Obama’s Cairo speech has obviously been the most talked about thing this past week. While I have been surveying the many varied praises and critiques out there, I was drawn to a set of responses on one particular aspect of the speech: the section on women’s rights. Fatemeh Fakhraie has shared her thoughtful observations here, mainly in response to other feminists who have found more to diss than to like in the speech.

A complaint by a certain Anne Applebaum caught my attention. She writes, in an otherwise positive take on the speech: “he could have spared us the comment about the ’struggle for womens’ equality in America,’ as if we were all in this together, us and the regimes who stone women for adultery.” This is a very interesting remark, because it objects to precisely one of the reasons why many of us might actually appreciate Obama’s speech, for his intelligent acknowledgment of nuance and complexity when it comes to such an issue. As Fatemeh notes, “Obama took care not to merely point fingers.” By recognizing problems within America while discussing those of “the Muslim world,” he made a very basic ethical gesture, one that I think is often crucial to resolving problems.

Applebaum’s perspective, however, is quite different. For her, the logic of differences between us and them reigns supreme. Incidentally, sometime after I read this yesterday, I was skimming through Paul Farmer’s Pathologies of Power and came across the following notable remarks:

The abuse of the concept of cultural specificity is particularly insidious in discussions of suffering in general and of human rights abuses specifically: cultural difference, verging on a cultural determinism, is one of several forms of essentialism used to explain away assaults on dignity and suffering. Practices including torture are said to be “part of their culture” or “in their nature” — “their” designating either the victims, or the perpetrators, or both, as may be expedient. (p. 48, Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power. Berkeley: UC Press, 2005)

Farmer is assailing those who focus myopically on cultural differences but ignore “the national and international mechanisms that create and deepen inequalities.” And this is why I think Farmer’s points are relevant to the above discussion on Abblebaum. For her, we and they are so different, that we can’t possibly have anything to do with those “regimes who stone women.” As if these regimes exist in a vacuum, totally independent of us! Not only does she seem to insist that there is nothing comparable between the circumstance of women here and that over there, she also implies that we–mighty America–basically have (had) no role to play in affecting those circumstances. But is that really so? I don’t think we can ever get to the bottom of things without also asking questions about the (geo)politics of power, the nation state, globalization and culture, and the insidious international market.

I think Paul Farmer’s insights are important because he helps show how both the “cultural relativist” and the liberal “universalist” may be at fault: while the two disagree on whether or not we should impose our values on them, they both seem to be relying on the premise of difference between us and them. But neither seriously considers the possibility that us and them may have always already shaped each other.

With regard to stoning women for adultery, a question that I have been wondering about for some time is why there appears to have been a recent spike in this practice in some places of the world, at least over the past decade or so. Naturally, given how I think, I became curious about historical precedents and patterns. Over the last few months, I have been thinking about doing a series of blog posts on the topic, particularly since I learned some very interesting things in a class this past semester. I still hope to be able to do so, alongside some more reading and research on my part. Stay tuned.

Is it possible for a man to be a feminist? Yes and No. Let me point out on the outset that I’m not posing this question simplistically, but really to hash out some of the complexities of this problem. I cannot and do not promise to resolve the issue, but this is hopefully the beginning of a process of understanding.

Firstly, the reason I bring this up. I only just learned about the Kyle Payne story day before yesterday (Here’s a reminder to not miss out on my reading Feministe for longer than a week!). So Payne is a blogger apparently well-known for his feminist activism. Specifically, he describes himself as “an advocate for survivors of sexual violence and other forms of abuse,” with an interest in the feminist anti-pornography movement. Now here’s the shocker: last year, while Payne served as an R.A. at his college, he assaulted an intoxicated and unconscious female student in the dorm under his care. And, get this, he also filmed/photographed the girl in the process. If that sounds hypocritical for an anti-porn activist, that’s because it is!

Now, I don’t want to discuss Kyle Payne per se, because the feminist blogosphere has been doing so already. For starters, you can see this post by Cara at Feministe. What I do want to discuss, and what I have been thinking about since yesterday, are the implications of this story and some of the questions it raises. Do Kyle Payne’s actions constitute a damnation of all pro-feminist men? Certainly not. But that’s not the end of the story either. After all, there are reasons why there are stereotypes of male feminist allies as “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (ref. this comment). Let’s hear Cara on this:

There are a lot of women — many of them feminists — who due to past experience have difficulty trusting men. I’m one of them. And I’m not proud of it; in fact, I’ve worked for years to change it and would be much happier if it wasn’t so. I have always been skeptical of men who are rape crisis counselors, if they are going to be working with survivors who are women — if not for lack of trust, than for the comfort of those survivors who were almost certainly assaulted by men. This case certainly does reinforce that feeling.

I think this anxiety is perfectly legitimate, and if I were a woman, I probably wouldn’t trust the men in these settings either. But Cara goes on to reaffirm her belief in the possibility of male feminism:

I do however fully believe that men can be feminists. I’ve met many good ones. In fact, I believe that making men a part of the movement is a necessity. I don’t take Payne’s crime as a mark against all men. But I’d be lying if I said that it probably won’t in any way feed that often subconscious and distrustful voice in the back of my head. I can’t blame other women who feel similarly.

Here, then, is another “yes and no” kind of response to my opening question: can men be feminists? After reading all this the other day, I immediately picked out a book with an essay that I had been meaning to read for a while. Here’s the first paragraph of Stephen Heath’s “Male Feminism” which I’m compelled to quote in full:

Men’s relation to feminism is an impossible one. This is not said sadly nor angrily (though sadness and anger are both known and common reactions) but politically. Men have a necessary relation to feminism—the point after all is that it should change them too, that it involves learning new ways of being women and men against and as an end to the reality of women’s oppression—and that relation is also necessarily one of a certain exclusion—the point after all is that this is a matter for women, that it is their voices and actions that must determine the change and redefinition. Their voices and actions, not ours: no matter how “sincere,” “sympathetic” or whatever, we are always also in a male position which brings with it all the implications of domination and appropriation, everything precisely that is being challenged, that has to be altered. Women are the subjects of feminism, its initiators, its makers, its force; the move and the join from being a woman to being a feminist is the grasp of that subjecthood. Men are the objects, part of the analysis, agents of the structure to be transformed, representatives in, carriers of the patriarchal mode; and my desire to be a subject there too in feminism—to be a feminist—is then only also the last feint in the long history of their colonization. Which does not mean, of course not, that I can do nothing in my life, that no actions are open to me, that I cannot respond to and change for feminism (that would be a variant on the usual justification for the status quo, men are men and that’s that); it just means that I have to realize nevertheless—and this is an effort not a platitude—that I am not where they are and that I cannot pretend to be (though men do, colonizing, as they always have done), which is the impossibility of my, men’s, relation. [Stephen Heath, "Male Feminism," in Feminist Literary Criticism, ed. Mary Eagleton (New York: Longman, 1991), pp. 193-225]

I was remarkably struck the first time I read these words (probably over a year ago, when I came across the book in my neighborhood used bookstore, though I actually bought a copy just a few weeks ago from another bookstore). Stephen Heath penned the essay nearly 25 years ago, when it was first published in The Dalhousie Review in 1984. Later, it served as a point of departure for a whole set of responses on the topic, gathered in a collection entitled Men in Feminism (New York & London: Methuen, 1987). I’ll obviously have to add that as well to my list of books to read.

Heath’s points above are too self-explanatory (and eloquent) for me to add any analysis or commentary. But I’ll say a few things on the question of women’s subjectivity that Heath draws attention to. The male feminist is a problem because men speaking for, or on behalf of, women is precisely the injustice that feminism is struggling against. I recall one early moment of recognition of this, when I was reading a short piece by a woman giving advice to her fellow Muslim brothers on women’s rights in Islam; her first point was: please, let the sisters speak for themselves. (Of course, as I may or may not have mentioned in the past, my consciousness of feminism happened through, because, and inspite of my being Muslim). A few years separated that fairly basic online reading and my eventual encounter with Gayatri Spivak’s famous ”Can the Subaltern Speak?” in which she reminds us of the silencing of the subaltern by the very critics who (claim to) speak on their behalf. But the point is the same. Men are used to a masculinist normativity, and the patriarchy by definition has a tendency to appropriate anything and everything. As such, Cara and other women have every reason not to “trust” men in the feminist movement: even if they’re not wolves dressed as sheep, they very well might be patronizing women (whether consciously or unconsciously) under the rubric of sympathizing with the victims.

On a related note, here’s an interesting quote from PhysioProf who is currently guest blogging at Feministe:

First, what the fuck is up with men calling themselves feminists?

I don’t call myself a feminist, because it’s not my call whether I am or not. It’s women’s call. I try not to be a fucking misogynist asshole and do what I can to reduce gender inequity in my professional and personal life, which includes trying to call out myself and other men on misogynist shit.

There are many other things to talk about (most importantly: the related question of male privilege and its implications for a feminist man). I’d love to revisit Heath’s essay for several points that I really wanted to mention here. So, more later!

Of course, we were only waiting for the attacks on Michelle to begin. Dinesh D’Souza has taken his turn. In a typically horrible piece of writing, Mr. D’Souza–the Indian immigrant turned crazy right-wing American, and a homophobe who also blames the cultural left for causing 9/11 (!)–vilifies Michelle Obama and identifies her as the “real problem” of Senator Obama. But we all know that for sexist misogynists, the real problems somehow always have something to do with women!

D’Souza, characterizes Michelle as an “above-average but far-from-stellar performer” who never deserved to have gone to Princeton. And then, you knew it, he quotes from her already much-quoted college senior thesis! For a man who doesn’t have a real job other than getting paid for spewing forth bullshit like this, D’Souza comes across as exactly the kind of person who would bother spending hours going through a 21 year old’s paper until he finds a “typical” sentence with a couple of grammar mistakes. And voila! Mr. D’Souza declares his triumphalism as he proves once and for all the lack of intelligence of an inherently inferior being. Of course, what were we thinking? Did we forget, black people are not supposed to know good English! And we have Mr. BA-in-English to remind us of that.

But D’Souza’s main contention is that Obama should be married to a strong woman like her, “a woman who clearly influences him and who stands to have public influence in her own right.” The assertion, it seems, is that Obama can’t control his wife. And a man who can’t control his wife is the real horror in the eyes of misogynists.

Katha Pollit’s column in The Nation this past week considers the state of women’s rigths in Iraq, in the context of the US invasion. She opens with a reference to Du’a Khalil Aswad, the 17 year old Kurdish girl who was stoned to death in a public spectacle for falling in love with a Muslim boy. I don’t know how I missed the story, but it is utterly horrendous:

The video, originally posted on jebar.info, a Kurdish website, is now plastered all over the Internet: a young girl in a red track-suit jacket and black underpants, beaten, kicked and stoned to death by a mob of excited, shouting men. It’s a gruesome marriage of twenty-first-century technology and medieval barbarity. At one point, bloody and dazed, the girl tries to protect herself, whereupon a man drops a big rock or lump of concrete on her face, killing her. Her crime? As an Agence France-Presse story explains, Doaa Khalil Aswad, a 17-year-old member of the Kurdish Yazidi religious minority, a non-Muslim sect, had fallen in love with a Sunni boy and possibly converted to Islam. For this “crime” against family and community, Doaa was murdered in the small village of Beshika, near Mosul, in a collective act of woman hatred, led by her brothers and uncles. In the video you can see local policemen watching and one man recording the killing on his cellphone.

Unfortunately, the superficial tendencies of our perspectives detract us from recognizing key structural problems beyond and underneath the cultural specificities of such social behavior (Which would explain, for instance, why the incident is being cited on most anti-Islamic blogs and websites, even while they recognize that this was not carried out by Muslim — but as if there is something intrinsically ‘Islamic’ about stoning a woman to death.) I am not critically mature enough to really understand some of the deeper issues that I refer to, but I sort of feel where these issues lie. The fact of Du’a being female, of course, is fundamental to this whole case – precisely why Pollit brings this up in her column. But there are other important aspects of the case to be examined: the theater of the punishment, i.e. the stoning as public spectacle; the identit(y/ies) of the individual versus the communal; the question of the body as the site of social conflict, as well as retribution; the question of shame; and, the meaning(s) of crime.

As a human being, however, the first question that necessarily springs to my mind is this: what about compassion? And emotion? What is it about the behavior of those men, shouting and cheering over a bloodied body, that I simply cannot fathom?

It’s a shame, really. The soul of humanity was crushed that day with the body of that girl. I am at the prospect of becoming physically ill on re-enacting that scene in my mind — which, honestly, may be worse than watching the video, as unbelievably horrible as that is. In face of helplessness, I invoke an invocation in memory of Du’a – whose name, in Arabic, means invocation. Alas, God’s Invocation herself was not safe from human cruelty.

A couple of weekends ago, I happened to be at a two-day feminist conference at a local college in Boston and the experience was as unsettling as it was enlightening. I came to know about the event quite by chance, months ago, through the personal website of Robert Jensen, the prominent UT Austin-based media critic often featured in liberal interviews and documentaries. I was interested in hearing Jensen speak live and much to my delight, found out that he was going to be in town for said conference. It was of course worth attending in its own right, and aside from speaking briefly with Jensen and getting his latest book signed, I had the chance to see and hear such well-known feminist activists as Diana Russell, Gail Dines, Rebecca Whisnant, and John Stoltenberg.

The first thing I should note is what I could not help but remain conscious of throughout the conference: and that was the fact that I was one of only a handful of men who made up less than 10% in an auditorium full of over 200 participants. If that in itself cannot dismantle androcentric tendencies, I don’t know what will. But of course, I’m not entirely unfamiliar with this type of situation. I do work for an organization where on most days I’m the only guy at lunch with three or four female colleagues. And I’ve written in the past about being an only guy in a class of nearly a dozen students — no, these weren’t Gender Studies courses, just ‘normal’ History. (Digression: I have a theory – based only on anecdotal evidence – that homosocial structures are breeding grounds for misogyny.)

The paradox of the male feminist is a matter I haven’t yet had much chance to ponder. But Bob Jensen’s work is a good starting point, since this is something he speaks about a lot, particularly in connection with his own experience as a “white, middle-aged, Minnesota man” in the feminist movement. In a brief talk at the conference, Jensen addressed himself to the men and made two key arguments that have begun to serve as focal points for my own relfections ever since. First: as men, we have to actively try and “take off the assumption of centrality” that we’re so used to. Second: we have to avoid the temptation of seeing ourselves as knights who can rescue women out of their situation. Both points pretty much hit the nail on the head and succinctly state what could use pages to elaborate. But of course, the complexities are many (Can men be the subjects of feminist theory? What does that even mean?). I hope to study and discuss this more in future.

What I found myself thinking about most during and after the conference is the relationship between theory and practice and between academia and activism. Until now, my understanding of and encounter with feminism has been largely theoretical. Sure, this understanding has been supported by perceptions of reality and observations over a short lifetime, but there’s no denying that most of the little that I know in this area comes from books (Though thanks also to a few precious friendships). In my quasi-intellectual demeanor, I have eagerly dropped academic buzzwords and theorized patriarchal domination. I have insisted on deconstructing the misogynistic subtexts of contemporary culture. I have believed that the need for a feminist movement is as obvious as the need for any other movements for justice, since women after all are history’s most oppressed group of people. At some point I even became conscious of the fact that by virtue of being male in this world, I was born with certain inherent privileges. I acknowledged the institutionalized violence that is committed on the bodies and souls of women. I somehow even believed that rape is worse than murder.

But I realized the limitations of my understanding as I sat there at the conference listening to women recount the pain of suffering, women who had been raped and abused, women who spoke of their experiences working with victims of child sexual abuse, women who dedicated their lives to activism. While the conference itself was about the feminist anti-pornography movement (a good review available here), these were the women in the audience who spoke up to comment, ask questions, or just share their feelings. It is an intensely intriguing experience, to hear a woman tell you how vulnerable she feels when faced with a visual discourse that evokes painful memories of abuse or reminds her of other women being systematically exploited. I walked away from the auditorium that chilly Sunday afternoon convinced that I know nothing of male violence. The experience I had can be equated to that of an academic who suddenly realizes there’s a whole world that exists outside and beyond the text.

That said, I want to recall a quote by Andrea Dworkin that I find as profound as distressing. The timing is oddly appropriate, considering that yesterday was the 9th of April and Dworkin died exactly two years ago. There is no question that Dworkin left behind an ambigous legacy, perhaps remembered more as a “man-hater” than anything else. But was there ever a radical activist who was not controversial? Whoever compared Dworkin to Malcolm X is probably right on track! Bob Jensen claims that Dworkin actually loved men, because she still believed in their humanity. In a speech to a group of men in 1983, Dworkin was explaining what is it she wants from men:

I want a twenty-four-hour truce during which there is no rape.

As simple as that.

Today, the 8th of March, is International Women’s Day: set aside to recognize the social, political, and economic struggles of women across the world. And so I as a man, hence inherently possessing the privileges that come with being born male, shall not speak today.

Earlier last week, I was on my daily morning commute to Harvard Square when I learned from the newspaper that Harvard finally has a new president. Of course, the fact that it’s a woman was hardly suprising, considering the circumstances of Larry Summers’s resignation (Although, in fact, Summers’s presidency was fraught with more controversies than just the remark on women in science. He was, for instance, the reason why Cornel West left for Princeton).

To some extent, it’s sad that the media has been more obsessed with looking at Dr. Faust (no pun intended!) as a woman, than as an individual. After all, Drew Gilpin has a pretty interesting biography. Despite a family legacy at Princeton, she had to choose Bryn Mawr for college, because in the 60’s Princeton was still a boys-only club. She had “skipped her spring midterms in 1965 to travel to Selma, Ala., and join a march led by Martin Luther King Jr. after she saw television broadcasts of Alabama state troopers attacking marchers with tear gas and billy clubs.” And now she’s a fairly well-recognized scholar in American Civil War history.

The symbolic significance of a woman as president at America’s oldest university is undeniable. It was almost as significant when, four years ago, Alison Richard became the first full-time female head of the 800-year old University of Cambridge. But such changes in leadership alone should not make us blind to the extensive, deeply-rooted disparities that exist otherwise. The academia is still largely a man’s world, and the reasons are often as complicated as the situation. A recent piece in Campus Progress takes a stab at the issue. Here’s a snippet:

Though Faust’s promotion is certainly a watershed moment for women in academia, her success comes amid continued underrepresentation of women on university faculties, particularly in the hard sciences… But although women now make up 56 percent of Harvard’s undergraduate population and are predicted to earn more than 60 percent of the university’s master’s degrees and nearly half of doctoral degrees by 2010, only 20 percent of full professors at Harvard are female, according to a study by the American Association of University Professors on gender indicators in higher education. In 2004, which was during Summers’ presidency, only four of the 32 faculty members offered tenure were female.

The numbers at Harvard are indicative of those at many research institutions. On average, women hold only 24 percent of full professorships in the United States.

I recommend reading the whole article.

Of course we know that women are often perceived as such, but I don’t think anyone has actually ever spelled it out. Until the Japan health minister did so, in a recent speech! Read here.

I’m frankly rather fascinated by such expressive vocabulary when it comes to objectifying women: uncovered meat, birth-giving machines, who knows what’s next?

I mentioned a while ago that I was reading bell hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman. Today as I was about to transfer it from my nightstand to the bookcase, I thought I should reflect again on its key points. My copy of the text is by now full of highlighted lines — hooks is a very quotable woman indeed! There are a few passages towards the end of the book that I think are particularly powerful in conveying some of the driving points of hook’s study, and so I feel compelled to present below an excerpt, albeit rather long.

I must note, though, that this does not in any way summarize the many other problems discussed throughout the brief but fairly comprehensive book, the main objective of which was to examine how black women have been the most oppressed group of people in American history. The following passages relate to hooks’s contention that the women’s movement, for the greater part of its history, had been coopted by privileged, white women who not only ignored the realities of poor and “colored” women, but were often even deliberately and explicitly racist. I’ve actually been quite fascinated by hooks’s brave and uncompromising outlook: when it comes to patriarchy and sexism, she does not excuse even figures of such stature as Malcolm X or Amiri Baraka. The title of this post, by the way, comes from a statement in the book a few pages after the following, where she comments on the variety of definitions of feminism that have been offered in the past, and suggests that “Feminism is an ideology in the making.” From the passages below, I’d highlight the boldest and probably my favorite line: “The women’s movement has become a kind of ghetto or concentration camp for women who are seeking to attain the kind of power they feel men have”(!). While, as you may know, this was hooks’s first book written over 25 years ago when she was still in college, I think much of what she argues probably still holds true.

Although the contemporary feminist movement was initially motivated by the sincere desire of women to eliminate sexist oppression, it takes place within the framework of a larger, more powerful cultural system that encourages women and men to place the fulfillment of individual aspirations above their desire for collective change. Given this framework, it is not surprising that feminism has been undermined by narcissism, greed, and individual opportunism of its leading exponents. A feminist ideology that mounts radical rhetoric about resistance and revolution while actively seeking to establish itself within the capitalist patriarchal system is essentially corrupt. While the contemporary feminist movement has successfully stimulated an awareness of the impact of sexist discrimination on the social status of women in the U.S., it has done little to eliminate sexist oppression. Teaching women how to defend themselves against male rapists is not the same as working to change society so that men will not rape. Establishing houses for battered women does not change the psyches of the men who batter them, nor does it change the culture that promotes and condones their brutality. Attacking heterosexuality does little to strengthen the self-concept of the masses of women who desire to be with men. Denouncing housework as menial labor does not restore to the woman houseworker the pride and dignity in her labor she is stripped of by patriarchal devaluation. Demanding an end to institutionalized sexism does not ensure an end to sexist oppression.

The rhetoric of feminism with its emphasis on resistance, rebellion, and revolution created an illusion of militancy and radicalism that masked the fact that feminism was in no way a challenge or a threat to capitalist patriarchy. To perpetuate the notion that all men are creatures of privilege with access to a personal fulfillment and a personal liberation denied women, as feminists do, is to lend further credibility to the sexist mystique of male power that proclaims all that is male is inherently superior to that which is female. A feminism so rooted in envy, fear, and idealization of male power cannot expose the de-humanizing effect of sexism on men and women in American society. Today, feminism offers women not liberation but the right to act as surrogate men. It has not provided a blueprint for change that would lead to the elimination of sexist oppression or a transformation of our society. The women’s movement has become a kind of ghetto or concentration camp for women who are seeking to attain the kind of power they feel men have. It provides a forum for the expression of their feelings of anger, jealousy, rage and disappointment with men. It provides an atmosphere where women who have little in common, who may resent or even feel indifference to one another can bond on the basis of shared negative feelings toward men. Finally, it gives women of all races, who desire to assume the imperialist, sexist, racist positions of destruction men hold with a platform that allows them to act as if the attainment of their personal aspirations and their lust for power is for the common good of all women.

Right now, women in the U.S. are witnessing the demise of yet another women’s rights movement. The future of collective feminist struggle is bleak. The women who appropriated feminism to advance their own opportunistic causes have achieved their desired ends and are no longer interested in feminism as a political ideology. Many women who remain active in women’s rights groups and organizations stubbornly refuse to critique the distorted analysis of women’s lot in society popularized by women’s liberation. Since these women are not oppressed they can support a feminist movement that is reformist, racist, and classist because they see no urgent need for radical change. Although women in the U.S. have come closer to obtaining social equality with men, the capitalist-patriarchal system is unchanged. It is still imperialist, racist, sexist, and oppressive.

bell hooks, Aint’ I a Woman (South End Press, 1981), p. 191-92.

Or so I thought, until I was bummed out by a number of (male) friends who think that “over-educated” women can never make “ideal wives” — an attitude that I find not only disturbing but nearly offensive. It seems, however, that trends may indicate otherwise. A recent review article in the Washington Post claims that women with bachelor’s degrees and PhDs are no longer “more likely to miss out on their ‘MRS’ degrees than their less-educated sisters”:

[F]or women born since 1960, there has been a revolutionary reversal of the historic pattern. As late as the 1980s, according to economist Elaina Rose, women with PhDs or the equivalent were less likely to marry than women with a high school degree. But the “marital penalty” for highly educated women has declined steadily since then, and by 2000 it had disappeared. Today, women with a college degree or higher are more likely to marry than women with less education and lower earnings potential. (S. Coontz, “Having It All,” Washington Post)

The study is probably not substantial, but it’s a pointer for some thought. And the fact remains that there are many men who feel threatened by educated women. (For the link, thanks to a chance landing on the blog of well-known Economics professor and textbook-author Greg Mankiw!)