of American Indians, an advocacy organization that unites tribal represent- atives from across the nation. She was involved with the passage of several important laws pertaining to Native American rights, including the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), the National Museum of the American Indian Act (1989), and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (1990). She received the Presidential Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama in 2014.

12. Brenda Child (Red Lake Ojibwe)

Brenda Child is a scholar and professor who has studied histories of boarding schools, Ojibwe women’s activism, Indigenous education, and Ojibwe labor, among other topics. Her debut book, Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900 to 1940, used letters between parents and their children in boarding schools to explore the deep emotional impact of these assimila- tionist institutions. In her 2012 book, Holding the World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community, she outlines the profound ways that Ojibwe women have contributed to strengthening their communities for centuries—from helping to mediate between tribes and European fur traders to organizing to ameliorate urban Indian poverty after World War II.

13. Sydney Freeland (Navajo)

Sydney Freeland is a transgender filmmaker who uses film to combat stereotypes about Native Americans and highlight the experiences of queer and trans people. Her debut feature length film, Drunktown’s Finest, follows the lives of three young people living on the Navajo Reservation: a young father-to-be, a transgender woman

who dreams of being a model, and a woman who was adopted by a white Christian family. The film’s name is a riff off an offensive ABC news segment that labeled Gallup, New Mexico, as “Drunk Town, USA.” Freeland also directed the web series Her Story, which revolves around queer and trans women, and was nominated for an Emmy.

14. Nicole Tanguay (Cree)

Nicole Tanguay is a Two-Spirit poet, playwright, musician, and advocate for Indigenous rights. Their poetry—which has been featured in anthologies such as Miscegenation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women and The Colour of Resistance: A Contemporary Collection of Writing by Aboriginal Women—explores topics like racism, environ- mental destruction, and violence against Indigenous peoples. Their poetry is raw and in your face, often tan- gling visceral descriptions of trauma, grief, and pain with the everyday survivance of Indigenous people. In “Blood,” for example, they memorialize Indigenous women who died “lying in the streets/ and in gutters of hell/ waiting for the great God to remember them/ for who they are/ children of this land.” They view poetry as a form of resist- ance and education on critical social justice issues.

15. Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo)

Leslie Marmon Silko is a prolific novelist, poet, and essayist and a key figure in the First Wave of the Native American Renaissance. Her novels are rooted in a Laguna Pueblo landscape and history, with her characters often striving to maintain their traditional or tribal lifestyles despite Western cultural imperialism. Her debut novel, Ceremony, follows the struggles of a Native American World War II veteran returning to his civilian life and find- ing strength in revitalizing his tribal spirituality. Ceremony challenges the Western canon by weaving Laguna stories throughout the novel in a poetic, viva voce style.

From initial colonial wars, to forced boarding schools, to the Dakota Access Pipeline, tribal communities have

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44 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

survived because of the relentless strength and knowl- edge of our grandmothers, aunties, and ancestors. These contemporary scholars, poets, activists, and filmmakers continue this long legacy of Indigenous feminist resis- tance. For Indigenous people and settlers/allies alike, it is crucial that we listen to these voices, honor their wisdom, and empower their work.

Source: Beck, Abaki. (2017, September 18). “15

Indigenous Feminists to Know, Read, and Listen

To.” Bitch Magazine (originally published April 19,

2017). Retrieved from: https://www.bitchmedia.org/

article/15-indigenous-feminists-know-read-and-listen.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 3

Throughout her literary career, Walker has remained a committed activist, devoting her time to many causes, including the civil rights movement, the women’s move- ment, and, most recently, the movements to end the wars in the Middle East. The excerpt that appears below comes from Walker’s first collection of essays, entitled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens and published in 1983. In it, Walker uses the term “womanist” for the first time to refer to the experiences of women of colour. This piece remains an important contribution to feminist thought.

Womanist

1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irre- sponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “You acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous, or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown-up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.

2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers wom- en’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?” Ans.: “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the folk. Loves herself. Regardless.

4. Womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender.

Source: Walker, Alice. (1983). In Search of Our Mothers’

Gardens: Womanist Prose (pp. x–xii). San Diego, CA:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

ACTIVIST INSIGHT: ALICE WALKER (1944–)

Alice Walker is an African American author, poet, and activist. Born February 9, 1944, Walker grew up in the southern United States, near Eatonton, Georgia. She has pub- lished many works of fiction and non-fiction, as well as anthologies and poetry. Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple was awarded the National Book Award and the 1983 Pu- litzer Prize for Fiction, making her the first African American woman writer to receive this prestigious literary award. To date, Walker’s books have sold more than 15 million copies, and her works have been translated into more than two dozen languages.

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In the past two centuries, a revolution has trans-formed women’s lives. Unlike national revolutions, this social upheaval crosses continents, decades, and ideologies. In place of armed struggle it gradually sows seeds of change, infiltrating our consciousness with the simple premise that women are as capable and valuable as men. To measure the breadth of this ongoing upheaval of old patterns, consider the way feminist movements have transformed law and politics, from divorce reforms in Egypt and sexual harassment cases in Japan and the United States to the nomination of equal numbers of male and female can- didates by French political parties. Or note the change in leadership: During the 1990s, 90 percent of the world’s nations elected women to national office, and women served as heads of state in more than twenty countries. Just as important, consider the thousands of grassroots organizations such as Women in Law and Development in Africa, the National Black Women’s

Health Project in the United States, and the Self- Employed Women’s Association in India. Women’s movements have never been so widespread.

In No Turning Back I explain why and how a feminist revolution has occurred. I argue that two related historical transitions have propelled feminist politics. First, the rise of capitalism disrupted older, reciprocal relations within families in ways that initially enhanced men’s economic opportunities and defined women as their dependants. Second, new political theories of individual rights and representa- tive government that developed alongside capitalism extended privileges to men only. In response, feminist movements named these disparities as unjust, insisting on the value of women’s economic contributions and the justice of political rights for women. In short, the market economies and democratic systems that now dominate the world create both the need for feminism and the means to sustain it.

CHAPTER 4

The Historical Case for Feminism

Estelle Freedman

Estelle Freedman is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in U.S. History at Stanford Univer- sity and a co-founder of the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research areas include the history of women and social reform, including feminism and prison reform, and the history of sexuality. Her book No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, from which the following piece is taken, has been praised as one of the most comprehensive and analytical studies of feminism to date. Freedman is the recipient of an impressive list of teaching and mentorship awards.

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Chapter 4 The Historical Case for Feminism 47

Feminist politics originated where capitalism, industrial growth, democratic theory, and socialist critiques converged, as they did in Europe and North America after 1800. Women and their male allies began to agitate for equal educational, economic, and political opportunities, a struggle that continues to the present. By 1900 an international women’s movement advanced these goals in urban areas of Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. Since 1970 feminism has spread globally, in both industrialized nations and in the developing regions where agriculture remains an economic mainstay.

Given their specific historical origins, the fem- inist politics initially forged in Europe and North America have not simply expanded throughout the world. Elsewhere, abundant forms of women’s resist- ance to men’s patriarchal authority predated Western democratic theories; they continue to influence femin- ist movements today. Socialist responses to capitalism invite quite different women’s politics than where free markets prevail. Both the term feminism and the pol- itics it represents have been continually transformed by the evolving responses of women and men from a variety of cultures. Indeed, women’s politics have developed organically in settings so diverse that the plural feminisms more accurately describes them.

By the year 2000 these growing international movements to improve women’s lives increasingly influenced each other, due in part to the forum pro- vided by the United Nations Decade for Women from 1975 to 1985 and the follow-up conference in Beijing in 1995. While they share the conviction that women deserve full human rights, international feminisms often diverge in their emphases. Only some concentrate solely on women, while others recognize complex links to the politics of race, class, religion, and nationality. Despite these differences, most Western feminists have learned that global economic and political justice are prerequisites to securing women’s rights. Women in the developing world have found that transnational femin- ist movements can help establish strategic international support for their efforts at home.

None of these feminist movements has proceeded without opposition, including formidable backlash in every era in which women have gained public author- ity. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the historical conditions that promote fem- inism can be found in much of the world: Whether through the influence of Western economic and pol- itical systems, the refashioning of earlier practices, or both, an impressive array of movements now attempts to empower women. At present, economic global- ization, along with international efforts to create stable democratic governments, suggests that new forms of feminism will continue to surface. Because of their flexibility and adaptability, women’s polit- ical movements, whether explicitly labeled feminist or not, have set much of the world’s agenda for the twenty-first century.

THE HISTORY OF A TERM

Since I use feminism to describe movements whose participants do not necessarily apply that label themselves, I want to acknowledge at the outset the specific historical origins of this term. Feminism is a relatively recent word. First coined in France in the 1880s as féminisme, it spread through European coun- tries in the 1890s and to North and South America by 1910. The term combined the French word for woman, femme, and -isme, which referred to a social movement or political ideology. At a time when many other “isms” originated, including socialism and communism, féminisme connoted that women’s issues belonged to the vanguard of change. The term was always controversial, in part because of its asso- ciation with radicalism and in part because propo- nents themselves disagreed about the label. Although self-defined socialist feminists appeared in Europe as early as 1900, many socialists who supported wom- en’s emancipation rejected the label feminist. They believed that middle-class demands for suffrage and property rights did not necessarily speak to working

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women’s needs for a living wage and job security. Middle-class women also hesitated to call themselves feminists, especially when the term implied a claim to universal rights as citizens rather than particular rights as mothers.

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From its origins through the social upheavals of the 1960s, feminist remained a pejorative term among most progressive reformers, suffragists, and socialists around the world. Even as universal adult suffrage gradually extended to women—in England in 1928, in countries such as France, Japan, Mexico, and China by the late 1940s—few politically engaged women called themselves feminists. Within the inter- national women’s movement, participants debated whether the term humanist rather than feminist best applied to them. Nations ruled by communist parties, such as China and later Cuba, officially pronounced the emancipation of women as workers, but their state-sanctioned women’s organizations rejected the feminist label and their suppression of oppositional political discourse precluded feminist politics.

A critical turning point in the history of fem- inisms occurred during the politically tumultuous 1960s. Women’s politics revived in the West, at first under the banner of “women’s liberation.” Although the press quickly derided adherents by calling them “women’s libbers,” this second wave proved quite tenacious. By this time, both capitalist and socialist economies had drawn millions of women into the paid labor force, and civil rights and anticolonial move- ments had revived the politics of democratization. In Europe and the United States, millions of women expected to earn wages as well as raise children. The old feminist calls for economic and political equality, and a new emphasis on control over reproduction, resonated deeply across generations, classes, and races.

Western women’s movements also significantly expanded their agendas after the 1960s. Along with demands for economic and political rights, women’s

liberation revived a politics of difference through its critique of interpersonal relations. Women’s liberation championed both women’s equality with men in work and politics and women’s difference from men within the arenas of reproduction and sexuality. In this way the two competing strains of equality and difference began to converge. Within a decade, the older term feminist began to be used to refer to the politics of this new movement, deepening its radical connotation but potentially widening its appeal. At about the same time, the introduction of the term gender, rather than sex, signaled feminists’ growing belief that social practices, and not only biology, have constructed our notions of male and female.

By 1980 an umbrella usage of the term fem- inism took hold in Western cultures. Anyone who challenged prevailing gender relations might now be called a feminist, whether or not they lived long before the coining of the term feminism, agreed with all the tenets of women’s liberation, or claimed the label. A generation of Western women came of age influenced by feminism to expect equal opportunities. The majority of this generation often proclaimed, “I’m not a feminist, but …,” even as they insisted on equal pay, sexual and reproductive choice, parental leave, and political representation. The children they raised, both male and female, grew up influenced by these feminist expectations but not necessarily comfortable with the term. Outside the West, the term femin- ism could still evoke a narrow focus on equal rights. Thus a 1991 essay in the influential Indian women’s journal Manushi, titled “Why I Do Not Call Myself a Feminist,” contrasted Western concerns about women’s rights with broader human rights and social justice campaigns that address the needs of both men and women in developing countries.1

The term feminism, in short, has never been widely popular. Yet the political goals of feminism have survived—despite continuing discomfort with the term, a hostile political climate, and heated internal criticism—largely because feminism has continually redefined itself.

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Over the past twenty-five years, for example, activists have amended the term to make it more com- patible with their unique perspectives. Self-naming by black feminists, Asian American feminists, Third World feminists, lesbian feminists, male feminists, ecofeminists, Christian feminists, Jewish feminists, Islamic feminists, and others attests to the malleability of the label and to the seemingly contradictory politics it can embrace. To make the movement more racially inclusive, the African American writer Alice Walker once coined womanist to refer to a “Black feminist or feminist of color.” In the 1990s young women in the United States, such as Walker’s daughter, promised to go beyond the second wave of feminism by forg- ing a more racially and sexually diverse movement that emphasized female empowerment rather than male oppression. “I’m not post-feminist,” Rebecca Walker explained in 1992, “I’m the Third Wave.”2 Significantly, this generation reclaims rather than rejects the term feminist. Internationally as well, more women’s organizations incorporate the word, such as the Feminist League in Central Asia, the Center for Feminist Legal Research in New Delhi, and the Working Group Toward a Feminist Europe.

By the 1990s the cumulative contributions of working-class women, lesbians, women of color, and activists from the developing world had transformed an initially white, European, middle-class politics into a more diverse and mature feminist movement. Taking into account the range of women’s experi- ences, feminists have increasingly recognized the validity of arguments that once seemed contradictory. Instead of debating whether women are similar to or different from men, most feminists now recognize that both statements are true. Instead of asking which is more important, gender or race, most feminists now acknowledge the indivisibility and interaction of these social categories. Along with demanding the right to work, feminists have redefined work to include caring as well as earning. Along with calling for women’s independence, feminists have recognized the interdependence of all people, as well as the

interconnection of gender equality with broader social justice movements.

DEFINING FEMINISM TODAY

Given its changing historical meanings, is there any coherence to feminism as a term? Can we define it in a way that will embrace its variety of adherents and ideas? For my purposes, a four-part definition contains the critical elements of feminisms, including views that may be shared by those who claim the label as well as many who reject it.

Feminism is a belief that women and men are inherently of equal worth. Because most societies privilege men as a group, social movements are necessary to achieve equality between women and men, with the under- standing that gender always intersects with other social hierarchies.

Each of the four components of this working definition—equal worth, male privilege, social move- ments, and intersecting hierarchies—requires some clarification. I use equal worth rather than equality because the latter term often assumes that men’s historical experience—whether economic, political, or sexual—is the standard to which women should aspire. The concept of equal worth values traditional female tasks, such as childbearing and child care, as highly as other kinds of work historically performed by men. It also allows us to recognize that women’s different experiences can transform, and not simply integrate, political life.

The term privilege can refer to formal political rights such as suffrage and the right to hold office, but privilege can also include more personal entitle- ments, such as the greater social value placed on male children as expressed by strong parental preference for boys across cultures. Privilege also ensues when societies have a sexual double standard that allows

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male heterosexual autonomy, punishing women but not men who seek non-marital sexual expression.

To refer to feminism in terms of social movements may conjure images of people marching in the streets or rallying around political candidates, but it may also mean individual participation, such as enrolling in a women’s studies class or engaging in artistic or literary creativity that fosters social change. While women may participate in a variety of social movements— civil rights, ecology, socialism, even fundamental- ism—those movements cannot be feminist unless they explicitly address justice for women as a primary concern. Thus human rights or nationalist movements that insist on women’s human rights and women’s full citizenship may be feminist, while those that overlook or affirm patriarchal authority cannot be.

Similarly, feminism must recognize the integral relationship of gender to other forms of social hierarchy, especially those based on class, race, sexuality, and culture. Despite the prevalence of hierarchies that privilege men, in every culture some women (such as elites or citizens) enjoy greater opportunities than many other women (such as workers or immigrants). Some women always have higher status than many men. If we ignore these intersecting hierarchies and create a feminism that serves only the interests of women who have more privilege, we reinforce other social inequalities that disadvantage both women and men in the name of improving women’s opportunities.

The overlapping identities of women as members of classes, races, and nations raise questions about the usefulness of the category woman itself. I use the term but with the recognition that there is no

single, universal female identity, for gender has been constructed differently across place and time. Because of historical, social, national, and personal differences, women cannot assume a sisterhood, even though we can find common ground on particular issues. At the same time, feminism cannot deny the significance of gender in a world in which 70 percent of those living in poverty and two-thirds of those who are illiterate are female.

Feminists must continually criticize two kinds of false universals. We must always ask not only “What about women?” (What difference does gender make?) but also “Which women?” (What difference do ideas about race, class, or nationality make?). […] I believe that we must question both the assumption that the term man includes woman as well and the assump- tion that the term woman represents the diversity of female experience.

NOTES

1. Madhu Kishwar, “Why I Do Not Call Myself a Feminist,” Manushi 61 (1991), 2–8.

2. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), xi; Rebecca Walker, “Becoming the Third Wave,” Ms. 2:4 (1992), 39–41.

Source: Freedman, Estelle. (2002). Excerpted from

“Chapter 1: The Historical Case for Feminism.” In No

Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future

of Women (pp. 1–11). New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

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Brandon Arber is a feminist. During college, he was the captain of his swim team and an all-around jock. For Brandon, feminism is a moral belief. It’s about thinking girls and women shouldn’t be raped, abused, discriminated against, or denied health services, especially if they get pregnant. When it comes down to it, he says, feminism is a viable approach to guiding decisions in our personal, polit- ical, and public lives. To Brandon, it’s just common sense to believe in egalitarian values. It makes sense to care for all people and to bring about a better world.

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Derrais Carter graduated from the University of Kansas, where he majored in sociology and African American studies. When Derrais started college, he fell in love with hip-hop and feminism. In fact, hip-hop is

what led Derrais to feminist politics when he started thinking about rap lyrics and what he calls “the bat- tlefield of identity.” Being a feminist gave Derrais a platform for changing his life and how he understands his relations with others. “I began to see women as more than a video prop, extra, and eye candy,” Derrais writes in his essay “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like.” Instead he realized that women are highly misrepresented figures in society whom he had been “conditioned to mistreat and ignore.” When Derrais taught a group of high school students one summer, the conversation led to culture, capitalism, and global- ization. “By understanding feminism,” Derrais says, “we were able to talk about how our ‘needs’ can exploit women in various other countries. The discussion made all of us think more about how we are all connected.”

Still, being a male feminist is a rough road, Derrais says. People are full of race- and gender-based

CHAPTER 5

This Is What a Feminist Looks Like

Shira Tarrant

Shira Tarrant is a professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies at California State University–Long Beach, as well as a recognized author, social critic, and expert on gender politics, pop culture, and masculinity. Her recent books cover a wide range of topics from pornography to men’s role in feminism, including New Views on Pornography; Gender, Sex, and Politics; The Pornography Industry: What Everyone Needs to Know; and Men and Feminism.

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assumptions. “As a black male in college, I was often assumed to be on an athletic scholarship,” he explains. “And when I wear my ‘This Is What a Feminist Looks Like’ T-shirt, people have accused me of trying to get laid.” Others have said the same about his job at the campus women’s center. “I used to get angry about it. Now I see these comments as mere ignorance and a failure to accept that there are men who truly care about women’s issues.”

Current feminist perspectives are challenging concepts of gender in fresh, new ways. More men are getting involved in feminist movements led by women. And there are plenty of examples of gender activism initiated by men, such as One in Four and Men Can Stop Rape, programs that work to prevent sexual assault. Colleges and universities are increas- ingly shifting from women’s studies to programs that study gender and sexuality more broadly. At the same time, more guys are becoming interested in feminism. As Julie Bindel reports in the Guardian, increasing numbers of men are enrolling in courses with feminist content and perspectives.

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THERE’S ROOM FOR MEN

One question that often comes up is how feminism is relevant to men. If feminism is a women’s movement, then where do men fit in?

The idea that only women can be feminists is based on essentialism—the assumption that men and women possess inherent behavioral traits based on biological sex. Sometimes people think the term “feminist men” is an oxymoron, says sociologist Michael Kimmel. In his essay “Who’s Afraid of Men Doing Feminism?” Kimmel explains that essentialism leads us to think that a feminist man is either not a “real” man or he cannot be a real feminist.

But just as being a woman doesn’t make someone a feminist, being a man doesn’t automatically mean

he’s not one. The “feminist-equals-woman” equation is a dangerous way of thinking, explains Judith Grant, author of Fundamental Feminism. That perspective blurs the point that feminism is about the interpretive lens we’re using, not women’s experience as women. Anyway, not all women are the same, just like all men aren’t the same. Our gender position is always affected by our socioeconomic, racial, national, sexual, and religious identities.

“Feminism is a political way of thinking,” explains Matthew Shepherd in Feminism, Men, and the Study of Masculinity. “And, like all political thought,” Shepherd writes, the attractions of feminism “cut across sex.” Being a feminist doesn’t require certain plumbing. It requires a certain consciousness. Feminism is about using a particular lens that filters how we understand the world. This lens is analytical and always puts gender front and center. Feminists don’t necessarily think that men and women are the same. Instead, they question the assumptions that biology is destiny and that might makes right. Feminists ask why difference comes at such a high price.

Essentialism also reinforces the binary idea that there are only two, opposite genders; in doing so, it limits our understanding of gender politics. Thinking of feminist-as-female excludes trans- gender, genderqueer, and intersex people, which is inconsistent with the principles of gender justice. According to activist and scholar Susan Stryker, the rise of queer and transgender studies has chal- lenged essentialist-based politics. In her essay “(De) Subjugated Knowledge,” Stryker writes that trans studies calls for “new analyses, new strategies and practices, for combating discrimination and injustice based on gender inequality.” If we think of feminism as something that women do or believe in, then we conflate feminism with women. This essentializes a political perspective while paradoxically arguing against essentialist foundations.

Feminism benefits from men’s participation. When men are involved in gender justice efforts, it maximizes the potential for deep, sustained social

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Chapter 5 This Is What a Feminist Looks Like 53

change. One practical advantage is that there is strength in numbers and feminism could use more allies. Plus, for the moment, as violence-prevention expert Jackson Katz suggests, men can be heard in ways that women still can’t be heard. “Sexist?” Katz asks rhetorically. “Maybe. But effective? Yes.”

Men’s participation in feminism is not an invita- tion for male chivalry or for “protecting our women.” A protectionist model actually perpetuates the gender stereotypes that are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Getting men involved with feminism means holding men personally and institutionally accountable for the sexist abuse of power, explains Katz. We need more men to challenge other men’s sexism or misogyny as it manifests in all sorts of ways. Katz challenges men to move beyond defensive posturing and be willing to call it like it is.

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JOINING THE STRUGGLE

When punk-rock feminist Chris Crass was hang- ing out with anarchist political groups in Southern California, his commitment to gender justice went hand in hand with opposing war, feeding homeless people through Food Not Bombs, and supporting students’ rights. Chris recognized that ending sex- ism is key to radical change both within political movements and throughout broader society. For Chris, this continues to mean working with women and men as “allies to each other in the struggle to develop models of anti-racist, class-conscious, pro- queer, feminist manhood that challenges strict binary gender roles and categories.” For Grantlin Schafer, being a “comrade in struggle” means working to pre- vent male violence through his job as an antiviolence educator for a sexual and domestic violence center in Loudoun County, Virginia. These men provide just two examples of the myriad ways men can get involved in feminism.

Nighat Gandhi explains that feminism is about transforming institutions such as the law, the family, the workplace, or marriage to weed out their injus- tices. Feminists don’t necessarily want to destroy these institutions and practices. Many feminists simply want to see them changed into more equitable situations. Men are not excluded from these efforts. In fact, Gandhi says, men should very much feel a part of feminism.

Jackson Katz points out that Americans like to brag how we’re “the freest country on earth,” yet half of us don’t even feel free enough to walk by ourselves at night. Many women aren’t even safe in their own homes. By conservative estimates, 20 percent of ado- lescent girls have been physically or sexually assaulted by a dating partner. Two-thirds of American men responding to a major American public opinion poll in 2000 said that domestic violence is very or fairly common. And 92 percent of people who answered a 2005 national survey said that “family violence is a much bigger problem than people think.” And these issues are not unique to the United States.

As Katz points out, it’s a mistake to think of sex- ual assault or domestic violence as “women’s issues.” Men’s violence against women is really more about men than it is about women, Katz explains in The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. What he means is that because men are the “ones committing the vast majority of the vio- lence,” it’s time for men to face up and do something about it. We live our lives in relation to other people, Katz notes. Something that affects women no doubt affects men—and vice versa.

[…] When it comes to issues such as pay inequity or male violence toward women, there’s a tremendous amount of work that men can do to stop the problem before it even happens! Prevention is the real solution. The most important thing is that we talk with each other as we continue coalition building between women and men and across the political spectrum.

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JUSTICE IS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE

Some men steer clear of feminism because they have been taught that it’s a movement to take power, resources, authority, and perks from men. The real issue is not what men might lose: All of us—women and men alike—actually have a lot to gain from fem- inism. The problem is that power is often seen as a limited resource. This view of power assumes that if one group gains power, another loses it. Or that if one person achieves resources, it must necessarily happen at someone else’s expense.

This scarcity model assumes that there are limited resources in the world and that if I get mine, you can’t have yours. For those accustomed to this kind of thinking, the assumption is that if women gain power, men will necessarily lose it. But instead of thinking that equality and justice are finite resources (like fossil fuels), there are other ways to view it. If our power grid is fueled by wind or sun, one person’s increase in power doesn’t mean that there’s less to go around. It is possible that we can work cooperatively toward achieving egalitarian conditions. It is pos- sible to think of power as an infinite resource that won’t run out when we challenge harmful or limiting gender expectations.

Feminism is about breaking down gender expectations that limit everyone. Feminism holds the potential for each of us to experience a fuller range of possibilities to exist freely in the world and to explore our full humanity while minimizing or eradicating oppression, subjugation, and patterns of domination.

Although equality and gender justice are unlimited resources, feminism does challenge men to change their behavior and to change systems from which they benefit. This requires hard work that some men resist—relinquishing some of the privileges that come with being a man, rethinking sexual pleasure that relies on a woman’s denigration, and surrendering unearned authority.

Feminism is a movement for ending gender-based oppression and all forms of related patterns of domination and subjugation in our homes, our communities, and the world. There is a serious and growing movement of men who stand beside women in tackling issues of gender, race, class, sexuality—as well as enormous, complex problems such as war, imperialism, and globalization. These issues are all part of the same package and feminism can be used to address each of them, and more. Sociopolitical issues as seemingly diverse as sexual harassment and the war in Iraq are linked by similar patterns of domi- nation, in which people or groups attempt to obtain power over others. Feminism can offer a new vision of shared power.

WHO ME? A FEMINIST?

Sometimes guys don’t get involved with feminist pol- itics because they don’t feel welcome. Even walking into a women’s studies classroom for the first time can be a challenging experience. Men frequently don’t engage with feminism because they think the issues don’t involve them. They just can’t relate. Or it never occurred to them to get involved in the first place. Not because they’re bad men. Maybe it just never crossed their minds.

At the same time, feminist groups that are made up largely of women may intentionally or inadvertently exclude men. Cliques happen anywhere. Politics is no exception. Even social justice and gender politics. It happens. We won’t pretend it doesn’t.

Men might sometimes feel intimidated by fem- inism. Or they can believe (or presume) that they are unwelcome to join activist groups. It might feel uncomfortable or strange to stand in a bookstore looking at the feminist titles on the shelves. And sometimes stereotypes about feminists act as barriers that impede men’s (and women’s) participation.

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DO I HAVE TO CALL MYSELF ONE?

What’s in a name? Does it matter if you call yourself a feminist, a pro-feminist, a feminist ally, or even a member of the Men’s Auxiliary? What if you practice your politics and don’t want to label yourself ?

Debates over terminology are nothing new—and they aren’t limited to men. In the 1940s and ‘50s, for example, there were those who promoted women’s rights and who objected to oppressions of all sorts, but who distanced themselves from the term feminist. Back then there were all sorts of reasons some people shied away from the label. To call oneself a femin- ist risked evoking images of being militant, racist, a sexual prude, bourgeois, strident, or just plain selfish. Similar assumptions are still made today. Both men and women who identify as feminists risk being called what historian Leila Rupp refers to as manhaters and crazies, kooks or queers.

Because there is concern that feminism focuses primarily on white women’s issues and uncritically assumes white experience as the norm, some shy away from the term feminist because it doesn’t go far enough. Thinkers and activists have developed terminology and frameworks to intentionally reflect the matrix of race, class, gender, and ethnicity. Womanism, for example, focuses on how black women experi- ence power, oppression, and status within the social hierarchy. Womanism uses this concept as a base for advocating social change and improved gender pol- itics by providing an option for social and political analysis that makes black women and other women of color central. […]

Some men who recognize these problems of gender repression, misogyny, sexism, and the politics of domination take a stand by identifying as feminists. Others call themselves pro-feminists, feminist allies, antisexist activists, or even “meninists”—a global group of men who, according to Feminist.com, “believe in and support the feminist principles of women’s political, social, and economic equality.” These are people who understand that men are not

born on Mars and women are not born on Venus but, rather, that we are all born on the same planet as equals. Like male feminists, men who are allies actively support gender justice. They “believe that women as a group suffer inequalities and injustices in society, while men as a group receive various forms of power and institutional privilege,” writes Australian scholar Michael Flood in his pro-feminist FAQ. These antisexist men resist using the term feminist in describing themselves because, while they support gender equity and oppose sexism, they see their role as supporting women who have done feminist work for so long. Pro-feminists want neither to colonize feminism nor to act as if they’ve got all the answers.

There’s no reason to shy away from claiming the term feminist, though our commitment to sociopolitical improvement may be more important than what we call ourselves. A person can be political without a label and sometimes we might not want to be tied down by a label at all. But particular labels can tell us about a person’s politics. And when it comes to the long history of feminist efforts, there have been many men working alongside women in the struggle for gender equality.

REFERENCES

Arber, Brandon. “It’s Just Common Sense,” in Shira Tarrant, ed., Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power. New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 163–164.

Bindel, Julie. “The New Feminists.” Guardian, Tuesday, November 28, 2006, p. 12.

Carter, Derrais. “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like,” in Shira Tarrant, ed., Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power. New York: Routledge, 2008, p. 152.

Crass, Chris. “How Can I Be Sexist? I’m an Anarchist!” in Shira Tarrant, ed., Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power. New York: Routledge, 2008, p. 284.

Flood, Michael. “Frequently Asked Questions about Pro- Feminist Men and Pro-Feminist Men’s Politics.” www. xyonline.net/misc/pffaq.html. Accessed June 23, 2008.

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Gandhi, Nighat. “Can Men Be the Allies of Feminism?” www. xyonline.net/Canmenbeallies.shtml. Accessed June 23, 2008.

Grant, Judith. Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of Feminist Theory. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 109.

Katz, Jackson. The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2006, pp. 1–3, 15, and 16.

Kimmel, Michael S. “Who’s Afraid of Men Doing Feminism?” in Tom Digby, ed., Men Doing Feminism (Thinking Gender). New York: Routledge, 1998.

Rupp, Leila J. “The Women’s Community in the National Women’s Party, 1945 to the 60s.” Signs, vol. 10, no. 4 (1985), p. 722.

Schafer, Grantlin. “Breaking the Silence One Mile at a Time,” in Shira Tarrant, ed., Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Shepherd, Matthew. “Feminism, Men, and the Study of Masculinity: Which Way Now?,” in Steven P. Schacht and Doris W. Ewing, eds., Feminisms and Men: Reconstructing Gender Relations. New York: New York University, 1998, p. 174.

Stryker, Susan. “(De)Subjugated Knowledge: An Introduction to Transgender Studies,” in Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle, eds., The Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 7.

Source: Tarrant, Shira. (2009). Excerpted from “Chapter

1: Overview and Introductions: This Is What a Feminist

Looks Like.” In Men and Feminism (pp. 1–2, 15–21,

23–25). New York, NY: Perseus Books.

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Intersectionality was a lived reality before it became a term. Today, nearly three decades after I first put a name

to the concept, the term seems to be everywhere. But if women and girls of color continue to be left in the shadows, something vital to the understanding of intersectionality has been lost.

In 1976, Emma DeGraffenreid and several other black women sued General Motors for discrimination, arguing that the company segregated its workforce by race and gender: Blacks did one set of jobs and whites did another. According to the plaintiffs’ experiences, women were welcome to apply for some jobs, while only men were suitable for others. This was of course a problem in and of itself, but for black women the consequences were compounded. You see, the black jobs were men’s jobs, and the women’s jobs were only for whites. Thus, while a black applicant might get hired to work on the floor of the factory if he were

male, if she were a black female she would not be considered. Similarly, a woman might be hired as a secretary if she were white, but wouldn’t have a chance at that job if she were black. Neither the black jobs nor the women’s jobs were appropriate for black women, since they were neither male nor white. Wasn’t this clearly discrimination, even if some blacks and some women were hired?

Unfortunately for DeGraffenreid and millions of other black women, the court dismissed their claims. Why? Because the court believed that black women should not be permitted to combine their race and gender claims into one. Because they could not prove that what happened to them was just like what happened to white women or black men, the discrimination that happened to these black women fell through the cracks.

It was thinking about why such a “big miss” could have happened within the complex structure

Part 1B: Diversity and Intersectionality

CHAPTER 6

Why Intersectionality Can’t Wait

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Kimberlé Crenshaw teaches courses in civil rights, critical race studies, and constitu- tional law at the University of California–Los Angeles and Columbia School of Law. She is a founder and leader in the intellectual movement called Critical Race Theory. She is also co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, a think tank that promotes efforts to dismantle structural inequality. Crenshaw’s publications include Critical Race Theory and Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment.

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58 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

of anti-discrimination law that the term intersection- ality was born. As a young law professor, I wanted to define this profound invisibility in relation to the law. Racial and gender discrimination overlapped not only in the workplace but in other arenas of life; equally significant, these burdens were almost com- pletely absent from feminist and anti-racist advocacy. Intersectionality, then, was my attempt to make fem- inism, anti-racist activism, and anti-discrimination law do what I thought they should—highlight the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppression were experienced so that the problems would be easier to discuss and understand.

Intersectionality is an analytic sensibility, a way of thinking about identity and its relationship to power. Originally articulated on behalf of black women, the term brought to light the invisibility of many constituents within groups that claim them as members, but often fail to represent them. Intersectional erasures are not exclusive to black women. People of color within LGBTQ movements, girls of color in the fight against the school-to-prison pipeline, women within immigration movements, trans women within feminist movements, and people with disabilities fighting police abuse—all face vul- nerabilities that reflect the intersections of racism, sexism, class oppression, transphobia, able-ism and more. Intersectionality has given many advocates a way to frame their circumstances and to fight for their visibility and inclusion.

Intersectionality has been the banner under which many demands for inclusion have been made, but a term can do no more than those who use it have the power to demand. And not surprisingly, intersectionality has generated its share of debate and controversy.

Conservatives have painted those who practice intersectionality as obsessed with “identity politics.” Of course, as the DeGraffenreid case shows, inter- sectionality is not just about identities but about the institutions that use identity to exclude and privilege. The better we understand how identities and power

work together from one context to another, the less likely our movements for change are to fracture.

Others accuse intersectionality of being too theoretical, of being “all talk and no action.” To that I say we’ve been “talking” about racial equality since the era of slavery and we’re still not even close to real- izing it. Instead of blaming the voices that highlight problems, we need to examine the structures of power that so successfully resist change.

Some have argued that intersectional under- standing creates an atmosphere of bullying and “privilege checking.” Acknowledging privilege is hard— particularly for those who also experience discrimin- ation and exclusion. While white women and men of color also experience discrimination, all too often their experiences are taken as the only point of departure for all conversations about discrimination. Being front and center in conversations about racism or sexism is a complicated privilege that is often hard to see.

Although the president’s [Barack Obama’s] recent call to support black women was commendable, undertaking intersectional work requires concrete action to address the barriers to equality facing women and girls of color in U.S. society.

Intersectionality alone cannot bring invisible bodies into view. Mere words won’t change the way that some people —the less-visible members of polit- ical constituencies—must continue to wait for leaders, decision-makers and others to see their struggles. In the context of addressing the racial disparities that still plague our nation, activists and stakeholders must raise awareness about the intersectional dimensions of racial injustice that must be addressed to enhance the lives of all youths of color.

This is why we continue the work of the #WhyWeCantWait campaign, calling for holistic and inclusive approaches to racial justice. It is why “Say Her Name” continues to draw attention to the fact that women too are vulnerable to losing their lives at the hands of police. And it is why thousands have agreed that the tragedy in Charleston, S.C., demonstrates our need to sustain a vision of social

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justice that recognizes the ways racism, sexism and other inequalities work together to undermine us all. We simply do not have the luxury of building social movements that are not intersectional, nor can we believe we are doing intersectional work just by saying words.

Source: Crenshaw, Kimberlé. (2015, September 24). “Why

Intersectionality Can’t Wait.” The Washington Post.

Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/

news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/24/why-intersectionality-

cant-wait/?utm_term=.4aa8101c2cf9.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 4

I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family. My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator. And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages. So, the year I turned eight, we got a new house boy. His name was Fide. The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor. My mother sent yams and rice, and our old clothes, to his family. And when I didn’t finish my dinner, my mother would say, “Finish your food! Don’t you know? People like Fide’s family have nothing.” So I felt enormous pity for Fide’s family.

Then one Saturday, we went to his village to visit, and his mother showed us a beautifully patterned bas- ket made of dyed raffia that his brother had made. I was startled. It had not occurred to me that anybody in his family could actually make something. All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor. Their poverty was my single story of them.

Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My

American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was con- sequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey.

She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me

even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possi- bility of a connection as human equals. […]

So, after I had spent some years in the U.S. as an African, I began to understand my roommate’s response to me. If I had not grown up in Nigeria, and if all I knew about Africa was from popular images, I too would think that Africa was a place of beautiful landscapes, beau- tiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting

THE DANGERS OF A SINGLE STORY

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibisicus, Half of Yellow Sun, and Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. She has also written several short stories and essays, in- cluding “We Should All Be Feminists,” that have been featured in various publications including The New Yorker and The Financial Times. Her work has been translated into over 30 languages.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 4 The Dangers of a Single Story 61

senseless wars, dying of poverty and AIDS, unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind, white foreigner. I would see Africans in the same way that I, as a child, had seen Fide’s family.

Source: Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. (2009, July).

Excerpted from The Dangers of a Single Story. TED

Talk. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/

chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/

transcript?language=en.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about shared female iden-tity. A lot of people seem to think that being born with female parts bonds you in some significant way to other people who are born with female parts. In order to get the most out of all that bonded-female- parts-ness, there are events and outings that welcome female-born people only, places where we can listen to the music “we” like and talk about our periods or something. It goes like this: “women” have a differ- ent experience in the world than “men” and therefore understand each other on some deep level and in some universal way because of that experience. While I agree, of course, with that first part, I find the last part really tricky.

I don’t feel any universal connection with all people who are born with female parts. I’m not sure I know anyone who actually does, not when you really break it down. Because, despite what mainstream

(white) feminism and tampon commercials would have us believe, “shared” female experience isn’t really all that “shared” at all.

Let’s take for example a well-known issue that affects women—the issue of “equal pay.” We’ve all heard the statistic: in the US, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes on average. That sucks. But it’s not quite the shared experience it seems. A recent report by the National Partnership for Women & Families shows that black women only make 70 cents for every dollar a man makes on average, and only 64 cents compared to every dollar paid to a white, non-Hispanic man. And Latinas make only 55 cents for every dollar made by a white, non-Hispanic man. Well, damn. That 77 cents never looked so good.

Of course, it’s not just economics. There are many ways in which factors such as race, sexuality, gender

CHAPTER 7

The Myth of Shared Womanhood and How It Perpetuates Inequality

Mia McKenzie

Mia McKenzie is a writer, activist, and the founder of the website Black Girl Danger- ous (BGD). McKenzie identifies as a queer Black feminist and uses her writing and website to make space for LGBTQ people of color. Her debut novel, The Summer We Got Free, received a Lambda Literary Award in 2013. Her essays and short stories appear regularly on BGD as well as in various publications. McKenzie presents talks that centre on the intersections of race, class, queerness, and gender at universities and conferences across the United States.

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Chapter 7 The Myth of Shared Womanhood and How It Perpetuates Inequality 63

presentation, and (dis)ability make the “collective” experience of one group of women vastly different from that of another. According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), 91% of people who are raped in the US are women. So, rape is a uni- versal issue for women, right? Of course. When you break it down, though, “universal” gets complicated. The rate of rape and attempted rape for white women is 17.7%. For American Indian/Alaskan women it’s 34.1%. And women with disabilities are raped at a rate at least twice that of women overall. So while “women” have a collective experience of being more vulnerable to rape, some women are a whole lot more vulnerable to it than others. While that first statistic is always used to suggest a shared female experience of the world, the statistics that follow it show that women’s experiences aren’t really all that shared. Or at least not equally shared. Not anywhere near equally.

Despite these and a hundred other examples, the myth of shared female experience prevails. Why? Well, the easy answer is that because “women” are so vulnerable to so many different injustices, even if that vulnerability is vastly different from one group to another, lumping us all in together gives us a louder voice and more power to change things. Even if that’s true, the downside of all this lumping together is sig- nificant. Because it allows the people with the loudest voices within the group to always be dominating the conversation. And because those voices rarely, if ever, even understand the experiences of the less-heard members of the group, not only can they not speak for them (which they shouldn’t be doing anyway), they can rarely even understand the importance of making space for them to speak for themselves.

This is why today’s mainstream feminist move- ments are still so white, even though women of color are 36.3% of the women in this country [United States]. It’s why, even though “marriage equality” is all over the news all the time, you rarely see lesbians of color, and you never see disabled lesbians or trans lesbians, on TV. Because the voice of the privileged majority, even within a presumed non-privileged group, doesn’t

end up raising the voices of the less-heard group; it usually just drowns them out. What you end up with is groups within groups that feel, and are, completely disconnected from one another. So is the case with women in this country. (This also describes queer com- munity and people of color community as a whole, and QTPOC community specifically.)

Yet, the myth of shared female experience persists. It gets used by certain groups, including Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival,1 to exclude trans women because they presumably don’t have all the parts necessary to participate in this “universal” female experience that doesn’t actually exist anyway. The idea that cis women who attend this festival have a shared experience of womanhood—an experience that stretches like a rainbow bridge across race, sexuality, (dis)ability and economic class—that is so certain that no one without a vagina could possibly understand any of it is, frankly, absurd.

As a black, queer, cis woman who was raised working class, I feel almost completely disconnected from the experiences of white, straight, trans women who were raised wealthy. And much more so from the experiences of white, straight, cis women who were raised middle-class. Put me in a room full of either of these groups of women and I wouldn’t be able to get away fast enough. I’d feel incredibly out of place.

In fact, put me in a room full of black lesbians and I won’t likely do a whole lot of bonding. A room full of queer black women nerd-types? Ok, now we’re getting closer.

Here’s a quick list of rooms full of people where I will likely bond, in order of best to worst.

1. Black queer women who are nerdy in bookish ways, regardless of economic class.

2. Other queer women of color who are nerdy in bookish ways, who are working class.

3. Other queer women of color who are nerdy in bookish ways, regardless of class.

4. Black women, regardless of class and sexuality, who are nerdy in bookish ways.

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64 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

5. Other women of color, regardless of class and sexuality, who are nerdy in bookish ways.

You see how complicated this is already??? A room full of white women is going to be somewhere around number 1006. Seriously, a “room full” of white women of any sort is a room I’m going to leave really quickly, and probably only have stumbled into by accident while looking for the bathroom.

My point is, possession of vaginas in and of them- selves is neither what define women nor what bond women to each other. Shared experiences of the world, which include experiences of race, sexuality, (dis)abil- ity, economic class, any number of nuanced vulnera- bilities, love of french fries, etc. is what bonds women to each other. And continuing to talk about “women” as this vagina-having-but-otherwise-unspecific group,

rather than looking closer and breaking down the ways in which our specific experiences of the world are impacted by race, sexuality, etc., only perpetuates the inequalities we’re supposed to be trying to eradicate.

NOTE

1. After 40 years in existence, the festival shut down after

2015, following controversies surrounding its “womyn-born-

womyn” policy.

Source: McKenzie, Mia. (2014). Excerpted from “The

Myth of Shared Womanhood and How it Perpetuates

Inequality.” In Black Girl Dangerous on Race,

Queerness, Class and Gender (pp. 106–111). Oakland,

CA: BDG Press.

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INTRODUCTION

While Canada has experienced substantial economic growth over the last decade, poverty continues to persist and grow in Canada. If you’re a woman or child, you may be counted among those most affected. One in seven (2.4 million) women live in poverty in this country.1

W hat’s worse—if you are an Aboriginal woman, a woman of colour, an immigrant woman, a woman with a disability, a lone mother, or a senior woman, you face an even greater chance of being counted among Canada’s poor. In 2003, 38% of lone-parent families headed by mothers had incomes that were less than the after-tax Low Income Cut- Offs. In comparison, only 13% of lone-parent families headed by fathers, and 7% of two-parent families, faced this situation.2

These numbers tell us that despite the efforts of many different groups to end poverty and create a more just society, we’ve made little headway. In fact, poverty is intensifying for those living closest to society’s margins.

After years of working towards greater equal- ity for women, CRIAW believes that different approaches are needed to make real social and eco- nomic change—approaches that offer diverse contri- butions, and that work from Intersectional Feminist Frameworks (IFFs).

IFFs offer alternative frameworks to viewing eco- nomic and social change that value and bring together the visions, directions, and goals of women from very diverse experiences and different perspectives.

In this document CRIAW hopes to foster interest in IFFs and encourage their use by women’s and social justice organizations.

CHAPTER 8

Intersectional Feminist Frameworks: A Primer

Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW)

The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) provides tools and resources to support researchers and organizations in advancing social justice and equality for all women. Its focus is on generating and promoting urgently needed feminist research, and making it available for public advocacy and education. CRIAW’s projects include Intersectional Feminist Frameworks, which aims to promote inclusiveness in re- search, and FemNorthNet, which seeks to engage women living in Northern communi- ties in research on their experiences and needs due to economic restructuring.

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66 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

A Case for IFFs

Intersectional Feminist Frameworks (IFFs) aim to foster understanding of the many circumstances that combine with discriminatory social practices to pro- duce and sustain inequality and exclusion. IFFs look at how systems of discrimination, such as colonial- ism and globalization, can impact the combination of a person’s

• social or economic status, • race, • class, • gender, • sexuality, • ability, • geographic location, • citizenship and nationalities, and/or • refugee and immigrant status.

Understanding IFFs

While IFFs are not new, many social activists face an ongoing challenge of developing, understanding, and applying these frameworks. However, CRIAW has identified emerging approaches and principles of IFFs that are based on countless conversations and represent many different views.

Some common underlying themes of IFFs include

• using tools for analysis that consider the com- plexities of women’s lives;

• making sure policy analysis is centred on the lives of those most marginalized;

• attempting to think about women’s lives in ho- listic ways when making policies;

• valuing self-reflection in our social justice beliefs so that we are aware of how we are all caught up in systems of power and privilege;

• integrating world views and knowledge that have historically been marginalized;

• understanding that women’s varying histories have created many social identities, which place them in different positions of hierarchical power;

• making efforts to challenge binary thinking that sustains inequalities, such as able/disabled, gay/ straight, white/black, man/woman, West/East, and North/South; and

• revealing that this binary thinking is a result of unequal power relations.

From these themes it’s clear that Intersectional Feminist Frameworks (IFFs) are

• fluid, changing, and continuously negotiated; • specific to the interaction of a person or group’s

history, politics, geography, ecology, and culture; • based upon women’s specific locations and situ-

ations rather than upon generalizations; • diverse ways to confront social injustices, which

focus on many types of discrimination rather than on just one; and

• locally and globally interconnected.

THE WAY FORWARD: SHIFTING TO IFFS

Organizations and individuals who actively engage with IFFs’ approaches and principles can be sure to uproot some tensions and challenges, as previously held beliefs and focal points are reexamined. But the adoption of IFFs by policy-makers and activists has the potential to generate equitable and broad-based social and economic change.

IFFs crack open oppressive structures and prac- tices without ranking the fight against one oppression over the fight against another. Putting these types of frameworks in place is urgently needed if we hope to one day see a just society.

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Chapter 8 Intersectional Feminist Frameworks: A Primer 67

Practising IFFs in Social Justice and Policy Work

Today’s struggles for equality are being fought from many different levels and perspectives. The following two examples show concrete ways that IFFs could bring about new understandings and strategies for change. The first illustrates the use of IFFs in under- standing immigration and refugee policies, while the second takes a look at using IFFs to fight for an end to poverty. […]

Immigrant and Migrant Women— Viewed through IFFs

Many activists and policy-makers have applied Gender-Based Analysis (GBA) to Canadian immi- gration policy and procedures to underscore the ineq- uities faced by women applicants. But the reality of women crossing borders is much more complex than this analysis captures.

The following two situations highlight some of the strengths of using IFFs to address Canadian immigration policy and procedures.

I. Broadening the Scope of Analysis GBA use in immigration law captures most wom- en’s reliance on male spouses because of the way the Canadian immigration classification system is structured. In this gendered dilemma, immigrant and migrant women may face

• difficulty attending English/French language training programs;

• isolation without English language training; • inadequate or unaffordable child care; • unemployment; and • lack of access to a social support network.

While gender plays a significant role, IFFs take note of many other factors in the immigration pro- cess to better understand the interlocking impact of

racism, sexism, ageism, and discrimination based on language, sexuality, and/or disability upon migrant women. These factors include the

• demand for poorly paid and highly skilled workers in Canada and other Western countries;

• connections between policies on trade, labour, citizenship, education, training, social welfare, health, military, national security, and human rights; and

• historical links between colonialism, nation formation, global economies, and immigra- tion policies.

II. Strengthening Domestic Worker Advocacy For years domestic worker advocacy groups have tried to challenge and change the government’s Live-in Caregiver Program.3 This program forces foreign domestic workers to live with their employer as a visa condition.

There is sizeable evidence that women are more vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, and isolation as live-in workers. Even with this knowledge, Canada refuses to listen to advocacy groups and end the live-in requirement, and Canadians remain unaware of these workers’ mistreatment.

At face value the Live-in Caregiver Program ap- pears

• economically supportive of migrant women, • sympathetic to poor women migrating to

Canada, and • helpful for privileged women and families in

Canada who require extensive child care.

Yet the live-in requirement results in workers being

• vulnerable to extended overtime hours without appropriate compensation, if any;

• unable to take skills training courses; • unable to establish meaningful networks; and • fearful of reporting any violation on the part of

the employer.

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68 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

IFFs can help build solid support and recognition for domestic workers by viewing gender alongside other forms of oppression that attempt to take away migrant women’s power. A review of the Live-in Caregiver Program by advocacy groups and the Canadian government through IFFs would

• expose the role of colonialism and Canada’s rac- ist and sexist immigration policies in shaping this program;

• force this issue to become all of society’s problem and not only the problem of the women facing the abuse;

• reveal how immigration, employment standards, citizenship, and restrictive labour policies com- bine to exclude and limit equal treatment of racialized women;

• show how Canada’s lack of good-quality, af- fordable child care spaces mean that affluent Canadian women and their families can meet their child care needs through this program, lead- ing to the exploitation of many migrant women from the South, while lower-income women in Canada, including many women with disabil- ities, Aboriginal women, racialized women, and women living in rural areas, have few or no child care alternatives; and

• explain the reluctance of governments to address unfair working conditions that are structured into the Live-in Caregiver Program.

Ending Poverty through IFFs

Many anti-poverty campaigns focus their fight upon income gaps created through capitalism. IFFs, how- ever, provide tremendous opportunities for radically re-envisioning such campaigns. For example, IFFs speak to the

• racialization of poverty through slavery, coloni- zation, and labour migration;

• social exclusion of women already pushed to the margins through limited access to housing, child care, education, social services, citizenship, and a living wage; and

• enforcement of poverty through social and eco- nomical policies such as the Indian Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

As IFFs are used to deal with poverty, social systems that crush the poor become exposed. IFFs make it clear that poverty is not simply about finding and keeping a job, although that is important. It may also be about

• having access to one’s culture, religion, and language;

• being part of a supportive community; • living in decent housing; • being accepted for who you are no matter what

you look like; and • having access to health, education, and welfare

services where your dignity as a human being equal to all others is respected.

Fighting poverty is about fighting social injustice across many fronts.

* * * * *

Choosing IFFs

IFFs are beginning to show signs of success for some organizations—particularly those with flexible struc- tures open to change. Recently one community and campus radio station surveyed its ethnic programming to find out which shows provided information and discussion on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgen- dered topics. This survey helped identify the need for expression of issues found within already marginal- ized groups. Station coordinators demonstrated IFFs’ principles by

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Chapter 8 Intersectional Feminist Frameworks: A Primer 69

• challenging programmers to think about who their audience includes;

• thinking about their listeners more holistically by offering more inclusive programming and messages; and

• opening up a self-reflection process for the station’s staff and the programmers’ social jus- tice beliefs.

How and where social justice and feminist activists begin their analysis depends on the specific conditions of the lives of those with whom they are working. It’s important to remember that IFFs

• are flexible and open to shifts and changes in the political, social, economic, and cultural order;

• have multiple points of entry, engagement, and discussion that cannot be determined in ad- vance (i.e., gender may not be the most useful entry point to understand particular issues or situations);

• can inform government policy and organizing strategies for activists in many different areas (i.e., labour, anti-poverty, immigration, and en- vironmental issues can be viewed from these frameworks);

• are challenging to adopt—growing pains and ten- sions are part of the process as previous beliefs are reflected upon; and

• aim to elicit broad-based social and economic change.

As women’s movements are now globally con- nected, an expanded and diverse range of tools and resources for analysis and activism are available to challenge dominant powers. Shifting to IFFs is one way to access the range of marginalized knowl- edges that are available to social justice activists around the world.

NOTES

1. CRIAW (2005). Women and Poverty Fact Sheet (3rd ed.)

Ottawa: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement

of Women.

2. Statistics Canada (2005). Women in Canada: A Gender-

Based Statistical Report (5th ed.).

3. Editors’ Note: The Live-in Caregiver Program was suspended

in 2014, leaving behind a large backlog of permanent

resident applications, along with confusion and fear among

migrant caregivers about pathways to permanent residence

under the old and new caregiver programs. Caregivers are

no longer required to live in their employer’s home, but there

are new barriers to qualify for permanent residence.

Source: Canadian Research Institute for the

Advancement of Women (CRIAW). (2006). Excerpted

from Intersectional Feminist Frameworks: A Primer

(pp. 5–16, 21–22). Ottawa, ON: CRIAW. Retrieved

from: http://www.criaw-icref.ca/en/product/

intersectional-feminist-frameworks--a-primer.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 5

CONCEPTUALIZING INTERSECTIONALITY

Intersectionality Wheel Diagram

• Innermost circle represents a person’s unique circumstances.

• Second circle from inside represents aspects of identity.

• Third circle from inside represents different types of discrimination/isms/attitudes that impact identity.

• Outermost circle represents larger forces and struc- tures that work together to reinforce exclusion.

Note: It is impossible to name every variety of discrimi- nation, identity, or structure. These are just examples to help give you a sense of what intersectionality is.

Source: Simpson, Joanna. (2009). Everyone Belongs: A Toolkit for Applying Intersectionality (p. 5). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 5 Conceptualizing Intersectionality 71

Bob the Triangle

Source: Dobson, Miriam. (2013). Intersectionality: A Fun Guide. Retrieved from: https://miriamdobson.com/2013/07/12/ intersectionality-a-fun-guide-now-in-powerpoint-presentation-formation/.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 6

ACTIVIST INSIGHT: SOJOURNER TRUTH (1797–1883)

Sojourner Truth, circa 1870, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Source: Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 6 Activist Insight: Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) 73

One critical thematic of feminism that is perennially relevant is the important question of what it means to be a woman under different historical circumstances. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, this concern was the subject of major debate as the concept of “global sisterhood” was critiqued for its failure to fully take on board the power relations that divided us.

A century earlier, contestations among feminists involved in anti-slavery struggles and campaigns for women’s suffrage also foregrounded similar conflicts. Their memory still resonates with us because the interre- lationships between racism, gender, sexuality, and social class were at the heart of these contestations. [The] 19th century political locution “Ain’t I a Woman?,” by funda- mentally challenging all ahistoric or essentialist notions of “woman,” neatly captures all the main elements of the debate on “intersectionality.” We regard the concept of “intersectionality” as signifying the complex, irreducible, varied, and variable effects which ensue when multiple axes of differentiation—economic, political, cultural, psy- chic, subjective, and experiential—intersect in historically specific contexts. The concept emphasizes that different dimensions of social life cannot be separated out into discrete and pure strands.

The phrase Ain’t I a Woman? was first introduced into North American and British feminist lexicon by an enslaved woman, Sojourner Truth (the name she took, instead of her original name, Isabella, when she became a travelling preacher). We know from the biographies of black women such as Sojourner Truth that many of them spoke loud and clear. They would not be caged by the violence of slavery even as they were violently marked by it. Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, very well demonstrates the historical power of a political subject who challenges imperatives of subordination and thereby creates new visions. Sojourner Truth was born into enslavement (to a wealthy Dutch slave-owner living in New York). She cam- paigned for both the abolition of slavery and for equal

rights for women. Since she was illiterate throughout her life, no formal record of the speech exists and, indeed, two different versions of it are in existence.

This cutting-edge speech (in all senses of the term) deconstructs every single major truth-claim about gender in a patriarchal slave social formation. More generally, the discourse offers a devastating critique of the socio-political, economic, and cultural processes of “othering” whilst drawing attention to the simultaneous importance of subjectivity—of subjective pain and vio- lence that the inflictors do not often wish to hear about or acknowledge. Simultaneously, the discourse foregrounds the importance of spirituality to this form of political activism when existential grief touches ground with its unconscious and finds affirmation through a belief in the figure of a Jesus who listens. Political identity here is never taken as a given but is performed through rhet- oric and narration. Sojourner Truth’s identity claims are thus relational, constructed in relation to white women and all men and clearly demonstrate that what we call “identities” are not objects but processes constituted in and through power relations.

It is in this sense of critique, practice, and inspiration that this discourse holds crucial lessons for us today. Part lament, but defiant, articulating razor-sharp pol- itics but with the sensibility of a poet, the discourse performs the analytic moves of a “decolonised mind.” It refuses all final closures. We are all in dire need of decolonized open minds today. Furthermore, Sojourner Truth powerfully challenges essentialist thinking that a particular category of woman is essentially this or essentially that (e.g., that women are necessarily weaker than men or that enslaved black women were not real women).

Source: Brah, Avtar, & Phoenix, Ann. (2004). Adapted

from “Ain’t I A Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality.”

Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 76–77.

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74 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851 Speech

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get it—and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member of audience whispers, “intellect”]

That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got nothing more to say.

Source: Truth, Sojourner, as recounted by Frances

Gage. (1863). Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee.

Retrieved from: http://sojournertruthmemorial.org/

sojourner-truth/her-words/.

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This essay focuses on women with disabilities, a significant and growing segment of Canadian society. According to Statistics Canada (2001), 3.6 million Canadians—12.4% of the population—have disabilities, and more than 50% of them are women. The rate of disability increases with age. Of children from birth to age 14, 3.3% have a disability; amongst working-age adults aged 15 to 64, 9.9% have a dis- ability. This figure rises to 40.5% for Canadians over the age of 65, and more than 50% for those over the age of 75 (Government of Canada, 2002). With more people living longer, and the tendency of women to outlive men, we can expect the number of disabled women to continue to grow.

Persons with disabilities demonstrate relatively high rates of unemployment and low rates of work- related earnings in comparison to those without dis- abilities. Not surprisingly, women with disabilities have even higher rates of unemployment and lower earnings than their male counterparts (Bunch & Crawford, 1998; Fawcett, 1996). Women with dis- abilities in Ontario demonstrate exceptionally low rates of workforce participation, and nearly one-third live in poverty.

Despite the growing number of women with disabilities and the challenges they face, disabled women constitute a group that is typically marginal- ized by the mainstream feminist movement (as well

CHAPTER 9

Reformulating the Feminist Perspective: Giving Voice to Women with Disabilities

Neita Kay Israelite and Karen Swartz

Neita Kay Israelite is a professor emerita in the Faculty of Education and Graduate Program in Critical Disability Studies at York University. Her research and teaching focus on disability and inclusion, including university experiences of students with disabilities, identity construction of hard-of-hearing adolescents, and transition and adjustment issues.

Karen Swartz is director of York University’s Physical, Sensory & Medical Disability Services, where she supports and advocates on behalf of university students, staff, and faculty living with disabilities. Her research focuses on postsecondary education and disability.

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76 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

as the masculinist disability movement). As Barbara Cassidy, Robina Lord, and Nancy Mandell point out (1998), feminist analyses of women’s oppression tend to take white middle-class women as the norm. Those who differ from this norm with regard to their physical, sensory, or mental status—i.e., women with disabilities—as well as those who differ with regard to factors such as race, class, or ethnicity, are often “left out without anyone noticing they are absent” (Cassidy, Lord, & Mandell, 1998, p. 33).

Our essay begins with an overview of the two major models of disability: the medical model and the social model. Next, we review feminist debates on two critical concerns regarding the social model: (1) its exclusion of the subjective experience of people with disabilities, and (2) its exclusion of discourses on the body and the reality of impairment. Finally, we take up critiques of mainstream feminism by feminist disability theorists.

Throughout this essay, we use personal accounts of women with disabilities to illuminate critical aspects of our discussion. Most of the narratives were collected by second author Karen Swartz (2003) in her participatory qualitative research study of the life transitions of university women with disabili- ties. These accounts are augmented by narratives of women and girls with disabilities gathered by first author Neita Israelite and her colleagues in several qualitative research projects (Israelite, 2003; Israelite, Karambatsos, Pullan, & Symanzik, 2000; Israelite, Swartz, Huynh, & Tocco, 2004).

The disability field is currently split regarding the use of “disability-first” versus “person-first” terminology (Marks, 1999). Disability-first (i.e., disabled women) is preferred by some women as it acknowledges the community and culture of disabled people and the primacy of disability in their lives; person-first (i.e., women with disabilities) is preferred by other women as it acknowledges the primacy of their personhood. We use both terms in recognition of both points of view.

MODELS OF DISABILITY

Two major theoretical positions inform attitudes and beliefs about disability: the traditional medical model, and the social model.

The Medical Model

The medical model assumes that differences from the norm in terms of physical, sensory, or mental capabilities produce a defective member of society. This model holds that any difficulties people with disabilities experience are due to problems within the individual, and not because of environmental, societal, physical, or attitudinal barriers within the larger society. For instance, it is assumed that women with physical disabilities will have problems with public transit because they cannot climb stairs, that women who are deaf will have parenting problems because they cannot hear their children’s voices, and that women with visual impairments will have problems with employment because they cannot read work manuals.

A critical dimension of the medical model is the notion of power. Considering disability as a defect within the individual allows those who are not disabled to take charge. This gives rise to a patriar- chal-like set of dynamics in which power is held by, and transferred through, nondisabled people, who are often doctors, allied health professionals, clinicians, or educators. Their professional dominance has led to the medicalization of disability—the extension of the power and influence of medicine such that it “dominates the daily lives and experiences of many disabled people” (French & Swain, 2001, p. 738). One byproduct of this form of social control is labelling, a “medical discourse of diagnosis of impairment” (Swain & Cameron, 1999, p. 77), in which the impairment, nature of the remediation, or the individual’s assistive devices become a description of her identity. In a study of attitudes toward university students with disabilities

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Chapter 9 Reformulating the Feminist Perspective: Giving Voice to Women with Disabilities 77

(Israelite et al., 2000), a disabled woman complained about nondisabled peers who identify people with disabilities in terms of their assistive devices:

One of the things that I consistently state when I speak in public is that I am not my machine.… And I’m sure it can be said … whether that machine happens to be a com- puter or a wheelchair or a hearing aid. If you can’t see the person, then you haven’t seen me.

Some disabled people internalize medicalized identities to such an extent that they even refer to themselves in terms of a medical definition rather than “an affirming self-definition” (Marks, 1999, p. 69). In interviews with hard-of-hearing high school students (Israelite, 2003), one young woman with congenital (from birth) hearing loss called herself a “hearing aid” student; another with recently acquired loss said, “Now I am a ‘hearing impaired.’”

The Social Model

In contrast to the medical model, the social model views disability as a social identity. It holds that the “problem” of disability is inherent not in the individ- ual, but rather in the social structure. In social model theory, the following distinction is made between impairment and disability:

Impairment is the functional limitation within the individual caused by physical, mental, or sensory impairment. Disability is the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in the normal life of a community on an equal level with others due to physical and social barriers. (Barnes, 1991, p. 2)

Therefore, the cause of disability is not impairment per se, but society’s failure to provide appropriate services and to adequately ensure that the needs of people with disabilities are fully taken into account. Disability,

from this perspective, is constructed as all the things that impose restrictions on people with disabilities, such as individual prejudice, institutional discrimin- ation, inequitable legislation, and restrictive school and work environments. Participants in a study of school-to-work transitions (Israelite et al., 2004) were disabled by a range of restrictions in the workplace. For instance, when a woman with a physical impair- ment approached a potential place of employment for a job application, she discovered that the human resources building was not wheelchair accessible:

I went into the human resources building to pick up an application and I couldn’t get in because I got stuck. I had to go all the way around to the back and come through, and I just knew that it didn’t feel right. If you can’t get into the human resources building to get an application, you know, it already discour- ages you by thinking, “Why would they want me when they wouldn’t even let me in?”

Another woman in the study felt that prospective employers seriously underestimated the abilities of disabled people:

They think, they assume, the job is too big for you. They underestimate you. And they have no faith in you or confidence. And you tell them you can do it successfully … But gen- erally they’ll tell you, “Oh, you can’t do it.”

The attitudes this woman describes exemplify some of the taken-for-granted or commonly held beliefs that people without disabilities hold about those with disabilities. In our culture, physical, sen- sory, and mental impairments are often considered to have far-reaching effects on ability. Although such beliefs may be unconscious, they nevertheless strongly influence behaviour and expectations.

Taken-for-granted beliefs play a large part in widespread assumptions of dysfunction regarding

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78 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

the sexuality of disabled women, such as the myth that they are unfit as sexual partners. The women in Karen Swartz’s (2003, pp. 21, 22) study, for example, said that, as they were growing up, they got the constant message from nondisabled peers that they were undesirable:

What I found in high school, a lot of times, was when you try to pursue somebody you’re interested in, they wouldn’t even look at you twice. There was that perception of, “Oh, you have a disability, part of your body is broken, so therefore you’re not a sexual being.”

Taken-for-granted beliefs also contribute to marginalization, a process that relegates women who “fall out of the scope of what is currently defined as socially acceptable” (Rauscher & McClintock, 1997, p. 198) to the outer margins of economic and social power and the cultural life of a society, leading to their exclusion from a range of social, cultural, and economic experiences that are part of the everyday lives of non-disabled women. […]

Since its original conception in Britain more than two decades ago, the social model has had a profound influence on the lives of people with disabilities. At the theoretical level, this model demonstrates “how the previously taken-for-granted, naturalistic category ‘disability’ is in reality an artificial and exclusionary social construction that penalizes those people who do not conform to mainstream expectations of appear- ance, behaviour, and/or economic performance” (Tregaskis, 2002, p. 457).

At the personal level, the social model has “lib- erated individual disabled people from the burden of personal tragedy, the oppression of individual inadequacies” (Morris, 1996, p. 12) by helping them understand that it is an impaired society, not their impaired bodies, that is responsible for the discrimin- ation, marginalization, and exclusion they face.

FEMINIST CRITIQUES OF THE SOCIAL MODEL

Although the social model has been beneficial to dis- abled people in both theory and praxis, it has been criticized for its failure to address the complexity of factors that shape the production of disability. Some prominent feminist debates deal with the exclusion of the subjective experience of people with disabil- ities from many social model accounts as well as the exclusion of discussions of the body and the reality of impairment.

Subjective Experience and Social Model Theory

Feminists with disabilities such as Susan Wendell (1996), Jenny Morris (1996), and Carol Thomas (1999) have put forward accounts of disability in which per- sonal narratives play an important role. Given the inequitable power differentials that characterize rela- tions between women with and without disabilities, these women emphasize the necessity of foreground- ing the individual experiences of disabled women as a vehicle for understanding their collective oppressions (Tregaskis, 2002). Other writers (e.g., Sheldon, 1999) argue that such analyses are too individualized and prioritize subjective experiences of disability over more theoretical explanations. Our position, however, is in line with Carol Thomas, who points out that “by taking the personal experiences of disabled women as their starting point and writing themselves into their own analyses, disabled feminist writers … are thus building upon well-established practices among feminist writers more generally” (1999, p. 70). Giving voice to the personal narratives of women with dis- abilities is also an important way of increasing the general public’s sense of social responsibility while informing and clarifying social model theory.

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The Body, Impairment, and Social Model Theory

Recent critiques of the social model focus on the exclusion of discussions of the body and impairment from many social model accounts. Many feminist disability theorists (e.g., Crow, 1996; French, 1994; Morris, 1991; Thomas, 1999; Wendell, 1996) and some masculinist disability theorists (e.g., Abberley, 1987; Hughes, 1999; Hughes & Paterson, 1997; Paterson & Hughes, 1999) take issue with the social model because it neither connects with the embodied experience nor the pain associated with impairment. Some theorists (e.g., French, 1994; Wendell, 1996) argue that the only way for the social model to move forward is to integrate the experience of impair- ment—the pain and the real limitations—with the experience of disability. Susan Wendell, who has an acquired physical disability, writes that disabled feminists should be discussing “how to live with the suffering body, with that which cannot be noticed without pain, and that which cannot be celebrated without ambivalence” (1996, p. 179). […]

Sally French, who has a visual impairment, points out that it is her actual lack of visual acuity, and not some barrier created by a sighted society, that prevents her from recognizing people and reading nonverbal cues in social situations.

While I agree with the basic tenets of [the social] model and consider it to be the most important way forward for disabled people, I believe that some of the most profound problems experienced by people with certain impairments are difficult, if not impossible, to solve by social manipulation. (1993, p. 17)

Social model proponents such as Michael Oliver (1996) point out that the original goal of the social model, when it was proposed more than 20 years ago, was to eradicate what they identify as the “true causes” of disability: societal discrimination and prejudice.

The fact that these causes still permeate the lives of women with disabilities is exemplified by their reaction to workplace prejudice and discrimination in our study of school-to-work transitions (Israelite et al., 2004, p. 20):

It gets right to the core of your identity. You begin to question, “What is my role in this world.”

I thought, “Oh my God, this is what it’s like out there. Oh my God, how am I going to find a job?”

Some disability scholars are calling for an updated version of the social model, one that acknowledges the relevance of bodily experience to the lives of dis- abled people. They argue that by not incorporating impairment, the social model concedes the body to medicine, thus giving tacit permission for it to be understood in terms of the medical model (Hughes & Paterson, 1997). Bill Hughes and Kevin Paterson (1997) assert that there is a need to wrest control of the impairment discourse from the medical profession and to establish the impaired body as an integral part of what it means to be disabled. This would entail, in part, “tackling the very real repulsion that society feels for the impaired body” (Tregaskis, 2002, p. 464). This repulsion was something that most of the participants in Karen Swartz’s (2003, p. 27) study had not only experienced, but also internalized, to a significant extent. One woman explained:

What you stare at in the mirror is not just something that is going to go away. You’re not going to wake up from a dream. This is reality.

Impairment theory provides an explanation that, in keeping with the social model, places the responsibility for “the problem of repulsion” on nondisabled people. Claire Tregaskis (2002) explains that, “in reality, it

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is the non-disabled gaze which creates abnormality, and that actually it is the gaze that is disfigured, not the [disabled] ‘other’ who is being gazed at” (p. 463). This point is clearly illustrated in the comments of two women in Karen Swartz’s (2003, p. 27) study:

The only time I saw myself as disabled was when … someone said, “Oh what happened to you?” [I would reply] “Oh what do you mean what happened to me? Oh yeah. Oh God. Oh you’re talking about that.”

[You have to] realize what you are feeling isn’t you. It is the images that somebody else has transferred on to you.

* * * * *

DISABILITY THEORISTS CRITIQUE FEMINIST THEORY

Many women with disabilities write that they feel marginalized within the feminist movement. Their experience is that mainstream feminist theories tend to privilege “the functional capabilities and social roles characteristic of ‘normal’ women” (Kittay, Schriempf, Silvers, & Wendell, 2001, p. viii), often not taking women with disabilities into account. Feminist dis- ability scholars share in the marginalization. Carol Thomas cites the cases of Jenny Morris (1991, 1996) and Susan Wendell (1996), both of whom have acquired disabilities. These scholars were accepted as feminist thinkers and writers until they became disabled; after that, they, too, found themselves mar- ginalized from feminist scholarship.

According to feminist scholars Fine and Asch (1988):

Women with disabilities traditionally have been ignored not only by those concerned about disability but also by those examining

women’s experiences. Even the feminist scholars to whom we owe great intellectu- al and political debts have perpetuated this neglect. The popular view of women with disabilities has been one mixed with repug- nance. Perceiving disabled women as child- like, helpless, and victimized, nondisabled women have severed them from the sister- hood in an effort to advance more power- ful, competent, and appealing female icons. As one feminist academic said to the non- disabled co-author of this essay: “Why study women with disabilities? They reinforce traditional stereotypes of women being de- pendent, passive and needy.” (pp. 3–4)

Several of Karen Swartz’s (2003) participants said that during their childhood, doctors, teachers, coun- selors, and even some family members encouraged them, through both implicit and explicit messages, to be passive and dependent rather than strong and independent. They were dismayed when they got to university to find that such attitudes still predomi- nated. One woman sought out courses in Women’s Studies in the hopes of finding answers to her ques- tions about the oppression of disabled women. She was dismayed to find that even a course on the history of women did not address this issue:

I won’t take a women’s history course because it doesn’t cover disabled women. You can’t tell me that disabled women didn’t exist.… I think we need to make professors more aware and almost demand that it get put on the curriculum. I mean if they can study women’s issues, gay issues, African American issues. We are part of society and we deserve to be studied. (p. 37)

Feminist disability scholars agree with this stu- dent’s assessment of university programs and have proposed ways of infusing disability issues into the

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Chapter 9 Reformulating the Feminist Perspective: Giving Voice to Women with Disabilities 81

postsecondary curriculum and making the experi- ence of disabled women more central to teaching and research in Women’s Studies (e.g., Garland-Thomson 2002; Linton, 1997). Rosemary Garland-Thomson (2002) argues for the positioning of feminist disability studies as a field of academic study and the inclusion of feminist disability theory as a major subgenre of feminist theory. Garland-Thomson is but one of many feminist scholars calling for the inclusion of the ability/disability binary as a category of analysis alongside gender, race, age, and social class in feminist analyses of oppression.

* * * * *

Disability is a fluid category. Some women are born with disabilities; others acquire them. Some are disabled for some portion of their lives, others for their whole lives. Virtually all women can expect to become disabled if they live long enough. Within the disability movement, masculinist disability scholars have been too slow to acknowledge the gendered nature of disability. Within the feminist movement, nondisabled feminist scholars have been too slow to acknowledge the importance of the disability to iden- tity construction and feminist analyses of oppression. Sadly, what Marion Blackwell-Stratton, Mary Lou Breslin, Arlean Mayerson, and Susan Bailey stated in 1988 still holds true: “For the disabled feminist, neither the disability movement nor the women’s movement fully addresses her concerns” (p. 307).

As Garland-Thomson so aptly states:

Disability—like gender—is a concept that pervades all aspects of culture: its structuring institutions, social identities, cultural prac- tices, political positions, historical commun- ities, and the shared human experience of embodiment.… To understand how disabil- ity operates is to understand what it means to be fully human. (2002, p. 4)

REFERENCES

Abberley, P. (1987). The concept of oppression and the development of a social theory of disability. Disability, Handicap, and Society, 2, 5–20.

Barnes, C. (1991). Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination: A Case for Anti-Discrimination Legislation. London: Hurst.

Blackwell-Stratton, M., Breslin, M., Mayerson, A., & Bailey, S. (1988). Smashing icons: Disabled women and the disability and women’s movements. In M. Fine & A. Asch (Eds.), Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics (pp. 306–332). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Bunch, M., & Crawford, C. (1998, June). Persons with Disabilities: Literature Review of the Factors Affecting Employment and Labor Force Transitions. Hull: Human Resources Development Canada. Retrieved June 19, 2003, from http://www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/sp-ps/arb-dgra/ publications/research/disability.shtml.

Cassidy, B., Lord, R., & Mandell, N. (1998). Silenced and forgotten women: Race, poverty, and disability. In N. Mandell (Ed.), Feminist Issues: Race, Class, and Sexuality (2nd ed.) (pp. 27–54). Toronto: Prentice-Hall.

Crow, L. (1996). Including all of our lives: Renewing the social model of disability. In J. Morris (Ed.), Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability (pp. 206–226). London: Women’s Press.

Fawcett, G. (1996). Living with Disability in Canada: An Economic Portrait. Hull: Office for Disability Issues, Human Resources Development Canada.

Fine, M., & Asch, A. (Eds.). (1988). Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

French, S. (1993). Disability, impairment, or something in between. In J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French, & M. Oliver (Eds.), Disabling Barriers, Enabling Environments. Buckingham: Open University Press.

French, S. (1994). On Equal Terms: Working with Disabled People. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

French, S., & Swain, J. (2001). The relationship between disabled people and health and welfare professionals. In G. Albrecht, K. Seelman, & M. Bury (Eds.), Handbook of Disability Studies (pp. 734–753). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

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Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). Integrating disability theory, transforming feminist theory. Feminist Disability Studies [Special issue] [Electronic version]. NWSA Journal, 14 (3), 1–32.

Government of Canada. (2002). Advancing the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities. Hull: Human Resources Development Canada. Retrieved March 12, 2004, from www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/bcph-odi.

Hughes, B. (1999). The construction of impairment: Modernity and the aesthetic of oppression. Disability & Society, 14, 155–172.

Hughes, B., & Paterson, K. (1997). The social model of disability and the disappearing body: Towards a sociology of impairment. Disability & Society, 12, 325–340.

Israelite, N. (2003). Identity construction of hard-of-hearing adolescents. Unpublished raw data.

Israelite, N., Karambatsos, S., Pullan, J., & Symanzik, A. (2000, June). Attitudes of university students toward students with disabilities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Disability Studies, Chicago, IL.

Israelite, N., Swartz, K., Huynh, J., & Tocco, A. (2004). Postsecondary students and graduates with disabilities: The school-to-work transition. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Kittay, E., Schriempf, A., Silvers, A., & Wendell, S. (2001). Introduction. Feminism and Disability [Special issue] [Electronic version]. Hypatia, 16 (4), vii–xii.

Linton, S. (1997). Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University Press, p. 94.

Marks, D. (1999). Disability: Controversial Debates and Conversations. London: Routledge.

Morris, J. (1991). Pride against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability. London: Women’s Press.

Morris, J. (1996). Introduction. In J. Morris (Ed.), Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability (pp. 1–16). London: Women’s Press.

Oliver, M. (1996). Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Paterson, K., & Hughes, B. (1999). Disability studies and phenomenology: The carnal politics of everyday life. Disability & Society, 14, 597–610.

Rauscher, L., & McClintock, J. (1997). Ableism curriculum design. In M. Adams, L.A. Bell, & P. Griffen (Eds.), Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice (pp. 198–231). New York: Routledge.

Sheldon, A. (1999). Personal and perplexing: Feminist disability politics evaluated. Disability & Society, 14, 643–657.

Swain, J., & Cameron, C. (1999). Unless otherwise stated: Discourses of labeling and coming out. In M. Corker & S. French (Eds.), Disability Discourse (pp. 68–78). Buckingham: Open University Press.

Swartz, K. (2003). Life transitions of student with disabilities revisited: A feminist approach. Unpublished manuscript. York University, Toronto, Canada.

Thomas, C. (1999). Female Forms: Experiencing and Understanding Disability. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Tregaskis, C. (2002). Social model theory: The story so far. Disability & Society, 17, 457–470.

Wendell, S. (1996). The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge.

Source: Isrealite, Neita Kay, & Swartz, Karen. (2004).

“Reformulating the Feminist Perspective: Giving Voice

to Women with Disabilities.” In Althea Prince & Susan

Silva-Wayne (Eds.), Feminisms and Womanisms: A

Women’s Studies Reader (pp. 471–479). Toronto, ON:

Women’s Press.

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NOTICING GENDER

One night a year, the attention of the TV-watching world is focused on Hollywood’s most spectacular event, the Oscar award ceremony. Famous people are driven up in limousines in front of an enthusiastic crowd, and in a blizzard of camera flashes they walk into the auditorium—the men in tuxedoes striding easily, the women going cautiously because they are wearing low-cut gowns and high-heeled shoes. As the evening wears on, awards are given out for film score, camera work, script writing, direction, best foreign film, and so on. But in the categories that concern the people you see on screen when you go to the movies,

there are two awards given: best actor and best actress; best supporting actor and best supporting actress.

The internet is saturated with images of glamor- ous people, from models in advertisements to all kind of celebrities and public figures. When pop star Miley Cyrus performed at the MTV Music Video Awards (VMA) in 2013, the images of her sexually provoc- ative dancing travelled at incredible speed across the world. After the event, Cyrus tweeted, “Smilers! My VMA performance had 306,000 tweets per minute. That’s more than the blackout or Superbowl! [sic].” Major news and entertainment websites, social media, blogs, and Youtube channels sent waves of chatter through cyberspace. Much of it was about whether the

Part 1C: Accounting for Inequalities

CHAPTER 10

The Question of Gender

Raewyn Connell and Rebecca Pearse

Rebecca Pearse is a professor in the Department of Political Economy at the Univer- sity of Sydney. Previously, she was a post-doctoral fellow working at the Australian National University on a project entitled Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences. Pearse has expertise in the political economy of climate and energy policy, social responses to environmental change, the sociology of knowledge, and feminism and gender relations.

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public was prepared for the transformation of Cyrus from child star to sex symbol.

Whilst women’s bodies are common elements of the visual images we consume on the web, women are much less likely to be producing web content. In a recent member survey, Wikipedia discovered that less than 15 per cent of people who write content for the online encyclopedia are women. Internet access is also uneven. In 2013 the multinational computer technology firm Intel found that nearly 25 per cent fewer women internationally have internet access than men. Whilst in a small number of affluent nations like France and the United States women actually have slightly higher rates of internet access, the gender gap reaches nearly 45 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa.

In politics women continue to be the minority. Every year a “family photo” is taken at G20 meetings, where heads of government and their senior finance and central bank representatives meet to discuss the inter- national financial system. In 2013, four women stood among twenty national leaders in the photo, represent- ing Germany, Brazil, South Korea, and Argentina. The imbalance is commonly more pronounced. There has never been a woman head of government in modern Russia, China, France, Japan, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, or Mexico. There has only been one each in the history of Brazil, Germany, Britain, Indonesia, and Australia. Statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union showed that in 2013, 79.1 per cent of members of the world’s parliaments were men.

Among senior ministers the predominance of men is even higher. In 2012, only four countries in the world had women making up half of a national ministry (Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland). More typical figures for women in ministerial roles were 21 per cent (Australia, Mexico), 11 per cent (China, Indonesia, Japan), 6 per cent (Malaysia), and 0 per cent (Lebanon, Papua New Guinea). The few women who do get to this level are usually given the job of running welfare or education ministries. Men keep control of taxation, investment, technology, international relations, police, and the military. Every

Secretary-General of the United Nations and every head of the World Bank has been a man.

Women’s representation in politics has changed slowly over time, and with difficulty. French lawyer Christine Lagard was the first woman ever to head the International Monetary Fund in 2011. The world aver- age number of women in parliaments increased from 10 per cent in 1995 to 20 per cent in 2012. Australia’s first women Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, served for three years with a record eight women in ministry and five in cabinet. She was then thrown out of power in a party coup. The new conservative government elected in 2013 had only one woman in cabinet.

What is true of politics is also true of business. Of the top 200 businesses listed on the Australian stock exchange in 2012 (including those that publish the mass-circulation magazines), just seven had a woman as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Of the 500 giant international corporations listed in Fortune magazine’s ‘Global 500’ in 2013, just 22 had a woman CEO. Such figures are usually presented by saying that women now form 4.4 per cent of the top business leadership around the world. It’s more informative to say that men compose 95.6 per cent of that leadership.

Women are a substantial part of the paid work- force, lower down the hierarchy. They are mostly con- centrated in service jobs—clerical work, call centres, cleaning, serving food, and professions connected with caring for the young and the sick, i.e., teaching and nursing. In some parts of the world, women are also valued as industrial workers, for instance in microprocessor plants, because of their supposedly ‘nimble fingers’. Though the detailed division between men’s and women’s work varies in different parts of the world, it is common for men to predominate in heavy industry, mining, transport, indeed in most jobs that involve any machinery except a sewing machine. World-wide, men are a large majority of the workforce in management, accountancy, law, and technical pro- fessions such as engineering and computing.

Behind the paid workforce is another form of work—unpaid domestic and care work. In all

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contemporary societies for which we have statistics, women do most of the cleaning, cooking and sewing, most of the work of looking after children, and almost all of the work of caring for babies. (If you don’t think this is work, you haven’t done it yet.) This work is often associated with a cultural definition of women as caring, gentle, self-sacrificing, and industrious, i.e., as good mothers. Being a good father is rarely associated with cutting school lunches and wiping babies’ bottoms— though there are now interesting attempts to promote what in Mexico has been called ‘paternidad afectiva’, i.e., emotionally engaged fatherhood. Normally, fathers are supposed to be decision-makers and breadwinners, to consume the services provided by women and represent the family in the outside world.

Women as a group are less likely to be out in the public world than men, and, when they are, have fewer resources. In almost all parts of the world, men are more likely to have a paid job. The world ‘eco- nomic activity rate’ for women has crept up, but is still just over two-thirds of the rate for men. The main exceptions are Scandinavia and parts of West Africa, where women’s relative labour force participation rates are unusually high. But in some Arab states, women’s participation rates are one-quarter the rate for men, and in much of South Asia and Latin America, they are about half the rate for men.

Once women are in the paid workforce, how do their wages compare? Over thirty years after the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, nowhere in the world are women’s earned incomes equal to men’s. Women are often engaged in low-wage employment, and still receive 18 per cent less than men’s average wages. In some countries, the gender pay gap is much bigger. Zambia has the largest gender pay gap at almost 46 per cent (2005), followed by South Korea with 43 per cent (2007) and Azerbaijan with 37 per cent (2008). Part of any gender gap in income can be explained by the pattern of women being more likely to work fewer hours and more likely to

be unemployed. Other reasons relate to discriminatory wage practices and to women’s overrepresentation in low-paid jobs.

Therefore, most women in the world, especially women with children, are economically dependent on men. Some men believe that women who are depend- ent on them must be their property. This is a com- mon scenario in domestic violence: when dependent women don’t conform to demands from their husband or boyfriend, they are beaten. This creates a dilemma for the women, which is very familiar to domestic violence services. They can stay, and put themselves and their children at high risk of further violence; or go, and lose their home, economic support, and status in the community. If they go, certain husbands are so infuriated that they pursue and kill the wives and even the children.

Men are not beaten up by their spouses so often, but men are at risk of other forms of violence. Most assaults reported to the police, in countries with good statistics on the matter, are by men on other men. Some men are beaten, indeed some are murdered, simply because they are thought to be homosexual; and some of this violence comes from the police. Most of the prisoners in gaols are men. In the United States, which has the biggest prison system in the world, the prison population in 2011 was 1.59 million, and 93 per cent of them were men. Most deaths in combat are of men, because men make up the vast majority of the troops in armies and militias. Most industrial accidents involve men, because men are most of the workforce in dangerous industries such as construc- tion and mining.

Men are involved disproportionately in violence partly because they have been prepared for it. Though patterns of child rearing differ between cultures, the situation in Australia is not unusual. Australian boys are steered towards competitive sports such as football, where physical dominance is celebrated, from an early age—by their fathers, by schools, and by the mass media. Boys also come under peer pressure to show bravery and toughness, and learn to fear being

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classified as sissies or poofters (a local term meaning effeminate or homosexual). Being capable of violence becomes a social resource. Working-class boys, who don’t have the other resources that will lead to a professional career, become the main recruits into jobs that require the use of force: police, the military, private security, blue-collar crime, and professional sport. It is mainly young women who are recruited into the jobs that repair the consequences of violence: nursing, psychology, and social work.

So far, we have listed an assortment of facts, about mass media, about politics and business, about families, and about growing up. Are these random? Modern thought about gender starts with the recogni- tion that they are not. These facts form a pattern; they make sense when seen as parts of the overall gender arrangement, which this chapter will call the ‘gender order,’ of contemporary societies.

To notice the existence of the gender order is easy; to understand it is not. Conflicting theories of gender now exist […], and some problems about gender are genuinely difficult to resolve. Yet we now have a rich resource of knowledge about gender, derived from decades of research, and a fund of practical experi- ence from gender reform. We now have a better basis for understanding gender issues than any previous generation had.

UNDERSTANDING GENDER

In everyday life we take gender for granted. We instantly recognize a person as a man or woman, girl or boy. We arrange everyday business around the distinction. Conventional marriages require one of each. Mixed doubles tennis requires two of each, but most sports require one kind at a time.

Most years, next to Oscar night, the most popu- lar television broadcast in the world is said to be the American Super Bowl, another strikingly gendered event: large armoured men crash into each other while chasing a pointed leather bladder, and thin women

in short skirts dance and smile in the pauses. Most of us cannot crash or dance nearly so well, but we do our best in other ways. As women or men we slip our feet into differently shaped shoes, button our shirts on opposite sides, get our heads clipped by different hairdressers, buy our pants in separate shops, and take them off in separate toilets.

These arrangements are so familiar that they can seem part of the order of nature. Belief that gender distinction is ‘natural’ makes it scandalous when people don’t follow the pattern—for instance, when people of the same gender fall in love with each other. So homosexuality is frequently declared ‘unnatural’ and bad.

But if having sex with a fellow-woman or a fellow-man is unnatural, why have a law against it? We don’t provide penalties for violating the third law of thermodynamics. Anti-gay ordinances in US cities, police harassment of gay men in Senegal, the crimi- nalization of women’s adultery in Islamic Sharia law, the imprisonment of transsexual women for violating public order—such things only make sense because these matters are not fixed by nature.

These events are part of an enormous social effort to channel people’s behaviour. Ideas about gender-ap- propriate behaviour are constantly being circulated, not only by legislators but also by priests, parents, teachers, advertisers, retail mall owners, talk-show hosts, and disc jockeys. Events like Oscar night and the Super Bowl are not just consequences of our ideas about gender difference. They also help to create gender difference, by displays of exemplary masculinities and femininities.

Being a man or a woman, then, is not a pre-determined state. It is a becoming, a condition actively under construction. The pioneering French feminist Simone de Beauvoir put this in a classic phrase: ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ Though the positions of women and men are not simply parallel, the principle is also true for men: one is not born masculine, but has to become a man.

This process is often discussed as the develop- ment of ‘gender identity’, […] a name for the sense

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Chapter 10 The Question of Gender 87

of belonging to a gender category. Identity includes our ideas of what that belonging means, what kind of person we are, in consequence of being a woman or a man. These ideas are not presented to the baby as a package at the beginning of life. They develop (there is some controversy about exactly when), and are filled out in detail over a long period of years, as we grow up.

As de Beauvoir further recognized, this business of becoming a gendered person follows many different paths, involves many tensions and ambiguities, and sometimes produces unstable results. Part of the mys- tery of gender is how a pattern that on the surface appears so stark and rigid, on close examination turns out so complex and uncertain.

So we cannot think of womanhood or manhood as fixed by nature. But neither should we think of them as simply imposed from outside, by social norms or pres- sure from authorities. People construct themselves as masculine or feminine. We claim a place in the gender order—or respond to the place we have been given—by the way we conduct ourselves in everyday life.

Most people do this willingly, and often enjoy the gender polarity. Yet gender ambiguities are not rare. There are masculine women and feminine men. There are women in love with other women, and men in love with other men. There are women who are heads of households, and men who bring up children. There are women who are soldiers, and men who are nurses. Sometimes the development of ‘gender identity’ results in intermediate, blended, or sharply contradictory patterns, for which we use terms like effeminate, camp, queer, and transgender.

Psychological research suggests that the great majority of us combine masculine and feminine char- acteristics, in varying blends, rather than being all one or all the other. Gender ambiguity can be an object of fascination and desire, as well as disgust. Gender impersonations are familiar in both popular and high culture, from the cross-dressed actors of Shakespeare’s stage to movies starring transsexual women and drag queens like Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (2004), and Hairspray (2007).

There is certainly enough gender blending to provoke heated opposition from movements dedi- cated to re-establishing ‘the traditional family’, ‘true femininity,’ or ‘real masculinity’. By 1988 Pope John Paul II had become so concerned that he issued an Apostolic Letter, On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, reminding everyone that women were cre- ated for motherhood and their functions should not get mixed up with those of men. In a Christmas address in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI criticized gender theory directly. He argued: “People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.” This is a good summary of a central insight from gender theory. Of course, the Pope was arguing against it, saying that an essential, biological nature should determine our personal and public lives. These efforts to main- tain essentialist ideas about fixed womanhood and manhood are themselves strong evidence that the boundaries are none too stable.

But these are not just boundaries; they are also inequalities. Most churches and mosques are run exclusively by men, and this is part of a larger pattern. Most corporate wealth is in the hands of men, most big institutions are run by men, and most science and technology is controlled by men. In many countries, including some with very large populations, women are less likely than men to have been taught to read. For instance, recent adult literacy rates in India stood at 75 per cent for men and 51 per cent for women; in Nigeria, 72 per cent for men and 50 per cent for women. On a world scale, two-thirds of illiterate people are women. In countries like the United States, Australia, Italy, and Turkey, middle-class women have gained full access to higher education and have made inroads into middle management and professions. But even in those countries many informal barriers operate to keep the very top levels of power and wealth mostly a world of men.

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88 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

There is also unequal respect. In many situations, including the cheerleaders at the football game, women are treated as marginal to the main action, or as the objects of men’s desire. Whole genres of humour—bimbo jokes, woman-driver jokes, moth- er-in-law jokes—are based on contempt for women’s triviality and stupidity. A whole industry, ranging from heavy pornography and prostitution to soft-core advertising, markets women’s bodies as objects of consumption by men. Equal opportunity reforms in the workplace often run into a refusal by men to be under the authority of a woman. Not only do most religions prevent women from holding major religious office, they often treat women symbolically as a source of defilement for men.

Though men in general benefit from the inequal- ities of the gender order, they do not benefit equally. Indeed, many pay a considerable price. Boys and men who depart from dominant definitions of masculinity because they are gay, effeminate, or considered wimp- ish are often subject to verbal abuse and discrimina- tion, and are sometimes the targets of violence. Men who conform to dominant definitions of masculinity may also pay a price. Research on men’s health shows that men have a higher rate of industrial accidents than women, have a higher rate of death by violence, tend to eat a worse diet and drink more alcohol, and (not surprisingly) have more sporting injuries. In 2012, the life expectancy for men in the United States was calculated at 76 years, compared with 81 years for women. In Russia, after the restoration of capitalism, life expectancy for men was 63 years, compared with 75 years for women.

Gender arrangements are thus, at the same time, sources of pleasure, recognition, and identity, and sources of injustice and harm. This means that gender is inherently political—but it also means the politics can be complicated and difficult.

Inequality and oppression in the gender order have repeatedly led to demands for reform. Movements for change include campaigns for women’s right to vote, and for women’s presence in anti-colonial movements and representation in independent governments. There are campaigns for equal pay, for women’s right to own property, for homosexual law reform, for women’s trade unionism, for equal employment opportunity, for reproductive rights, for the human rights of transsexual men and women and transgen- der people; and campaigns against discrimination in education, against sexist media, against rape and domestic violence.

Political campaigns resisting some of these changes, or seeking counter-changes, have also arisen. The scene of gender politics currently includes anti- gay campaigns, anti-abortion (‘pro-life’) campaigns, a spectrum of men’s movements, and a complex international debate about links between Western feminism and Western cultural dominance in the world. One of the most striking waves of change underway now is the legalization of gay marriage. Same-sex couples are now able to marry in 13 US states and Washington, DC.1 This is a fast-growing reform movement mostly in the global North, but also in Latin America. Of the 16 countries that permit gay men and lesbians to marry, 9 have made this reform since 2010.

In this history, the feminist and gay movements of the 1960s–1970s were pivotal. They did not reach all their political goals, but they had a profound cultural impact. They called attention to a whole realm of human reality that was poorly understood, and thus created a demand for understanding as well as action. This was the historical take-off point of contemporary gender research. Political practice launched a deep change—which increasingly seems like a revolution— in human knowledge.

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Chapter 10 The Question of Gender 89

NOTE ON SOURCES

Most of the statistics mentioned in this chapter, such as

income, economic activity rates, and literacy, can be found

in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human

Development Report (UNDP 2013), or online tables regularly

published by the United Nations Statistics Division. Figures

on parliamentary representation and numbers of ministers

are from Inter-Parliamentary Union (2013), and on managers,

from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Fortune, and

CNN. Sources of information on men’s health can be found in

Schofield et al. (2000). Gender wage gap figures are taken from

the International Trade Union Confederation report Frozen in

Time: Gender Pay Gap Unchanged for 10 Years (ITUC 2012). The

quotation on woman is from Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second

Sex (1949: 295).

NOTE

1. In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled that the constitution

guarantees the right to same-sex marriage.

REFERENCES

de Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. The Second Sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin (1972 edition).

Inter-Parliamentary Union. 2013. ‘Women in national parliaments: Situation as of 1 July’, http://ipu.org/wmn-e/ world.htm (accessed 20 March 2014).

ITUC. 2012. Frozen in Time: Gender Pay Gap Unchanged for 10 Years. Brussels: International Trade Union Confederation.

Schofield, T., R.W. Connell, I. Walker, J. Wood, and D. Butland. 2000. ‘Understanding men’s health: A gender relations approach to masculinity, health and illness’, Journal of American College Health 48 (6): 247–56.

UNDP. 2013. Human Development Report 2013: The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World. New York: United Nations Development Programme.

Source: Connell, Raewyn, & Pearse, Rebecca. (2014).

Excerpted from “Chapter 1: The Question of Gender.”

In Gender: In World Perspective, 3rd Edition (pp. 1–12).

Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 7

Introduction

For Canadian women, the last decade has been shock- ing. The Harper Conservative government was hostile to women’s non-governmental organizations, human rights advocates, and to women’s equality claims, creating fear and silence.1 It made new and deeper cuts to programs and benefits that are crucial to women.2 Shrinking social programs and services, which are the building blocks of women’s equality, moved women backwards. These actions hit Indigenous women, racialized women, women with disabilities, Muslim women, immigrant women, and single mothers especially hard. Twenty years ago, Canada was number one on UN gender equality indexes. In 2014, Canada ranked 25th.3

This CEDAW review happens at an important moment for Canadian women. Canada has a new federal Liberal government and a Prime Minister who says he is a femi- nist. The tone of government has changed and a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls has been launched. These are welcome shifts.

Facts demonstrate, however, that there is a lot to do and to undo and many steps must be taken by federal, provincial and territorial governments in Canada to fulfill the rights set out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women [CEDAW]. Canadian women need new, ambitious and transforma- tive plans with adequate resource allocations in order to move forward. […]

Canada’s Failure to Recognize Social and Economic Rights

At the February 2016 review of Canada by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), CESCR criticized Canada for failing to recognize social and eco- nomic rights as justiciable rights and failing to provide domestic remedies for their violation.4 This failure by Canada is a serious concern for women.

*****

BECAUSE IT’S 2016!

Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA)

Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA) is an alliance of women’s organizations at the national, provincial, territorial, and local levels. Its mandate is to advance women’s equality in Canada by working for the full implementation of the in- ternational human rights treaties and agreements that Canada has ratified. FAFIA pro- vides training and resources on women’s human rights instruments and helps women to engage in using those instruments to address inequalities in their lives.

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Women’s Poverty and Income Inequality

About 13.5% of women in Canada live in poverty accord- ing to Statistics Canada’s 2011 figures.5 Particular groups of women have much higher rates of poverty:

• 37% of First Nations women (off reserve);6

• 23% of Métis and Inuit women;7

• 20% of immigrant women;8

• 28% of racialized women;9

• 27.5% of women with severe disabilities;10

• 28.3% of single women;11

• 23% of single mothers;12 and • 34% of single women over 65.13

Further, women’s average incomes are about two- thirds of men’s in Canada.14 The gender income gap has narrowed a bit over twenty years, but Canada is ranked 11th among 17 comparable countries by the Conference Board of Canada.15

Women are poorer than men in Canada, are more likely to be poor, and more likely to live in deeper pov- erty.16 As the data shows, particular groups of women are even more likely to be poor, and to have lower incomes, such as racialized, immigrant women or women with disabilities.

This income inequality has deep roots. Women are poorer than men because they have been assigned the role of unpaid caregiver and nurturer for children, men and old people; because in the paid labour force they perform caregiving and support work which is devalued and lower paid; because there is a lack of safe affordable childcare and this constrains women’s participation in the paid labour force; because women, particularly racial- ized, immigrant women and women with disabilities, are devalued workers, and more likely to be in precarious work; and because women incur economic penalties when they are not attached to men and when they have children alone.17

For women, poverty and economic inequality have gendered, harmful consequences. Poor women are less able to protect themselves from being treated as sexual

commodities and nothing more, and more likely to accept sexual commodification, prostitution and subordination in order to survive. They lose sexual autonomy in relation- ships. Their vulnerability to rape and assault is magnified. Their ability to care for their children is compromised, and they are more likely to have their children taken away in the name of “protection,” often because they do not have adequate housing and cannot supply proper food or ensure safe conditions. Without adequate incomes, women cannot secure stable housing and become home- less, increasing their exposure to violence. They have no political voice or influence. They are over-policed and under-protected by police. Without access to adequate social programs, including adequate social assistance and social services, such as shelters and transitional housing, women are much less able to resist or escape subordination and violence.18

Inadequate Social Programs

Inadequate Social Assistance In Canada, welfare (social assistance) is a program of last resort. It is only available to persons who have no alternative income to rely on. Unfortunately, welfare rates in Canada are set so low that women who are reliant on social assistance are stuck in poverty rather than being helped out of it.

The Caledon Institute’s report on welfare rates for 2013 shows that welfare incomes for all households in all jurisdictions fall well below the poverty line, as measured by Statistics Canada’s after tax low-income cut-offs.19 The effect of below poverty line welfare rates is that recipients cannot afford adequate food and shelter.

*****

Lack of Affordable, Safe, Public Childcare 77% of mothers with children between 3 and 5 years old are in the labour force.20 Yet, Canada still does not have a national childcare program. Canadian women scramble to find safe childcare and struggle to pay for it. Eight years ago the CEDAW Committee expressed its

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92 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

concerns with Canada’s “lack of affordable quality child- care spaces,” particularly for low-income women raising children,21 and urged Canada “to step up its efforts to provide a sufficient number of affordable childcare spaces.”22 Forty-six years ago the Royal Commission on the Status of Women called for a national childcare program, describing it as the “ramp” to women’s equality. But today regulated childcare is available for only 24% of Canadian children under five.23

Canada (outside of Quebec) is assessed poorly on childcare by Canadian24 and international experts. At 0.25% of GDP, Canada’s public investment in childcare is about one-half of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average and one-third of the minimum recommended level.25 As a result, Canada has among the lowest levels of access to childcare and the highest parent fees in the OECD. […]

The new Government of Canada has promised to transfer funds to provinces, territories and Indigenous communities for some childcare programs under a National Early Learning and Childcare Framework.26

The 2016 Budget set aside funds for these transfers to start in 2017.

This promised funding, while welcome, is not, by itself, a national childcare program. Canadian women need the Government of Canada to develop and immediately implement a comprehensive national approach to child- care, so that its leadership, and funding, can ensure affordable, quality, accessible childcare for all families and decent wages for childcare workers.

*****

Women and Employment

Wage Inequality Canadian women are paid less than their male counter- parts in nearly all sectors of the economy.27 This occurs regardless of women’s level of education.28 Even those women with comparable levels of education, experience,

and responsibilities to men are usually paid less.29 Women who work in female dominated occupations typically have lower rates of pay than those who work in male dominated occupations.30 For racialized women,31 women with disabilities32 and Indigenous women,33 the gender pay gap is even wider.34

• Comparing women and men who work full-time, full-year, women take home 20% less, on average, than men.35

• The pay gap between men and women in Canada is double that of the global average;36 is the 8th larg- est gender wage gap among OECD countries;37 and the World Economic Forum ranks Canada’s wage equality in 27th place.38 This gender wage gap has changed little since 1977.39

• Women are the majority of minimum wage workers (between $10–$13 across Canada);40 are nearly twice as likely as men to work in minimum wage jobs;41 and nowhere in Canada does working full-time for minimum wage earn a woman enough income to meet the poverty line, even for a single person.42

• Women are more likely than men to hold multiple, part time jobs.43 In 2013, 26% of women worked part-time, while only 11% of men worked part-time.44

• The wage gap is worse for women with disabilities and for Indigenous and racialized women. Women with disabilities earn 32% less than women overall, and 57% less than men.45 Racialized women earn 70.5% as much as racialized men.46 Indigenous women who live off-reserve earn 68.5% as much as Indigenous men living off-reserve.47 All of these groups earn less than non-racialized men.

NOTES

1. The silencing of advocacy in Canada, including attacks

on many women’s and human rights organizations, is

documented by Voices-Voix, online: <http://voices-voix.ca/>.

2. See FAFIA, Women’s Inequality in Canada, Submission

to the CEDAW Committee (September 2008) at 8, online:

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<http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CEDAW/Shared%20

Documents/CAN/INT_CEDAW_NGO_CAN_42_8234_E.

pdf>. (For other commentary, see “For women, Harper’s

government has been a Disaster,” ipolitics (22 September

2015), online: <http://ipolitics.ca/2015/09/22/

for-women-harpers-government-has-been-a-disaster/>).

3. UNDP, Human Development/Gender Equality Index, online:

<http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GII>.

4. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,

57th Sess, 7th Mtg, UN Doc E/C.12/2016/SR7 (2016)

at para 41, online: <https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/

doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/037/75/PDF/G1603775.

pdf?OpenElement>; Committee on Economic, Social

and Cultural Rights, Concluding Observations on the

Sixth Report of Canada, UN Doc. E/C.12/CAN/CO/6 (4

March 2016) at paras 5–6, online: <http://tbinternet.

ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.

aspx?symbolno=E%2fC.12%2fCAN%2fCO%2f6&Lang=en>.

5. Statistics Canada, Persons in Low Income after Tax (In

Percent, 2007 to 2011), Catalogue No 75-202-X (June

2013), online: <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/

sum-som/l01/cst01/famil19a-eng.htm> [Statistics Canada,

Persons in Low Income].

6. Vivian O’Donnell & Susan Wallace, Women in Canada: A

Gender-Based Statistical Report First Nations, Métis and

Inuit Women, Statistics Canada, Catalogue No 89-503-X

(July 2011), online: <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-

503-x/2010001/article/11442-eng.pdf>.

7. Ibid.

8. Tina Chui, Women in Canada: A Gender-based Report

Immigrant Women, Statistics Canada, Catalogue No 89-

503-X (July 2011), online: <http://www.statcan.gc.ca/

pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11528-eng.pdf>.

9. Tina Chu and Hélène Maheux, Women in Canada: A Gender-

Based Statistical Report Visible Minority Women, Statistics

Canada, Catalogue No 89-503-X (July 2011), online: <http://

www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11527-

eng.pdf>.

10. DAWN Canada, “Factsheet: Women with Disabilities and

Poverty” (2015), online: <http://www.dawncanada.net/

issues/issues/fact-sheets-2/poverty/>.

11. Statistics Canada, Persons in Low Income, supra note 5.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Statistics Canada, Average Total Income of Women and

Men, 1976 to 2008, Catalogue No 89-503-X, Table 202-

0407, Chart 1, (13 May 2013), online: <http://www.statcan.

gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11388/c-g/c-g001-

eng.htm>.

15. Conference Board of Canada, Gender Income Gap (January

2013), online: <http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/

details/society/gender-income-gap.aspx>.

16. Monica Townson, Women’s Poverty and the Recession,

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (2009), online:

<https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/

uploads/publications/National_Office_Pubs/2009/

Womens_Poverty_in_the_Recession.pdf>); Monica

Townson (commentary), Canadian Women on Their Own

Are the Poorest of the Poor, Canadian Centre for Policy

Alternatives (8 September 2009), online: <https://

www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/

canadian-women-their-own-are-poorest-poor>.

17. Shelagh Day, “The Indivisibility of Women’s Human Rights”

(2003) 20:3 Canadian Woman Studies 11 at 12.

18. Canadian Women’s Foundation, The Facts about Women

and Poverty (30 March 2013), online: <http://www.

canadianwomen.org/sites/canadianwomen.org/files//

FactSheet-EndPoverty-ACTIVE%20-%20May%2030.pdf>.

19. Ann Tweddle, Ken Battle & Sherri Torjman, Welfare in

Canada 2013, Caledon Institute of Social Policy (2014)

at 48, online: <http://www.caledoninst.org/Publications/

PDF/1057ENG.pdf>.

20. Martha Friendly, Bethany Grady, Lyndsay Macdonald & Barry

Forer, Early Childhood Education and Care 2014, Childcare

Canada (2015), online: <http://www.childcarecanada.

org/publications/ecec-canada/16/03/early-childhood-

education-and-care-canada-2014> [Friendly, Early

Childhood Education and Care 2014].

21. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against

Women, Concluding Observations of the Committee on

the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, UN Doc

CEDAW/C/CAN/CO/7, (7 November 2008) note 4 at para 39.

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94 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

22. Ibid. at para 40.

23. Friendly, Early Childhood Education and Care 2014, supra

note 32.

24. Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada (CCAAC) &

Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC (CCCABC), A Tale

of Two Canadas: Implementing Rights in Early Childhood

(February 2011), online: <http://www.cccabc.bc.ca/res/

rights/ccright_tale2can_brief.pdf>.

25. OECD, Directorate for Education, Starting Strong II:

Early Childhood Education and Care (Paris: OECD,

2006), online: <http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/

startingstrongiiearlychildhoodeducationandcare.htm>.

(Note that this is the most current complete data on

Canadian ECEC available from the OECD; based on available

information in Canada, ECEC funding has undoubtedly

increased since 2006, as several provinces have added full

day kindergarten, while childcare funding has continued to

grow slowly. No comparative data, however, are available as

Canada’s entries in the OECD Family Database (2009) and

other international sources are incomplete.)

26. The Canadian Press, “‘Ambitions’ for Childcare

Agenda for Federal-Provincial Talks,” CBC (4 February

2016), online: <http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/

social-service-ministers-child-care-meeting-1.3433626>.

27. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Progress on

Women’s Rights: Missing in Action (2014) at 9, 11, online:

<https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/

uploads/publications/National%20Office/2014/11/

Progress_Women_Beijing20.pdf> [CCPA, Progress on

Women’s Rights]; Government of Canada, Twentieth

Anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women

and the Adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform

for Action Canada’s National Review (June 2014) at 11,

online: <http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/Gender/

publication/Canada_National_Review_Beijing_20.pdf>

28. Statistics Canada, Study: Cumulative Earnings by Major

Field of Study, 1991 to 2010 (28 October 2014), online:

<http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-626-x/11-626-

x2014040-eng.htm>.

29. Ibid.

30. Kate McInturff & Paul Tulloch, Narrowing the Gap: The

Difference That Public Sector Wages Make (Ottawa:

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2014) at 7, online:

<https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/

uploads/publications/National%20Office/2014/10/

Narrowing_the_Gap.pdf> [McInturff et al., Narrowing

the Gap].

31. Statistics Canada, Women in Canada Visible Minority

Women: Lower Employment Income (2015), online: <http://

www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11527-

eng.htm#a19>.

32. National Union of Public and General Employees, Facts

about Women and Economic Wellbeing (2011) at 2, online:

<https://alltogethernow.nupge.ca/facts-about-womens-

economic-well-being> [NUPGE, Facts].

33. McInturff et al., Narrowing the Gap, supra note 30 at 4.

34. NUPGE, Facts, supra note 32 at 2.

35. CCPA, Progress on Women’s Rights, supra note 27 at 9.

36. “Gender Pay Gap in Canada More Than Twice Global

Average, Study Shows,” The Globe and Mail (5 May

2015), online: <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

news/british-columbia/gender-pay-gap-in-canada-

more-than-twice-global-average-study-shows/

article24274586/>.

37. Equal Pay Coalition, Gender Wage Gap: Full Time

Employees, online: <http://equalpaycoalition.org/

calculating-the-pay-gap/> (see also <https://www.oecd.org/

gender/data/genderwagegap.htm>).

38. Ricardo Husmann et al., The Global Gender Gap Report

2014, World Economic Forum (2014) at 65, online:

<http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GGGR14/GGGR_

CompleteReport_2014.pdf>.

39. Ibid.

40. Government of Canada Labour Program, Current and

Forthcoming Minimum Hourly Wage Rates for Experienced

Adult Workers in Canada (August 2016), online: <http://

srv116.services.gc.ca/dimt-wid/sm-mw/rpt1.aspx>.

41. Diane Galarneau and Eric Fecteau, The Ups and Downs

of Minimum Wage, Statistics Canada (2006), online:

<http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-006-x/2014001/

article/14035-eng.htm#a6>.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 7 Because It’s 2016! 95

42. Canada Labour Congress, Minimum Wage in Canada (April

2015) at 8, online: <http://canadianlabour.ca/sites/default/

files/media/minwagecanada-2015-04-13%20%281%29.

pdf>.

43. CCPA, Progress on Women’s Rights, supra note 27 at 8.

44. Ibid.

45. NUPGE, Facts, supra 32 at 2; also see CCPA, Progress on

Women’s Rights, supra note 27 at 9, 19.

46. NUPGE, Facts, ibid. at 2.

47. Ibid.

Source: Canadian Feminist Alliance for International

Action (FAFIA). (2016, October). Excerpted from Report

to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination

against Women (CEDAW). Ottawa, ON: FAFIA.

Retrieved from: http://fafia-afai.org/wp-content/

uploads/2016/10/FAFIA-Coalition-report.pdf.

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CHAPTER 11

Conceptual Guide to the Unpaid Work Module

Marion Werner, Leah F. Vosko, Angie Deveau, Giordana Pimentel, and Deatra Walsh, with past contributions from Abetha Mahalingam,

Nancy Zukewich, Krista Scott-Dixon, Megan Ciurysek, and Vivian Ngai

Marion Werner was a researcher at the Gender and Work Database (GWD) and is cur- rently an associate professor in the Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, SUNY. She researches economic restructuring, the gendered and racialized politics of labour, and agro-food systems and policies. She is the author of Global Displace- ments: The Making of Uneven Development in the Caribbean.

Leah Vosko is project director of the GWD and professor of political science and Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy of Gender and Work at York Univer- sity. She is recognized internationally for her scholarship on work, gender, citizenship, migration, and labour markets.

Angie Deveau is completing a PhD in gender, feminist, and women’s studies at York University. Her research interests include a focus on women’s unpaid work and gender, health, and social policy.

Giordana Pimentel completed her Master’s degree at York University, where she re- searched women’s constitutional rights under Section 15 of the Charter.

Deatra Walsh is director of the Poverty Reduction Division with the Government of Nunavut. She holds a PhD in sociology from Memorial University of Newfoundland, and her research interests include precarious employment and its gendered dimensions, and rural labour mobility.

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Chapter 11 Conceptual Guide to the Unpaid Work Module 97

INTRODUCTION

This module explores how particular forms of unpaid work—like caregiving, domestic work, and volunteer- ing—are defined, socially valued, organized, and gen- dered. Its purpose is twofold: to provide statistical data and library resources on the measurement of unpaid work in Canada, and to illustrate how unpaid work is shaped by gender relations as they intersect with “race,” ethnicity, (dis)ability, age, and sexuality. […]

Unpaid work refers to the production of goods or services that are consumed by those within or outside a household, but not for sale in the market (OECD 2011). An activity is considered “work” (vs. “leisure”) if a third person could be paid to do a certain activity (OECD 2011).

It is widely recognized that women—in Canada and beyond—perform the bulk of unpaid work in households and in the paid labour force (see, for exam- ple, Armstrong and Armstrong 2001; Beneria 1999; Luxton 1980; Marshall 2006; Mies 1986; Zukewich 2002). This work is often socially, politically, and eco- nomically devalued because “work” is often defined in conventional statistics as paid activities linked to the market (Beneria 1999). Despite the efforts of several generations of feminist scholars to make unpaid work visible, it remains marginalized in most methods of measuring economic activity.

In recent decades, many women’s groups have struggled to have unpaid work taken more seriously in national statistical surveys. In the 1990s, as a result of sustained and multi-faceted attempts by Canadian women’s groups to challenge statisticians on the notion that only paid labour contributes to production, Statistics Canada included an in-depth question about the amount of time individuals spent on unpaid work in the 1996 Census (Luxton and Vosko 1998). Over time, other national statistical agencies have devised guidelines and surveys for identifying and classifying various types of unpaid work (EUROSTAT 2004; Picchio 1998). […]

KEY CONCEPTS

Unpaid Informal Caregiving

Unpaid informal caregiving encompasses care and assistance provided by individuals to other individuals outside of civic or voluntary organizations (Zukewich 2002). This work is often similar in character to paid caregiving occupations such as those related to childcare provision, nursing, and home care. These are typically among the lowest paid occupations in the labour force.

The burden of unpaid informal caregiving falls disproportionately on women (Baxter et al. 2005; MacDonald et al. 2005). Unpaid informal caregivers are often family members, relatives, friends, and volunteers (Luxton 2006; Zukewich 2002). The recip- ients of care are usually children, elders, individuals who are ill, or people with disabilities, as well as individuals within the paid workforce like supervi- sors, co-workers, and friends (see Unpaid Work in Paid Workplaces). For example, in 2003, 62 percent of mothers were primary caregivers in homes where Canadian children with disabilities lived compared to three percent of fathers (Yantzi and Rosenberg 2008). As women age, their care work seldom diminishes and may even increase (Gattai and Musatti 1999). A large proportion of grandmothers are responsible for the care of their grandchildren (Bracke et al. 2008). Moreover, increasing numbers of elderly women are responsible for the care of their husbands (Paun 2003).

Caregiving accounts for a large proportion of unpaid work performed by individuals. Although unpaid informal caregiving benefits society, as well as caregivers and care recipients, it still lacks social recognition and is not counted as part of a country’s productive output (Elson 1999; ILO 2007). Feminist economists estimate that, were it to be counted, this type of work would account for at least half of a given country’s total Gross National Product (GNP) (Elson 1999; ILO 2007). Thus, for some scholars conducting research in the area of gender and work, a central

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98 Part 1 Foundations: Why Gender and Women’s Studies? Why Feminism?

concern involves measuring and assigning value to unpaid informal caregiving, and highlighting the sex/gender divisions that exist when it comes to who performs such types of work. Some analysts, such as Zukewich (2003), argue that only when adequate tools are created to measure and value unpaid informal caregiving will we have a better understanding of how the social and economic costs of sustaining ourselves and dependents relate to individuals’ capacity to engage in the labour force.

Although men’s participation in childcare dut- ies within dual-income families has increased over the last three decades, women remain responsible for the largest share of unpaid caregiving within the home despite their growing participation in paid employment (Marshall 2006). Moreover, in single-earner households, 89 percent of mothers stay at home to fulfill caregiving responsibilities (Ibid.). Given the gendered character of unpaid informal caregiving, women’s rights activists have advocated for state-supported universal childcare (see, for e.g., Mahon 2000; Prentice 2004). Efforts to institute a universal program at the federal level have largely failed. Provinces remain the main source of child- care subsidization and federal monies that could be put towards childcare are often used for other ends (e.g., tax credits, early learning initiatives, etc.) (Battle 2006; Campbell 2006; Friendly et al. 2007; Mahon 2006; Vosko 2006). Since 1997, Québec has offered extensive support for childcare and remains the only Canadian province to do so. Despite this advance, resources for childcare in Québec are not equitably distributed: children from working class and poor families access poorer quality facilities than their middle and upper class counterparts (Mahon 2006).

The growing participation of women in the paid workforce and the lack of state support for elder and child caregiving has created a “care deficit” in many countries of the global North. To fill this gap, gov- ernments promote the immigration of women, many of whom are women of colour, from poorer countries in the global South (Beneria 2008; Lawson 2007;

Pratt 2003). This practice reproduces the care deficit in migrants’ home countries since women migrants are often legally restricted or economically unable to bring their children with them when they migrate to work (Beneria 2008; Pratt 2005; Raghuram et al. 2009). It is also premised upon the growing number of temporary categories of migration and precarious forms of employment.

Volunteering

Unpaid work that extends beyond one’s own house- hold into the households of others and social institu- tions more broadly is generally classified as “volunteer work.” These activities are integral to maintaining the labour force, although they are rarely recognized as such. Beneria (1999) defines volunteer work as unpaid work performed for recipients who are not members of the immediate family and for which there is no direct payment (see also Gaskin 2003; Taylor 2004). Volunteer work includes both work done for formal organizations as well as help and care provided in an informal manner by individuals for other individuals.

Women’s volunteer work predominates in institutions and sectors that are associated with the feminized work of care such as schools, hospitals, and voluntary services related to elder and childcare. In instances where these services are restructured, and fewer financial resources are dedicated to them, mostly female volunteers become essential sources of unpaid labour, tied to the overarching belief in a woman’s “natural” capacity to carry out care work (Baines 2004; Denton et al. 2002). In contrast, men are more likely than women to take on leadership roles in their volunteer work, as well as more maintenance, coaching, or teaching positions (Rotolo and Wilson 2007).

Unpaid Work in Paid Workplaces

Various types of unpaid work are performed by individuals in the workplace itself and often mis- recognized as volunteer work. As with other forms

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of unpaid work, the bulk of this work is undertaken by women. Forrest (1998) documents how women carry out unpaid work on-the-job outside their formal job requirements. These activities include cleaning, informal caregiving, serving other individuals, and maintaining interpersonal relations. The latter activity can involve empathy work: the often taxing efforts of employees to establish personal connections by means of listening and attending to the emotional needs of their clients, co-workers, or employers (Kosny and MacEachen 2009). Despite the benefits of the various unpaid work activities to workplaces, they still remain largely invisible. There is a tendency among policy makers, employers, and analysts to define paid work as time and effort spent directly in the production of goods and services for the market and thus to discount unpaid work in the workplace.

This form of unseen and unpaid work can be strongly associated with female-dominated and fem- inized occupations and sectors. For example, Baines (2004; 2009) documents the increasing reliance upon unpaid work performed by mostly female employees in the social service sector. These activities include unpaid policy- and service-building work, fundrais- ing, and unpaid care for social service clients and their families. Restructuring of social services—linked to privatization—and declining state support for them have led to increased demands upon workers in this sector to perform these unpaid duties for their own or other service agencies.

Finally, unpaid work is being extended into paid workplaces through immigrant settlement processes. Many immigrants looking to access employment in their respective professional fields are required to gain “Canadian work experience” in the form of unpaid work. While this work is officially termed “volunteer work,” it differs from standard definitions of volun- teering (see above) in terms of motivation, experience, and sector (McLaren and Dyck 2004; Slade and Schugurensky 2010). Immigrants are compelled to undertake unpaid work due to their exclusion from the Canadian labour market. Their unpaid work is not

ancillary to workplaces, as helpers; rather, they per- form similar functions as paid workers. Immigrants undertaking unpaid work to obtain “Canadian worker experience” not only perform unpaid work in non- profit or community agencies but also in for-profit companies (e.g., banks) and the public sector (Ibid.).

Unpaid Domestic Work

An analysis of types of unpaid domestic work con- tinues to reveal sex/gender divisions of labour in households. Although the gap between men’s and women’s performance of domestic work has narrowed slightly, a greater share of housework in Canada con- tinues to be performed by women (Marshall 2006). Findings from the 2006 Census reveal little change in this pattern (e.g., see Statistics Canada 2006 Census Table). Although a majority of women engage in paid work, women remain disproportionately responsible for daily housework in dual-earner families. Thus, women carry the double burden of paid and unpaid work. Social context matters, however. The compos- ition of families—especially the numbers and ages of children and multigenerational households— influence the number of hours spent on performing domestic duties, and the burden of this work on women (Marshall 2006; McMullin 2005). The timing of life transitions, specifically ages of marriage and child-bearing, also shapes the distribution of unpaid domestic work between women and men partners in households (McMullin 2005). As McMullin observes in her study of generational patterns of unpaid work in Canadian families, women who married and had children early in life are more likely to undertake more unpaid domestic work responsibilities than their older female counterparts.

The home has long been a site where unpaid domestic work is combined with paid employment, especially for women. Historically, paid work in the home (or homework) has been associated with wom- en’s work in systems of industrial production in, for example, the garment industry (Ng et al. 1999; Scott

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1988). The reorganization of industry and changes in information technology have seen more workers in white collar occupations such as writers, editors, programmers, and software engineers shift to perform paid work in the home, with growing numbers of men working from home. Despite this shift, gendered divi- sions and uneven normative expectations regarding housework continue to persist in homes where paid work is also undertaken in either industrial or white collar sectors (Osnowitz 2005; see also Bernstein et al. 2001; Mirchandani 2000). Men working from home are more likely to segregate paid work from unpaid housework in comparison to their female counter- parts, for whom this divide tends to be especially blurred, leading to longer hours of paid and unpaid work arranged in fragmented periods. The isolated and unregulated nature of homework tends to consolidate uneven gendered roles in these households (Ibid.). Furthermore, women who shoulder the dual burden of paid labour and unpaid work in the home are more likely to suffer from related stress and adverse effects on their physical and mental health (MacDonald et al. 2005; Marshall 2006).

The list of unpaid domestic activities in the Canadian Census illustrates the diversity and indis- pensability of these activities. Tasks include meal preparation and clean-up; clothing care; cleaning; plant and garden care; home maintenance/manage- ment; care for children and adults; unpaid help to other households; shopping or obtaining services; travel as part of care or obtaining services; and unpaid work in family businesses. Each category of unpaid work also includes a subset of tasks. For example, care to children includes attending to their health needs, supervising their education, transporting them to school and other activities, “babysitting,” and so forth.

Unpaid Subsistence Activities

Subsistence and/or survival-based activities form yet another type of unpaid work performed pre- dominantly by women that is socially undervalued

and made invisible in economic accounts of work. Subsistence activities can include the cultivation of vegetables, fetching wood and water, and the care of livestock animals, especially important for farming households’ economies (Beneria 1999; Teitelbaum and Beckley 2006). While subsistence activities are often associated with so-called developing countries in the global South, they remain vital to livelihoods in industrial economies, especially in rural areas. In rural communities in Canada, for example, sub- sistence activities are important not solely due to economic need; these also form part of communities’ cultural identity, heritage, and survival (Teitelbaum and Beckley 2006). Women’s participation in sub- sistence production tends to be underestimated, especially where it is classified as unpaid family work (Philipps 2008a; 2008b). […]

Unpaid Family Work

Unpaid family work refers to the direct contributions of unpaid family members to production for the market, work that is officially counted under another member of the household. For example, one household member may be constructed legally as an owner or entrepreneur although the business may also rely upon the unpaid work of relatives who assist in the business’ operations (Philipps 2008a; 2008b). Unpaid family work is generally performed by women from diverse geographical and social locations, such as immigrants, farm wives, and executive/political spouses.

In Canada, although initially associated with unpaid work on farms, unpaid family work is increas- ingly comprised of immigrant women and their family members who contribute to small businesses officially belonging to one member of the household (often, a male head of the household) (Philipps 2008a; 2008b). For example, the work of many Chinese immigrant women in Canada is categorized as unpaid in small businesses run by male heads of the household (Man 1997). Unpaid family work and its gendered dimensions also persist on farms. Women engage in

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long hours of on-farm unpaid work, activities also often combined with off-farm paid labour. Kubik and Moore (2005) document high rates of stress among Saskatchewan farm wives, linked to the triple burden of unpaid family work, unpaid domestic work, and paid off-farm labour.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 8

UNPAID WORK: A GLOBAL VIEW

Gender Division of Labor

Hours spent each week on cooking, cleaning, and childcare, most recent since 2000, selected countries

Source: Seager, Joni. (2009). “Gender Division of Labour.” Plate no. 25. In The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World, 4th edition (pp. 70–71). New York, NY: Penguin.

4h 5h 4h

4h 6h 6h

MexicoMadagascar Mongolia South Korea

child care

Spain UK USA

<1h

5h 1h2h 1h1h

women men

20h

27h

18h

33h

26h

18h

13h

MexicoMadagascar Mongolia South Korea

housework

Spain UK USA

12h

7h 5h 4h6h 4h

women men

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Water Carriers

Average hours per week spent fetching water, 1998–2005

Source: Seager, Joni. (2009). “Water Carriers.” Plate no. 25. In The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World, 4th Edition (pp. 70–71). New York, NY: Penguin.

by women

by girls under 14 years old

by men

by boys under 14 years old

Benin Ghana Guinea Madagascar Malawi South Africa

5.1h 4.8h

2.7h 3.2h

6.3h

1h 1.4h

3.8h

36 min

1h 43

min 18

min

5.4h

2.1h

3.6h 3.2h

2.2h

1.3h 1.9h

1.1h

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PART 2 Constructions of Sex and Gender

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. —Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1974, p. 301)

[Woman] is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end.

—Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990, p. 33)

Part 2 explores the role of Western science and culture in making social differences and hierarchies based on categories such as sex, gender, race, ability, class, and sexuality. We highlight concepts like “essentialism” and “social constructionism,” examine feminist critiques of and contributions to science, and trace scientific and social constructions of differences across time and place.

Part 2A: The Construction of Sexed Bodies In the first section, we introduce feminist and critical theory that challenges Western culture’s taken-for-granted and deeply held ideas about sexed bodies. We call into question sexual binaries of male and female bodies, and invite students to consider alternative ways of conceptualizing sex differences.

Part 2B: The Making of “Difference” and Inequalities We are particularly interested in this section in examining feminist critiques of Western science and its role in constructing dualist thinking and hierarchical categories of difference based on ideas about sex, race, and disability. We see some of the ways in which inequalities among groups of people have been constructed, maintained, justified, and resisted. Students are also introduced to new ways of thinking about the relationship of biology and culture as interactive.

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108 Part 2 Constructions of Sex and Gender

Part 2C: Gender Construction and Performativity Here we explore the social construction of our gendered identities through language and everyday practices. We introduce the concept of gender performativity, as well as important insights from contemporary analyses of masculinity and men’s political involvement in feminism. We take up key perspectives in queer theory, which trouble gender binaries and challenge the narrow rigidity of dominant constructions of masculinity and femininity.

Part 2D: The Construction of Sexuality We examine in this section how social constructionist theory has been applied to his- torical and contemporary studies of sexuality within Canadian and global contexts. We invite students to assess critically the “naturalness” of heterosexuality, heterosexism, and homophobia, as well as the ethics of scientific research on sexual orientation. In addition, we begin to explore how ableism has, intentionally or not, shaped the politics and practices of social movements, focusing specifically on queer organizing.

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CHAPTER 12

Introduction to Beyond the Natural Body

Nelly Oudshoorn

Nelly Oudshoorn is a professor of technology dynamics and health care at the Univer- sity of Twente in the Netherlands, where she researches medical technology, and in- formation and communication technology. Her scholarly works looking at the develop- ment of the “male pill” and the naming of “sex” hormones uncover some of the ways that science is implicated in creating and maintaining sex differences.

* * * * *

Part 2A: The Construction of Sexed Bodies

What about sex and the body? […] During the second wave of feminism that started in the 1970s, (fe)male bodies were of central concern in many debates, although in a rather peculiar way. Feminist biologists, like myself, were certain that biological determinism had to be rejected. We knew that nature does not determine what we mean when we use terms such as woman, body, femininity. We chose this position to contest those opponents of fem- inism who suggested that social inequality between women and men is primarily rooted in biological sex differences. According to this opinion, social changes demanded by feminists are wishful thinking because biology, rather than society, sets constraints on the behavior and abilities of women. Biology is destiny, and feminists simply have to accept this reality.

* * * * *

Feminist biologists and historians of science did not hesitate to make [a] crucial move in exposing the myth of the natural body. Ruth Bleier, Ruth Hubbard, Evelyn Fox Keller and Helen Longino suggested that anatomical, endocrinological or immunological “facts” are anything but self-evident.1 From these feminist scholars, I adopted the intellectually chal- lenging and politically relevant notion that there does not exist an unmediated natural truth of the body. Our perceptions and interpretations of the body are mediated through language and, in our society, the biomedical sciences function as a major provider of this language. This view of the body is linked to a critical reappraisal of the status of biomedical know- ledge. If understanding the body is mediated by language, scientists are bound by language as well. Consequently, the assumption that the biomedical sciences are the providers of objective knowledge about the “true nature” of the body could be rejected. This really changed my view of science and the world.

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What is science all about if scientists are not discover- ing reality? In search of an answer to this question, I was inspired by the literature of the emerging field of social studies of science that introduced the powerful idea that scientific facts are not objectively given, but collectively created. This implies a totally different perspective on what scientists are doing: scientists are actively constructing reality, rather than discovering reality. For the debate about the body, this means that the naturalistic reality of the body as such does not exist; it is created by scientists as the object of scientific investigation (Duden 1991: 22). The social constructivist approach opened up a whole new line of research exposing the multiple ways in which the biomedical sciences as discursive technologies (re) construct and reflect our understanding of the body. The body, in all its complexities, thus achieved an important position on the feminist research agenda.

* * * * *

SEX AND THE BODY

In these biomedical discourses, the construction of the body as something with a sex has been a central theme all through the centuries. The myriad ways in which scientists have understood sex provide many illuminating counter-moves to the argument that sex is an unequivocal, ahistorical attribute of the body that once unveiled by science is valid everywhere and within every context. Early medical texts in particular challenge our present-day perceptions of male and female bodies. For our postmodern minds, it is hard to imagine that for two thousand years, male and female bodies were not conceptualized in terms of differences. Medical texts from the ancient Greeks until the late eighteenth century described male and female bodies as fundamentally similar. Women had even the same genitals as men, with one difference: “theirs are inside the body and not outside it.” In this approach, characterized by Thomas Laqueur as the

“one-sex model,” the female body was understood as a “male turned inside herself,” not a different sex, but a lesser version of the male body (Laqueur 1990). Medical textbooks of this period show drawings of the female genitals that stress their resemblance to male genitalia so vividly that one could believe them to be representations of the male penis. For thousands of years, the “one-sex model” dominated biomedical discourse, even to such an extent that medical texts lacked a specific anatomical nomenclature for female reproductive organs. The ovary, for instance, did not have a name of its own but was described as the female testicle, thus referring again to the male organ. The language we are now familiar with, such as vagina and clitoris, simply did not exist (Laqueur 1990: 5, 96).

This emphasis on similarities rather than differ- ences is also present in the texts of anatomists who studied parts of the body other than the reproductive organs. For Vesalius, the father of anatomy, “sex was only skin deep, limited to differences in the outline of the body and the organs of reproduction. In his view, all other organs were interchangeable between the sexes” (Schiebinger 1989: 189). In his beautiful drawings of the skeleton in Epitome, an anatomical atlas that appeared in 1543, Vesalius did not give sex to the bony structure of the body (Schiebinger 1989: 182). This (as we would now perceive it) “indifference” of medical scientists to bodily differences between the sexes does not seem to be a consequence of ignorance of the female body. Since the fourteenth century, the dissection of women’s bodies was part of ana- tomical practice (Schiebinger 1989: 182). According to Laqueur, the stress on similarities, representing the female body as just a gradation of one basic male type, was inextricably intertwined with patriarchal thinking, reflecting the values of an overwhelmingly male public world in which “man is the measure of all things, and woman does not exist as an ontologically distinct category” (Laqueur 1990: 62).

It was only in the eighteenth century that bio- medical discourse first included a concept of sex that is more familiar to our present-day interpretations of

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the male and the female body. The long-established tradition that emphasized bodily similarities over differences began to be heavily criticized. In the mid-eighteenth century, anatomists increasingly focused on bodily differences between the sexes, and argued that sex was not restricted to the reproductive organs, or as one physician put it: “the essence of sex is not confined to a single organ but extends, through more or less perceptible nuances, into every part” (Schiebinger 1989: 189). The first part of the body to become sexualized was the skeleton. If sex differences could be found in “the hardest part of the body,” it would be likely that sex penetrated “every muscle, vein, and organ attached to and molded by the skeleton” (Schiebinger 1989: 191). In the 1750s, the first female skeletons appeared in medical textbooks. Londa Schiebinger has described how anatomists paid special attention to those parts of the skeleton that would become socially signifi- cant, amongst which was the skull. The depiction of the female skull was used to prove that women’s intellectual capacities were inferior to those of men (Schiebinger 1986). The history of medicine in this period contains many illustrations of similar reflec- tions of the social role of women in the representa- tion of the human body. Anatomists of more recent centuries “mended nature to fit emerging ideals of masculinity and femininity” (Schiebinger 1989: 203). In nineteenth-century cellular physiology, the medical gaze shifted from the bones to the cells. Physiological “facts” were used to explain the passive nature of women. The biomedical sciences thus func- tioned as an arbiter in socio-political debates about women’s rights and abilities (Laqueur 1990: 6, 215). By the late nineteenth century, medical scientists had extended this sexualization to every imaginable part of the body: bones, blood vessels, cells, hair and brains (Schiebinger 1989: 189). Only the eye seems to have no sex (Honegger 1991: 176). Biomedical discourse thus shows a clear shift in focus from sim- ilarities to differences. The female and the male body now became conceptualized in terms of opposite

bodies with “incommensurably different organs, functions, and feelings” (Laqueur 1990: viii).

Following this shift, the female body became the medical object par excellence (Foucault 1976), empha- sizing woman’s unique sexual character. Medical sci- entists now started to identify the “essential features that belong to her, that serve to distinguish her, that make her what she is” (Laqueur 1990: 5). The medical literature of this period shows a radical naturalization of femininity in which scientists reduced woman to one specific organ. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientists set out to localize the “essence” of femininity in different places in the body. Until the mid-nineteenth century, scientists considered the uterus as the seat of femininity. This conceptu- alization is reflected in the statement of the German poet and naturalist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832): Der Hauptpunkt der ganzen weiblichen Existenz ist die Gebaermutter (The main point (or the essence) of the entire female existence is the womb) (Medvei 1983: 213).

In the middle of the nineteenth century, medical attention began to shift from the uterus to the ovaries, which came to be regarded as largely autonomous control centers of reproduction in the female animal, while in humans they were thought to be the “essence” of femininity itself (Gallagher and Laqueur 1987: 27). In 1848, Virchow (1817–1885), often portrayed as the founding father of physiology, characterized the function of the ovaries:

It has been completely wrong to regard the uterus as the characteristic organ.… The womb, as part of the sexual canal, of the whole apparatus of reproduction, is merely an organ of secondary importance. Remove the ovary, and we shall have before us a mas- culine woman, an ugly half-form with the coarse harsh form, the heavy bone forma- tion, the moustache, the rough voice, the flat chest, the sour and egoistic mentality and the distorted outlook … in short, all that we

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admire and respect in woman as womanly, is merely dependent on her ovaries. (Medvei 1983: 215)

The search for the female organ par excellence was not just a theoretical endeavor. The place in the body where the “essence” of femininity was located became the object of surgical interventions. The ovaries, per- ceived as the “organs of crises,” became the paradig- matic object of the medical specialty of gynecology that was established in the late nineteenth century (Honegger 1991: 209, 211). The medical attention given to the ovaries resulted in the widespread practice of surgical operations for removal of the ovaries in many European countries, as well as in the United States. In the 1870s and 1880s, thousands of women were subjected to this drastic procedure for the treat- ment of menstrual irregularities and various neuroses (Corner 1965: 4).

Early in the twentieth century, the “essence” of femininity came to be located not in an organ but in chemical substances: sex hormones. The new field of sex endocrinology introduced the concept of “female” and “male” sex hormones as chemical messengers of femininity and masculinity. This hormonally con- structed concept of the body has developed into one of the dominant modes of thinking about the biological roots of sex differences. Many types of behaviour, roles, functions and characteristics considered as typically male or female in western culture have been ascribed to hormones. In this process, the female body, but not the male body, has become increasingly portrayed as a body completely controlled by hormones. At this moment, the hormones estrogen and progesterone are the most widely used drugs in the history of medicine. These substances are a popular means of controlling fertility and are used for numerous other purposes: as menstruation regulators or abortifa- cients, in pregnancy tests and as specific medications for female menopause. Hormones are produced by

pharmaceutical companies and delivered to women through a worldwide distribution network, including Third World countries (Wolffers et al. 1989: 27). This was not so a century ago. Our grandmothers did not know of any hormones: estrogen and progesterone as such did not exist in the nineteenth century. The concept of hormones was coined in 1905, and it took two decades before pharmaceutical companies began the mass production of hormones. Nowadays millions of women take hormonal pills and many of us have adopted the hormonal model to explain our bodies.

* * * * *

Feminist studies have pointed out that cultural stereotypes about women and men play an important role in shaping scientific theories. The major question that emerges then is: To what extent do scientists use cultural notions as resources in their research practice?

NOTE

1. Bleier (1984, 1986); Hubbard (1981); Hubbard et al.

(1982); Keller (1982, 1984); Longino (1990); Longino and

Doell (1983). In contrast to feminist sociologists, feminist

biologists considered the body as relevant for the feminist

research agenda. Actually, feminist biologists have adopted

this position from the beginning of the debate about sex and

gender. My account of the history of feminist studies should

therefore not be read as a story of continuity and progress.

There have been, and still are, many different positions in

this debate about sex, gender and the body.

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Chapter 12 Introduction to Beyond the Natural Body 113

REFERENCES

Bleier, R. (1984) Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and Its Theories on Women. New York: Pergamon.

Bleier, R. (ed.) (1986) Feminist Approaches to Science. New York: Pergamon.

Corner, G.W. (1965) “The Early History of Oestrogenic Hormones,” Proceedings of the Society of Endocrinology 33: 3–18.

Duden, B. (1991) The Woman beneath the Skin: A Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.

Foucault, M. (1976) Histoire de la sexualité, 1: La volonté de savoir. Paris: Gallimard.

Gallagher, C., Laqueur T., (eds) (1987) The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.

Honegger, C. (1991) Die Ordnung der Geslechter Die Wissenschaften vom Menschen und das Weib. Frankfurt and New York: Campus Verlag.

Hubbard, R. (1981) “The Emperor Doesn’t Wear Any Clothes: The Impact of Feminism on Biology,” in D. Spender (ed.), Men’s Studies Modified: The Impact of Feminism on the Academic Disciplines. Oxford and New York: Pergamon.

Hubbard, R., Henifin, M.S., Fried, B. (eds) (1982) Biological Woman: The Convenient Myth. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman.

Keller, E. Fox (1982) “Feminism and Science,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7 (1): 589–595.

Keller, E. Fox (1984) Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Laqueur, T. (1990) Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.

Longino, H. (1990) Science as Social Knowledge: Value and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Longino, H., Doell, R. (1983) “Body, Bias and Behavior: A Comparative Analysis of Reasoning in Two Areas of Biological Science,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 9 (2): 207–227.

Medvei, V.C. (1983) A History of Endocrinology. The Hague: MTP Press.

Schiebinger, L. (1986) “Skeletons in the Closet: The First Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in the Nineteenth- Century Anatomy,” Representations 14: 42–83.

Schiebinger, L. (1989) The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press.

Wolffers, I., Hardon, A., Janssen, J. (1989) Marketing Fertility: Women, Menstruation and the Pharmaceutical Industry. Amsterdam: Wemos.

Source: Oudshoorn, Nelly. (1994). Excerpted from Beyond

the Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones

(pp. 1–4, 6–10). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

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ACTIVIST ART 1

ASSIGNED MALE

Sophie Labelle

Sophie Labelle is a trans author, cartoonist, and public speaker from Montreal. She is especially known for her webcomic Assigned Male. Labelle grew up in rural Quebec, is a former elementary school teacher, and was the camp coordinator for Gender Cre- ative Kids Canada. She is active in the trans rights movement and orga- nizes conferences about trans history and transfeminism.

Assigned Male is a webcomic and series of zines tackling issues of gen- der norms and privilege. It tells the story of Stephie, a young trans girl dis- covering and embracing her gender.

Source: Labelle, Sophie. (2016, September 28). “#254.” Assigned Male. Retrieved from: http://assignedmale.tumblr.com/post/151053988052/ an-anecdote-a-participant-of-lgbt-youth-scotlands.

Source: Labelle, Sophie. (2015, August 28). “#121.” Assigned Male. Retrieved from: http://assignedmale. tumblr.com/post/127783970357/fridays-update-this-is-a-discussion-that-i-often.

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CHAPTER 13

How the Practice of Sex-Testing Targets Female Olympic Athletes

Kate Allen

Kate Allen writes about science and technology for the Toronto Star’s foreign desk. She is interested in all things great and geeky—from particle physics to paleontology and everything in between.

Sometime in 2011 or 2012, four elite female athletes travelled from their homes to a clinic in France. They were all tall, flat-chested and muscular. Though

they ranged in age from 18 to 21, none of the women had ever menstruated. Hormonal screening at the hands of anti-doping officers and team doctors had detected high levels of natural testosterone, so the athletes had come to be examined at a medical centre in Nice.

Doctors inspected the women’s genitalia and found some atypical features. But genetic analysis and physical exams revealed something more unusual: all four had XY chromosomes rather than the usual female XX, and their internal reproductive glands were testes, not ovaries.

The athletes were diagnosed with 5-alpha reductase deficiency. Because of a genetic quirk, their bodies do not produce an enzyme that converts testosterone into a secondary hormone involved in the development of male characteristics. These women were chromosomally male, but had lived their lives, and competed athletically, as women.

The women, the doctors reported in a 2013 jour- nal article, had “many questions” about the biological landmarks of female life: child-bearing, menstruation, sex. But from a competitive perspective, there was a different concern. Their testosterone levels were considered by the International Olympic Committee [IOC] and International Association of Athletics Federations [IAAF] to be in the male range, and therefore too high to compete fairly.

The doctors proposed a solution: gonadectomies, or surgical removal of their reproductive organs; clitoridectomies, or partial surgical removal of their clitorises; and, later, surgeries to feminize their vagi- nas and estrogen replacement therapy. These measures were not medically necessary, but after a year, the women would be cleared to compete. All four agreed.

Criticism from bioethicists, sports activists and intersex scholars was loud and furious.

Had these perfectly healthy women really just undergone clitoral mutilation for the purposes of sport? The athletes were competing with the

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hormones their bodies produced naturally, not doping—why is natural genetic variation policed in female athletes, but celebrated in men, like freakishly tall basketball players? What evidence is there, any- way, that testosterone is the sole predictor of superior athletic performance?

If the particulars were new, the fight itself was not. Ever since women began competing at elite lev- els, sports governing bodies like the Olympics have been searching for a way to cleanly divide men from women. Supporters say these boundaries are necessary to create a level playing field for female athletes.

Critics charge that these divisions are just metas- tasized social anxieties about gender. It is certainly true that crucial leaps in our understanding of sex differentiation were the result of studying animals and humans that warp our binary definitions. Even hard-nosed scientists admit that the field floats atop a fathomless public fascination: what makes a man, and what makes a woman?

But the more research we do, the less easy it is to answer that with a clear biological boundary. The public is by now used to the idea that sex is biological while gender is a social construct. But where in our biology

does sex reside: in our genes, in our genitals, in our hormones? And is it even possible to separate biological sex from the environmental influence of gender?

“It is very difficult to come up with an absolute line,” says Arthur Arnold, distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology at the University of California Los Angeles. “The Olympic committees have struggled with this and have had different lines, all of which have broken down in various ways.”

Last year, the IAAF was forced to lift its rules on female athletes and testosterone, and the IOC has begrudgingly followed suit. When the Games begin in Rio [2016 Summer Olympics in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil] on Aug. 5, there will be no policy in place at all. It’s not clear what tests or policies will eventually replace the revoked rules—or even if there should be a policy.

“It’s kind of a mess,” says Arnold.

* * * * *

THE SEX VERIFICATION TEST

At the 1936 Olympics, officials said they had con- ducted a “sex check” on an American gold-medal sprinter, Helen Stephens. Stephens had narrowly beaten a Polish runner, Stella Walsh, and Polish newspapers questioned the American’s true gender.

Stephens “passed” the first known sex verification test. Officials, apparently, did not feel the need to examine Walsh.

In 1980, Walsh was murdered in a robbery in Cleveland. An autopsy revealed she had ambiguous genitalia, including a tiny, nonfunctioning penis. The revelation caused an uproar. In the Star, a headline declared “Olympic star Stella was a man.” Along with media worldwide, the paper repeated that as fact over the decades.

But the coroner actually found that Walsh’s cells were mismatched: some carried XY chromosomes, and some carried chromosomes with one X, not Source: Getty Images.

Figure 13.1: Helen Stephens, right, returns to the U.S. from the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Stephens “passed” the first known sex verification test.

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Chapter 13 How the Practice of Sex-Testing Targets Female Olympic Athletes 117

two. This type of “mosaicism” is caused by embry- onic cell division errors, and is also called “mixed gonadal dysgenesis.”

Walsh had mixed chromosomes, mixed internal sex organs and mixed external genitalia. As for her gender identity, the coroner, Samuel Gerber, offered his own assessment. “Socially, culturally and legally, Stella Walsh was accepted as a female for 69 years. She lived and died a female.”

Western anthropologists have long f ixated on “third” genders in other cultures: the Samoan Fa’afafine, the South Asian Hijra. But in international sports, authorities found increasingly laboured ways to split the two sexes, eventually mandating sex testing in the 1960s.

“Every generation of sex testing has been accompanied by a generation of activists and critics, and they’ve all pretty much had the same criti- cisms—which is that sex cannot be differentiated so easily,” says Sandy Wells, a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia who studies the history of these policies.

At first, athletes were asked to appear naked before a panel of doctors. The “nude parades” were criticized as humiliating and abandoned.

Critics today would add they are diagnostically useless. Features like clitoromegaly—an atypically enlarged clitoris—are associated not only with inter- sex conditions but with premature birth and nerve tumours. “Guess what—everyone’s body is different,” says Wells. “More often than you’d think, the opinion of the panel would be contradictory.”

Barr Body testing, more dignified and supposedly more scientific, used cells from a cheek swab, stained and examined under a microscope, to detect a bun- dled, silenced X chromosome, found in most cells of XX females and visible as a dark blot.

Maria José Martinez-Patiño, a Spanish hurdler, failed a Barr Body chromosome test in 1985. She was stripped of her national records and had her sports scholarship revoked. “I felt ashamed and embar- rassed,” Martinez-Patiño wrote decades later. “I lost

friends, my fiancé, hope and energy. But I knew that I was a woman.”

Martinez-Patiño has androgen insensitivity syndrome. Her chromosomal sex is XY and she has male internal sex organs, but a genetic mutation means her androgen receptors don’t work. “When I was conceived, my tissues never heard the hormonal messages to become male,” she wrote.

She developed as a typical female, and she and her family never doubted her gender. As an athlete, she could not make use of her body’s testosterone. Armed with medical evidence, the hurdler fought the IAAF and won permission to race again. Absent from competition for three years, however, she failed to qualify for the next Olympics.

Through the decades, scientists joined in criticiz- ing the tests as inaccurate and unethical. Nevertheless, athletes who had always known themselves to be women continued to be traumatically “outed.” Between three and 15 athletes at every Games failed a sex test, a figure that does not count those who slunk away from sport to avoid humiliation.

The IAAF finally sponsored two medical-scien- tific symposia, which concluded what critics said all along: female athletes with sex-related genetic abnor- malities, including mosaicism, androgen insensitivity syndrome and 5-alpha reductase deficiency do not enjoy any unfair physical advantage beyond the range of normal human variability. Blanket sex-testing is arbitrary and discriminatory.

The IAAF dropped the practice in 1991. But the IOC lumbered on. It replaced Barr Body testing with DNA tests to locate the newly discovered SRY gene on the Y chromosome. At the 1996 Games, eight female athletes were found positive for SRY. All had androgen insensitivity syndrome or 5-alpha reductase deficiency, and they were eventually cleared.

Dozens of scientific and medical societies had by this point called for the elimination of sex testing, including the American Medical Association and the Canadian and Australian genetics societies.

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Whether it was the censure of scientists, disap- proval from many athletes, or the cost of a program that had never caught a man masquerading as a woman—its stated purpose—the IOC finally dropped blanket sex testing in 1999.

It was a short-lived victory. Both the IAAF and IOC had retained an important condition: they could medically evaluate an athlete if necessary. A decade later, the case of Caster Semenya would convulse the sports world all over again.

“JUST LOOK AT HER”

When Caster Semenya, the South African 800-metre runner, posted dominant wins in two championships in 2009, word leaked that officials had singled her out for a sex test. As her white competitors publicly ques- tioned the muscular black woman’s femininity—“ just look at her,” one said—Semenya underwent a battery of invasive physical and psychological exams.

Again, an athlete who had lived her life as a woman was barred from competition as her gender was publicly, humiliatingly scrutinized. Semenya was cleared to run again in 2010. […]

In the wake of that furor, the IAAF adopted new regulations on “female hyperandrogenism.” The IOC followed suit. Female athletes with testosterone levels “within the male range” would be unable to compete, unless they lowered their levels with drugs or sur- gery. (Those with androgen insensitivity syndrome were excused.)

The sports bodies said the new policies were not sex tests—they were tests for unfair advantage. Observers were dismayed, if not incredulous.

“I’m very proud of my association with the Olympic movement,” says Bruce Kidd, who partic- ipated in numerous Games as an athlete, journalist and social scientist, and is now the principal of University of Toronto Scarborough. But, Kidd says, “for a movement that has long tried to link science and scholarship to its mission, it’s an embarrassment.”

Testosterone is a natural place to park suspicions about the source of athletic advantage. Men’s testos- terone levels are about 10 times higher than women’s, and elite male athletes are demonstrably faster and stronger than elite female athletes.

IA AF researchers found that women with XY-chromosome disorders of sex development, who have significantly higher testosterone than is typical, are “dramatically” overrepresented among elite ath- letes compared to the general population.

What’s more, anabolic steroids—the drug of choice for East Germany’s state-sponsored doping program, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, and baseball’s Barry Bonds—usually consist of syn- thetic testosterone.

But no study has ever shown that performance— say, finishing times in a race—correlates to athletes’ levels of testosterone. Testosterone is a complicated, dynamic substance: finishing a marathon causes it to plummet in men, while positive feedback from a coach can cause it to shoot up.

Like every other biological marker, testosterone’s ability to cleanly divide two binary sexes is muddled, especially in athletes.

In one study of nearly 700 Olympians partic- ipating in 15 sports, 13.7 per cent of women had natural testosterone levels above the typical female range, 4.7 per cent were within the male range, and 16.5 per cent of men had levels below the typical male range, with some falling into the female range. An IAAF study on 849 female athletes, excluding competitors with intersex traits and other genetic sex diversity, still found outliers.

If hyperandrogenic women are overrepresented in elite sports, they themselves are still vastly out- ranked by female athletes who are winning with typical hormones.

As for the cheaters, there is little evidence that synthetic or “exogenous” testosterone behaves the same way as natural or “endogenous” testosterone, which is produced by and responds to a dynamic sys- tem of hormones.

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“There is every reason to be really cautious about how we fill in those gaps, because we tend to fill them in a way that fits really pre-scientific ideas about masculinity and femininity,” says Barnard College’s Rebecca Jordan-Young.

Kidd was part of a team that took the hyperan- drogenism rules to the Court of Arbitration for Sport after a young Indian sprinter with hyperandrogenism, Dutee Chand, was barred from competition.

“We have said all along that we support the anti-doping prohibitions against exogenous … phar- maceutically created testosterone. But we are bitterly opposed to the idea that a woman can’t run on her own chemicals,” Kidd said.

In July 2015, the court found that indirect evidence indicates testosterone probably confers an advantage. But it was not convinced that testoster- one explained the entire performance gap between men and women, a difference in the range of 10 to

12 per cent. If testosterone confers an advantage in the realm of 1 to 3 per cent, it is no different from other variables that conspire to produce a superior athlete: height, muscle mass, oxygen uptake.

The ruling suspended the IAAF’s regulations, citing lack of scientif ic evidence. But it raised questions that venture well beyond science: what is fairness, really, in the world of elite sport?

Those who decried the court’s ruling cited a desire to maintain a level playing field for women. Female athletes themselves want that: the British world-re- cord-holding marathoner, Paula Radcliffe, testified in support of the IAAF, and Maria José Martinez- Patiño, the banned hurdler, co-authored an article that concluded some rule must exist.

But why are women the only ones who need the playing field levelled? Is it fair to compete against LeBron James, Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt? Sports celebrates outliers on the spectrum of genetic

Figure 13.2: Women at the Olympics: Female participants through the years

Source: Data from International Olympic Committee. (2016, January). “Factsheet: Women in the Olympic Movement.” Lausanne, Switzerland: Olympic Studies Centre.

44.2%

40.7%

34.0%

23.0%

14.6%

9.6%

0.9%

2.2%

2012*

2004

1996

1984

1972

1928

1904

1900

*The first year women competed in every available sport

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diversity. No one is hunting for male athletes who produce vastly more testosterone than their peers, or enjoy any other freakish advantage.

We don’t know the names of the four young female athletes who travelled to France, or anything about their athletic or personal lives, only that they were from developing countries. But because of the court’s decision—affirmed by the IOC—their irreversible gonadectomies would no longer be necessary to com- pete. And of course their partial clitoridectomies, a cosmetic procedure, were never necessary.

Nobody knows what will happen next. The IAAF has two years from last July’s ruling to produce evi- dence supporting the hyperandrogenism regulations. Even some supporters don’t think they will: the sci- ence of sex and athletic advantage is just too elusive. Should declaring a gender identity be enough? Should we do away with divisions entirely?

Kidd points out we don’t actually know how much of the 10- to 12-per-cent male advantage is the result of social context rather than biology.

“Will women run as fast as men in some events if genuine equality is achieved—if the genetic pool out of which female Olympians are drawn is the same, and there is the same motivational encouragement, the same financial encouragement?” he asks.

“We’re living in an experiment.”

Source: Allen, Kate. (2016, July 31). Excerpted from “How

the Practice of Sex-Testing Targets Female Olympic

Athletes.” Toronto Star. Retrieved from: https://www.

thestar.com/news/world/2016/07/31/why-the-

olympics-cant-figure-out-who-is-a-man-and-who-is-a-

woman.html.

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INTRODUCTION: “YOU’RE IN THE MONKEY CAGE WITH ME”

Summer in Chicago is a time for exploring the city, visiting Lake Michigan, enjoying great food, and debating the causes of the Cubs’ inability to win. However, in the summer of 2008, a group of more than one hundred visitors chose to stay in their run- of-the-mill conference hotel rather than discover what Chicago has to offer. Mostly white middle class women, young and old, from around the country, they had come to the Windy City for the annual meeting of the Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome Support Group–USA (AISSG-USA).

Unlike most other national conferences, this one had no posters with its name decorating the hotel. Instead, the signs that led attendees to their registration site displayed a colorful orchid and the words “Women’s Support Group” in bold letters,

followed by “Please do not disturb.” Curious hotel employees and guests found the meeting mysteri- ous. One employee asked me, “Why are all of you needing support?” I shrugged my shoulders, not sure how to respond.

In fact, the ambiguity of the signs was appropri- ate to the purpose of the meeting, whose attendees were distinguished by the fact that the sex they were born with had been deemed biologically ambiguous by the medical profession. To put it another way, almost everyone at the meeting had been born with an intersex trait (or accompanied someone born with an intersex trait). In many instances, the result was physical bodies incongruent with sex chromosomes. In the past, these individuals might have been considered hermaphrodites, a term that some—but not all—in the intersex community now consider derogatory. Terms less contentious today include intersex, intersex traits, intersexuality, and intersexual.

CHAPTER 14

Contesting Intersex

Georgiann Davis

Georgiann Davis is an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas. She is current president of interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth, and former president of the AIS-DSD (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome – Disorder of Sex Devel- opment) Support Group. Davis has written numerous articles on intersex in various outlets ranging from Ms. Magazine to the American Journal of Bioethics. In her book, Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis, Davis explores how intersex is defined, experienced, and contested in contemporary U.S. society.

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This work is about how intersex is defined, experi- enced, and contested in contemporary U.S. society. I argue that medical professionals have replaced intersex language with disorder of sex development nomenclature, a linguistic move designed to reclaim their authority and jurisdiction over the intersex body. Ironically, this disorder of sex development (DSD) terminology was strategically introduced in 2005 by Cheryl Chase, a prominent intersex activist, and her allies, who had hoped the new nomenclature would improve medical care for those born with intersex traits. Instead, as I show here, DSD terminology has heightened tension within the intersex commun- ity. Some individuals born with intersex traits are embracing the new nomenclature; others resist it, citing the pathologization that underlies the term disorder; a few are indifferent to diagnostic labels and think individuals should use whatever term(s) they prefer. My hope is that Contesting Intersex will tease apart the tensions over terminology in the intersex community, while also showing how power resides in diagnostic labels.

Although intersex is itself a term whose meaning is contested, in general it is used to describe the state of being born with a combination of characteristics (e.g., genital, gonadal, and/or chromosomal) that are typically presumed to be exclusively male or female. People with androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS), for example, have XY chromosomes and testes “but lack a key androgen receptor”1 that consequently pre- vents their bodies from responding during gestational development and beyond to the normal amounts of androgens (an umbrella term for testosterone) their testes produce. Depending upon how much andro- gen the receptor blocks, some AIS individuals have ambiguous external genitalia (usually a larger clitoris that resembles a small penis) with either internal or external testes, while others have an outwardly “normal”-looking vagina with a shortened vaginal canal, no uterus, and undescended testes. […]

There is no simple medical explanation for the cause(s) of intersex, no agreement on what defines

intersex, and no formal record of those born with such “abnormalities.” All of these lacks presumably con- tribute to the challenge of establishing the frequency of intersex. Still, estimates have been made, with the most-used figure suggesting 1 in 2,000 people is intersex, but because estimates drastically vary across publications,2 I’m uncomfortable offering my own estimate. What I do know, however, is that intersex people exist all around the world.

Estimates of intersex in the population did not matter to the conference attendees, who shared a unique medical history and had a strong connection with one another. They were there to support one another in healing from what, for many, has been a life full of medical lies, deception, and unnecessary surgi- cal intervention. Yet if you had happened to stumble into that Chicago hotel that summer weekend, you would have had no idea of what had brought the attendees together. Without the “Women’s Support Group” signs, you might have imagined that you were interrupting a meeting of sorority sisters or a family reunion. A group official told me that one reason for the secrecy was to prevent any attendees from feeling uncomfortable or “freakish.” This was also why the support group’s public website did not name the conference location. I found AISSG-USA through that very website, as I searched the Internet for information about my intersex “abnormality.” As a twenty-seven-year-old individual with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS), I had met only one other intersex person, a friend from work who was as private about her diagnosis as I was about mine. I wanted to know more about intersex, and I started my search for information online. […]

I was diagnosed with CAIS around the age of thirteen. I was experiencing abdominal pains, and my mother thought I would soon begin menstruating, a rite of passage for women in my family, as in many other families. However, my period never came. The abdominal pain went away, but my mother was con- cerned enough to seek medical advice. I soon found myself in an endocrinologist’s office, wondering why

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so many doctors were literally looking over—and within—my body. At the time, the doctors told me I had underdeveloped ovaries that had a very high risk of being cancerous and would need to be surgically removed before my eighteenth birthday. But the doc- tors were lying: The purported ovaries were actually undescended testes. Encouraged by medical providers, my parents went along with the lie, and when I was seventeen, I had surgery to remove the supposedly dangerous organs.

I would not see a doctor again, or discover that I had an intersex trait, until, at nineteen, I relocated to a new area far from my childhood medical providers, where I sought new doctors. As is customary, they requested that I bring my medical records with me to my appointment for a routine physical. When I finally got my hands on my surgical records, I read them in utter disbelief. That was my first encounter with the truth about my body and the medically unnecessary surgery I had undergone. At that time, it made me deeply uncomfortable to learn that I had XY chromosomes and testicular feminization syndrome—the label for my trait when I was initially diagnosed. I was in tears as I read what one gynecologist had written in my medical file: “After extensive discussion I feel pt [patient] needs surgery to have gonads removed. She is not aware of any chromosomal studies and most literature agrees it best she not be aware of the chromosome studies. She has been told she is missing her uterus, she does have a vagina. She has no tubes. She has been told she may have streaked ovaries and they should be removed because of the possibility of developing gonadal cancer” (personal medical records, November 26, 1997).

I was shocked and confused. Why had my med- ical providers and parents lied to me for so many years? I thought I’d had surgery because of a health risk. Was having an intersex trait that horrible? I remember thinking I must be a real freak if even my parents hadn’t been able to tell me the truth. I ran to the dumpster outside my building and threw my records

away, not wanting to be reminded of the diagnosis or the surgery that couldn’t be undone.

Almost a decade later, I was finally emotionally ready to confront my medical past, and I requested another set of my records. I was exploring feminist theories and gender and sexuality scholarship in my sociology doctoral program, an incredibly empow- ering experience that positioned me to revisit my personal experience with sex, gender, and sexuality binaries. Our assigned readings and thoughtful class- room discussions encouraged me to delve deeply into my medical history, first with close graduate school friends and faculty, eventually with anyone who cared to listen. Finally feeling liberated, I sought others like me, which is how I ended up at my first intersex support group conference, which happened to be in Chicago that year.

This project was born during that emotional weekend, which will forever mark my first involvement with the intersex community. Although I entered the weekend as an individual with an intersex trait look- ing for peers, by its end I was determined to pursue a sociological analysis of intersex in contemporary U.S. society. Despite my personal experience with intersex, I was initially concerned that I would have difficulty gaining access to a community that hasn’t had the best experiences with researchers, notably psychologist John Money, whose work was discredited after the discovery of his falsified data and unethical research practices. I was wrong: AISSG-USA was incredibly supportive of my research, as was each of the other organizations I studied. It became clear during data collection that my personal experience with intersexuality provided an inroad into the field and community that would eventually become my second home. In the fall of 2013, I was elected presi- dent of the AIS-DSD Support Group, the new name of AISSG-USA, which had just started to allow men with intersex traits to attend their annual meeting.

As a result of the access, support, and assistance I received in connecting with intersex community members, I was able to collect a tremendous amount

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of data in a relatively short time. During this period, I formed friendships throughout the intersex commun- ity, to which I am now permanently connected. For I am not only studying the intersex community, I’m in it. As Peggy, a fifty-six-year-old with an intersex trait, said to me, “I feel that you’re going to be on my side. You’re not like someone at the zoo saying, ‘Well I’m a human being and I’m taking notes on the monkeys.’ You’re in the monkey cage with me.”

Like that of many of my research participants, my experience with intersexuality has left me with some horrific physical and emotional scars. However, it has also become the core of my intellectual passion and academic commitment. On January 7, 2010, in the midst of my data collection, I met fifty-three-year-old Cheryl Chase, who was instrumental in the rise of the intersex rights movement nearly two decades earlier. As we finished our emotionally intense interview, Chase wrote on a piece of paper, “Georgiann, Finish your PhD and change the world!” That note, along with a framed picture of the two of us, greets me every time I sit down at my desk. It is not just memorabilia from the field; it is symbolic of my commitment to our entire community, no matter how divided—over medical terminology and how best to advocate for change—we are today.

* * * * *

THE DUBIOUS DIAGNOSIS

I started Contesting Intersex with one broad ques- tion in mind: How did intersex become a disorder of sex development? I’ve argued that a good part of the answer to this question has to do with medical authority and jurisdiction over the intersex body. While Cheryl Chase and her allies came up with and advocated for the new DSD terminology, hoping it would improve intersex medical care, the phrase was formally introduced by the medical profession. DSD nomenclature initiated the transformation of intersex advocacy from collective confrontation to contested

collaboration. Today, DSD terminology has come to replace intersex language in almost all corners of the medical profession, a change that dismays at least some members of the intersex community.

The rapid and widespread acceptance of DSD by medical providers has been striking, but it can be explained by its context. When the terminological shift occurred in 2005, medical control over intersex was in jeopardy as a result of a confluence of factors, including feminist critiques of intersex medical care […] and intersex activism. As public awareness rose about the prevalence of medically unnecessary surger- ies on intersex people, it seemed impossible that med- ical providers could continue to treat intersex traits as they had been doing. But when intersex traits were reinvented as disorders of sex development—itself an act of powerful evidence for the social construction of medical diagnoses—medical providers had the perfect opportunity to reassert their authority over intersex and reclaim jurisdiction over the intersex body in treating this new disorder. The fact that many medical providers hold essentialist understandings of sex, gender, and sexuality—tending to see all three as biologically prescribed and, in many cases, neatly correlated—made them more open to and quick to accept the idea of disorders of sex development, not to mention the pathologization its language implies.

But at the same time as DSD nomenclature has taken off in the medical profession, it has been a major source of tension in the intersex community, especially since it was officially introduced by the medical pro- fession in the “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders” (Houk et al. 2006; Hughes et al. 2006; Lee et al. 2006). Some intersex people accept DSD language, which allows them access to biological citizenship and its benefits, including sup- portive relationships with medical providers and fam- ily members, though at the cost of feeling stigmatized for being labeled as having a disorder. Intersex people who reject DSD language tend to reject the idea that sex, gender, and sexuality are biologically prescribed bodily phenomena and instead embrace intersex itself

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as a powerful identity. In doing so, they challenge gender essentialist ideologies. However, I argue that by rejecting DSD terminology, they also limit their access to biological citizenship and its benefits.

Though DSD nomenclature has heightened divides in the intersex community, most intersex people agree that surgeries designed to “normalize” the intersex body shouldn’t be performed until individuals are old enough to make their own decisions. This is an important goal our community shares, grounded in a desire to improve the lives of future generations of intersex people. But we need to remember that surgical interventions are not the exclusive cause of our struggles as intersex people, for even those who have escaped surgery struggle with intersex. This leads me to conclude that those struggles are not solely the result of dangerous interactions with the scalpel. Rather, they emerge out of the broader medicalization process, specifically the ongoing struggle to challenge the belief that we are abnormal, a belief held, alas, by too many of us, as well as much of the medical profession and society at large.

Given this challenge, our intersex community cannot afford in-group conflict over terminology. We need to be conscious of the origins and history of DSD terminology, but when we think about what needs to change to benefit future generations of intersex people, people should be able to choose whatever term—or terms—they find suitable: intersex; intersex traits; intersex conditions; intersexed; intersexual; disorder of sex development; difference of sex development; the abbreviation DSD; diverse reproductive develop- ment (DRD); diverse sex development, also known as intersex (DSDI); intersex, also known as differences in reproductive development (IDSD); conditions affecting reproductive development (CARD); congenital atypical reproductive development (CARD); conditions related to reproductive development (CR D); variations of reproductive development (VRD); hermaphrodite; a term we have not yet come up with; or no term at all. This flexibility will provide us with more open access to biological citizenship, which I have shown has

significant, though not exclusive, value. It will allow us to devote our time to other matters, such as ending the shame and secrecy tied to the intersex diagnosis.

Like some of my research participants, I find the word disorder pathologizing, but if strategically employing DSD nomenclature results in higher- quality medical care, why shouldn’t we use it or some variation of it, including differences of sex develop- ment? While I find value in Audre Lorde’s (1984) claim that the “master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (112), meaning that using the tools of oppression can’t end oppression, sometimes we need to access powerful institutions in order to create change. Because intersex has historically been situated in the medical institution, we need to access that institution, which means that sometimes we need to work with its terms, even disorder of sex development. But we can control how we approach that term by acknowledging—and pushing medical professionals to acknowledge—that sex, gender, and sexuality, as well as medical diagnoses, are socially constructed phenomena embedded within a system of stratification. There is power in a name, and the intersex community can and should use that power to its advantage.

Since the publication of the “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders” (Houk et al. 2006; Hughes et al. 2006; Lee et al. 2006), the global intersex community has experienced several significant events that have raised public awareness about intersex in ways that have significant potential to shift the def- inition, status, and experience of intersex for years to come. The years 2012 and 2013, in particular, brought new political visibility to the intersex community. In 2012, the Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics3 and the German Ethics Council4 independently offered opinions that critiqued the contemporary state of intersex medical care. In 2013, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture condemned the medical profession’s nonconsensual surgical treatment of intersex by associating it with torture.5 The New Jersey Senate approved a bill that

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will allow intersex and trans people to change the gen- der listed on their birth certificates without surgery,6 and a new German law came into effect that allows parents of intersex children to register their children as “X,” rather than “M” or “F,” on birth certificates.7 Members of the intersex community often disagree on the implications of these events—for instance, the new German law has been criticized8 for forcing intersex children into an arbitrary third option (“X”), unlike the law passed in Australia, also in 2013, that allows adults to choose a third gender designation on government-issued personal documents.9

* * * * *

Actions for Liberation

Despite recent attention on intersex, too much shame, secrecy, and stigma remain associated with intersex traits. My hope is that, regardless of our genitalia and our experiences with intersex, we can continue to fight for liberation from the shackles society rigidly ties to intersex bodies. We can begin to do this, I argue, by directly confronting the gender structure. When we make the gender structure visible—that is, when we understand how gender constrains us at the institutional, individual, and interactional levels of society—we diminish at least some of the powerful control it has over our lives. […]

Given my personal, professional, and ethical commitment to the intersex community, I want to conclude Contesting Intersex by using the information and insights I have derived from my research to offer seven actions for liberation that intersex activists and our allies can take to decrease intersex stigma and the shame and secrecy that surrounds it. […]

Action #1: Stop the Surgeries The first action in a liberatory transformation of the lives of intersex people must involve holding medical professionals responsible for violating med- ical protocols during the medical management of

intersexuality. Although both the 2000 commit- tee statement “Evaluation of the Newborn with Developmental Anomalies of the External Genitalia” and the 2006 “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders” are critical of the medically unnecessary surgical modification of intersex bodies (Committee 2000; Hughes et al. 2006; Lee et al. 2006; Houk et al. 2006), these surgeries continue under the guise of protecting children from health risks, especially cancer, even as these cancer claims are inconsistent at best and fallacious at worst.10 There are no official estimates on the number of intersex people who have been subjected to medically unnec- essary surgical interventions. However, my interviews with medical professionals indicate that such pro- cedures are still quite common. Scholars who were studying the community years before I did noted the physical and emotional scarring caused by intersex “normalization” surgery (e.g., Holmes 2008; Karkazis 2008; Preves 2003), yet, as I’ve documented, these struggles continue to persist throughout the intersex community. […]

Action #2: Work with—Not for—Doctors Liberatory transformation will also require that med- ical professionals engage in collective collaboration with intersex people and our families while simul- taneously calling for us to be open to collaborating with doctors to promote change. Providers must be willing to learn from the intersex community and share at least some of their authority over intersex traits and the intersex body. There is no question that medical professionals who treat intersex traits are trying to help their patients, yet the majority of them are working exclusively from a medicalized body of knowledge and strategies acquired during their medical educations. However, for intersex people to achieve a true liberatory transformation, medical professionals need to extend their scope by engaging with, valuing the knowledge of, and even welcoming the tools of other stakeholders, including people in the intersex community and sociocultural scholars. […]

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The medical profession is a powerful institu- tion. It is in our interest to work with that power to promote change. With supportive medical allies as our secret weapons, we can work together to change intersex medical care.

Action #3: Expand and Diversify Peer Support Liberatory transformation also depends upon expand- ing and diversifying peer support and the informa- tional biocitizenship such support enables. When I asked research participants what advice they would give to someone recently diagnosed with an inter- sex trait, almost everyone said they would strongly encourage that person to meet other intersex people. Intersex people, me included, find solace in knowing we are not alone in our experience of being differently bodied. My interviews with parents confirmed the value of peer support. Parents with whom I spoke reported that meeting other parents of intersex chil- dren was emotionally empowering. […]

Given the importance of peer support, I strongly recommend that all intersex groups strive toward being more inclusive of all intersex people, regardless of their gender expression. […] There also needs to be more collaboration across intersex organizations toward a shared goal of increasingly racial and class diversity throughout the global intersex community. As it stands today, the intersex community consists largely of individuals privileged by race and class. We must actively work to diversify our community.

Action #4: Replace Fear with Power In order to achieve liberatory transformation, we must replace the fear of not fitting into the sex binary with the power we gain by educating others about sex vari- ability. In my interviews with intersex people, I saw that the individuals who are most emotionally com- fortable with their intersex diagnosis are those who do not feel constrained by the difference but rather embrace it as part of their identity. Many of these individuals speak publicly about their lived experi- ences. […] This public exposure seems to be related

to both a positive sense of self for these individuals and a destigmatization of intersexuality that benefits the entire intersex community. […]

Action #5: Embrace Feminist Ideas If we believe, as my research suggests, that ideas can themselves be liberatory, and classrooms can be spaces where these liberatory ideas are shared (e.g., hooks 1994), then another step we must take on our road to liberatory transformation is to embrace the insights of feminist scholarship. Exposure to feminist schol- arship created strikingly different outcomes for my research participants. Individuals who encountered feminist scholarship in formal educational settings or were introduced to it by friends or the media reported much more positive senses of self and were much more comfortable with their intersex trait than those who weren’t.

* * * * *

Action #6: Recognize Social Constructions This sixth action for a liberatory transformation builds on the previous action and calls for us to understand that phenomena throughout the world are constructed by various institutions in ways that maintain and per- petuate inequalities. The medical profession is just one example of such an institution. In the intersex community, the most debilitating phenomena include sex, gender, sexuality, and medical diagnoses, all of which tend to be viewed as indisputable characteristics of the body or, in the case of diagnoses, indisputable descriptions of those characteristics. It is not common to recognize sex, gender, sexuality, and even medical diagnoses as socially constructed through various social institutions, but doing so could be liberatory for the intersex community. […]

Action #7: Listen to Children I see the seventh and final action as one of the most important. We must respect and include children’s voices in the medical decision-making process. […]

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More often than not, medical providers ignore intersex children. That is, children’s voices aren’t usually heard in both specific decisions about their own bodies or in larger debates about intersex medical care, despite the fact that they are the ones most affected by the medical management of intersex traits. In most cases, medically unnecessary surgical interventions on inter- sex bodies happen to children—that is, to minors who cannot legally make their own decisions, or, if they are babies or toddlers, cannot even formulate their own opinions. Many medical providers who treat intersex children do not seriously consider children’s wishes in the medical decision-making process. In order to value children’s voices, medical providers would need to avoid all medically unnecessary interventions until children were mature enough to make their own deci- sions about their bodies. Given that these irrevers- ible procedures are more often than not cosmetic, shouldn’t intersex children have the right to delay or refuse them? I’m not suggesting that all medical recommendations pertaining to a child’s intersex trait should be withheld until the child is mature enough to assess them. Rather, I’m suggesting that in the case of medically unnecessary and irreversible surgical interventions, we need to listen to intersex children and involve them in the decision-making process.

NOTES

1. Cited from Sharon Preves’s (2003) Intersex and Identity, p. 27.

2. For a further discussion of estimates of intersex in the

population, see Melanie Blackless et al. (2000) and Anne

Fausto-Sterling (2000, 53).

3. See Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical

Ethics (2012).

4. See German Ethics Council (2012).

5. See Feminist Newswire (2013).

6. See Kelly (2013).

7. See Nandi (2013).

8. Hida Viloria, a well-known intersex activist, offered a critique

at Advocate.com. See Viloria (2013).

9. See Zara (2013).

10. See Rola Nakhal et al. (2013), Rebecca Deans et al. (2012),

J. Pleskacova et al. (2010), Leendert H.J. Looijenga et al.

(2007), Martine Cools et al. (2006), and Deborah Merke and

Stefan Bornstein (2005).

REFERENCES

Blackless, Melanie, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, and Ellen Lee. 2000. “How Sexually Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis.” American Journal of Human Biology 12(2): 151–66.

Committee on Genetics: Section on Endocrinology and Section on Urology. 2000. “Evaluation of the Newborn with Developmental Anomalies of the External Genitalia.” Pediatrics 106(1): 138–42.

Cools, Martine, Stenvert L.S. Drop, Katja P. Wolffenbuttel, J. Wolter Oosterhuis, and Leendert H.J. Looijenga. 2006. “Germ Cell Tumors in the Intersex Gonad: Old Paths, New Directions, Moving Frontiers.” Endocrine Reviews 27(5): 468–84.

Deans, R., S. M. Creighton, L. M. Liao, and G. S. Conway. 2012. “Timing of Gonadectomy in Adult Women with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS): Patient Preferences and Clinical Evidence.” Clinical Endocrinology 76(6): 894–98.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 2000. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Feminist Newswire. 2013. “UN Condemns ‘Normalization’ Surgeries of Intersex Children.” Feminist Majority Foundation Blog. Accessed January 31, 2015. http:// feminist.org/blog/index.php/2013/02/08/un-condemns- normalization-surgeries-of-intersex-children/.

German Ethics Council. 2012. “Press Release: Intersex People Should Be Recognized, Supported and Protected from Discrimination.” Deutscher Ethikrat. Accessed January 31, 2015. http://www.ethikrat.org/files/press-release-2012-01. pdf/.

Holmes, Morgan. 2008. Intersex: A Perilous Difference. Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press.

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hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.

Houk, Christopher P., Ieuan A. Hughes, S. Faisal Ahmed, Peter A. Lee, and Writing Committee for the International Intersex Consensus Conference Participants. 2006. “Summary of Consensus Statement on Intersex Disorders and Their Management.” Pediatrics 118(2): 753–57.

Hughes, Ieuan A., Christopher Houk, S. Faisal Ahmed, Peter A. Lee, and LWPES1/ESPE2 Consensus Group. 2006. “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders.” Archives of Disease in Childhood 91(7): 554–63.

Karkazis, Katrina. 2008. Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Kelly, Ashlee. 2013. “New Jersey Senate Panel Approves Trans and Intersex Birth Certificate Bill.” Gay Star News. Accessed January 31, 2015. https://www.gaystarnews. com/article/new-jersey-senate-panel-approves-trans-and- intersex-birth-certificate-bill141213/.

Lee, Peter A., Christopher P. Houk, S. Faisal Ahmed, and Ieuan A. Hughes. 2006. “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders.” Pediatrics 118(2): 488–500.

Looijenga, Leendert H.J., Remko Hersmus, J. Wolter Oosterhuis, Martine Cools, Stenvert L.S. Drop, and Katja P. Wolffenbuttel. 2007. “Tumor Risk in Disorders of Sex Development (DSD).” Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 21(3): 480–95.

Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde. Berkeley, Calif.: Crossing Press.

Merke, Deborah P., and Stefan R. Bornstein. 2005. “Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia.” The Lancet 365(9477): 2125–36.

Nakhal, Rola S., Margaret Hall-Craggs, Alex Freeman, Alex Kirkham, Gerard S. Conway, Rupali Arora, Christopher R. J. Woodhouse, Dan N. Wood, and Sarah M. Creighton.

2013. “Evaluation of Retained Testes in Adolescent Girls and Women with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.” Radiology 268(1): 153–60.

Nandi, Jacinta. 2013. “Germany Got It Right by Offering a Third Gender Option on Birth Certificates” The Guardian. Accessed January 31, 2015. http://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/10/ germany-third-gender-birth-certificate.

Pleskacova, J., R. Hersmus, J. W. Oosterhuis, B. A. Setyawati, S. M. Faradz, M. Cools, K. P. Wolffenbuttel, J. Lebl, S. L. Drop, and L. H. Looijenga. 2010. “Tumor Risk in Disorders of Sex Development.” Sexual Development 4(4/5): 259–69.

Preves, Sharon. 2003. Intersex and Identity: The Contested Self. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics. 2012. “On the Management of Differences of Sex Development: Ethical Issues Relating to ‘Intersexuality.’” Swiss National Advisory Commission on Biomedical Ethics. Accessed January 31, 2015. http://www.nek-cne.ch/ fileadmin/nek-cne-dateien/Themen/Stellungnahmen/en/ NEK_Intersexualitaet_En.pdf.

Viloria, Hida. 2013. “Germany’s Third-Gender Law Fails on Equality.” Advocate.com. Accessed January 31, 2015. https:// www.advocate.com/commentary/2013/11/06/op-ed- germany%E2%80%99s-third-gender-law-fails-equality.

Zara, Christopher. 2013. “Intersex Australia: Third Gender Allowed on Personal Documents in Addition to Male and Female.” International Business Times. Accessed January 31, 2015. http://www.ibtimes.com/intersex-australia- third-gender-allowed-personal-documents-addition-male- female-1307843.

Source: Davis, Georgiann. (2015). Excerpted from

Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis (pp. 106,

145–148, 156–162, 164–166, 171, 179, 189–208).

New York, NY: NYU Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 9

Size Does Matter

The size of an infant’s genitals is important to physicians who “manage” the sex assignment of intersexed infants. In her book entitled Lessons from the Intersexed, Suzanne Kessler explores how physicians use size to determine the appropriateness of genitals.

Ranges of Medically Acceptable Infant Clitoral and Penile Lengths

How big must a clitoris be before physicians decide it is too large? … In spite of there being a table of standards, physicians are more likely to refer to the average clitoris in food terminology, such as a pea or a small bean. In general, medical standards do not allow clitorises larger than .9 centimeters (about ⅜ of an inch). […]

DEFINING GENITALS: WHO WILL MAKE ROOM FOR THE INTERSEXED?

Between 1.7 and 4% of the world population is born with intersex conditions, hav- ing primary and secondary sexual characteristics that are neither clearly male nor female.1 The current recommended treatment for an infant born with an intersex con- dition is genital reconstruction surgery to render the child as clearly sexed either male or female.2 Every day in the United States, five children are subjected to genital recon- struction surgery that may leave them with permanent physical and emotional scars.3 Despite efforts by intersexed people to educate the medical community about their rejection of infant genital reconstruction surgery, the American medical community has not yet accepted the fact that differences in genital size and shape do not neces- sarily require surgical correction.4

When is a penis too small? In general, medical stan- dards permit infant penises as small as 2.5 centimeters (about one inch) to mark maleness, but usually not smaller. [Boys with penises smaller than 2.5 centimeters may be reassigned as girls based on the assumption that] a male infant needs a penis of a certain size in order to be accepted by family and peers. [The figure shown here] indicates standard clitoral and penile lengths for infants, revealing that intermediate area of phallic length that neither females nor males are permitted to have.

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NOTES

1. Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and

the Construction of Sexuality 51 (2000) (reporting that 1.7%

of the population may be intersexed); Julie A. Greenberg,

Defining Male and Female Intersexuality and the Collision

between Law and Biology, 41 Ariz. L. Rev. 265, 267 (1999)

(reporting that Johns Hopkins sex researcher John Money

estimates the number of people born with ambiguous

genitals at 4%). Historically, people with intersex conditions

were referred to as “hermaphrodites” but this word has

been rejected as embodying many of the misperceptions

and mistreatment of intersexed people. Raven Kaldera,

American Boyz Intersexuality Flyer, at http://www.amboyz.

org/intersection/flyerprint.html (last visited Mar. 27, 2004).

2. Hazel Glenn Beh & Milton Diamond, An Emerging Ethical

and Medical Dilemma: Should Physicians Perform Sex

Assignment Surgery on Infants with Ambiguous Genitalia?

7 Mich. J. Gender & L. 1, 3 (2000); Fausto-Sterling, supra

note 1, at 45; see infra note 4.

3. Emi Koyama, Suggested Guidelines for Non-Intersex

Individuals Writing about Intersexuality and Intersex People,

at http://isna.org/faq/writing-guidelines.html (last visited

Mar. 27, 2004). But see Beh & Diamond, supra note 2, at 17

(estimating the number of sex reassignments in the United

States at 100 to 200 annually).

4. Kishka-Kamari Ford, “First Do No Harm”—The Fiction of

Legal Parental Consent to Genital-Normalizing Surgery on

Intersexed Infants, 19 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 469, 471 (2001).

Sources: Haas, Kate. (2004). “Who Will Make Room for

the Intersexed?” American Journal of Law & Medicine,

30(1), 41–68; Kessler, Suzanne J. (1998). Lessons

from the Intersexed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

University Press. Reprinted in Caron, Sandra L. (2007).

Sex Matters for College Students: FAQs in Human

Sexuality, 2nd Edition (p. 23). Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Prentice Hall.

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MALE OR FEMALE?

In the rush and excitement of leaving for the 1988 Olympics, Maria Patiño, Spain’s top woman hurdler, forgot the requisite doctor’s certificate stating, for the benefit of Olympic officials, what seemed patently obvious to anyone who looked at her: she was female. But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had anticipated the possibility that some competitors would forget their certificates of femininity. Patiño had only to report to the “femininity control head office,”1 scrape some cells off the side of her cheek, and all would be in order—or so she thought.

A few hours after the cheek scraping, she got a call. Something was wrong. She went for a second examination, but the doctors were mum. Then, as she rode to the Olympic stadium to start her first race, track officials broke the news: she had failed the sex test. She may have looked like a woman, had a wom- an’s strength, and never had reason to suspect that she wasn’t a woman, but the examinations revealed that

Patiño’s cells sported a Y chromosome, and that her labia hid testes within. Furthermore, she had neither ovaries nor a uterus. According to the IOC’s defin- ition, Patiño was not a woman. She was barred from competing on Spain’s Olympic team.

Spanish athletic officials told Patiño to fake an injury and withdraw without publicizing the embar- rassing facts. When she refused, the European press heard about it and the secret was out. Within months after returning to Spain, Patiño’s life fell apart. Spanish officials stripped her of past titles and barred her from further competition. Her boyfriend deserted her. She was evicted from the national athletic residence, her scholarship was revoked, and suddenly she had to struggle to make a living. The national press had a field day at her expense. As she later said, “I was erased from the map, as if I had never existed. I gave twelve years to sports.”2

Down but not out, Patiño spent thousands of dollars consulting doctors about her situation. They explained that she had been born with a condition

CHAPTER 15

Dueling Dualisms

Anne Fausto-Sterling

Anne Fausto-Sterling is a professor emerita at Brown University and fellow of the Amer- ican Association for the Advancement of Science. She is one of the world’s leading researchers on the development of sexual identity and the biology of gender, and her trail-breaking works on gender and sexuality include Myths of Gender and Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (excerpted below).

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called androgen insensitivity. This meant that, although she had a Y chromosome and her testes made plenty of testosterone, her cells couldn’t detect this mascu- linizing hormone. As a result, her body had never developed male characteristics. But at puberty her testes produced estrogen (as do the testes of all men), which, because of her body’s inability to respond to its testosterone, caused her breasts to grow, her waist to narrow, and her hips to widen. Despite a Y chromosome and testes, she had grown up as a female and developed a female form.

Patiño resolved to fight the IOC ruling. “I knew I was a woman,” she insisted to one reporter, “in the eyes of medicine, God and most of all, in my own eyes.”3 […] After two and a half years, the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) [now called the International Association of Athletics Federations] reinstated her, and by 1992, Patiño had rejoined the Spanish Olympic squad, going down in history as the first woman ever to challenge sex testing for female athletes. Despite the IAAF’s flexibility, however, the IOC has remained adamant: even if looking for a Y chromosome wasn’t the most scientific approach to sex testing, testing must be done.

* * * * *

SEX OR GENDER?

Until 1968, female Olympic competitors were often asked to parade naked in front of a board of examiners. Breasts and a vagina were all one needed to certify one’s femininity. But many women complained that this procedure was degrading. Partly because such complaints mounted, the IOC decided to make use of the modern “scientific” chromosome test. The problem, though, is that this test, and the more sophisticated polymerase chain reaction to detect small regions of DNA associated with testes development that the IOC uses today, cannot do the work the IOC wants it to do. A body’s sex is simply too complex. There is no either/

or. Rather, there are shades of difference. […] One of the major claims I make in this book is that labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. We may use scientific knowledge to help us make the decision, but only our beliefs about gender—not science—can define our sex. Furthermore, our beliefs about gender affect what kinds of knowledge scientists produce about sex in the first place.

Over the last few decades, the relation between social expression of masculinity and femininity and their physical underpinnings has been hotly debated in scientific and social arenas. In 1972, the sexologists John Money and Anke Ehrhardt popularized the idea that sex and gender are separate categories. Sex, they argued, refers to physical attributes and is anatom- ically and physiologically determined. Gender they saw as a psychological transformation of the self—the internal conviction that one is either male or female (gender identity) and the behavioral expressions of that conviction.4

Meanwhile, the second-wave feminists of the 1970s also argued that sex is distinct from gender— that social institutions, themselves designed to perpetuate gender inequality, produce most of the differences between men and women.5 Feminists argued that although men’s and women’s bodies serve different reproductive functions, few other sex differences come with the territory, unchangeable by life’s vicissitudes. If girls couldn’t learn math as easily as boys, the problem wasn’t built into their brains. The difficulty resulted from gender norms—different expectations and opportunities for boys and girls. Having a penis rather than a vagina is a sex difference. Boys performing better than girls on math exams is a gender difference. Presumably, the latter could be changed even if the former could not.

Money, Ehrhardt, and feminists set the terms so that sex represented the body’s anatomy and physio- logical workings and gender represented social forces that molded behavior. Feminists did not question the realm of physical sex; it was the psychological and cultural meanings of these differences—gender—that

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was at issue. But feminist definitions of sex and gender left open the possibility that male/female differences in cognitive function and behavior could result from sex differences, and thus, in some circles, the matter of sex versus gender became a debate about how “hardwired” intelligence and a variety of behaviors are in the brain, while in others there seemed no choice but to ignore many of the findings of contem- porary neurobiology.

In ceding the territory of physical sex, femin- ists left themselves open to renewed attack on the grounds of biological difference. Indeed, feminism has encountered massive resistance from the domains of biology, medicine, and significant components of social science. Despite many positive social changes, the 1970s optimism that women would achieve full economic and social equality once gender inequity was addressed in the social sphere has faded in the face of a seemingly recalcitrant inequality.6 All of which has prompted feminist scholars, on the one hand, to question the notion of sex itself,7 while on the other to deepen their inquiry into what we might mean by words such as gender, culture, and experience. The anthropologist Henrietta A. Moore, for example, argues against reducing accounts of gender, culture, and experience to their “linguistic and cognitive elements.” […] I argue, as does Moore, that “what is at issue is the embodied nature of identities and experience. Experience … is not individual and fixed, but irredeemably social and processual.”8

Our bodies are too complex to provide clear cut answers about sexual difference. The more we look for a simple physical basis for “sex,” the more it becomes clear that “sex” is not a pure physical category. What bodily signals and functions we define as male or female come already entangled in our ideas about gender. Consider the problem facing the International Olympic Committee. Committee members want to decide definitively who is male and female. But how? […] Could the IOC use muscle strength as some measure of sex? In some cases. But the strength of men and women, especially highly

trained athletes, overlaps. […] And although Maria Patiño fit a commonsense definition of femininity in terms of looks and strength, she also had testes and a Y chromosome. But why should these be the deciding factors?

The IOC may use chromosome or DNA tests or inspection of the breasts and genitals to ascertain the sex of a competitor, but doctors faced with uncertainty about a child’s sex use different criteria. They focus primarily on reproductive abilities (in the case of a potential girl) or penis size (in the case of a prospective boy). If a child is born with two X chromosomes, oviducts, ovaries, and a uterus on the inside, but a penis and scrotum on the outside, for instance, is the child a boy or a girl? Most doctors declare the child a girl, despite the penis, because of her potential to give birth, and intervene using surgery and hormones to carry out the decision. Choosing which criteria to use in determining sex, and choosing to make the determination at all, are social decisions for which scientists can offer no absolute guidelines.

REAL OR CONSTRUCTED?

I enter the debates about sex and gender as a biologist and a social activist. Daily, my life weaves in and out of a web of conflict over the politics of sexuality and the making and using of knowledge about the biology of human behavior. The central tenet of this book [Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality] is that truths about human sexuality created by scholars in general and by biologists in particular are one component of political, social, and moral struggles about our cultures and economies. At the same time, components of our political, social, and moral struggles become, quite literally, embod- ied, incorporated into our very physiological being. My intent is to show how these mutually depend- ent claims work, in part by addressing such issues as how—through their daily lives, experiments, and medical practices—scientists create truths about

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sexuality; how our bodies incorporate and confirm these truths; and how these truths, sculpted by the social milieu in which biologists practice their trade, in turn refashion our cultural environment.

My take on the problem is idiosyncratic, and for good reason. Intellectually, I inhabit three seemingly incompatible worlds. In my home department, I interact with molecular biologists, scientists who examine living beings from the perspective of the molecules from which they are built. They describe a microscopic world in which cause and effect remain mostly inside a single cell. Molecular biologists rarely think about interacting organs within an individual body, and even less about how a body bounded by skin interacts with the world on the other side of the skin. Their vision of what makes an organism tick is decidedly bottom up, small to large, inside to outside.

I also interact with a virtual community—a group of scholars drawn together by a common interest in sexuality—and connected by something called a list- serv. On a listserv, one can pose questions, think out loud, comment on relevant news items, argue about theories of human sexuality, and report the latest research findings. The comments are read by a group of people hooked together via electronic mail. My listserv (which I call “Loveweb”) consists of a diverse group of scholars—psychologists, animal behaviorists, hormone biologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers. Although many points of view coexist in this group, the vocal majority favor body-based, biological explanations of human sexual behavior. […]

Unlike molecular biologists and Loveweb mem- bers, feminist theorists view the body not as essence, but as a bare scaffolding on which discourse and performance build a completely acculturated being. Feminist theorists write persuasively and often imagi- natively about the processes by which culture molds and effectively creates the body. Furthermore, they have an eye on politics (writ large), which neither molecular biologists nor Loveweb participants have. Most femin- ist scholars concern themselves with real-world power relationships. They have often come to their theoretical

work because they want to understand (and change) social, political, and economic inequality. Unlike the inhabitants of my other two worlds, feminist theorists reject what Donna Haraway, a leading feminist theo- retician, calls “the God-trick”—producing knowledge from above, from a place that denies the individual scholar’s location in a real and troubled world. Instead, they understand that all scholarship adds threads to a web that positions racialized bodies, sexes, genders, and preferences in relationship to one another. New or differently spun threads change our relationships, change how we are in the world.

Traveling among these varied intellectual worlds produces more than a little discomfort. When I lurk on Loveweb, I put up with gratuitous feminist-bashing aimed at some mythic feminist who derides biology and seems to have a patently stupid view of how the world works. When I attend feminist conferences, people howl in disbelief at the ideas debated on Loveweb. And the molecular biologists don’t think much of either of the other worlds. The questions asked by feminists and Loveweb participants seem too complicated; studying sex in bacteria or yeast is the only way to go.

To my molecular biology, Loveweb, and feminist colleagues, then, I say the following: as a biologist, I believe in the material world. As a scientist, I believe in building specific knowledge by conducting exper- iments. But as a feminist Witness (in the Quaker sense of the word) and in recent years as a historian, I also believe that what we call “facts” about the living world are not universal truths. Rather, as Haraway writes, they “are rooted in specific histories, practices, languages and peoples.”9 Ever since the field of biology emerged in the United States and Europe at the start of the nineteenth century, it has been bound up in debates over sexual, racial, and national politics. And as our social viewpoints have shifted, so has the science of the body.

Many historians mark the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries as periods of great change in our concepts of sex and sexuality.10 During this period, a

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notion of legal equality replaced the feudal exercise of arbitrary and violent power given by divine right. As the historian Michel Foucault saw it, society still required some form of discipline. A growing capital- ism needed new methods to control the “insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomena of population to eco- nomic processes.”11 Foucault divided this power over living bodies (bio-power) into two forms. The first centered on the individual body. The role of many science professionals (including the so-called human sciences—psychology, sociology, and economics) became to optimize and standardize the body’s function.12 In Europe and North America, Foucault’s standardized body has, traditionally, been male and Caucasian. And although this [chapter] focuses on gender, I regularly discuss the ways in which the ideas of both race and gender emerge from under- lying assumptions about the body’s physical nature. Understanding how race and gender work—together and independently—helps us learn more about how the social becomes embodied.

Foucault’s second form of bio-power—“a biopol- itics of the population”13—emerged during the early nineteenth century as pioneer social scientists began to develop the survey and statistical methods needed to supervise and manage “births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity.”14 For Foucault, “discipline” had a double meaning. On the one hand, it implied a form of control or punishment; on the other, it referred to an academic body of knowledge—the disci- pline of history or biology. The disciplinary knowledge developed in the fields of embryology, endocrinology, surgery, psychology, and biochemistry have encouraged physicians to attempt to control the very gender of the body—including “its capacities, gestures, movements, location and behaviors.”15

By helping the normal take precedence over the natural, physicians have also contributed to populational biopolitics. We have become, Foucault writes, “a society of normalization.”16 One important mid-twentieth-century sexologist went so far as to

name the male and female models in his anatomy text Norma and Normman [sic].17 Today, we see the notion of pathology applied in many settings—from the sick, diseased, or different body, to the single-parent family in the urban ghetto. But imposing a gender norm is socially, not scientifically, driven. The lack of research into the normal distributions of genital anatomy, as well as many surgeons’ lack of interest in using such data when they do exist […], clearly illustrate this claim. From the viewpoint of medical practitioners, progress in the handling of intersexuality involves maintaining the normal. Accordingly, there ought to be only two boxes: male and female. The know- ledge developed by the medical disciplines empowers doctors to maintain a mythology of the normal by changing the intersexual body to fit, as nearly as pos- sible, into one or the other cubbyhole.

One person’s medical progress, however, can be another’s discipline and control. Intersexuals such as Maria Patiño have unruly—even heretical—bodies. They do not fall naturally into a binary classification; only a surgical shoehorn can put them there. But why should we care if a “woman” (defined as having breasts, a vagina, uterus, ovaries, and menstruation) has a “clitoris” large enough to penetrate the vagina of another woman? Why should we care if there are individuals whose “natural biological equipment” enables them to have sex “naturally” with both men and women? Why must we amputate or surgically hide that “offending shaft” found on an especially large clitoris? The answer: to maintain gender divisions, we must control those bodies that are so unruly as to blur the borders. Since intersexuals quite literally embody both sexes, they weaken claims about sexual difference.

* * * * *

Euro-American ways of understanding how the world works depend heavily on the use of dualisms—pairs of opposing concepts, objects, or belief systems. […]

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Why worry about using dualisms to parse the world? I agree with the philosopher Val Plumwood, who argues that their use makes invisible the interde- pendencies of each pair. This relationship enables sets of pairs to map onto each other. Consider an extract of Plumwood’s list:

Table 15.1

Reason Nature Male Female Mind Body Master Slave Freedom Necessity (nature) Human Nature (nonhuman) Civilized Primitive Production Reproduction Self Other

In everyday use, the sets of associations on each side of the list often run together. “Culture,” Plumwood writes, accumulates these dualisms as a store of weapons “which can be mined, refined and redeployed. Old oppressions stored as dualisms facilitate and break the path for new ones.”18 For this reason, even though my focus is on gender, I do not hesitate to point out occasions in which the constructs and ideology of race intersect with those of gender.

Ultimately, the sex/gender dualism limits femin- ist analysis. The term gender, placed in a dichotomy, necessarily excludes biology. As the feminist theorist Elizabeth Wilson writes: “Feminist critiques of the stomach or hormonal structure … have been rendered unthinkable.”19 […] Such critiques remain unthink- able because of the real/constructed divide (sometimes formulated as a division between nature and culture), in which many map the knowledge of the real onto the domain of science (equating the constructed with the cultural). Dichotomous formulations from feminists and nonfeminists alike conspire to make a sociocultural analysis of the body seem impossible.

Some feminist theorists, especially during the last decade, have tried—with varying degrees of success— to create a nondualistic account of the body. Judith Butler, for example, tries to reclaim the material body for feminist thought. Why, she wonders, has the idea of materiality come to signify that which is irreducible, that which can support construction but cannot itself be constructed?20 We have, Butler says (and I agree), to talk about the material body. There are hormones, genes, prostates, uteri, and other body parts and phys- iologies that we use to differentiate male from female, that become part of the ground from which varieties of sexual experience and desire emerge. Furthermore, variations in each of these aspects of physiology pro- foundly affect an individual’s experience of gender and sexuality. But every time we try to return to the body as something that exists prior to socialization, prior to discourse about male and female, Butler writes, “we discover that matter is fully sedimented with discourses on sex and sexuality that prefigure and constrain the uses to which that term can be put.”21

Western notions of matter and bodily materiality, Butler argues, have been constructed through a “gen- dered matrix.” That classical philosophers associated femininity with materiality can be seen in the origins of the word itself. “Matter” [is] derived from mater and matrix, referring to the womb and problems of reproduction. In both Greek and Latin, according to Butler, matter was not understood to be a blank slate awaiting the application of external meaning. “The matrix is a … formative principle which inaugurates and informs a development of some organism or object … for Aristotle, ‘matter is potentiality, form actuality.’ … In reproduction women are said to contribute the matter, men the form.”22 As Butler notes, the title of her book, Bodies That Matter, is a well-thought-out pun. To be material is to speak about the process of mate- rialization. And if viewpoints about sex and sexuality are already embedded in our philosophical concepts of how matter forms into bodies, the matter of bodies cannot form a neutral, pre-existing ground from which to understand the origin of sexual difference.

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Since matter already contains notions of gender and sexuality, it cannot be a neutral recourse on which to build “scientific” or “objective” theories of sexual development and differentiation. At the same time, we have to acknowledge and use aspects of materiality “that pertain to the body.” “The domains of biology, anatomy, physiology, hormonal and chemical compos- ition, illness, age, weight, metabolism, life and death” cannot “be denied.”23 The critical theorist Bernice Hausman concretizes this point in her discussion of surgical technologies available for creating male-to- female versus female-to-male transsexual bodies. “The differences,” she writes, “between vagina and penis are not merely ideological. Any attempt to engage and decode the semiotics of sex … must acknowledge that these physiological signifiers have functions in the real that will escape … their function in the sym- bolic system.”24

To talk about human sexuality requires a notion of the material. Yet the idea of the material comes to us already tainted, containing within it pre-existing ideas about sexual difference. Butler suggests that we look at the body as a system that simultaneously pro- duces and is produced by social meanings, just as any biological organism always results from the combined and simultaneous actions of nature and nurture.

Unlike Butler, the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz allows some biological processes a status that pre-exists their meaning. She believes that biological instincts or drives provide a kind of raw material for the development of sexuality. But raw materials are never enough. They must be provided with a set of meanings, “a network of desires”25 that organize the meaning and consciousness of the child’s bodily functions. This claim becomes clear if one follows the stories of so-called wild children raised without human constraints or the inculcation of meaning. Such children acquire neither language nor sexual drive. While their bodies provided the raw materials, without a human social setting the clay could not be molded into recognizable psychic form. Without human sociality, human sexuality cannot develop.

Grosz tries to understand how human sociality and meaning that clearly originate outside the body end up incorporated into its physiological demeanor and both unconscious and conscious behaviors.

Some concrete examples will help illustrate. A tiny gray-haired woman, well into her ninth decade, peers into the mirror at her wrinkled face. “Who is that woman?” she wonders. Her mind’s image of her body does not synchronize with the mirror’s reflection. Her daughter, now in her mid-fifties, tries to remember that unless she thinks about using her leg muscles instead of her knee joint, going up and down the stairs will be painful. (Eventually, she will acquire a new kinesic habit and dispense with conscious thought about the matter.) Both women are readjusting the visual and kinesic components of their body image, formed on the basis of past information, but always a bit out of date with the current physical body. How do such read- justments occur, and how do our earliest body images form in the first place? Here we need the concept of the psyche, a place where two-way translations between the mind and the body take place—a United Nations, as it were, of bodies and experiences.

In Volatile Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz considers how the body and the mind come into being together. To facilitate her project, she invokes the image of a Möbius strip as a metaphor for the psyche. The Möbius strip is a topological puzzle (Figure 15.1), a flat ribbon twisted once and then attached end to end to form a circular twisted surface. One can trace the surface, for example, by imagining an ant walking along it. At the beginning of the circular journey, the ant is clearly on the outside. But as it traverses the twisted ribbon, without ever lifting its legs from the plane, it ends up on the inside surface. Grosz proposes that we think of the body—the brain, muscles, sex organs, hormones, and more—as composing the inside of the Möbius strip. Culture and experience would consti- tute the outside surface. But, as the image suggests, the inside and outside are continuous and one can move from one to the other without ever lifting one’s feet off the ground.

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As Grosz recounts, psychoanalysts and phenome- nologists describe the body in terms of feelings.26 The mind translates physiology into an interior sense of self. Oral sexuality, for example, is a physical feeling that a child and later an adult translates into psycho- sexual meaning. This translation takes place on the inside of the Möbius surface. But as one traces the surface toward the outside, one begins to speak in terms of connections to other bodies and objects— things that are clearly not-self. Grosz writes, “Instead of describing the oral drive in terms of what it feels like … orality can be understood in terms of what it does: creating linkages. The child’s lips, for example, form connections … with the breast or bottle, pos- sibly accompanied by the hand in conjunction with an ear, each system in perpetual motion and in mutual interrelation.”27

Continuing with the Möbius analogy, Grosz envisions that bodies create psyches by using the libido as a marker pen to trace a path from biological processes to an interior structure of desire. It falls to

a different arena of scholarship to study the “outside” of the strip, a more obviously social surface marked by “pedagogical, juridical, medical, and economic texts, laws, and practices” in order to “carve out a social subject … capable of labor, or production and manipu- lation, a subject capable of acting as a subject.”28 Thus, Grosz also rejects a nature versus nurture model of human development. While acknowledging that we do not understand the range and limits of the body’s pliability, she insists that we cannot merely “subtract the environment, culture, history” and end up with “nature or biology.”

BEYOND DUALISMS

Grosz postulates innate drives that become organized by physical experience into somatic feelings, which translate into what we call emotions. Taking the innate at face value, however, still leaves us with an unexplained residue of nature. Humans are biological and thus in some sense natural beings and social and in some sense artificial—or, if you will, constructed entities. Can we devise a way of seeing ourselves, as we develop from fertilization to old age, as simultan- eously natural and unnatural? During the past decade, an exciting vision has emerged that I have loosely grouped under the rubric of developmental systems theory, or DST. What do we gain by choosing DST as an analytic framework?

Developmental systems theorists deny that there are fundamentally two kinds of processes: one guided by genes, hormones, and brain cells (that is, nature), the other by the environment, experience, learning, or inchoate social forces (that is, nurture). The pioneer systems theorist, philosopher Susan Oyama, promises that DST “gives more clarity, more coherence, more consistency and a different way to interpret data; in addition it offers the means for synthesizing the con- cepts and methods … of groups that have been working at cross-purposes, or at least talking past each other for decades.” Nevertheless, developmental systems theory

Figure 15.1: Möbius Strip

Source: Courtesy of John Harrison.

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is no magic bullet. Many will resist its insights because, as Oyama explains, “it gives less … guidance on fun- damental truth” and “fewer conclusions about what is inherently desirable, healthy, natural or inevitable.”29

How, specifically, can DST help us break away from dualistic thought processes? Consider an example described by systems theorist Peter Taylor: a goat born with no front legs. During its lifetime, it managed to hop around on its hind limbs. An anatomist who studied the goat after it died found that it had an S-shaped spine (as do humans), “thickened bones, modified muscle insertions, and other correlates of moving on two legs.”30 This (and every goat’s) skeletal system developed as part of its manner of walking. Neither its genes nor its environment determined its anatomy. Only the ensemble had such power. Many developmental physiologists recognize this principle. As one biologist writes, “enstructuring occurs during the enactment of individual life histories.”31

A few years ago, when the neuroscientist Simon LeVay reported that the brain structures of gay and heterosexual men differed (and that this mirrored a more general sex difference between straight men and women), he became the center of a firestorm.32 Although an instant hero among many gay males, he was at odds with a rather mixed group. On the one hand, feminists such as myself disliked his unques- tioning use of gender dichotomies, which have in the past never worked to further equality for women. On the other, members of the Christian right hated his work because they believe that homosexuality is a sin that individuals can choose to reject. LeVay’s, and later geneticist Dean Hamer’s, work suggested to them that homosexuality was inborn or innate.33 The language of the public debate soon became polarized. Each side contrasted words such as generic, biological, inborn, innate, and unchanging with environmental, acquired, constructed, and choice.

The ease with which such debates evoke the nature/nurture divide is a consequence of the poverty of a nonsystems approach. Politically, the nature/nur- ture framework holds enormous dangers. Although

some hope that a belief in the nature side of things will lead to greater tolerance, past history suggests that the opposite is also possible. Even the scientific architects of the nature argument recognize the dangers. In an extraordinary passage in the pages of Science, Dean Hamer and his collaborators indicated their concern: “It would be fundamentally unethical to use such information to try to assess or alter a person’s current or future sexual orientation. Rather, scientists, educators, policy-makers and the public should work together to ensure that such research is used to benefit all members of society.”34

The feminist psychologist and critical theorist Elisabeth Wilson uses the hubbub over LeVay’s work to make some important points about systems theory. Many feminist, queer, and critical theorists work by deliberately displacing biology, hence opening the body to social and cultural shaping. This, however, is the wrong move to make. Wilson writes: “What may be politically and critically contentious in LeVay’s hypothesis is not the conjunction neurology-sexuality per se, but the particular manner in which such a conjunction is enacted.”35 An effective political response, she continues, doesn’t have to separate the study of sexuality from the neurosciences. Instead, Wilson, who wants us to develop a theory of mind and body—an account of psyche that joins libido to body—suggests that feminists incorporate into their worldview an account of how the brain works that is, broadly speaking, called connectionism.

The old-fashioned approach to understanding the brain was anatomical. Function could be located in particular parts of the brain. Ultimately, function and anatomy were one. […] Many scientists [still] believe that a structural difference represents the brain location for measured behavioral differences. In contrast, connectionist models argue that func- tion emerges from the complexity and strength of many neural connections acting at once. The system has some important characteristics: the responses are often nonlinear, the networks can be “trained” to respond in particular ways, the nature of the

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response is not easily predictable, and informa- tion is not located anywhere—rather, it is the net result of the many different connections and their differing strengths.

The tenets of some connectionist theory pro- vide interesting starting points for understanding human sexual development. Because connectionist networks, for example, are usually nonlinear, small changes can produce large effects. One implication for studying sexuality: we could easily be looking in the wrong places and on the wrong scale for aspects of the environment that shape human development. Furthermore, a single behavior may have many under- lying causes, events that happen at different times in development. I suspect that our labels of homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, and transgender are really not good categories at all, and are best understood only in terms of unique developmental events affecting particular individuals. Thus, I agree with those con- nectionists who argue that “the developmental pro- cess itself lies at the heart of knowledge acquisition. Development is a process of emergence.”36

In most public and most scientific discussions, sex and nature are thought to be real, while gender and culture are seen as constructed. But these are false dichotomies.

NOTES

We have cut extensively the notes and references, which were

lengthy in the original.

1. Hanley 1983.

2. Quoted in Carlson 1991, p. 27.

3. Ibid. The technical name for Patiño’s condition is Androgen

Insensitivity Syndrome. It is one of a number of conditions

that leads to bodies having mixtures of male and female

parts. Today, we call such bodies intersexes.

4. […] Money and Ehrhardt 1972, p. 4. […]

5. See, for example, Rubin 1975. Rubin also questions the

biological basis of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Note

that feminist definitions of gender applied to institutions as

well as personal or psychological differences.

6. For a discussion of this recalcitrance in terms of gender

schema in adulthood, see Valian 1998a, 1998b.

7. […] Burke 1996; Dreger 1998b; Feinberg 1996; Haraway

1989, 1997; Hausman 1995; Kessler and McKenna 1978;

and Rothblatt 1995. […]

8. Moore 1994, pp. 2–3.

9. Haraway 1997, p. 217. See also Foucault 1970; Gould

1981; Schiebinger 1993 a, b.

10. During this time, Foucault maintains, the change from

Feudalism to Capitalism required a new concept of the

body. Feudal lords applied their power directly. Peasants

and serfs obeyed because God and their sovereign told

them to (except, of course, when they revolted, as they did

from time to time). The punishment for disobedience was, to

the modern eye, violent and brutal: drawing and quartering.

For a stunning description of this brutality, see the opening

chapters of Foucault 1979.

11. Foucault 1978, p. 141.

12. These efforts created “an anatomo-politics of the human

body” (Foucault 1978, p. 139; emphasis in the original).

13. Foucault 1978, p. 139; emphasis in the original.

14. Ibid. […]

15. Sawicki 1991, p. 67 [….]

16. Foucault 1980, p. 107.

17. Quoted in Moore and Clarke 1995, p. 271.

18. Plumwood 1993, p. 43. Plumwood also argues that

dualisms “result from a certain kind of denied dependency

on a subordinated other.” The denial, combined with a

relationship of domination and subordination, shape the

identity of each side of the dualism (ibid., p. 41). […]

19. Wilson 1998, p. 55.

20. In her words, she “wants to ask how and why ‘materiality’

has become a sign of irreducibility, that is, how is it that

the materiality of sex is understood as that which only

bears cultural constructions and, therefore, cannot be a

construction” (Butler 1993, p. 28).

21. Ibid., p. 29.

22. Ibid., p. 31.

23. Ibid., p. 66.

24. Hausman 1995, p. 69.

25. Grosz 1994, p. 55.

26. Phenomenology is a field that studies the body as an active

participant in the creation of self. […]

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27. Grosz 1994, p. 116.

28. Ibid., p. 117. […]

29. Oyama 1985, p. 9. The revised and expanded edition of

Oyama’s book is due out in the year 2000 (Duke University

Press).

30. Taylor 1998, p. 24.

31. Ho 1989, p. 34. […]

32. LeVay’s results still await confirmation and in the meantime

have been subject to intense scrutiny (LeVay 1991). See

Byne 1995; Byne and Parsons 1993; and Fausto-Sterling

1992a and 1992b. […]

33. […] Hamer et al. 1993.

34. Extraordinary, because it is not customary to use a strictly

scientific report to discuss the potential social implications

of one’s work. Hamer et al. 1993, p. 326.

35. Wilson 1998, p. 203.

36. Elman et al. 1996, p. 359. See also Fischer 1990.

REFERENCES

Burke, P. 1996. Gender shock: Exploding the myth of male and female. New York: Doubleday.

Butler, J. 1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York: Routledge.

Byne, W. 1995. Science and belief: Psychological research on sexual orientation. Journal of Homosexuality 28(3–4): 303–44.

Byne, W., and B. Parsons. 1993. Human sexual orientation: The biological theories reappraised. Archives of General Psychiatry 50(March): 228–39.

Carlson, A. 1991. When is a woman not a woman? Women’s Sports and Fitness 13: 24–29.

Dreger, A.D. 1998. Hermaphrodites and the medical invention of sex. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Elman, J.L., E.A. Bates, et al. 1996. Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Fausto-Sterling, A. 1992a. Why do we know so little about human sex? Discover 13: 6, 28–30.

Fausto-Sterling, A. 1992b. Myths of gender: Biological theories about women and men. New York: Basic Books.

Feinberg, L. 1996. Transgender warriors. Boston: Beacon Press. Fischer, R. 1990. Why the mind is not in the head but in the

society’s connectionist network? Diogenes 151(Fall): 1–28. Foucault, M. 1978. The history of sexuality. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. 1980. Two lectures. In Power/knowledge: Selected

interviews and other writings 1972–1977 by Michel Foucault, ed. C. Gordon. New York: Pantheon, 78–108.

Grosz, E. 1994. Volatile bodies: Towards a corporeal feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Hamer, D., S. Hu, et al. 1993. Linkage between DNA markers on the X chromosome and male sexual orientation. Science 261: 321–25.

Hanley, D.F. 1983. Drug and sex testing: Regulations for the international competition. Clinics in Sports Medicine 2: 13–17.

Haraway, D. 1989. Primate visions. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_ Millennium.

FemaleMan©_ Meets_OncoMouse™. New York: Routledge. Hausman, B.L. 1995. Changing sex: Transsexualism, technology,

and the idea of gender in the 20th century. Durham: Duke University Press.

Ho, M.W. 1989. A structuralism of process: Towards a post- Darwinian rational morphology. In Dynamic Structures in Biology, ed. B. Goodwin, A. Sibatani, and G. Webster. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 31–48.

Kessler, S.J., and W. McKenna. 1978. Gender: An ethnomethodological approach. New York: Wiley.

LeVay, S. 1991. A difference in hypothalamic structure between heterosexual and homosexual men. Science 253: 1034–37.

Money, J., and A.A. Ehrhardt. 1972. Man and women, boy and girl. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Moore, H.L. 1994. A passion for difference: Essays in anthropology and gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Moore, L.J., and A.E. Clarke. 1995. Clitoral conventions and transgressions: Graphic representations in anatomy texts, c1900–1991. Feminist Studies 21(2): 255–301.

Oyama, S. 1985. The ontogeny of information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Plumwood, V. 1993. Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York: Routledge.

Rothblatt, M. 1995. The apartheid of sex: A manifesto on the freedom of gender. New York: Crown.

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Rubin, G. 1975. The traffic in women: Notes on the “political economy” of sex. In Toward an anthropology of women, ed. R.R. Reiter. New York: Monthly Review Press, 157–210.

Sawicki, J. 1991. Disciplining Foucault. New York: Routledge. Schiebinger, L. 1993a. Why mammals are called mammals:

Gender politics in eighteenth-century natural history. American Historical Review 98(2): 382–411.

Schiebinger, L. 1993b. Nature’s body: Gender in the making of modern science. Boston: Beacon Press.

Taylor, P.J. 1998. Natural selection: A heavy hand in biological and social thought. Science as Culture 7(1): 5–32.

Valian, V. 1998a. Running in place. The Science ( January/ February): 18–23.

Valian, V. 1998b. Why so slow? The advancement of women. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Wilson, E. 1998. Neural geographies: Feminism and the microstructure of cognition. New York: Routledge.

Source: Fausto-Sterling, Anne. (2000). Excerpted from

“Chapter 1: Dueling Dualisms.” In Sexing the Body:

Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality

(pp. 1–8, 21–27). New York, NY: Basic Books.

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In the prelude to Middlemarch, George Eliot lamented the unfulfilled lives of talented women: Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fash- ioned the natures of women; if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.

Eliot goes on to discount the idea of innate lim- itation, but while she wrote in 1872, the leaders of European anthropometry were trying to measure “with scientific certitude” the inferiority of women. Anthropometry, or measurement of the human body, is not so fashionable a field these days, but it dominated the human sciences for much of the

Part 2B: The Making of “Difference” and Inequalities

CHAPTER 16

Women’s Brains

Stephen Gould

Stephen Gould was a highly influential paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and award-winning popular science writer. Among the best-known scientists of his gener- ation, he held the position of Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology at Harvard Uni- versity and was curator of paleontology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Gould also wrote numerous widely read books, as well as regularly contributed essays to Natural History Magazine that uncovered and critiqued scientific sexism and racism in research.

nineteenth century and remained popular until intelligence testing replaced skull measurement as a favored device for making invidious comparisons among races, classes, and sexes. Craniometry, or measurement of the skull, commanded the most attention and respect. Its unquestioned leader, Paul Broca (1824–80), professor of clinical surgery at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, gathered a school of disciples and imitators around himself. Their work, so meticulous and apparently irrefutable, exerted great influence and won high esteem as a jewel of nineteenth-century science.

Broca’s work seemed particularly invulnerable to refutation. Had he not measured with the most scrupulous care and accuracy? (Indeed, he had. I have the greatest respect for Broca’s meticulous procedure. His numbers are sound. But science is an inferential exercise, not a catalog of facts. Numbers, by them- selves, specify nothing. All depends upon what you

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Chapter 16 Women’s Brains 145

do with them.) Broca depicted himself as an apostle of objectivity, a man who bowed before facts and cast aside superstition and sentimentality. He declared that “there is no faith, however respectable, no interest, however legitimate, which must not accom- modate itself to the progress of human knowledge and bend before truth.” Women, like it or not, had smaller brains than men and, therefore, could not equal them in intelligence. This fact, Broca argued, may reinforce a common prejudice in male society, but it is also a scientific truth. L. Manouvrier, a black sheep in Broca’s fold, rejected the inferiority of women and wrote with feeling about the burden imposed upon them by Broca’s numbers:

Women displayed their talents and their diplomas. They also invoked philosophical authorities. But they were opposed by num- bers unknown to Condorcet or to John Stuart Mill. These numbers fell upon poor women like a sledge hammer, and they were accom- panied by commentaries and sarcasms more ferocious than the most misogynist impreca- tions of certain church fathers. The theolo- gians had asked if women had a soul. Several centuries later, some scientists were ready to refuse them a human intelligence.

Broca’s argument rested upon two sets of data: the larger brains of men in modern societies, and a supposed increase in male superiority through time. His most extensive data came from autopsies per- formed personally in four Parisian hospitals. For 292 male brains, he calculated an average weight of 1,325 grams; 140 female brains averaged 1,144 grams for a difference of 181 grams, or 14 percent of the male weight. Broca understood, of course, that part of this difference could be attributed to the greater height of males. Yet he made no attempt to measure the effect of size alone and actually stated that it cannot account for the entire difference because we know, a priori, that women are not as intelligent as men (a premise

that the data were supposed to test, not rest upon):

We might ask if the small size of the female brain depends exclusively upon the small size of her body. Tiedemann has proposed this explanation. But we must not forget that women are, on the average, a little less intelligent than men, a difference which we should not exaggerate but which is, none- theless, real. We are therefore permitted to suppose that the relatively small size of the female brain depends in part upon her phys- ical inferiority and in part upon her intellec- tual inferiority.

In 1873, the year after Eliot published Middlemarch, Broca measured the cranial capacities of prehistoric skulls from L’Homme Mort cave. Here he found a difference of only 99.5 cubic centimeters between males and females, while modern popula- tions range from 129.5 to 220.7. Topinard, Broca’s chief disciple, explained the increasing discrepancy through time as a result of differing evolutionary pressures upon dominant men and passive women:

The man who fights for two or more in the struggle for existence, who has all the re- sponsibility and the cares of tomorrow, who is constantly active in combating the environ- ment and human rivals, needs more brain than the woman whom he must protect and nourish, the sedentary woman, lacking any interior occupations, whose role is to raise children, love, and be passive.

In 1879, Gustave Le Bon, chief misogynist of Broca’s school, used these data to publish what must be the most vicious attack upon women in modern scientific literature (no one can top Aristotle). I do not claim his views were representative of Broca’s school, but they were published in France’s most respected anthropological journal. Le Bon concluded:

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In the most intelligent races, as among the Parisians, there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of go- rillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to chil- dren and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason. Without doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely.

Nor did Le Bon shrink from the social implica- tions of his views. He was horrified by the proposal of some American reformers to grant women higher education on the same basis as men:

A desire to give them the same education, and, as a consequence, to propose the same goals for them, is a dangerous chimera.… The day when, misunderstanding the infer- ior occupations which nature has given her, women leave the home and take part in our battles; on this day a social revolution will begin, and everything that maintains the sacred ties of the family will disappear.

Sound familiar?1 I have reexamined Broca’s data, the basis for all

this derivative pronouncement, and I find his numbers sound but his interpretation ill-founded, to say the least. The data supporting his claim for increased difference through time can be easily dismissed.

Broca based his contention on the samples from L’Homme Mort alone—only seven male and six female skulls in all. Never have so little data yielded such far-ranging conclusions.

In 1888, Topinard published Broca’s more extensive data on the Parisian hospitals. Since Broca recorded height and age as well as brain size, we may use modern statistics to remove their effect. Brain weight decreases with age, and Broca’s women were, on average, considerably older than his men. Brain weight increases with height, and his average man was almost half a foot taller than his average woman. I used multiple regression, a technique that allowed me to assess simultaneously the influence of height and age upon brain size. In an analysis of the data for women, I found that, at average male height and age, a woman’s brain would weigh 1,212 grams. Correction for height and age reduces Broca’s measured difference of 181 grams by more than a third, to 113 grams.

I don’t know what to make of this remaining difference because I cannot assess other factors known to influence brain size in a major way. Cause of death has an important effect: degenerative disease often entails a substantial diminution of brain size. (This effect is separate from the decrease attributed to age alone.) Eugene Schreider, also working with Broca’s data, found that men killed in accidents had brains weighing, on average, 60 grams more than men dying of infectious diseases. The best modern data I can find (from American hospitals) records a full 100-gram difference between death by degenerative arteriosclerosis and by violence or accident. Since so many of Broca’s subjects were very elderly women, we may assume that lengthy degenerative disease was more common among them than among the men.

More importantly, modern students of brain size still have not agreed on a proper measure for elimin- ating the powerful effect of body size. Height is partly adequate, but men and women of the same height do not share the same body build. Weight is even worse than height, because most of its variation reflects nutrition rather than intrinsic size—fat versus skinny

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exerts little influence upon the brain. Manouvrier took up this subject in the 1880s and argued that muscular mass and force should be used. He tried to measure this elusive property in various ways and found a marked difference in favor of men, even in men and women of the same height. When he corrected for what he called “sexual mass,” women actually came out slightly ahead in brain size.

Thus, the corrected 113-gram difference is surely too large; the true figure is probably close to zero and may as well favor women as men. And 113 grams, by the way, is exactly the average difference between a 5-foot 4-inch and a 6-foot 4-inch male in Broca’s data. We would not (especially us short folks) want to ascribe greater intelligence to tall men. In short, who knows what to do with Broca’s data? They certainly don’t permit any confident claim that men have bigger brains than women.

To appreciate the social role of Broca and his school, we must recognize that his statements about the brains of women do not reflect an isolated prej- udice toward a single disadvantaged group. They must be weighed in the context of a general theory that supported contemporary social distinctions as biologically ordained. Women, blacks, and poor people suffered the same disparagement, but women bore the brunt of Broca’s argument because he had easier access to data on women’s brains. Women were singularly denigrated but they also stood as surrogates for other disenfranchised groups. As one of Broca’s disciples wrote in 1881: “Men of the black races have a brain scarcely heavier than that of white women.” This juxtaposition extended into many other realms of anthropological argument, particularly to claims that, anatomically and emotionally, both women and blacks were like white children—and that white children, by the theory of recapitulation, represented an ancestral (primitive) adult stage of human evolution. I do not regard as empty rhetoric the claim that women’s battles are for all of us.

Maria Montessori did not confine her activities to educational reform for young children. She lectured

on anthropology for several years at the University of Rome, and wrote an influential book entitled Pedagogical Anthropology (English edition, 1913). Montessori was no egalitarian. She supported most of Broca’s work and the theory of innate criminality proposed by her compatriot Cesare Lombroso. She measured the circumference of children’s heads in her schools and inferred that the best prospects had bigger brains. But she had no use for Broca’s conclusions about women. She discussed Manouvrier’s work at length and made much of his tentative claim that women, after proper correction of the data, had slightly larger brains than men. Women, she concluded, were intel- lectually superior, but men had prevailed heretofore by dint of physical force. Since technology has abolished force as an instrument of power, the era of women may soon be upon us: “In such an epoch there will really be superior human beings, there will really be men strong in morality and in sentiment. Perhaps in this way the reign of women is approaching, when the enigma of her anthropological superiority will be deciphered. Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honor.”

This represents one possible antidote to “scientific” claims for the constitutional inferiority of certain groups. One may affirm the validity of biological distinctions but argue that the data have been misinterpreted by prejudiced men with a stake in the outcome, and that disadvantaged groups are truly superior. In recent years, Elaine Morgan has followed this strategy in her Descent of Woman, a speculative reconstruction of human prehistory from the woman’s point of view—and as farcical as more famous tall tales by and for men.

I prefer another strategy. Montessori and Morgan followed Broca’s philosophy to reach a more congenial conclusion. I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant and highly injurious. George Eliot well appreciated the special tragedy that biological labeling imposed upon members of disadvantaged groups. She expressed it for people like herself—women of

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extraordinary talent. I would apply it more widely— not only to those whose dreams are flouted but also to those who never realize that they may dream—but I cannot match her prose. In conclusion, then, the rest of Eliot’s prelude to Middlemarch:

The limits of variation are really much wider than anyone would imagine from the same- ness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the duck- lings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unat- tained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances instead of centering in some long recognizable deed.

NOTE

1. When I wrote this essay, I assumed that Le Bon was a

marginal, if colorful, figure. I have since learned that he was

a leading scientist, one of the founders of social psychology,

and best known for a seminal study on crowd behavior, still

cited today (La psychologie des foules, 1895), and for his

work on unconscious motivation.

Source: Gould, Stephen. (1980). “Women’s Brains.”

In The Panda’s Thumb: More Reflections in Natural

History (pp. 152–159). New York, NY: Norton.

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FREAK SHOW

The history of freakdom extends far back into west- ern civilization. The court jester, the pet dwarf, the exhibition of humans in Renaissance England, the myths of giants, minotaurs, and monsters all point to this long history, which reached a pinnacle in the mid-1800s to mid-1900s. During that century, freaks were big entertainment and big business. Freak shows populated the United States, and people flocked to the circus, the carnival, the storefront dime museum. They came to gawk at “freaks,” “savages,” and “geeks.” They came to be educated and entertained, titillated and repulsed. They came to have their ideas of normal and abnormal, superior and inferior, their sense of self, confirmed and strengthened. And gawk they did. But who were they gawking at? This is where I want to start.

Whatever these paying customers—rubes in cir- cus lingo—believed, they were not staring at freaks of nature. Rather, the freak show tells the story of an elaborate and calculated social construction that utilized performance and fabrication as well as deeply held cultural beliefs. At the center of this construction is the showman, who, using costuming, staging, elaborate fictional histories, marketing, and choreography, turned people from four groups into freaks. First, disabled people, both white people and people of color, became Armless Wonders, Frog Men, Giants, Midgets, Pinheads, Camel Girls, Wild Men of Borneo, and the like. Second, nondisabled people of color—bought, persuaded, forced, and kidnapped to the United States from colonized countries all over the world—became Cannibals and Savages. Third, nondisabled people of color from the United States became Natives from the Exotic Wilds. And fourth,

CHAPTER 17

Freaks and Queers

Eli Clare

Eli Clare is a writer, speaker, activist, teacher, and poet. His areas of expertise and activism are disability, queer, and trans rights and integrating ableism into feminist understandings of oppression. Exile and Pride, from which the following selection is taken, has established Clare as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability. In his most recent book, Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure, Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure—the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed. He has also published a collection of poetry entitled The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion.

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nondisabled people with visible differences—bearded women, fat women, very thin men, people covered with tattoos, intersex people—became wondrous and horrifying exhibits. Cultural critic and disability theorist Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that the differences among these sometimes overlapping groups of people melded together:

Perhaps the freak show’s most remarkable effect was to eradicate distinctions among a wide variety of bodies, conflating them under a single sign of the freak-as-other…. [A]ll the bodily characteristics that seemed dif- ferent or threatening to the dominant order merged into a kind of motley chorus line of physical difference on the freak show stage…. [A] nondisabled person of color billed as the “Fiji Cannibal” was equivalent to a phys- ically disabled Euro-American called the “Legless Wonder.”1

In the eyes of many rubes, particularly white and/ or nondisabled folks, the freak show probably was one big melting pot of difference and otherness. At the same time, the differences among the various groups of people who worked as freaks remain important to understanding the freak show in its entirety. But what- ever the differences, all four groups held one thing in common: nature did not make them into freaks. The freak show did, carefully constructing an exaggerated divide between “normal” and Other, sustained in turn by rubes willing to pay good money to stare.

Hiram and Barney Davis performed wildly for their audiences, snapping, snarling, talking gibberish from stage. The handbill sold in conjunction with their display described in lengthy, imagined detail “What We Know About Waino and Plutano, the Wild Men of Borneo.” In reality, Hiram and Barney were white, cognitively disabled brothers from an immigrant farm family who lived in Ohio. Their mother, after many offers which she refused, finally sold them to a persistent showman for a wash pan

full of gold and silver. Off-stage, Hiram and Barney were quiet, unassuming men. In one photo, they stand flanking their manager Hanford Lyman. Their hair falls past their shoulders; they sport neatly trimmed goatees; Hiram folds his hands in front of him; Barney cocks his hands on his hips; they look mildly and directly into the camera.

Ann Thompson, a white woman born without arms, posed as “The Armless Wonder.” From stage, she signed and sold photographs as souvenirs, writing with her toes sayings like, “So you perceive it’s really true, when hands are lacking, toes will do,” or more piously, “Indolence and ease are the rust of the mind.” In her autobiography, which she hawked along with her photos and trinkets, Ann presented herself as a respectable, religious lady. In one photo, she sits beside her husband and son, all of them wearing formal Victorian clothing.

William Johnson, a cognitively disabled African American man from New Jersey, became the “What Is It?,” the “missing link,” the “Monkey Man.” He wore hairy ape-like costumes, shaved his head bald except for a little tuft at the very top, and posed in front of a jungle backdrop. The showmen at P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York City described William as “a most singular animal, which though it has many of the features and characteristics of both the human and the brute, is not, apparently, either, but in appearance, a mixture of both—the connecting link between human- ity and brute creation.”2 Although the way in which he came to the freak show is unknown—Barnum may have bought him at a young age and coerced him into performing at first—William died in his 80s at home, a rich and well-liked man, referred to, by his co-workers, as the “dean of freaks.”

Charles Stratton, a working-class short person— dwarf in medical terminology—from Connecticut worked the freak show as General Tom Thumb. He played the role of a European aristocrat, complete with resplendent suits, a miniature carriage pulled by ponies, and meetings with rich and famous people around the world, becoming in the process a rich man

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himself. When Charles and Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, a short woman who also worked the freak show, fell in love and decided to get married, P. T. Barnum set out, in an extravagant example of show- manship, to turn their wedding into a huge media spectacle. He was successful; 2,000 people attended the event, and the New York Times ran a full-page story, headlined “Loving Lilliputians.” Charles and Mercy played their roles and used the publicity to springboard another European tour.

Two Congolese men and thirteen Congolese women, wearing large, heav y jewelry in their pierced lips, were bought by circus agent Ludwig Bergonnier and shipped from Africa to the United States. The poster advertising their display in the Ringling Brothers Circus freak show proclaimed them “Genuine Monster-Mouthed Ubangi Savages World’s Most Weird Living Humans from Africa’s Darkest Depths.” The women were forced to wear only gunny sack skirts; the men, given only loincloths, carried spears. Ubangi was a name randomly pulled off a map of Africa and had no relationship to where these women and men had actually lived. Their real names and actual homeland are unknown.

The Davis brothers, Thompson, Johnson, Stratton, the now unknown African men and women did not slide into the world as infant freaks. They were made freaks, socially constructed for the purposes of entertainment and profit. This construction depended not only upon the showmanship of the “freaks” and their managers. It also capitalized on the eagerness of rubes to gawk at freaks and on the ableism and racism, which made the transitions from disabled white person, disabled person of color, nondisabled person of color, to freak even possible. Without this pair of oppressive ideologies, the attendant fear and hatred of all disabled people and all people of color, and the desire to create an Other against whom one could gauge her/his normality, who could ever believe for even one farcical moment that William Johnson was Darwin’s missing link; Barney Davis, a wild man from Borneo; Ann Thompson, an armless wonder?

Ann, in that photo of you with your husband and son, you sit on a rug decorated with crosses, a rug you crocheted. The showmen made a big deal of your dexterity. But did you learn to crochet as a freak show stunt? Or did you, like so many women of your time, sew and knit, embroider and crochet, simply as a necessity and a pastime?

Within this context of ableism and racism, the people who worked the freak show did not live only as victims. Many of the “freaks” themselves— particularly those who were not cognitively disabled or brought to the United States from Africa, Asia, South and Central America, the Pacific islands, and the Caribbean—controlled their own acts and displays, working alongside their managers to shape profitable shows. Many of them made decent livings; some, like Charles Stratton, Mercy Lavinia Warren Bump, and William Johnson, even became wealthy. When P. T. Barnum lost all his money in a bad business deal, Stratton came out of semi-retirement and rescued him by agreeing to go on yet another lucrative European tour. Others, like the Hilton sisters, conjoined twins who worked in the mid-1900s, became their own managers, or, like Bump and her Lilliputian Opera Company, formed their own performing groups, which were employed by dime museums and traveling vaudeville companies. In other words, white, nondis- abled freak show owners and managers didn’t only exploit “their freaks.” The two groups also colluded together to dupe the audience, to make a buck off the rube’s gullibility. Within the subculture of the freak show, rubes were understood as exploited vic- tims—explicitly lied to, charged outrageous sums for mere trinkets, pickpocketed, or merely given incorrect change at the ticket counter.

Charles, there is a picture of you, taken during a visit with the Queen of England. You have a miniature sword drawn and are staging a fight with a poodle. Your wife, Mercy, writes of embarrassment and outrage. Of presidential candidate Stephen Douglas, she remembers: “He expressed great pleasure at again seeing me, and as I stood before him he took my hand and, drawing me toward him, stooped to kiss me. I instinctively

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drew back, feeling my face suffused with blushes. It seemed impossible to make people at first understand that I was not a child.”3 Did you share her embarrass- ment and outrage as you faced that poodle? Or did you and Barnum laugh long and hard as you concocted your stunts?

The questions about exploitation are complicated; simple answers collapse easily. Robert Bogdan, in his history Freak Show, excerpts a letter he received from freak show manager Ward Hall: “I exhibited freaks and exploited them for years. Now you are going to exploit them. The difference between authors and the news media, and the freak show operators is that we paid them.” Bogdan comments, “[Hall’s] use of the word exploit was playful. He does not think he exploited them. He had a business relationship, complete with contract, with his troupe of human oddities. His livelihood depended on them, as theirs did on him. He had no pretensions of doing good….”4 Although Bogdan chronicles the social construction of freaks in amazing detail and refuses to situate the people who worked the freak shows as passive victims, I believe he is reaching toward a simple answer to the question of exploitation.

Hall’s exploitation of people who worked as freaks may not have revolved around ableism and racism. Maybe he wasn’t acting out of fear and hatred of disabled people and people of color, out of his internal psychological sense and the external legislated reality of privilege. And then again, maybe he was. But most certainly, like all the people who profited from the freak show, he used ableism and racism to his benefit. This use of oppression by white, nondisabled business- men is common, fraught, and ultimately unacceptable. In his letter, Hall explicitly casts himself as a boss exploiting his workers, placing the freak show within the context of capitalism. Bogdan defends Hall in a backhanded way when he writes: “[Hall] had no pretensions of doing good.” But since when do bosses in most profit-making business have real pretensions of doing good by their workers? Doing good may be a byproduct of making profit, but only a byproduct.

Is Hall any less exploitative because he was acting as a boss rather than, or in addition to, a racist white person and an ableist nondisabled person?

Any estimation of exploitation in the freak show needs to also include Hall and “his troupe of human oddities” colluding together to exploit the rube. Sometimes, this exploitation carried with it a sense of absurdity, a sense that the rubes would believe anything, that they were simple, gullible fools. Other times, this exploitation was pure thievery, the sideshow creating situations in which it was easy to steal the rube’s money. But to cast the audience only as victim neglects the very real ways in which the freak show bolstered white people’s and nondisabled people’s sense of superiority and well-being. The social construction of freaks always relied upon the perceived gap between a rube’s normality and a freak’s abnormality. Unsurprisingly, normality was defined exclusively in terms of whiteness and able-bodiedness.

The complexities of exploitation pile up, layer upon layer. White people and nondisabled people used racism and ableism to turn a profit. The freak show managers and owners were bosses and as such had power over their workers, the people who worked as freaks. Boss and worker together consciously manip- ulated their audience. That same audience willingly used lies to strengthen its own self-image. Given this maze of relationships, I have trouble accepting the assessment that exploitation in the freak show, if it existed at all, wasn’t truly serious. Rather, I believe it exerted influence in many directions.

Working as a freak never meant working in a respectful, liberating environment, but then disabled people had no truly respectful and liberating options available to them in the mid-1800s. They could beg in the streets. They could survive in almshouses, where, as reformer Dorothea Dix put it, mentally ill people and developmentally disabled people lived “in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.”5 They could live behind closed doors with their families. Consider William Johnson. As a Black, cognitively disabled man who

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apparently had no surviving family, he had few options. P. T. Barnum found William’s counterpart, the woman displayed as the female “What Is It?,” abandoned in an outhouse, covered with shit, left to die. In a world such as this, where the freak show existed alongside the street, the almshouse, the outhouse, William’s position as the “dean of freaks,” although dehumanizing in a number of ways, doesn’t look so bad.

William, late after the exhibits had closed, the rubes gone home, did you and your friends gather backstage to party, passing a bottle of whiskey round and round? Did you entertain some more, pull out your fiddle and play silly squeaky songs? Or did you sit back and listen to one joke after another until you were breathless with laughter?

In many ways, working as a freak was similar to working as a prostitute. Cultural worker and working-class scholar Joe Kadi writes, “Left-wing working-class analysis … situates prostitution within the context of capitalism (one more really lousy job), celebrates the women who survive, thumbs its nose at the moralistic middle-class attitudes that condemn without understanding, and relays the women’s stories and perspectives.”6 This same theoretical and political framework can be used to examine the job of freak. Clearly, working as a freak meant working a lousy job, many times the only job available, in a hostile ableist and racist world. Sometimes, the job was lousier than others. The African women and men who performed as “Ubangi savages” made a nickel on every photograph they sold, nothing else; whereas their manager, Ludwig Bergonnier, made $1,500 a week renting “his display” to the Ringling Brothers Circus. In contrast, Charles Stratton became rich, owning a horse farm and a yacht. Still others, like William Johnson, found community among the people who worked the freak show.

You who ended up in the history books named only “Ubangi Savages,” no names of your own: night after night, you paraded around the circus tent, air sticky against your bare skin, burlap prickly against your covered skin. Did you come to hate Bergonnier?

What did the people who worked as freaks think of their jobs, their lives? I want to hear their stories,

but like the stories of other marginalized people, they were most often never told, but rather eaten up, thrown away, lost in the daily grind of survival. Some of these people didn’t read or write, due to their particular disabilities or to the material/social cir- cumstances of their lives. Or, as in the case of many of the people brought here from other countries, they didn’t speak English and/or didn’t come from cultures that passed stories through the written word. A few people who worked the freak show did write autobiographies, but these pamphlets or books were mostly part of the whole production, sold alongside the handbills and photos. These stories ended up being part of the showmen’s hyperbole. So, in order to reconstruct, celebrate, and understand the lives of the people who worked the freak show, I rely on his- torians, like Robert Bogdan, who have sifted through thousands of handbills, posters, newspaper articles, and promotional garbage used to create The Armless Wonder, The Wild Men of Borneo. In large part, I will never truly know their lives but can only use my imagination, political sensibilities, and intuition to fill the holes between the outrageous headlines in the New York Times and other newspapers and the outrageous handbills sold at the carnival.

The historians who moralize about the freak show frustrate me. These academics will take a detail, like the fact that Hiram and Barney Davis’s mother sold her sons to a showman, and use it to demonstrate just how despicable showmen could be and how oppressive the freak show was. The disturbing fact that many of the people who worked as freaks—disabled people from the United States7 as well as people from colo- nized countries—were sold into the business needs to be examined. The question, why were they sold, has to be asked. Certainly, in many cases, the answer must revolve around fear and hatred, undiluted ableism and racism, imperialism, and capitalism. But consider Hiram and Barney. They were sold for a wash pan full of gold and silver. What did that wash pan mean to their mother, Catherine Davis? My sources suggest, although don’t explicitly state, that the Davises were a

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poor immigrant farm family. Did that gold and silver mean economic survival to Catherine Davis? What happened to working-class and poor disabled people who needed care but whose families could not provide it? The options did not abound: the almshouse, the street, the freak show. Rather than moralize and condemn, I want freak show historians to examine the whole context, including racism, ableism, and classism, and begin to build a complex understanding of exploitation. Like the women Joe Kadi refers to in her analysis of prostitution, the people who worked as freaks—especially those who had some control over their own display—grasped an exploitative situation in an exploitative world and, as often as possible, turned it to their benefit.

At the same time, the people who had the least power in the freak show—people from colonized countries and cognitively disabled people—under- score just how exploitative this institution could be. Many of the people of color brought to the United States died bleak deaths of pneumonia, pleurisy, or tuberculosis. They died on the long ship rides. They died wanting desperately to return to their home countries. They did not want to be part of the freak show; they never came to like the freak show; they didn’t become showmen and -women in their own right. Instead, the circus, the dime museum, the vaudeville act, the natural history museum were sim- ply sites of imperialist atrocity. Likewise, cognitively disabled people most frequently had no control over their displays. Some lacked the abilities to say yes or no to their own exhibition; others were simply trapped by unscrupulous managers, who typically were also their legal guardians. Although some cognitively disabled people had what appear to be good and happy relationships with their managers, the dual role of showman and legal guardian is a setup for exploitation.

The display of both groups of people capitalized on the theory of the time that nondisabled people of color and cognitively disabled people embodied the missing link between primates and humans.

Eminent zoologist Baron Georges Cuvier wrote in the early 1800s:

The negro race is confined to the south of Mount Atlas. Its characteristics are, black complexion, woolly hair, compressed crani- um, and flattish nose. In the prominence of the lower part of the face, and the thick- ness of the lips, it manifestly approaches the monkey tribe.8

Much the same was believed about cognitively disabled people. Following the same train of thought as Cuvier, German scientist Carl Vogt wrote in 1867 even more explicitly about evolutionary theory:

Microcephalics [people with a type of cog- nitive disability medically known as micro- cephalia] must necessarily represent an earlier developmental state of the human being … they reveal to us one of the milestones which the human passed by during the course of his historical evolution.9

The racism and ableism imbedded in these theor- ies intersect intensely in the exhibition of cognitively disabled people of color. Consider the story of two cognitively disabled siblings kidnapped as children from San Salvador. Called “Maximo” and “Bartola,” they were declared to be from “a long-lost race of Aztecs.” Scientists and anthropologists studied them; showmen displayed them. Both groups helped create and defend the “long-lost race” fabrication, anthropol- ogists to substantiate their theories, showmen to make money, each feeding off the other. They used a var- iety of observations as their proof. They emphasized physical attributes associated with being disabled by microcephalia, particularly short stature and a slightly sloping skull. They took note of “Maximo’s” and “Bartola’s” dark skin and thick black hair. They made much of their subjects’ language use and food preferences, citing the cultural differences between

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“civilized” white people and “barbaric” people of color. They exaggerated the specific cognitive impairments of “Maximo” and “Bartola.” In short, these white, nondisabled men totally intertwined race and dis- ability; racism and ableism, to create “their freaks.”

In one set of photos, “Maximo” and “Bartola” are stripped naked, posed against a blank wall. I imagine scientists measuring the diameter of their skulls, the length of their legs, taking notes about their skin color and speech patterns, then snapping these pictures to add to their documentation. A second set of photos has them sitting against a stone wall. “Maximo” wears striped pants and a shirt with a big sun on its front. “Bartola’s” dress has a zig-zag design woven through it. Their hair is teased into big, wild afros. “Maximo” looks dazedly beyond the camera; “Bartola” looks down. I imagine showmen carefully arranging their props, calculating their profits. There are no complex or ambiguous answers here to the questions of power, control, and exploitation.

During the freak show’s heyday, today’s dominant model of disability—the medical model—did not yet exist. This model defines disability as a personal problem, curable and/or treatable by the medical establishment, which in turn has led to the whole- sale medicalization of disabled people. As theorist Michael Oliver puts it:

Doctors are centrally involved in the lives of disabled people from the determination of whether a foetus is handicapped or not through to the deaths of old people from a variety of disabling conditions. Some of these involvements are, of course, entirely appro- priate, as in the diagnosis of impairment, the stabilisation of medical condition after trauma, the treatment of illness occurring in- dependent of disability, and the provision of physical rehabilitation. But doctors are also involved in assessing driving ability, prescrib- ing wheelchairs, determining the allocation

of financial benefits, selecting educational provision and measuring work capabilities and potential; in none of these cases is it im- mediately obvious that medical training and qualifications make doctors the most appro- priate persons to be so involved.10

In the centuries before medicalization, before the 1930s and ’40s when disability became a pathology and the exclusive domain of doctors and hospitals, the Christian western world had encoded disabil- ity with many different meanings. Disabled people had sinned. We lacked moral strength. We were the spawn of the devil or the product of god’s will. Our bodies/minds reflected events that happened during our mothers’ pregnancies.

At the time of the freak show, disabled people were, in the minds of nondisabled people, extra- ordinary creatures, not entirely human, about whom everyone—“professional” people and the general public alike—was curious. Doctors routinely robbed the graves of “giants” in order to measure their skele- tons and place them in museums. Scientists described disabled people in terms like “female, belonging to the monocephalic, ileadelphic class of monsters by fusion,”11 language that came from the “science” of teratology, the centuries-old study of monsters. Anthropologists studied disabled people with an eye toward evolutionary theory. Rubes paid good money to gawk.

Hiram, did you ever stop mid-performance, stop up there on your dime museum platform and stare back, turn- ing your mild and direct gaze back on the rubes, gawking at the gawkers, entertained by your own audience?

At the same time, there were signs of the move toward medicalization. Many people who worked as freaks were examined by doctors. Often, handbills included the testimony of a doctor who verified the “authenticity” of the “freak” and sometimes explained the causes of his or her “freakishness.” Tellingly, doctors performed this role, rather than anthropol- ogists, priests, or philosophers. But for the century

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in which the freak show flourished, disability was not yet inextricably linked to pathology, and without pathology, pity and tragedy did not shadow disability to the same extent they do today.

Consequently, the freak show fed upon neither of these, relying instead on voyeurism. The “armless wonder” played the fiddle on stage; the “giant” lived as royalty; the “savage” roared and screamed. These per- formances didn’t create freaks as pitiful or tragic but as curious, odd, surprising, horrifying, wondrous. Freaks were not supercrips. They did not overcome disability; they flaunted it. Nor were freaks poster children, the modern-day objects of pity, used to raise money on the telethon stage. Instead, the freaks performed, and the rubes gawked. In a culture that paired disability and curiosity, voyeurism was morally acceptable. Thus, people flocked without shame or compunction to see the “freaks,” primed by cultural beliefs about disability to be duped by the lies and fabrications created at the freak show.

In the same way, cultural beliefs about race— notions about the “wild savage,” the “noble savage,” and an eagerness to see both—made the exhibition of nondisabled people of color at the freak show and other venues extraordinarily profitable. Take, for example, the display of Filipino people at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The exhibit was billed as the “Igorot Village,” complete with mostly naked women and men dancing wildly and eating dog stew. One among many “anthropological” displays at the Fair, the Village, as a near perfect representation of the “wild savage,” attracted by far the most Fair-goers and media attention. Christopher Vaughan, in his article “Ogling Igorots,” writes:

The “civilized ” Visayans, despite of- fering hourly theatrical and orchestral performances—concluding with “The Star Spangled Banner,” sung in English by the entire village—went relatively ignored in comparison with the Igorots.… Gate receipts at the Igorot concession nearly quadrupled

the total for the Visayans and tripled that of the colorful Moros.12

It was all too easy for white people to gawk at people of color, using the image of dog-eating savages from far-away “uncivilized” islands both to create and strengthen their sense of white identity and white superiority.

During this same period of time, imperialism had intensified to a fevered pitch, both abroad in places like the Philippines and at home as white people continued to subjugate and destroy Native peoples and cultures. By the time of the 1904 World’s Fair, the United States had won the Spanish-American War and gained control over the Philippines. In explaining his decision to solidify the United States’ colonial rule there, President McKinley referred to “our civilizing mission.” What better way to justify that mission, than to display Filipino people as “uncivilized savages”?

This interplay between politics and the freak show also occurred on the national level. For instance, the missing-link evolutionary theory, used so profitably by showmen, supported slavery before Emancipation and the suppression of civil rights after. But the freak show didn’t only use this ideology. The display of Black and white cognitively disabled people and nondisabled people of color as the “missing link” and the “What Is It?” actually bolstered the theory. The scientists and politicians could point to William Johnson and say, “See, here is living proof. Look at this creature.” In doing so, they were reaffirming the less-than-human status of people of color and rationalizing much of their social and political policy. Simply put, the freak show both fed upon and gave fuel to imperialism, domestic racist politics, and the cultural beliefs about “wild savages” and white superiority.

The decline of the freak show in the early decades of the 20th century coincided with the medicalization of disability. As pity, tragedy, and medical diagnosis/ treatment entered the picture, the novelty and mystery

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of disability dissipated. Explicit voyeurism stopped being socially acceptable except when controlled by the medical establishment. And later in the 20th century, as colonized people of color fought back successfully against their colonizers and as legal seg- regation in the United States ended and civil rights started to take hold, the exhibition of people of color also became, at least ostensibly, unacceptable. Along with these changes came a scorn for the freak show as an oppressive institution from the bad old days. But I’m not so sure the freak show is all that dead.

Consider Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez- Peña’s performance piece “The Couple in the Cage,” created in 1992 as part of the “500 Years of Resistance” celebration.13 Fusco and Gomez-Peña costumed themselves in everything from false leopard skins to mirrored sunglasses and posed as native people from a newly discovered tribe. They toured natural history museums, art galleries, and street corners in a cage, performing the script of exotic and noble “savages.” In the long tradition of showmen and -women, they even invented an island in the Gulf of Mexico from which they supposedly came and, as they toured, didn’t let on to their ruse. Fusco and Gomez-Peña expected their audiences to immediately recognize the parody. Instead, as documented in a video shot at the scene of several performances14 many people apparently took the ruse seriously. Some people expressed shock and disgust. Others, particularly white people, expounded on their theories about why Fusco paced back and forth, why Gomez-Peña grunted, staring out at the audience. Still others paid 50 cents for Polaroid pic- tures of the “savages” posed at their bars. Whether these people were serious, whether they all left the performance sites still duped, whether they truly believed their own theories is not clear. But at least to some extent, it appears that “The Couple in the Cage” easily replicated the relationship between rube and freak—even as there are significant differences between this performance art piece and the freak show—suggesting that the old images of race, rather than being dead, live painfully close to the surface.

The scorn for the freak show also assumes that the bad old days were really awful, but I’m not so sure that they were in actuality all that bad for some of the “freaks.” Listen to the stories Robert Waldow and Violet and Daisy Hilton tell. All of them lived during the freak show’s decline as medicalization took hold.

Robert Waldow, a tall man born in the 1920s, resisted becoming a giant, a freak. He wanted to be a lawyer, but unable to get the necessary education, he turned to shoe advertising. And later, after being pursued for years by showmen, he worked for the circus, earning a large salary and refusing to partici- pate in the hype that would have made him appear taller than he really was. At the same time, doctors also pursued Robert, reporting him to be the tallest man in the world—this being medical hype, not circus hype. They refused to leave him alone. In 1936, a Dr. Charles Humberd showed up uninvited at the Waldows’ home. Robert refused a physical exam and wouldn’t cooperate with the interview. Humberd left disgruntled and the next year, unbeknownst to the Waldows, published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association called, “Giantism: A Case Study,” in which Robert became a case study of a “preacromegalic giant.” Because of the article, which cast him as a surly brute, Robert and his family were deluged with unwelcome attention from the media, the general public, and the medical establishment. In the biography The Gentleman Giant, Waldow’s father reveals that Robert was far more disturbed and angered by his dealings with doctors than with showmen.

Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton echo this reaction. These women worked the circus, carnival, and vaudeville circuits from the time they could talk. Early on, their abusive guardians controlled and managed the show. They would lock Daisy and Violet away for days at a time to ensure that no one but rubes paying good money could see them. Later, after a court order freed the sisters, they performed on their own. The cover of one publicity pamphlet has Daisy playing the saxophone, Violet, the piano, and both of them smiling

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cheerfully at the viewer. Much of their lives they spent fighting poverty as the freak show’s popularity waned. And yet in their autobiography, they write about “loath[ing] the very tone of the medical man’s voice” and fearing that their guardians would “stop show- ing us on stage and let the doctors have us to punch and pinch and take our picture always.”15 Try telling Robert Waldow and the Hilton sisters how enlightened today’s medical model of disability is, how much more progressive it is than the freak show, how bad the bad old days were. Try telling Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña that the freak show is truly dead.

The end of the freak show meant the end of a par- ticular kind of employment for the people who had worked as freaks. For nondisabled people of color from the United States, employment by the 1930s didn’t hinge heavily on the freak show, and so its decline didn’t have a huge impact. And for people from Africa, Asia, South and Central America, the Pacific islands, and the Caribbean, the decline meant only that white people had one less reason to come kidnap and buy people away from their homes. But for disabled people—both people of color and white people—the end of the freak show almost guaranteed unemployment, disability often being codified into law as the inability to work.

In the ’30s when Franklin Roosevelt’s work pro- grams employed many people, the federal government explicitly deemed disabled people unable to work, stamping their work applications “P. H. Physically handicapped. Substandard. Unemployable,” sending them home with small monthly checks. The League of the Physically Handicapped protested in Washington, DC, occupying the Work Progress Administration’s offices, chanting, “We want jobs, not tin cups.”16 In this climate, as freak show jobs disappeared, many disabled people faced a world devoid of employment opportunities.

Listen, for instance, to Otis Jordan, a disabled African American man who works the Sutton Sideshow, one of the only remaining freak shows in

the country, as “Otis the Frog Man.” In 1984, his exhibit was banned from the New York State Fair when someone lodged a complaint about the indig- nities of displaying disabled people. Otis responded, “Hell, what does she [the woman who made the complaint] want from me—to be on welfare?”17 Working as a freak may have been a lousy job, but nonetheless it was a job.

PRIDE

Now with this history in hand, can I explain why the word freak unsettles me, why I have not embraced this piece of disability history, this story of disabled people who earned their livings by flaunting their disabilities, this heritage of resistance, an in-your-face resistance similar to “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it”? Why doesn’t the word freak connect me easily and directly to subversion? The answer I think lies in the transition from freak show to doctor’s office, from curiosity to pity, from entertainment to pathology. The end of the freak show didn’t mean the end of our display or the end of voyeurism. We simply traded one kind of freakdom for another.

Take, for instance, public stripping, the med- ical practice of stripping disabled children to their underwear and examining them in front of large groups of doctors, medical students, physical ther- apists, and rehabilitation specialists. They have the child walk back and forth. They squeeze her muscles. They watch his gait, muscle tension, footfall, back curvature. They take notes and talk among them- selves about what surgeries and therapies they might recommend. Since the invention of video cameras, they tape the sessions. They justify public stripping by saying it’s a training tool for students, a way for a team of professionals to pool knowledge.18 This isn’t a medical practice of decades gone by. As recently as 1996, disability activist Lisa Blumberg reported in The Disability Rag that “specialty” clinics (cerebral palsy clinics, spina bifida clinics, muscular dystrophy

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clinics, etc.) at a variety of teaching hospitals regu- larly schedule group—rather than private—exam- inations and conduct surgery screenings in hospital amphitheaters.19 Excuse me, but isn’t public stripping exactly what scientists and anthropologists did to “Maximo” and “Bartola” a century ago? Tell me, what is the difference between the freak show and public stripping? Which is more degrading? Which takes more control away from disabled people? Which lets a large group of nondisabled people gawk unabashedly for free?

Today’s freakdom happens in hospitals and doc- tors’ offices. It happens during telethons as people fork over money out of pity, the tragic stories milked until they’re dry. It happens in nursing homes where severely disabled people are often forced to live against their wills. It happens on street corners and at bus stops, on playgrounds and in restaurants. It happens when nondisabled people stare, trying to be covert, smacking their children to teach them how to pretend not to stare. A character in the play P.H.reaks: The Hidden History of People with Disabilities juxtaposes the voyeurism of the freak show with the voyeurism of everyday life, saying:

We’re always on display. You think if I walked down the street of your stinking little nowhere town people wouldn’t stare at me? Damn right they would, and tell their neigh- bors and friends and talk about me over din- ners and picnics and PTA meetings. Well, if they want to do that, they’re going to have to pay me for that privilege. You want to stare at me, fine, it’s 25 cents, cash on the barrel. You want a picture, that’s another quarter. My life story. Pay me. You think I’m being exploited? You pay to go to a baseball game, don’t you?20

Today’s freakdom happens all the time, and we’re not even paid for it. In fact, disabled people have, as a group, an astounding unemployment rate

of 71 percent.21 When we do work, we make 64 cents to a nondisabled worker’s dollar.22

We don’t control today’s freakdom, unlike the earlier freak show freakdom, which sometimes we did. The presentation of disability today has been shaped entirely by the medical establishment and the charity industry. That is, until the disability rights movement came along. This civil rights and libera- tion movement established Centers for Independent Living all over the country, working to redefine the concept of independence. These centers offer support and advocacy, helping folks find accessible housing and personal attendants, funding for adaptive equip- ment and job training. Independent living advocates measure independence not by how many tasks one can do without assistance, but by how much control a disabled person has over his/her life and by the quality of that life.

The movement founded direct-action, rabble- rousing groups, like ADAPT23 and Not Dead Yet,24 that disrupt nursing home industry conventions, blockade non-accessible public transportation, occupy the offices of politicians committed to the status quo, and protest outside courtrooms. Disabled people have a history of direct-action protest, beginning with the League of the Physically Handicapped’s WPA protest. In 1977, disabled people occupied the HEW (Department of Health, Education, and Welfare) offices in San Francisco for 25 days, successfully pressuring politicians into signing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the first civil rights legislation in the United States for disabled people.25 And today, ADAPT is rabble-rousing hard, both on the streets and in Congress, to pass legislation that would make it more possible for people with significant disabilities to live in homes of their own choosing, rather than nursing homes.

The movement is creating a strong, politicized disability culture with a growing body of literature, performances, humor, theory, and political savvy. We have theater, dance, poetry, anthologies, fiction, magazines, art exhibits, film festivals, analysis, and

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criticism written by disabled folks, conferences, and a fledgling academic discipline called disability studies. At the same time, there are disabled people work- ing to crossover into mainstream culture, working to become models photographed for the big-name fashion magazines, actors in soap operas, sitcoms, and Hollywood movies, recognized artists, writers, and journalists.

The movement lobbied hard for laws to end separate and unequal education, for comprehensive civil rights legislation. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) did not spring from George H. W. Bush’s head, fully formed and shaped by his goodwill and understanding of disability issues. Rather, lawyers schooled in disability rights and disabled White House appointees with a stake in disability politics crafted the bill, disability lobbyists educated and lobbied hard, and grassroots disability activists mobilized to get the ADA passed. In short, the disability rights movement founded in the same storm of social change as women’s liberation and gay/ lesbian liberation, riding on the energy and framework created by the Black civil rights movement, came along and is undoing internalized oppression, making community, creating a culture and sense of identity, and organizing to change the status quo.

These forces are taking freakdom back, declaring that disabled people will be at the center of defining disability, defining our lives, defining who we are and who we want to be. We are declaring that doctors and their pathology, rubes and their money, anthropologists and their theories, gawkers and their so-called innocu- ous intentions, bullies and their violence, showmen and their hype, Jerry Lewis and his telethon, government bureaucrats and their rules will no longer define us. To arrive as a self-defined people, disabled people, like other marginalized people, need a strong sense of identity. We need to know our history, come to understand which pieces of that history we want to make our own, and develop a self-image full of pride. The women and men who worked the freak show, the freaks who knew how to flaunt their disabilities—the

tall man who wore a top hat to add a few inches to his height, the fat woman who refused to diet, the bearded woman who not only refused to shave, but grew her beard longer and longer, the cognitively disabled person who said, “I know you think I look like an ape. Here let me accentuate that look”—can certainly teach us a thing or two about identity and pride.

Pride is not an inessential thing. Without pride, disabled people are much more likely to accept unques- tioningly the daily material conditions of ableism: unemployment, poverty, segregated and substandard education, years spent locked up in nursing homes, violence perpetrated by caregivers, lack of access. Without pride, individual and collective resistance to oppression becomes nearly impossible. But disability pride is no easy thing to come by. Disability has been soaked in shame, dressed in silence, rooted in isolation.

In 1969 in the backwoods of Oregon, I entered the “regular” first grade after a long struggle with the school officials who wanted me in “special education,” a battle won only because I had scored well on an IQ test, my father knew the principal, and the first grade teacher, who lived upriver from us, liked my family and advocated for me. I became the first disabled kid to be mainstreamed in the district. Eight years later, the first laws requiring public education for disabled kids, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and Section 504, were signed. By the mid- 1980s, mainstreaming wasn’t a rare occurrence, even in small, rural schools, but in 1969 I was a first.

No one—neither my family nor my teachers— knew how to acknowledge and meet my particular disability-related needs while letting me live a rather ordinary, rough-and-tumble childhood. They simply had no experience with a smart, gimpy six-year-old who learned to read quickly but had a hard time with the physical act of writing, who knew all the answers but whose speech was hard to understand. In an effort to resolve this tension, everyone ignored my disability and disability-related needs as much as possible. When I had trouble handling a glass of water, tying my shoes, picking up coins, screws, paper

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clips, writing my name on the blackboard, no one asked if I needed help. When I couldn’t finish an assignment in the allotted time, teachers insisted I turn it in unfinished. When my classmates taunted me with retard, monkey, defect, no one comforted me. I rapidly became the class outcast, and the adults left me to fend for myself. I took as much distance as I could from the kids in “special ed.” I was determined not to be one of them. I wanted to be “normal,” to pass as nondisabled, even though my shaky hands and slurred speech were impossible to ignore.

Certainly, I wasn’t the only disabled person I knew. In Port Orford, many of the men had work-related dis- abilities: missing fingers, arms, and legs, broken backs, serious nerve damage. A good friend of my parents had diabetes. A neighbor girl, seven or eight years younger than me, had CP much like mine. My best friend’s brother had a significant cognitive disability. And yet I knew no one with a disability, none of us willing to talk, each of us hiding as best we could.

No single person underlines this ironic isolation better than Mary Walls, who joined my class in the fourth grade. She wore hearing aids in both ears and split her days between the “regular” and the “special ed” classrooms. We shared a speech therapist. I wish we had grown to be friends, but rather we became enemies, Mary calling me names and me chasing her down. I understand now that Mary lived by trying to read lips, and my lips, because of the way CP affects my speech, are nearly impossible to read. She probably taunted me out of frustration, and I chased her down, as I did none of my other bullies, because I could. I under- stand now about horizontal hostility: gay men and lesbians disliking bisexual people, transsexual women looking down on drag queens, working-class people fighting with poor people. Marginalized people from many communities create their own internal tensions and hostilities, and disabled people are no exception. I didn’t have a disabled friend until I was in my mid- 20s, and still today most of my close friends, the people I call “chosen family,” are nondisabled. Often, I feel like an impostor as I write about disability, feel that

I’m not disabled enough, not grounded deeply enough in disability community, to put these words on paper. This is the legacy for me of shame, silence, and isolation.

Pride works in direct opposition to internalized oppression. The latter provides fertile ground for shame, denial, self-hatred, and fear. The former encourages anger, strength, and joy. To transform self-hatred into pride is a fundamental act of resist- ance. In many communities, language becomes one of the arenas for this transformation. Sometimes, the words of hatred and violence can be neutralized or even turned into the words of pride. To stare down the bully calling cripple, the basher swinging the word queer like a baseball bat, to say “Yeah, you’re right. I’m queer, I’m a crip. So what?” undercuts the power of those who want us dead.

* * * * *

Whatever we name ourselves, however we end up shattering our self-hatred, shame, silence, and isolation, the goal is the same: to end our daily material oppression.

NOTES

1. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring

Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 62–63.

2. Robert Bogdan, Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities

for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1988), 136.

3. Quoted in Lori Merish, “Cuteness and Commodity

Aesthetics: Tom Thumb and Shirley Temple” in Freakery:

Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body, ed.

Rosemarie Garland-Thompson (New York: New York

University Press, 1996), 190.

4. Bogdan, Freak Show, 268.

5. Quoted in Joseph Shapiro, No Pity: How the Disability Rights

Movement Is Changing America (New York: Times Books,

1993), 59.

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6. Joanna Kadi, Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural

Worker (Boston: South End Press, 1996), 103.

7. For instance, before the end of slavery, enslaved children

born disabled were often sold to showmen, sometimes for

large sums of money. Conjoined twins Millie and Christina

McCoy, born into slavery in 1852, brought their enslaver

$30,000.

8. Quoted in Beruth Lindfors, “Circus Africans,” Journal of

American Culture 6.2 (1983): 9.

9. Quoted in Nigel Rothfels, “Aztecs, Aborigines, and Ape-

People: Science and Freaks in Germany, 1850–1900” in

Freakery, 158.

10. Michael Oliver, The Politics of Disablement (New York: St.

Martin’s Press, 1990), 48.

11. Bogdan, Freak Show, 230.

12. Christopher Vaughan, “Ogling Igorots” in Freakery, 222.

13. This year-long celebration, marking the 500th-year

anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the

Americas, focused on people of color’s ongoing resistance

to racism, imperialism, and genocide.

14. The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey, prod. and dir.

Coco Fusco and Paula Heredia, 31 min., sd., col. with b&w

sequences, 4 3/4 cm (Chicago: Authentic Documentary

Productions/Video Data Bank, 1993), videodisc/DVD.

15. Quoted in Bogdan, Freak Show, 173.

16. Shapiro, No Pity, 63–64.

17. Bogdan, Freak Show, 280.

18. Lisa Blumberg, “Public Stripping” in The Ragged Edge: The

Disability Experience from the Pages of the First Fifteen

Years of The Disability Rag, ed. Barrett Shaw (Louisville:

Avocado Press, 1994), 73–77.

19. Lisa Blumberg, “Public Stripping Revisited,” The Disability

Rag 17.3 (1996): 18–21.

20. Doris Baizley and Victoria Ann Lewis, P.H.*reaks: The

Hidden History of People with Disabilities in Beyond Victims

and Villains, ed. Victoria Ann Lewis (New York: Theatre

Communications Group, 2006), 78–79.

21. Disability Rights Nation, “‘Nearly Half of Us Don’t Know

About the ADA,’ Says New Harris Poll,” Ragged Edge 19.5

(1998): 5.

22. Shapiro, No Pity, 28.

23. ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today)

can be reached at 1640 E. Second St., Suite 100, Austin,

TX 78702. Telephone: (512) 442-0252. www.adapt.org |

[email protected].

24. Not Dead Yet can be reached at 497 State St., Rochester,

NY 14608-1642. Contact: Diane Coleman, telephone: (585)

697-1640. www.notdeadyet.org | [email protected].

25. Shapiro, No Pity, 66–70.

Source: Clare, Eli. (1999). Excerpted from “Freaks and

Queers.” In Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and

Liberation (pp. 85–109). Durham, NC: Duke University

Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 10

I have never consulted a seer or psychic; I have never asked a fortune-teller for her crystal ball. No one has searched my tea leaves for answers or my stars for omens, and my palms remain unread. But people have been telling my future for years. Of fortune cookies and tarot cards they have no need: my wheelchair, burn scars, and gnarled hands apparently tell them all they need to know. My future is written on my body.

In 1995, six months after the fire, my doctor suggested that my thoughts of graduate school were premature, if not misguided. He felt that I would need to spend the next three or four years living at home, under my parents’ care, and only then would it be appropriate to think about starting school. His tone made it clear, however, that he thought graduate school would remain out of reach; it was simply not in my future. What my future did hold, according to my rehabilitation psychologist and my rec- reation therapist, was long-term psychological therapy.

My friends were likely to abandon me, alcoholism and drug addiction loomed on my horizon, and I needed to prepare myself for the futures of pain and isolation brought on by disability. Fellow rehab patients, most of whom were elderly people recovering from strokes or broken hips, saw equally bleak horizons before me. One stopped me in the hallway to recommend suicide, explaining that life in a wheelchair was not a life worth living (his son, he noted offhandedly, knew to “let him go” if he was eventually unable to walk).

My future prospects did not improve much after leav- ing the rehabilitation facility, at least not according to strangers I encountered, and continue to encounter, out in the world. A common response is for people to assume they know my needs better than I do, going so far as to question my judgement when I refuse their offers of help. They can apparently see into my immediate future, forecasting an inability to perform specific tasks and

IMAGINING DISABILITY FUTURES

Alison Kafer

Alison Kafer is associate professor and chair of the Department of Feminist Studies at Southwestern University. Her research interests are in disability studies; feminist, crip, and queer theory; and activism. Kafer has written several articles that have appeared in the Journal of Women’s History and Feminist Disability Studies, among other jour- nals and collections. The excerpt that appears below comes from her book Feminist, Queer, Crip, published in 2013. Since then, it has fast become a classic in feminist, disability, and queer studies.

I dream of more inclusive spaces. —Kavitha Koshy, “Feels Like Carving Bone”

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predicting the accidents and additional injuries that will result. Or, taking a longer view, they imagine a future that is both banal and pathetic: rather than involving dramatic falls from my wheelchair, their visions assume a future of relentless pain, isolation, and bitterness, a represen- tation that leads them to bless me, pity me, or refuse to see me altogether. Although I may believe I am leading an engaging and satisfying life, they can see clearly the grim future that awaits me: with no hope of a cure in sight, my future cannot be anything but bleak. Not even the ivory tower of academia protected me from these dis- mal projections of my future: once I made it to graduate school, I had a professor reject a paper proposal about cultural approaches to disability; she cast the topic as inappropriate because [it was] insufficiently academic. As I prepared to leave her office, she patted me on the arm and urged me to “heal,” suggesting that my desire to study disability resulted not from intellectual curiosity but from a displaced need for therapy and recovery. My future, she felt, should be spent not researching disability but overcoming it.

These grim imagined futures, these suggestions that a better life would of necessity require the absence of impairment, have not gone unchallenged. My friends, family, and colleagues have consistently conjured other futures for me, refusing to accept ableist suggestions that disability is a fate worse than death or that dis- ability prohibits a full life. Those who have been most vocal in imagining my future as ripe with opportunities have been other disabled people, who are themselves resisting negative interpretations of their futures. They tell stories of lives lived fully, and my future, according to them, involves not isolation and pathos but community and possibility: I could write books, teach, travel, love, and be loved; I might raise children or become a com- munity organizer or make art; I could engage in activist struggles for the rights of disabled people or get involved in other movements for social justice.

At first glance, these contradictory imagined futures have nothing in common: the first casts disability as pitiable misfortune, a tragedy that effectively prevents one from leading a good life, while the second refuses

such inevitability, positioning ableism—not disability—as the obstacle to a good life. What these two representa- tions of the future share, however, is a strong link to the present. How one understands disability in the present determines how one imagines disability in the future; one’s assumptions about the experience of disability create one’s conception of a better future.

If disability is conceptualized as a terrible unending tragedy, then any future that includes disability can only be a future to avoid. A better future, in other words, is one that excludes disability and disabled bodies; indeed, it is the very absence of disability that signals this better future. The presence of disability, then, signals some- thing else: a future that bears too many traces of the ills of the present to be desirable. In this framework, a future with disability is a future no one wants, and the figure of the disabled person, especially the disabled fetus or child, becomes the symbol of this undesired future. As James Watson—a geneticist involved in the discovery of DNA and the development of the Human Genome Project—puts it, “We already accept that most couples don’t want a Down child. You would have to be crazy to say you wanted one, because that child has no future.’’1 Although Watson is infamous for making claims about who should and shouldn’t inhabit the world, he’s not alone in expressing this kind of sentiment.2 Watson’s version simply makes clear some of the assumptions underlying this discourse, and they are assumptions that cut to the heart of this project. The first is that disability is seen as the sign of no future, or at least of no good future. The second, and related, assumption is that we all agree; not only do we accept that couples don’t want a child with Down syndrome, we know that anyone who feels otherwise is “crazy.” To want a disabled child, to desire or even to accept disability in this way, is to be disordered, unbalanced, sick. “We” all know this, and there is no room for “you” to think differently.

It is this presumption of agreement, this belief that we all desire the same futures, that I take up in this work. I am particularly interested in uncovering the ways the disabled body is put to use in these future visions, attending to both metaphorical and “corporeal presence

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and absence.”3 I argue that disability is disavowed in these futures in two ways: first, the value of a future that includes disabled people goes unrecognized, while the value of a disability-free future is seen as self-evident; and second, the political nature of disability, namely its position as a category to be contested and debated, goes unacknowledged. The second failure of recogni- tion makes possible the first; casting disability as [a] monolithic fact of the body, as beyond the realm of the political and therefore beyond the realm of debate or dissent, makes it impossible to imagine disability and disability futures differently. Challenging the rhetoric of naturalness and inevitability that underlies these discus- sions, I argue that decisions about the future of disability and disabled people are political decisions and should be recognized and treated as such. Rather than assume that a “good” future naturally and obviously depends upon the eradication of disability, we must recognize this perspective as colored by histories of ableism and disability oppression. Thus, in tracing these two failures of recognition—the disavowal of disability from “our” futures—I imagine futures otherwise, arguing for a cripped politics of access and engagement based on the work of disability activists and theorists.

What Feminist, Queer, Crip offers is a politics of crip futurity, an insistence on thinking these imagined futures—and hence, these lived presents—differently. […] I hold on to an idea of politics as a framework for thinking through how to get “elsewhere,” to other ways of being that might be more just and sustainable. In imagining more accessible futures, I am yearning for an elsewhere—and, perhaps, an “elsewhen”—in which dis- ability is understood otherwise: as political, as valuable, as integral.

Before going any further, I admit to treading tricky ground here. “A future with disability is a future no one wants”: while I find it absolutely essential to dismantle the purported self-evidence of that claim, I can’t deny that there is truth to it. Not only is there abstract truth

to it, there’s personal, embodied truth: it is a sentiment I myself hold. As much joy as I find in communities of disabled people, and as much as I value my experiences as a disabled person, I am not interested in becoming more disabled than I already am. I realize that position is itself marked by an ableist failure of imagination, but I can’t deny holding it. Nor am I opposed to prenatal care and public health initiatives aimed at preventing illness and impairment, and futures in which the majority of people continue to lack access to such basic needs are not futures I want. But there is a difference between denying necessary health care, condoning dangerous working conditions, or ignoring public health concerns (thereby causing illness and impairment) and recognizing illness and disability as part of what makes us human.4

*****

I became disabled before I began reading feminist theory, yet it was feminist theory that led me to disabil- ity studies. It was through reading feminist theoretical approaches to the body that I came intellectually to understand disability as a political category rather than an individual pathology or personal tragedy. Feminist theory gave me the tools to think through disability and the ways in which assumptions about disability and disabled bodies lead to resource inequalities and social discrimination. Just as feminist theorists had questioned the naturalness of femininity, challenging essentialist assumptions about “the” female body, I could question the naturalness of disability, challenging essentialist assumptions about “the” disabled body. My understanding of the political/relational model of disability has been made possible by my engagement with the work of feminist theorists […]. Simply put, feminism has given me the theoretical tools to think critically about disability, the stigmatization of bodily variation, and various modes and strategies of resist- ance, dissent, and collective action.

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NOTES

1. Michael Gerson, “The Eugenics Temptation,” Washington

Post, October 24, 2007. A19.

2. I have borrowed my phrasing here from Ruth Hubbard. See

her “Abortion and Disability: Who Should and Who Should

Not Inhabit the World?” in The Disability Studies Reader, ed.

Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2006). 93–103.

3. Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore, Missing Bodies: The

Politics of Visibility (New York: New York University Press,

2009), 4.

4. For an account of disability as human biodiversity, see

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Welcoming the Unbidden: The

Case for Preserving Human Biodiversity,” in What Democracy

Looks Like: A New Critical Realism for a Post-Seattle World,

ed. Amy Schrager Lang and Cecelia Tichi (New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 2006), 77–87. See also Kenny

Fries, The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s

Theory (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2007).

Source: Kafer, Alison. (2013). Excerpted from

“Introduction: Imagined Futures.” In Feminist, Queer,

Crip (pp. 1–4, 14). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University

Press.

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ACTIVIST ART 2

ALISON LAPPER PREGNANT

Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn (born 1964) is a leading contemporary British artist. Quinn makes art about what it is to be a person living in the world—whether his work concerns our rela- tionship with nature and how that relationship is mediated by our desires; what identity and beauty mean and why we feel compelled to transform our identities and bodies; or representations of pressing issues in contemporary social history. He has exhibited internationally in many museums and galleries.

Source: Quinn, Marc. (2005). “Alison Lapper Pregnant.” The Complete Marbles. Retrieved from: http://marcquinn.com/artworks/single/ alison-lapper-pregnant1.

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Marc Quinn’s iconic sculpture Alison Lapper Pregnant is a portrait of disabled artist Alison Lapper when she was eight months pregnant. He notes that when he was mak- ing marble sculptures for The Complete Marble series (1999–2005),

they seemed to me like public sculptures from the future. But now that Alison Lapper is in Trafalgar Square, the present has caught up to the future. Marble is the material used to commemorate heroes, and these people seem to me to be a new kind of hero—people who instead of conquering the outside world have conquered their own inner world and gone on to live fulfilled lives. To me, they celebrate the diversity of humanity. Most monuments are commemorating past events; because Alison is pregnant it’s a sculpture about the future possibilities of humanity.

In The Complete Marbles series, Quinn explores the contradictions between our outside appearance and inner being. The figures celebrate imperfection and the beauty of different kinds of bodies as well as the strength and vitality of the human spirit.

Of the original sculpture (first exhibited in Trafalgar Square in 2005–2007), Alison Lapper has said: “I regard it as a modern tribute to femininity, disability and moth- erhood. It is so rare to see disability in everyday life—let alone naked, pregnant and proud.”

Source: Quinn, Marc. (2005). “Alison Lapper Pregnant”

(Artist Statement). Retrieved from: http://marcquinn.

com/artworks/single/alison-lapper-pregnant1.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 11

Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Race

Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese, but what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today?

There’s less—and more—to race than meets the eye:

1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn’t even have the word “race” until it turns up in a 1508 poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.

2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait, or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.

3. Human subspecies don’t exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven’t been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appear- ances, we are one of the most genetically similar of all species.

4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability, or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.

5. Most variation is within, not between, “races.” Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans, or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.

6. Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours [European and North American] was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.

7. Race and freedom evolved together. The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that “All men are created equal.” But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.

8. Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the race idea evolved, white superiority became “com- mon sense” in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democ- racy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society.

9. Race isn’t biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people

ON RACE AND RACISM

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different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.

10. Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn’t exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prej- udice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.

Source: California Newsreel. (2003). “RACE—The

Power of an Illusion: Ten Things Everyone Should

Know about Race.” San Francisco, CA: California

Newsreel. Retrieved from: http://newsreel.org/guides/

race/10things.htm.

Racism in Canada: A Timeline

1608 The French introduce Black slavery into Canada. 1613 French and English practise genocide and

attempt to exterminate the Beothuck people from Newfoundland.

1709 Proclamation makes slavery legal in French Canada.

1763 European settlers exploit, kill, and infect Indigenous peoples with tuberculosis and smallpox in order to obtain Indigenous land. For instance, Lord Jeffrey Amherst practises germ warfare by giving out smallpox-infected blankets.

1763 Through the Treaty of Paris, France cedes Canada to Britain. One effect of this transfer in power is the legal strengthening of slavery in Canada.

1784 Race riot in Shelburne and Birchtown, Nova Scotia. A mob destroys Black people’s property and drives Blacks out of the townships.

1875 Chinese Canadians are disenfranchised. 1876 Canada passes the Indian Act as one tool to

eradicate Indigenous culture and expropriate land and resources for profit and settlement.

1880s–1996 Government/church-run residential schools are established. Indigenous children are taken from parents to be “civilized and edu- cated” and “to kill the Indian in the child.”

1885 In response to white Canada’s racist fears of Chinese immigration, the federal government passes the Chinese Immigration Act, which introduced the Head Tax.

1900s Federal government officials engage in a cam- paign to discourage Black American applicants from settlement and rejected them on the basis of medical or other grounds. The Ontario legis- lature establishes segregated schools for Black people (in place until 1964). Black people are refused service and segregated in restaurants, theatres, and recreational facilities.

1907 The Asiatic Exclusion League forms with the goal of restricting Asian admission to Canada. The League carries out a major demonstration, which culminates in the worst race riot in the history of British Columbia.

1910 The Canadian Immigration Act creates a list of preferred and non-preferred countries, with British and white European immigrants on the “preferred” list and the rest of the world, made up largely of people of colour, on the “non-preferred” list.

1923 The Chinese Exclusion Act bans Chinese immi- gration until 1947.

1942 Canada closes its doors to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler’s Final Solution. Of all the Western countries, Canada admits the fewest Jewish refugees.

1942–1947 The federal government forced Japanese Canadians into internment camps and confis- cated their property.

1955 Canadian Domestic Workers Program is estab- lished to deal with the chronic shortage of Canadian workers prepared to accept low wages and undesirable working conditions as domes- tic servants. The program initially targets Black women from the Caribbean, and later women from the Philippines.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 11 On Race and Racism 171

1960s/1970s Africville, a Black settlement near Halifax, Nova Scotia, is demolished and its residents are forced to relocate. Vancouver City Council destroys Hogan’s Alley, Vancouver’s Black community, with the construction of the Georgia Street Viaduct.

1995 As part of the federal budget, the government imposes the Right of Landing Fee, widely known as the Head Tax. The fee of $975 applies to all adults, including refugees, becoming permanent residents. In 2000, the government rescinds the fee for refugees, but maintains it for immigrants.

2002 The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act comes into force in 2002 and as a “security” measure in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks. The Act erodes basic rights in Canada, with some of the worst impacts being experienced by refugees and immigrants.

Source: Vancouver Status of Women. (2008).

Adapted from History in Our Faces on Occupied

Land: A Race Relations Timeline. Vancouver,

BC: Vancouver Status of Women. Retrieved

from: http://www.anti-racism.ca/content/

history-our-faces-occupied-land-race-relations-timeline.

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What are the ethics of the current “War on Terrorism,” a war that justifies itself by pur- porting to liberate, or save, Afghan women? Does anthropology have anything to offer in our search for a viable position to take regarding this ratio- nale for war?

I was led to pose the question of my title in part because of the way I personally experienced the response to the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Like many colleagues whose work has focused on women and gender in the Middle East, I was deluged with invi- tations to speak—not just on news programs but also to various departments at colleges and universities, especially women’s studies programs. Why did this not please me, a scholar who has devoted more than 20 years of her life to this subject and who has some complicated personal connection to this identity? Here was an opportunity to spread the word, disseminate my knowledge, and correct misunderstandings. The urgent search for knowledge about our sister “women

of cover” (as President George Bush so marvelously called them) is laudable and when it comes from wom- en’s studies programs where “transnational feminism” is now being taken seriously, it has a certain integrity (see Safire 2001).

My discomfort led me to reflect on why, as fem- inists in or from the West, or simply as people who have concerns about women’s lives, we need to be wary of this response to the events and aftermath of September 11, 2001. I want to point out the minefields—a metaphor that is sadly too apt for a country like Afghanistan, with the world’s highest number of mines per capita—of this obsession with the plight of Muslim women. I hope to show some way through them using insights from anthropology, the discipline whose charge has been to understand and manage cultural difference. At the same time, I want to remain critical of anthropology’s complicity in the reification of cultural difference.

CHAPTER 18

Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?

Lila Abu-Lughod

Lila Abu-Lughod is the Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science in the De- partment of Anthropology at Columbia University. Abu-Lughod’s work focuses on the relationship between cultural forms and power, the politics of knowledge and repre- sentation, and the dynamics of gender and the question of women’s rights in the Mid- dle East. Many of her works have become classics in the fields of women’s studies and anthropology.

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Chapter 18 Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? 173

CULTURAL EXPLANATIONS AND THE MOBILIZATION OF WOMEN

It is easier to see why one should be skeptical about the focus on the “Muslim woman” if one begins with the U.S. public response. I will analyze two manifestations of this response: some conversations I had with a reporter from the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and First Lady Laura Bush’s radio address to the nation on November 17, 2001. The presenter from the NewsHour show first contacted me in October to see if I was willing to give some background for a segment on Women and Islam. I mischievously asked whether she had done segments on the women of Guatemala, Ireland, Palestine, or Bosnia when the show covered wars in these regions; but I finally agreed to look at the questions she was going to pose to panelists. The questions were hopelessly general. Do Muslim women believe “x”? Are Muslim women “y”? Does Islam allow “‘z” for women? I asked her: If you were to substitute Christian or Jewish wher- ever you have Muslim, would these questions make sense? I did not imagine she would call me back. But she did, twice, once with an idea for a segment on the meaning of Ramadan and another time on Muslim women in politics. One was in response to the bombing and the other to the speeches by Laura Bush and Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister.

What is striking about these three ideas for news programs is that there was a consistent resort to the cultural, as if knowing something about women and Islam or the meaning of a religious ritual would help one understand the tragic attack on New York’s World Trade Center and the U.S. Pentagon, or how Afghanistan had come to be ruled by the Taliban, or what interests might have fueled U.S. and other interventions in the region over the past 25 years, or what the history of American support for conservative groups funded to undermine the Soviets might have been, or why the caves and bunkers out of which Bin Laden was to be smoked “dead or alive,” as President

Bush announced on television, were paid for and built by the CIA.

In other words, the question is why knowing about the “culture” of the region, and particularly its religious beliefs and treatment of women, was more urgent than exploring the history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history. Such cultural framing, it seemed to me, prevented the serious exploration of the roots and nature of human suffering in this part of the world. Instead of political and historical explanations, experts were being asked to give religio-cultural ones. Instead of questions that might lead to the exploration of global interconnections, we were offered ones that worked to artificially divide the world into separate spheres—recreating an imaginative geography of West versus East, us versus Muslims, cultures in which First Ladies give speeches versus others where women shuffle around silently in burqas.

Most pressing for me was why the Muslim woman in general, and the Afghan woman in particular, were so crucial to this cultural mode of explanation, which ignored the complex entanglements in which we are all implicated, in sometimes surprising alignments. Why were these female symbols being mobilized in this “War against Terrorism” in a way they were not in other conflicts? Laura Bush’s radio address on November 17 [2001] reveals the political work such mobilization accomplishes. On the one hand, her address collapsed important distinctions that should have been maintained. There was a constant slippage between the Taliban and the terrorists, so that they became almost one word—a kind of hyphenated monster identity: the Taliban-and-the-terrorists. Then there was the blurring of the very separate causes in Afghanistan of women’s continuing malnutrition, poverty, and ill health, and their more recent exclusion under the Taliban from employment, schooling, and the joys of wearing nail polish. On the other hand, her speech reinforced chasmic divides, primarily between the “civilized people throughout the world” whose hearts break for the women and children of

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Afghanistan and the Taliban-and-the-terrorists, the cultural monsters who want to, as she put it, “impose their world on the rest of us.”

Most revealingly, the speech enlisted women to justify American bombing and intervention in Afghanistan and to make a case for the “War on Terrorism” of which it was allegedly a part. As Laura Bush said, “Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. […] The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women” (U.S. Government 2002).

These words have haunting resonances for any- one who has studied colonial history. Many who have worked on British colonialism in South Asia have noted the use of the woman question in colonial policies where intervention into sati (the practice of widows immolating themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres), child marriage, and other practices was used to justify rule. As Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) has cynically put it: white men saving brown women from brown men. The historical record is full of similar cases, including in the Middle East. In turn of the century Egypt, what Leila Ahmed (1992) has called “colonial feminism” was hard at work. This was a selective concern about the plight of Egyptian women that focused on the veil as a sign of oppression but gave no support to women’s education and was professed loudly by the same Englishman, Lord Cromer, who opposed women’s suffrage back home.

Sociologist Marnia Lazreg (1994) has offered some vivid examples of how French colonialism enlisted women to its cause in Algeria. […] Lazreg (1994) also gives memorable examples of the way in which the French had earlier sought to transform Arab women and girls. She describes skits at awards ceremonies at the Muslim Girls’ School in Algiers in 1851 and 1852. In the first skit, written by “a French lady from Algiers,” two Algerian Arab girls

reminisced about their trip to France with words including the following:

Oh! Protective France: Oh! Hospitable France! …

Noble land, where I felt free Under Christian skies to pray to our God: … God bless you for the happiness you bring us! And you, adoptive mother, who taught us That we have a share of this world, We will cherish you forever!

[Lazreg 1994:68–69]

These girls are made to invoke the gift of a share of this world, a world where freedom reigns under Christian skies. This is not the world the Taliban-and- the-terrorists would “like to impose on the rest of us.”

Just as I argued above that we need to be sus- picious when neat cultural icons are plastered over messier historical and political narratives, so we need to be wary when Lord Cromer in British-ruled Egypt, French ladies in Algeria, and Laura Bush, all with military troops behind them, claim to be saving or liberating Muslim women.

POLITICS OF THE VEIL

I want now to look more closely at those Afghan women Laura Bush claimed were “rejoicing” at their liberation by the Americans. This necessitates a dis- cussion of the veil, or the burqa, because it is so central to contemporary concerns about Muslim women. This will set the stage for a discussion of how anthropolo- gists, feminist anthropologists in particular, contend with the problem of difference in a global world. In the conclusion, I will return to the rhetoric of saving Muslim women and offer an alternative.

It is common popular knowledge that the ultimate sign of the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban-and-the-terrorists is that they were forced to wear the burqa. Liberals sometimes confess their

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surprise that even though Afghanistan has been lib- erated from the Taliban, women do not seem to be throwing off their burqas. Someone who has worked in Muslim regions must ask why this is so surprising. Did we expect that once “free” from the Taliban they would go “back” to belly shirts and blue jeans, or dust off their Chanel suits? We need to be more sensible about the clothing of “women of cover,” and so there is perhaps a need to make some basic points about veiling.

First, it should be recalled that the Taliban did not invent the burqa. It was the local form of covering that Pashtun women in one region wore when they went out. The Pashtun are one of several ethnic groups in Afghanistan, and the burqa was one of many forms of covering in the subcontinent and Southwest Asia that has developed as a convention for symbolizing women’s modesty or respectability. The burqa, like some other forms of “cover,” has, in many settings, marked the sym- bolic separation of men’s and women’s spheres, as part of the general association of women with family and home, not with public space where strangers mingled.

Twenty years ago, the anthropologist Hanna Papanek (1982), who worked in Pakistan, described the burqa as “portable seclusion.” She noted that many saw it as a liberating invention because it enabled women to move out of segregated living spaces while still observing the basic moral requirements of separating and protecting women from unrelated men. Ever since I came across her phrase “portable seclusion,” I have thought of these enveloping robes as “mobile homes.” Everywhere, such veiling signifies belonging to a particular community and participating in a moral way of life in which families are paramount in the organization of communities and the home is associated with the sanctity of women.

The obvious question that follows is this: If this were the case, why would women suddenly become immodest? Why would they suddenly throw off the markers of their respectability, markers, whether burqas or other forms of cover, which were supposed to assure their protection in the public sphere from the harassment of strange men by symbolically signaling

to all that they were still in the inviolable space of their homes, even though moving in the public realm? Especially when these are forms of dress that had become so conventional that most women gave little thought to their meaning.

To draw some analogies, none of them perfect, why are we surprised that Afghan women do not throw off their burqas when we know perfectly well that it would not be appropriate to wear shorts to the opera? At the time these discussions of Afghan women’s burqas were raging, a friend of mine was chided by her husband for suggesting she wanted to wear a pantsuit to a fancy wedding: “You know you don’t wear pants to a WASP wedding,” he reminded her. New Yorkers know that the beautifully coiffed Hasidic women, who look so fashionable next to their dour husbands in black coats and hats, are wearing wigs. This is because religious belief and community standards of propriety require the covering of the hair. They also alter boutique fashions to include high necks and long sleeves. As anthropologists know perfectly well, people wear the appropriate form of dress for their social communities and are guided by socially shared standards, religious beliefs, and moral ideals, unless they deliberately transgress to make a point or are unable to afford proper cover. If we think that U.S. women live in a world of choice regarding clothing, all we need to do is remind ourselves of the expression, “the tyranny of fashion.”

What had happened in Afghanistan under the Taliban is that one regional style of covering or veiling, associated with a certain respectable but not elite class, was imposed on everyone as “religiously” appropriate, even though previously there had been many different styles, popular or traditional with different groups and classes—different ways to mark women’s propriety, or, in more recent times, religious piety. Although I am not an expert on Afghanistan, I imagine that the majority of women left in Afghanistan by the time the Taliban took control were the rural or less educated, from nonelite families, since they were the only ones who would not emigrate to escape the hardship and

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violence that has marked Afghanistan’s recent hist- ory. If liberated from the enforced wearing of burqas, most of these women would choose some other form of modest headcovering, like all those living nearby who were not under the Taliban—their rural Hindu counterparts in the North of India (who cover their heads and veil their faces from affines) or their Muslim sisters in Pakistan.

Even The New York Times carried an article about Afghan women refugees in Pakistan that attempted to educate readers about this local variety (Fremson 2001). The article describes and pictures everything from the now iconic burqa with the embroidered eye- holes, which a Pashtun woman explains is the proper dress for her community, to large scarves they call chadors, to the new Islamic modest dress that wearers refer to as hijab. Those in the new Islamic dress are characteristically students heading for professional careers, especially in medicine, just like their counter- parts from Egypt to Malaysia. One wearing the large scarf was a school principal; the other was a poor street vendor. The telling quote from the young street vendor is, “If I did [wear the burqa] the refugee would tease me because the burqa is for ‘good women’ who stay inside the home” (Fremson 2001:14). Here you can see the local status associated with the burqa—it is for good respectable women from strong families who are not forced to make a living selling on the street.

The British newspaper The Guardian published an interview in January 2002 with Dr. Suheila Siddiqi, a respected surgeon in Afghanistan who holds the rank of lieutenant general in the Afghan medical corps (Goldenberg 2002). A woman in her sixties, she comes from an elite family and, like her sisters, was educated. Unlike most women of her class, she chose not to go into exile. She is presented in the article as “the woman who stood up to the Taliban” because she refused to wear the burqa. She had made it a condition of returning to her post as head of a major hospital when the Taliban came begging in 1996, just eight months after firing her along with other women. Siddiqi is described as thin, glamorous,

and confident. But further into the article, it is noted that “her graying bouffant hair is covered in a gauzy veil” (Goldenberg 2002:38). This is a reminder that though she refused the burqa, she had no question about wearing the chador or scarf.

Finally, I need to make a crucial point about veiling. Not only are there many forms of covering, which themselves have different meanings in the communities in which they are used, but also veiling itself must not be confused with, or made to stand for, lack of agency. As I have argued in my ethnography of a Bedouin community in Egypt in the late 1970s and 1980s (1986), pulling the black head cloth over the face in front of older, respected men is considered a voluntary act by women who are deeply committed to being moral and have a sense of honor tied to family. One of the ways they show their standing is by covering their faces in certain contexts. They decide for whom they feel it is appropriate to veil.

To take a very different case, the modern Islamic modest dress that many educated women across the Muslim world have taken on since the mid-1970s now both publicly marks piety and can be read as a sign of educated urban sophistication, a sort of modernity (e.g., Abu-Lughod 1995, 1998; Brenner 1996; El Guindi 1999; MacLeod 1991; Ong 1990). As Saba Mahmood (2001) has so brilliantly shown in her ethnography of women in the mosque movement in Egypt, this new form of dress is also perceived by many of the women who adopt it as part of a bodily means to cultivate virtue, the outcome of their pro- fessed desire to be close to God.

Two points emerge from this fairly basic discus- sion of the meanings of veiling in the contemporary Muslim world. First, we need to work against the reductive interpretation of veiling as the quintessential sign of women’s unfreedom, even if we object to state imposition of this form, as in Iran or with the Taliban. (It must be recalled that the modernizing states of Turkey and Iran had earlier in the century banned veiling and required men, except religious clerics, to adopt Western dress.) What does freedom mean

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if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, always raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular com- munities that shape their desires and understandings of the world? Is it not a gross violation of women’s own understandings of what they are doing to simply denounce the burqa as a medieval imposition? Second, we must take care not to reduce the diverse situations and attitudes of millions of Muslim women to a single item of clothing. Perhaps it is time to give up the Western obsession with the veil and focus on some serious issues with which feminists and others should indeed be concerned.

Ultimately, the signif icant political-ethical problem the burqa raises is how to deal with cul- tural “others.” How are we to deal with difference without accepting the passivity implied by the cultural relativism for which anthropologists are justly famous—a relativism that says it’s their culture and it’s not my business to judge or interfere, only to try to understand. Cultural relativism is certainly an improvement on ethnocentrism and the racism, cultural imperialism, and imperiousness that underlie it; the problem is that it is too late not to interfere. The forms of lives we find around the world are already products of long histories of interactions.

I want to explore the issues of women, cultural relativism, and the problems of “difference” from three angles. First, I want to consider what feminist anthropologists […] are to do with strange political bedfellows. I used to feel torn when I received the e-mail petitions circulating for the last few years in defense of Afghan women under the Taliban. I was not sympathetic to the dogmatism of the Taliban; I do not support the oppression of women. But the provenance of the campaign worried me. I do not usually find myself in political company with the likes of Hollywood celebrities (see Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002). I had never received a petition from such women defending the right of Palestinian women to safety from Israeli bombing or daily harassment at checkpoints, asking the United States to reconsider

its support for a government that had disposed them, closed them out from work and citizenship rights, refused them the most basic freedoms. Maybe some of these same people might be signing petitions to save African women from genital cutting, or Indian women from dowry deaths. However, I do not think that it would be as easy to mobilize so many of these American and European women if it were not a case of Muslim men oppressing Muslim women—women of cover for whom they can feel sorry and in rela- tion to whom they can feel smugly superior. Would television diva Oprah Winfrey host the Women in Black, the women’s peace group from Israel, as she did RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, who were also granted the Glamour Magazine Women of the Year Award? […]

To be critical of this celebration of women’s rights in Afghanistan is not to pass judgment on any local women’s organizations, such as RAWA, whose members have courageously worked since 1977 for a democratic secular Afghanistan in which women’s human rights are respected, against Soviet-backed regimes or US-, Saudi-, and Pakistani-supported conservatives. Their documentation of abuse and their work through clinics and schools have been enormously important.

It is also not to fault the campaigns that exposed the dreadful conditions under which the Taliban placed women. […] It is, however, to suggest that we need to look closely at what we are supporting (and what we are not) and to think carefully about why. How should we manage the complicated politics and ethics of finding ourselves in agreement with those with whom we normally disagree? I do not know how many feminists who felt good about saving Afghan women from the Taliban are also asking for a global redistribution of wealth or contemplating sacrificing their own consumption radically so that African or Afghan women could have some chance of having what I do believe should be a universal human right— the right to freedom from the structural violence of global inequality and from the ravages of war, the

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everyday rights of having enough to eat, having homes for their families in which to live and thrive, having ways to make decent livings so their children can grow, and having the strength and security to work out, within their communities and with whatever alliances they want, how to live a good life, which might very well include changing the ways those communities are organized.

Suspicion about bedfellows is only a first step; it will not give us a way to think more positively about what to do or where to stand. For that, we need to confront two more big issues. First is the acceptance of the possibility of difference. Can we only free Afghan women to be like us or might we have to recognize that even after “liberation” from the Taliban, they might want different things than we would want for them? What do we do about that? Second, we need to be vigilant about the rhetoric of saving people because of what it implies about our attitudes.

Again, when I talk about accepting difference, I am not implying that we should resign ourselves to being cultural relativists who respect whatever goes on elsewhere as “ just their culture.” I have already discussed the dangers of “cultural” explanations; “their” cultures are just as much part of history and an interconnected world as ours are. What I am advocating is the hard work involved in recognizing and respecting differences—precisely as products of different histories, as expressions of different circumstances, and as manifestations of differently structured desires. We may want justice for women, but can we accept that there might be different ideas about justice and that different women might want, or choose, different futures from what we envision as best (see Ong 1988)? We must consider that they might be called to personhood, so to speak, in a different language.

Reports from the Bonn peace conference held in late November to discuss the rebuilding of Afghanistan revealed significant differences among the few Afghan women feminists and activists pres- ent. RAWA’s position was to reject any conciliatory

approach to Islamic governance. According to one report I read, most women activists, especially those based in Afghanistan who are aware of the realities on the ground, agreed that Islam had to be the starting point for reform. Fatima Gailani, a U.S.-based advisor to one of the delegations, is quoted as saying, “If I go to Afghanistan today and ask women for votes on the promise to bring them secularism, they are going to tell me to go to hell.” Instead, according to one report, most of these women looked for inspiration on how to fight for equality to a place that might seem surprising. They looked to Iran as a country in which they saw women making significant gains within an Islamic framework—in part through an Islamically oriented feminist movement that is challenging injustices and reinterpreting the religious tradition.

The situation in Iran is itself the subject of heated debate within feminist circles, especially among Iranian feminists in the West (e.g., Mir-Hosseini 1999; Moghissi 1999; Najmabadi 1998, 2000). It is not clear whether and in what ways women have made gains and whether the great increases in literacy, decreases in birthrates, presence of women in the pro- fessions and government, and a feminist flourishing in cultural fields like writing and filmmaking are because of or despite the establishment of a so-called Islamic Republic. The concept of an Islamic feminism itself is also controversial. Is it an oxymoron or does it refer to a viable movement forged by brave women who want a third way?

One of the things we have to be most careful about in thinking about Third World feminisms, and feminism in different parts of the Muslim world, is how not to fall into polarizations that place femin- ism on the side of the West. I have written about the dilemmas faced by Arab feminists when Western feminists initiate campaigns that make them vul- nerable to local denunciations by conservatives of various sorts, whether Islamist or nationalist, of being traitors (Abu-Lughod 2001). As some like Afsaneh Najmabadi are now arguing, not only is it wrong to see history simplistically in terms of a putative opposition

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between Islam and the West (as is happening in the United States now and has happened in parallel in the Muslim world), but it is also strategically dangerous to accept this cultural opposition between Islam and the West, between fundamentalism and feminism, because those many people within Muslim countries who are trying to find alternatives to present injus- tices, those who might want to refuse the divide and take from different histories and cultures, who do not accept that being feminist means being Western, will be under pressure to choose, just as we are: Are you with us or against us?

My point is to remind us to be aware of differ- ences, respectful of other paths toward social change that might give women better lives. Can there be a liberation that is Islamic? And, beyond this, is liberation even a goal for which all women or people strive? Are emancipation, equality, and rights part of a universal language we must use? […] In other words, might other desires be more meaningful for different groups of people? Living in close families? Living in a godly way? Living without war? I have done fieldwork in Egypt over more than 20 years and I cannot think of a single woman I know, from the poorest rural to the most educated cosmopolitan, who has ever expressed envy of U.S. women, women they tend to perceive as bereft of community, vulner- able to sexual violence and social anomie, driven by individual success rather than morality, or strangely disrespectful of God.

Mahmood (2001) has pointed out a disturbing thing that happens when one argues for a respect for other traditions. She notes that there seems to be a difference in the political demands made on those who work on or are trying to understand Muslims and Islamists and those who work on secular-humanist projects. She, who studies the piety movement in Egypt, is consistently pressed to denounce all the harm done by Islamic movements around the world— otherwise, she is accused of being an apologist. But there never seems to be a parallel demand for those

who study secular humanism and its projects, despite the terrible violences that have been associated with it over the last couple of centuries, from world wars to colonialism, from genocides to slavery. We need to have as little dogmatic faith in secular humanism as in Islamism, and as open a mind to the complex possibilities of human projects undertaken in one tradition as the other.

BEYOND THE RHETORIC OF SALVATION

Let us return, finally, to my title, “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” The discussion of culture, veiling, and how one can navigate the shoals of cultural difference should put Laura Bush’s self-congratulation about the rejoicing of Afghan women liberated by American troops in a different light. It is deeply problematic to construct the Afghan woman as someone in need of saving. When you save someone, you imply that you are saving her from something. You are also saving her to something. What violences are entailed in this transformation, and what presumptions are being made about the superiority of that to which you are saving her? Projects of saving other women depend on and reinforce a sense of superiority by Westerners, a form of arrogance that deserves to be challenged. All one needs to do to appreciate the patronizing qualities of the rhetoric of saving women is to imagine using it today in the United States about disadvantaged groups such as African American women or working-class women. We now understand them as suffering from structural violence. We have become politicized about race and class, but not culture.

As anthropologists, feminists, or concerned cit- izens, we should be wary of taking on the mantles of those 19th-century Christian missionary women who devoted their lives to saving their Muslim sisters. One of my favorite documents from that period is a collection called Our Moslem Sisters, the proceedings

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of a conference of women missionaries held in Cairo in 1906 (Van Sommer and Zwemer 1907). The sub- title of the book is A Cry of Need from the Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It. Speaking of the ignorance, seclusion, polygamy, and veiling that blighted women’s lives across the Muslim world, the missionary women spoke of their responsibility to make these women’s voices heard. As the introduction states, “They will never cry for themselves, for they are down under the yoke of centuries of oppression” (Van Sommer and Zwemer 1907:15). “This book,” it begins, “with its sad, reiterated story of wrong and oppression is an indictment and an appeal.… It is an appeal to Christian womanhood to right these wrongs and enlighten this darkness by sacrifice and service” (Van Sommer and Zwemer 1907:15).

One can hear uncanny echoes of their virtuous goals today, even though the language is secular, the appeals not to Jesus but to human rights or the Liberal West. […]

Could we not leave veils and vocations of saving others behind and instead train our sights on ways to make the world a more just place? The reason respect for difference should not be confused with cultural relativism is that it does not preclude asking how we, living in this privileged and powerful part of the world, might examine our own responsibilities for the situations in which others in distant places have found themselves. We do not stand outside the world, looking out over this sea of poor benighted people, living under the shadow—or veil—of oppressive cultures; we are part of that world. Islamic move- ments themselves have arisen in a world shaped by the intense engagements of Western powers in Middle Eastern lives.

A more productive approach, it seems to me, is to ask how we might contribute to making the world a more just place. A world not organized around stra- tegic military and economic demands; a place where certain kinds of forces and values that we may still

consider important could have an appeal and where there is the peace necessary for discussions, debates, and transformations to occur within communities. We need to ask ourselves what kinds of world condi- tions we could contribute to making such that popular desires will not be overdetermined by an overwhelm- ing sense of helplessness in the face of forms of global injustice. Where we seek to be active in the affairs of distant places, can we do so in the spirit of support for those within those communities whose goals are to make women’s (and men’s) lives better? Can we use a more egalitarian language of alliances, coalitions, and solidarity, instead of salvation?

Even RAWA, the now celebrated Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which was so instrumental in bringing to U.S. women’s attention the excesses of the Taliban, has opposed the U.S. bombing from the beginning. They do not see in it Afghan women’s salvation but increased hardship and loss. They have long called for disarmament and for peacekeeping forces. Spokespersons point out the dangers of confusing governments with people, the Taliban with innocent Afghans who will be most harmed. They consistently remind audiences to take a close look at the ways policies are being organized around oil interests, the arms industry, and the inter- national drug trade. They are not obsessed with the veil, even though they are the most radical femin- ists working for a secular democratic Afghanistan. Unfortunately, only their messages about the excesses of the Taliban have been heard, even though their criticisms of those in power in Afghanistan have included previous regimes. A first step in hearing their wider message is to break with the language of alien cultures, whether to understand or eliminate them. Missionary work and colonial feminism belong in the past. Our task is to critically explore what we might do to help create a world in which those poor Afghan women, for whom “the hearts of those in the civilized world break,” can have safety and decent lives.

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REFERENCES

Abu-Lughod, Lila. (1986). Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.

—. (1995). Movie Stars and Islamic Moralism in Egypt. Social Text (42), 53–67.

—. (1998). Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

—. (2001). Orientalism and Middle East Feminist Studies. Feminist Studies 27(1), 101–113.

Ahmed, Leila. (1992). Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Brenner, Susanne. (1996). Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and “the Veil.” American Ethnologist 23(4), 673–697.

El Guindi, Fadwa. (1999). Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford: Berg.

Fremson, Ruth. (2001). Allure Must Be Covered. Individuality Peeks Through. New York Times, November 4: 14.

Goldenberg, Suzanne. (2002). The Woman Who Stood Up to the Taliban. The Guardian, January 24. Electronic document, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/ jan/24/gender.uk1.

Hirschkind, Charles, and Saba Mahmood. (2002). Feminism, the Taliban, and the Politics of Counter-Insurgency. Anthropological Quarterly 75(2), 107–122.

Lazreg, Marnia. (1994). The Eloquence of Silence: Algerian Women in Question. New York: Routledge.

MacLeod, Arlene. (1991). Accommodating Protest. New York: Columbia University Press.

Mahmood, Saba. (2001). Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival. Cultural Anthropology 16(2), 202–235.

Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. (1999). Islam and Gender: The Religious Debate in Contemporary Iran. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Moghissi, Haideh. (1999). Feminism and Islamic Fundamentalism. London: Zed Books.

Najmabadi, Afsaneh. (1998). Feminism in an Islamic Republic. In Islam, Gender and Social Change. Yvonne Haddad and John Esposito, eds. 59–84. New York: Oxford University Press.

—. (2000). (Un)Veiling Feminism. Social Text (64), 29–45. Ong, Aihwa (1988). Colonialism and Modernity: Feminist

Re-Presentations of Women in Non-Western Societies. Inscriptions 3–4, 79–93.

—. (1990). State versus Islam: Malay Families, Women’s Bodies, and the Body Politic in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 17(2), 258–276.

Papanek, Hanna. (1982). Purdah in Pakistan: Seclusion and Modern Occupations for Women. In Separate Worlds. Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault, eds. 190–216. Columbus: South Asia Books.

Safire, William. (2001). “On Language.” New York Times Magazine, October 28: 22.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak? In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds. 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

U.S. Government. (2002). Electronic document, http://www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011117 (link no longer active). Accessed January 10.

Van Sommer, Annie, and Samuel M. Zwemer, eds. (1907). Our Moslem Sisters: A Cry of Need from Lands of Darkness Interpreted by Those Who Heard It. New York: Fleming H. Revell Co.

Source: Abu-Lughod, Lila. (2002). Excerpted from “Do

Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological

Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.”

American Anthropologist, 104(3), 783–790.

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ACTIVIST ART 3

TECHNICOLOR MUSLIMAH

Saba Taj

“I am Saba Taj, a queer Muslim femme mixed-media visual artist and activist whose work centers around identity and challenging Islamophobia and sexism. I have strug- gled with my Muslim identity and its seeming contradictions with the other parts of myself, but have come to wholly embrace it as an essential part of who I am by reject- ing monolithic interpretations of what it means to be Muslim. Over the years, my explo- rations of identity have grown increasingly intersectional, confronting Islamophobia’s connections to systemic oppression rooted in anti-black racism and imperialism.”

—From Carol Kuruvilla, “Queer Muslim Artist Saba Taj Sees Her Art as an Act of Resistance,” Huff Post News (2016, June 24)

[Top row] Amna, Student; Sarah, Mother; [Bottom row] Taiyyaba, Attorney; Mona, Doctor.

Source: Taj, Saba. (2011). “Technicolor Muslimah.” Portraits of American Muslim Women. Retrieved from: http://www. artbysaba.com/technicolor-muslimah-2011---2014.

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Activist Art 3 Technicolor Muslimah 183

Modern treatment of Muslim subject matter in art and media is closely tied to the political and religious con- troversy that seems to be pervasive in these “exotic” countries of the East. While much of the conflict is real, oftentimes, visual media and “Muslim art” do nothing to lessen the perception of all Muslims as exotic, “other,” and entirely homogenous. Truly, much art and writing relies on the juxtaposition of the traditional and the taboo within Islam—emphasizing that the East is in exact opposition to the West. This portrayal is a farce. There is a massive community of Muslims who live in Western countries who are not antithetical to “the West.” This community is made up of individuals, each with their own unique mosaic of culture and experiences. Islam is not a tiny box. It is not one-dimensional, and neither are the people who identify as Muslim. That such a simplistic perception of these peoples has persisted into our world today is unacceptable. There is a place for everyone in this country [United States], yet these people have con- tinued to be not only homogenized, but vilified.

I have created a series of fifteen portraits of Muslim women in acrylic paint. The women are rendered in bright colors, which, in itself, is a departure from how Muslim women are often portrayed. I chose women because I believe that they are often the clearest representatives of the Muslim world, and the most misunderstood. This series focuses on aspects of these women that need to be explored—their humor, their joy, and their kindness. Each woman is identified as Muslim by her headscarf. This visual symbol is truly the only suggestion of her religion, because my perspective here is humanist. In addition, eleven of the paintings are presented with

props to further support the theme of humor, or to iden- tify the subjects as American, as well as Muslim. […] The fifteenth portrait is a bit of a departure from the rest of the group. The subject faces the viewer directly, with an assertive gaze. We know nothing of her but her name. This portrait is especially important, because it indicates that the story is not over. This joyful portrayal of Muslim women is only one aspect amongst the kalei- doscope of qualities that these women possess. She is the blank slate. She is asking the viewer, “So what do you think of me, now?” She anchors the series, and asks the viewers to look back upon themselves. What do we know of her, if she does not tell us? Even in this age of instant information, we have a tendency to see a woman wearing a hijab, and imagine a patriarch forcing that veil upon her. We have an obsession with that piece of cloth and all that we think it represents. The assumption is that these women are being oppressed, that they are imprisoned within layers of cloth. This closed-minded perspective imprisons far too many. Those who fall prey to this misconception are preventing themselves from seeing how dynamic these women truly are, from see- ing that they are American women who make their own choices. The hijab truly recedes into the background in these paintings, and the vibrant women within them shine through—in technicolor.

Source: Taj, Saba. (2013). “Technicolor Muslimah: A

Lighter & Brighter Side.” Muslimah: Muslim Women’s

Art & Voices. New York: Global Fund for Women.

Retrieved from: http://muslima.globalfundforwomen.

org/content/technicolor-muslimah.

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Once upon a time, a baby named X was born. This baby was named X so that nobody could tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Its parents could tell, of course, but they couldn’t tell anybody else. They couldn’t even tell Baby X, at first.

You see, it was all part of a very important Secret Scientific Xperiment, known officially as Project Baby X. The smartest scientists had set up this Xperiment at a cost of Xactly 23 billion dollars and 72 cents, which might seem like a lot for just one baby, even a very important Xperimental baby. But when you remember the prices of things like strained carrots and stuffed bunnies, and popcorn for the movies and booster shots for camp, let alone twenty-eight shiny quarters from the tooth fairy, you begin to see how it adds up.

Also, long before Baby X was born, all those scientists had to be paid to work out the details of the Xperiment, and to write the Official Instruction Manual for Baby X’s parents and, most important of all, to find the right set of parents to bring up Baby X. These parents had to be selected very carefully.

Part 2C: Gender Construction and Performativity

CHAPTER 19

X: A Fabulous Child’s Story

Lois Gould

Lois Gould was an acclaimed American writer, known for her novels, memoirs, and other works about women’s lives. Her only children’s story, X: A Fabulous Child’s Story, was first published in Ms. magazine in 1972 and has become a feminist classic. She wrote a column for The New York Times, and served as editor of the Ladies Home Journal and other national magazines.

Thousands of volunteers had to take thousands of tests and answer thousands of tricky questions. Almost everybody failed because, it turned out, almost every- body really wanted either a baby boy or a baby girl, and not Baby X at all. Also, almost everybody was afraid that a Baby X would be a lot more trouble than a boy or a girl. (They were probably right, the scientists admitted, but Baby X needed parents who wouldn’t mind the Xtra trouble.)

There were families with grandparents named Milton and Agatha, who didn’t see why the baby couldn’t be named Milton or Agatha instead of X, even if it was an X. There were families with aunts who insisted on knitting tiny dresses and uncles who insisted on sending tiny baseball mitts. Worst of all, there were families that already had other children who couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret. Certainly not if they knew the secret was worth 23 billion dollars and 72 cents—and all you had to do was take one little peek at Baby X in the bathtub to know if it was a boy or a girl.

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Chapter 19 X: A Fabulous Child’s Story 185

But, finally, the scientists found the Joneses, who really wanted to raise an X more than any other kind of baby—no matter how much trouble it would be. Ms. and Mr. Jones had to promise they would take equal turns caring for X, and feeding it, and singing it lullabies. And they had to promise never to hire any baby-sitters. The government scientists knew perfectly well that a babysitter would probably peek at X in the bathtub, too.

The day the Joneses brought their baby home, lots of friends and relatives came over to see it. None of them knew about the secret Xperiment, though. So the first thing they asked was what kind of a baby X was. When the Joneses smiled and said, “It’s an X!,” nobody knew what to say. They couldn’t say, “Look at her cute little dimples!” And they couldn’t say, “Look at his husky little biceps!” And they couldn’t even say just plain “kitchycoo.” In fact, they all thought the Joneses were playing some kind of rude joke.

But, of course, the Joneses were not joking. “It’s an X” was absolutely all they would say. And that made the friends and relatives very angry. The relatives all felt embarrassed about having an X in the family. “People will think there’s something wrong with it!” some of them whispered. “There is something wrong with it!” others whispered back.

“Nonsense!” the Joneses told them all cheerfully. “What could possibly be wrong with this perfectly adorable X?” Nobody could answer that, except Baby X, who had just finished its bottle. Baby X’s answer was a loud, satisfied burp.

Clearly, nothing at all was wrong. Nevertheless, none of the relatives felt comfortable about buying a present for a Baby X. The cousins who sent the baby a tiny football helmet would not come and visit any more. And the neighbors who sent a pink-flowered romper suit pulled their shades down when the Joneses passed their house.

The Official Instruction Manual had warned the new parents that this would happen, so they didn’t fret about it. Besides, they were too busy with Baby X and the hundreds of different Xercises for treating it properly. Ms. and Mr. Jones had to be Xtra careful

about how they played with little X. They knew that if they kept bouncing it up in the air and saying how strong and active it was, they’d be treating it more like a boy than an X. But if all they did was cuddle it and kiss it and tell it how sweet and dainty it was, they’d be treating it more like a girl than an X.

On page 1,654 of the Official Instruction Manual, the scientists prescribed: “plenty of bouncing and plenty of cuddling, both. X ought to be strong and sweet and active. Forget about dainty altogether.”

Meanwhile, the Joneses were worrying about other problems. Toys, for instance. And clothes. On his first shopping trip, Mr. Jones told the store clerk, “I need some clothes and toys for my new baby.” The clerk smiled and said, “Well, now, is it a boy or a girl?” “It’s an X,” Mr. Jones said, smiling back. But the clerk got all red in the face and said huffily, “In that case, I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir.” So Mr. Jones wandered helplessly up and down the aisles trying to find what X needed. But everything in the store was piled up in sections marked “Boys” or “Girls.” There were “Boys’ Pajamas” and “Girls’ Underwear” and “Boys’ Fire Engines” and “Girls’ Housekeeping Sets.” Mr. Jones went home without buying anything for X. That night, he and Ms. Jones consulted page 2,326 of the Official Instruction Manual. “Buy plenty of everything!” it said firmly.

So they bought plenty of sturdy blue pajamas in the Boys’ Department and cheerful flowered under- wear in the Girls’ Department. And they bought all kinds of toys. A boy doll that made pee-pee and cried, “Pa-pa.” And a girl doll that talked in three languages and said, “I am the Pres-i-dent of Gen-er-al Mo-tors.” They also bought a storybook about a brave princess who rescued a handsome prince from his ivory tower, and another one about a sister and brother who grew up to be a baseball star and a ballet star, and you had to guess which was which.

The head scientists of Project Baby X checked all their purchases and told them to keep up the good work. They also reminded the Joneses to see page 4,629 of the Manual, where it said, “Never make Baby X feel embarrassed or ashamed about what it

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wants to play with. And if X gets dirty climbing rocks, never say ‘Nice little Xes don’t get dirty climbing rocks.’”

Likewise, it said, “If X falls down and cries, never say ‘Brave little Xes don’t cry.’ Because, of course, nice little Xes do get dirty, and brave little Xes do cry. No matter how dirty X gets, or how hard it cries, don’t worry. It’s all part of the Xperiment.”

Whenever the Joneses pushed Baby X’s stroller in the park, smiling strangers would come over and coo: “Is that a boy or a girl?” The Joneses would smile back and say, “It’s an X.” The strangers would stop smiling then, and often snarl something nasty—as if the Joneses had snarled at them.

By the time X grew big enough to play with other children, the Joneses’ troubles had grown bigger, too. Once a little girl grabbed X’s shovel in the sandbox, and zonked X on the head with it. “Now, now, Tracy,” the little girl’s mother began to scold, “little girls mustn’t hit” and she turned to ask X, “Are you a little boy or little girl, dear?”

Mr. Jones, who was sitting near the sandbox, held his breath and crossed his fingers.

X smiled politely at the lady, even though X’s head had never been zonked so hard in its life. “I’m a little X,” X replied.

“You’re a what?” the lady exclaimed angrily. “You’re a little b-r-a-t, you mean!”

“But little girls mustn’t hit little Xes, either!” said X, retrieving the shovel with another polite smile. “What good does hitting do, anyway?”

X’s father, who was still holding his breath, finally let it out, uncrossed his fingers, and grinned back at X.

And at their next secret Project Baby X meeting, the scientists grinned, too. Baby X was doing fine.

But then it was time for X to start school. The Joneses were really worried about this, because school was even more full of rules for boys and girls, and there were no rules for Xes. The teacher would tell boys to form one line, and girls to form another line. There would be boys’ games and girls’ games, and boys’ secrets and girls’ secrets. The school library would have a list of recommended books for girls,

and a different list of recommended books for boys. There would even be a bathroom marked BOYS and another one marked GIRLS. Pretty soon, boys and girls would hardly talk to each other. What would happen to poor little X?

The Joneses spent weeks consulting their Instruction Manual (there were 249½ pages of advice under “First Day of School”), and attending urgent special conferences with the smart scientists of Project Baby X.

The scientists had to make sure that X’s mother had taught X how to throw and catch a ball properly, and that X’s father had been sure to teach X what to serve at a doll’s tea party. X had to know how to shoot marbles and how to jump rope and, most of all, what to say when the Other Children asked whether X was a Boy or a Girl.

Finally, X was ready. The Joneses helped X button on a nice new pair of red-and-white checked overalls, and sharpened six pencils for X’s nice new pencilbox, and marked X’s name clearly on all the books in its nice new bookbag. X brushed its teeth and combed its hair, which just about covered its ears, and remem- bered to put a napkin in its lunchbox.

The Joneses had asked X’s teacher if the class could line up alphabetically, instead of forming sep- arate lines for boys and girls. And they had asked if X could use the principal’s bathroom, because it wasn’t marked anything except BATHROOM. X’s teacher promised to take care of all those problems. But nobody could help X with the biggest problem of all—Other Children.

Nobody in X’s class had ever known an X before. What would they think? How would X make friends?

You couldn’t tell what X was by studying its clothes—overalls don’t even button right-to-left, like girls’ clothes, or left-to-right, like boys’ clothes. And you couldn’t guess whether X had a girl’s short haircut or a boy’s long haircut. And it was very hard to tell by the games X liked to play. Either X played ball very well for a girl, or else X played house very well for a boy.

Some of the children tried to find out by asking X tricky questions, like “Who’s your favorite sports

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Chapter 19 X: A Fabulous Child’s Story 187

star?” That was easy. X had two favorite sports stars: a girl jockey named Robyn Smith and a boy archery champion named Robin Hood. Then they asked, “What’s your favorite TV program?” And that was even easier. X’s favorite TV program was “Lassie,” which stars a girl dog played by a boy dog.

When X said that its favorite toy was a doll, everyone decided that X must be a girl. But then X said that the doll was really a robot, and that X had computerized it, and that it was programmed to bake fudge brownies and then clean up the kitchen. After X told them that, the Other Children gave up guessing what X was. All they knew was they’d sure like to see X’s doll.

After school, X wanted to play with the Other Children. “How about shooting some baskets in the gym?” X asked the girls. But all they did was make faces and giggle behind X’s back.

“How about weaving some baskets in the arts and crafts room?” X asked the boys. But they all made faces and giggled behind X’s back, too.

That night, Ms. and Mr. Jones asked X how things had gone at school. X told them sadly that the lessons were okay, but otherwise school was a terrible place for an X. It seemed as if Other Children would never want an X for a friend.

Once more, the Joneses reached for their Instruction Manual. Under “Other Children,” they found the following message: “What did you Xpect? Other Children have to obey all the silly boy-girl rules, because their parents taught them to. Lucky X—you don’t have to stick to the rules at all! All you have to do is be yourself. P.S. We’re not saying it’ll be easy.”

X liked being itself. But X cried a lot that night, partly because it felt afraid. So X’s father held X tight, and cuddled it, and couldn’t help crying a little, too. And X’s mother cheered them both up by reading an Xciting story about an enchanted prince called Sleeping Handsome, who woke up when Princess Charming kissed him.

The next morning, they all felt much better, and little X went back to school with a brave smile and a clean pair of red-and-white checked overalls.

There was a seven-letter-word spelling bee in class that day. And a seven-lap boys’ relay race in the gym. And a seven-layer-cake baking contest in the girls’ kitchen corner. X won the spelling bee. X also won the relay race. And X almost won the baking contest, except it forgot to light the oven. Which only proves that nobody’s perfect.

One of the Other Children noticed something else, too. He said: “Winning or losing doesn’t seem to count to X. X seems to have fun being good at boys’ skills and girls’ skills.”

“Come to think of it,” said another one of the Other Children, “maybe X is having twice as much fun as we are!”

So after school that day, the girl who beat X at the baking contest gave X a big slice of her prizewinning cake. And the boy X beat in the relay race asked X to race him home.

From then on, some really funny things began to happen. Susie, who sat next to X in class, suddenly refused to wear pink dresses to school any more. She insisted on wearing red-and-white checked overalls— just like X’s. Overalls, she told her parents, were much better for climbing monkey bars.

Then Jim, the class football nut, started wheeling his little sister’s doll carriage around the football field. He’d put on his entire football uniform, except for the helmet. Then he’d put the helmet in the carriage, lovingly tucked under an old set of shoulder pads. Then he’d start jogging around the field, pushing the carriage and singing “Rockabye Baby” to his football helmet. He told his family that X did the same thing, so it must be okay. After all, X was now the team’s star quarterback.

Susie’s parents were horrified by her behavior, and Jim’s parents were worried sick about his. But the worst came when the twins, Joe and Peggy, decided to share everything with each other. Peggy used Joe’s hockey skates, and his microscope, and took half his newspaper route. Joe used Peggy’s needlepoint kit, and her cookbooks, and took two of her three baby-sitting jobs. Peggy started running the lawn mower, and Joe started running the vacuum cleaner.

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Their parents weren’t one bit pleased with Peggy’s wonderful biology experiments, or with Joe’s terrific needlepoint pillows. They didn’t care that Peggy mowed the lawn better, and that Joe vacuumed the carpet better. In fact, they were furious. It’s all that little X’s fault, they agreed. Just because X doesn’t know what it is, or what it’s supposed to be, it wants to get everybody else mixed up, too!

Peggy and Joe were forbidden to play with X anymore. So was Susie, and then Jim, and then all the Other Children. But it was too late; the Other Children stayed mixed up and happy and free, and refused to go back to the way they’d been before X.

Finally, Joe and Peggy’s parents decided to call an emergency meeting of the school’s Parents’ Association, to discuss “The X Problem.” They sent a report to the principal stating that X was a “disruptive influence.” They demanded immediate action. The Joneses, they said, should be forced to tell whether X was a boy or a girl. And then X should be forced to behave like whichever it was. If the Joneses refused to tell, the Parents’ Association said, then X must take an Xamination. The school psychiatrist must Xamine it physically and mentally, and issue a full report. If X’s test showed it was a boy, it would have to obey all the boys’ rules. If it proved to be a girl, X would have to obey all the girls’ rules.

And if X turned out to be some kind of mixed-up misfit, then X should be Xpelled from the school. Immediately!

The principal was very upset. Disruptive influ- ence? Mixed-up misfit? But X was an Xcellent student. All the teachers said it was a delight to have X in their classes. X was president of the student council. X had won first prize in the talent show, and second prize in the art show, and honorable mention in the science fair, and six athletic events on field day, including the potato race.

Nevertheless, insisted the Parents’ Association, X is a Problem Child. X is the Biggest Problem Child we have ever seen!

So the principal reluctantly notified X’s parents that numerous complaints about X’s behavior had

come to the school’s attention. And that after the psychiatrist’s Xamination, the school would decide what to do about X.

The Joneses reported this at once to the scientists, who referred them to page 85,759 of the Instruction Manual. “Sooner or later,” it said, “X will have to be Xamined by a psychiatrist. This may be the only way any of us will know for sure whether X is mixed up—or whether everyone else is.”

The night before X was to be Xamined, the Joneses tried not to let X see how worried they were. “What if—?” Mr. Jones would say. And Ms. Jones would reply, “No use worrying.” Then a few minutes later, Ms. Jones would say, “What if—?” and Mr. Jones would reply, “No use worrying.”

X just smiled at them both, and hugged them hard and didn’t say much of anything. X was thinking, What if—? And then X thought: No use worrying.

At Xactly nine o’clock the next day, X reported to the school psychiatrist’s office. The principal, along with a committee from the Parents’ Association, X’s teacher, X’s classmates, and Ms. and Mr. Jones, waited in the hall outside. Nobody knew the details of the tests X was to be given, but everybody knew they’d be very hard, and that they’d reveal Xactly what everyone wanted to know about X, but were afraid to ask.

It was terribly quiet in the hall. Almost spooky. Once in a while, they would hear a strange noise inside the room. There were buzzes. And a beep or two. And several bells. An occasional light would flash under the door. The Joneses thought it was a white light, but the principal thought it was blue. Two or three children swore it was either yellow or green. And the Parents’ Committee missed it completely.

Through it all, you could hear the psychiatrist’s low voice, asking hundreds of questions, and X’s higher voice, answering hundreds of answers.

The whole thing took so long that everyone knew it must be the most complete Xamination anyone had ever had to take. Poor X, the Joneses thought. Serves X right, the Parents’ Committee thought. I wouldn’t like to be in X’s overalls right now, the children thought.

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Chapter 19 X: A Fabulous Child’s Story 189

At last, the door opened. Everyone crowded around to hear the results. X didn’t look any dif- ferent; in fact, X was smiling. But the psychiatrist looked terrible. He looked as if he was crying! “What happened?” everyone began shouting. Had X done something disgraceful? “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised!” muttered Peggy and Joe’s parents. “Did X flunk the whole test?” cried Susie’s parents. “Or just the most important part?” yelled Jim’s parents.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Mr. Jones. “Oh, dear,” sighed Ms. Jones. “Sssh,” ssshed the principal. “The psychiatrist is

trying to speak.” Wiping his eyes and clearing his throat, the

psychiatrist began, in a hoarse whisper. “In my opin- ion,” he whispered—you could tell he must be very upset—“in my opinion, young X here—”

“Yes? Yes?” shouted a parent impatiently. “Sssh!” ssshed the principal. “Young Sssh here, I mean young X,” said the

doctor, frowning, “is just about—” “Just about what? Let’s have it!” shouted

another parent. “… just about the least mixed-up child I’ve ever

Xamined!” said the psychiatrist. “Yay for X!” yelled one of the children. And then

the others began yelling, too. Clapping and cheering and jumping up and down.

“SSSH!” ssshed the principal, but nobody did. The Parents’ Committee was angr y and

bewildered. How could X have passed the whole Xamination? Didn’t X have an identity problem? Wasn’t X mixed up at all ? Wasn’t X any kind of a misfit? How could it not be, when it didn’t even know what it was? And why was the psychiatrist crying?

Actually, he had stopped crying and was smiling politely through his tears. “Don’t you see?” he said. “I’m crying because it’s wonderful! X has absolutely no identity problem! X isn’t one bit mixed up! As for being a misfit—ridiculous! X knows perfectly well what it is! Don’t you, X?” The doctor winked. X winked back.

“But what is X?” shrieked Peggy and Joe’s parents. “We still want to know what it is!”

“Ah, yes,” said the doctor, winking again. “Well, don’t worry. You’ll all know one of these days. And you won’t need me to tell you.”

“What? What does he mean?” some of the par- ents grumbled suspiciously.

Susie and Peggy and Joe all answered at once. “He means that by the time X’s sex matters, it won’t be a secret anymore!”

With that, the doctor began to push through the crowd toward X’s parents. “How do you do,” he said, somewhat stiffly. And then he reached out to hug them both. “If I ever have an X of my own,” he whispered, “I sure hope you’ll lend me your instruction manual.”

Needless to say, the Joneses were very happy. The Project Baby X scientists were rather pleased, too. So were Susie, Jim, Peggy, Joe, and all the Other Children. The Parents’ Association wasn’t, but they had promised to accept the psychiatrist’s report, and not make any more trouble. They even invited Ms. and Mr. Jones to become honorary members, which they did.

Later that day, all X’s friends put on their red- and-white checked overalls and went over to see X. They found X in the back yard, playing with a very tiny baby that none of them had ever seen before. The baby was wearing very tiny red-and-white checked overalls.

“How do you like our new baby?” X asked the Other Children proudly.

“It’s got cute dimples,” said Jim. “It’s got husky biceps, too,” said Susie. “What kind of baby is it?” asked Joe and Peggy. X frowned at them. “Can’t you tell?” Then X

broke into a big, mischievous grin. “It’s a Y!”

Source: Gould, Lois. (1998). “X: A Fabulous Child’s Story.”

In Blyth McVicker Clinchy & Julie K. Norem (Eds.), The

Gender and Psychology Reader (pp. 523–530). New

York, NY: NYU Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 12

• Multiple Masculinities. Historians and anthropol- ogists have shown that there is no one pattern of masculinity that is found everywhere. Different cultures and different periods of history construct masculinity differently. Equally important, more than one kind of masculinity can be found within a given cultural setting. Within any workplace, neighbour- hood or peer group, there are likely to be different understandings of masculinity and different ways of “doing” masculinity.

• Hierarchy of Masculinities. Different masculinities do not sit side-by-side like dishes in a smorgasbord; there are definite relations between them. Typically, some masculinities are more honoured than others. Some may be actively dishonoured, for example, homosexual masculinities in modern western cul- ture. Some are socially marginalized, for example, the masculinities of disempowered ethnic minori- ties. Some are exemplary, taken as symbolizing

admired traits, for example, the masculinities of sporting heroes.

• Hegemonic Masculinity. The form of masculinity that is culturally dominant in a given setting is called “hegemonic masculinity.” “Hegemonic” signifies a position of cultural authority and leadership, not total dominance; other forms of masculinity per- sist alongside. The hegemonic form need not be the most common form of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is, however, highly visible. It is likely to be what casual commentators have noticed when they speak of “the male role.” Hegemonic masculinity is hegemonic not just in relation to other masculinities, but in relation to the gender order as a whole. It is an expression of the privilege men collectively have over women. The hierarchy of masculinities is an expression of the unequal shares in that privilege held by different groups of men.

UNDERSTANDING MASCULINITIES: THE WORK OF RAEWYN CONNELL

Raewyn Connell is a professor emerita at the University of Sydney. She was one of the founders of the study of masculinity and published Masculinities in 1995. The concept of “hegemonic masculinity” was introduced in the book and has been particularly influ- ential and controversial. Connell has been an advisor to United Nations initiatives on gender equality and peacemaking and is considered one of the pre-eminent scholars of global masculinities. A sociologist by training, Connell has won numerous awards for her contributions to the study of sex and gender. Below are some of her key insights about the workings of masculinity.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 12 Understanding Masculinities: The Work of Raewyn Connell 191

• Active Construction of Masculinities. Masculinities do not exist prior to social behaviour, either as bodily states or fixed personalities. Rather, masculinities come into existence as people act. They are accom- plished in everyday conduct or organizational life, as patterns of social practice. In other words, we “do gender” in everyday life. However, masculini- ties are far from settled. From bodybuilders in the gym, to managers in the boardroom, to boys in the elementary school playground, a great deal of effort goes into the making of conventional, as well as non-conventional, masculinities. Recent research on homosexual men shows that for men too, identity and relationships involve a complex and sustained effort of construction.

• Dynamics of Masculinities. Since different mas- culinities exist in different cultures and historical epochs, we can deduce that masculinities are able to change. Masculine identities are not fixed but are dynamic; particular masculinities are composed, de-composed, contested and replaced. Sometimes, this process of contestation and change finds spec- tacular public expression, in large-scale rallies or demonstrations. More often, it is local and limited. Sometimes, it becomes conscious and deliberate; at other times, it is non-conscious.

Source: Connell, Raewyn. (2002). Slightly modified

from “Understanding Men: Gender Sociology and the

New International Research on Masculinities.” Social

Thought and Research, 24(1–2), 13–31.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 13

Donald Trump’s advantage over Hillary Clinton with white voters has been one of the most talked-about story lines of the 2016 presidential campaign. What’s received far less attention is the fact that men make up the over- whelming majority of Trump’s white base of support. […]

JE: In your new book, Man Enough? you look at how cultural ideals of manhood have shaped the way we see the presidency and the qualifications of presidential candidates. How do differences in men’s and women’s voting patterns, the so-called gender gap, factor into your analysis?

JK: One of the main things I look at in the book is why so many men—white men in particular—have been abandoning the Democratic Party over the past 40-plus years and identifying as Republicans and conservatives. For decades it has flummoxed both Democrats and many on the left that millions of

working and downwardly mobile middle-class white guys vote for the party that delivers tax cuts to the wealthy and seeks to eliminate programs that are designed to help working families. Why do they vote against what many of us see as their self-interest? I’ve tried to demonstrate that millions of white guys have an emotional and identity investment in a certain ideology and style of manhood. We hear a lot about men voting based on things like national security and free enterprise and taxes and the econ- omy, but I think this misses how their identities as men are also at work here. In the simplest terms, I’m saying it’s the masculinity, stupid!

JE: How does your analysis apply to the current cam- paign? Polls show Trump with a massive advantage over Hillary with men, specifically white men—a much greater margin than Hillary’s advantage with women overall.1

IT’S THE MASCULINITY, STUPID!

Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp

Jackson Katz is internationally renowned for his groundbreaking scholarship and ac- tivism on issues of gender, race, and violence. He has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence.

Jeremy Earp is the production director of the Media Education Foundation and the dir- ector of several films on media culture and politics, including Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood & American Culture, featuring and based on the work of Jackson Katz. Below is an excerpt from their interview on the throwback allure of Donald Trump.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 13 It’s the Masculinity, Stupid! 193

JK: I think the gigantic and historic gender gap we’re see- ing is the natural outgrowth of Trump doubling down on Republican strategy that goes back decades—a strategy designed, at its core, to target white vot- ers, especially white male voters, and run up huge margins with them. The problem with this strategy, of course, is that the percentage of white men as a share of the total electorate has been shrinking. That’s why so many Republicans have been arguing for years that the party needs to modify its approach and grow its voting base, and it’s why so many of them have been recoiling in horror at Trump’s approach. Trump and his people clearly aren’t buying any of this. They’ve obviously made a calculation that they can win without growing the base so long as they can capture something like 70% of the white male vote, which would be a historic record. They’ve been very up front about this. Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who’s now working for CNN, said after Trump’s immigration speech on August 31 that the chief goal of the speech was to “lock in the white guys” who are Trump’s core voters. This was an incredibly revealing statement, but most commentators ignored it, focusing instead on how Trump’s aggressive and uncompromising tone might be turning off swing voters and women.

JE: Why do you think that is? When gender comes up in discussions of politics, why does the conversation always seem to turn to women and women’s voting patterns, leaving men off the hook?

JK: I think it’s partly an analytic blind spot, rooted in the fact that we’re not used to seeing dominant groups as “groups” at all. It’s the same with discussions about race. When most people hear the word “race,” they tend to think about people of color, not whites, because white people are the unexamined norm we measure other racial groups against. In the same way, when gender comes up, the conversation typ- ically turns to “women’s issues” and the kind of things that motivate women voters. What’s mostly

missing is any kind of sustained look at the male side of the gender gap, the material and symbolic factors that have driven men’s voting patterns over the years.

JE: A lot’s been made of Trump’s genius as a media impresario, especially his mastery of television. In your view, what is it about Trump’s media per- formance as a man that seems to be resonating so powerfully with white guys of very different class backgrounds?

JK: When you listen to Trump’s supporters, they say over and over again that what Trump says isn’t as important as how he says it. They love the confi- dent, aggressive, forceful, and unfiltered way he expresses himself, the fact that he doesn’t back down, doesn’t apologize even when he’s obviously wrong. That he refuses to be “politically correct.” It’s the whole straight-shooter cowboy thing, the sense that he tells it like it is. This is exactly what people used to say about Ronald Reagan—that they may not have always agreed with him, but at least they knew where he stood. A lot of people were drawn to his persona, especially men, and white working-class men in particular. And I think Trump is tapping into a lot of these same longings for a throwback to the days when men were men.

JE: In a lot of the mainstream commentary on the gender gap, it seems to be assumed that men are somehow hardwired to be more conservative than women. What’s your take on this?

JK: The right-wing echo chamber of talk radio, Fox News, and alt-right media, especially, make it seem like American men emerge from the womb as natural Republicans and conservatives. But what this for- gets is that working-class and blue collar white men in the United States were rock-solid Democrats for decades, beginning with the 1930s New Deal and all the way through the 1960s. During those years,

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194 Part 2 Constructions of Sex and Gender

most blue-collar white guys wouldn’t have dreamed of voting Republican, who were seen as the party of effete country club elites, out-of-touch aristocrats, and snobs who were hostile to the interests of the average working man.

JE: When, and why, did that start to change?

JK: For me, the watershed year is 1972, when Richard Nixon won a crushing 49-state landslide victory over South Dakota Senator George McGovern. Nixon won huge numbers of blue collar white men who had been rock-solid Democrats since FDR and the New Deal, setting in motion the political realign- ment that shapes presidential politics to this day. Since 1972, Republicans have not only succeeded in positioning themselves as the party of white people in the post-Civil Rights era, but as the party of real men. They’ve also managed, on a parallel track, to cast the Democrats not only as the party of African-Americans and people of color, but also as the party of soft and weak men, an ineffectual collection of weak-kneed, emasculated intellectuals who align themselves with women and gays and turn their backs on the real-world issues that real men care about in a dangerous world full of real threats. There’s no question race was also abso- lutely central to these shifts, but race isn’t enough to explain why so many white men fled the Democratic Party while so many white women stayed put. I don’t think we can separate the race politics from the gender politics.

JE: Are there other factors involved here?

JK: I think some of the Democratic Party’s diminished strength with white working men can also be traced to the decline of the labor movement as a traditional source of masculine strength. As blue collar manu- facturing jobs have been shipped overseas, a lot of dislocated, alienated, and screwed-over white work- ing-class guys have gravitated toward the tough-guy

rhetoric and symbolism of the Republicans to hold on to their manhood. The Republican Party may offer working-class white men very little in terms of actual policies that benefit them, but at least they offer them a kind of cultural recognition and validation.

JE: Beyond the optics and rhetoric, are there actual issues Republicans have seized on to speak to these men?

JK: There are a number of key issues that have allowed Republican candidates to reach out to male voters, especially working-class white guys, and establish their masculine chops. The gun issue, for example, is clearly about much more than legalistic debates about the proper interpretation of constitutional rights. For many gun-owning men, the issue is intensely personal and goes to core aspects of their identity. […] And there’s a whole range of issues like this—military spending, law and order, etc.—that speak to white men, emotionally, as men.

JE: How does the right-wing narrative about liberal elitism come into play here?

JK: When conservatives go on and on about Democrats being cultural elitists who look down on average folks, it’s really just another way of feminizing them. If Democrats are unassertive, effete, and urbane intellectuals who use genteel, condescending language, then how can they be trusted to provide tough leadership and act in the interests of the hard- scrabble working men of the American heartland? Trump has gotten a lot of mileage out of this men- tality. Even though he grew up the pampered child of complete and utter privilege, his brash personal style and bravado have signaled to a lot of work- ing-class white guys that he’s one of them, a “real man” and a “blue collar billionaire” who understands them—the kind of guy, in Clint Eastwood’s words, who can fight back against the liberal “wussification” of America. It’s totally emotional, it’s all about white

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 13 It’s the Masculinity, Stupid! 195

men’s identities, and it has nothing to do with how Republican policies will affect working-class men and women in the real world.

JE: And yet conservatives have somehow been able to frame “identity politics” as this emotionally sensitive stuff that only liberals and left-wingers engage in.

JK: Exactly. If you’re not straight, white, and male, and you assert your rights based on your gender or racial or ethnic identities, you get accused of playing identity politics; you’re criticized for playing the “woman card” or the “race card.” At the same time, if you’re a woman who supports a woman candidate, or a person of color who supports a person of color, you’re dismissed for allowing your own personal identity to cloud your judgment. It’s as though only subordinate groups have identities, only people of color and women and LGBTQ people are prone to thinking about politics and the world through the lens of their experience as gendered and racial beings. And it’s as though straight white guys are somehow immune to all of this, which is obviously

ridiculous. Trump and his handlers have very clearly, and by their own admission, been playing the “man card”—the white man card—again and again during this campaign.

Note

1. Editors’ note: This interview was conducted prior to the

2016 U.S. presidential election held on November 8, 2016.

Trump lost the popular vote but won the election.

Source: Katz, Jackson, & Earp, Jeremy. (2016, September

26). Excerpted from “It’s the Masculinity, Stupid! An

Interview with Jackson Katz on the Throwback Allure

of Donald Trump.” Media Education Foundation.

Reprinted from Huffington Post, October 2, 2016:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/its-the-

masculinity-stupid-an-interview-withjackson_

us_57f197b9e4b07f20daa10e6f. Full interview

can be found at: http://www.mediaed.org/itsthe-

masculinity-stupidan-interview-with-jackson-katz-on-

the-throwback-allure-of-donald-trump/.

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T o most people, being a man or a woman is above all a matter of personal experience. It is part of the way we grow up, the way we conduct family life and sexual relationships, the way we present ourselves in everyday situations, and the way we see ourselves. This chapter examines some issues that arise in this realm of intimacy, and reflects on how to understand what happens here.

* * * * *

GROWING UP GENDERED: SEX ROLE SOCIALIZATION

When sex role theory provided the main framework of gender studies, there was a straightforward account of how people acquired gender. Babies were identified as either female or male and put in pink and blue clothes respectively. The blue babies were expected to behave rougher and tougher, to be more demanding and vig- orous. In time, they were given toy guns, footballs, and computer games. The pink babies were expected to be more passive and compliant, also prettier. As they grew older, they were dressed in frilly clothes, given dolls and makeup kits, told to take care of their appearance and be polite and agreeable.

CHAPTER 20

Gender in Personal Life

Raewyn Connell and Rebecca Pearse

Rebecca Pearse is a professor in the Department of Political Economy at the Uni- versity of Sydney. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow working at the Australian National University on a project entitled Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences. Pearse has expertise in the political economy of climate and energy policy, social responses to environmental change, the sociology of knowledge, and feminism and gender relations.

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Chapter 20 Gender in Personal Life 197

Put more formally, the idea was that ‘sex roles’ were acquired by socialization. Various ‘agencies of socialization’, notably the family, the school, the peer group, and the mass media, took the growing child in hand. Through an immense number of small interac- tions, these agencies conveyed to the girl or the boy the social ‘norms’ or expectations for behaviour. This could be done by imitating admired ‘role models’, such as a father might be for a boy; or it could be done piecemeal. Compliance with the norms would lead to rewards, or ‘positive sanctions’: smiles from mother, approval from friends, good marks at school, success in the dating game, appointment to a good job. Nonconformity or deviance would lead to negative sanctions, all the way from frowns to getting beaten up or sent to gaol.

With this mixture of positive and negative reinforcement, most children would learn the gender- appropriate behaviour, develop the traits the society thought appropriate for women or for men, and thus ‘internalize’ the norms. As fully socialized members of society, they would in turn apply negative sanc- tions to deviants, and convey the norms to the next generation. Of course, the process could go wrong, for instance if fathers disappeared from families and boys lacked role models, which would probably lead to juvenile delinquency.

There is something to be said for this story of how gender is acquired, but there are also severe problems with it; so severe, in fact, that the socialization model should be abandoned.

First, it is too monolithic. The world does not consist of neatly homogeneous cultures. Cultures were smashed, fragmented, and re-composed by conquest, colonization, migration, and contempor- ary globalization. The ethnic pluralism of modern societies mixes traditions. The model of sex role socialization mistakes what is dominant for what is normative. Further, multiple patterns arise within gender relations. […] There are always multiple patterns of masculinity and femininity to complicate the picture of learning.

Second, the socialization model supposes that learning gender is a matter of acquiring traits, that is, regularities of character that will produce regularities of behaviour. Sex role theory, basically, is a version of the difference model of gender. But, major differences in traits between women and men (or between girls and boys) are hard to detect.

Third, the socialization model pictures the learner as passive, the agencies of socialization as active. In real life, gender learning does not look like this. Consider the American elementary schools studied by Barrie Thorne (1993). The boys and girls here are not lying back and letting the gender norms wash over them. They are constantly active. They sometimes accept gender divisions supplied by adults and some- times don’t. They set up their own gender divisions in the playground, and then disrupt them. They try out gendered self-presentations (e.g., the older girls putting on lip gloss); they complain, joke, fantasize, and question about gender. Similar energy appears in other studies of schools. […]

The socialization model seems to miss the pleasure that is obvious in much gender learning; the resist- ance which many young people put up to hegemonic definitions of gender; and the difficulty involved in constructing identities and working out patterns of conduct in a gender order marked by power, violence, and alienated sexualities. […]

Fourth, the socialization model recognizes just one direction of learning—towards or away from the sex role norms. This makes it hard to understand the shifts of direction that often appear in a young person’s life, coming apparently from nowhere. There can be a shift of attachment from mother to father, a new level of aggression, a sudden burst of sexual activity, a turning away from girls or boys. Rather than just failing to ‘internalize’ the gender patterns of her/his parents, a young person may vehemently reject them, criticize their political or human inadequacy, and launch out on a search for something different.

* * * * *

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A BETTER ACCOUNT: EMBODIED LEARNING

A good account of how we acquire gender must rec- ognize both the contradictions of development, and the fact that learners are active, not passive. It must recognize the agency of bodies in the social world, since the active learner is embodied. It must recognize the power and the complexity of the institutions that occupy the learner’s world. It must give an account of the gender competencies that are learned, and the different life projects in which they are used. And it must recognize historical change in all these respects.

The pleasure involved in learning gender is to some extent a bodily pleasure, pleasure in the body’s appearance and in the body’s performance. Bodily changes such as menarche, first ejaculation, the ‘breaking’ of a boy’s voice, and the development of a girl’s breasts are important, but their meanings remain ambiguous until they are given definition by the society’s gender symbolism.

Because gender practice involves bodies but is not biologically determined, the learned behaviour may be hostile to bodies’ physical well-being. Young men in rich countries such as the United States and Australia, enacting their fresh-minted masculinities on the roads, die in appalling numbers in traffic accidents, at a rate four times higher than young women. A large number of adolescent girls and young women go in for dieting, in an attempt to maintain their heterosexual attractiveness. For a smaller number, this escalates into life-threatening anorexia. In poorer countries, the circumstances are different but the stakes are also very high. In the Palestinian confrontation with Israeli occupation, the intifada, most of the direct resistance has been carried out by very young men and boys. As Julie Peteet (1994) showed in a terrifying ethnography, being beaten or arrested by the Israeli army and police became a kind of rite of passage into masculinity for Palestinian youth; and some of them were killed.

Embodied learners encounter the gender regimes of the institutions they come in contact with. The

socialization model was right about the importance of the family, the school, and the media in children’s lives, but failed to recognize the internal complexity of the gender regimes of these institutions. In a school, teach- ers and peer groups present a range of different patterns of masculinity and femininity to the children. […]

The diversity of gender patterns among children and youth shows up with particular clarity in research that looks across different social groups. Stephen Frosh, Ann Phoenix, and Rob Pattman, in a very perceptive study called Young Masculinities (2002), report on 11- to 14-year-old boys in 12 secondary schools across London. They show that ethnic position is prominent in London boys’ views about masculinity—Afro-Caribbean boys being thought high in masculinity and Asian boys low. Relationships with schools are ambivalent, academic success being both desired and thought feminine. Above all, the study shows that diversity in the boys’ lives exists in tension with ‘canonical narratives’ of masculinity, i.e., a hegemonic pattern (an admired physical toughness, sports skills, heterosexuality). All boys acknowledge the hegemonic masculinity but most do not fully inhabit it. Rather, their adolescence is marked by a complex negotiation with definitions of gender, in which they may criticize some versions of masculinity as too tough, while rejecting others as effeminate.

Much of young people’s learning about gender is learning what we might call gender competence. Young people learn how to navigate the local gender order and the gender regimes of the institutions they deal with. They learn how to adopt a certain gender identity and produce a certain gender performance—how to ‘do gender’, as West and Zimmerman (1987) famously put it. Young people also learn how to distance themselves from a given gender identity, how to joke about their own performance. Most boys and girls fail to match gender ideals of handsomeness, beauty, skill, achieve- ment, or recognition. But most of them cope. […]

Gender configurations, being patterns of activity, are not static. Masculinity and femininity are ‘pro- jects’, to use a term suggested by the philosopher

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Jean-Paul Sartre (1968). They are patterns of a life- course projected from the present into the future, bringing new conditions or events into existence. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) includes a long section that discusses alternative life projects for women as they existed in European society and hist- ory. There is likely to be overlap in the gender projects, a degree of social standardization of individual lives. These common trajectories of gender formation are what researchers pick up as patterns of masculinity or femininity in life-history and ethnographic research.

Gender projects are not one-dimensional or smooth, and may involve heavy costs. Any trajectory involves a number of distinct moments in which differ- ent gender commitments are made, different strategies are adopted, or different resolutions of gender issues are achieved. This can be seen in the lives of a group of men from the Australian ‘green’ movement (Connell 1995: ch. 5). Most of them grew up in homes with a conven- tional gender division of labour, and in childhood and adolescence began to make a commitment to hege- monic masculinity. But this moment of engagement was followed by a moment of negation, as they started to distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity, for a variety of reasons, including family conflict. Most then, in the counter-culture or in the green movement, encountered feminism and were obliged to confront gender issues head-on: this was a moment of separation from hegemonic masculinity. Some were still at this point when we interviewed them. Some, however, had moved on to a moment of contestation, starting a pol- itical project of reforming masculinity and committing themselves to gender equality.

The diversity of masculinities and femininities shown by a great deal of gender research implies dif- ferent trajectories of gender formation. Class inequal- ities, ethnic diversity, regional difference, national origin, and migration create different experiences of childhood. Major social changes may alter relations between parents and children. […]

The diversity of trajectories is shown in a British study, Gillian Dunne’s Lesbian Lifestyles (1997). Some

of the women she interviewed served an ‘apprentice- ship’ to conventional femininity, some were tomboys; some grew up in families with a conventional division of labour, some in egalitarian homes. Dunne empha- sizes the agency of the girls in responding to these experiences. But she also notes the intractability of the gender order. As they moved into adolescence, where the ‘romance’ and ‘dating’ culture ruled, many of the girls found the middle ground in gender relations, which they had previously occupied, disappearing beneath their feet. As one woman, Connie, recalls:

The whole thing changed, suddenly they became totally different people. I thought what is this thing that happens to everyone else and doesn’t happen to me? … I didn’t know how to behave, quite honestly. They all seemed to have this secret code that they all learned, and I didn’t. They all knew how to behave at discos, and I would sit pinned to the wall terrified. Where did they learn this? I didn’t have it. It was some sort of pattern of social behaviour that everyone fell into, and I didn’t have it—God! … The big ‘goo goo’ eyes came out, the painted faces, and the frocks, and all that stuff, and the act, the peacock act, basically attracting.

As the gender order changes, new trajectories become possible. In parts of the world influenced by the Women’s Liberation movement, young women growing up in the following decades had their own dilemmas about jobs, marriage, and children, as can be seen in the stories told in Chilla Bulbeck’s three-generation study, Living Feminism (1997). But they did not face the same impasse as women of earlier generations. Belief in gender equality has also spread among younger men, in some places. Witness the national study of men in Germany by Paul Zulehner and Rainer Volz (1998), where men below 50 endorse a gender-equal model of family life, and reject ‘trad- itional’ norms, much more often than men above 50.

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DISCOURSE AND IDENTITY

Perhaps the commonest way of understanding the presence of gender in personal life is through the con- cept of ‘gender identity’. The term ‘identity’ shifted meaning during its long history. […] Erik Erikson’s famous Childhood and Society (1950) interpreted a range of modern personal, social, and political prob- lems as difficulties in achieving identity. […]

To Erikson, the term identity meant the coher- ence of the psychological mechanisms by which the ego handles the pressures that impinge on it—from the unconscious mind, on the one side, and the outside world, on the other. The question ‘who am I?’ is, in principle, answered by the ego’s success in mastering the trials and tribulations of psychological develop- ment. This was, Erikson thought, a particularly important issue in adolescence.

The key application of this concept to gender was made by the American psychiatrist Robert Stoller (1968), who altered it in two ways. First, the ‘core gender identity’ that Stoller saw as the basis of adult personality was supposed to be formed very early in life, not in adolescence. Second, the concept of iden- tity acquired a different frame of reference. Erikson referred to the integration of the ego as a whole. Stoller’s conception was much more specific. To talk of ‘gender identity’ is to talk only of one aspect of the person—her or his involvement in gender relations or sexual practice.

To Stoller, this narrower focus did not matter because he assumed that the integration of the per- sonality as a whole was largely focused on the sense of being a male or a female. But on any other view of personality and social process, an exclusive focus on gender is a problem. We can speak just as meaning- fully of ‘racial identity’, ‘generational identity’, or ‘class identity’. If we acknowledge the ‘constant interweav- ing’ (Bottomley 1992) of these social relations, which is now common in discussions of intersectionality, we must attend to these other forms of identity in order to understand gender identity. The concept

of ‘gender identity’ formulated by Stoller thus leads towards a conception of identity as inherently plural rather than unitary.

A model of identity built on gender dichotomy was easily accepted by the 1970s because American feminist research emphasized gender difference in the rearing of children. […]

Though it has been well established that men can ‘mother’ (Risman 1986), it is still the case that, in con- temporary Western society, few of them do. But the reasons for this may be economic rather than psych- ological. Introducing paid leave for fathers of young children, in Scandinavia, has been a successful reform (Holter 2003). There has also been more recognition […] that we do not find dichotomous gender patterns in adult personalities. […]

The trend has therefore been to speak of multiple gender and sexual identities. […] The concept of ‘iden- tity’ has increasingly been used for claims made by individuals about who they are in terms of difference from other people.

This is closely related to the growth, especially in the United States, of identity politics. One becomes a member of a social movement by claiming the identity (as Black, as a woman, as lesbian, etc.) that the movement represents. Queer politics takes the process a step further. Queer activists have challenged taken-for-granted communities by emphasizing their diversity: highlighting the presence of Black lesbians in white-dominated lesbian communities, for instance. Yet the queer movement has, ironically, generated a spectacular new identity, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), sometimes expanded by adding TQI (transsexual, queer, intersex) and even others who can be assembled under the umbrella as ‘sexual minorities’. LGBT persons, and the LGBT community, are now familiar entities in human rights talk and sexual politics.

Even the identities on which social movements have been based prove, on close examination, to be less solid than we might think. Arne Nilsson’s (1998) beautifully crafted study of homosexual history in the Swedish city of Gothenburg identifies three ways of

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being homosexual: ‘so’, commonly a bit effeminate; ‘real men’, often working-class youth; and ‘fjollor’, flam- boyant queens. Three identities, perhaps? But Nilsson also shows how the patterns of homosexual life grew out of the structure of the industrial and maritime city. Among the conditions shaping sexuality were crowded housing, a sharp gender division of labour, high density of men in public spaces, a non-respectable working-class street life, connections to other cities via the shipping trade, certain patterns of policing, and the poverty of many young men, who might enter homo- sexual relationships for a period and then move on.

The distinctive forms of homosexual practice changed as these conditions changed. The 1950s saw rising affluence in Sweden, suburban work- ing-class housing, the growth of the welfare state, and moral panics about the seduction of youth. A sharper cultural distinction between heterosexual and homosexual people followed the increasing privacy of sexual conduct itself. Thus, the configurations of sexual and social practice which might easily be read as ‘identities’ were dependent on historically transitory social conditions, and for many participants were only a limited part of their whole sexual life-history. […]

Is a unified identity really so desirable? To weld one’s personality into a united whole is to refuse inter- nal diversity and openness, perhaps to refuse change. Major reform in gender relations may well require a loss of self, an experience of gender vertigo, as part of the process. This seemed common among the group of men in the Australian ‘green’ movement who were trying to change traditional masculinity. […] But how far can changing gender configurations go? We now turn to [other] cases recognized in gender studies.

TRANSITION, TRANSGENDER, AND TRANSSEXUAL

One of the most dramatic proofs of the importance of social processes in gender, and a familiar disproof of biological essentialism, is the fact that different

societies have recognized different gender categories. There are not only women and men; there might also be third genders, or variations on two that seem to multiply the gender categories in which people can live.

This question has intrigued gender researchers, and there is a large ethnographic literature addressed to categories such as the berdache, the ‘two-souled’ people of Indigenous cultures in the south-western region of North America (Williams 1986), who have male bodies, a social position closer to that of women than of men, and great spiritual power. Javanese society traditionally provided a space for banci, people with male bodies and women’s dress who typically have sex with straight men. In Brazil, there are travesti, often in poverty and making their living as sex workers, who are physically male but feel themselves feminine, and have sex with men within a sexual culture that makes a strong distinction between the insertive and the receptive partner.

These groups are all different from each other, and it is debated whether the idea of a ‘third gender’ makes sense for any of them. Certainly, all such patterns can change, as shown in Thailand. In research by Peter Jackson (1997), the traditional Thai sex/gender cat- egories for males were phuchai (man, mainly heterosex- ual) and kathoey (effeminate or cross-gender, receptive homosexual). Under the impact of international gay culture, these categories have not disappeared. Rather, they have been elaborated with a series of additions: bai (bisexual), gay-king (homosexual, preferring to be insertor), gay-queen (usually effeminate, preferring to be receptive), and gay-quing (masculine or effeminate, and sexually versatile).

Even within the gender order of the global North, which emphasizes a dichotomy of man and women, there are opportunities for violating the boundaries, whether in a carnival mood or with great seriousness. A well-known study by Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests (1992), finds an astonishing range of cross-dressing practices, in theatre, film, the sex industry, religion, music, detective stories, television … ranging from Marlene Dietrich’s top hat to Boy George’s dresses.

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People who somehow live across gender boundaries, who don’t just dip in and out, have intrigued gender analysts within Western culture as much as ‘third gender’ categories have intrigued ethnographers. […]

[After] the social science of gender was well developed, ‘transsexuals’, as such people came to be called in the 1950s, still appeared to psychiatrists and sociologists as a kind of natural experiment exposing the mechanism of the gender system. The story of the creation of ‘transsexualism’ as a medical syndrome, the ambiguous role of doctors, and the controversy within the medical profession has been well told (Meyerowitz 2002; Stryker 2008), and interested readers can find many of the key documents in Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle’s admirable Transgender Studies Reader (2006).

With the rise of performative theories of gender, there has been great interest in variations in gender and violations of norms. If normative gender is brought into being performatively, then by changing the performative actions, we should be able to create non-normative gender. This line of thought gave rise in the 1990s to a transgender movement influenced by queer theory, mainly in the United States, which has since had considerable impact across the world. This movement emphasized the instability of gen- der boundaries, rejected the ‘binary’ of male and female, and tried in various ways to live outside, or beyond, or across, gender categories. Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (1994) is perhaps the best-known statement from this movement.

The analysis of gender in the present chapter sug- gests an important difference between this transgen- der movement, focused on the symbolic dimension of gender and trying to break down or blur the symbolic categories of gender, and the projects of transition between locations in the gender order that since about 1950 have been called transsexual. Viviane Namaste in Invisible Lives (2000) challenges transgender dis- course, urging attention to the real-life experiences, subjectivities, and struggles of transsexual men and

women that are ‘erased’ by queer theory as well as by government agencies. Simply accessing health care and social services, as Namaste’s research in Canada shows, can be very difficult for people making tran- sitions. Yet the state, and the world of institutions more generally, is critically important for transsexual women. Namaste’s studies in her important book Sex Change, Social Change (2011) show the struggles for recognition and safety that have to be carried on—in prisons, in the media, in universities, in social services, in human rights forums.

The following account is based on the analysis in Raewyn Connell’s paper ‘Transsexual Women and Feminist Thought’ (2012), where more detail will be found. Whereas transgender stories mostly emphasize the fluidity of gender, transsexual autobi- ographies mostly emphasize gender’s stability, indeed its intransigence. This is abundantly clear in the best social-scientific study of gender transition, Henry Rubin’s Self-Made Men (2003). The gender project, to use the term introduced earlier in this chapter, is consistent over time—however ‘wrong’ in terms of conventional social embodiment it may be.

Experiences of contradictory embodiment are central in transsexual women’s lives. This is well shown in the survey undertaken by Claudine Griggs (1998) as well as autobiographies such as Katherine Cummings’ Katherine’s Diary (1992). Transsexual women describe these experiences in different ways: having a man’s body and a woman’s body at the same time, or one emerging from the other, or—the traditional one—being trapped in the wrong body. These figures of speech have aroused scorn, but they do highlight the importance of social embodiment. Transsexuality is best understood not as a syndrome nor as a discursive position, but as a bundle of life trajectories that arise from contradictions in social embodiment. Transsexual women’s narratives speak of recognition: sometimes a dramatic moment, some- times a gradually growing awareness, but centrally a matter of recognizing a fact about oneself, that one is a woman despite having a male body.

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But this recognizing is a fearful thing, because the central contradiction in transsexuality is so pow- erful. This fact is totally at odds with what everyone around knows, and with what the transsexual woman knows too, being also recognizable as a man (or boy, since this often happens in youth). And there is no walking away from this terror: gender is intransigent, both as a structure of the society and as a structure of personal life. Some transsexual women try to keep the contradiction inside their skins, and ride out the terror. Some kill themselves; it’s not clear how many, but there are high rates of attempted suicide. Moving towards transition is an attempt to end this precarious practice and achieve a settlement.

Because the contradiction is one of embodiment, transition now usually involves modifications to the body with medical aid. This involves a number of pro- cedures: psychiatric screening, hormonal treatment (mainly oestrogen for transsexual women, testosterone for transsexual men), surgery (‘top’ and ‘bottom’ in different packages), electrolysis, vocal training, and sometimes others. The process is unavoidably trau- matic, as shown in Griggs’ (1996) superb narrative of reassignment surgery.

There is nothing pretty about gender reassign- ment; these are rough measures and have rough results. Though media and scholarly attention have focused obsessively on the surgery, that is only part of the medical treatment, and medical treatment is only part of transition. A huge amount of other work is to be done. This includes raising funds; getting personal support, post-operative care, legal documentation; finding housing; dealing with relationship crises; dealing with a workplace or finding work; dealing with bodily changes; gaining social recognition; and dealing with hostility. Any of these may be uppermost in turn.

This work, as the sociology of gender would lead us to expect, engages all the dimensions of the gender order; it is not only about sexuality or identity. It is structured by the inequalities of the gender order; the process is not the same for transsexual women

and transsexual men. Transsexual women are shed- ding the patriarchal dividend that accrues to men as a group, in labor markets, finance markets (e.g., housing), family status, professional authority, and so on. A small but path-breaking econometric study by Kristen Schilt and Matthew Wiswall (2008) in the United States finds there is an economic penalty in transition for both men and women, but transsexual men eventually are better paid after transition than before, while transsexual women lose, on average, nearly one-third of their income.

A great deal rests on the responses of others. Transition puts partnerships, especially marriages, at acute risk: a wife’s position in the gender order is seriously challenged, and may be traumatically under- mined, by a husband’s moves towards transition. With transsexual women’s children, too, relationships may end at transition. Even when they continue, both child and parent have to handle the significant loss that occurs in transition. Gender relations are embodied; here it is embodied fatherhood being lost, and it is not only the transitioning woman who pays the price. These issues have become more prominent in autobio- graphies, such as the very readable account of transition by Jennifer Boylan (2003). As Boylan’s story shows, families can be resilient, and partnerships and parent/ child relationships can be re-woven. Indeed, family members may be vital supports during transition.

Gatekeepers for jobs and housing have to be negotiated with. According to recent research by Schilt and Wiswall (2008) in the United States, transsexual women have different workplace strat- egies. Some respond by concealing their stories—the ‘stealth’ strategy—while others are not only open about their transition, but contest rather than con- form to sexist conventions. These studies, however, had mainly middle-class samples. A lot of work- ing-class transsexual women have always survived by sex work. There is a certain clientele of straight men who are excited by transsexual women. But this does not mean they respect them. […] For that kind of reason, sex work is likely to be a precarious

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milieu, exposing transsexual women to high levels of HIV infection and violence (Garofalo et al. 2006; Namaste 2009).

In the past, feminists have often held negative views of transsexual women. This is less common now, and some transsexual women are well-recog- nized feminists. Most transsexual women are not banner-bearers for any cause. Gender transition only happens through severe contradictions in personal life, which can be unbearable, and commonly absorb a great deal of energy simply to hold together. Transsexual lives can be made harder, as Namaste says, by denial of recognition from institutions or movements. Yet in some sense these lives do show the potentials for change that lie in the historical process of social embodiment, and they enrich the project of gender justice that feminism has launched.

REFERENCES

Bottomley, Gillian. 1992. From Another Place: Migration and the Politics of Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bornstein, Kate. 1994. Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. New York: Routledge.

Boylan, Jennifer Finley. 2003. She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders. New York: Broadway Books.

Bulbeck, Chilla. 1997. Living Feminism: The Impact of the Women’s Movement on Three Generations of Australian Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Connell, Raewyn. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity. Connell, Raewyn. 2012. ‘Transsexual women and feminist

thought: Toward a new understanding and new politics’, Signs 37 (4): 857–81.

Cummings, Katherine. 1992. Katherine’s Diary: The Story of a Transsexual. Melbourne: Heinemann.

de Beauvoir, Simone. 1949. The Second Sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin (1972 edition).

Dunne, Gillian A. 1997. Lesbian Lifestyles: Women’s Work and the Politics of Sexuality. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Erikson, Erik H. 1950. Childhood and Society. London: Imago.

Frosh, Stephen, Ann Phoenix and Rob Pattman. 2002. Young Masculinities: Understanding Boys in Contemporary Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

Garafalo, Robert, Joanne Deleon, Elizabeth Osmer, Mary Doll and Gary W. Harper. 2006. ‘Overlooked, misunderstood and at-risk: Exploring the lives and HIV risk of ethnic minority male-to-female transgender youth’, Journal of Adolescent Health 38 (3): 230–6.

Garber, Marjorie. 1992. Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety. New York: Routledge.

Griggs, Claudine. 1996. Passage through Trinidad: Journal of a Surgical Sex Change. Jefferson: McFarland & Co.

Griggs, Claudine. 1998. S/he: Changing Sex and Changing Clothes. New York: Bloomsbury.

Holter, Øystein Gullvåg. 2003. Can Men Do It? Men and Gender Equality—the Nordic Experience. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers.

Jackson, Peter A. 1997. ‘Kathoey><Gay><Man: The historical emergency of gay male identity in Thailand’, in Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure, edited by Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Meyerowitz, Joanne. 2002. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Namaste, Viviane K. 2000. Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Namaste, Viviane K. 2009. ‘Undoing theory: The “transgender question” and the epistemic violence of Anglo-American feminist theory’, Hypatia 24 (3): 11–32.

Namaste, Viviane K. 2011. Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.

Nilsson, Arne. 1998. ‘Creating their own private and public: The male homosexual life space in a Nordic city during high modernity’, Journal of Homosexuality 35: 81–116.

Peteet, Julie. 1994. ‘Male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A cultural politics of violence’, American Ethnologist 21: 31–49.

Risman, Barbara J. 1986. ‘Can men “mother”? Life as a single father’, Family Relations 35: 95–102.

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Chapter 20 Gender in Personal Life 205

Rubin, Henry. 2003. Self-Made Men: Identity and Embodiment among Transsexual Men. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1968. Search for a Method. New York: Vintage. Schilt, Kristen, and Matthew Wiswall. 2008. ‘Before and

after: Gender transitions, human capital, and workplace experiences,’ The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 8(1): article 39.

Stoller, Robert J. 1968. Sex and Gender, vol. 1: On the Development of Masculinity and Femininity. London: Hogarth Press.

Stryker, Susan. 2008. Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Press. Stryker, Susan, and Stephen Whittle, eds. 2006. The

Transgender Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.

Thorne, Barrie. 1993. Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

West, Candace, and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. ‘Doing gender’, Gender and Society 1: 125–51.

Williams, Walter L. 1986. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture. Boston: Beacon Press.

Zulehner, Paul M., and Rainer Volz. 1998. Männer im Aufbruch: wie Deutschlands Männer sich selbst und wie Frauen sie sehen. Ostfildern: Schwabenverlag.

Source: Connell, Raewyn, & Pearse, Rebecca. (2014).

Excerpted from “Chapter 6: Gender in Personal Life.”

In Gender: In World Perspective, 3rd Edition (pp. 93,

96–111). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 14

This is not a glossary of all terms relevant to transgen- der studies, trans histories, and trans lives. It would be impossible to be exhaustive here, as the list of terms related to cultural and community-based gender prac- tices is literally infinite. Neither is it definitive: meanings and uses change across time and place.

Language itself is a social activity; words, phrases, and uses effectively communicate only within a com- munity that grants rough consensus to that particular expression. At the same time, language adapts around cultural changes and may be open to new words and new grammars; in the same measure, communities and individuals do learn new languages all the time. Since the 1960s, the concept of “gender inclusive” language has gone from referring to the once radical practice of saying “people” instead of “men,” “person” instead of “man,” and “he and she” instead of just “he” to today, when “gender-inclusive” might refer to language that does not impose binary gender and honors the actual gender diversity of human lives.

The English language imposes binary gender, and, in many cases, it requires work to circumvent this imposition. In contrast to many languages, English does not gender all nouns or attach gender to the first

person singular (“I”). However, most singular pronouns (“he,” “she”) are gendered, as are some familial terms (e.g., “aunt,” “uncle”). In many cases, English provides a neutral choice (one can say “child” rather than “son” or “daughter”), but speech customs may make certain options feel awkward. Workers in many service-sector jobs are taught to greet customers as “ma’am,” “sir,” or “ladies”; this is an entirely gratuitous gender imposition that may feel polite and even friendly to some people, but to others it may feel irritating if not violent.

Transliteracy suggests the following:

• Become more aware of when the language, culture, or simply one’s own habits of speech are imposing gender.

• Consider one’s own attachments or intentions with such speech.

• Learn to use alternatives.

These are ways to begin to change cultural consen- sus in language. This does not mean doing away with gender-specific language; it means developing additional fluencies to respect the complexity of gender.

TRANSFEMINIST TERMS AND CONCEPTS

A. Finn Enke

A. Finn Enke is a professor of history and of gender and women’s studies, and the director of the LGBT Studies Certificate Program at the University of Wisconsin– Madison. Enke’s work focuses on the history of sexuality and gender, primarily in 20th century United States, and on feminist, queer, and transgender social move- ments and theory.

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Gender-Inclusive Pronouns (often called gender- neutral): ze/hir/hir, they/them/theirs (subject/object/ possessive, respectively). Gender-inclusive pronouns are not associated with a specific gender and thereby do not ascribe gender. In English, the plural “they” is an example. The singular “they” dates back to the fifteenth century and is common in some parts of the English-speaking world, but in most places in North America, the singular “they” is less familiar. For the singular, our most common options (“he” and “she”) are specifically gendered. Trans-aware communities developed the use of ze/hir/hir as gender-in- clusive alternatives. In more recent years, they/them/their is becoming even more popular as a singular pronoun.

Usage considerations: For many trans people who iden- tify as men or women, use of inclusive pronouns can feel like an offensive refusal to recognize their gender identity. At the same time, the fact that many people identify with one of the binary pronouns does not pre- clude using inclusive pronouns as a general practice for all people, conveying that we do not know how other people identify their own gender and also that some people do not identify with either of the binary options. In some communities and classrooms, “ze” and/or “they” are used universally and with complete fluency. However, these options have yet to circulate through mainstream culture, and thus their use must be considered political and pedagogical.

Sex: From the perspective of evolutionary biology, human sex is conventionally classified in two categories (female and male) according to whether a body produces eggs or sperm. Associated with this characteristic are others, such as genital morphology, chromosomal makeup, and genetic factors that affect secondary sex characteristics (body hair, breasts, and so forth). The variety of factors involved and the natural variation in all of them have led to greater acknowledgment of the fact that humans exceed sexual dimorphism (that is to say, male and female are not neatly distinct) and also that it would be theoretically possible to group humans into more than two sex categories.

Legally Recognized Sex Status: People’s legal existence in the United States is accompanied by the requirement to have a legally recognized sex status, but in practice, sex status is indicated by multiple and at times compet- ing factors. Legal sex is designated on such documents as birth certificates, passports, Social Security cards, and state IDs. Because such documents are purportedly used for identification, institutions place great weight on whether a person “looks like” the sex indicated on the document. In the absence of federal law, the ease with which identity documents may be changed varies according to laws established at the state and/or local level and according to bureaucratic idiosyncrasies. For these reasons, a person’s identity documents may not all have the same sex designation, and the concept of “legal sex” itself is a bit of an oxymoron.

Intersex Conditions: More than thirty variations in sexual development fall under the category of intersex conditions. Some of these lead to ambiguity in genital morphology, others to secondary sex characteristics less commonly associated with genetic sex, and so forth.

Usage considerations: In recent years, medical institu- tions have come to favor the term “Disorders of Sexual Development” (DSD). Some people with intersex con- ditions prefer this term over “intersex”; others identify as intersex, or as persons with intersex conditions, and many feel that DSD is pathologizing and depoliticizing.

Gender: Gender results from cultural practices of order- ing or organizing different types of people according to bodies and behaviors. Social gender has mainly to do with a combination of the expectations assigned to one’s sex and the role one plays in one’s society. Because each culture establishes its own categorizations of norms for genders, gender conformity and gender crossing are necessarily culturally specific. In many societies, pro- duction, reproduction, consumption, and distribution are infused with and constitute gender.

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Gender Identity: One’s sense of one’s self as a gen- dered person (e.g., as man, woman, both, neither, or some other configuration of gender). A person’s gen- der identity may or may not match the sex assigned at birth or current legal sex as indicated on any of the several documents indicating sex, and it may or may not conform to conventional expectations of maleness or femaleness, including expectations of what a man’s or woman’s body looks like.

Gender Expression: How people express, wear, enact, and perform gender through behavior, mannerism, clothing, speech, physicality, and selective body modification.

Transgender: The term “transgender” incorporates distinct but overlapping arenas of social organization. “Transgender” may be used as:

• The name of a social movement that insists on the right of all people to determine for themselves their own personal and legal gender statuses (gender self-determination), freedom of gender identity and gender expression for all people, and civil and social rights for all people regardless of gender identity, gender expression, and body type.

• An ever-expanding social category that incorporates the broadest possible range of gender nonconfor- mity for the purposes of movement building, orga- nizing, and social-service recognition. In the United States and Canada, this may include transsexuals, transvestites, cross-dressers, female and male impersonators, persons with intersex conditions, butches, studs, femmes, fem queens, drag queens, drag kings, feminine-identified men, masculine- identified women, MTF, FTM, trannies, gender vari- ants, gender queers, boi dykes, trans men, trans guys, trans women, bigender, two spirit, intergender, neutrois, pan gender, third gender, gender fluid, and so forth. People who place themselves in any of the above categories may or may not identify with the collective term “transgender.” […]

Transsexual: Medical and popular term describing per- sons with significant cross-gender identity. Due to varying life circumstances, transsexuals may or may not live in their gender identity some of or all the time; depending on medical access, legal options or restrictions, financial means, physical appropriateness, and desire, transsex- uals may or may not change bodily characteristics and/ or achieve legal sex reassignment through hormonal and surgical means.

MTF (Male to Female, also MtF, M2F): A trans spec- trum indicating movement from male (assignment at birth based on perceived physical sex) to female (gender identity); it includes personal and sometimes social rec- ognition of feminine and/or female identity; MTF may or may not include hormonal and/or surgical modifications and/or sex reassignment.

FTM (Female to Male, also FtM, F2M): A trans spec- trum indicating movement from female (assignment at birth based on perceived physical sex) to male (gender identity); it includes personal and sometimes also social recognition of masculine and/or male identity; FTM may or may not include hormonal and/or surgical modifica- tions and/or sex reassignment.

Usage consideration: MTF and FTM are often preferred as adjectives modifying a noun, such as “person” or “spec- trum,” rather than as a noun substitute. For example, just as one is a “transgender person” rather than “a transgen- der,” one might prefer to be considered an “MtF person” or “person on an MtF spectrum” rather than “an MtF.”

Trans (trans-, trans*) and Trans People: At this time, “trans” is an inclusive and respectful term available for use by people outside trans communities as well as by those who identify with or as trans; as a general term, it avoids the subcultural specificities and alliances that require specialized knowledge for appropriate use.

Usage considerations: “Transgender,” “transsexual,” and “trans” are words that have institutional recognition in

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many English-speaking countries, but many people who would be included under the “transgender umbrella” do not identify with them. For example, some people with trans histories reject being considered trans-(anything) but instead are men or women, period. Furthermore, identities are generally community-specific and thus may also be specific to class, race, nationality, location, age, and so forth. […]

Cisgender, Cissexual: From the Latin prefix “cis,” mean- ing on the same side or staying with the same orienta- tion, “cisgender” and “cissexual” name the characteristic of staying with or being perceived to stay with the gender and/or sex one was assigned at birth.

Cis-privilege: The privilege and power accorded to people who are perceived to follow the norms associated with the sex they are perceived to be and assumed to have been assigned at birth. People who trans gender as well as people who do not may receive cis-privileges, and people who do not intentionally trans gender as well as people who do are denied cis-privileges if they fail to pass (or pass enough) in the sex/gender they are expected to be.

Sexual Preference (or Identity or Orientation): Sexual identity and gender identity are two different things.

Sexual identity (or preference) has to do with sexual, erotic, and/or emotional attractions, interests, and ori- entations. For each person, sexual identity may have nothing or everything to do with gender identity and body type. Like all people, trans people may be gay, bi, lesbian, straight, asexual, pansexual, queer, and so forth; similarly, people across all sexual identities may or may not be trans.

A Note on Transgender and Intersex: These two cat- egories are distinct but may overlap and form an alliance. As with the general population, some people who have intersex conditions are trans-identified; in addition, some trans people may consider their trans-ness itself to be one form of intersex condition. […] Trans and intersex movements achieve alliance based on the overlap (some people occupy both categories), especially on the shared goal of sex/gender self-determination and the right to respectful medical care.

Source: Enke, A. Finn. (2012). Excerpted from “Note on

Terms and Concepts.” In Transfeminist Perspectives in

and beyond Transgender and Gender Studies (pp. 16–

20). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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“Why don’t you just buy him a gun? It would be just as dangerous!” This is my mother’s impassioned response to my decision to allow my four- year-old son to wear a skirt.

Although I am explicit about my feminist values and have attempted to raise my children in a gender fluid context, this is the moment where all of the vague allusions I have made come to a head, where all the dolls and trucks for my sons and daughter unambiguously solidify into a message my mother finally can’t ignore: I am going to honour my small son’s sartorial decision-making and allow him to wear “girls’ ” clothing. All the groundwork I had thought I’d laid over the years has obviously not made the impression I expected because my mother is exactly as shocked as she would have been had I given my boy a loaded gun.

I attempt to weakly deflect her anger, to shield my children from her outrage, to explain my commit- ment to this value system, but leave her house with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. My mother, notorious for calling me multiple times a day, does not communicate with me for more than a week and takes weeks longer to drop her frosty tone.

There are a number of ways to read this inter- action. On the one hand, it is easy to give a simple reading: my mother, an older, immigrant woman, is unfamiliar with contemporary outlooks on gender and is thus amusingly outraged by this most gentle of forays into gender fluidity. A more nuanced response would look at the oppression and danger experienced in her countries of origin and would respond to her passion as a natural extension of her complicated life history. Alternatively, we may examine my mother’s

CHAPTER 21

Between the Village and the Village People: Negotiating Community, Ethnicity,

and Safety in Gender Fluid Parenting

May Friedman

May Friedman is an associate professor at Ryerson University in the School of Social Work and in the Ryerson/York University Joint Graduate Program in Communication and Culture. Her recent publications include “Reproducing Fat-Phobia: Reproductive Technologies and Fat Women’s Right to Mother” and “Here Comes a Lot of Judgement: Honey Boo Boo as a Site of Reclamation and Resistance.”

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strongly normative gender identity as a safety blanket as her other identities (age, citizenship, ethnicity) have been shifting and unstable.

All of these readings of our conversation are true, and yet none are adequate, none address how bereft I feel at her scorn and fury, or how complicated are the intricacies of our relationship, and of her relationship to her grandson and subsequent grandchildren. These readings are also not the story I want to tell, of the simple uneducated Orientalized immigrant woman who doesn’t “get” “our” enlightened values (Arat-Koç). That reading is both disrespectful to my mother (and my roots) and doesn’t acknowledge the force of our familial ties.

If there is a village raising my children, my mother is on the town council. She is a central part of our lives, and the tension between the need for her support and her inability—for whatever reason—to share my parenting values cannot be read as her “simpleness.” The truth is far from simple.

SHARING THE CARING

How do we take care? How can we ensure that our children live safe and authentic lives? I increasingly find myself with two competing and contradictory responses to this question. Answer one says that we cannot provide safety alone, that mythic nuclear families are simply insufficient to provide for the complex needs of children, and indeed, their par- ents (Kinser). The second answer, however, is the answer that comes when I am frightened. When I am made aware of my race, I want to protect my children from racism. When I fear the repercussions of living in a female body, I want to surround them with enlightened feminists. And when they explore their gender diversity, using the tools I have been trying to give them for years, I am shocked by my own hesitation, my own fear and desire to limit their environment to safe allies. Yet to do so is to court disaster in other realms.

I’ve written about our need to assume respon- sibility for one another, as individuals, families, and communities (Friedman). As a social work academic, I am strongly committed to the notion of shared responsibility culminating in the formal response of a robust welfare state. I believe that we all experience contingencies in our lives and that having a strong societal support system (not merely the informal networks of family and friends) is essential to our continued well-being (Baines). This is especially so in the wearying realm of parenthood where liberal individualism would have us, mothers in particu- lar, assume sole responsibility for the avalanche of minutiae associated with maintaining life and socializing small humans (O’Reilly). On a political level, I advocate for national childcare, state support for single mothers and other impoverished parents. On both instrumental and psychological levels, I do not believe we were meant to go it alone. This can be seen in my parenting practice, in my attempt to ensure that my children experience multiple secure attachments to their caregivers. Aiming to disrupt the perceived normativity of our immediate family, we discuss our kids’ “grown-ups”—Mama, Daddy, Safta, Saba, Sabrina, Doda Judy, Bubie, Zadie, their teachers, our neighbours, friends, etc. And indeed, especially in their infancies, it felt like we were able to participate in a nuanced patchwork of caregiving, assisted by those around us in negotiating the work of sustaining young life.

It may seem that my commitment to this shared and communal parenting practice is born from ideology, yet, like all praxis, it begins with very tangible realities: in my case, the reality of blending complicated and intense employment with a desire for multiple children. I can no longer say whether my commitment to communality grew with my family or allowed my family to grow, yet here we are with many, many allies in our parenting (though of course, the final burdens of total responsibility, and the legal assignment of liability remain my partner’s and mine alone). What I could not foresee as my children’s needs

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grew beyond immediate physical care and increasingly into the realm of political and emotional choices, was the impact of diversifying their care team beyond our intimate bubble. If we share their care, we have a different responsibility to allow others to weigh in on parenting choices, a notion that is anathema in a neo-liberal environment that controls parental choice through dominant discourse, but purports to leave the transmission of values to parents alone. When my children were tiny, I would have blithely agreed that monolithic parental control was both unrealis- tic and not in children’s best interest. Then I bought my son a skirt.

FEMINISM AS A SECOND LANGUAGE

I did not grow up with feminism. Unlike many of my friends and colleagues who became politicized in childhood or adolescence, who attended protests and discussed the intersections of personal and political with their families of origin, my consciousness was raised at a much later stage. It was not until gradu- ate school (shortly after my enormous spectacle of a wedding, complete with name change) that my “click” moment occurred. Suddenly, I found language to describe the nagging discomfort I had felt for years, the vague recognition that things were not as they should be. My indistinct commitment to a moral life was abruptly reconfigured as a strong dedication to social justice.

The contemporary feminism that I espouse engages with critical race theory and a reckoning of both heterosexism and homophobia, considers the social model of disability and (less than I’d like) the impact of class (Hernández and Rehman; Wilson, Sengupta, and Evans); it functions as “a polysemic site of contradictory positionalities” (Shohat 2). This post-structuralist, post-colonial moment has allowed me to make sense of my own life and identity as well as the complex world I inhabit. My engagement with

feminism thus affected my parenting before I even began to grow my family. I knew the impact of gender, race, and class on my own life; I could see more clearly my areas of privilege. Most of all, I wanted to live an empowered life despite motherhood, and wanted to ensure that my children had complete access to all opportunities and experiences, regardless of their sex or gender. My commitment to these ideals grew quickly alongside my parenting. I was frustrated at the extent to which becoming parents allowed my relationship with my partner to regress to problematic gender roles (though years of provocative conversation have had a remarkable impact on these concerns). I was, and am, incredibly dismayed at the limitations placed on my older son and daughter in particular, the extent to which my son has been dubbed smart and strong, lauded for his physical ability, while my daughter was praised for her beautiful penmanship (pengirlship?) and capacity for independent play. One of the many joys of welcoming our third child was the extent to which this little person was allowed a dis- tinct personality without every trait, every difference from his siblings, being immediately put down to sex.

Co-parenting with my partner has itself required an intense negotiation, and an awareness of the ways that parenting in a heterosexual union presents its own version of gender entrenchment. His martial arts training, my baking, my preference for laundry while he takes out the garbage—these hobbies and chores are not benign choices. Likewise, when we play to our strengths as parents, my children may view their female parent doing detail oriented work and keeping track of things like appointments and deadlines, while their male parent may sometimes seem like more fun. On the other hand, there are ways we subvert these binaries, make choices that work against expectations. Certainly, we stand together in our attempts to main- tain an awareness of the ways that gender works on us and with us as parents, and as people.

Gender fluid parenting isn’t about letting them wear each the “other” gender’s clothes, though of course, we encourage them to do so. It isn’t about

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buying them dolls and trucks. It’s about aiming for ongoing complicated conversations that encourage them to understand how their ideas and identities are formed. It’s about helping them keep doors open, to allow them to become their most authentic selves. This involves an exploration of race, of ability, a con- sideration of the reading of my fat, brown body and their white skin and the ways other identities intersect with gender. It’s about asserting both the centrality of gender on their lives, and, simultaneously, its fun- damental irrelevance.

These are radical values, ideas that are funda- mentally contrary to the dominant discourses about how boys and girls, and mothers and fathers, should act. It’s an uphill battle to uphold these values in the face of school, media, peers, and virtually all other influences blaring the need for specific and delineated gender that matches genitalia, to encourage critical thought instead of mindless conformity. As Dan Kois asserts, “… any parent raising kids in 2012 knows that it’s still not simple navigating a culture that seems intent on selling princess dresses to girls (even if the princesses who wear them are spunky, smart, and Brave) and superhero outfits to boys (even if the superheroes are—well, they’re pretty much still all muscly dudes).” It is tempting to believe that I am best served by protecting my kids as much as possible from the influence of the outside world, by aiming to limit their loving relationships to only myself and my co-parent, or perhaps a tiny circle of allies. Yet to do so works in direct conflict with my aim to remain empowered as a mother. In my particular context, empowered motherhood is achieved by allowing my children to be bombarded with love, by inviting the people in my family and community to join me in caring for these young people. Asking for help, asking for community, however, makes the “values” message less coherent, and, especially in the case of intimate caregivers like my mother, requires that I cede control, that I grant buy-in. I cannot share my children solely on my terms without severely restricting my access to both instrumental and emotional support.

HAVING IT ALL

Suggesting that my children benefit from a wealth of caregivers only to give me a break diminishes the full potential of these contradictory and complicated relationships. By spending time with many people who love them, my children have learned to embrace ambiguity, to understand (respectful) conflict, and have had their certainty about adult omnipotence severely challenged. Arguably, their capacity for critical thought has been extended by their access to so many different points of view. They have learned about things that I cannot teach them. When they talk to their grandfather about how he left his whole family behind to avoid remaining a soldier, they learn about gender. When they learn about their grand- mother’s experiences in law school while parenting their father as a young child, they learn about het- eronormativity. When they witness, or talk to their aunt about her decision to parent her children in a hyper-gendered way, they are exercising their critical capacity to understand how gender marks our beliefs and intersects with systems such as religion and class. Both positive and negative influences thus allow my children to learn much more than they would if I restricted them, by some wizardry, to a perfect pro- gressive enclave. Yet such an analysis does not take into account their safety, the ways that I flinch when a family member says something homophobic, or how I recoil when the conversation turns to a patronizing analysis of racialized nannies, and the trouble with finding “good help.” I am looking for “good help,” and I am frightened of the implications of sharing my children with people who love them, but who do not express that love in terms of acceptance or respect for difference. I am especially fearful of the implications of normative gender models, given the high rate of suicide among gender diverse young people: Kim Pearson of the Trans Youth Family Allies suggests that “Trans kids are the highest suicide risk on the planet, bar none” (quoted in Green). I cannot say whether my children will push beyond the limits of

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the sexes listed on their birth certificates, but I will be damned if I will lose them because they are afraid to.

Given the impossibility of “safe space,” I nonethe- less want to help my children avoid hateful influences, to feel free to explore their potential, especially with people who purport to love them. It is sometimes tempting to limit access in the name of safety. As I navigate this terrain, I realize the extent to which I remain closeted about my beliefs and desires in the heart of my family of origin. I take note of the ways that my decision to partner with a man has allowed me to “pass” for so long that I have forgotten the depth of the normativity with which I was raised. Yet to portray my origins as normative is also a distortion, also doesn’t tell the whole story.

OUTSIDE/IN

Some days, it feels like I live my life in two modes. I am the confident feminist academic, examining representations of motherhood in the public sphere and teaching my students about the perils of hege- monic identity markers. Other times, however, I’m just “Baby May.”

“Baby May” is the way I’m known in my family of origin. Nine years younger than my only sibling, I will never not be the baby, no matter how many degrees I get or children I bear. And because sometimes I am weary of arguing, it is sometimes comforting to retreat to this place, a place where critical thought is given much less value than high fashion.

Coming from extreme poverty, racism, and marginalization, the class privilege that my family of origin has achieved is tempered by insecurity, by experiences as both refugees and immigrants. Our shifting geographical base has prioritized our familial connections, which may be why being “Baby May” is so seductive, so safe. In their own ways, my family and community of origin are quite politicized but are often very conservative as a means of erasing their past vulnerabilities and maintaining their own need

for untouchable safety in the present day. Their biases and hostilities toward my progressive beliefs are not borne of ignorance, but of a complex amalgam of fear, history, and love—of a feeling that their conservatism will save my children and me the pain of being an outsider, of being reviled for my identity. Bizarrely, in my particular experience, my family and I are attempting to solve the same problem—responding to difference—by enacting two opposing solutions. I attempt to embrace difference and fluidity in gender, sexuality, and in all other realms. They smile grimly at my naïveté and advise me, in their words and their actions, to avoid standing out, to annihilate difference whenever possible and to “pass” for as long as I can.

The conservatism of my places of origin makes me deeply uncomfortable, but it is its own sort of home. By contrast, emigrating to my progressive neighbourhood downtown has surrounded me with parenting allies, with hip gender-bending kids on the monkey bars at our local park. Yet this shift has not always been perfectly comfortable. In some respects, I feel unstably situated in this domain, surrounded by relatively class-privileged and educated (and overwhelming white) neighbours. As Paula Austin beautifully articulates, “I have felt left out of feminism mostly because it leaves out women who looked like my mother” (167). Like others who inhabit liminal identities (Walker; Weiner-Mahfuz), sometimes I feel like an outlier wherever I dwell.

I fear that by analyzing my own experiences, I lend fuel to the stereotypical construction of raised consciousness as solely the domain of privileged bodies, and of gender fluidity as exclusively a white enterprise (Tokawa). I cringe a bit when I am admired for my parenting practice, when I hear “they are so lucky to have you!” The cringing is because I am merely muddling my way through, making endless, future-therapy-inducing errors, scolding when I should listen, pushing away when I should gather my children close, wrestling with the challenge of being myself and being accountable. I can’t hear that I’m doing this well when I know how many ways

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I may be parenting poorly. At the same time, however, there is a deeper discomfort behind my resistance to acknowledging the praise of my parenting practice: especially when issued in response to my concerns about difficult moments with other loved ones and caregivers, these accolades feel fraught. Sometimes, it feels like the subtext of the compliment is an acknow- ledgement that we are so much more enlightened than our forebears; that we are more educated than the people around us.

As someone who did not grow up steeped in feminism, this analysis makes me squirm. It feels like so recently that I was the person making ham- handed comments, that I could so easily have stayed in my well-intentioned, charity model, uncritical compassion. I am aware of the ways that the rhet- oric, in my case, may be true—that I have had my consciousness raised through education, and that that is an unearned and complicated privilege. I am also aware of the politicization of many of the people around me through sites of extreme oppression, of my immigrant and Aboriginal colleagues who under- stand “revolution” in visceral ways that I will never access, of my marginalized friends who know the meaning of activism in their bodies, in tangible and critical moments. I don’t want to write the story of the educated English speaking daughter who raises her kids “right,” protecting them from the biased and unenlightened views of her immigrant parents. That story is limited and limiting and does everyone, my parents, my children, and myself, a great disservice.

My resistance to the notion of gender fluid par- enting as exclusively the domain of educated Western parents does not merely take issue with this supposi- tion as a misrepresentation of the many forms of com- plicated gender expression that occur in non-Western contexts (Comeau). Rather, on a personal level, I fear my children becoming entitled to activism. Suddenly, I am raising the people who will blithely discuss the protests they attended with their mama, who will take for granted the need for social transformation. In this context, it can be easy to raise children who

will become unthinkingly critical, who will develop a critical lens that may not be informed by the hard work of consciousness raising, but will instead merely allow them to see critical thought as a new dogma, a “right way” in opposition to the thoughtless people around them. As one respondent in a study done by Tey Meadow suggests, however, this is not the goal of gender fluid parenting: “I don’t think parenting is having our kids grow up and making little us’s. It’s how do we create the safe, comfortable, competent environment where they get to grow up and be them- selves, whoever that is? And are there limits to that? Yes, but within a certain broad bandwidth they get to discover who they are” (737).

CONCLUSIONS

I want my children to play with gender. I want my children to be critical and authentic and to have the relative safety to name and choose their identity mark- ers. Fostering a thoughtful response to difference, however, means understanding my mother’s rage. It means understanding both why I believe my mother is wrong, that my son should get his skirt, and also her complex and convoluted reasons for being so very angry. It means teaching my children to challenge, rather than to dismiss. As Amber Kinser writes, “Every moment of mother-relating for me also is a moment of relating-in-multiplicity, of trying to reduce the friction of opposing demands of multiple selves and relationships. Survival in feminist mothering necessitates coming to see this rubbing against, this friction, this tension, not as purely oppositional and therefore needing to be resolved, but as inherent and necessary, and not in need of fixing” (124).

Teaching critical thought, teaching my children to challenge is not best done alone. I cannot model a successful critique of a neo-liberal paradigm of indi- vidualism and efficiency by keeping them to myself in order to ensure a coherent message. Instead, I have to hope that being surrounded by love and contradiction

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will hone their critical skills, that being forced to confront differences of opinion (some of them very painful) will give them a greater capacity for under- standing. I appreciate that this response invites controversy, that in inviting dialogue rather than certainty I may expose my children to hatred, that I am privileging imperfect love over perfect safety. Yet this is all I know how to do, not following any manual, not following any sage advice, but just trusting my instincts, navigating this knife edge between where I am and where I come from and hoping that I will not fail too badly, that my best will be good enough.

REFERENCES

Arat-Koç, Sedef. “Whose Social Reproduction? Transnational Motherhood and Challenges to Feminist Political Economy.” Social Reproduction: Feminist Political Economy Challenges Neo-Liberalism. Eds. Kate Bezanson and Meg Luxton. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006. 75–92. Print.

Austin, Paula. “Femme-Inism: Lessons of My Mother.” Colonize This: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. Eds. Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2002. 157–169. Print.

Baines, Donna, ed. Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Social Justice Social Work. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2011. Print.

Comeau, Lisa M. “Towards White, Anti-Racist Mothering Practices: Confronting Essentialist Discourses of Race and Culture.” Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering 9.2 (2007): 20–30. Print.

Friedman, May. Mommyblogs and the Changing Face of Motherhood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013. Print.

Green, Jesse. “S/He: Why Parents of Transgender Children Are Faced with a Difficult Decision.” New York Magazine. Web. 27 May, 2012.

Hernández, Daisy, and Bushra Rehman, eds. Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2002. Print.

Kinser, Amber E. “Mothering as Relational Consciousness.” Feminist Mothering. Ed. Andrea O’Reilly. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. 123–142. Print.

Kois, Dan. “Free to Be.” Slate. Web. 22 October, 2012. Meadow, Tey. “‘Deep Down Where the Music Plays’: How

Parents Account for Childhood Gender Variance.” Sexualities 14.6 (2011): 725–747. Print.

O’Reilly, Andrea, ed. Mother Outlaws: Theories and Practices of Empowered Mothering. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2004. Print.

Shohat, Ella. Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Tokawa, Kenji. “Why You Don’t Have to Choose a White Boy Name to be a Man in this World.” Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. Eds. Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. Berkeley: Seal Press, 2010. Print.

Walker, Rebecca. Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. New York: Riverhead Books, 2001. Print.

Weiner-Mahfuz, Lisa. “Organizing 101: A Mixed-Race Feminist in Movements for Social Justice.” Colonize This: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism. Eds. Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman. Emeryville: Seal Press, 2002. 29–39. Print.

Wilson, Shamillah, Anasuya Sengupta, and Kristy Evans, eds. Defending Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation. London: Zed Books, 2005. Print.

Source: Friedman, May. (2013). “Between the Village and

The Village People: Negotiating Community, Ethnicity,

and Safety in Gender Fluid Parenting.” In Joy Green

& May Friedman (Eds.), Chasing Rainbows: Exploring

Gender Fluid Parenting Practices (pp. 99–110).

Bradford, ON: Demeter Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 15

Who We Are

White Ribbon is the world’s largest movement of men and boys working to end violence against women and girls, promote gender equity, healthy relationships and a new vision of masculinity.

Starting in 1991, we asked men to wear white ribbons as a pledge to never commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women and girls. Since then the White Ribbon has spread to over 60 countries around the world.

We work to examine the root causes of gender-based violence and create a cultural shift that helps bring us to a future without violence.

Our vision is for a masculinity that embodies the best qualities of being human. We believe that men are part of the solution and part of a future that is safe and equit- able for all people.

Through education, awareness-raising, outreach, technical assistance, capacity building, partnerships and creative campaigns, White Ribbon is helping create tools, strategies and models that challenge negative, outdated concepts of manhood and inspire men to understand and embrace the incredible potential they have to be a part of positive change.

What We Do

White Ribbon positively engages men, young men and boys through relevant educational programming that challenges language and behaviours, as well as harmful ideas of manhood that lead to violence against women.

Our programming includes:

Workshops, Talks, and Presentations

• Engaging workshops, presentations and talks with elementary, middle, high school and post-secondary students.

• Trainings and presentations for educators and teacher candidates around promoting gender equal- ity in classrooms and schools.

• Sessions explore realities for women and girls as well as pressures on men and boys and ways they can become allies for change that affects everyone.

• Topics include “Building Allyship Together With Women and Girls to End Gender-Based Violence,” “Building Allyship and Unpacking ‘Bro-Culture,’” “Building Allyship and Exploring My Own Role and Commitment to Ending Gender-Based Violence,” and “Building Allyship Through Story-Telling and Action Planning.”

MEN AND FEMINISM

The White Ribbon Campaign

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It Starts With You, It Stays With Him

• Encouraging and inspiring fathers, father figures, educators, community leaders, coaches and fam- ily members to embrace being positive, strong role models for the young men and boys around them by valuing women as equal and teaching how to have healthy, equal relationships.

• Tips, Tools, e-Modules and Videos to view and share.

Draw The Line

• Interactive campaign that aims to engage Ontarians in a dialogue about sexual violence.

• Challenging common myths about sexual violence, equipping bystanders with information on how to intervene safely and effectively.

• Series of scenario postcards and posters, PSAs and podcasts.

• Resources include: Drawling the Line on Sexual Violence: A Guide for Ontario Educators (Grades 1-8); Drawing the Line on Sexual Violence: A Guide for Ontario Educators (9-12).

Boys Conferences

• Annual conferences in partnership with Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario bringing boys together to discuss gender equality, respect and healthy relationships and steps they can take to make a difference. Uses interactive workshops, drama, art, video, peer educators and other engaging facilitation styles, guest speakers.

Huddle Up & Make The Call

• Utilizes the power of student-led initiatives and ath- lete testimonials to address gender-based violence in secondary schools in the Greater Toronto Area.

• Promoting and supporting equitable, healthy rela- tionships and safe environments for all students, Make The Call empowers and inspires students to

engage their peers and communities in ending all forms of violence against women and girls.

• This initiative is proudly brought to you by the Toronto Argonauts and White Ribbon, with support from Status of Women Canada and Tim Hortons.

National Community of Practice [NCoP] Project

• Funded by Status of Women Canada, White Ribbon worked in collaboration with nine women’s, youth, and community-based organizations across Canada to create a community of practice. Together we shared lessons learned, key challenges, and developed a national evaluation framework for gender-based violence prevention programming. The national evaluation framework is a comprehen- sive tool which assesses changes across individ- ual, social, organizational and community capacity. To learn more about CoP national partners and examples of the ways in which men and boys are interrogating their power and privilege to promote gender equality, visit the National community of practice toolkit (http://www.canpreventgbv.ca/ toolkit/about-the-toolkit/).

What Makes A Man Conference

• What Makes A Man is a discussion-focused event exploring how ideas of masculinity and gender affect everyone in all walks of life. The unique trademark of WMAM is how we reduce the line between expert and listener, as we are all experts in our lived experi- ences! Diverse speakers share short informal talks designed to spark a following discussion with the audience.

The Education and Action Kit

• White Ribbon’s Education and Action Kit is used by hundreds of thousands of teachers and students in 3000 schools across North America. Teachers and students have used the Kit and related White Ribbon

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 15 Men and Feminism 219

resources with enormous success. The Kit combines in-class lessons with school-wide projects to raise awareness about violence against women, and to promote ideals about gender equality and healthy relationships. It is designed as a positive resource for both females and males.

Campaign in a Box

• The Campaign in a Box is a set of fully interactive exercises designed to help teach and promote healthy equal relationships among boys and girls in grades 5-8.

Source: Excerpted from the White Ribbon Campaign.

(n.d.) Retrieved from: www.whiteribbon.ca.

Source: Men Can Stop Rape. (2008). Retrieved from: http://www. mystrength.org/8.0.html (site no longer active). Current campaigns can be found here: http://www.mencanstoprape.org.

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CHAPTER 22

Troubling Genders, Subverting Identities: An Interview with Judith Butler

Vasu Reddy and Judith Butler

Judith Butler is Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California–Berkeley. Her many honours include the Brudner Prize from Yale University, the Adorno Prize from the City of Frankfurt, the Andrew Mellon Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in the Humanities, and the Albertus Magnus Professorship from the City of Cologne, Germany. She is considered a leading intellectual in gender, feminist, and queer studies, and her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Butler’s theory of per- formativity, introduced in her book Gender Trouble, has significantly shaped our under- standing of gender and has had a major influence on feminist and queer scholarship.

Vasu Reddy is the executive director of the Human and Social Development research programme at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). He is an honorary asso- ciate professor and research fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

In this interview we engage Judith Butler, one of the most challenging, influential and refreshing thinkers of our time. […]

It is difficult to summarize the work of Butler. […] In one sense her ongoing tenacious interrogation of the ontology of language and discourse is critical to her thinking […]. Whereas some critics have venomously indicated that her work represents a verbal politics as opposed to a concern with the material conditions of women’s lives, Butler’s work (indeed her ideas), how- ever, demonstrate otherwise. Since the publication of Gender Trouble, her work continues to shape, impact

and influence different fields of inquiry, including and especially gender and sexuality studies, feminist and queer theory, cultural studies and, to some extent the humanities academy as a whole. In the preface to the second edition of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1999: xvi), a foundational text in critical gender studies, Butler writes:

Despite the dislocation of the subject that the text performs, there is a person here: I went to many meetings, bars, and marches and saw many kinds of genders, understood

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myself to be at the crossroads of some of them, and encountered sexuality at several of its cultural edges.

Her work disturbs, provokes and challenges the relationship between politics and the critique of iden- tity, thereby implying that her experiential ground continues to remain intact in relation to her verbal politics (1999: xxii):

What continues to concern me most is the following kinds of questions: what will and will not constitute an intelligible life, and how do presumptions about normative gen- der and sexuality determine in advance what will qualify as the ‘human’ and the ‘livable’.

It is especially in this context that we invite (and encourage) our diverse readership to consider Butler’s thinking in relation to how men and women may continue to engage theory and analysis from an activist perspective.

Vasu: You have been critical about the essentialism in some feminist work, including the reluctance of some feminists to return to biology. You are also critical of the essentialism evident in some aspects of the gay and queer movements. Added to this is your view that categories such as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are too displaced. Why?

Judith: The debate between essentialism and social constructionism was strong about ten years ago. I find that the terms have become complicated recently. It is no longer possible to take a strict view on either side. I was part of a group of fem- inists (there were many I would include in this group) who were very concerned about how the categories of ‘woman’ or ‘women’ were used and understood in feminist discourse. […] If I want to be able to refer to the gender that I am, the sex that I am, the way I see the world, and I need

these references in order to define myself, I better know what these terms imply before I commit myself to them as part of any self-description. It is for this reason, if not for others, that it is crucial to find out the meaning of the category of ‘women’ as it has been historically wrought and politically mobilized.

Vasu: You turn to performativity as a possible improvement on social construction. You emphasise that identity or, for that matter, gen- der identity is a performative construct? What is the logic in conceiving identity in this way? […]

Judith: The first point to understand about perfor- mativity is what it is not: identities are not made in a single moment in time. They are made again and again. This does not mean identities are made radically new every time they are made, but only that it takes some time for identities to be brought out; they are dynamic and historical. In fact if we ask what is distinctive about ‘being’ human, it will probably turn out that human being is always about becoming. There is always a question of what I will become, even if I am living in such a way that seeks to refuse that question. There is always a question of whether what I was yesterday will be precisely the same as what I become in time. Tomorrow is there a possibility for me to become otherwise than what I am? This is not just a question of a private struggle with the self, but of the social terms by which identities are supported and articulated. In this sense it is always in the context of a certain constellation of social power that I am able to pose the question of my own becoming differently. Through what constellations of social discourse and power was I brought into the world? And how is it that I might inhabit or revise the world such that my own way of being might also change? We are interpreted by social means; the language we have for what is most intimately our own is already

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given to us from elsewhere. This means that in the most intimate encounters with ourselves, the most intimate moments of disclosure, we call upon a language that we never made in order to say who we are. In this sense we are exposed to the social, impinged upon by the social, in ways that precede my doing, but any doing that might come to be called my own is dependent upon this very unchosen domain. My view is that there are norms into which we are born—gendered, racial, national—that decide what kind of subject we can be, but in being those subjects, in occupying and inhabiting those deciding norms, in incor- porating and performing them, we make use of local options to rearticulate them in order to revise their power. Norms cannot be embodied without an action of a specific kind, and they cannot continue to enforce themselves without a continual action. It is in the thinking through of this action that change can happen, since we are acting all the time in the ways that we enact, repeat, appropriate and refuse the norms that decide our social ontology. You will see that I subscribe neither to free will nor to determinism in these debates. Social terms decide our beings, but they do not decide them once and for all. They also establish the conditions by which a certain constrained agency, even a decision, is possible on our parts.

Vasu: Your theory of materialisation renders the material category of sex into a site of permanent contestation? If this is a correct assessment, why do you hold this view, and what spin-offs does it hold for understanding agency and the subject?

Judith: I began the theory of materialisation in response to the question of the physical matter that is said to constitute lived bodies. […] I think if we want to accord dignity to bodies, to their suffering, to their desires, then we cannot reduce the body in advance to the status of pure matter.

The body is a site of vulnerability, of longing, of suffering, disease, reproduction (sometimes), dying and death. To understand any of these pro- foundly human dimensions of bodily experience, we have to consider the body as something that not only occupied specific sites and places, but something that is also in time, temporalised. It is impinged upon, for instance, by social norms, but it also enters into extended ways of living, modes of appropriating and re-enacting social norms, ways of giving material substance to norms that can only be described as processes in time. So whatever concept of ‘materiality’ we come up with to describe the living and dying of bodies will have to be one that takes time into account, not as a contingent feature of bodily experience, but as a necessary one. It would be wrong to think about bodies as inert matter; except in those cases where they have ended up in that state by virtue of death […] Cultural imprints on the body become a part of the very physiology of the body, so that it becomes impossible to separate the biological from the cultural in ways that some people used to do. Our responses to social environments over time are part of what produces the so-called ‘facts’ of the biological body. And all such a formulation implies is that it will not work to separate the body from cultural discourse. That said, causal models that reduce culture to biology or biology to culture misrepresent the dynamic and histor- ical process of their interplay. […] As a conse- quence, we should not treat the body as a kind of slate or surface on which cultural meanings are imposed. The body is that which embodies and enacts certain kinds of social meanings. […]

Vasu: In the past decade, the world has witnessed an increase in the homophobia displayed by several African leaders. Like Zimbabwean pres- ident Mugabe, his counterparts from Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, Uganda and Kenya have virulently opposed homosexuality, labelling it

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a ‘scourge’ that goes against Christian teachings and African traditions. In Excitable Speech (1997) you address some of these issues in relation to hate speech. Are these expressions of ‘excitable speech’ in any way unique to Africa, and what observations do you have about this beyond the description that these utterances are examples of hate speech and homophobic discourse?

Judith: You know, I think that there are questions that arise when Mugabe makes his claims comparing homosexuals to animals or saying that lesbian and gay people sacrifice their very status as human beings by virtue of their homosexuality. In such extreme statements, it is not only a matter of Mugabe having the right to express his private view. His speech is public discourse, and it affects employment, it affects where people can move, it affects who can make a housing claim, who may secure adoption rights, who has access to health care, who lives and who dies. I fear that these are murderous words.

Vasu: In Bodies That Matter you raise the question of ‘freedom of choice’ and that our gender choices are limited rather than ‘free’. In what ways are our gender choices limited, and what concerns does this raise for questions about agency?

Judith: Many people tend to think within the terms of a classical political liberalism, assuming that either we are free or we are restrained. For me, though, restraint is a condition of freedom. By the fact that we are socially constructed, we were born into a world we never made. We do not have a lot of choice about who our parents are, who raises us. There are many things that come to us from the outside that we do not choose. And yet there is always the question of how to live these various conditions. You’ll note that ‘live’ becomes a transitive verb. And I do not believe that these various conditions determine

us absolutely, although sometimes social power can take away our lives or the lives of others, and agency is vitiated. Social conditions that determine us absolutely, restrict us absolutely, and actually produce victims of all of us. Sometimes this describes the situation well, especially when we are, quite against our will, subject to an annihilating violence. But it would be wrong to devise a theory about social construction that takes that model as the norm. If we were to do so, then, we are always already victims. And no political agency can be derived from this view. On the other hand, the classical liberal position tends to counsel that it does not matter what your social conditions are. If freedom is an inherent attribute of every human, then every human can and ought to ‘rise above’ social conditions and act. I accept neither the social determinism view nor the classical liberal one.

We cannot become anything we want. You know, there is one reading of Gender Trouble, which suggests that a person can become one thing one day and then something radically different the next. I don’t think that’s true. There is another reading of Gender Trouble that concludes that we are fully constituted, we are fully constructed and that means that there is no freedom. I do not think that is true either. I think they are both misunderstandings of what I’m trying to do— understandable misunderstandings, since they subscribe to the two oppositional moments within the framework that I am trying to displace. What is the dilemma of what it is to be constructed, to live that construction, to be part of an ongoing process of constructing? What is done to me, and what is it I do with what is done to me?

Vasu: Like Gender Trouble, Bodies That Matter, and Excitable Speech, The Psychic Life of Power extends your argument about identity, focusing on how gender ‘accomplishments’ such as masculinity and femininity, and ‘achievements’ such as

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heterosexuality come about. Here too you situate homosexuality at the heart of a ‘homosexually panicked’ culture. Could you expand on your thinking here?

Judith: It comes down to the question of whose lives are regarded as worthy lives, and whose illness is worthy of treatment, and whose dying and death is worthy of acknowledgment and grief. These are issues raised by gay politics during the AIDS crisis, but they are compounded now as the AIDS crisis continues in Africa, and racialisation within the contemporary geopolitical sphere compounds each and every one of these questions. In the North American context, grieving became a political issue with the onset of the AIDS crisis in the ’80s and early ’90s, and indeed continuing into present time. One of the reasons that lives lost through AlDS were difficult to grieve in the US, and why there was such an important activism centring on public mourning, such as the Names Project, the Quilt, is that it seemed that homosexuality was in this culture, not a real love, and gay lives were not as visible and real as others, and so their deaths, especially their deaths from a stigmatised disease remained, at first, unspeakable, and unmournable. Members of the dominant culture looked over at gay people and silently and openly concluded, ‘well their lives are not real lives anyway’ and ‘their loves are not real loves anyway’, and ‘their losses are not real losses anyway’; they are just ‘playing’ or they are just ‘copying’, or they are just living in a ‘shadow world’, or an ‘unreal world’, they haven’t ‘grown up’, or their relations are not legitimate in the way that heterosexual marriages are, then it follows that these lives are devalued, lost before they are lost, unworthy of public grief. […] If the part of the population that has died is the one ‘we never loved’, then they are also those we never lost. And yet, there is an elusive death that haunts dominant culture in ways that cannot be readily explained. […]

Vasu: In What’s Left of Theory? you engage at length with the political uses of theory and literature. Some related questions: Is it still appropriate to talk about the political uses of theory and literature? Is literary theory dead? Where is theory today?

Judith: When some critics claim that ‘theory is dead’ it seems to me that the statement ‘theory is dead’ is an effort to drive a nail into the coffin and that, in fact, proves that theory is alive. So rather the statement is an effort to accomplish something and make theory into past history. In fact I think it has evolved into a new kind of scholarly work that is much more engaged in cultural practices and popular culture. Most significant is the way that new theory ‘moves’ between social theory and literary criticism, economic analysis or political theory; it has become disseminated into various disciplinary frames. Certain theoretical questions have hardly gone away. For example, how do we think about the subject? How do we think about explanation? How do we think about interpreta- tion? What is the nation? What is the political? We have to be able to speak not only about this or that political institution or structure, this or that national formation, but the political as a way that groups live together in power. Surely it is theor- etical to ask, how might we live with the notion of the future? Literature engages in the charting of possible worlds, theory engages in the charting of possible worlds, it schematises possibility, it does not always tell us what possibilities to realise, or where to go with them, but it opens up a way of seeing the world that can be very disorienting, that can produce another sense of reality, that can destabilise the status quo, that can question deeply what we take for granted as naturalised or realistic versions of the status quo, and that helps open up possibility. […] If theory does this, then it can be absolutely exhilarating in so far as it opens up this world we thought was so closed to us. […]

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REFERENCES

Butler J (1990; 1999) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York & London: Routledge.

Butler J (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, New York & London: Routledge.

Butler J (1997) The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Butler J (1997) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, New York & London: Routledge.

Butler J, Guillory J and Thomas K (eds) (2000) What’s Left of Theory? New Works on the Politics of Literary Theory, London: Routledge.

Source: Reddy, Vasu, & Butler, Judith. (2004). Excerpted

from “Troubling Genders, Subverting Identities:

Interview with Judith Butler.” Agenda, 18(62),

115–123.

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Part 2D: The Construction of Sexuality

CHAPTER 23

Becoming 100 Percent Straight

Michael A. Messner

Michael A. Messner is a professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California. His research areas include men and masculinity, gender relations, and the gendered division of labour in organized sports and athletics. He is the author of over a dozen books, including a history of men’s involvement in the anti-violence movement called Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence against Women. He also continues a now 25-year longitudinal study of coverage of women’s and men’s sports on TV news and highlights shows.

In 1995, as part of my job as the president of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, I needed to prepare an hour-long presidential address for the annual meeting of some 200 people. This pre- sented a challenge to me: how might I say something to my colleagues that was interesting, at least some- what original, and above all, not boring. Students may think that their professors are especially dull in the classroom but, believe me, we are usually much worse at professional meetings. For some reason, many of us who are able to speak to our classroom students in a relaxed manner, using relatively jargon-free language, seem to become robots, dryly reading our papers—packed with impressively unclear jargon—to our yawning colleagues.

Since I desperately wanted to avoid putting 200 sport studies scholars to sleep, I decided to deliver a talk which I entitled “Studying up on Sex.” The title, which certainly did get my colleagues’ attention,

was intended as a play on words, a double entendre. “Studying up” has one generally recognizable collo- quial meaning, but in sociology it has another. It refers to studying “up” in the power structure. Sociologists have perhaps most often studied “down”—studying the poor, the blue- or pink-collar workers, the “nuts, sluts, and perverts,” the incarcerated. The idea of “studying up” rarely occurs to sociologists unless and until we live in a time when those who are “down” have organized movements that challenge the insti- tutional privileges of elites. For example, in the wake of labor movements, some sociologists like C. Wright Mills studied up on corporate elites. Recently, in the wake of racial and ethnic civil rights movements, some scholars like Ruth Frankenberg have begun to study the social meanings of “whiteness.” Much of my research, inspired by feminism, has involved a studying up on the social construction of masculinity in sport. Studying up, in these cases, has raised some

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fascinating new and important questions about the workings of power in society.

However, I realized that when it comes to under- standing the social and interpersonal dynamics of sexual orientation in sport, we have barely begun to scratch the surface of a very complex issue. Although sport studies have benefited from the work of scholars such as Helen Lenskyj (1986, 1997), Brian Pronger (1990), and others who have delineated the experiences of lesbians and gay men in sports, there has been very little extension of their insights into a consideration of the social construction of heterosexuality in sport. In sport, just as in the larger society, we seem obsessed with asking “How do people become gay?” Imbedded in the question is the assumption that people who identify as heterosexual or “straight” require no explan- ation, since they are simply acting out the “natural” or “normal” sexual orientation. We seem to be saying that the “sexual deviants” require explanation, while the experience of heterosexuals, because we are considered normal, seems to require no critical examination or discussion. But I knew that a closer look at the develop- ment of sexual orientation or sexual identity reveals an extremely complex process. I decided to challenge myself and my colleagues by arguing that although we have begun to “study up” on corporate elites in sport, on whiteness, on masculinity, it is now time to extend that by studying up on heterosexuality.

But in the absence of systematic research on this topic, where could I start? How could I explore, raise questions about, and begin to illuminate the social construction of heterosexuality for my colleagues? Fortunately, for the previous two years I have been working with a group of five men (three of whom identified as heterosexual, two as gay) mutually to explore our own biographies in terms of the earlier bodily experiences that helped to shape our gender and sexual identities. We modeled our project after that of a German group of feminist women, led by Frigga Haug, who created a research method which they call “memory work.” In short, the women would mutually choose a body part, such as “hair,” and each

would then write a short story based on a particularly salient childhood memory that related to their hair (for example, being forced by parents to cut one’s hair, deciding to straighten one’s curly hair in order to look more like other girls, etc.). Then the group would read all of the stories and discuss them one by one in the hope of gaining more general understanding of, and raising new questions about, the social construction of “femininity.” What resulted from this project was a fascinating book called Female Sexualization (Haug 1987), which my men’s group used as the inspiration for our project.

As a research method, memory work is anything but conventional. Many sociologists would argue that this is not really a “research method” at all. The information that emerges from the project cannot be used very confidently as a generalizable “truth,” and in this sort of project the researcher is simul- taneously part of what is being studied. How, my more scientifically oriented colleagues might ask, is the researcher to maintain his or her objectivity? My answer is that in this kind of project objectivity is not the point. In fact, the strength of this sort of research is the depth of understanding that might be gained through a systematic group analysis of one’s experi- ence, one’s subjective orientation to social processes. A clear understanding of the subjective aspect of social life—one’s bodily feelings, emotions, and reaction to others—is an invaluable window that allows us to see and ask new sociological questions about group interaction and social structure. In short, group memory work can provide an important, productive, and fascinating insight on social reality, though not a complete (or completely reliable) picture.

As I pondered the lack of existing research on the social construction of heterosexuality in sport, I decided to draw on one of my own stories from my memory work in the men’s group. Some of my most salient memories of embodiment are sports memories. I grew up as the son of a high school coach, and I eventually played point guard on my dad’s team. In what follows, I juxtapose my story with that of a gay

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former Olympic athlete, Tom Waddell, whom I had interviewed several years earlier for a book on the lives of male athletes (Messner 1994).

Many years ago, I read some psychological studies that argued that even for self-identified heterosexuals it is a natural part of their development to have gone through “bisexual” or even “homosexual” stages of life. When I read this, it seemed theoretically reason- able, but did not ring true in my experience. I have always been, I told myself, 100 percent heterosexual! The group process of analyzing my own autobiograph- ical stories challenged the concept I had developed of myself, and also shed light on the way in which the institutional context of sport provided a context for the development of my definition of myself as “100 percent straight.” Here is one of the stories.

When I was in the 9th grade, I played on a “D” basketball team, set up especially for the smallest of high school boys. Indeed, though I was pudgy with baby fat, I was a short 5'2", still pre-pubescent with no facial hair and a high voice that I artificially tried to lower. The first day of practice, I was immediately attracted to a boy I’ll call Timmy, because he looked like the boy who played in the Lassie TV show. Timmy was short, with a high voice, like me. And like me, he had no facial hair yet. Unlike me, he was very skinny. I liked Timmy right away, and soon we were together a lot. I noticed things about him that I didn’t notice about other boys: he said some words a certain way, and it gave me pleasure to try to talk like him. I remember liking the way the light hit his boyish, nearly hairless body. I thought about him when we weren’t together. He was in the school band, and at the football games, I’d squint to see where he was in the mass of uniforms. In short, though I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, I was infatuated with Timmy—I had

a crush on him. Later that basketball season, I decided—for no reason that I could really articulate then—that I hated Timmy. I ag- gressively rejected him, began to make fun of him around other boys. He was, we all agreed, a geek. He was a faggot.

Three years later, Timmy and I were both on the varsity basketball team, but had hardly spoken a word to each other since we were freshmen. Both of us now had lower voices, had grown to around 6 feet tall, and we both shaved, at least a bit. But Timmy was a skinny, somewhat stigmatized reserve on the team, while I was the team captain and starting point guard. But I wasn’t so happy or secure about this. I’d always dreamed of dominating games, of being the hero. Halfway through my senior season, however, it became clear that I was not a star, and I figured I knew why. I was not aggressive enough.

I had always liked the beauty of the fast break, the perfectly executed pick and roll play between two players, and especially the long twenty-foot shot that touched nothing but the bottom of the net. But I hated and feared the sometimes brutal contact under the basket. In fact, I stayed away from the rough fights for rebounds and was mostly a perimeter player, relying on my long shots or my passes to more aggressive teammates under the basket. But now it became apparent to me that time was running out in my quest for greatness: I needed to change my game, and fast. I decided one day before practice that I was gonna get aggressive. While prac- ticing one of our standard plays, I passed the ball to a teammate, and then ran to the spot at which I was to set a pick on a defender. I knew that one could sometimes get away with setting a face-up screen on a player, and

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Chapter 23 Becoming 100 Percent Straight 229

then as he makes contact with you, roll your back to him and plant your elbow hard in his stomach. The beauty of this move is that your own body “roll” makes the elbow look like an accident. So I decided to try this move. I approached the defensive player, Timmy, rolled, and planted my elbow deeply into his solar plexus. Air exploded audibly from Timmy’s mouth, and he crumbled to the floor momentarily.

Play went on as though nothing had hap- pened, but I felt bad about it. Rather than making me feel better, it made me feel guilty and weak. I had to admit to myself why I’d chosen Timmy as the target against whom to test out my new aggression. He was the skinniest and weakest player on the team.

At the time, I hardly thought about these inci- dents, other than to try to brush them off as incidents that made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Years later, I can now interrogate this as a sexual story, and as a gender story unfolding within the context of the het- erosexualized and masculinized institution of sport. Examining my story in light of research conducted by Alfred Kinsey a half-century ago, I can recognize in myself what Kinsey saw as a very common fluidity and changeability of sexual desire over the life-course. Put simply, Kinsey found that large numbers of adult, “heterosexual” men had previously, as adolescents and young adults, experienced sexual desire for males. A surprisingly large number of these men had experi- enced sexual contact to the point of orgasm with other males during adolescence or early adulthood. Similarly, my story invited me to consider what is commonly called the “Freudian theory of bisexuality.” Sigmund Freud shocked the post-Victorian world by suggesting that all people go through a stage, early in life, when they are attracted to people of the same sex.1 Adult experiences, Freud argued, eventually led most people to shift their sexual desire to what he

called an appropriate “love object”—a person of the opposite sex. I also considered my experience in light of what lesbian feminist author Adrienne Rich called the institution of compulsory heterosexuality. Perhaps the extremely high levels of homophobia that are often endemic in boys’ and men’s organized sports led me to deny and repress my own homoerotic desire through a direct and overt rejection of Timmy, through homophobic banter with male peers, and the resultant stigmatization of the feminized Timmy. Eventually, I considered my experience in the light of what radical theorist Herbert Marcuse called the sublimation of homoerotic desire into an aggressive, violent act as serving to construct a clear line of demarcation between self and other. Sublimation, according to Marcuse, involves the driving underground, into the unconscious, of sexual desires that might appear dangerous due to their socially stigmatized status. But sublimation involves more than simple repression into the unconscious. It involves a transformation of sexual desire into something else—often into aggressive and violent acting out toward others. These acts clarify the boundaries between oneself and others and therefore lessen any anxieties that might be attached to the repressed homoerotic desire.

Importantly, in our analysis of my story, the mem- ory group went beyond simply discussing the events in psychological terms. The story did perhaps suggest some deep psychological processes at work, but it also revealed the importance of social context—in this case, the context of the athletic team. In short, my rejection of Timmy and the joining with teammates to stigmatize him in 9th grade stands as an example of what sociologist R. W. Connell calls a moment of engagement with hegemonic masculinity, where I actively took up the male group’s task of constructing heterosexual/masculine identities in the context of sport. The elbow in Timmy’s gut three years later can be seen as a punctuation mark that occurred precisely because of my fears that I might be failing in this goal.

It is helpful, I think, to compare my story with gay and lesbian “coming out” stories in sport. Though

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we have a few lesbian and bisexual coming out stories among women athletes, there are very few from gay males. Tom Waddell, who as a closeted gay man, finished sixth in the decathlon in the 1968 Olympics, later came out and started the Gay Games, an athletic and cultural festival that draws tens of thousands of people every four years. When I interviewed Tom Waddell over a decade ago about his sexual identity and athletic career, he made it quite clear that for many years sports was his closet:

When I was a kid, I was tall for my age, and was very thin and very strong. And I was usually faster than most other people. But I discovered rather early that I liked gymnas- tics and I liked dance. I was very interested in being a ballet dancer … [but] something became obvious to me right away—that male ballet dancers were effeminate, that they were what most people would call faggots. And I thought I just couldn’t handle that … I was totally closeted and very concerned about being male. This was the fifties, a ter- rible time to live, and everything was stacked against me. Anyway, I realized that I had to do something to protect my image of myself as a male—because at that time homosex- uals were thought of primarily as men who wanted to be women. And so I threw myself into athletics—I played football, gymnastics, track and field … I was a jock—that’s how I was viewed, and I was comfortable with that.

Tom Waddell was fully conscious of entering sports and constructing a masculine/heterosexual athletic identity precisely because he feared being revealed as gay. It was clear to him, in the context of the 1950s, that being known as gay would undercut his claims to the status of manhood. Thus, though he described the athletic closet as “hot and stifling,” he remained there until several years after his athletic retirement. He even knowingly played along with

locker room discussions about sex and women as part of his “cover.”

I wanted to be viewed as male, otherwise I would be a dancer today. I wanted the male, macho image of an athlete. So I was protect- ed by a very hard shell. I was clearly aware of what I was doing … I often felt compelled to go along with a lot of locker room garbage because I wanted that image—and I know a lot of others who did too.

Like my story, Waddell’s points to the importance of the athletic institution as a context in which peers mutually construct and reconstruct narrow definitions of masculinity. Heterosexuality is considered to be a rock-solid foundation of this concept of masculinity. But unlike my story, Waddell’s may invoke a dra- maturgical analysis.2 He seemed to be consciously “acting” to control and regulate others’ perceptions of him by constructing a public “front stage” persona that differed radically from what he believed to be his “true” inner self. My story, in contrast, suggests a deeper, less consciously strategic repression of my homoerotic attraction. Most likely, I was aware on some level of the dangers of such feelings, and was escaping the risks, disgrace, and rejection that would likely result from being different. For Waddell, the decision to construct his identity largely within sport was to step into a fiercely heterosexual/masculine closet that would hide what he saw as his “true” identity. In contrast, I was not so much stepping into a “closet” that would hide my identity; rather, I was stepping out into an entire world of heterosexual privilege. My story also suggests how a threat to the promised privileges of hegemonic masculinity—my failure as an athlete—might trigger a momentary sexual panic that can lay bare the constructedness, indeed, the instability of the heterosexual masculine identity.

In either case, Waddell’s or mine, we can see how, as young male athletes, heterosexuality and masculinity was not something we “were,” but

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something we were doing. It is significant, I think, that although each of us was “doing heterosexual- ity,” neither of us was actually “having sex” with women (though one of us desperately wanted to). This underscores a point made by some recent the- orists that heterosexuality should not be thought of simply as sexual acts between women and men. Rather, heterosexuality is a constructed identity, a performance, and an institution that is not neces- sarily linked to sexual acts. Though for one of us it was more conscious than for the other, we were both “doing heterosexuality” as an ongoing practice through which we sought to do two things:

• avoid stigma, embarrassment, ostracism, or per- haps worse if we were even suspected of being gay;

• link ourselves into systems of power, status, and privilege that appear to be the birthright of “real men” (i.e., males who are able to compete success- fully with other males in sport, work, and sexual relations with women).

In other words, each of us actively scripted our own sexual and gender performances, but these scripts were constructed within the constraints of a socially organized (institutionalized) system of power and pleasure.

QUESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

As I prepared to tell this sexual story publicly to my colleagues at the sport studies conference, I felt extremely nervous. Part of the nervousness was due to the fact that I knew some of them would object to my claim that telling personal stories can be a source of sociological insights. But a larger part of the reason for my nervousness was due to the fact that I was revealing something very personal about my sexuality in such a public way. Most of us are not accustomed to doing this, especially in the context of

a professional conference. But I had learned long ago, especially from feminist women scholars, and from gay and lesbian scholars, that biography is linked to history. Part of “normal” academic discourse has been to hide “the personal” (including the fact that the researchers are themselves people with values, feelings, and, yes, biases) behind a carefully con- structed facade of “objectivity.” Rather than trying to hide or be ashamed of one’s subjective experience of the world, I was challenging myself to draw on my experience of the world as a resource. Not that I should trust my experience as the final word on “reality.” White, heterosexual males like me have made the mistake for centuries of calling their own experience “objectivity,” and then punishing anyone who does not share their world view by casting them as “deviant.” Instead, I hope to use my experience as an example of how those of us who are in dominant sexual/racial/gender/class categories can get a new perspective on the “constructedness” of our identities by juxtaposing our subjective experiences against the recently emerging world views of gay men and lesbians, women, and people of color.

Finally, I want to stress that in juxtaposition neither my own nor Tom Waddell’s story sheds much light on the question of why some individuals “become gay” while others “become” heterosexual or bisexual. Instead, I should like to suggest that this is a dead-end question, and that there are far more important and interesting questions to be asked:

• How has heterosexuality, as an institution and as an enforced group practice, constrained and limited all of us—gay, straight, and bi?

• How has the institution of sport been an espe- cially salient institution for the social construc- tion of heterosexual masculinity?

• Why is it that when men play sports they are almost always automatically granted masculine status, and thus assumed to be heterosexual, while when women play sports, questions are raised about their “femininity” and sexual orientation?

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These kinds of questions aim us toward an analysis of the workings of power within institutions—includ- ing the ways that these workings of power shape and constrain our identities and relationships—and point us toward imagining alternative social arrangements that are less constraining for everyone.

NOTES

1. The fluidity and changeability of sexual desire over the life

course is now more obvious in evidence from prison and

military populations, and single-sex boarding schools. The

theory of bisexuality is evident, for example, in childhood

crushes on same-sex primary schoolteachers.

2. Dramaturgical analysis, associated with Erving Goffman,

uses the theater and performance to develop an analogy

with everyday life.

REFERENCES

Haug, Frigga (1987) Female Sexualization: A Collective Work of Memory. London: Verso.

Lenskyj, Helen (1986) Out of Bounds: Women, Sport and Sexuality. Toronto: Women’s Press.

Lenskyj, Helen (1997) “No fear? Lesbians in sport and physical education.” Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal 6(2): 7–22.

Messner, Michael A. (1994) “Gay athletes and the Gay Games: In interview with Tom Waddell,” in M.A. Messner and D.F. Sabo (eds) Sex, Violence and Power in Sports: Rethinking Masculinity. Freedom: The Crossing Press, pp. 113–19.

Pronger, Brian (1990) The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality and the Meaning of Sex. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Source: Messner, Michael A. (1999). “Becoming 100

Percent Straight.” In Jay Coakley & Peter Donnelly

(Eds.), Inside Sports (pp. 104–110). London, UK:

Routledge.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 16

1. What do you think caused your heterosexuality? 2. When and how did you decide that you were a

heterosexual? 3. Is it possible that your heterosexuality is just a phase

you may grow out of? 4. Is it possible that your heterosexuality stems from

a neurotic fear of others of the same sex? 5. If you have never slept with a person of the same sex,

is it possible that all you need is a good gay lover? 6. Do your parents know that you are straight? Do

your friends and/or roommate(s) know? How did they react?

7. Why do you insist on flaunting your heterosexuality? Can’t you just be who you are and keep it quiet?

8. Why do heterosexuals place so much emphasis on sex?

9. Why do heterosexuals feel compelled to seduce others into their lifestyles?

10. A disproportionate majority of child molesters are heterosexual. Do you consider it safe to expose children to heterosexual teachers?

11. Just what do men and women do in bed together? How can they truly know how to please each other, being so anatomically different?

12. With all the societal support marriage receives, the divorce rate is spiraling. Why are there so few stable relationships among heterosexuals?

13. Statistics show that lesbians have the lowest inci- dence of sexually transmitted diseases. Is it really safe for a woman to maintain a heterosexual lifestyle and run the risk of disease and pregnancy?

14. How can you become a whole person if you limit yourself to compulsive, exclusive heterosexuality?

15. Considering the menace of overpopulation, how could the human race survive if everyone were heterosexual?

16. Could you trust a heterosexual therapist to be objective? Don’t you feel s/he might be inclined to influence you in the direction of her/his own leanings?

THE HETEROSEXUAL QUESTIONNAIRE

Martin Rochlin

Martin Rochlin was a scholar, activist, and pioneer in the field of gay-affirmative psy- chotherapy. Through his clinical practice, mentorship of students, professional presen- tations, and public appearances, he promoted the rights of sexual minorities. Rochlin was a leader in the campaign that resulted in the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. His heterosexual questionnaire, originally published in 1972, is still widely reprinted in textbooks and anthologies in gender and women’s studies and sociology.

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17. There seem to be very few happy heterosexuals. Techniques have been developed that might enable you to change if you really want to. Have you consid- ered trying aversion therapy?

18. Would you want your child to be heterosexual, know- ing the problems that s/he would face?

Source: Rochlin, Martin. (1995). “The Language of Sex:

The Heterosexual Questionnaire.” In Adie Nelson &

Barrie William Robinson (Eds.), Gender in the 1990s:

Images, Realities, and Issues (pp. 38–39). Toronto, ON:

Nelson Canada.

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CHAPTER 24

The Ethics of Genetic Research on Sexual Orientation

Udo Schüklenk, Edward Stein, Jacinta Kerin, and William Byne

Udo Schüklenk is a professor and Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics in the Depart- ment of Philosophy at Queen’s University. A leading expert in the field of bioethics (the study of ethics in health care), he has authored or co-authored a number of books and over 100 academic papers. His research interests are in the area of public health issues and infectious disease control. He is the joint editor-in-chief of Bioethics and Developing World Bioethics.

Edward Stein is a professor of law and the founding director of the Family Law, Policy, and Bioethics Program at the Cardozo School of Law in New York City. He is the auth- or of The Mismeasure of Desire: The Science, Theory, and Ethics of Sexual Orienta- tion and editor of Forms of Desire: Sexual Orientation and the Social Constructionist Controversy.

Jacinta Kerin completed her PhD in bioethics at Monash University in 2004. Her re- search concerns focus on the philosophy of science, ethics, and feminism.

William Byne is an associate professor and director of the Laboratory of Neuroanatomy and Morphometrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He is co-editor of the book Treatment of Transgender Children and Adolescents and editor-in-chief of the academic journal LGBT Health.

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Research on the origins of sexual orientation has received much public attention in recent years, especially findings consistent with the notion of relatively simple links between genes and sexual orientation.

* * * * *

ETHICAL CONCERNS

We have several ethical concerns about genetic research on sexual orientation. Underlying these concerns is the fact that even in our contemporary societies, lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals are subject to widespread discrimination and social disappro- bation. Against this background, we are concerned about the particularly gruesome history of the use of such research. Many homosexual people have been forced to undergo “treatments” to change their sexual orientation, while others have “chosen” to undergo them in order to escape societal homophobia. All too often, scientifically questionable “therapeutic” approaches destroyed the lives of perfectly healthy people. “Conversion therapies” have included electro- shock treatment, hormonal therapies, genital mutila- tion, and brain surgery.1 We are concerned about the negative ramifications of biological research on sexual orientation, especially in homophobic societies. In Germany, some scholars have warned of the potential for abuse of such genetic research, while others have called for a moratorium on such research to prevent the possible abuse of its results in homophobic soci- eties. These warnings should be taken seriously.

We are concerned that people [are] conducting research on sexual orientation work within homopho- bic frameworks, despite their occasional claims to the contrary. A prime example is the German obstetrician Günter Dörner, whose descriptions of homosexual- ity ill-conceal his heterosexism. Dörner writes about homosexuality as a “dysfunction” or “disease” based on “abnormal brain development.” He postulates that

it can be prevented by “optimizing” natural conditions or by “correcting abnormal hormonal concentrations prenatally” (emphasis added).2 Another example is provided by psychoanalyst Richard Friedman, who engages in speculation about nongay outcome given proper therapeutic intervention.3 Research influenced by homophobia is likely to result in significantly biased accounts of human sexuality; further, such work is more likely to strengthen and perpetuate the homophobic attitudes on which it is based.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION RESEARCH IS NOT VALUE NEUTRAL

Furthermore, we question whether those who research sexual orientation can ever conduct their work in a value-neutral manner. One might think that the majority of American sex researchers treat homo- sexuality not as a disease, but rather as a variation analogous to a neutral polymorphism. To consider whether or not this is the case, one must look at the context in which interest in sexual orientation arises. Homophobia still exists to some degree in all societies within which sexual orientation research is conducted. The cultures in which scientists live and work influ- ence both the questions they ask and the hypotheses they imagine and explore. Given this, we believe it is unlikely that the sexual orientation research of any scientist (even one who is homosexual) will escape some taint of homophobia.

* * * * *

We are not claiming that all researchers are homophobic to some degree whether or not they are aware of it. Nor are we talking about the implicit or explicit intentions of individual sexual orienta- tion researchers. Rather, we are seeking to highlight that the very motivation for seeking the “origin” of homosexuality has its source within social frameworks that are pervasively homophobic. Recognition that

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Chapter 24 The Ethics of Genetic Research on Sexual Orientation 237

scientific projects are constituted by, and to some degree complicit in, social structures does not neces- sarily entail that all such science should cease. At the very least, however, it follows that sexual orientation research and its use should be subject to critique. Such a critique will call into question the claim that, by treating homosexuality as a mere variation of human behavior, researchers are conducting neutral investi- gations into sexual orientation.

* * * * *

Normativity of Naturalness and Normality. Why is there a dispute as to whether homosexuality is natural or normal? We suggest it is because many people seem to think that nature has a prescriptive normative force such that what is deemed natural or normal is necessarily good and therefore ought to be. Everything that falls outside these terms is constructed as unnatural and abnormal, and it has been argued that this constitutes sufficient reason to consider homosexuality worth avoiding.4 Arguments that appeal to “normality” to provide us with moral guidelines also risk committing the naturalistic fal- lacy. The naturalistic fallacy is committed when one mistakenly deduces from the way things are to the way they ought to be. For instance, Dean Hamer and colleagues commit this error in their Science article when they state that “it would be fundamentally unethical to use such information to try to assess or alter a person’s current or future sexual orientation, either heterosexual or homosexual, or other normal attributes of human behavior.”5 Hamer and colleagues believe that there is a major genetic factor contributing to sexual orientation. From this, they think it follows that homosexuality is normal, and thus worthy of preservation. Thus, they believe that genetics can tell us what is normal, and that the content of what is normal tells us what ought to be. This is a typical example of a naturalistic fallacy.

Normality can be defined in a number of ways, but none of them direct us in the making of moral

judgments. First, normality can be reasonably defined in a descriptive sense as a statistical average. Appeals to what is usual, regular, and/or conforming to existing standards ultimately collapse into statistical state- ments. For an ethical evaluation of homosexuality, it is irrelevant whether homosexuality is normal or abnormal in this sense. All sorts of human traits and behaviors are abnormal in a statistical sense, but this is not a sufficient justification for a negative ethical judgment about them.

Second, “normality” might be defined in a func- tional sense, where what is normal is something that has served an adaptive function from an evolutionary perspective. This definition of normality can be found in sociobiology, which seeks biological explanations for social behavior. There are a number of serious problems with the sociobiological project.6 For the purposes of this argument, however, suffice it to say that even if sociobiology could establish that certain behavioral traits were the direct result of biological evolution, no moral assessment of these traits would follow. To illustrate our point, suppose any trait that can be reasonably believed to have served an adaptive function at some evolutionary stage is normal. Some questions arise that exemplify the problems with deriving normative conclusions from descriptive sci- ence. Are traits that are perpetuated simply through linkage to selectively advantageous loci less “normal” than those for which selection was direct? Given that social contexts now exert “selective pressure” in a way that nature once did, how are we to decide which traits are to be intentionally fostered?

* * * * *

U.S.-Specific Arguments. In the United States, several scholars and lesbian and gay activists have argued that establishing a genetic basis for sexual orientation will help make the case for lesbian and gay rights. The idea is that scientific research will show that people do not choose their sexual orientations and therefore they should not be punished or discriminated against

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in virtue of them. This general argument is flawed in several ways.7 First, we do not need to show that a trait is genetically determined to argue that it is not amenable to change at will. This is clearly shown by the failure rates of conversion “therapies.”8 These failures establish that sexual orientation is resistant to change, but they do not say anything about its ontogeny or etiology. Sexual orientation can be unchangeable without being genetically determined. There is strong observational evidence to support the claim that sexual orientation is difficult to change, but this evidence is perfectly compatible with nongenetic accounts of the origins of sexual orientations. More importantly, we should not embrace arguments that seek to legitimate homosexuality by denying that there is any choice in sexual preference because the implicit premise of such arguments is that if there was a choice, then homosexuals would be blameworthy.

Relatedly, arguments for lesbian and gay rights based on scientific evidence run the risk of leading to impoverished forms of lesbian and gay rights. Regardless of what causes homosexuality, a person has to decide to publicly identify as a lesbian, to engage in sexual acts with another woman, to raise children with her same-sex lover, or to be active in the lesbian and gay community. It is when people make such decisions that they are likely to face discrimination, arrest, or physical violence. It is decisions like these that need legal protection. An argument for lesbian and gay rights based on genetic evidence is impotent with respect to protecting such decisions because it focuses exclusively on the very aspects of sexuality that might not involve choices.

Another version of this argument focuses on the specifics of U.S. law. According to this version, scientific evidence will establish the immutability of sexual orientation, which, according to one current interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, is one of three criteria required of a classification if it is to evoke heightened judicial scrutiny. While this line of argument has serious internal problems,9 such an

argument, like a good deal of American bioethical reasoning, has limited or no relevance to the global context. Since the results of the scientific research are not confined within American borders, justifications that go beyond U.S. legislation are required.

The same sort of problem occurs in other defenses of sexual orientation research that discuss possible ramifications in U.S.-specific legislative terms. For instance, Timothy Murphy claims that, even if a genetic probe predictive of sexual orientation were available, mandatory testing would be unlikely.10 He bases this claim on the fact that in some states employment and housing discrimination against homosexual people is illegal. In many countries, however, the political climate is vastly different, and legal anti-gay discrimination is widespread. And there is evidence that scientific research would be used in a manner that discriminates against homosexuals.11 [For example,] in Singapore, homosexual sex acts are a criminal offense. The Singapore Penal Code sections 377 and 377A threaten sentences ranging from two years to life imprisonment for homosexual people engaging in same-sex acts. Not coincidentally, in light of our concerns, a National University of Singapore psychiatrist recently implied that “pre-symptomatic testing for homosexuality should be offered in the absence of treatment,”12 thereby accepting the idea that homosexuality is something in need of a cure.

Genetic Screening. Several attempts to defend sexual orientation research against ethical concerns related to the selective abortion of “pre-homosexual” fetuses have been made. It has been claimed that this sort of genetic screening will not become commonplace because “diagnostic genetic testing is at present the exception rather than the rule.”13 While this may indeed be true in the U.S., it has far more to do with the types of tests currently offered than with a reluc- tance on the part of either the medical profession or the reproducing public to partake of such technology. For example, the types of tests available are diagnostic for diseases and are offered on the basis of family

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Chapter 24 The Ethics of Genetic Research on Sexual Orientation 239

history or specific risk factors. The possibility of tests that are supposed to be (however vaguely) predictive of behavioral traits opens genetic technology to a far greater population, especially when the traits in question are undesired by a largely prejudiced society.

Furthermore, it has been claimed that the med- ical profession would not advocate such a test that does not serve “important state interests” (p. 341). This argument not only ignores the existence of homophobia among individuals within medicine,14 it assumes also that public demand for genetic testing varies predominantly according to medical advice. However, should such a test become available, the media hype surrounding its market arrival would ren- der its existence common knowledge, which, coupled with homophobic bias, would create a demand for the test irrespective of its accuracy and of any kind of state interest. Furthermore, this argument ignores the fact that genetic screening for a socially undesirable char- acteristic has already been greeted with great public demand in countries such as India, where abortion on the basis of female sex is commonplace, irrespec- tive of its legality.15 Techniques to select the sexual orientation of children, if made available, might well be widely utilized.16

* * * * *

The Value of Knowing the Truth. Finally, various schol- ars appeal to the value of the truth to defend research on sexual orientation in the face of ethical concerns. Scientific research does, however, have its costs and not every research program is of equal importance. Even granting that, in general, knowledge is better than ignorance, not all risks for the sake of know- ledge are worth taking. With respect to sexual orien- tation, historically, almost every hypothesis about the causes of homosexuality led to attempts to “cure” healthy people. History indicates that current genetic research is likely to have negative effects on lesbians and gay men, particularly those living in homophobic societies.17

A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Homosexual people have in the past suffered greatly from societal discrimination. Historically, the results of biological research on sexual orientation have been used against them. We have analyzed the arguments offered by well-intentioned defenders of such work and concluded that none survive philosophical scrutiny. It is true that in some countries in Scandinavia, North America, and most parts of Western Europe, the legal situation of homosexual people has improved, but an adequate ethical analysis of the implications of gen- etic inquiry into the causes of sexual orientation must operate from a global perspective. Sexual orientation researchers should be aware that their work may harm homosexuals in countries other than their own. It is difficult to imagine any good that could come of genetic research on sexual orientation in homophobic societies. Such work faces serious ethical concerns so long as homophobic societies continue to exist. Insofar as socially responsible genetic research on sexual orientation is possible, it must begin with the awareness that it will not be a cure for homophobia and that the ethical status of lesbians and gay men does not in any way hinge on its results.

NOTES

1. Jonathan Ned Katz, Gay American History (New York:

Thomas Crowell, 1976), pp. 197–422.

2. Günter Dörner, “Hormone-Dependent Brain Development

and Neuroendocrine Prophylaxis,” Experimental and Clinical

Endocrinology 94 (1989): 4–22.

3. Richard C. Friedman, Male Homosexuality: A Contemporary

Psychoanalytic Perspective (New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1988), p. 20.

4. Michael Levin, “Why Homosexuality Is Abnormal,” Monist 67

(1984): 251–83.

5. Dean Hamer et al., “A Linkage between DNA Markers on the

X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation,” Science 261

(1993): 326.

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6. Philip Kitcher, Vaulting Ambition: Sociobiology and the Quest

for Human Nature (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).

7. Edward Stein, “The Relevance of Scientific Research

Concerning Sexual Orientation to Lesbian and Gay Rights,”

Journal of Homosexuality 27 (1994): 269–308.

8. Charles Silverstein, “Psychological and Medical Treatments

of Homosexuality,” in Homosexuality: Research Implications

for Public Policy, ed. J.C. Gonsiorek and J.D. Weinrich

(Newbury Park: Sage, 1991), pp. 101–14.

9. Janet Halley, “Sexual Orientation and the Politics of Biology:

A Critique of the New Argument from Immutability,” Stanford

Law Review 46 (1994): 503–68.

10. Timothy Murphy, “Abortion and the Ethics of Genetic Sexual

Orientation Research,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare

Ethics 4 (1995): 341.

11. Paul Billings, “Genetic Discrimination and Behavioural

Genetics: The Analysis of Sexual Orientation,” in Intractable

Neurological Disorders, Human Genome, Research, and

Society, ed. Norio Fujiki and Darryl Macer (Christchurch and

Tsukuba: Eubios Ethics Institute, 1993), p. 37; Paul Billings,

“International Aspects of Genetic Discrimination,” in Human

Genome Research and Society, ed. Norio Fujiki and Darryl

Macer (Christchurch and Tsukuba: Eubios Ethics Institute,

1992), pp. 114–17.

12. L.C.C. Lim, “Present Controversies in the Genetics of

Male Homosexuality,” Annals of the Academy of Medicine

Singapore 24 (1995): 759–62.

13. Murphy, “Abortion and the Ethics of Genetic Sexual

Orientation Research,” p. 341.

14. Kevin Speight, “Homophobia Is a Health Issue,” Health Care

Analysis 3 (1995): 143–48.

15. Kusum, “The Use of Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques for Sex

Selection: The Indian Scene,” Bioethics 7 (1993): 149–65.

16. Richard Posner, Sex and Reason (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 308.

17. For further elaborations on this argument, see Edward Stein,

Udo Schüklenk, and Jacinta Kerin, “Scientific Research on

Sexual Orientation,” in Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics, ed.

Ruth Chadwick (San Diego: Academic Press, 1997).

Source: Schüklenk, Udo, Stein, Edward, Kerin, Jacinta,

& Byne, William. (1998). Excerpted from “The Ethics

of Genetic Research on Sexual Orientation.” Hastings

Centre Report, 7(4), 6, 8–13.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 17

Below are two definitions by noted American feminists Suzanne Pharr and Audre Lorde. Pharr is a long-time activist and organizer for social and economic justice movements, and author of Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism. Lorde was a writer, poet, and activist, and a key figure in the Black feminist and lesbian movements of the 1970s and 1980s.

Pharr and Lorde each define homophobia and het- erosexism in a different way. What does each writer contribute to your understanding of these concepts?

Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism, Suzanne Pharr

Homophobia works effectively as a weapon of sexism because it is joined with a powerful arm, heterosexism. Heterosexism creates the climate for homophobia with its assumption that the world is and must be heterosex- ual and its display of power and privilege as the norm. Heterosexism is the systemic display of homophobia in the institutions of society. Heterosexism and homopho- bia work together to enforce compulsory heterosexual- ity and that bastion of patriarchal power, the nuclear family. The central focus of the rightwing attack against women’s liberation is that women’s equality, women’s self-determination, women’s control of our own bodies and lives will damage what they see as the crucial soci- etal institution, the nuclear family.

Scratching the Surface, Audre Lorde

Heterosexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving and thereby its right to dominance. Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one’s own sex and therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.

How Do You Recognize Homophobia in Yourself and Others?

The Campaign to End Homophobia, Cooper Thompson and Barbara Zoloth

There are four distinct but interrelated types of homopho- bia: personal, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural.

Personal homophobia is prejudice based on a personal belief that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are sinful, immoral, sick, inferior to heterosexuals, or incomplete women and men.

Personal homophobia is experienced as a feeling of fear, discomfort, dislike, hatred, or disgust with same-sex sexuality. Anyone, regardless of their sexual orientation or preference, can experience personal homophobia; when this happens with lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, it is called internalized homophobia.

HOMOPHOBIA, HETEROSEXISM, AND HETERONORMATIVITY

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Interpersonal homophobia is individual behavior based on personal homophobia. This hatred or dislike may be expressed by name-calling, telling “jokes,” verbal and physical harassment, and other individual acts of discrimination.

Interpersonal homophobia, in its extreme, results in lesbians, gays, and bisexuals being physically assaulted for no other reason than their assailants’ homophobia. Most people act out their fears of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in non-violent, more commonplace ways. Relatives often shun their lesbian, gay, and bisex- ual family members; co-workers are distant and cold to lesbian, gay, and bisexual colleagues; heterosexual friends aren’t interested in hearing about their lesbian, gay, and bisexual friends’ relationships.

Institutional homophobia refers to the many ways in which government, businesses, churches, and other institutions and organizations discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation. Institutional homophobia is also called heterosexism.

Institutional homophobia is reflected in religious organizations which have stated or implicit policies against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals leading services; agencies which refuse to allocate resources to services to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people; and governments which fail to insure the rights of all citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Cultural homophobia refers to social standards and norms which dictate that being heterosexual is better or more moral than being lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and that everyone is or should be heterosexual. Cultural homophobia is also called heterosexism.

Cultural homophobia is spelled out each day in tele- vision shows and print advertisements where virtually

every character is heterosexual, every erotic relationship involves a female and a male, and every “normal” child is presumed to be attracted to and will eventually marry someone of the other sex. In the few cases where lesbi- ans, gays, or bisexual people are portrayed, they are usu- ally unhappy, stereotyped, engaged in self-destructive behaviors, or ambivalent about their sexual orientation.

Heteronormativity

Identity and Opportunity, Miriam Smith

Heteronormativity means that social organization is structured around the assumption that heterosexual sexual preference and heterosexual coupling is the dom- inant mode of sexual, intimate, and family organization and that homosexuality is deviant. Even when dominant norms are not openly homophobic or hostile towards homosexuality, lesbian and gay people are outside of the “norm.” So, for example, people are usually assumed to be heterosexual unless they state or are shown to be otherwise, an assumption that is an example of “hetero- normativity.” Some lesbian and gay people label them- selves “queer”—traditionally a hostile epithet aimed at them—in part to call attention to the power of “naming” as a means of enforcing social expectations and defining “normalcy.” Heteronormativity is not confined to social attitudes, norms, and values but is also enshrined in public policies. Until very recently, same-sex couples [in Canada] were not entitled to benefits provided to het- erosexual couples, such as pensions or medical benefits provided by private or public sector employers. Such policies are “heteronormative” because they assume that heterosexual couples are the only form of couple or the only form of couple that is worthy of the social and economic support they provide.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 17 Homophobia, Heterosexism, and Heteronormativity 243

Sources: Pharr, Suzanne. (1988). Homophobia: A Weapon

of Sexism (p. 16). Inverness, CA: Chardon Press; Lorde,

Audre. (1984). “Scratching the Surface: Some Notes

on Barriers to Women and Loving.” In Audre Lorde

(Ed.), Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (p. 45).

Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press. Originally published

in The Black Scholar, 9(7) (1978), 31–35; Thompson,

Cooper, & Zoloth, Barbara. (1990). Excerpted from

“The Campaign to End Homophobia: Homophobia

Pamphlet.” Campaign to End Homophobia (pp. 1–2).

Retrieved from: http://www.cooper-thompson.com/

essays/PDF/Homophobia.pdf; Smith, Miriam. (2012).

“Identity and Opportunity: The Lesbian and Gay Rights

Movement.” In Maureen Fitzgerald & Scott Rayter

(Eds.), Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in

Sexuality Studies (p. 122). Toronto, ON: Canadian

Scholars’ Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 18

It’s not fiction—although it sounds like something straight out of a dystopian novel.

The so-called “fruit machine” was a homosexuality detection system commissioned by the Canadian gov- ernment during the Cold War—and developed largely by a psychologist at Carleton University in Ottawa—to keep LGBT people out of the public service or military.1

While the machine is long gone, its legacy is back in the news after the federal government was hit with a class-action lawsuit this week from former public servants who lost their jobs because of their sexual orientation.

Gay and lesbian civil servants were driven out of the Canadian military and public service beginning in the 1950s, but the practice continued after homosexuality was removed from the Criminal Code in the 1960s.

At the time, homosexuals were perceived by the gov- ernment as weak, unreliable and potentially disloyal. The government feared they might be easy targets for Soviet spies who could blackmail them into giving up import- ant secrets—and thus commissioned the machine to determine a person’s sexual identity through involuntary biological responses.

The project “was a series of psychological tests,” said Patrizia Gentile, an associate professor at Carleton

University and the [co-]author of The Canadian War on Queers.

In one test, for example, subjects were shown pictures that would “arouse desire,” said Gentile, while cameras took pictures of their pupils, to see if they dilated.

“Product of His Time”

The machine was used by the federal government throughout the 1960s, until the Defence Research Board—which was later folded into the Department of National Defence—pulled funding in 1967.

The device was never able to establish a “discernable difference,” between the biological responses of hetero- sexuals and LGBT individuals, Gentile wrote in her book.

The machine was based on research by Frank Robert Wake, a Carleton University psychologist who died in 1993.

“I think he was a product of his time, definitely. But that doesn’t of course excuse the fact that he came up with research that was discriminatory and harmful to a lot of people’s lives,” Gentile told CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning on Thursday.

“He is part of the Cold War culture and this culture of fear, where homosexuals and communists were conflated.”

THE “FRUIT MACHINE”

Sherry Aske and Trevor Pritchard

Sherry Aske is a news editor, presenter, and producer at CBC Ottawa. Trevor Pritchard is a writer, editor, radio producer, and photographer. Most recently, he has worked as a radio producer with CBC in Ottawa and Saskatoon.

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According to Doug Elliott, a longtime gay rights activist and the Toronto lawyer leading the class-action lawsuit, as many as 9,000 people could be eligible to join it.

The Liberal government is planning an apology to the country’s LGBT community for the past discrimination, but it’s unclear when it will act.2

NOTES

1. For more information, please follow the link

to the CBC Digital Archives video on the “fruit

machine”: http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/

rcmp-uses-fruit-machine-to-detect-gays.

2. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered this historic apology

to LGBTQ2 Canadians on November 28, 2017.

Source: Aske, Sherry, & Pritchard, Trevor. (2016,

November 3). “How the Cold War ‘Fruit Machine’

Tried to Determine Gay from Straight.” CBC News.

Retrieved from: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/

ottawa/archives-homosexuality-dector-fruit-

machine-1.3833724.

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What does it mean to be a “lesbian” in the mod-ern world? In the 21st century it means loving women, desiring women, forming relationships with women, engaging in sexual behaviour with women, claiming an identity as a lesbian, and perhaps forming communities with other lesbians, although not all of these are necessary to the definition. But what do we make of women who loved, desired, formed relation- ships with and had sex with women before the concept and identity of “lesbian” were available? What do we make of such women in cultures that have different categories of gender and sexual behaviour? We might call them “lesbian-like” or talk of same-sex love, desire or sexual acts.1 What is crucial is that we contemplate, as best we can, the ways in which women in the past and in different parts of the world negotiated and understood their desire, love and self-conceptions.

I explore here different patterns of loving women in various parts of the world, from around the beginning of the 19th century up to the present. It is impossible, of course, to be comprehensive, since research on many societies remains sketchy or is entirely lacking. Nor is there space to do justice to more than a few places. But my aim is to give a sense of women’s lives with other women before, during and after the “discovery,” naming and claiming of lesbian identity. Although lesbianism is often dismissed in societies subject to Western imperialism as an imported perversion (and in Western societies trad- itionally attributed to those of “other” races, classes or nations), women all around the world have found many ways of loving other women.

The story of loving women in the modern world is a tale of women who dressed and passed as men

CHAPTER 25

Loving Women in the Modern World

Leila J. Rupp

Leila J. Rupp is the interim dean of social sciences and distinguished professor in the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California–Santa Barbara. An his- torian by training, she was editor of the Journal of Women’s History for many years. She researches and publishes widely in the areas of women’s movements, sexualities, and comparative and transnational women’s history. Among her many books, Rupp co-edited the ninth edition of Feminist Frontiers, a widely used anthology of feminist writings. Her most recent co-edited volume, Understanding and Teaching U.S. Les- bian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, received a Lambda Literary Award for Best Anthology.

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and who married women, of female-husbands and manly women, of romantic friends who made lives together, of trysts in domestic spaces, of secretive and not-so-secretive communities, of sapphists and female inverts and marriage-resisters and bulldaggers and butches and fems and lesbians. Yet it is not simply a tale of women with same-sex desires freeing and nam- ing themselves as the modern world came into being. What history teaches us is how differently sexuality has been conceived and practised in the past and in various societies, and how mistaken we are to think solely in terms of progress. As a way of disrupting a narrative of progress, I have approached the history of loving women thematically, looking first at marrying women, then desiring women, and finally at women claiming diverse identities.

MARRYING WOMEN

One of the most persistent patterns of what may or may not accurately be called female same-sex sexuality is the case of women crossing the gender line to live as men and to marry women. What we do not know in such cases is whether women became men solely for the economic and social freedom that male dress and employment provided, whether a sexual motivation figured in their decisions, or whether they conceived of themselves as something akin to transgendered, even if no such concept existed. We are particularly in the dark about the motives of their wives. What we do know is that such gender-crossing and marriage to women existed in a number of contexts.

Consider the story of Edward De Lacy Evans, born a woman, who lived as a man for twenty-three years in Victoria, Australia.2 The case came to light in 1879 when he was forcibly stripped for a bath, having just arrived at Kew Asylum in Melbourne. Evans had emigrated to Australia from Ireland in 1856 as Ellen Tremaye, but after working for a short time as a domestic servant began dressing as a man and married one of his shipmates. He went to work as

a miner and, when his first wife left him for another man, explaining that Evans was actually a woman, he married a young Irishwoman. When she died, he married a third young woman, who bore a child after being impregnated by her sister’s husband. Although Evans claimed the child as his own, it was the birth, it seems, that sent Evans to the asylum.

What grabbed public interest was not the mas- querade itself but the three marriages. Newspaper stories reported Evans’s interest in women on board ship, and one journalist concluded that “the woman must have been mad on the subject of sex from the time she left Ireland.”3 The fact that Evans had been committed may have explained his sexual deviance, but how was one to account for his wives? It was difficult to ignore the fact that his third wife had borne a child, so therefore must have engaged in sexual intercourse with a man. Although she claimed not to know either that Evans was a woman or how she became pregnant, her speculation that Evans had one night substituted a real man for himself sug- gested that she and Evans did indeed regularly have sex. One newspaper story reported that his wives did not expose him because they were “nymphomaniacs,” suggesting knowledge of the emerging medical lit- erature that linked excessive heterosexual desire and prostitution with female same-sex sexuality. When Evans’s wife eventually named her brother-in-law as the father of the child in a bid for support, Evans testified in court that he had witnessed the two in bed together, but that it was so painful he could barely speak of it.

Evans’s story, like so many tales of women who became men and married women, leaves us uncertain what to think.4 Clearly there was more here at stake than occupational mobility. That Evans loved and desired women seems evident, but did he think of himself as male? Did his wives? What was crucial to the public commentary was the insistence that gender transgression was a sign of mental illness, and in fact the doctors proclaimed Evans cured only when he donned female clothing.

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In other cultures in other parts of the world, “manly women” might marry women without the need for deception. The crucial difference was societal acceptance of gender-crossing or the existence of a third (or more) category of gender. In some Native American cultures, what are called “two-spirit” manly females are conceptualized as a mixture of the mascu- line and feminine, a gender apart from either women, men or womanly men. The two-spirit role has to do with spirituality, occupation, personality and gender more than sexuality, so when sex does take place between a manly woman and another woman, it may technically be “same-sex sex”—because the bodies involved are physiologically alike—but in fact the sex is more accurately conceptualized as cross-gender.5 Among the Mohaves, hwames are women who take on male roles and who are able to marry women and serve as fathers of children borne by their wives.

* * * * *

Native American societies were not the only ones that conceptualized multiple genders and allowed same-sex but cross-gender relationships, nor were they the only social group in which two biological women might marry one another. In more than thirty African groups woman–woman marriage has been, and in some cases still is, a possibility. As among the Mohaves, a female husband could be the father of children born to her wife from a union with a bio- logical male. In that sense, she is a “social male.” In at least some cases, such a role involved male dress and occupations, as for third-gender Native Americans. In Nigeria in the 1990s, an elderly Ohagia Igbo dike-nwami (“brave-woman”) by the name of Nne Uko told an ethnographer that she “was interested in manly activities” and felt that she was “meant to be a man.”6 Although she was divorced from a husband, she farmed and hunted, joined men’s societies and married two women who gave birth to children bio- logically fathered by her brother. The fundamental reason for the existence of such marriages is economic

and familial: if a woman cannot conceive, she can continue her family line by taking a wife who will bear children. Women might choose a female husband for a number of reasons, including the possibility of greater sexual freedom, more companionship, less quarrelling and physical violence, distaste for men, more input in household decisions or more bridewealth.7 We know little or nothing about the emotional and sexual aspects of having a female husband, although scholars tend to insist that sex is not a part of such marriages. One ethnographer who spent two years studying the Bangwa of Cameroon in the 1970s suggested the presence of at least an emotional component when he described his best woman informant’s relationship with one of her wives, commenting on “their obvious satisfaction in each other’s company.”8

A quite different kind of marriage from one in which a partner passed as a man or became a social male developed in the Euro-American world in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As an ideology of sexual difference between women and men took hold among the urban middle classes, the phenomenon known as “romantic friendship” flourished. Women, assigned the domestic sphere of the home and assumed to be emotional and asexual, developed strong and passionate ties to other women that thrived in addi- tion to or alongside marriage to men. When romantic friends in certain privileged circumstances chose not to marry as expected, they sometimes formed marriage-like relationships that became known in the United States, because of their prevalence in the north-east, as “Boston marriages.”

No doubt the most famous marriage between romantic friends was that of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who ran away together from their aristocratic Irish homes in 1778 when they were thirty-nine and twenty-three respectively. Although Butler, the elder of the pair, dressed and behaved in a masculine manner, they lived respectably, if eccentrically and not without occasional criticism, in a rural retreat in Wales for fifty-one years. As the “Ladies of Llangollen” they came to embody romantic

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friendship and the possibility of marriage, in practice if not in name, between two women. They called each other “my Better Half,” “my Sweet Love” and “my Beloved.”9 Visitors flocked to their home, newspaper accounts described their house and garden, and other women who loved women viewed them as icons of female love. Anne Lister, a member of the Yorkshire gentry who was quite forthright about her love and lust for women, visited the Ladies in 1822 and felt a connection. She concluded that the long marriage between the two women must have been held together by “something more tender still than friendship.”10 When Butler died, leaving Ponsonby almost penni- less, friends managed to arrange for Butler’s pension to be paid to her—in effect a recognition that they had been married.

* * * * *

The Ladies of Llangollen […] lived in [a society] that did not have a category for women who married women. Their relationship [was] nonetheless accepted, or at least tolerated, because of class privilege and because of ignorance, wilful or otherwise, that sexual relationships formed part of the arrangement. In 19th-century England and Wales, as throughout Europe and the United States, romantic friendships crossed the boundaries of respectability if there was too much gender transgression or suspicion of sexual activity beyond kissing and cuddling, as we shall see. But by the end of the 19th century, as the science of sexology began to describe and categorize masculine women and women with same-sex desires as “inverts” or “perverts,” everything began to change.

Consider the case of Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward in late 19th-century Memphis, Tennessee. Mitchell, a middle-class white nineteen-year-old, fell in love with her seventeen-year-old friend Freda Ward (known as ‘Fred’) and hatched a plot to dress as a man, run away with her and marry her. To this point their attachment seemed, to their families, to fit the familiar pattern of romantic friendship. Then

Ward’s family uncovered the plot and sent back Mitchell’s engagement ring and other tokens of their love, forbidding them to see each other. Even worse from Mitchell’s perspective, Ward began to be courted by a man. Early on in their plans to run away, Mitchell had said that she would kill Ward if she backed out of her promise to marry her, and she acted on this threat by slashing Ward’s throat on the streets of Memphis in 1892. The case attracted attention from doctors and the popular press not only because of its drama, but also because it seemed to fit so perfectly the newly emerging theory of gender inversion and sexual deviance as inextricably linked. That is, Alice Mitchell became the embodiment of the “invert” or “lesbian” in American medical and popular discourse.11 Her family’s strategy for the defence was to have her declared insane, and she died in an asylum.

Across the Atlantic, at about the same time, the Hungarian count Sandor Vay was accused by his father- in-law not only of forgery, but also of fraud, since he “was only a woman, walking around in masculine clothes.”12 Unlike Mitchell, Vay was a “passing woman” who was raised as a boy, had affairs with women and worked as a journalist and writer. His father-in-law testified that one could see the shape of (rather large) male equipment between Vay’s legs, and Vay’s wife reported that she had given herself to him and had had no idea prior to his arrest that he was not biologically a man. Yet other witnesses testified that they knew the count to be a woman. The doctor who reported on the case to the court was himself confused, finding it difficult to deal with the masculine countess as a lady and much “easier, natural, and more correct” to think of Sandor as “a jovial, somewhat boyish student.”13 At this point the medical authorities proceeded from the story of a passing woman to a diagnosis of inversion and mental illness. As in the case of Alice Mitchell, the emerging ideas of the sexologists concerning gender inversion and same-sex sexual desire came to the fore. Sandor Vay was to Hungary, and to Europe more gen- erally, what Alice Mitchell was to the United States: the embodiment of a sexual invert.

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Once women who passed as men became defined in Euro-American cultures as sexual inverts and sub- sequently as mannish lesbians, marriages between women—whether passing women, manly women, social males, female husbands or romantic friends— had the potential to take on an air of sexual deviance. Nevertheless, some women continued to cross the gender line secretly, to live their lives as men and to marry women. Billy Tipton, a US jazz musician, originally invented himself as a man in order to earn a living during the Depression, but in 1989, when he died, his secret was revealed. He had been married several times and had adopted sons, and none of his immediate family—including his wives—knew that he had been born a woman.14

In the contemporary world, women in a few places can actually marry. In Belgium, Canada, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and, in the United States, Massachusetts, lesbian marriages are taking place. Even in India, a society that does not condone same- sex relations, the fact that the Hindu Marriage Act allows diverse communities to define marriage means that some same-sex couples are able get married.15 In the 1990s in a very poor rural region of India, Geeta, a woman from a dalit or “untouchable” family who was married to an abusive husband, met Manju, an older woman whose masculinity had won her a great deal of respect and power in her village. They came to know each other at a residential school run by a women’s organization devoted to equality and empowerment, and they fell in love. As Geeta put it, “I do not know what happened to me when I met Manju but I forgot my man. I forgot that I had been married. We were so attracted to each other that we immediately felt like husband and wife.”16 Geeta accepted Manju as her husband at a Shiva temple, Manju’s family accepted Geeta as a daughter-in-law, and Manju became both a second mother and a father to Geeta’s daughter.

Marriage between women, then, has a long and complicated history. Many of the stories of women who married other women involve gender trans- gression, whether secret or open. Some take place in

societies that recognize more than two genders or, for a variety of reasons, accept the idea of women as social males. There are many reasons why women might choose to cross the gender line or identify with a third or fourth gender, sexual desire for other women being only one. We know even less about why women might choose to marry female husbands. But what is clear is that women in various places in modern history have chosen to live their lives with other women.

DESIRING WOMEN

What do we know of women’s sexual activities with one another, much less of their desires? This is a ques- tion not only of evidence, but also of interpretation. What counts as “sex”? Kissing, hugging, cuddling? And what about acts that seem clearly sexual from a contemporary Western perspective but might have little to do with erotic desire in other contexts? These are tricky questions. What we do know is that, despite all the obstacles, some record of women’s same-sex desires has survived.

Let us begin with romantic friendship in the 18th- and 19th-century Western world, since one of the central debates in the history of sexuality hinges on the question of whether or not these passionate, intense, loving and physically affectionate relation- ships included sex, by which we presumably mean the involvement of genitals and/or sexual desire and/or sexual gratification. Certainly some of what romantic friends wrote to each other sounds like declarations of desire. There is Alice Baldy, a white woman from the US state of Georgia, writing in 1870 to her beloved, Josie Varner: “Do you know that if you only touch me, or speak to me there is not a nerve or fibre in my body that does not respond with a thrill of delight?”17 Or 19th-century Czech writer Božena Némcové writing to Sofie Rottová, a fellow author: “Believe me, sometimes I dream that your eyes are right in front of me, I am drowning in them, and they have the same sweet expression as they did when they used

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to ask: ‘Božena, what’s wrong? Božena, I love you.’”18 Or African-American poet Angelina Weld Grimké writing in 1896 to her school friend Mamie Burrell: “Oh Mamie if you only knew how my heart beats when I think of you and it yearns and pants to gaze, if only for one second upon your lovely face.”19 Are these expressions of physical desire? Formulaic expressions of friendship? Or sometimes the former, sometimes the latter and sometimes both?

One of the cases that most troubles our under- standing of the relationship between romantic friendship and sexual desire is that of Scottish schoolteachers Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods. In the early 19th century, Pirie and Woods fulfilled a dream by establishing a school together in Edinburgh. Then their plans all came crashing down one day when one of their students, Jane Cumming, born of a liaison between an Indian woman and an aristocratic Scottish man serving the empire in the East, reported shocking behaviour to her grandmother. According to Jane Cumming, the two teachers visited each other in bed, lay one on top of the other, kissed and shook the bed. Furthermore, Cumming reported that Jane Pirie said one night, “You are in the wrong place,” and Marianne Woods replied “I know,” and asserted that she was doing it “for fun.” Another night, said Cumming, Pirie had whispered, “Oh, do it, darling.” And she described a noise she heard as similar to “putting one’s finger into the neck of a wet bottle.”20

One can only imagine the reactions of the judges in the case, forced to make an impossible choice between believing that respectable Scottish schoolteachers might engage in sexual behaviour or believing that decent schoolgirls could make up such tales. As one judge put it, making clear the acceptability of normal romantic friendship, “Are we to say that every woman who has formed an inti- mate friendship and has slept in the same bed with another is guilty? Where is the innocent woman in Scotland?”21 Ultimately, they had to decide whether Pirie and Woods kissed, caressed and fondled “more than could have resulted from ordinary female

friendship,” suggesting a line between affectionate behaviour and sexuality that could be crossed.22 The only way out of the dilemma was provided by Jane Cumming’s heritage and childhood in India, where surely, many of the judges decided, she must have learned not only about sex, but also about sexual relations between women—something no respectable Scottish schoolgirl would be able to imagine.

* * * * *

In describing and defining lesbianism, sexologists have left us some of the first detailed and reliable rec- ords of female same-sex sexual behaviour. Despite the filter of the doctors’ own intentions and interpreta- tions, women’s voices do sometimes break through. In one famous US study of “sex variants” in New York in the 1930s, women described their sex lives and bragged about their ability to satisfy their lovers. Perhaps playing with both traditional notions about lesbians and the experts’ belief in the hypersexuality of black women, a number of African-American subjects boasted of their sexual technique: “I insert my clitoris in the vagina just like the penis of a man.… Women enjoy it so much they leave their husbands.”23 Far more reliable are oral histories collected by historians sympathetic to their narrators. In the working-class lesbian bar culture of 1940s and 1950s Buffalo, New York, white, black and Native American butches saw their role as pleasuring their fems, primarily through tribadism or what they called “friction.”24 Oral sex became more acceptable in the 1950s at the same time that the idea of the “untouchable” or “stone butch”—the “doer” who did not let her lover make love to her—became more firmly entrenched. As one stone butch from the 1950s put it, “I wanted to satisfy them, and I wanted to make love—I love to make love. I still say that’s the greatest thing in the world.”25

These varied sources from different places provide evidence of kissing, the caressing of breasts, tribadism, manual stimulation, the use of dildoes, and oral sex. Sex practices change over time and vary in different

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cultures. But what all this evidence makes clear is that there is a long history of women desiring other women and acting on that desire. How women thought about what they did with each other, both before and after “lesbian” became a possible identity, we know less about. Yet women who loved women did, in different contexts, come to define identities that were based on their love and desire.

CLAIMING AN IDENTITY

The story of the emergence of lesbian identity has both geographical and chronological limitations, but the notion of love, sexual desire or sexual activity making one a kind of person has more fluid boundaries. That is, the term lesbian has a relatively recent origin in Western culture, but there were other words or con- cepts that women applied to themselves to describe their desires and actions. Before the invention of the term homosexuality in 1869, Anne Lister saw her love and desire for women as a defining characteristic. She knew the term Saffic, considered her attraction to women natural, and proclaimed proudly that “I love, & only love, the fairer sex & thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.”26

At the same time we need to remember that there have always been, and still are, women who love and desire other women but do not see that as defining their identities in any way. In Lesotho, for example, a small, poor country entirely enclosed by South Africa, women love other women and engage in activities that seem to a modern Western sensibility to be sexual; yet they neither identify as a particular category of “sexual being” nor even define what they do as “sex,” which in Lesotho requires a penis.27 As in much of the rest of the world, women must expect to marry and bear children. But boarding-school girls pair up as “Mummy” and “Baby” and kiss, rub each other’s bodies, sometimes have genital contact, and jealously guard their relationships. Older women greet each

other with long “French” kisses, fondle one another and engage in tribadism and cunnilingus, all of which they describe as “loving each other,” “staying together nicely,” “holding each other” or “having a nice time together,” but not as sex.28 And they are not lesbians.

In other cultures, women may engage in actions that provide an identity, but not one that corresponds to the concept “lesbian.” At the end of the 19th century in Canton, a Chinese silk-producing area, women organized “sworn sisterhoods” (zishu) and identified as “marriage-resisters” (dushen zhyyi nüzi, literally “women believing in remaining single”).29 Although there were economic and cultural reasons behind their decision, commentators at the time attributed the phenomenon in part to the fact that women “acquired intimate friends with whom they practiced homosexual love.”30

Once the sexologists had undertaken the process of naming and defining the kind of people who loved others of the same sex, what did such definitions mean to women who loved other women? For some, the medicalization of same-sex love brought unwanted attention and shame; for others, self-understanding and an identity. Jeannette Marks, a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, who lived in an intimate relationship with Mary Woolley, the college’s president from 1901 to 1937, was one who worried that others might see her as a lesbian. […]

On the other hand, the concept of lesbianism as a defining characteristic allowed some women to embrace their own sexuality more fully. British feminist Frances Wilder expressed her gratitude to homosexual sexologist Edward Carpenter, whose work made her realize that she “was more closely related to the intermediate sex than I had hitherto imagined.”31 In The Well of Loneliness, Radclyffe Hall has her famous character Stephen discover her true nature when she finds a copy of Richard von Krafft- Ebing’s monumental work Psychopathia Sexualis. Hall hoped that her novel would help young women like herself come to terms with their desires, as well as elicit sympathy from heterosexual readers.32

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But it would be a mistake to assume that the experts defined lesbian identity independently, leaving women-loving women either to reject or embrace what was offered them. For the sexologists fashioned their analyses from what they saw around them, including the cases of women such as Alice Mitchell and Sandor Vay. And in the early 20th century a self-fashioning of the modern lesbian was taking place in communities where women with same-sex desires found others like themselves.

In Paris, the salon of the American Natalie Clifford Barney was the heart of one such lesbian community from the 1890s to the 1930s. A wealthy heiress, Barney wasted no time agonizing over the conclusions of the sexologists. Secure in her sexual desire for women, feminine in her self-presentation and protected by class privilege, Barney flourished in an environment in which homosexuality was cel- ebrated among the elite. In her salon, she gathered around her a coterie of writers, artists and lovers whose works celebrated lesbianism. And she eschewed shame: “Albinos aren’t reproached for having pink eyes and whitish hair, why should they [society] hold it against me for being a lesbian? It’s a question of nature: my queerness isn’t a vice, isn’t ‘deliberate,’ and harms no one.”33 Flamboyant and self-confident, Barney had no qualms about flaunting her non- monogamous lesbianism.

Berlin, too, was home in the 1920s to a vibrant lesbian world. Until the Nazi rise to power, an aston- ishing number of lesbian clubs, bars, balls, groups, circles and publications catered to women who loved women, and cabaret acts openly represented lesbian love.34 The periodical Die Freundin (“The Girlfriend”), published in Berlin from 1924 to 1933, directed its stories and articles to women described as “same-sex loving” (gleichgeschlechtlichliebend), “homosexual” (homosexuell), “homoerotic” (homoerotisch) or “lesbian” (lesbisch).35 The transnational aspects of lesbian culture among elites is evident in the title of another periodical published in Berlin in the 1930s. Garçonne (the French for “boy” with an added feminine ending, meaning

also an “emancipated woman”) catered to a lesbian and male transvestite audience.36 Both periodicals featured photographs and illustrations of a variety of lesbians: some cross-dressed, some in butch–fem couples, some entirely feminine.

New York was also home to commercial and private venues that catered to a crowd with same-sex desires, and not just to elite women. By the 1920s, two neighbourhoods—Greenwich Village and Harlem—had established reputations as welcoming places for lesbians as well as gay men. Like Paris and Berlin, both districts were also artistic and bohemian centres. The Harlem Renaissance in particular spread word of lesbian love through literature, art and the blues. Lucille Bogan, in “B.D. Women Blues,” sang of “bulldagger” women, and in fact many of the great women blues singers were themselves lesbian or bisexual. Mabel Hampton, a black performer who in her teens lived in Harlem, described private parties where women who desired women might meet: “The bulldykers used to come and bring their women with them, you know.”37

Such vibrant lesbian communities were the exception rather than the rule, however, for in much of the world the idea that women should live independ- ently of men remained unthinkable. But even where the conditions for such lesbian communities were lacking, the language of same-sex love began to enter the vernacular. In Republican China, indigenous developments—such as the emergence of marriage resistance, the widespread existence of same-sex love relations in sex-segregated schools, and changes in gender roles accompanying urbanization—combined with the translation of the work of Western sexologists and drew attention to the new concept of “same-sex love” (tongxing ai) that had migrated from Japan.38 A number of women writers from the progressive May Fourth movement wrote about love between women, often telling of relationships between women in school. One such author, Lu Yin, in Lishi’s Diary (1923) tells the story of a woman who does not wish to marry and whose feelings for her school friend Yuanqing

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change from “ordinary friendship” to “same-sex romantic love.” They make plans to live together, and Lishi that night dreams that they are rowing a boat in the moonlight. Then Yuanqing’s mother forces her to move away and plans to marry her off to her cousin. Yuanqing writes to Lishi, “Ah, Lishi! Why didn’t you plan ahead! Why didn’t you dress up in men’s clothes, put on a man’s hat, act like a roan, and visit my parents to ask for my hand?”39 In the end, Yuanqing repudiates their dream and Lishi dies of melancholia. Lu Yin herself married twice, but her writings suggest that she struggled with lesbian desire. She described her urge to dress as a man and visit a brothel, although she feared that if anyone found out, they would have “dreadful suspicions” about her.40

* * * * *

In the 1960s and 1970s, in conjunction with move- ments for social justice that were appearing around the world, women who identified as lesbians began to speak out and organize public protests, even in places where that put them in a great deal of danger. When the United Nations-sponsored first International Women’s Year Conference came to Mexico City in 1975, the press attacked the lesbian presence as imported and alien to Mexican culture, but four years later a group of lesbians promoted their cause publicly at the first World Sexology Congress.41 In South Africa, groups such as Sunday’s Women in Durban, the GLOW (Gay and Lesbian Organization of the Witwatersrand), Lesbian Forum in Soweto-Johannesburg, and Lesbians in Love and Compromising Situations (LILACS) in Cape Town emerged during the 1980s.42 Lesbians with sufficient class or organizational privilege connect at international feminist and gay/lesbian conferences such as those sponsored by the International Lesbian and Gay Association. The Asian Lesbian Network brings together lesbians from ten Asian countries and Asian lesbians living outside Asia, and the Encuentros de Lesbianas Feministas are conferences for lesbians in Latin America and the Caribbean.43

Claiming an identity—as Saffic or lesbian; as a marriage-resister, a garçonne or a bulldagger; as bombero (literally “firefighter,” for butch) or mucama (“housemaid,” for fem) in Argentina or as chapatbaz (women who engage in tribadism) in Urdu—requires one to have a concept of a particular kind of person with which one can relate, a notion that there are others like oneself with whom one might build a community. Although identity is important to the construction of the modern lesbian, we must remem- ber that there are still women all around the globe who are crossing the gender line, loving women and engaging in sexual relations without thinking of themselves as lesbians.

LOVING WOMEN

What does it mean to love women in the modern world? As all of these manifestations of relationships between women make clear, there are many and var- ious ways in which women love other women. Some cross the gender line to marry their lovers. […] And others, in different ways, celebrated their love, claimed an identity and joined together to make the world a more hospitable place for loving women.

NOTES

1. Judith M. Bennett, “‘Lesbian-Like’ and the Social History

of Lesbianisms,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 9,

no. 1–2 (2000), pp. 1–24; Leila J. Rupp, “Toward a Global

History of Same-Sex Sexuality,” Journal of the History of

Sexuality, vol. 10, no. 2 (2001), pp. 287–302.

2. Lucy Chesser, “‘A Woman Who Married Three Wives’:

Management of Disruptive Knowledge in the 1879

Australian Case of Edward De Lacy Evans,” Journal of

Women’s History, vol. 9, no. 4 (1998), pp. 53–77.

3. Ibid., p. 60.

4. See Rudolf Dekker and Lott van de Pol, The Tradition of

Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (London

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Chapter 25 Loving Women in the Modern World 255

1989); and Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids:

Women Who Dressed As Men in Pursuit of Life, Liberty and

Happiness (London 1989).

5. See Sabine Lang, “Various Kinds of Two-Spirit People:

Gender Variance and Homosexuality in Native American

Communities,” in Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas and

Sabine Lang (eds.), Two-Spirit People (Urbana 1997),

pp. 100–118; and Walter L. Williams, The Spirit and

the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture

(Boston 1986).

6. Quoted in Joseph M. Carrier and Stephen O. Murray,

“Woman–Woman Marriage in Africa,” in Stephen O. Murray

and Will Roscoe (eds.), Boy-Wives and Female Husbands:

Studies in African Homosexualities (New York 1998), p. 259.

7. See Carrier and Murray, Boy-Wives.

8. Quoted in Carrier and Murray, Boy-Wives, p. 263.

9. Quoted in Martha Vicinus, Intimate Friends: Women Who

Loved Women, 1778–1928 (Chicago 2004), p. 9.

10. Ibid., p. 45.

11. See Lisa Duggan, Sapphic Slashers: Sex, Violence and

American Modernity (Durham 2000).

12. Quoted in Geertje Mak, “Sandor/Sarolta Vay: From Passing

Woman to Invert,” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 16, no. 1

(2004), p. 54.

13. Ibid., p. 61.

14. See Diane Wood Middlebrook, Suits Me: The Double Life of

Billy Tipton (New York 1998).

15. Ruth Vanita, “CLAGS Reports,” Centre for Lesbian and Gay

Studies News, vol. 14, no. 2 (2004), p. 14.

16. Quoted in Amanda Lock Swarr and Richa Nagar, “Dismantling

Assumptions: Interrogating ‘Lesbian’ Struggles for Identity

and Survival in India and South Africa,” Signs: Journal of

Women in Culture and Society, vol. 29 (2004), p. 500.

17. Quoted in Elizabeth W. Knowlton, “‘Only a Woman Like

Yourself’: Rebecca Alice Baldy, Dutiful Daughter, Stalwart

Sister and Lesbian Lover of Nineteenth-Century Georgia,” in

John Howard (ed.), Carryin’ On in the Lesbian and Gay South

(New York 1997), p. 48.

18. Quoted in Dasa Francikova, “Female Friends in Nineteenth-

Century Bohemia: Troubles with Affectionate Writing and

‘Patriotic Relationships,’” Journal of Women’s History, vol.

12, no. 3 (2000), pp. 23–28, quotation on p. 24.

19. Quoted in Gloria T. Hull, Color, Sex and Poetry: Three

Women Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington

1987), p. 139.

20. Quoted in Lillian Faderman, Scotch Verdict (New York 1983),

p. 147.

21. Ibid., p. 281.

22. Ibid., p. 82.

23. Quoted in Jennifer Terry, An American Obsession: Science,

Medicine and Homosexuality in Modern Society (Chicago

1999), p. 242.

24. See Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis,

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian

Community (New York 1993).

25. Ibid., p. 204.

26. Anne Lister, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister

(1797–1810), ed. Helena Whitbread (London 1988), p. 145.

27. Kendall, “‘When a Woman Loves a Woman’ in Lesotho:

Love, Sex, and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia,”

in Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe (eds.), Boy-Wives and

Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities (New

York 1998), pp. 223–41.

28. Ibid., p. 233. On boarding-school relationships, Kendall

cites Judith Gay, “Mummies and Babies and Friends and

Lovers in Lesotho,” Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 11, no.

3–4 (1985), pp. 97–116.

29. See Tze-Ian D. Sang, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-

Sex Desire in Modern China (Chicago 2003), pp. 52, 377.

30. Ibid., p. 52.

31. Quoted in Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Discourses of Sexuality

and Subjectivity: The New Woman, 1870–1936,” in Martin

Bauml Duberman, Martha Vicinus and George Chauncey

(eds.), Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian

Past (New York 1989), p. 275.

32. See Vicinus, Intimate Friends, p. 217.

33. Ibid., pp. 189–90.

34. See the articles in Eldorado: Homosexualle Frauen und

Männer in Berlin 1850–1950, exh. cat., Berlin, Schwules

Museum (Berlin 1984).

35. Katharine Vogel, “Zum Selbstverständnis lesbischer Frauen

in der Weimarer Republik,” in Eldorado, pp. 162–68.

36. Quoted in Petra Shlierkamp, “Die Garçonne,” in Eldorado,

p. 173.

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256 Part 2 Constructions of Sex and Gender

37. Joan Nestle, “Excerpts from the Oral History of Mabel

Hampton,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,

vol. 18 (1993), p. 933.

38. See Sang, The Emerging Lesbian.

39. Ibid., p. 139.

40. Ibid., p. 144.

41. Claudia Hinojosa, “Mexico,” in Bonnie Zimmerman

(ed.), Lesbian Histories and Cultures (New York 2000),

pp. 494–96.

42. Ian Barnard, “South Africa,” in Zimmerman, Lesbian

Histories and Cultures, pp. 721–22.

43. Julie Dorf, “International Organizations,” in Zimmerman,

Lesbian Histories and Cultures, pp. 398–400.

Source: Rupp, Leila J. (2006). Excerpted from “Loving

Women in the Modern World.” In Robert Aldrick (Ed.),

Gay Life and Culture: A World History (pp. 223–247).

New York, NY: Universe.

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It was Queer Pride Week 2011 in Edmonton, as we began to write this piece. Our city’s billboards are wrapped with rainbow-colored posters of young scant- ily-clad men with bulging… muscles. Unfortunately, we have come to expect a significant dose of ableism, ageism, racism and fatphobia at Pride festivals across North America. In 2011, however, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society1 made ableism official!

Edmonton Pride’s official slogan in 2011 was “STAND UP.”2 Although dismayed by the ableist3 lan- guage, we were hoping, at the very least, that this slogan signaled a move towards a more political Pride: A move away from the festival that had renamed itself after a bank two years ago and that had begun banning some political queer groups from marching (most notably

in Toronto). But what Edmonton Pride is standing up for this year is not greater equity. The event listings tell the disappointing story: “Stand up… and boogie”; and “Stand up… and barbeque”—as if there was nothing of political value left for queers to “stand up” for.

The Pride slogan, poster and website, however, demonstrate that there is still much work to be done. On the poster, “STAND UP”4 is written in white monolithic letters below the diversity-rainbow- colored silhouettes of six immaculately non-diverse bodies in progressive stages of getting up to stand. On one side of the poster are three square, thin, muscular silhouettes: one in “thinker” pose; one crouching as though about to begin a sprint; and one standing with arms and legs wide apart, taking up space. On

CHAPTER 26

“Stand Up” for Exclusion? Queer Pride, Ableism, and Inequality

Danielle Peers and Lindsay Eales

Danielle Peers is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Rec- reation at the University of Alberta. Peers’s work focuses on adapted physical activity, socio-cultural sport and movement studies, and critical disability studies. A former Paralympic medallist, Peers works with art-based and autoethnographic research methods involving video, creative movement, and creative writing.

Lindsay Eales is a Vanier scholar and PhD student in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta. Eales studies, choreographs, and performs integrated dance, as well as disability and Mad performance art. As co-artistic director of CRIPSiE (Collaborative Radically Integrated Performers Society in Edmonton), she has spent the last ten years creating vibrant movement communities that appreciate diversity and reimagine disability.

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the other side are three smaller, super-thin-yet-curvy multi-colored figures: one on knees and bum sitting in a “schoolgirl” pose (like the pornography pose, minus the braids and the kilt); one on knees with head thrown back to show off large, perky breasts; one standing with arms and legs pulled together to make space for the more masculine standing counterpart. The Edmonton Pride website bears the slogan and poster below a banner photograph which features scantily-clad, athletic-looking white-skinned men wearing afro-like wigs. There is still so much work to be done.

Among the many race, gender and ability issues with these images of supposed queer diversity is the noticeable lack of fat, gender-queer, wheeling, scootering, ageing, small-statured, cane-wielding, pre-pubescent and dog-guided members of our queer communities. The lack of any significantly diverse bodies in the diversity poster and website might not have struck many Pride-goers as strange, however, since many of these bodies are structurally excluded from Queer5 events, in general.

Every summer, for example, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society rents one of the most accessible6 venues in Edmonton, and, through great expense and logis- tical prowess, manages to transform it into an almost entirely inaccessible space (despite years of being offered free or cheap alternatives for rendering the space more accessible). Year round, gay parties and events are held almost exclusively in bars or galleries that are up or down at least a flight of stairs. Most of these events don’t allow minors, won’t accommodate wheelchairs, have gender-segregated washrooms and are not set up for those who see or hear in non-normative ways. With few “standing up” against (or perhaps even taking note of) these exclusions, many community members end up having to sit out most “queer” events.

Of course, mainstream gay movements are per- haps too easy targets. […] We ask: Are our academic, artistic and activist movements that claim to be equity-based any less ableist and any more accessible than the Edmonton Pride example herein?

In Robert McRuer’s groundbreaking work, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability,7 he argues that the exclusion, marginalization or complete erasure of disability is common to contemporary queer politics and to activist politics more generally. One of his most poignant examples is the 2004 World Social Forum8 (WSF) in Mumbai, India, a global activist network that protested the World Economic Forum by collectively imagining alternatives to globalized capitalism. The WSF earned protests of its own, how- ever, due to its lack of accessibility and the organizers’ refusal to include a speaker on disability issues. The WSF’s slogan was “Another World Is Possible,” yet it remained somewhat impossible for WSF activists to imagine disability as having a place in this new world, let alone in the movement that might create it.

There is an eerie familiarity to this seeming impossibility of imagining accessibility and disabil- ity issues as vital components of social movements. Think about it. Have you recently attended any of the following:

• Equity-based academic conferences or lectures organized without any physical, visual or audio accessibility forethought?

• Take back the night or G8 marches planned on inaccessible routes?

• Film festivals in which wheelchair users are deemed fire hazards and are not allowed in the theatre, and where captions are turned off be- cause normate9 audience members find them “distracting”?

• Expensive queer parties or fundraisers held in spaces with gender-segregated washrooms, in- accessible entrances and no minors allowed?

More importantly, did you notice these structural exclusions at the time? People often don’t notice these barriers because excluded bodies usually cannot enter these spaces to demonstrate their inaccessibility. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy and one that has very real consequences for the bodies and communities that are

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Chapter 26 “Stand Up” for Exclusion? Queer Pride, Ableism, and Inequality 259

excluded, as well as for those of us who fail to address these systemic exclusions.

Odds are, however, that some of you have noticed some of these barriers at least some of the time. There are, after all, vibrant activist communities that work hard at identifying and creatively responding to the ways that they participate in the inequitable treatment and exclusion of others. […]

As inundated as we are with the inequitable pol- itics of Pride, Edmontonians are finally getting a taste of equity-oriented queer celebrations. The Exposure Queer Arts and Culture Festival10 is making radical moves towards removing barriers to their festival and to Edmonton’s queer scene in general. It started with their “All Bodies Pool Party”: an outdoor, wheelchair accessible, pay-what-you-can, all-ages, all-gender affair. Finally, queer Edmontonians—like queers elsewhere—have a choice: “Stand Up!” for the ableism of Pride, or sit in on an accessible queer/crip celebra- tion of swimming, mobilizing and imagining more inclusive images, activities, events and communities.

NOTES

1. Edmonton Pride Festival. (2012). Home. Retrieved from

http://www.edmontonpride.ca/

2. Edmonton Pride Festival. (2012). Home. Retrieved from

http://www.edmontonpride.ca/

3. Fedcan Blog. (2011). Home. Retrieved from http://blog.

fedcan.ca/tag/ableism-and-disability/ (link no longer

active).

4. Edmonton Pride Festival. (2012). Home. Retrieved from

http://www.edmontonpride.ca/

5. Queer Studies. (2011, December 17). Retrieved December

29, 2011 from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Queer_studies

6. Accessibility. (2012, January 2). Retrieved January 2, 2012

from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility

7. McRuer, R. (2006). Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness

and Disability. New York: New York University Press.

8. World Social Forum. (2011, December 30). Retrieved on

January 1, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/World_Social_Forum#2004_World_Social_Forum

9. Editors’ Note: Feminist disability studies scholar Rosemarie

Garland-Thomson coined the term normate as a way of

describing all those who derive privilege for mentally and

physically fitting the characteristics that western cultures

deem as typical or normative.

10. Exposure. (n.d.). The 5th Annual Exposure. Retrieved from

http://www.exposurefestival.ca/

Source: Peers, Danielle, & Eales, Lindsay. (2012).

Excerpted from “‘Stand Up’ for Exclusion? Queer

Pride, Ableism and Inequality.” In Malinda S. Smith

& Fatima Jaffer (Eds.), Beyond the Queer Alphabet:

Conversations on Gender, Sexuality & Intersectionality

(pp. 39–41). Ottawa, ON: Canadian Federation for the

Humanities and Social Sciences.

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PART 3 Gendered Identities

Movements begin when people refuse to live divided lives. —Parker J. Palmer, quoted in The Cultural Creatives:

How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (2000, p. 20)

This part of the book examines gendered identities, systemic inequalities, and the power of stereotypes. We emphasize some of the main institutions in societies that shape gendered social relations through, for example, the family, the community, the educational system, and the state. The main focus is on practices and legacies of colonization and imperialism.

Part 3A: Thinking about Difference and Identity We introduce here some basic concepts for understanding constructions of difference and identity in the contemporary social world. These include critical writings on identity, difference, stereotyping, racism, white privilege, microaggression, and culture. We use South Asian girls’ struggles for belonging as a North American case study that illustrates the significance of race to women’s lives.

Part 3B: Histories and Legacies of Colonialism and Imperialism In this section, we take up histories and legacies of slavery, colonization, and imperialism, nationally and transnationally. We introduce readers to “difficult knowledge” about the histories of slavery and colonization in Canada and North America as well as the implicatedness of whiteness in colonialism and imperialism. We examine legacies of racism and colonialism today by exploring how race and gender interact in diverse women’s lives. This section and the next also work together to ground and elaborate our analysis of colonization by examining its specific operations and consequences for one group in particular: Indigenous women within what is now called Canada.

Part 3C: Indigenous Women: Resistance and Resurgence We turn in this section to examining Indigenous women’s individual and collective strategies for survival and resistance in North America in the past and present. We highlight women’s involvements in political activism; community leadership; artistic expression, including performance and poetry; and various strategies employed to negotiate and challenge colonial imagery and institutions.

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We need to reflect on how a racialized regime of representation actually works. Essentially, this involves examining more deeply the set of representational practices known as stereotyping. […] Stereotyping reduces people to a few, simple, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by Nature.

Stereotyping as a signifying practice is central to the representation of racial difference. But what is a stereotype? How does it actually work? In his essay on “Stereotyping,” Richard Dyer (1977) makes an important distinction between typing and stereotyping. He argues that, without the use of types, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of the world. We understand the world by referring individual objects, people, or events in our heads to the general classificatory schemes into which—according to our culture—they fit. Thus, we “decode” a flat object on legs on which we place things as a “table.” We may never have seen that kind of “table” before, but we

Part 3A: Thinking about Difference and Identity

CHAPTER 27

Stereotyping As a Signifying Practice

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall was a leading cultural theorist and sociologist, and one of the founding fig- ures of British cultural studies. Hall was director of the Centre for Contemporary Cultur- al Studies at Birmingham University in England, where he played an instrumental role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to include an analysis of race and gender. He later became a professor of sociology at the Open University. The British newspa- per The Observer has called him “one of the country’s leading cultural theorists.”

have a general concept or category of “table” in our heads, into which we “fit” the particular objects we perceive or encounter. In other words, we understand “the particular” in terms of its “type.” We deploy what Alfred Schutz called typifications. In this sense, “typing” is essential to the production of meaning.

Richard Dyer argues that we are always “making sense” of things in terms of some wider categories. Thus, for example, we come to “know” something about a person by thinking of the roles which he or she performs: is he/she a parent, a child, a worker, a lover, boss, or an old age pensioner? We assign him/ her to the membership of different groups, according to class, gender, age group, nationality, “race,” linguistic group, sexual preference, and so on. We order him/ her in terms of personality type—is he/she a happy, serious, depressed, scatter-brained, over-active kind of person? Our picture of who the person “is” is built up out of the information we accumulate from positioning him/her within these different orders

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of typification. In broad terms, then, “a type is any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and change or ‘development’ is kept to a minimum” (Dyer, 1977, p. 28).

What, then, is the difference between a type and a stereotype? Stereotypes get hold of the few “simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized” characteristics about a person, reduce everything about the person to those traits, exaggerate and simplify them, and fix them without change or development to eternity. So the first point is—stereotyping reduces, essentializes, naturalizes, and fixes “ difference.”

Secondly, stereotyping deploys a strategy of “split- ting.” It divides the normal and the acceptable from the abnormal and the unacceptable. It then excludes or expels everything which does not fit, which is different. Dyer argues that “a system of social- and stereo-types refers to what is, as it were, within and beyond the pale of normalcy [i.e., behaviour which is accepted as “normal” in any culture]. Types are instances which indicate those who live by the rules of society (social types) and those who the rules are designed to exclude (stereotypes). For this reason, stereotypes are also more rigid than social types … [B]oundaries … must be clearly delineated and so stereotypes, one of the mechanisms of boundary maintenance, are characteristically fixed, clear-cut, unalterable” (ibid., p. 29). So, another feature of stereotyping is its practice of “closure” and exclusion. It symbolically fixes boundaries, and excludes everything which does not belong.

Stereotyping, in other words, is part of the maintenance of social and symbolic order. It sets up a symbolic frontier between the “normal” and the “deviant,” the “normal” and the “pathological,” the “acceptable” and the “unacceptable,” what “belongs” and what does not or is “Other,” between “insiders” and “outsiders,” Us and Them. It facilitates the “bind- ing” or bonding together of all of Us who are “normal” into one “imagined community”; and it sends into symbolic exile all of Them—“the Others”—who are

in some way different—“beyond the pale.” Mary Douglas (1966), for example, argued that whatever is “out of place” is considered as polluted, dangerous, taboo. Negative feelings cluster around it. It must be symbolically excluded if the “purity” of the culture is to be restored. The feminist theorist Julia Kristeva calls such expelled or excluded groups “abjected” (from the Latin meaning, literally, “thrown out”) (Kristeva, 1982).

The third point is that stereotyping tends to occur where there are gross inequalities of power. Power is usually directed against the subordinate or excluded group. One aspect of this power, according to Dyer, is ethnocentrism—“the application of the norms of one’s own culture to that of others” (Brown, 1965, p. 183). [Derrida argued] that, between binary oppositions like Us/Them, “we are not dealing with … peaceful coexistence … but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs … the other or has the upper hand” (1972, p. 41).

In short, stereotyping is what Foucault called a “power/ knowledge” sort of game. It classifies people accord- ing to a norm and constructs the excluded “other.” Interestingly, it is also what Gramsci would have called an aspect of the struggle for hegemony. As Dyer observes, “The establishment of normalcy (i.e., what is accepted as ‘normal’) through social- and stereo-types is one aspect of the habit of ruling groups … to attempt to fashion the whole of society according to their own world view, value system, sensibility and ideology. So right is this world view for the ruling groups that they make it appear (as it does appear to them) as ‘natural’ and ‘inevitable’—and for everyone—and, in so far as they succeed, they establish their hegemony” (Dyer, 1977, p. 30). Hegemony is a form of power based on leadership by a group in many fields of activity at once, so that its ascendancy commands widespread consent and appears natural and inevitable.

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REFERENCES

Brown, R. (1965) Social Psychology. London/New York, Macmillan.

Derrida, J. (1972) Positions. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Dyer, R. (ed.) (1977) Gays and Film. London, British Film Institute.

Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror. New York, Columbia University Press.

Source: Hall, Stuart. (2002). Excerpted from “The

Spectacle of the ‘Other.’” In Representation: Cultural

Representations and Signifying Practices (pp. 257–

259). London, UK: Open University.

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Many feminists of color have demonstrated the need to take into account differences among women to avoid hegemonic gender-essentialist analyses that represent the problems and interests of privileged women as paradigmatic. As feminist agendas become global, there is growing feminist concern to consider national and cultural differences among women. However, in attempting to take seri- ously these cultural differences, many feminists risk replacing gender-essentialist analyses with cultur- ally essentialist analyses that replicate problematic colonialist notions about the cultural differences between “Western culture” and “non-Western cul- tures” and the women who inhabit them (Narayan 1998). Seemingly universal essentialist generalizations about “all women” are replaced by culture-specific essentialist generalizations that depend on totalizing categories such as “Western culture,” “non-Western cultures,” “Indian women,” and “Muslim women.” The picture of the “cultures” attributed to these groups

of women remains fundamentally essentialist, depict- ing as homogeneous groups of heterogeneous peoples whose values, ways of life, and political commitments are internally divergent.

I believe that many contemporary feminists are attuned to the problem of imposing Sameness on Other women but fail to register that certain scripts of Difference can be no less problematic. Cultural imperialism in colonial times denied rather than affirmed that one’s Others were “ just like oneself,” insisting on the colonized Others’ difference from and inferiority to the Western subject. Insistence on sharp contrasts between “Western culture” and “Other cultures” and on the superiority of Western culture functioned as justifications for colonialism. However, this self-portrait of Western culture had only a faint resemblance to the political and cultural values that actually pervaded life in Western soci- eties. Thus, liberty and equality could be represented as paradigmatic Western values at the very moment

CHAPTER 28

Undoing the “Package Picture” of Cultures

Uma Narayan

Uma Narayan is a professor of philosophy and Andrew W. Mellon Chair of the Human- ities at Vassar College in the United States. Her research and teaching areas include contemporary moral issues, feminist theory, and global feminism. She is co-editor of a number of anthologies and the author of Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions and Third World Feminism. Narayan’s work is especially influential for challenging the common misconception that feminism is solely a Western notion.

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266 Part 3 Gendered Identities

when Western nations were engaged in slavery, col- onization, and the denial of liberty and equality to large segments of Western subjects, including women.

Anticolonial nationalist movements added to the perpetuation of essentialist notions of national culture by embracing, and trying to revalue, the imputed facets of their own culture embedded in the colonialists’ stereotypes. Thus, while the British imputed “spiritualism” to Indian culture to suggest lack of readiness for the worldly project of self-rule, many Indian nationalists embraced this definition to make the anticolonialist and nationalist argument that their culture was distinctive from and superior to that of the West. Thus, sharply contrasting pictures of Western culture and of various colonized national cultures came to be reiterated by both colonizers and colonized.

Prevalent essentialist modes of thinking about cultures depend on a problematic picture of what var- ious cultures are like, or on what I call the “Package Picture of Cultures.” This view understands cultures on the model of neatly wrapped packages, sealed off from each other, possessing sharply defined edges or contours, and having distinctive contents that differ from those of other “cultural packages.” I believe that these packages are more badly wrapped and their contents more jumbled than is often assumed and that there is a variety of political agendas that determine who and what are assigned places inside and outside a particular cultural package.

The essentialist Package Picture of Cultures rep- resents cultures as if they were entities that exist neatly distinct and separate in the world, independent of our projects of distinguishing among them, obscuring the reality that boundaries between them are human constructs, underdetermined by existing variations in worldviews and ways of life. It eclipses the reality that the labels currently used to demarcate particu- lar cultures themselves have a historical provenance and that what they individuate as one culture often changes over time. For example, while a prevailing picture of Western culture has it beginning in ancient Greece and perhaps culminating in the contemporary

United States, a historical perspective would register that the ancient Greeks did not define themselves as part of “Western culture” and that “American culture” was initially distinguished from “European culture” rather than assimilated to it under the rubric “Western culture.” The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary indicates that the use of the term Western to refer to Europe in distinction to Eastern or Oriental began around 1600, testimony to its colonial origins. Similarly, Indian culture is a label connected to the historical unification of an assortment of political territories into British India, a term that enabled the nationalist challenge to colonialism to emerge as Indian. Labels that pick out particular cultures are not simple descriptions that single out already distinct entities; rather, they are arbitrary and shifting designations connected to political projects that, for different reasons, insist on the distinctness of one culture from another.

The Package Picture of Cultures also assumes that the assignment of individuals to specific cultures is an obvious and uncontroversial matter. Under the influ- ence of this picture, many of us assume that we know as a simple matter of fact to what “culture” we and others belong. I invite readers who think that they are members of Western culture or American culture to ask themselves what they have in common with the millions of people who would be assigned to the same cultural package. Do I share a common culture with every other Indian woman, and, if so, what are the constituent elements that make us members of the same culture? What is my relationship to Western culture? Critical reflection on such questions suggests that the assignment of individuals to particular cul- tures is more complicated than assumed and that it is affected by numerous, often incompatible, political projects of cultural classification.

The Package Picture of Cultures mistakenly sees the centrality of particular values, traditions, or practices to any particular culture as a given and thus eclipses the historical and political processes by which particular values or practices have come to be deemed central components of a particular culture.

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Chapter 28 Undoing the “Package Picture” of Cultures 267

It also obscures how projects of cultural preservation themselves change over time. Dominant members of a culture often willingly discard what were pre- viously regarded as important cultural practices but resist and protest other cultural changes, often those pertaining to the welfare of women. For instance, Olayinka Koso-Thomas’s work reveals that in Sierra Leone virtually all the elaborate initiation rites and training that were traditional preliminaries to female circumcision have been given up because people no longer have the time, money, or social infrastructure for them. However, the rite of excision, abstracted from the whole context of practices in which it used to be embedded, is still seen as a crucial component of “preserving tradition” (Koso-Thomas 1987, 23). Feminists need to be alert to such synecdochic moves, whereby parts of a practice come to stand in for the whole, because such substitutions conceal important dimensions of social change.

Feminist engagement with cultural practices should be attentive to a process that I call “selective labeling,” whereby those with social power con- veniently designate certain changes in values and practices as consonant with cultural preservation and others as cultural loss or betrayal. Selective label- ing allows changes approved by socially dominant groups to appear consonant with the preservation of essential values or core practices of a culture, while depicting changes that challenge the status quo as threats to that culture. The Package Picture of Cultures poses serious problems for feminist agen- das in third-world contexts, since it often depicts culturally dominant norms of femininity, along with practices that adversely affect women, as central components of cultural identity and casts feminist challenges to norms and practices affecting women as cultural betrayals (Narayan 1997).

Giving up the Package Picture’s view of cultural contexts as homogeneous helps us see that sharp dif- ferences in values often exist among those described

as members of the same culture while among those described as “members of different cultures” there are often strong affinities in values, opening up liberating possibilities with respect to cross-cultural feminist judgments. For instance, the values and judgments of a Western feminist may diverge greatly from those of politically conservative members of her “package,” while they might converge quite strongly with those of an Indian feminist counterpart. A Western feminist accused of imposing Western values in her negative judgment of an Indian cultural practice could, for instance, point out that her judgments correspond closely to those of some Indian feminists. Making this assertion does require her to be informed about Indian feminists’ analyses of the practice and to use her critical judgment when such analyses disagree, as sometimes happens. Feminists can avoid the Package Picture of Cultures by attending to the historical variations and ongoing changes in cultural practices, to the wide range of attitudes toward those practices manifested by different members of a culture, and to the political negotiations that help to change the meanings and significances of these practices. Such attention would facilitate informed and astute feminist engagement with women’s issues in national contexts different from their own.

REFERENCES

Koso-Thomas, Olayinka. 1987. The Circumcision of Women. New York: Zed.

Narayan, Uma. 1997. Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism. New York: Routledge.

Narayan, Uma. 1998. “Essence of Culture and a Sense of History.” Hypatia 13(2): 86–106.

Source: Narayan, Uma. (2000). Excerpted from “Undoing

the ‘Package Picture’ of Cultures.” Signs: Journal of

Women in Culture and Society, 25(4), 1083–1086.

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ACTIVIST ART 4

MISS CANADIANA

Camille Turner

Camille Turner is an artist, educator, and cultural producer whose work explores themes of race, space, home, and belonging. Miss Canadiana, one of her earliest projects, challenges perceptions of Canadianness and troubles the unspoken binary of “real Canadian” and “diverse other.” Turner is the founder of Outterregion, an Afro- futurist performance group. She is a graduate of OCAD University and York University’s Masters in Environmental Studies Program, where she is currently a PhD candidate.

Source: Turner, Camille. (2011). “Hometown Queen.” Miss Canadiana. Retrieved from: http://camilleturner.com/project/ miss-canadiana/.

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Activist Art 4 Miss Canadiana 269

My image as Miss Canadiana points to the con- tradiction of the Canadian mythology. My body, as a representative of Canadian heritage, is surprising only because Blackness is perceived as foreign in Canada. (Camille Turner)

Miss Canadiana is a persona created and performed by Camille Turner since 2002. She has made appearances across Canada and has represented Canada in the UK, Germany, Senegal, Australia, Cuba, Jamaica and Mexico. Documentation of the performances has been included in numerous exhibitions and festivals.

Hometown Queen is a series of staged photographs of Miss Canadiana returning to Camille’s hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.

I created the Hometown Queen series to re-write my personal history and to pay homage to my complicated relationship with Hamilton

[Ontario], my hometown. The Hamilton I grew up in was a proud, hard-working steel town with a no-nonsense attitude. On the one hand, I admire this city’s fierce resistance to the influence of nearby sprawling full-of-itself Toronto. On the other hand, growing up there I witnessed and experienced many incidents of blatant bigotry. I couldn’t wait to get away from Hamilton when I was young but now I realize that this complex city made me the person I am today—always looking beneath the surface and recognizing the irony in everything around me. (Camille Turner)

Source: Turner, Camille. (n.d.). Miss Canadiana (Artist

Statement). Retrieved from: http://camilleturner.com/

project/miss-canadiana/.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 19

When I talk about “white people” I am talking about people who exist in bodies that give them access to white privilege. Some people exist in these bodies and get these privileges but don’t ID as white. The thing about whiteness, though, is that you don’t have to claim it to have it. You may not want to be white, for whatever reasons, but you don’t choose whiteness. Whiteness chooses you. And when it does, it gives you—whether you want or acknowledge them or not—a whole slew of privileges that non-white folks don’t get. Even if you are poor. Even if you are a woman. Even if you are queer and/or trans. Even if you are elderly. Even if you are a person with a disability. All of these things will, of course, affect your life in enormous ways and affect your access to any number of things. But they don’t erase whiteness.

So if you’re confused about whether or not whiteness has chosen you, here’s a few questions to help you sort it out.

1. Do you look white? If this seems in any way like a complicated question, it can be easily discerned by walking into a fancy store (in clean, neat clothing) and seeing how the people who work there treat you. Do you get dirty looks upon entering? Do the shopkeep- ers glance at each other with worry? Do you notice people following you around to make sure you’re not stealing anything? If not, you may be white.

2. When you are walking down the street and a cop car rolls by, do you feel safer because the police are around? Because they are there to protect you should something go wrong? If so, you may be white.

3. Do people ask you where you’re from, and when you answer, “I’m from here,” do they ask, “No, like, where are you from from?” If not, you may be white.

4. Are people visibly surprised when you are smart and articulate? If not, you may be white.

5. Have you ever been mistaken for a valet while wear- ing a suit? If not, you may be white.

6. Does the idea of driving through Mississippi fill you with apprehension? If not, you may be white.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE WHITE

Mia McKenzie

Mia McKenzie is a writer, activist, and the founder of the website Black Girl Dangerous (BGD). McKenzie identifies as a queer Black feminist and uses her writing and website to make space for LGBTQ people of color. Her debut novel, The Summer We Got Free, received a Lambda Literary Award in 2013. Her essays and short stories appear reg- ularly on BGD as well as in various publications. McKenzie presents talks that centre around the intersections of race, class, queerness, and gender at universities and conferences across the United States.

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Snapshots & Soundwaves 19 How to Know If You Are White 271

7. Do people reach out and touch your hair/body with- out your permission and then accuse you of being too sensitive or of overreacting when you don’t like it? If not, you may be white.

8. Do you regularly experience racism (note: racism is a system in which people are given less access to employment, education, safe and adequate hous- ing, legal representation, etc. based on their race; racism is not people “not liking you” because of your race)? If not, you may be white.

9. Do you see a lot of people who are the same color as you in movies, on TV, in magazines, etc. who are not portraying stereotypes or caricatures? If so, you may be white.

10. When you stand up for yourself, do people accuse you of being too angry? If not, you may be white.

11. Do people assume, without knowing you or ever speaking to you, that you are unintelligent, a crim- inal, good with computers, a terrorist, lazy, that you don’t speak English, or that you are poor? If not, you may be white.

Hope this helps!

Source: McKenzie, Mia. (2014). “How to Know If You Are

White.” In Black Girl Dangerous: On Race, Queerness,

Class and Gender (pp. 70–72). Oakland, CA: BGD Press.

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T he purpose of this fact sheet is to provide easy-to- understand statistical information and research on how women experience racism, and to provide suggestions for resources and action. We hope it will serve as a basic introduction for people with no knowledge of how race and gender affect women’s lives. […]

Anti-racism does not mean pretending that race doesn’t exist. It means recognizing racism; effectively and constructively challenging racism in yourself and others; and eliminating racism embedded in public policy, workplaces, and every other area of life.

JOBS/INCOME

Racism and sexism combine to produce more eco- nomic inequalities for racialized women than for

either white women or racialized men. Average annual income for 1995/961:

$31,117: All Canadian men $23,600: Visible minority men $19,208: All Canadian women $18,200: Aboriginal men $16,600: Visible minority women $13,300: Aboriginal women

Over half or nearly half of some racialized groups of women in Canada are living in poverty: 52% of women of Arab/West Asian (Middle Eastern) ances- try, 51% of women of Latin American ancestry, 47% of Black women, and 43% of Aboriginal women live in poverty. In the case of the first two groups, recent immigration may be a factor. Racialized immigrant

CHAPTER 29

Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact

Marika Morris, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW)

Marika Morris is an adjunct research professor in the School of Indigenous and Cana- dian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Prior to earning her PhD, she was the research coordinator for the Canadian Research Institute for the Advance- ment of Women. Morris is the author of Participatory Research and Action: A Guide to Becoming a Researcher for Social Change. In her research, she recognizes the interconnectedness between policy, economy, and society at federal, provincial, and municipal levels.

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Chapter 29 Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact 273

women face more roadblocks to employment in Canada. More often than not, foreign university degrees and qualifications and foreign work experience are not recognized because Canada has inadequate systems to judge academic equivalencies.2 Although govern- ments invest in English or French as a second language programs, existing programs are inadequate to meet the need. Many women in particular are not receiving enough language training to integrate themselves as full participants in Canadian society. Racism is a major barrier to employment: Many employers and managers make assumptions about work habits, suitability of certain types of work, and ability to “fit in” on the basis of skin colour, or assume that someone who speaks English or French with a different accent is stupid.3 In the case of Black women and Aboriginal women, long-standing policies and practices of racism and marginalization keep almost half (over 40%) of these groups of women living in poverty, compared with 19% of women who are not visible minorities.4 In 1996, 17% of visible minority women in Canada had a university degree compared to 12% of Canadian women who did not belong to a visible minority group. Nevertheless, 15% of visible minority women were unemployed, compared with 9% of non-visible-minority women.5

What the Words Mean

Aboriginal or Indigenous peoples: “Native” peoples,

including First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and status and

non-status Indians.

Immigrant: An immigrant is someone who

moves to Canada with the intention of staying

permanently. Immigrants come from all over the

world: Asia, Africa, Europe, North or South America,

or Oceania. Immigrants can be white or people of

colour, and speak English, French, or another lan-

guage as a mother tongue.

Racialized: This word has been used in dif-

ferent ways by different people. In this fact sheet,

racialized will refer to anyone who experiences

racism because of his or her race, skin colour,

ethnic background, accent, culture, or religion. In

this fact sheet, racialized includes people of colour,

Aboriginal peoples, and ethnic, linguistic, religious,

or cultural minorities who are targets of racism.

When terms such as women of colour are used,

they refer only to that group, as Canadian statistics

are often collected separately for visible minori-

ty, Aboriginal, and immigrant groups. Racialized

women have different cultures, histories, religions,

family norms, life experiences, and are subject to

different stereotypes. What they have in common

is they are racialized—that is, they are subject to

racism and made to feel different because of their

racial/ethnic background.

Refugee: Refugees move to Canada under a

special category (“refugee”) because they are flee-

ing persecution or war in their own countries.

Visible minority, racial minority, women/people

of colour: Visible minority tends to be used by the

Canadian government, and will be used in this fact

sheet when reporting statistics collected by the

federal government. These terms do not include

Aboriginal peoples.

Some people are now using the term racialized

to refer to this group, to show that “race is socially

constructed.” For example, in Canada “Irish” and

“French Canadians” used to be considered races.

There were signs saying “No Irish allowed” and Irish

people were discriminated against in employment.

Racist hatred has nothing to do with the target

groups and everything to do with how dominant

groups in a society identify non-dominant groups

for discrimination.

HOUSING

Racial discrimination in housing is well documented. Jamaican and Somali immigrants had particular dif- ficulties in finding rental housing because of some landlords’ perceptions of these groups.6 Race is also a barrier to home ownership. Two studies of Black

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274 Part 3 Gendered Identities

and white people in Toronto (matched for income and family characteristics) found a lower rate of home ownership among Black people.7 There is also a racist perception that Chinese immigrants in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland, for example, are “taking over,” particularly certain suburbs like Richmond.8 No one seems to feel that white people have “taken over” certain communities, even though all white people in Canada are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Research has shown that racialized immigrant women can experience extreme forms of discrimination when finding housing, especially if they are single parents. They are very vulnerable to abuse by landlords.9

What Racism Affects

Racism affects

• housing

• jobs

• self-esteem

• health

• and every aspect of your life

If you are subject to racism, it may cost you money,

a place to live, a job, your self-respect, your health,

or your life. Women who experience racism may live

through it in a different way from men, and from

each other.

ACCESS TO JUSTICE

For racialized women, gender-based violence is not the only type of violence they experience: race and gender combine to increase their likelihood of being assaulted. For example, [in 1971 the young Cree woman] Helen Betty Osbourne was brutally gang- raped, tortured, and killed by a group of white men, and the white townsfolk kept a conspiracy of silence

about her rapists and murderers. Because of the doc- umented racism of Canada’s police forces, criminal justice system, and jails,10 racialized women may be reluctant to call police in cases of domestic assault out of loyalty to their family and community, or because they do not wish to fuel racist stereotypes about their community or to subject themselves or family members to a racist system. Refugees from places in which police forces, the military, and the government were involved in violence against civilians, including organized or systemic rape of women, may have no trust in systems of authority.11 Aboriginal women are subject to racism in the courts, and are overrepre- sented in Canadian jails, which is a soul-destroying experience. Aboriginal women make up over 20% of Canada’s female prison population, but only 2% of the female population of Canada.12 In Canada, you are more likely to be sent to jail if you are poor or racialized.13 Programs in jail are often not appropriate for racialized women.14

More Words and Ideas

Overt racism: Racism can be overt, such as calling

people names, beating them up, excluding them on

the basis of race or ethnicity. Some companies ask

employment agencies for white candidates only.

Covert, subtle, or “polite” racism: Lets you know you

are different, that the most salient characteristic

about you is your race, rather than your personality,

your achievements as an individual, or anything else.

Structural racism: Not all racism is as obvious as

beating someone up or even secretly excluding some-

one while being polite to his or her face. Racism can

be structural (it’s a part of every aspect of society).

Sometimes, structural racism in hiring is not con-

scious or deliberate: People tend to hire those they

know, people like themselves, or they advertise the

job among their own networks. When the majority of

people in decision-making positions are white men,

continued

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Chapter 29 Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact 275

they tend to hire other white men. Employment eq-

uity programs are supposed to get companies and

government departments to expand their networks,

to ensure that racialized communities hear about

job opportunities, to give them a fair chance, and to

introduce anti-discrimination policies and workshops

in the workplace.

“But All That Is in the Past. Why Can’t We Forget about It?”

It’s obviously not in the past. Take a look at the statis-

tics about how racism affects access to housing, jobs,

health, justice, and citizenship. The past also shapes

people’s experiences in the present. For example,

for over 100 years, a Canadian government policy to

assimilate Aboriginal peoples by taking children away

from their families to residential schools—where they

were punished for speaking their language, practising

their own cultural and religious traditions, and where

they were often the victims of physical and sexual

abuse—left generations of Aboriginal peoples with-

out parenting skills, without self-esteem, and feeling

ashamed of who they were and hopeless about the

future. Survivors of residential schools are still trying

to heal from the damage.

HEALTH

Racism itself can cause illness. When people are overtly racist, it translates into poorer health for the targets of racism.15 Structural racism can also cause illness and death. Language and cultural barriers mean less access to life-saving medical procedures.16 Structural racism leading to less income and social status has a direct impact on health.17 Another example of structural racism is using standards developed in research using white men to measure health and health risks when these standards may

not be the same for women, racialized people, and particularly racialized women.

Some women refugees in Canada have experi- enced rape during wartime and have seen their children and other family members tortured and killed. This has particular physical and mental health consequences. Some women have been subject to female genital mutilation, which may also pose health problems and isolate them from health care providers and from women outside their communities.18

Women tend to be the health guardians of their families, and sacrifice paid work and personal hap- piness to care for sick relatives. Greater vulnerability to illness and less access to health care and home care services for racialized communities19 mean more unpaid health care work for racialized women, which can have an impact on their own health.

RACIALIZED SEXUALITY

Racialized women are often sexualized in racist ways. This is one of the ways racism and sexism can combine. For women of colour, sexual harassment can be racialized. A man might sexually harass a woman of colour by making racist comments or assumptions about her sexuality. Women of Asian origin are often stereotyped as exotic and obedient. Black women are stereotyped as highly sexual and available.20 It is possible that women of colour face more sexual harassment and may be more vulner- able to sexual assault because of racist stereotypes. In addition, if they are harassed or assaulted, racist stereotypes on the part of the police and the courts mean they may have less access to justice. Racialized women who are lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered face homophobia and racism from mainstream society; marginalization from their own commun- ities; and racism, exclusion, and stereotyping from movements seeking gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans- gendered rights.

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276 Part 3 Gendered Identities

“Why Can’t Women Just Join Together As a Sisterhood Instead of Bringing Up Things That Divide Us?”

Kalwant Bhopal says that the idea of sisterhood im-

plies that all women experience the same oppres-

sion, but solidarity implies an understanding that the

struggles of all women are different, but intercon-

nected. Métis anti-racist, feminist activist educator

Jean Fyre Graveline discusses the myths that “skin

colour doesn’t matter,” “we are all equal,” “we all

have equal opportunity to succeed.” She draws on

Aboriginal healing methods to show that we are all

interconnected, but we must recognize that people

have different privileges that affect how people work

together. To build a strong women’s movement and a

strong society, we must face head-on the challenges

of racism and how it interacts with many other factors

to produce our different life experiences.

SCHOOLS

School curricula tend to erase the contributions of racialized women in building Canada. For example, many Canadians still believe that Canada is made of “two founding peoples” (English and French), and do not learn about the 10,000-year history of Aboriginal women and men on this land, Canada’s own history of slavery prior to 1833 and the particular suffering of Black women slaves, the interaction of racism and sexism in Canada’s old law banning men of Asian origin from employing white women, the trafficking of Aboriginal women as prostitutes by white male Indian agents, a law (which lasted until 1946) that banned women of Chinese origin from becoming citizens, or the fact that Aboriginal women and men did not receive the federal vote until 1960, 42 years after the full federal vote was granted to white women. When they learn about the contributions of racialized people to Canada, it tends to be about those of racial- ized men. In addition, teachers may treat racialized

students differently, sometimes without realizing they are doing so. Some racialized students do not do well at school because of their teachers’ racist low expecta- tions of them.21 Both sexist and racist expectations of teachers and guidance counsellors can have a profound effect on the lives of racialized girls. A study found that young Canadian-born Black francophone and anglophone women and men living in Montreal also experienced racial confrontations and harassment by fellow students in English and French elementary and high schools.22

MEDIA

The media portrayal of white women still leaves a lot to be desired, but the media portrayal of racial- ized women is worse. Apart from a small minority of racialized women who appear to be confident, whole people, racialized people in general and racial- ized women in particular are underrepresented in Canadian television drama and news media relative to their proportion in the Canadian population, and where racialized women do appear, they are often relegated to stereotypical positions.23

SELF-ESTEEM

Racism can create feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem,24 which have an impact on health, hap- piness, and life chances.

“What about Reverse Racism?”

Reverse racism is a term mainly used by people to

justify their own racism. Some people defend white

privilege by saying, “Well, such-and-such a group

is racist too.” The big difference is because white

people, particularly white men, are overrepresented

in positions of power relative to their proportion in the

population, white racism against other groups often

continued

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Chapter 29 Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact 277

means lost job opportunities, particularly for racial-

ized women. There are so few racialized women in

positions of power that if some of them dislike white

men, it has no real effect on white men. Quite frankly,

after experiencing the horrible effects of racism, the

onus is not on racialized women to embrace and trust

white people, but on white people to stop being racist.

Reverse racism is also used to describe employ-

ment equity programs by people who believe such

programs are “race-based, gender-based hiring sys-

tems.” What these people do not want to acknow-

ledge is that in the absence of employment equity

systems, there is often an unwritten race-based,

gender-based hiring system that favours white men,

which is why white men are overrepresented in

decision-making positions. […] Employment equity

is not an attack on white men. It is a mechanism to

ensure that everyone has a fair chance.

CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRATION

Canada claims to have a non-racist, non-sexist immigration system. Why, then, is there an over- representation of Canadian overseas immigration offices in the United States and Europe, when most of Canada’s immigrants now come from Asia?25 Canada’s immigration system divides people into classes: If you have enough money, you can buy your way in under the investor class. Canada judges independent-class immigrants according to a point system, which gives points for education and for speaking one of Canada’s official languages, for example. This discriminates against women because “women have been denied access to education, training and employment oppor- tunities. As a result, most women entering Canada are unable to qualify as independent immigrants.”26 Most women enter Canada as sponsored immigrants, which means that they are financially dependent on their sponsors, usually their husbands, for a period of 10 years. It means they do not qualify for many social services or programs. It gives husbands and other sponsors a huge amount of power over women, who

can be abused and threatened with deportation if they complain. Many women do not know their rights.

Racism Hurts the Country and the World

White people unknowingly experience immediate

benefits of racism, such as access to housing and

jobs because racialized candidates have been turned

down. However, in the end, racism destroys commun-

ity and individual well-being. Hatred, suspicion, lack

of trust, putting up barriers between oneself and

others, […] or seeing someone [negatively because

of his or her race create] conflicts and problems in the

country and [elsewhere] in the world. Racial discrimin-

ation is also a terrible waste of human resources,

which hurts our economy as a whole.

DOMESTIC WORKERS

Some advocates refer to the federal government’s immigration Live-in Caregiver Program27 as “a form of slavery.” Women from other countries and regions, particularly the Philippines and the Caribbean, come to Canada because of a lack of economic alternatives in their own countries, in order to send money back to support their children and other relatives. This obligation and lack of choices makes them very vul- nerable to abuse of all kinds. Women who come to Canada under the Live-in Caregiver Program must live in their employer’s home (which increases their vulnerability to sexual assault, eliminates privacy, and means they are on call 24 hours a day and are usually not paid for overtime). They can work only for the employer who is listed on the Employment Authorization (EA) form and cannot take other work. They can stay in Canada only until the date specified on the EA. They are frequently unaware of their rights, and employers have threatened them with deportation and other measures to ensure their silence about abusive working conditions.28

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278 Part 3 Gendered Identities

“What about So-and-So Who’s in a Position of Power? Doesn’t That Mean All Racialized Women Can Make It If They Work Hard Enough?”

A few token racialized women in positions of power

does not mean that things are fine for all racialized

women, or that racism and sexism do not exist. Many

racialized women have worked very hard to get where

they are, and many have worked very hard and not

reached their goals because of racist attitudes and

structures.

HATE CRIMES

In Toronto, there are about 300 overt acts of racism every year, involving mainly vandalism and assault, particularly against Jewish and Black people. However, these statistics are from before September 11 [2001], after which there was a huge increase in vandalism and assault of Muslims and people who looked like they might be of Arab origin, as well as bombings and vandalism of Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu places of worship.29 Hate crimes, in terms of being beaten because of your race, ethnicity, or religion, can lead to injury, permanent disability, or death. Hate crimes involving vandalism of places of worship or other buildings or objects identified with a group can leave the community fearful and feeling excluded from society. Women may have particular safety concerns as the targets of sexual as well as physical assault.

ASSUMPTIONS THAT REFLECT GENDERED RACISM

Assumptions That All People of Colour Are Immigrants

White women who emigrate from the United States or other primarily English- or French-speaking

countries are often not viewed as immigrants, but as Canadians who were born elsewhere. Women of colour who were born in Canada are often viewed as immigrants, even though they are not. They are asked, “Where are you from?” If they answer, “Edmonton,” they are then asked, “No, where are you really from?” They are made to feel like foreigners in their own country.

Assumptions That Racialized Women Are Not Feminists

Some people assume that women may have certain beliefs and outlooks depending on their racial, eth- nic, or religious background. Women of South Asian ancestry (including India and Pakistan) are often assumed to want to have only sons. Muslim women who wear the hijab (head scarf ) are often assumed not to be feminists, or to be subservient to men. The only way to know what a woman believes is by asking her.

Resistance to Acknowledging Racism

Most Canadians know that to be racist is a bad thing, so they deny being racist. However, many Canadians continue to hold stereotypes that benefit white people and hurt everyone else in very real ways. Some people think racism is about only a few isolated incidents per- petrated by a few ignorant individuals. However, there have recently been a number of disturbing comments by people with decision-making power over others, such as these examples from early 2002 alone:

• Ontario Finance Minister Jim Flaherty suggested in January 2002 that Aboriginal peoples were not “real people.”30 Flaherty held the purse strings for every initiative in Ontario, and came in second in the leadership race to become premier of Ontario.

• Saskatchewan Member of Parliament Roy Bailey publicly stated in January 2002 that Dr. Rey Pagtakhan, the new minister for veterans’ affairs, was unsuited for the job because he is “Asiatic.”31

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Chapter 29 Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact 279

• PEI Member of the Legislative Assembly Wilbur MacDonald said in an April 2002 speech that “the white human race is on a fast track which will destroy us … we’re not at the present time keeping up with the numbers of people who are in our society.… England, for example, is being taken over by British West Indies people, France is being taken over by another group of people. It won’t be long in the United States … [that] Spanish people will be taking over…. We’re going to deteriorate in our population too.…”32

Racism is systemic. It’s not about a few individuals. Racism pervades the structures of our society, such as our government, our schools, the labour market, the immigration system, the justice system, police forces, and so on.

INTERNALIZED RACISM

Racialized people can also be racist, both in terms of accepting mainstream views about other racial, ethnic, and cultural groups, and in terms of believing the repeated racist messages they have heard all their lives. Everyone has a voice in their head that repeats messages about good and bad, right and wrong, from when we were growing up. When someone has grown up with racism, that voice can be internalized, that is, the voice repeats the racist messages throughout life, about not being good enough. It can also harm that person’s relationships with people within their com- munity. One example of this is in Beatrice Culleton’s book, In Search of April Raintree, in which two Métis sisters grow up in separate foster homes. One can “pass for white” and the other has darker skin. The lighter-skinned sister, despite her lighter skin, grew up being called “half-breed,” “dirty Indian,” etc., and was mistreated by her white foster family, while the darker-skinned sister grew up in a Métis-positive home. The lighter-skinned sister is ashamed to be seen with her darker-skinned sister, and renounces

her heritage and wants to “live like a white person.” This is internalized racism, and it has an effect on the relationship between the sisters. It is when even some small part of you believes the racist garbage you have heard. It can affect how you live your life. Developing high self-esteem and modelling this for others is a powerful act of resistance.

RACE INTERACTS WITH MANY OTHER FACTORS

[Race can interact with] class, income, occupation, social status, language, physical appearance, culture, religion, ability, sexual orientation, age, immigra- tion status, Indian status, personal background, and experience.

NOTES

1. The averages for all men and all women in Canada are 1995

data from the 1996 Census, reported in Statistics Canada,

1996 Census: Sources of Income, Earnings, and Total

Income, and Family Income, The Daily, May 12, 1998. The

other data are from Statistics Canada, Women in Canada

2000: A Gender-Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Minister

of Industry, 2000).

2. National Organization of Immigrant and Visible Minority

Women of Canada (NOIVMC), A Survey of Immigrant and

Visible Minority Women on the Issue of Recognition of

Foreign Credentials (Ottawa: NOIVMC, 1996).

3. West Coast Domestic Workers Association website: www.

vcn.bc.ca/wcdwa/eng_1.htm.

4. Statistics Canada, Women in Canada 2000: A Gender-

Based Statistical Report (Ottawa: Minister of Industry,

2000), p. 246.

5. Statistics Canada, Women in Canada 2000, pp. 224, 226.

6. Kenneth Dion, Immigrants’ Perceptions of Housing

Discrimination in Toronto: The Housing New Canadians

Project, The Journal of Social Issues, volume 57, number 3

(Fall 2001): 523–39.

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280 Part 3 Gendered Identities

7. Joe T. Darden and Sameh M. Kamel, Black and White

Differences in Homeownership Rates in the Toronto Census

Metropolitan Area: Does Race Matter?, The Review of Black

Political Economy, volume 28, number 2 (Fall 2000): 53–76;

Andrejs Skaburskis, Race and Tenure in Toronto, Urban

Studies, volume 33 (March 1996): 223–52.

8. Brian K. Ray, Greg Halseth, and Benjamin Johnson, The

Changing “Face” of the Suburbs: Issues of Ethnicity and

Residential Change in Suburban Vancouver, International

Journal of Urban and Regional Research, volume 21 (March

1997): 75–99.

9. Sylvia Novac, Immigrant Enclaves and Residential

Segregation: Voices of Racialized Refugee and Immigrant

Women, Canadian Woman Studies, volume 19, number 3

(Fall 1999): 88–93.

10. Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal

Justice System, Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism

in the Ontario Criminal Justice System (Toronto: Queen’s

Printer for Ontario, 1995); Jean Charles Coutu, La Justice

pour et par les autochtones (Québec: Ministre de la Justice

du Québec, 1995); A. Currie and George Kiefl, Ethnocultural

Groups and the Justice System in Canada: A Review of the

Issues (Ottawa: Department of Justice Canada, 1994);

Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal

Justice System, Racism behind Bars: The Treatment of

Black and Other Racial Minority Prisoners in Ontario Prisons

(Toronto: Queen’s Printer for Ontario, 1994); Urban Alliance

on Race Relations, Race and the Canadian Justice System:

An Annotated Bibliography (Toronto: Urban Alliance on Race

Relations, 1995); the Hon. Louise Arbour, Commission of

Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston

(Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services, 1996).

11. Amnesty International, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights:

Resources for Information and Action (Ottawa: Amnesty

International Canada, 2002): www.amnesty.ca/women/

index.html.

12. Statistics Canada, Women in Canada 2000, p. 177.

13. Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, Factsheet:

Justice and the Poor (Ottawa: CAEFS, no date): www.

elizabethfry.ca/eweek02/factsht.htm#justice; Elizabeth

Comack, Vanessa Chopyk, and Linda Wood, Mean Streets?

The Social Locations, Gender Dynamics, and Patterns

of Violent Crime in Winnipeg (Ottawa: Centre for Policy

Alternatives, December 2000).

14. Kelly Blanchette, Risk and Need among Federally

Sentenced Female Offenders: A Comparison of Minimum,

Medium, and Maximum Security Inmates (Ottawa: Research

Division, Correctional Service of Canada, 1997); Barbara

Bloom, Gender-Responsive Programming for Women

Offenders: Guiding Principles and Practices, Forum on

Corrections Research, volume 11, number 3 (2000): 22–27;

Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (CAEFS),

Position of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry

Societies (CAEFS) regarding the Classification and Carceral

Placement of Women Classified as Maximum Security

Prisoners (Ottawa: CAEFS, 1997); Kim Pate, Complaint

regarding the Discriminatory Treatment of Federally

Sentenced Women by the Government of Canada (Ottawa:

Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, 2001):

www.elizabethfry.ca/complain.htm.

15. See Nancy Krieger and Stephen Sidney, Racial

Discrimination and Blood Pressure: The CARDIA Study of

Young Black and White Adults, American Journal of Public

Health, volume 86, number 19 (October 1996): 1370–78;

Wornie L. Reed, Suffer the Children: Some Effects of

Racism on the Health of Black Infants, in Peter Conrad

and Rochelle Kern (Eds.), The Sociology of Health and

Illness: Critical Perspectives (New York: St. Martin’s Press,

1994), pp. 314–27, quoted in Boston Women’s Health Book

Collective, Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century (New

York: Touchstone, 1998), p. 683.

16. T. Gregory Hislop, Chong The, Agnes Lai, Tove Lobo, and

Victoria M. Taylor, Cervical Cancer Screening in BC Chinese

Women, BC Medical Journal, volume 42, number 10

(December 2000): 456–60.

17. Income is the primary determinant of health, beyond

smoking, “lifestyle choices,” and genetic endowment: see

Andrew Haines and Richard Smith, Working Together to

Reduce Poverty’s Damage, British Medical Journal, volume

317 (February 22, 1997): 529; Dennis Raphael, Health

Inequalities in Canada: Current Discourses and Implications

for Public Health Action, Critical Public Health, volume

10, number 2 (2000): 193–216; Pat Armstrong, Hugh

Armstrong, and David Coburn, Unhealthy Times: Political

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Chapter 29 Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and Gender Interact 281

Economy Perspectives on Health and Care (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2001). […]

18. Canadian Women’s Health Network, Female Genital

Mutilation and Health Care: Current Situation and Legal

Status Recommendations to Improve the Health Care of

Affected Women (Ottawa: Health Canada Women’s Health

Bureau, 2000): www.cwhn.ca/resources/fgm.

19. Mary Ann Mulvihill, Louise Mailloux, and Wendy Atkin,

Advancing Policy and Research Responses to Immigrant

and Refugee Women’s Health in Canada (Ottawa: Centres of

Excellence for Women’s Health, Health Canada, 2001): www.

cewh-cesf.ca/resources/im-ref_health/im_ref_health.pdf.

20. Philomena Essed, Towards a Methodology to Identify

Converging Forms of Everyday Discrimination (New York:

United Nations, no date), quoted in Canadian Feminist

Alliance for International Action (FAFIA), Report on

Canada’s Compliance with the International Convention

on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

in Response to Canada’s 13th and 14th Reports to

the Committee in the Elimination of All Forms of Racial

Discrimination, FAFIA Think Tank Paper no. 3 (Ottawa:

FAFIA, August 2001).

21. See Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF), Racism in

Our Schools: What to Know about It; How to Fight It (Toronto,

CRRF, 2000): www.crr.ca/en/MediaCentre/FactSheets/

FACTJune2000.pdf.

22. Micheline Labelle, Daniel Salée, and Yolande Frenette, Civic

Incorporation or Exclusion? Representation of Citizenship

among Second-Generation Youth of Jamaican and Haitian

Origin in Montreal (Montréal: Centre de recherche sur

l’immigration, l’ethnicité et la citoyenneté (CRIEC): www.

unites.uqam.ca/criec.

23. MediaWatch, Front and Centre: Minority Representation on

Television (Toronto: MediaWatch, no date), data collected in

1993: www.mediawatch.ca/research/front.

24. Josephine Enang, Mothering at the Margins: An African-

Canadian Immigrant Woman’s Experience, Canadian

Women’s Health Network (Spring 2001): 7‒8: www.cwhn.ca.

25. Applicants who immigrate to Canada must submit their

applications to the Canadian embassy, consulate, or

commission nearest them. There are six such offices in the

United States alone, whereas many Asian countries do not

have even one, and India, one of the largest countries in the

world, has only one for the whole country. See Citizenship

and Immigration Canada, Immigration Processing Missions

Abroad: www.cic.gc.ca/english/info/emission.html.

26. Judy Vashti Persad and Véronica Moreno, Community

Development with Immigrant Women: A Resource Kit for

Community Educating and Organizing (Toronto: Cross

Cultural Communication Centre, 1990), p. 21.

27. West Coast Domestic Workers Association website: http://

www.wcdwa.ca/.

28. Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), Annual Report

2001 (Ottawa: CHRC, 2002).

29. Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF), “Flaherty:

Enough Is Enough: Says the Executive Director of the CRRF,”

News release (Toronto: CRRF, January 22, 2002).

30. Canadian Race Relations Foundation, ““Asiatic’ Remark

Inappropriate: A Statement from the Executive Director,”

News release (Toronto: CRRF, January 2002).

31. Wilbur MacDonald speaking in the PEI legislature, Hansard,

Prince Edward Island Legislative Assembly, Third session of

the 61st General Assembly, April 19, 2002: www.gov.pe.ca/

leg/hansard/2002spring.

Source: Morris, Marika. (2002). Excerpted from

“Women’s Experience of Racism: How Race and

Gender Interact” (pp. 1–12). Ottawa, ON: CRIAW.

Retrieved from: http://www.criaw-icref.ca/en/product/

womens-experience-of-racism-how-race-and-gender-

interact.

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In my interviews with young South Asian women it became apparent that parental and community regulation of women’s sexuality was tied into protect- ing young women from the ills of Western society. All the women in my study knew how they had to behave in order to be accepted as “good” daughters and community members. They were all concerned about their sexual reputations in one way or another and were very aware that their behaviour has an impact on how their family is viewed by the rest of the com- munity. In their experience, their reputation, and the resulting family reputation, was closely monitored by community members: relatives, family friends, and acquaintances. What struck me as familiar and noteworthy were the lengths to which we would go to protect our reputations, and the extent to which our

lives were experienced as fragmented. This fragmen- tation meant that the codes of femininity we observed outside the home were completely different to those observed within the family and community. Our good reputations were always ultimately based on our sexual reputations, although much of the discourse around reputation was embedded in taken-for-granted notions of feminine codes of behaviour; hence its sex- ual subtext was often implicit.

MIS-USES OF THE BODY

The debates involving women in colonial India are not only a historical example of how women come to represent and maintain cultural boundaries but the

CHAPTER 30

The Hall of Shame: Lies, Masks, and Respectful Femininity

Amita Handa

Amita Handa is a scholar, author, and DJ. She currently works as a student equity adviser for the Toronto District School Board. She has an MA in women’s studies and a PhD in sociology, and has produced cutting-edge Canadian research focusing on issues of cultural conflict among second-generation South Asian youth. Her book, Of Silk Saris and Mini Skirts: South Asian Girls Walk the Tightrope of Culture, from which we have drawn the following selection, has been described as “an articulate and richly textured account of South Asian girls’ attempts to ‘fit in’ without abandoning their diasporic roots.”

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illustration of a process of contestation over cultural difference. There are continuities between this earlier period of colonialism and nationalism and the present diasporic context. […] Specifically, there are paral- lels between colonial racism and Canadian racism, and the South Asian diaspora mirrors, in significant ways, the Indian nation-state. In the diasporic context young women continue to mark boundaries of cultural difference. These boundaries are maintained through notions of femininity that regulate the body in how it is adorned, what it consumes, and where it goes (meaning women can go [to] only certain places at certain times).

Leslie Roman has argued that the body is a primary site on which notions of femininity are con- structed.1 She shows how bodily consumption and adornment are tied into sexual reputation, and how control of the body is an expression of social control. As a mechanism of social control, “dirtiness” is linked not only to health but also to prevailing cultural norms around order and propriety. Individuals who transgress these are seen as vulgar and bad.2 Roman applies this theoretical framework to her study of girls in a Catholic high school. She points out that for women, smoking is associated with “low” behaviour, such as alcoholism, and “provocative” dress. It suggests a “looser construction of the body; a body freed to its desires, so to speak, as well as a rejection of the ‘little girl,’ the niceness, the willingness to get along, the softness,” that often characterizes dominant notions of femininity.3 Roman found that the “‘price’ of free- dom of the body—freedom to be at ease in public arenas, to wear comfortable and casual clothes, to smoke cigarettes—was the loss of a good reputation.”

For the young women I interviewed, maintaining a notion of difference from white Canadians is also contingent on notions of appropriate femininity. Like most girls, South Asian teenagers face com- munity sanctions if their conduct does not conform to expected feminine behaviour. Regulations and sanctions are strategies of identification and a means by which community is imagined and produced. It

is through the sanctioning of those who transgress the boundaries that communities are constituted as bounded entities. By observing specific norms of con- duct, “we” come to feel identity with each other and see ourselves as different from “others.”

Most of the women I spoke with defined nor- mative feminine behaviour by things they were not supposed to do: drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and dating boys. What they were expected to do included studying hard, going to family and community gath- erings, and helping with domestic duties. For South Asian women, negotiating their femininities doesn’t just affect their sexual reputations—it also indicates their degree of allegiance to an ethnic collectivity. The danger of engaging in immoral activities is associated with the outside world. Nina explained that much of her life outside the home was hidden from her parents and that they did not understand or accept many of the things that she wanted to do: “Indian girls are not supposed to drink or smoke or go out, you know. My parents think, well you know, if you go out so much, if you’re going to clubs and stuff, it looks so bad on you. Like I know friends whose parents think, well you know, if you go to a club nobody’s going to marry you, because you’re always going out all the time and you’re doing this and that.”

Nina shows how the East/ West dualism is embedded in codes of feminine behaviour that regulate drinking, smoking, and social (potentially sexual) affiliations. A woman’s failure to comply with these codes brands her with an unscrupulous sexual reputation and will eventually inhibit her marriage- ability. Nina explains how restrictions on freedom of movement and bodily expression are synonymous with being South Asian. Her ethnic identity depends on complying with these restrictions around femin- inity. Notions of South Asian-ness and femininity are integral to each other, so that transgressing the norms of one category simultaneously destabilizes the other. Later, Nina said about her friends: “They’re aware that I am Indian ’cause they, I mean, I feel like I constantly have to explain to them why I am

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Indian, because of the way my parents are. I have to explain that I can’t do this with you, I can’t do this with you. Why? Because my parents are Indian and that’s why I can’t.” Here, the restriction of social activities by parents becomes part of what actually defines being South Asian.

* * * * *

GEOGRAPHY OF GENDER

As mentioned previously, the boundary of ethnicity is often dependent on gender. Characteristics that have become associated with gender serve to carve out ethnic identity and what most often distinguishes one ethnic collective from another are “rules relating to sexuality, marriage and family … and a true member will perform these roles properly” (my emphasis).4 Gender and ethnicity work together in establishing definitions of identity, and notions of cultural authen- ticity help to maintain regulations around “appro- priate” femininity. This became apparent during the course of these conversations.

My interviews often began with an exploration of school environments, and I used these discussions to explore the young women’s sense of ethnic identity vis-à-vis their sense of belonging in relation to other cultural groups. In all of the interviews it was often implicit that they had to be different from “Canadian women,” by which they meant white women. I observed the contest between East and West in the various discourses that construct white and South Asian women’s sexualities in contrast with one another. I spoke with Salimah, for example, about the various cultural groups in her school, and we began to tease out some of the ways in which South Asian women were located differently from white women in relation to sexuality. In a discussion of stereotypical representations Salimah said: “Okay, when I see white girls, I can generalize here, most white girls are more giving, like fast sexually, you know. Even

though Indian girls aren’t [fast], well not all, but I’m just saying they’re taught not to be. But I don’t think that’s enforced in, in you know, white families. I know of this one girl whose mother bought her the pill. That would never happen in an Indian family.”

The East-West dualism operates as an organizing category in her talk and she points to the oppositional relationship between brown and white women. Here, brown/white stands in for East/West. Part of what differentiates South Asian and white girls are codes around sexual behaviour and family acceptance of (heterosexual) sexuality: Salimah shows that in order to be seen as good girls, young South Asian women must conform to sexual norms that are not associated with what white girls do.

Within modernity, unresolved fears about mod- ern social progress, anxieties about social change, and the possibility that unregulated freedom could cause moral and social disintegration have been projected onto both youth and women. We have also seen how the West has become synonymous with modernity, while the East is associated with tradition or pre- modernity. The young women in my study suggest that fears about modern change are manifested in fears about westernization. Within South Asian com- munities, in the sexualized discourse of East as pure and West as temptress, women are often positioned as sexual by the mere fact of living in the modern West. Salimah talked about how diasporic sexuality is viewed by those “back home.”

[…] [There’s] definitely a double standard. ’Cause I want to meet a really nice sweet guy kind of thing, but once you get them, they don’t want the modern girl, they don’t want that girl who could be smart or anything. They want that girl who’s going to do everything for them, who’s going to be that typical Indian girl. You know, and that’s not what Cana- da’s producing at the moment, I’m not lying. That’s another thing, the Pakistani cricket team was here and one of the guys met this

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girl and phoned her and said, “Oh I want to get with you” and this and that. And she’s like, “What do you think I am? Just ’cause I’m from Canada I’m a slut? Just ’cause I’m from Canada, I’m not your typical one, so you can turn around and do anything with me?” That’s what a lot of Indian girls are getting slack for, just ’cause they’re from Canada, they’re modernized, and they’re not what people want them to be. [my emphasis]

Salimah begins by commenting on how men are threatened by women’s independence and popularity. For her the typical Pakistani girl fits modern colonial notions of South Asian womanhood: servitude, docil- ity, and chastity. A typical Canadian woman, on the other hand, is seen as sexually active and associated with modernity. Modern is defined as both intelligent and sexually promiscuous. There is also a subtext of cultural authenticity; living in Canada makes one less Pakistani than living “back home.”

[…] Salimah’s comments indicate that the discourse around sexuality is not just about the rela- tionship between white and brown. Even within the category of “brown” some forms of sexual behaviour are seen as more authentic than others. Let us refer back to Yuval-Davis’s claim about the boundaries of ethnic identity being dependent on gender. From Salimah’s account we can see that the definition of South Asian is contingent on the degree to which it is associated with the non-West. The non-West is not defined just geographically, however; it is also contingent upon certain sexual codes, whereby women become the territory upon which East is constructed as pure and West as degenerate. This moral discourse views the modern/West as a sexual threat to notions of South Asian femininity and thereby constructs women on a modern terrain as sexually available to men. Salimah’s passage maps out Canada as a modern terrain. This terrain is gendered and thus a South Asian girl’s mere residency in the modern positions her as a sexual object.

Most of the young women I interviewed com- mented on how their parents often referenced “back home” as a standard of measure. […] Alka shows how the myth of “back home” works in regulating young women’s sexualities. She addresses this myth in relation to upper-class youth culture in India:

I went to boarding school in India for six months.… And I go back there every year and I know. I mean, […] girls go out left, right, and centre. Where they go out? To clubs and you name it. The only happening thing right now is big clubs and nice hotels and whatever. They go out for coffee, they come home late nights, even. I’m talking about even in the most decent homes they go out, they go out guys and girls. I mean you should see New Year’s, it’s a blast there.… But the really funny thing is that when I go back it’s like freedom like you wouldn’t believe. I get freedom like you wouldn’t be- lieve and I enjoy it. That’s why I like India a lot, ’cause I get freedom like you wouldn’t.…

Alka explodes the “back home” myth by reveal- ing that the worst fears about women and the West are actually occurring in the East. The strictness and sexual propriety associated with the homeland are displaced by her account of experiencing more freedom in India itself than she does here in the Toronto diasporic community. Why, then, maintain the fantasy? Because this myth serves as a means to hold on to a notion of protection, purity, and propriety associated with the East. This protection from moder- nity may be all the way back home, but it serves as a distant standard to aspire to. This myth also justifies the regulation and protection of women on diasporic terrain by giving permission for the reproduction of “Indian” (from India) in Canada.

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WHITE LIES, BROWN PARENTS

All of the girls I interviewed admitted that they lied to their parents. While most teenagers do not share everything with their parents, I was struck by how instrumental lying is in maintaining the next-to- impossible status of the good South Asian girl. Salimah told me she “had to lie,” although she had mixed feelings about it. She explained that her parents viewed her as an innocent, good daughter and that it was very important for her to maintain this image: “I lie to my parents a lot, and if I started thinking that I feel bad about lying then there wouldn’t be much to my life. It’s kind of like living, doing what you have to do. I do feel bad about lying, but I want to keep my parents happy. If I didn’t lie I wouldn’t get anywhere. And I do feel bad about lying that much but I’d feel more bad if … I want to keep my parents happy. I really do. I really look for their approval.”

I recall learning about concealment as central to ideas of respect in my own family, when I found a pack of Du Maurier cigarettes in my older brother’s room. He was smoking but hiding it from my parents. Later that evening, my father lit up a cigar with some friends, a habit he indulged in occasionally. My grand- parents were not at home. He was smoking but hiding it from his parents. The next day, I saw my grandfather come inside from an afternoon walk, and I detected the smell of bidis (Indian cigarettes) on his breath. He realized that his secret had been found out. “Shhh, please don’t tell anyone,” he said. He was smoking but hiding it from everyone! Over time I realized: it was not that nobody knew about each other’s smoking, but that not openly engaging in a behaviour that was deemed negative was enmeshed in notions of respect.

For the women I interviewed, lying is used not only to negotiate freedom, but also to uphold the good girl image in the eyes of their parents and the larger South Asian community. Even when family members are aware that their daughters are engaged in activities deemed inappropriate by family and community members, they participate in

maintaining the lie. To speak about these activities honestly is considered to be disrespectful. In addi- tion to upholding the image of goodness for family and community, however, with their peers the girls had to negotiate another set of expectations. With friends, they often lied about lying, because they found those who were able to participate more freely in the social world often did not understand the necessity for masking. Lying, it seemed, conformed only too well to the stereotype of the South Asian girl. For example, Nina explained that she could not be open with her white friends about the extent to which she lied to her parents:

It is easier to turn to them [South Asian friends] than to my other friends sometimes, when they don’t understand and I, I feel like I’m being put down, like my own character is being put down.… They go, “Why can’t you argue with your parents?” And I tell them that I try to. But I feel like they’re putting me down.… They go, “But why don’t you be stronger?” and they don’t realize that I’m try- ing to be really, really strong and they don’t understand that and I get really defensive.… They go, “Oh but if I was your parents’ daugh- ter, they would die, they wouldn’t last,” and I go, “If you were my parents’ daughter then you wouldn’t be like the way you are now.”

In relation to her friends, lying represents not being rebellious enough. Acquiescing to authority is equivalent to docility and does not measure up to the carefree, heroic rebellious image of the westernized teenager. And yet for Nina in relation to her parents, telling the truth risks the loss of a good reputation.

Although most girls crossed over the boundaries of proper femininity, many of them did not feel that they were “bad” girls. Yet they knew that in the eyes of their parents they would be seen as disobedient or immoral and therefore un-Indian. Defining South Asian femininity as synonymous with the restrictions

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around self-determination that I have spoken about leaves very little room for a self-definition that describes the reality of the young women’s lived experiences. I found that young women were able to negotiate their freedom and sexual reputations through the use of clothing. Lying, in this case, takes the form of masking and manipulating femininity. Salimah described her relationship to clothing:

They [parents] don’t mind me wearing nor- mal clothes and everything. The only thing they don’t like is ripped jeans, anything that is tight. I’m not allowed to wear shorts, all that kind of stuff. One story, it was in the summer, I was in shorts and all of a sudden I see my dad at the end of the driveway and I started waving to my dad [instinctively] and he started driving by and then I realized. So I jumped into a bush and I changed and my friend’s just watching me and watching my dad driving by, and I changed in the bush, in the mud and everything, and I got up and she said, “Ahh, he’s gone,” and I’m like, “Oh shit, oh well” [laughter].5

In her study of working-class girls in England, Susan Lees showed that young women walk a tight- rope in order to negotiate their reputations.6 She argues that both “good” girls and “bad” girls stake out their femininity through clothing. Good girls must negotiate the next-to-impossible line between adhering to the ideals of beauty and attractiveness and appearing too sexual. In my conversation with Tina and Pam […] they pointed to how dress conveys certain meanings around traditional and modern, good girls and bad girls:

Tina: Well okay, you have your modern Indian girl and the traditional.… Okay, if you see like the trad- itional Indian girl, they’re more like, okay, study well, do what your parents say, and there’s lots of them. I’m talking the traditional Indian girl.

Pam: Okay there’s this girl.… We went to Square One one day, I saw her walking into the mall with her father, plain face okay? When we saw her in the mall later on, she left her father and she was wearing bright red lipstick and makeup and everything, and I bet she like washes her face by the time she goes and sees her dad again, and goes home like nothing happened. And I see this girl go to dances and …

Tina: Ahh, she’s pretty, ahh, promiscuous.

The sisters indicate how girls manipulate their femininity through fashion in order to suit the dictates of a particular context. For the girl they discuss, the mall represents a public space where she negotiates contradictory codes of femininity. Her dilemma is similar to Salimah’s description of changing clothes in the bushes. The fear of getting caught by her father translates into getting caught for wearing clothes that transgress the boundaries of appropriate femininity. The trouble is, of course, that appropriate femininity is defined differently in other social spaces, to which these young women also wish to belong.

* * * * *

While lying helps young women gain more free- dom, it also helps them negotiate their reputations. Lying gives them some control over their reputations at home and school. While the emotional cost of “living lies” is extremely high for these young women, for many South Asian women honesty is too high a price to pay. It carries the risk of exclusion from the definition of “South Asian.” Walking this tightrope of upholding community identity in a white dom- inant context brings with it a tremendous amount of emotional stress. Constantly masking or hiding parts of the self which are not accepted either by the world of peers or parents has a serious negative effect on self-esteem and self-worth. It is seldom that all the parts of the self can be celebrated, approved of, and accepted.

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Defiance of adulthood is manifested for youth in terms of challenging and defying authority. For young women this takes place on the sexual terrain; manipulating their femininities and transgressing expected codes of behaviour. In its narrative of womanhood, the South Asian community draws on nationalist constructions of femininity that are in direct opposition to discourses around teens in the West. While white girls may defy social norms around growing up through dress and “sexual deviance” (i.e., sexual expression), for South Asian girls, rebellion against the responsible adult citizen narrative is also seen as a defiance of cultural identity and a disloyalty to ethnic membership. South Asian girls in Canada have to negotiate contradictory messages about their sexuality. On the one hand, they “get slack” because they are modernized; not being “typical” makes them open to assumptions about their sexual availability. On the other hand, being South Asian in Canada automatically sets them up as sexually unavailable in relation to dominant white culture. According to the latter, the typical South Asian girl is a patriarchal construction of docility and passivity. Her subjectiv- ity is depersonalized and disregarded by a discursive construction that locates her as a victim within a cultural problematic only. While these narratives regulate and limit the lives of young South Asian women, I would like to place them within the wider context of Canadian racism. An allegiance to certain authentic notions of tradition and culture is also a means by which to articulate a standpoint against a racist and assimilationist white Canadian society. In this sense diaspora is a complex and overlapping space: it disrupts some normative categories while simultaneously reproducing others. In the context of negative or absent representations, notions of South Asian cultural authenticity also serve as a powerful site of resistance.

NOTES

1. Leslie Roman, “Intimacy, Labour, and Class.”

2. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger.

3. Roman, “Intimacy, Labour, and Class,” pp. 134, 136.

4. Floya Anthias and Nira Yuval-Davis, Introduction to Woman-

Nation-State, p. 102.

5. The regulation of women’s bodies through social sanctions

and controls, such as the bodily controls that Leslie

Roman speaks about (in “Intimacy, Labour, and Class”),

has been documented in both sociological as well as

anthropological research. See S. Ardener, “Introduction: The

Nature of Women in Society”; S. Ortner and H. Whitehead,

“Introduction: Accounting for Sexual Meanings,” pp. 1–28;

E.M. Schur, Labelling Women Deviant; C. Smart and B.

Smart, Women, Sexuality and Social Control. Feminist

scholars have also illustrated that women who challenge

the norms of appropriate feminine behaviour are often open

to social disapproval through the “sexualization” of their

behaviour. For example, L.S. Smith has argued that girls

who transcend the norms of femininity through delinquent

behaviour are portrayed by adults in the legal system as

sexually promiscuous (1978, pp. 74–86).

6. Susan Lees, Losing Out: Sexuality and Adolescent Girls.

REFERENCES

Anthias, F. and N. Yuval-Davis. Introduction to Woman- Nation-State. Ed. F. Anthias and N. Yuval-Davis. London: Macmillan, 1989.

Ardener, S. “Introduction: The Nature of Women in Society.” Defining Females. Ed. S. Ardener. New York: Wiley, 1978.

Douglas, M. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge, 1984. Lees, S. Losing Out: Sexuality and Adolescent Girls. London:

Hutchinson, 1986. Ortner, S. and H. Whitehead. “Introduction: Accounting for

Sexual Meanings.” Sexual Meanings. Ed. S. Ortner and H. Whitehead. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 1–28.

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Roman, L.G. “Intimacy, Labour, and Class: Ideologies of Feminine Sexuality in the Punk Slam Dance.” Becoming Feminine: The Politics of Popular Culture. Ed. L.G. Roman, L.K. Christian-Smith, with E. Ellsworth. London: The Falmer Press, 1988.

Schur, E.M. Labelling Women Deviant. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984.

Smart, C. and B. Smart. Women, Sexuality and Social Control. London: Routledge, 1978.

Smith, L.S. “Sexist Assumptions and Female Delinquency: An Empirical Investigation.” Women, Sexuality and Social Control. Ed. C. Smart and B. Smart. London: Routledge, 1978, 74–86.

Source: Handa, Amita. (2003). Excerpted from “The Hall

of Shame: Lies, Masks, and Respectful Femininity.” In

Of Silk Saris and Mini Skirts: South Asian Girls Walk

the Tightrope of Culture (pp. 107–128). Toronto, ON:

Women’s Press.

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SNAPSHOTS & SOUNDWAVES 20

American actress, comedian, and blogger Franchesca Ramsey, known online as Ches- caleigh, went viral in January 2012 when she posted a video called “Sh*t White Girls Say…to Black Girls.” The video uses humour to expose microaggressions—the every- day insults, dismissals, and indignities that white people inflict upon people of colour. The term is now being used by other marginalized groups (e.g., sexual and gender mi- norities, people with disabilities) to describe the slights, stereotypes, and insults that they confront. The video currently has over 12 million views and has been featured on many news and popular culture programs. Check it out on her YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylPUzxpIBe0.

Ramsey also posted a video entitled “5 Tips for Being an Ally,” which you can view here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dg86g-QlM0.

ACTIVIST INSIGHT: FRANCHESCA RAMSEY ON MICROAGGRESSIONS AND BEING AN ALLY

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Part 3B: Histories and Legacies of Colonialism and Imperialism

CHAPTER 31

The Secret of Slavery in Canada

Afua Cooper

Afua Cooper is a scholar, author, and poet. She is an associate professor and holds the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is a leading authority on Black Canadian history and slavery. Cooper has published multiple books of poetry and historical fiction and non-fiction, and has curated exhibits on African Canadian history and the transatlantic slave trade. The following selection is from her national bestseller, The Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards.

Slavery is Canada’s best-kept secret, locked within the national closet. And because it is a secret it is written out of official history. But slavery was an institutionalized practice for over two hundred years. Canada also engaged in the nefarious business of slav- ing. Stephen Behrendt, a historian and demographer of slavery, reveals that the shipyards of several of the older Canadian colonies constructed ships for use in the British slave trade.1 Canada might not have been a slave society—that is, a society whose economy was based on slavery—but it was a society with slaves. It shared this feature with virtually all other New World societies. Contrary to popular belief, slavery was common in Canada.

The reluctance to discuss and accept Canada as a place where slavery was institutionalized for 206 years is understandable. In North America, we associate the word slavery with the United States, not

Canada, because the American economy, especially the southern portion, was fuelled by the labour of millions of African slave captives. In the story of North American slavery, we associate Canada with “freedom” or “refuge,” because during the nineteenth century, especially between 1830 and 1860, the period known as the Underground Railroad era, thousands of American runaway slaves escaped to and found refuge in the British territories to the north. Therefore, the image of Canada as “freedom’s land” has lodged itself in the national psyche and become part of our national identity. One result is the assumption that Canada is different from and morally superior to that “slave-holding republic,” the United States.

When most people think of slavery, they see a huge cotton or sugar cane plantation worked by hundreds of slaves, with blood dripping down their backs as they endure constant whipping from the slave-drivers.

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The slaveholder (usually a male) sits on the verandah of his mansion, fanned by docile young slaves. This lurid image is drawn from a southern United States or Caribbean version of slavery, and most people cannot associate it with Canada’s early history. Yet the White settlers who colonized Canada during both the French and English periods were indeed slaveholders.

Scholars have painted a pristine picture of Canada’s past. It is difficult to find a scholarly or popular publication on the country’s past in which images, stories, and analyses of slave life are depicted. We read numerous accounts of pioneer life without learning that some of these pioneers were enslaved people who, like the free White pioneers, built roads and highways, constructed homesteads, fought off bears, caught beavers, established farms from forests, and helped in the defence of the young country.2 People of African descent, free and enslaved, have vanished from national narratives. It is possible to complete a graduate degree in Canadian studies and not know that slavery existed in Canada.

A useful definition of slavery is the robbery of one’s freedom and labour by another, usually more powerful person. Violence and coercion are used to carry out the theft and to keep the slave captive in the condition of bondage and servitude. This definition applies to slavery in Canada. Laws were enacted and institutions created to rob persons of their freedom and labour and keep them in perpetual servitude. In the earliest era of colonial rule in Canada, both Aboriginal peoples and Africans and their descend- ants were enslaved (Aboriginal slaves were colloquially termed Panis). From 1628 to 1833, slavery was a legal and acceptable institution in both French and British Canada and was vigorously practised.

The colonists in New France wanted slaves, especially Black slaves. In all European New World settlements, large percentages of the Native popula- tions were exterminated through genocide, the harsh conditions of slavery, and the arrival of new diseases in their midst. In enslavement, the Native populations declined rapidly, which gave Europeans the notion that

Natives could not withstand slavery. In the belief that Blacks were sturdier people, Europeans began to bring African captives into the colonies to work as slaves. On the whole, Blacks appeared somewhat better able to withstand the physical demands of slavery: they lived a little longer than the Native people. Canada’s polit- ical and administrative leaders—suave, urbane, and educated men, some of whom spent time in the tropical colonies—knew this. They therefore used their power and influence to bring Black slaves into the country.

* * * * *

As French colonists settled in Canada and expanded their colonizing ventures, it became clear that the available labour force could not meet the demands created by a burgeoning economy. Thus, New France began its colonial life with a chronic labour shortage. Even though a system of indenture- ship had been set in place, with contract labourers coming from France to serve out an indenture, it did not solve the problem. Seeing the prosperity of their New England neighbours, a prosperity based on slave labour, les Canadiens hit on the idea that slavery was exactly what their colony needed.

* * * * *

By 1690, New France had a population of 12,000. But it was not enough. The labour shortage continued. In 1688, bowing to pressure from the settlers, the governor, Marquis de Denonville, and the intendant, Jean Bochart de Champigny, wrote to Louis XIV, requesting permission to introduce Black slaves into the colony. […]

The following year, the king gave his consent, though he expressed doubts about the effects of the severe Canadian climate on slaves from the tropics. Despite his concerns, enslaved Africans were brought into the colony. Further royal consent was given in 1701, and slavery began to take root.

* * * * *

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With or without help from the Crown, New France’s colonists were able, with varying degrees of success, to obtain enslaved Africans. One method available to the French was the use of Native allies. The Abenaki and sometimes the Iroquois captured Black slaves from the English to the south and sold them to the French settlers in Canada. However, there were also legal transactions between the French and the English: French colonists bought Black slaves from New York, New England, the Carolinas, and other American colonies. Enslaved Africans also came to New France from the West Indies, from Africa, and from Europe.

In Montréal, which eventually would have the largest slave population in the colony, the first Black person recorded as a slave in the register of the church of Notre-Dame is simply named “Louis.” It is noted that he was a native of Madagascar and was twenty-six at the time of his baptism on May 24, 1692. Louis Lecomte-Dupre owned Louis, the slave. On the same day, another slave, Pierre Célestin, age twenty-four, was baptized as well. Also a native of Madagascar, his owner was Pierre Leber. It would seem that both of these slaves received the first names of their owners.3

* * * * *

The French empire in the West Indies was built on sugar production and the labour of enslaved Africans. The Code Noir, a French legal code, regulated slavery in the West Indies. Though it was never made law in Canada, New France’s slaveholders applied the Code Noir when they thought it necessary. […] Under the Code Noir, slaves were declared “movable,” that is, personal property, in the same category as livestock, furniture, and trade goods. The Code Noir regulated other aspects of slave life, such as relations between master and slave, the status of slave children, slave marriages, and so forth.4

* * * * *

Imperial edicts and local laws also consolidated, regularized, and protected slavery in New France and enshrined the rights of colonists to own slaves. In 1701, Louis XIV gave his full consent to Black slavery in Canada, authorizing “its colonists to own slaves … in full proprietorship.”5 This consent was merely aca- demic, because Canadians had already been doing so.

* * * * *

Black slavery in Canada was patriarchal, meaning that the male slaveholder was the head of an extended family that included people he was related to by mar- riage and blood (his wife and children) and enslaved persons. Slaves often lived in the same houses as their owners, ate the same food, were baptized by their owners, and had owners or their close relatives as godparents, and sometimes they received the name of the owner’s family.

The paternalistic nature of slavery in New France had much to do with the scarcity of labour in a growing colony: slaves were a valuable resource. Yet the economy, largely based on the fur trade, did not demand large gangs of labourers in the way that an agriculturally based economy would have. True, in Canada, agriculture was an important secondary economic activity, and many of the White colonists were farmers who did use slaves as farm labourers. Canada’s economic model made for a form of slavery that was, to some degree, different from the slavery seen across the southern United States. It was more in line with the type of slavery found in colonial New England and New York.

Slaves in Canada engaged in a variety of occupations—from rat catcher to hangman—but most worked as house servants, as farm labourers, or in skilled occupations. In New France, and later in British Canada, slaves were owned by a variety of individuals and corporations. The Church, the nobility, merchants, lawyers, government officials, gentry, soldiers, seigneurs, tavern-keepers, farmers, business people, and artisans all held slaves. The

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merchant elite, as a group, held the largest number of enslaved people.

[…] The majority of this population lived in the three main centres of the colony: Montréal, Trois- Rivières, and the capital, Québec. This made slavery in New France a more or less urban phenomenon. By the end of the French period, in 1760, seventy- seven percent of all enslaved people lived in urban areas, with fifty-two percent of this group residing in Montréal alone.6 Living in cities, the enslaved had some mobility and so became acquainted with the geography of their locale. This knowledge, in many instances, accounted for their frequent escapes.

Generally speaking, the kind of work enslaved people did ensured close proximity to their owners. Even if relationships between owners and slaves were hostile, the two parties nonetheless maintained physical domestic closeness. Enslaved people could legally marry, with the permission of their owners, and upon death were usually given a Christian burial. New France’s slaves also had certain rights typically reserved for free persons in the rest of the New World. For example, they could serve as witnesses at religious functions and could petition against free persons.7

* * * * *

Enslaved Africans were hired out, […] and they were also sold and bought. On September 25, 1743, Charles Réaume drew up a contract in the office of a Québec notary to sell five enslaved Africans to Louis Cureux. […]

The entire slave party was sold for 3,000 livres. The French colonists and rulers also gave away

slave children as gifts:

In July, 1748, Jean-Pierre Roma, Comman- dant for the King at the Island of St. Jean [Prince Edward Island] … on his passage to Québec, made a singular Gift to his friend, Fleury de la Gorgendière…. He

gave him a mulatto Girl, five months old and named Marie.

The child was born at Québec, February 20, 1848; she was baptized the following day, and her godfather and godmother were M. Perrault, a merchant, and Marie-Anne Roma, daughter of Commandant Roma.

The gift made to M. Fleury de la Gorgendière is explained by the fact that the mother of the child, the slave of Roma, died in giving it birth. Roma, not being able to charge himself with raising the orphan, preferred to give it to M. Fleury de la Gorgendière.

The deed is drawn up by the Notary, Jean- Claude Panet, July 15, 1748; and it is the stipulation that in case of the death of Fleury and his wife, the mulatto will return to Mlle [Mademoiselle] Roma (her godmother). If she cannot take her, it is stipulated that she will receive her freedom.8

This sad story hides as much as it reveals. The slave mother died giving birth to her child, and her owner gave the baby away because he felt he could not raise her himself. The child, described as a mulatto, was called an “orphan.” But for a child to be created, a father had to be involved. Who was the child’s father? Was it Roma himself? Was that why he felt so obliged to find a home for the child, and why he gave her away to his trusted friend instead of selling her? A veil of semi-protectiveness was drawn around the slave baby. Not only was she given to someone whom Roma believed would care for her, but Roma’s daughter was the baby’s godmother and a stand-in parent if that became necessary. The baby’s mother remained nameless, but we know a few things about her: she was a Black woman; she was Roma’s slave; and she died in childbirth.

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Enslaved Africans in Canada reacted to slavery in much the same way that slaves did in other New World societies and took steps to wreak revenge on their owners. They ran away, talked back, broke tools, were disobedient, threatened their owners, organized slave uprisings, and in two cases allegedly set major fires that devastated colonial towns.

Slaves also died young. The average age of death for Panis was 17.7 years, and for Blacks, 25.2. Only a few Blacks lived to be 80.9

During the French period, enslaved Panis were more numerous than enslaved Africans because Panis were easier to obtain. This situation would be reversed with the Conquest of Canada.

In 1760, at the end of the Seven Years War between Britain and France, Britain conquered Canada. Three years later, by the Treaty of Paris, France ceded Canada to Britain. New France ceased to be, and the Canadian territory seized by the British was renamed and transformed into the colony of Québec. By the time of the conquest, over 1,500 Black slaves had landed in Canada.

With the 47th article of the treaty of capitulation, signed between the victorious British and the defeated French, the British confirmed the rights of the French colonists to own and retain their slaves.

* * * * *

With its successes in the Seven Years War, Britain became the strongest power in the world. By this time, it was also the most powerful slave trading nation. […] By the time of the Conquest of Canada, Britain had transported hundreds of thousands of captive Africans to the New World in numerous slave ships. Britain also had a large slave empire centred in the West Indies and the United States, with slave colonies in southern India and south Africa.

If the enslaved Canadian Blacks and Panis thought the Conquest would deliver a chance for freedom, they were wrong. The British conquest led to the intensification of slavery in Canada. Britain had

the resources to pump slaves into Canada; however, no large-scale shipments of slaves were required to provide the Canadian colonists with slave labour. With Canada now a British possession, land-hungry British-American colonists to the south began migrating in large numbers to the new territory. The post-Conquest immigrants brought their Black slave labourers with them, thus increasing the slave population in Canada.

The British preferred Black slaves to enslaved Panis, and, having the resources, ensured that more Black bondspeople would enter the colony. As a result, under the British regime, Black enslaved labourers became more numerous than Panis. Consequently, enslavement gradually became identif ied solely with Africans.

* * * * *

The British conquerors introduced the printing press and the newspaper to the newly acquired ter- ritory. From these papers, we learn that slaves in the new dispensation, as in the old regime, continued to run away. Throughout the colonial period, English- language newspapers regularly announced slave flight. These advertisements give us insight into the enslaved people, their condition, and their responses to slavery.

* * * * *

[One] runaway was the slave woman Cash.

Quebec Gazette, October 19, 1769

On Sunday morning … a Negro wench named Cash, twenty-six years old … speaks English and French very fluently, carried with her a considerable quantity of linen and other valuable effects not her own; and as she has also taken with her a large bundle of wearing apparel belonging to herself, con- sisting of a black satin cloak, caps, bonnets,

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ruffles, ribbons, six or seven petticoats, a pair of old stays, and many other articles of value which cannot be ascertained, it is likely that she may change her dress.

Cash absconded with a large portion of her owner’s wardrobe and must have thought of using these clothes as a means of disguise. Or, quite likely, she felt that her owner owed her all that she took.

From these ads, we learn that many slaves were bilingual, sometimes multi-lingual. We often learn of a slave’s knowledge of skills and trades. For example, one Pompey was noted to be a sailor. And we get a description of the kind of clothes the runaways wore.

Where would slaves run? Slave runaways could take refuge with sympathetic Natives in the Upper Country or disappear into some frontier communities. Escaping to land held by a foreign power was another possibility, as was escaping via ship to the West Indies or Florida. But it is likely that slaves like Cash and others who came with their owners from places such as New England and New York were running back to these places—places they knew and where they may have had relatives. When going back to the thirteen colonies, escapees traversed a reverse Underground Railroad.

* * * * *

Marronage, the act of running away, could be either temporary or permanent. With temporary (or petit) marronage, enslaved persons ran away for a few days or weeks because they were upset and angry with their owners. However, they intended to go back. Temporary marronage was a weapon enslaved Africans used to show their owners that they did not have to “put up with it.” It also showed that slaveholders did not have complete ownership over the bodies of their slave property. Permanent marronage meant that the captives escaped and lived in freedom in hard-to- reach places such as forests, wildernesses, swamps, and mountain strongholds.10

Newspapers in the colony of Québec were not the only ones that broadcasted the flight of slaves. In the forty years after the Conquest, and in the early years of the nineteenth century, ads for runaway and missing slaves also graced the pages of colonial newspapers in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Upper Canada.

The sale of slaves was another feature of life in Canada. The value of slave property depended on physical health (acquired immunity from smallpox was an asset), special aptitudes, age, and sex, among other factors. Olivier Le Jeune was sold for 50 livres in 1628. Marie-Joseph Angélique was sold for a bar- rel of gunpowder. In 1738, in Montréal, Catherine Raimbault sold two of her Black male slaves, Laramee, aged thirty, and Charles, aged ten, for 200 and 570 livres respectively. That a ten-year-old child fetched more than a thirty-year-old man is not strange, given that slaves died so young in the colony. The seller and purchaser probably knew that Laramee did not have long to live, while the boy could potentially render fifteen more years of service.

In the post-Conquest period, a woman skilled in housework could fetch between £30 and £50. The woman described in this ad would likely have commanded a good price:

Quebec Gazette, February 23, 1769

Mr. Prenties has to sell a negro woman, aged 25 years, with a mulatto male child, 9 months old. She was formerly the property of General Murray; she can be well recom- mended for a good house servant; handles milk well and makes butter to perfection.

* * * * *

[Such ads] reveal, certainly, that slaves were seen as chattel, like horses or harnesses. They also tell us that women’s primary occupation was that of domestic. Black women laboured in the homes of their owners doing all manner of housework, including child care.

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The image of the Black woman who “understands thoroughly every kind of housework,” the tireless domestic, has persisted throughout the centuries. […]

Sale of slaves was usually a transaction between two parties, but sometimes slaves were sold publicly. The same Mr. Prenties who advertised in February 1769 was not successful in selling his slaves. Six months later, he chose to do so at a public market. “To be sold at public vendue … a negro woman aged 25, with a mulatto child, male.…”11

Slave ads pertaining to women and children often indicate that children were sold with their mothers. Some of these children are described as mulattoes, the fathers of whom are “unknown.” The relatively large mulatto population at the time of the Conquest reveals that White men often sired the children of Black women, most of whom were enslaved women. This fact must be placed in the context of the power relationships in slave societies. White men owned Black women’s bodies and what came out of those bodies. Black women were regularly subjected to sexual assaults by their owners and other White men. If the women were impregnated and had children, these children inherited the status of their mothers and were enslaved. It mattered little that the children’s fathers were White men, sometimes very prominent White men; what mattered was that their mothers were enslaved and Black. One of the most dehuman- izing aspects of slavery was the loss of control that Black people, especially women, experienced over their bodies.12

One commentator on Canadian slavery makes light of the sexual abuse that Black women faced when he casts them as seducers whose charms (hapless) White men cannot resist.13 Slaveholders who sexu- ally abused Black women, kept them as concubines, and impregnated them may have subscribed to this sentiment. It is a common attitude of those in power. Refusing to take responsibility for their offence, they blame the victim.

The American Revolutionary War (1776–1783) produced a further expansion of slavery in Canada.

Many Americans who remained loyal to the Crown fled to Canada, with their enslaved chattel, on the heel of British defeat by the American forces. At least 35,000 of these Loyalists fled to Nova Scotia. Five thousand were Black, both slave and free; however, the majority were free. The expansion of Nova Scotia’s population led, in 1784, to the province being div- ided to create New Brunswick. This new province got its share of free and enslaved Black Loyalists. Likewise, some Black Loyalists made it into Prince Edward Island.

About 10,000 Loyalists—White, Black, and Native—came to the province of Québec. However, unlike in the Maritime provinces, most of the Québec Black Loyalists were enslaved. They came with their White owners from New York, New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, and other parts of the thirteen colonies. Some of the enslaved Blacks were also in the parties of members of the Iroquois Confederacy.

* * * * *

In Upper Canada and Québec (renamed Lower Canada after 1791), though many Blacks were free people, the majority were enslaved. The enslaved population, brought to Canada mainly by White Loyalists (members of the Mohawk elite also held Black slaves), came with a variety of skills, which they used in the founding and development of the colonies. Slaves worked as millwrights, black- smiths, coopers, printers, and tinsmiths. They felled trees, made roads, opened highways, and worked as domestics, nannies, and farm labourers. James Walker insists that “we cannot understand early pioneer history unless we acknowledge that slavery existed.…”14 By 1793, it is estimated that there were five hundred slaves in Upper Canada.

Like many of the families of the old French regime, most of Upper Canada’s leading families, including many of the province’s founding fathers and mothers, were slaveholders.

* * * * *

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Peter Russell, a member of the Executive Council and future provincial administrator, held at least five slaves, four of whom comprised one family: a woman named Peggy and her three children. Peggy and her family lived with Russell and big sister Elizabeth in their town home in York (now part of Toronto).15

* * * * *

Peggy, the mother of three children, Milly, Amy, and Jupiter, and the wife of a free Black man named Pompadour, was a disobedient and recalcitrant slave who bucked the Russells’ authority by talking back to them and running away whenever she felt like it. On more than one occasion, her master had her confined to the town’s jail. Jupiter, her son, was also a runaway and “disobedient”; he too was lodged in jail for his rudeness and “saucy ways.” Peter Russell determined to get Peggy off his hands by selling her to another member of the colonial elite, slaveholder Matthew Elliott, then living in Sandwich.

* * * * *

Peter Russell, an Anglo-Irish man, accepted the institution of slavery in Upper Canada even though in Britain itself slavery was on the decline. He behaved like a typical American slaveholder: he separated fami- lies if he saw fit, he punished and imprisoned his slaves, and when they would not “obey” he sold them. He was not going to put Peggy on the auction block; rather, he was selling her through a more “genteel” method. Nevertheless, the result would be the same: Peggy would be separated from her husband and children.

Yet, contrary to a once-popular belief that slave masters had “absolute authority” over their slaves, Russell was not in total control. If conditions were not to their liking, slaves often tried in subtle and not so subtle ways to live within the bounds of the institution on their own terms, to change the frame of reference. Peggy was doing just that when she left the Russell household to live “at large.”

Peggy’s way of dealing with her enslavement paralleled that of enslaved people throughout the Americas and Canada. […] Peggy may not have tried to make a permanent bid for her freedom because she had young children and wanted to remain with her family. What Peggy engaged in was petit mar- ronage, running away temporarily to protest one’s enslavement, or taking a vacation of sorts to escape the vagaries of slave life.

* * * * *

Even though York was a small town, others would employ and harbour Peggy while knowing she belonged to someone else. Because there was a labour shortage, Peggy could find sympathizers who would take her in. Who knows what was going on in the Russell household that led Peggy to run from it. Was she sexually abused by either owner? It seems that her relationship with Elizabeth Russell, in particular, was strained. Peter Russell, in his letter to Elliott, said that Peggy showed a “disposition at times to be very troublesome,” revealing that Peggy was an incorrigible slave. She would not behave.

* * * * *

By 1806, Peter Russell, who by this time was no longer the provincial administrator, was at the point of desperation. He wanted to rid himself of Peggy and her son, Jupiter. He advertised in the York Gazette:

February 19, 1806, To Be Sold:

A Black woman named Peggy, aged forty years, and a Black boy, her son, named Ju- piter, aged about fifteen years, both of them the property of the subscriber. The woman is a tolerable cook and washerwoman, and perfectly understands making soap and can- dles. The boy is tall and strong for his age,

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and has been employed in the country busi- ness, but brought up principally as a house servant. They are each of them servants for life. The price of the woman is one hundred and fifty dollars. For the boy two hundred dollars, payable in three years, with interest from the day of sale, and to be secured by bond, &c. But one-fourth less will be taken for ready money.

If the Russells seem to have been “reluctant” masters, Peggy and her family were “irresolute” slaves. What is quite clear is that Peggy and her family pushed and pulled at slavery and sought to effect their freedom or gain concessions. […]

Common people also bought, held, and sold slaves. In the Niagara Herald, on January 2, 1802, we find “for sale, a negro slave, 18 years of age, stout and healthy, has had the smallpox and is capable of service either in the house or out of doors.” In the same paper, on January 18: “For sale, negro man and woman, the prop- erty of Mrs. Widow Clement. They have been bred to the work of the farm; will be sold on highly advanta- geous terms for cash or lands. Apply to Mrs. Clement.”

Colonists could also place ads when they wished to buy slaves. The Niagara Gazette and Oracle of January 11, 1797, ran the following: “Wanted to purchase, a negro girl from seven to twelve years of age of good disposition. For full particulars, apply to … W.J. Cooke, West Niagara.”

How were enslaved people treated? Some masters baptized their slaves, married them, and remembered them in their wills. One salient example of a “good and paternalistic master” is Robert I.D. Gray. He apparently treated his slave family well, and provided generously for them in his will, manumitting them and setting up a trust fund for them. Yet not even he could free the slaves while he lived. They had to wait until he died, and therefore had no further use of their time and labour, to get their freedom. Another slaveholder, Isaac Bennett, made provision in his will for the education and freedom of his two slave boys.

But, for every humane master, there was a brutal one to match.

* * * * *

Black people, then, throughout the length and breadth of British North America, were owned, bought, and sold by White colonists. The lives of the Black enslaved people and their offspring were regulated and circumscribed by those who owned them and the legal resources they could access. Slavery was as Canadian as it was American or West Indian. It is important to note, though, that in this period of the mid- to late eighteenth century, there were also free Black com- munities in British North America. In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Black people of Loyalist origin built free villages and towns in such places as Preston, Shelburne, Birchtown, and Saint John. In fact, these and others became the first free Black communities in North America. However, the residents of these communities faced extreme hostility from Whites. […]

Slavery did not remain unchallenged. And the enslaved were always the first to challenge the conditions of their servitude. We have seen that they ran away and performed other hostile acts against their owners. However, the first official challenge to slavery came from the top down and occurred in the colony of Upper Canada. Colonel John Graves Simcoe, veteran of the Revolutionary War, arrived in Canada in 1792 to take up the post of lieutenant governor of the new province of Upper Canada. Simcoe had been a member of the British Parliament and supported antislavery measures in its House. On arriving in Canada (he came by way of Montréal), Simcoe realized the extent of slaveholding among the White population and is reputed to have said that, under his governorship, he would not dis- criminate “between the natives of Africa, America, or Europe.”16 On reaching Upper Canada, Simcoe was determined to abolish slavery.

He had his chance in March 1793, when he heard of the case of Chloe Cooley, a slave woman

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who was manhandled, tied up with ropes, and thrown in a boat by her owner, William Vrooman of Queenston in the Niagara district. Vrooman then rowed the boat to the New York side of the Niagara River and sold his slave to someone on the American side. Eyewitnesses related that Cooley “screamed violently and made resistance.”17 Simcoe decided to prosecute Vrooman, but his chief justice told him he did not have a leg to stand on, since slavery was legal in the British empire and Vrooman was well within his rights to dispose of his slave in any manner he wished. Simcoe then decided to prosecute Vrooman for disturbing the peace.

Later, Simcoe gathered enough support in the legislative and executive councils and the assembly to push for a bill on the immediate abolition of slavery in the province. But it was not to be. The slaveholders inside his parliament and those outside were outraged at his audacity and fought him. They claimed that slave labour was essential for the economic life of the colony and that Simcoe would ruin them if he abolished slav- ery. […] So Simcoe backed off, and he and his advisers worked out a compromise. In July 1793, “An act to prevent the further introduction of slaves and to limit the term of contracts for servitude within this province” was pushed through the legislature.18 The title of the act tells us that it was a compromise indeed. Nothing was said about abolition, because that was not the act’s intent. The act did not free a single slave.

It did accomplish other things. First, it confirmed that current slaves would remain slaves. Slaveholders had pushed for this, and they got it. Now they could breathe a sigh of relief. Second, the act banned the introduction of new slaves. Third, the children of current slaves would gain their freedom upon reach- ing twenty-five, and if they had children before they reached that magic number, their children would be automatically free.

Interestingly, the act did not prevent the sale of slaves across international borders. Many slaveholders saw this loophole and, like Vrooman, sold their slaves into New York.

Upper Canadian slaves who were hoping to be freed by Simcoe’s bill had to look for their free- dom elsewhere. In 1787, the Northwest Territory (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota) issued an ordinance prohibiting slavery. Vermont and other parts of New England had also abolished slavery by this date. And, in 1799, New York made provisions for the gradual aboli- tion of slavery. As a result, many Upper Canadian enslaved Blacks escaped into these free territories.19 So numerous were some of these former Canadians in American cities that, in Detroit, for example, a group of former Upper Canadian slaves formed a militia in 1806 for the defence of the city against the Canadians. They also fought against Canada in the War of 1812.

If Simcoe’s bill had a redeeming feature, it was the article that prohibited the importation of new slaves into the province. This meant, in effect, that slavery would decline, as it could not be expanded through importation. Perhaps, more important, it also meant that any foreign slaves would be immedi- ately freed upon reaching the soil of Upper Canada. That was what began the Underground Railroad for enslaved Americans. By the War of 1812, they had heard of this novel situation and many began making the trek northward. The paradox is inescapable: at the same time, many Upper Canadian slaves were making the trek southward to freedom in Michigan and New England.

* * * * *

In the other provinces, there was some movement against slavery. A few legislators in Lower Canada tried to copy Simcoe’s bill, but they were roundly defeated by the slaveholding interests in the House. One such pro-slavery legislator, a slaveholder himself, was none other than Québec nationalist Joseph Papineau. It would be the courts in Lower Canada, not the gov- ernment, that would move against slavery. Some Québec slaves took their masters to court, claiming

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that their masters were holding them illegally. In 1797, the courts began to rule in favour of the enslaved. In some instances in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, local courts also freed some slaves who petitioned for their freedom. The slaveholders of Prince Edward Island, on the other hand, held fast to their right to own enslaved property. Slaves there did not even bother to present their case in court. Gradually, over time, slavery declined in the five colonies that made up British North America. It would eventually come to an end in 1834, when the British Parliament outlawed and abolished it in all its territories.

Though the story of slavery in Canada has been silenced, those who owned slaves and those whose actions impinged directly on the lives of the enslaved did not adopt a secretive pose in their dealings with their slave property. Government officials deliber- ated slavery as a public issue. Various statutes and acts concerning Black enslavement came from the imperial and provincial parliaments. The courts also documented the presence of slaves and their concerns. Further, census takers counted enslaved Blacks among the general population. In fact, in the years following the Revolutionary War, there were at least two censuses done to count the number of slaves in the populations of Upper and Lower Canada.20 As important, enslaved people bore witness to their own presence through flight and other subversive actions.

NOTES

1. Stephen D. Behrendt, The Atlantic Slave Trade [CD ROM]

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). This

database has information on over 30,000 slave ships used

in the British trade.

2. James Walker, a historian at the University of Waterloo,

discusses how Black history is missing from pioneer history.

See James Walker, A History of Blacks in Canada (Hull:

Ministry of State for Multiculturalism, 1980), 1–7.

3. O.M.H. Lapalice, “Les Esclaves noir à Montréal sous l’ancien

régime,” Canadian and Numismatic Journal 12 (1915): 139.

4. William Riddell, “The Code Noir,” Journal of Negro History

10, no. 3 (1925): 321–28.

5. Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (Montréal:

McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 1.

6. Ibid., 9. See also Marcel Trudel, L’esclavage au Canada

Français: Histoire et conditions de l’esclavage (Québec: Les

Presses Universitaire Laval, 1960), 130. On demography, see

Kenneth Donovan, “Slaves and Their Owners in Ile Royale,”

Acadiensis xxv, no. 1 (Autumn 1995, pp. 3–32), 3.

7. See Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 11.

8. William Riddell, “An Early Canadian Slavery Transaction,”

Journal of Negro History 13, no. 2 (1928): 207. The

translation is Riddell’s. The original is in French and is

taken from Pierre Georges Roy, Le bulletin des recherches

historiques 33, no. 8: 584.

9. Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 10.

10. See Bernard Moitt, “Women and Resistance,” in

Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635–1848

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 125–50.

11. Hurbert Neilson, “Slavery in Old Canada, before and after

the Conquest,” Transactions of the Literary and Historical

Society of Quebec 2, no. 26 (1906): 35.

12. See Dorothy Roberts, Killing the Black Body: Race,

Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (New York: Vintage

Books, 1999), 23–25; Maureen Elgersman, Unyielding

Spirits: Black Women and Slavery in Early Canada and

Jamaica (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), 21–38.

13. Trudel, L’eslavage au Canada Français, 258.

14. Walker, A History of Blacks in Canada, 6.

15. The Russells wrote about their slave woman Peggy and her

family. Much of Peggy’s story is contained in the Russell

Papers, a portion of which is Elizabeth Russell’s diary, housed

at the Baldwin Room, Toronto Public Library. Sections of

Elizabeth’s diary are reprinted in Edith Firth, Town of York,

1791–1815 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1962).

16. Winks, The Blacks in Canada, 96.

17. Peter Martin, a free Black man, and William Grisley, a

White man, witnessed Vrooman binding and disposing

of Chloe Cooley. Martin and Grisley related the matter

to Simcoe and some members of his Executive Council.

See E.A. Cruikshank, ed., The Correspondence of Lieut.

Governor John Graves Simcoe [hereafter cited as Simcoe

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Papers], vol. 1 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1923–

31), 304.

18. For the complete “Act to Prevent Further Introduction of

Slaves …,” see Nancy Power and Michael Butler, Slavery

and Freedom in Niagara (Niagara-on-the-Lake: Niagara

Historical Society, 1993), Appendix A. The act can also

be viewed in Statutes of Ontario, 1791–1840, or on the

Archives of Ontario Black history website.

19. William Riddell, “The Slave in Canada,” The Journal of Negro

History 3 (July 1920): 324. Henry Lewis, a former slave of

William Jarvis, escaped to Schenectady, New York, and

wrote to his ex-owner, offering to buy himself. See Henry

Lewis to William Jarvis, 3 May 1798, Jarvis Papers, Toronto

Public Library.

20. Two censuses of slaves in the Niagara district of Upper

Canada were carried out in 1783. The Lower Canadian

census was done in 1784. See Winks, The Blacks in

Canada, 35; Power and Butler, Slavery and Freedom,

13–15.

Source: Cooper, Afua. (2006). Excerpted from The

Hanging of Angelique: The Untold Story of Canadian

Slavery and the Burning of Old Montréal (pp. 68–81,

83–98, 100–105). Toronto, ON: Harper Collins.

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ACTIVIST ART 5

YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE

Wangechi Mutu

Mutu was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is best known for her large-scale collages depicting female figures in lush, otherworldly land- scapes. Her work explores issues of gender, race, war, globalization, colonialism, and the eroticization of the Black female body. She creates mysterious cyborgian figures pieced together with human, animal, machine, and monster parts. She often combines found materials and magazine cutouts with sculpture and painted imagery, sampling from sources as diverse as African traditions, international politics, the fashion indus- try, and science fiction. Wangechi Mutu is considered one of the most important con- temporary African artists working today. Her art has been exhibited around the world and has achieved widespread acclaim.

Source: Mutu, Wangechi. (2015). “You are My Sunshine.” Collage painting on paper, 24 x 36 in. Retrieved from: http://wangechimutu.com/.

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The piece, “You Are My Sunshine,” was exhibited at the Africa’s Out! inaugural event at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in Manhattan on June 5, 2015. Mutu founded Africa’s Out! as an artistic and political response to the recent criminalization of homosexuality in African coun- tries like Nigeria and Uganda. Africa’s Out!, explains Mutu, “is our sincere effort to counter this with joy, support and celebration.” “I thought I’m going to call it Africa’s Out! because it will be about … you know, what is out,” she said. “We’re here and we’re all over. We’re out of the bag. We’re confident, we’re capable, we’re evolved, we’re full and we’re ready. So, Africa’s Out!”

Source: Sommerfeldt, Chris. (2015, June 14). Adapted

from “Africa’s Out!: Wangechi Mutu’s Initiative to

Celebrate African Diversity.” Kenyan Vibe. Retrieved

from: https://www.kenyanvibe.com/africas-out-

wangechi-mutus-initiative-to-celebrate-african-

diversity/.

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Black Woman rage makes us take to the stages Up front at rallies Leading black families Black woman rage is a thing of beauty Doing our duty, making our roles Suffering in silence, giving the bad eye Calling on God, dealing with spirits Jah-Jah takes over as riddims move hips Cusses come from full brown female lips Black woman rage is a sight to behold Working the fields suns beat on bent backs Black songs rise with density of deep sound Deep pasts seep to all who have the ear— Can you understand the meaning of Rage … Black … Woman … Song? Sad, true, throaty, tired Awakened

As we stretch to the heights of creation Leggo our hand in the offending face Stay in our place? What place? When we just be all over … Never removed as we feed the masses with milk, poems and minds Full breasts and asses Queen Nzinga looks on as we swing our small axes through the forests of fearsome shadows that mean us no good We learn to run from home-grown licks Give 2 snaps up and stand akimbo as only Raging Black Women could. We beat the drums to call on the sisters to pass on the secrets that only mothers know. two hundred and forty days of two heart-beats, two sighs, two souls, two-fold life-form multiply

CHAPTER 32

Black Women Rage

Wendy Brathwaite

Wendy (Motion) Brathwaite is a poet, performer, and award-winning spoken word and hip hop artist. Her work addresses some of the difficult realities of African Canadian life in Greater Toronto, including racism, marginalization, gender inequalities, and Black motherhood. She is the author of two published works of poetry, Motion in Poetry and 40 Dayz, and the play Aneemah’s Spot.

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with the powers of Yin and Yang One moment kisses to heal the sting of her strong

hand Raging, Woman Black— back to the basics of the Motherland … Speak your story, speak sister songs and weep if you will at the rage that kept us frozen, still under humping weights that pinned us in darkened places Rage that kept us from killing our rapists In order to maintain we paralyzed ourselves instead They left us for dead They thought we were dead But we don’t die, we … grow, laugh, spread, cry Daughters of the cotton and cane cannot wither and die.

Source: Brathwaite, Wendy. (2002). “Black Women

Rage.” In Motion in Poetry (pp. 27–29). Toronto, ON:

Three O’Clock Press.

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Princess, Princess, calendar girl, Redskin temptress, Indian pearl. Waiting by the water For a white man to save. She’s a savage now remember— Can’t behave! 1

These lines, taken from Monique Mojica’s play Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots, capture the essence of how Indigenous women in the Americas are stereotyped: as sexual temptresses, aligned with nature, savagely promiscuous, and in need of salvation from the white man. Every North American is famil- iar with the imagery and connotations of the Indian princess and the “squaw,” and as Indigenous women of the twenty-first century we continue to endure the Halloween Pocahottie costumes, the “dirty squaw”

catcalls, and the landscapes with names like “Squaw Valley.” Where do the Indian princess and squaw images come from? How did they become so wide- spread, and how do they affect the day-to-day lives of contemporary Native women?

As I explored these questions, I discovered that both the Indian princess and the dirty, easy squaw were invented and then reinforced because they proved useful to the colonizer. The Indian princess upholds settler entitlement to the land as she is the one who invited the white man in. The “uncivilized” squaw justifies the violence involved in this process. To me, these images are like a disease that has spread through both the Native and the non-Native mindset. In trac- ing this development, I hope to highlight a renewed understanding of Native womanhood that will help us to recover our strength, self-esteem, and dignity.

CHAPTER 33

The Construction of a Negative Identity

Kim Anderson

Kim Anderson (Cree Métis) is an associate professor of family relations and applied nutrition at the University of Guelph. She is well known for her book A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, which was followed by Life Stages and Na- tive Women: Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine. Anderson has conducted several research projects in collaboration with the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC), most recently on projects about Indigenous knowledge transfer in ur- ban communities, and gender and life stage factors in urban Indigenous governance.

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ROOTS OF A NEGATIVE FEMALE IMAGE

In both Western and Indigenous frameworks, Native women have historically been equated with the land. The Euro-constructed image of Native women, therefore, mirrors Western attitudes toward the earth. Sadly, this relationship has typically developed within the context of control, conquest, possession, and exploitation. The Euro-Canadian image of Native women has been constructed within this context and has evolved along with the evolving relationship of European people to this continent.

When they first arrived on Turtle Island in the sixteenth century, Europeans produced images of Native womanhood to symbolize the magnificent richness and beauty they encountered. This was the phase of the great mother, the Indian Queen. Cherokee scholar Rayna Green described the personification of “America” typical to this period (1575‒1765):

Draped in leaves, feathers, and animal skins, as well as in heavy jewelry, she appeared ag- gressive, militant, and armed with spears and arrows. Often she rode on an armadillo, and stood with her foot on the slain body of an animal or human enemy. She was the familiar mother-goddess figure—full bodied, power- ful, nurturing but dangerous—embodying the wealth and danger of the New World.2

“Exotic, powerful, dangerous and beautiful,” this Native female symbol represented both “American liberty and European virtue,”3 but as the European settler became more familiar with the land, the queen was demoted. Colonial claims to the land would work only if the queen became more accessible, less pow- erful, and within the grasp of the white man. Out of this need, the “Indian princess” was born. The queen was transformed from a mother-goddess figure to a girlish-sexual figure, for who can own a mother or dominate the gods?

“Indian princess” imagery constructed Indigenous women as the virgin frontier, the pure border wait- ing to be crossed.4 The enormous popularity of the princess lay within her erotic appeal to the covetous European male wishing to lay claim to the “new” territory. This equation of the Indigenous woman with virgin land, open for consumption, created a Native female archetype that, as Elizabeth Cook-Lynn has pointed out, could then be “used for the colonizer’s pleasure and profit.”5

Richard Slotkin’s work offers valuable insights into how such fantasies of border crossing underpin settler/invader identity building and nationalism in the United States. He writes about the myth of the American frontier, where the white hero must cross the border into the lands of the “primitive” where he is regenerated through acts of violence.6 These notions of border crossing, possession, and achieving a sense of renewal and belonging are dependent on the conquest and consumption of Native women and are ubiqui- tous in North American his-story and storytelling. They have been promoted through other popular his-storical characters like Sacajewea, the Shoshone woman who purportedly led explorers Lewis and Clark into the interior of the North American continent.7 In Canada, we have Tekakwitha, the seventeenth-century “Mohawk Saint” who is eroti- cized by the white males who have written about her because she represents another version of transfor- mative borderlands.8 Further abroad, the story is the same. In her essay connecting Pocahontas in North America, Malintzin in Mexico, and Krotoa in South Africa, Pamela Scully writes: “The overly sexualized native woman surfaces in the sources of European exploration in places as diverse as North America, the South Pacific, East Indies and West Africa.”9

The erotic image of Native female as “new” ter- ritory to be conquered persists to this day. You need only glance at posters of Walt Disney’s Pocahontas to be confronted with a contemporary example of this archetype. We see a voluptuous yet innocent-looking Native (but not too Native) “girl,” who will soon be

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conquered and consumed by the adventurous young white male. In her book Killing the Indian Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film, M. Elise Marubbio points out that images of the princess and sexualized maiden persist into films she reviewed into the 1990s, and that the end of the story typically involves the death of the Native woman.10 Chris Finley has written about the problematic representation of Sacajawea in the 2006 film Night at the Museum, where Sacajawea is “a Celluloid Maiden character that loves white men and aids in conquest.”11 While it may be possible to interpret characters like Pocahontas or Sacajewea as strong Indigenous leaders,12 the mainstream interpretation of these mythic characters is quite the opposite: Native women (and, by asso- ciation, the land) are “easy, available, and willing” for the white man, and conquest, consumption, and disappearance are the end result.13

Whereas the Indian princess has been popular and has a long history, her “darker twin,” the “squaw,” is also ubiquitous.14 As with other colonial his-stories, once Indigenous peoples began to resist colonization, new archetypes emerged. Indigenous women world- wide became symbols of the troublesome colonies, and in the Americas the squaw emerged. Carol Douglas Sparks has traced the princess-to-squaw devolution in colonizer accounts of the Navajo.15 The virgin-princess, so commonly found in white male adventurer records of the nineteenth century, is soon transformed. While the princess held erotic appeal for the covetous imperial male wishing to claim the “new” territory, the squaw drudge justified the conquest of an uncivilized terrain: “Americans found squaw drudges far more comfortable than these outspoken and powerful women, whose presence defied colonial rationalizations. Not only could the squaw be pitied, but her very existence justified American intrusion into her land and society.”16

In her book, Capturing Women: The Manipulation of Cultural Imagery in Canada’s Prairie West, Sarah Carter demonstrates how both the Canadian state and the national press deliberately promoted “dirty squaw”

imagery in the late 1800s.17 At the time of settler invasion in western Canada, “dirty squaw” fiction was useful for a number of reasons. The uncivilized squaw provided a backdrop for the repressive measures against the Native population of the time. Like the men who were depicted as savage warriors, the women were reported to be “violent instigators of atrocities” (against whites),18 thereby justifying colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. The image of the Native woman as the beast of burden in her society was drawn up to demonstrate the superiority of European wom- anhood and femininity (after all, white women did not “labour”), and the necessity for replacing Native wom- anhood with European womanhood. David Smits has written about how “the squaw” was thus constructed in contrast to the civilized, white “Victorian lady.”19

As Native peoples were increasingly forced off their homelands, and women lost their status and role as producers within the economic structure of their societies, they were further cast as lazy and slovenly. Women were no longer able to provide for their families because they had lost the means to produce primary goods, such as clothing and food. They became dependent upon purchased goods and an economy in which they held no power. The dirty squaw conveniently took the blame for the increasing poverty in Indigenous communities and deflected attention from government and public complicity in the devastation of Indigenous peoples. If Native women were constructed as “squaws,” dirty, lazy, and slovenly, it was faster to cover up the reality of Native women who were merely struggling with the increasingly inhuman conditions on reserve:

In the unofficial and unpublished reports of reserve life … it was widely recognized that problems with reserve housing and health had little to do with the preferences, temper- ament, or poor housekeeping abilities of the women. Because of their poverty, the people were confined in one-room shacks, which were poorly ventilated and were impossible

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to keep clean because they had dirt floors and were plastered with mud and hay. One inspector of the agencies noted in 1891 that the women did not have soap, towels, wash basins, or wash pails, nor did they have any means of acquiring them. Similarly, it was frequently noted that the women were short of basic clothing and had no textiles or yarn to work with. Yet in official public state- ments, the tendency was to ascribe blame to the women rather than drawing attention to conditions that would injure the reputation of government administration.20

Similarly, if Native women were portrayed as poor parents, it was then excusable for the state to remove Native children and place them in residential schools and foster homes.

Native female sexuality was also transformed into the “squaw” who was “lewd and licentious” and mor- ally reprehensible. This representation was projected onto Native women to excuse the mistreatment they endured from white settler males. Within the context of late nineteenth-century morality, it was easier to blame Native women than to challenge the behaviour of the heroes on the frontier. The narrative espousing how “easy” Native women were was developed to cover up the fact that white males were involved in unmarried sexual activity and that state officials were perpetrators of sexual assault. This tactic is common in rape cases and is well entrenched in the Western consciousness: blame women for the sexual deviance of certain men. As part of the Native woman-blaming campaign, the Toronto Daily Mail of February 2, 1886, railed: “The character of the men of this country has been assailed.”21

The squalor of the media-driven uncivilized easy squaw was further intended to guard against interra- cial marriages, thus protecting racial “purity” in the new country: “There were fears that the Anglo-Celts might be overrun by more fertile, darker and lower people, who were believed to be unable to control

their sexual desires.”22 The moral reform movement of the late 1880s in the West embraced images of the dirty squaw in an effort to keep the races segregated and to keep the white race pure. The dirty, dark squaw not only justified the deplorable treatment of Indigenous peoples, she also created a gauge against which white femininity could be measured and defined. Where Native women were powerful physical workers, white women were encouraged to be weak and frail. The Native woman thus was reinvented as a drudge. Where Native women had sexual liberty, white women were restricted from pleasure. The Native woman was then perceived as easy. Where Native women resisted the increasing restrictions and poverty of reserves, white women were expected to be models of domesticity, indus- triousness, and obedience. The Native woman had to be reconstructed as deficient in order to prop up the image of the white woman.

Since contact with the Europeans, Native women have been trapped within a dichotomous world view, where everything is either good or bad, dark or light, pure or corrupt. The Euro-constructed Indigenous woman with her dark ways, her squalor and corrup- tion makes the construction of whiteness all the more attractive in the North American subconscious. In terms of female identity, the Native woman must endure the Western framework of virgin-whore, which was translated to princess-squaw and slapped on top of the complex understanding of Native wom- anhood that had existed for tens of thousands of years. This his-story continues to interfere with the lives of contemporary Native women.

GHOSTS OF THE SQUAW AND THE PRINCESS

The majority of Native women will tell you that they have been called a “squaw”; this label has been applied to Native women right across North America. There are accounts from women of nations as widespread as

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the Mi’kmaq (Rita Joe) and the Pawnee/Otoe (Anna Lee Walters).23 Native girls begin to hear racial/sexual slurs from an early age, often before they even under- stand the terms themselves. Anishinaabe professor Shirley Williams says she remembers hearing white boys singing, “Squaws along the Yukon aren’t good enough for me.” The boys would follow up with, “Would two dollars be enough?,” playing on the myth that Native women are “easy.” […]

The “squaw” remains alive and well in the North American imaginary. The February 2, 2015, cover of “Canada’s National Magazine,” Maclean’s, featured a photo of Cree writer and broadcaster Rosanna Deerchild, with the caption “They call me a stupid squaw, or tell me to go back to the rez.”24 Deerchild notes that she is harassed every few weeks on the streets of Winnipeg, stating “someone honks at me, or yells out ‘How much’ from a car window.”25 This squaw image is not only stamped on the North American subconscious when it comes to Native women, but also on land, place, and products such as “squaw brand sifted peas” and “Siwash squaw apples.”26 In her article “The S-Word: Discourse, Stereotypes, and the American Indian Woman,” Debra Merksin writes that she found 4.8 million hits in a Google search of the term squaw, and that “most are linked to resorts, casinos or about landforms.”27 Efforts on the part of Indigenous peoples and allies to change such labelling are often resisted. Merskin points out that Native Americans have not had the same success at changing stereotypes as other marginalized groups and that the racist and sexist messages in this labelling reify “the hierarchical position of dominant Euro- American culture by controlling access to resources and power.”28 […]

When negative images of Native women are so ingrained in the North American consciousness that even children participate in using them, it is easy to see how Native women might begin to think of themselves as “easy squaws.” Janice Acoose describes how these negative images affected her consciousness.

I learned so passively to accept and inter- nalize the easy squaw, Indian-whore, dirty Indian, and drunken Indian stereotypes that subsequently imprisoned me, and all Indige- nous peoples, regardless of our historic, eco- nomic, cultural, spiritual, and geographical differences.… I shamefully turned away from my history and cultural roots, becoming, to a certain extent, what was encouraged by the ideological collusiveness of text books, and the ignorant comments and peer pressure from non-Indigenous students.29

Many Native female writers—including Joanne Arnott, Beth Brant, Maria Campbell, Janet Campbell Hale, Beatrice Culleton, Paula Gunn Allen, Lee Maracle, and Anna Lee Walters30—have provided accounts of how they or other Native women have fostered destructive and hateful attitudes toward themselves. This self-hatred is rooted in internalized racism, which comes from the negative self-concepts of racist stereotypes like the squaw. Internalized racism spreads like a disease through Native communities.31 It makes us doubt the validity of the existence of our people, and thus ourselves.

Whereas the squaw is overtly negative, the Indian princess can be trickier to unpack. This is because the Indian princess today is often disguised as the honour- ing of an Indigenous female icon. In 2000, the United States released the “Sacagawea dollar,” a commem- orative coin, demonstrating the Shoshone woman’s “eagerness to lead the way.”32 In other instances, commemoration of the archetypical “Indian maiden” involves adopting her identity. Rebecca Blevins Faery has written about her experience of going to Pocahontas, Iowa, to witness the opening of Disney’s Pocahontas.33 At this event, the white settlers of the town dressed up in beaded headbands, sang pioneer anthems, and sold white-looking dolls of Pocahontas. Where does such an inclination come from? Indigenous scholars such as Phillip Deloria and Shari Huhndorf have documented

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how North American traditions of “playing Indian” allow settlers to claim a sense of entitlement to the ter- ritory and assuage negative feelings about the violence that has facilitated their occupation.34 Too often we find ourselves confronting these situations. I remember being taken off guard by a Pocahontas number at one of my daughter’s dance shows—an honour that made me want to crawl under the seat. But at least I had the advantage of having read Indigenous and other critical race theorists to know why it feels so wrong to be faced with such images.35

Although the Indian princess can appear in such manifestations as children’s Halloween or dance cos- tumes, she is more often than not sexualized. As with the squaw, this imagery validates racist attitudes about the promiscuity and sexual availability of Indigenous women. This understanding finds its way into our lives and our communities. Sometimes, it means constantly having to fend off the advances of people with an appetite for the “Other.”36 It may involve a continual struggle to resist crass, sexualized interpretations of one’s being. It often involves violence, or the threat of rape. In her autobiography, Métis performing artist and writer Morningstar Mercredi tells a story that demonstrates the connection between sexualization of Native women, settler conquest and consumption, and nationalized identity. She writes about living in western Canada, where “walking down most city streets guarantees a proposition”37 and recalls being solicited by a white worker in an oil camp, who tells her “They say you’re not a real Canadian till you’ve had an Indian woman.…”38

Plains Cree/Métis professor Emma LaRocque asserts that “the dehumanizing portrayal of the squaw and the over-sexualization of Native females such as Disney’s Pocahontas surely render all Native female persons vulnerable.”39 After telling me, “Since child- hood, I have had to walk through a maze of racist and sexist assaults on me,” she told me a story that offered a striking image of the perceived worthlessness of Native female existence as it has too often been under- stood by the dominant society:

My first experience of when I was conscious of this kind of assault happened when I was about ten years old. I was sitting in a café in my hometown, reading a comic book, as I [was] wont to do. Minding my own busi- ness. I don’t know where my parents were, but I just remember a big, fat, red-faced white guy coming in. Leering at me. I don’t even think I could identify what that look was because I had been so safe at home and in my community. I had never been attacked, and I didn’t know what on earth that was. This guy, he throws a quarter. I still remember, and I still see that quarter rolling right past my Coke bottle. He threw a quarter and he said, “Want to go for a ride, little squaw?”

LaRocque acknowledges the danger she was in at that moment, and how racist stereotypes endanger Native girls and women: “To this day, I am profoundly grateful he did nothing else. He could have just picked me up and taken me away. Nobody would have known the difference.” She asks, “Where do these men get off on attacking little children, teenagers, regular-aged women and grandmothers? It has to come from some conditioning, some horrendous sociological, racist, and sexist conditioning, to be so inhumane to your co-human beings. It is really stunning.”

Negative images of Native women, whether in historical accounts, anecdotes, jokes, movies, or Canadian literature,40 are at the root of stories like that of Helen Betty Osbourne, a sixteen-year-old Native woman who was picked up by four white men and brutally raped and murdered in The Pas, Manitoba, in 1971. This story remains fixed in the conscious- ness of many Native women as it demonstrates how mainstream society interprets violence against Native women, especially when it is committed by whites. In my conversation with Gertie Beaucage (Anishinaabe), she pointed out that Osbourne was killed because she was expected to be “easy,” and yet she resisted the sexual assault of the white men who attacked her.

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As Emma LaRocque has further pointed out, “In the minds of ‘good boys who did bad things,’ it is not the place of ‘squaws’ to resist white power, especially power snakily connected to the male ego.”41

The Osbourne case eventually received a mod- erate amount of publicity because of the injustices it represented. There are, however, many more Native women’s tales that would reveal the min- imal worth placed on Native female lives. In our conversations, Lee Maracle (Sto:lo) and Catherine Martin (Mi’kmaq) have demonstrated to me that the notion that Native women are there for the sexual taking has been acted out from one side of the con- tinent to the other. Maracle recalls her childhood on the West Coast:

In my village, every single weekend … men came into the village, picked up little children, took them to the gravel pit, raped them—sometimes killed them—and were never prosecuted. I personally was chased in automobiles by white men. And when I went to swear out a complaint, they said it was in my imagination. I had charged a white man with assault, and I was called not a credible witness. Those things happen in our personal lives.

Maracle attributes this to the “permission that white society gave to white men to enter our commun- ities, murder, pillage, rape, and plunder us at will.” […]

Hereditary Wet’suwet’en Chief Theresa Tait lives in central British Columbia. When I spoke with her about this issue, she told me that in the previous dec- ade there had been at least five Indigenous women who had been killed in her local area, with little investigation and next to no media coverage about these incidents. In the years since I first spoke with Tait, Indigenous women and their allies have worked diligently to raise awareness and demand action to address the travesty of the more than 1,000 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada,

and the lack of attention to the issue. In spite of reports by Amnesty International (2004), the Native Women’s Association of Canada (2009), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (2014) and countless efforts of grassroots activism, the Canadian state has only recently begun to address missing and murdered Indigenous women as an issue warranting immediate investigation in the form of a national inquiry.42

Native women seeking justice against the violence in their lives are overshadowed by the image of the squaw. In her study of how race figures into sexual abuse trials, Sherene Razack notes that Indigenous women are treated as “inherently rapeable” because of assumptions made about Native female promiscuity and the insistence that a rape victim who has passed out because of alcohol is considered to have suffered less of a violation.43 A Native woman who is drunk is deemed particularly unworthy of humane treatment, and Native women who are involved in abusive rela- tionships may not feel comfortable calling the police in the case of domestic violence because they may be seen as “at fault,” or deserving of the abuse.44 As recent evidence has proven, calling the police might put an Indigenous woman’s safety further at risk. In 2011, for example, a northern Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer arrested an intoxicated Indigenous woman, but then took her out of her cell and brought her home “to pursue a personal relationship.”45 According to the RCMP adjudication documents obtained by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), “Fellow officers teased and goaded him by text message to see ‘how far he would go,’” and his senior officer told him “You arrested her, you can do whatever the f--k you want to do.”46 For this, the offending officer was given a “reprimand” and docked seven days’ pay.47

As Indigenous women’s testimony here and elsewhere indicates, these violent, racist, and sexist practices are not isolated incidents, nor are they historical. In 2013, the international organization Human Rights Watch released an 89-page report entitled Those Who Take Us Away: Abusive Policing

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