32nd edition – Feminism – Pike & Hurricane

Manuela Sáenz – Liberator of the Liberator

Anna Bernard — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:22:47 +0000

Manuela Sáenz is a curious case indeed. She was a Latin American revolutionary figure from the continent’s turbulent 19th century. The revolutionary times opened up a space for behavior defying gender, class and racial norms, which created the first seeds for emancipatory women’s movements. Since her passing, Sáenz has gained a heroine status. Her legacy has empowered various Latin American feminist and revolutionary movements to this day.

The life of Sáenz

Born in Quito, current-day Ecuador, in 1797 as the illegitimate child of elite class parents, Manuela Sáenz defied societal norms since her birth. She was informally recognized by her father who later found her a rich English merchant, who she married according to her father’s wishes. This marriage subsequently set off a chain reaction that destined her to become a revolutionary heroine.

Sáenz followed her husband and became a socialite in Lima, Peru. It is in these circles that she got involved in political and military affairs, leading her to bloom as a supporter of the independence cause. As a politically active member of the upper class in Lima, she initially engaged in the independence cause in ways acceptable for women. She informed independence leaders of any Spanish royalist actions and strategies that she heard of, and she was known to hold “tertulias”, intellectual gatherings, where independence sympathizers gathered to further their cause.

It was in 1822, at the age of 25, that Manuela Sáenz met Simón Bolívar, the Liberator, the most famous Spanish American revolutionary figure of the time. During the revolutionary campaigns, Sáenz worked as Bolivar’s personal archivist, informant and confidant, while also being his lover, companion and political supporter. Sáenz is also believed to have fought alongside Bolívar’s troops as an equal in one or more of the battles, thus contributing to the independence movement’s victories and to the consolidation of the independence of Spanish America.

Most memorably she also twice saved her confidant’s life. In 1828, Sáenz assisted Bolívar to flee would-be assassins who had made their way into Bolívar’s proximity. Her audacity and perceptiveness earned her the title ‘Libertadora del Libertador’ from Bolívar.

Women’s involvement in the revolution – the legacy

Although the life of Sáenz was incredibly eventful and full of departures from the norms of her times, she has been depicted most commonly merely as the lover and partner of Bolívar, thus not receiving the credit she deserves for her efforts and loyalty to the independence movement. This difficulty to reconcile with and accept her significance in the creation of an independent continent is arguably related to her break from traditional female roles and societal norms. However, since the turn of the twentieth century, a variety of scholars have sought to capture the deep scope of her life and efforts in the revolutionary processes, while recalling and re-evaluating her association with Bolívar and his movement.

Women were crucial to the Spanish American wars of independence. Most women, especially among the elite and middle sectors of society, conformed to the notion of “proper womanhood” even during exceptional times such as revolutionary struggles. These women supported the independence cause by giving monetary support, serving as spies, sewing uniforms, and by sacrificing their husbands and adult sons to the independence movement. Some women would follow armies in order to tend to the wounded, which was deemed as acceptable behavior for women, as they were seen as extending their supposedly natural instinct to nurture into an extreme situation in a time of crisis and sacrifice. Most of the women with the armies, however, were poor indigenous or mestiza women, who were the daughters, girlfriends, or wives of low-ranking soldiers. These women followed their men, feeding and comforting them as they fought for independence. Still, women in the aforementioned functions stayed in the accepted spectrum of actions regarding their gender, class, race, and status.

Manuela Sáenz departed from these standards. She was engaged in the revolution long before she was involved with Bolívar. Sáenz was a talented and dedicated revolutionary who was capable of manipulating existing gender norms – sometimes adhering to them, at others rejecting them – when she needed to advance her personal and political interests. The problem was that as the revolution ended, strong female revolutionaries such as Sáenz were expected to step away from their exceptional position they had gained during the crisis, and once again pertain to a more traditional role out of the realms of politics and military affairs.

Emancipation emanating from the revolutions

It is argued that Manuela Sáenz and other women like her participating in the revolutionary movements have been crucial in the revolution of women’s emancipation in Latin America.

“The revolution will be feminist or it will not be.”

Five factors have been identified that contributed to the emergence of Latin American women’s emancipation and revolutionary feminism, born of the various revolutionary movements. Firstly, engagement, such as that of Sáenz’s, in independence movements challenged the status-quo perception of gender behavior thus giving women more space to manoeuvre. Secondly, training in the ranks of the independence movements gave women unprecedented logistical skillsets that they were able to utilize in the organization of women’s movements. Thirdly, there was a political opening in a more chaotic state structure that gave women a chance to organize. In addition, this organizing was stimulated by unmet basic needs by revolutionary movements that women themselves felt a need to address; and finally, a collective feminist consciousness – subtle or not – needed to be present for emancipatory movements to gain strength.

In this context Sáenz was certainly ahead of her time, as great innovators often are. Instead of receiving recognition for her efforts, she was exiled and died a pariah. However, even after such degradation, Sáenz’s legacy subtly lived on, inspiring countless women to mobilize.

The life of Sáenz was that of norm-breaking behavior and extreme solidarity for a cause and commitment to the leader she deemed invaluable for the revolution. Sáenz found an opportunity to express her aspirations, desires and ambitions through the revolutionary movement, and by doing so she contributed to an independent continent and paved way for successive women’s mobilization.

By Anna Bernard

Photos:

Osvaldo Gago #acampadasol (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0))

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“Not just a feminist.”

Ida Scharla Løjmand — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:11:13 +0000

“I am not a feminist. I am an intersectional feminist.”

This is how a friend of mine described herself when our conversation one day touched upon women’s rights. To me, this first sounded slightly paradoxical. Wasn’t a movement like feminism supposed to be united in the fight for gender equality? What was the point of separating it into more subcategories?

My friend’s counter-argument was that there is no such thing as just one united kind of feminism as women’s needs differ all over the world. That seemed legit. However, since the term of “intersectional feminism” was new to me, I still didn’t understand what it covers and where it comes from. This is what I aim to do in this article.

Photo: Lindsey Jene Scalera

The term “intersectional feminism” is defined in different words by different feminist scholars. What unifies them is the emphasis on the fact that a woman is not a universal category and that different women fight different battles all over the world.

Juliet Williams, professor of gender studies at UCLA, puts it this way: “Intersectional feminism is a form of feminism that stands for the rights and empowerment of all women, taking seriously the fact of differences among women, including different identities based on radicalization, sexuality, economic status, nationality, religion, and language.”

Recognizing these differences is crucial, according to Ruth Enid Zambrana, director of the Consortium on Race, Gender and Ethnicity at the University of Maryland.

“Intersectionalism is crucial,” she writes. “How do we begin to disentangle ‘women’ from ‘African American women’ from ‘Puerto Rican’ women from ‘Mexican American women’ from ‘international women’?”

Maybe it is a rising awareness of diversity that have shed more light on the term intersectional feminism the past years and put it on the lips of, for instance, the women protesting against Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year.

However, intersectional feminism is not a new concept. It was named already in 1989 by the American professor of law Kimberlé W. Crenshaw. Her definition frames intersectional feminism as “the view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity […] Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.”

So, intersectional feminism is aiming to raise awareness of the different challenges and discrimination women

experience. It stresses that women of different class, ethnicity, sexuality etc. have different experiences and problems.

Back in 2014, the British comedian and feminist Ava Vidal wrote in a column in The Telegraph: “There is no one-size-fits-all type of feminism” as a comment on what she defined as mainstream feminism – “a feminism that is overwhelmingly white, middle class, cis-gendered and able bodied.”

Nasime Naseri, Human Rights-student and volunteer for the Swedish association “Kvinna till Kvinna” (“Woman to Woman”), has similar views as Williams, Zambrana, Crenshaw and Vidal.

“Intersectional feminism, to me, is inclusive,” she says. “This type of feminism considers how women face gender discrimination in multiply different ways, for example being a woman, coloured and lesbian. These factors put in a disadvantaged position compared to white heterosexual women.”

She explains: “For example, people tell me I look exotic and it makes me feel objectified – it’s a word you use for plants or animals, not humans. When people say this, they refer to white beauty standards like I’m not normal.”

Photo: Paul Sableman

When asked if feminism – being the belief that men and women are equal – does not automatically include all types of women, Naseri answers: “Mainstream feminism only focuses on issues based solely on gender. It forgets to consider that for e.g. ethnicity also has an impact on how a woman faces gender discrimination. Intersectional feminism considers this.”

She stresses that she does not consider intersectional feminism an only black women’s movement.

“I don’t identify as an intersectional feminist just because I’m a person of colour,” she states. “Everyone can be an intersectional feminist. I identify as such because of my own experiences and because of seeing how my friends and family face discrimination. By only focusing on one part of a problem, we will not find a solution for everyone despite ethnicity, social group and who they love. By being inclusive and joining together we have more chances for change.”

At the same time, she also rejects that intersectional feminism is separating the whole movement into different categories.

“I don’t see intersectional feminists as a sub-group,” she says. “Intersectional feminism is representing people from different social classes, identity groups and it considers how different people face discrimination. So instead of creating a conflict, I think intersectional feminism, by considering things that the first feminist movement did not, is adding more and making feminism more inclusive.”

According to Ava Vidal’s column, it is necessary for the feminism movement to recognize the intersectional development. Otherwise it can possibly cause a backlash to the whole feminism movement.

“Until the mainstream feminist movement starts listening to the various groups of women within it, then it will continue to stagnate and not be able to move forward,” Vidal writes. “The only result of this is that the movement will become fragmented and will continue to be less effective.”

By Ida Scharla Løjmand

Image credit:

Picture 1: Lindsey Jene Scalera, lincensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 2: Paul Sableman, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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Feminism in a Historical Context

Yaroslav Mikhaylov — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:10:17 +0000

Social movements are inherently the result of their social context, and no movement serves a better example of this than feminism. On its surface, feminism may seem like a straightforward and self-contained social movement, but on closer examination it becomes clear that feminist movements can’t be separated from the historical context in which they developed. From the early opposition to slavery to modern anti-capitalism, most of the movements seeking to change the social order during the previous two centuries included women and women’s liberation in a crucial role.

In the mid-19th century United States, the feminist movement grew out of and was intertwined with the anti-slavery abolition movement. The activists of the 1800s saw parallel between the lack of rights experienced by slaves and those experienced by women. Male resistance to the political participation by women in abolitionist groups led them to carve out their own political spaces, as well as eventually focus entirely on the legal issues of women’s suffrage and legal equality. This characterizes the first wave of feminism as stemming from a wider push for social equality. Both the practical experience from the slavery abolition movement, as well as the idea that social change could be brought about through activism, were the key to making the early women’s rights campaigns a success.

Women were also intimately involved with efforts to combat the social ills of industrialization on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In the United Kingdom, women were one of the key constituencies of the radical Chartist movement, fighting for both democratic equality and social and economic justice. In the United States, the Progressive women of the early 20th century not only were involved in traditional feminist causes like suffrage and birth control access, but also wider social reforms like the minimum wage, the restriction on alcohol sales, and corporate corruption. To the female activists of the late 19th and early 20th century, the inequality between women and men was just a single facet of the larger social issues caused by the corrupt and decadent society they sought to reform.

One of the most radical social transformations of the 20th century was the Russian Revolution of 1917, which practically overnight transformed a traditional, religious and conservative Russia into an experiment in radical egalitarianism. Here, too, women and feminism could be found on the forefront of the social transformation. The new Soviet government immediately introduced a special department for women’s affairs – Department of Working Women and Peasant Women – led by women committed to gender equality. Under their purview, the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to fully legalize abortion, as well as introduced no-fault divorce, legal rights for out-of-wedlock children and child-support obligations for non-custodial fathers. However, even more radical was the participation of Soviet women in wartime activities. Approximately 66,000 Russian women fought in the Russian Civil War and as many as a million in World War II.

The most famous of those was the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, which was an all-female unit that flew refurbished crop duster planes in night-time raids on German positions. They were so feared that the German troops called them Night Witches, while the German high command would award the highest military award to any soldier that shot one down. By comparison, many nations today are still just taking the first steps to gender equality in their militaries. In practice, women were not nearly as liberated as Soviet legislative efforts would suggest. Gender roles still played a significant role in what jobs men and women got, women were paid less for similar work and the economy and politics were still heavily male-dominated spheres. However, feminism still clearly played a major role in the Soviet leaders’ image of the new society they aimed to build and female empowerment was seen as simply another aspect of the grand social revolution.

Later in the 20th century and into the 21st, women’s movements would still be entangled with the social issues debated at the time. Women’s liberation in the 1960s and 1970s United States was linked to the protests against the Vietnam War and the growing civil rights movement before developing into its own independent movement. Today, feminist and gender equality concerns play a major role in the work of the World Social Forum, which seeks to address the fundamental inequalities in the world economy. Even the opposition to the recent election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States has been heavily driven by the feminist movement. It is impossible to separate out feminism from the general concerns about what is wrong with the world today.

For the last 200 years, and probably for as long as humanity has been around, we have been imagining ways to make the world a better place – more just, more equal, more prosperous and more peaceful. The history of feminism follows this history of utopian visions, from a world without slavery and drunkenness to a world without exploitation and nuclear weapons. As the social problems that need to be addressed change, so does the feminism that flows out of them. It is possible to look at feminism as simply being a movement about men and women, but in doing so one would be missing the great canvas of human struggle for a better world against which it is set. As long as there is a human society, there will be a drive for social change, and as long as there is the need for social change, there will be feminism.

By Yaroslav Mikhaylov

Image credits:

Cover Image: The New York Times Photo Archive, Public Domain

Image 1: Public Domain

Image 2: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress), Public Domain

Image 3: Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, Public Domain

Image 4: Alex Layzell, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic

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She’s Still Here: Muslim Women on the Frontlines

Mariah Katz — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:05:58 +0000

How Islamophobia Took Root

What have you heard about Muslim women recently?

“They are meek.”

“They are oppressed.”

“Their hijab is a barricade.”

“Feminism is unknown to them. Equality is denied.”

But what if I told you these are gross generalities? There is a rich fabric of various women’s movements throughout the Middle East and the Muslim communities around the world. It is a revolution, though, quite apparently, an underground revolution. Being misunderstood or simply written off, it is a flower blooming in a dark room.

Before today’s events like the Arab Spring or the Syrian Civil War, Western interventionism killed millions of civilians, made wastelands out of cities, complicated international affairs to the point of proxy wars. It is questionable if interventionism is what solely caused the politics in today’s Middle East. I would say it is the reason why Islam has radicalized and Islamophobia persists in response. People are still trying to make sense of the aftermath of the War on Terror to this day. The United States sunk trillions of dollars into it for various reasons, either myths of weapons of mass destruction or patriotic visions of democratization in the Middle East. Throughout the early 2000’s, former president, George W. Bush, and his wife, Laura Bush, made claims that intervening would also liberate Muslim women. But do Muslim women really need saving? More so than other demographics? This assumption that Muslim women need to be saved has spurred prejudice against Muslim communities. The logic being that Muslims are supremely oppressive toward women. What can be made certain, Western countries are conflicted with how they respond to Muslims in their own borders: headlines calling for hijab and burqa bans from Germany to France. There is rampant Islamophobia. War can create peace, but it more often creates hatred.

Muslim Women Reclaiming Respect

Syria is an ongoing war for seven years. It all started with the idea for a ‘revolution of dignity.’ A people’s movement. By and large, it is still a people’s movement. Those who still remain in Syria have taken up arms, learned first aid, teach children left behind, care for abandoned animals. They are the ones who tend to Syria and protect its people against President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, ISIS and other terrorist groups.

Made up of about 7,000 volunteer fighters between the ages of 18 and 40, the YPJ–or “Women’s Protection Unit”– is the all-female Kurdish military branch. Around 80 YPJ fighters are stationed in the Kurdish region in Syria, Rojava Kurdistan. The YPJ is trained to protect the area from ISIS, Assad’s Syrian Army and various terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda. In 2014, the YPJ made headlines when they rescued a large Yazidis community from ISIS on Mount Sinjar.

They also made headlines for the death of 22-year-old Kurdish fighter, Asia Ramazan Anta, because she was beautiful. The headline was from pop culture juggernaut, The Sun. Their article’s message ignores the actual importance and bravery of YPJ fighters. Anta died on the frontlines protecting her community. To focus on the beauty of a fallen fighter objectifies and trivializes the fighter and her work.

Therein lies the hurdle Muslim women have to face: Western media, sexism and misunderstanding.

Nesrin Abdullah, the spokeswoman for YPJ, said to the Independent UK, “War is not only the liberation of land. We are also fighting for the liberation of women and men. If not, the patriarchal system will prevail once again.”

There is not another feminist movement like YPJ: a group of women who carry guns and train themselves to protect their communities against violent and patriarchal terrorist groups. All-female fighter groups are a startling and rare phenomenon. The YPJ is not representative of the entire Muslim feminist movement, but the YPJ is worth mentioning as a reminder that Muslim women in the Middle East cannot be stereotyped as “weak” and “docile.”

And yes, some of them do fight in hijabs.

Muslim women in the Middle East have various political leanings, values and religious beliefs that are on a spectrum, like any other demographic of women on any other corner of the planet. YPJ fighters are on one end and maybe a stay-at-home mom in a burqa living in Abu Dhabi is on the other end of the spectrum. Yet, there is a feminist movement in Abu Dhabi as well.

Again, media and prejudice overshadow these stories.

Deborah Williams at the New York Times recently penned an article about her time teaching at New York University’s portal campus in Abu Dhabi. It is titled, “Discovering Feminist Students in the Middle East.” Williams was the professor of a literature class where all of the books were by female authors. Her students happened to be all women as well. They came from Pakistan, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and other areas of the world. The diversity created a globalist perspective of what it means to be a woman. Often, feminism came up in class discussion alongside the question of what it means to be a woman. The students from Abu Dhabi dubbed themselves feminists. As well as the woman from Hong Kong. Also, the woman from Pakistan. It seemed a necessity for most women in the class who were told to be married, keep quiet and be subservient. The students came to one conclusion they agreed on: the patriarchy is still very much alive everywhere. If they kept facing setbacks simply because of their gender, if their mothers kept telling them to get married and that their education at NYU seemed excessive and unecessary, then they say feminism is vital.

Moving Forward Together

In a world that is imagined to be divided and constructed along gender and ethnic lines, it is a more nuanced approach to have a globalist perspective that is open to pluralities and contradictions. Yes, there is sexism in the Middle East, but there is sexism in your home country, too. Yes there are Muslim women in the Middle East, but there are Muslim women in Western countries too. Some are even blonde, some are African, but all are Muslim in their own way. It may be difficult to stretch one’s mind to accept and appreciate each person in a group of nearly 2 billion, but it is at least correct to assume not all Muslims are the same in a group that large. In this diverse group of 2 billion, feminism exists despite an overwhelming bias that says otherwise.

Some Muslims see an overarching cause for this bias, or Islamophobia, that has taken root in the West. There is the abovementioned theory that much of the bias occurred because of Western interventionism. From Canada, Fariha Róisín, a writer and feminist, wrote about her Muslim culture and identity:

“Lots of people talk about the misogyny of Muslim culture, without examining the overwhelming patriarchal blunder of the West, without questioning why the Muslim world has been radicalized in the last fifty years, which has led to the stern crackdown on women…This is a time where I encourage all of us to try and understand context, and understand the beauty of Islam. I hope that we can decolonize together. When I was kid I wanted to be anything other than Muslim, today, with tears in my eyes, I say: ‘Mashallah, I am so lucky to be a Muslim woman.’”

Being Muslim is interpreted by its followers in diverse ways. This diversity lends itself to many iterations of Muslim feminism as well. Outsiders and Western feminists all over the world can benefit from seeing beyond prejudice to learn from their Muslim counterparts about the sacrifice, bravery and intellectualism of Muslim feminism.

If Westerners can look beyond prejudice and media, a great lesson on feminism can be brought out from the shadows and illuminated.

By Mariah Katz

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