soapbox
I've been wanting to post about it because it's been, like, nearly consuming my thoughts for the past couple of days... a documentary I saw a couple of weeks ago in Vermont called The Beauty Academy of Kabul. I didn't want to write about it because it was amazing... because it wasn't. And I didn't want to write about it because it was naive and poorly made, even though it kind of was. I wanted to write about it because I've been irked ever since by my mounting annoyance at the version of contemporary mainstream white feminism that we were hit with in that film.
Before I springstep onto my soapbox, I want it to be known that I absolutely consider myself a feminist. And this is, in no way, like an attack on feminism. It's just a load of stuff I've been mulling over.
I realize it's rather divisive to criticize a portion of a social movement that you are actually a part of, but there is so much about mainstream feminism that Just Fucking Ticks Me Off. And I got a hot dose of it in that film. Seriously, though. How can we herald statements by feminist thinkers that are just blatantly ethnocentric elitist horseshit? It's not enough that, for decades now, feminism has been marginalizing and excluding nearly every group of women possible, from women of color, women in poverty, the LGBTQ community, women of limited physical ability, religious women, women who believe in disparate forms of government, I mean... you name it. I don't want to put down the things that the second wave accomplished. There have absolutely been significant changes in the American social structure since the women's movement of the 70s. But, it's just that we've really gotten to a point where feminists are, hopefully without knowing it, oppressing women in other cultures via an agenda of homogenization and westernization that just kind of makes my stomach flip over.
How dare we go over to another country (any country, anywhere), and declare ourselves as The Image to Strive For in seeking your own self-independence and agency? Does that even make sense? To walk into a room with your Prada bag and your New York manicure and tell a group of Afghan women who are there to learn how to cut hair in order to feed their children that they can't be hair stylists unless they wear their makeup every day and throw away the veil and get better shoes... I mean, at one point one woman stood up and basically said, "Are you kidding me? I'll get beaten if I leave the house that way. I'm lucky I'm allowed to come to this school." I mean, this American stylist-teacher was actually nearly yelling at these women, telling them they had to, basically, "liberate" themselves. And isn't that quite the statement? That their liberation comes from reclaiming their eye shadow? From dressing as Americans?
The most insidious part of all of this, in my mind, is the way that a couple of the Americans went in there expecting to "save" these women. To free them. I can't see much of a theoretical difference between wanting to save a country by bombing it or wanting to save a country's women by stuffing them into high heels. It's destruction on both counts. Either of lives or of culture. It is as if these feminists feel that women in war torn countries are unable to affect their own transformations, on their own time, and on their own terms. Who are we to force their revolution upon them, and to hone their revolution into the shape that we feel it should take? What does it say about us that we believe we should be the agents of liberation instead of the very women we want to set free? This is the worst crime of all--that we believe they are incapable of knowing what they need when they need it and how. That we do not deem them capable of creating their own change.
So many good things could happen if we simply went to a country and asked. What do you need? Do you even want or need our help? How is it best to help you? Because, trust me, they know. It's not like these women have no knowledge of their own lives, and it just completely offends me that their own agency gets ignored in favor of a western feminist agenda that could very well be completely out of line when it comes to Afghan women's lives.
And, this whole thing with the veil. Now, it's different in Afghanistan where the burqa was forced on Afghan women by the Taliban at a time when veiling was otherwise not a mainstream cultural practice. So, to get Afghan women out of the veil is actually more like restoring them to where they were before the Taliban (if they choose to do so). But, in other predominantly Muslim cultures, the veil can actually be embraced. And, not in the way that most would have you think... like, that the women who embrace veiling are, in fact, merely acting as such because of their internalized oppression or self-hatred. In fact, in the early 90s, in Egypt, the veil was used by an enormous contingent of freethinking educated women in an organized political resistance to the erasure of Egyptian culture that they were experiencing following the influx and spread of western clothing and ways of life. What an incredibly powerful move, no?
And, ultimately, I don't know. I have no idea. I have no way to prove what I've said is true. I have no way to say that these feminists were wrong, or misguided... because no one took the time to ask any of the Afghan women what they wanted or if they feel like they got something good, so we'll never know, will we? And please don't think that I'm saying that veiling is good, that we all should do it, that I don't support the "liberation" of oppressed women, or any of that. I'm just looking at the ways in which we, as a western society, may force our way of life on other cultures as some sort of exemplar, or ideal of womanhood. Because, come on. We've got a long way to go.
And, I also feel like I should say that there were good parts of this documentary too. I mean, the hair stylist "teachers" were not only Americans. There were a couple of women who had fled the Taliban in the 70s and 80s and had come to America that were just then returning home. Their stories were incredible. And that's the kind of voice that could really make a difference in Afghanistan, I imagine... women who have had the benefit of growing up in that culture, then getting educations in another country, and returning home. They are able to work from within multiple identities and standpoints, and are able to understand the complexities of the lives of these women. I definitely teared up over a few of their stories. I don't want you to think I wasn't touched. I'm not made of stone, after all, sometimes I'm just overly self-righteous and prickly. ;)
I just came back from another documentary, Shakespeare Behind Bars, about incarcerated murderers and sex offenders performing Shakespeare in prison. Unbelievably intense. You can probably expect another soapbox experience in a couple of days once I've processed this one. Hello thoughts on prison reform.
Before I springstep onto my soapbox, I want it to be known that I absolutely consider myself a feminist. And this is, in no way, like an attack on feminism. It's just a load of stuff I've been mulling over.
I realize it's rather divisive to criticize a portion of a social movement that you are actually a part of, but there is so much about mainstream feminism that Just Fucking Ticks Me Off. And I got a hot dose of it in that film. Seriously, though. How can we herald statements by feminist thinkers that are just blatantly ethnocentric elitist horseshit? It's not enough that, for decades now, feminism has been marginalizing and excluding nearly every group of women possible, from women of color, women in poverty, the LGBTQ community, women of limited physical ability, religious women, women who believe in disparate forms of government, I mean... you name it. I don't want to put down the things that the second wave accomplished. There have absolutely been significant changes in the American social structure since the women's movement of the 70s. But, it's just that we've really gotten to a point where feminists are, hopefully without knowing it, oppressing women in other cultures via an agenda of homogenization and westernization that just kind of makes my stomach flip over.
How dare we go over to another country (any country, anywhere), and declare ourselves as The Image to Strive For in seeking your own self-independence and agency? Does that even make sense? To walk into a room with your Prada bag and your New York manicure and tell a group of Afghan women who are there to learn how to cut hair in order to feed their children that they can't be hair stylists unless they wear their makeup every day and throw away the veil and get better shoes... I mean, at one point one woman stood up and basically said, "Are you kidding me? I'll get beaten if I leave the house that way. I'm lucky I'm allowed to come to this school." I mean, this American stylist-teacher was actually nearly yelling at these women, telling them they had to, basically, "liberate" themselves. And isn't that quite the statement? That their liberation comes from reclaiming their eye shadow? From dressing as Americans?
The most insidious part of all of this, in my mind, is the way that a couple of the Americans went in there expecting to "save" these women. To free them. I can't see much of a theoretical difference between wanting to save a country by bombing it or wanting to save a country's women by stuffing them into high heels. It's destruction on both counts. Either of lives or of culture. It is as if these feminists feel that women in war torn countries are unable to affect their own transformations, on their own time, and on their own terms. Who are we to force their revolution upon them, and to hone their revolution into the shape that we feel it should take? What does it say about us that we believe we should be the agents of liberation instead of the very women we want to set free? This is the worst crime of all--that we believe they are incapable of knowing what they need when they need it and how. That we do not deem them capable of creating their own change.
So many good things could happen if we simply went to a country and asked. What do you need? Do you even want or need our help? How is it best to help you? Because, trust me, they know. It's not like these women have no knowledge of their own lives, and it just completely offends me that their own agency gets ignored in favor of a western feminist agenda that could very well be completely out of line when it comes to Afghan women's lives.
And, this whole thing with the veil. Now, it's different in Afghanistan where the burqa was forced on Afghan women by the Taliban at a time when veiling was otherwise not a mainstream cultural practice. So, to get Afghan women out of the veil is actually more like restoring them to where they were before the Taliban (if they choose to do so). But, in other predominantly Muslim cultures, the veil can actually be embraced. And, not in the way that most would have you think... like, that the women who embrace veiling are, in fact, merely acting as such because of their internalized oppression or self-hatred. In fact, in the early 90s, in Egypt, the veil was used by an enormous contingent of freethinking educated women in an organized political resistance to the erasure of Egyptian culture that they were experiencing following the influx and spread of western clothing and ways of life. What an incredibly powerful move, no?
And, ultimately, I don't know. I have no idea. I have no way to prove what I've said is true. I have no way to say that these feminists were wrong, or misguided... because no one took the time to ask any of the Afghan women what they wanted or if they feel like they got something good, so we'll never know, will we? And please don't think that I'm saying that veiling is good, that we all should do it, that I don't support the "liberation" of oppressed women, or any of that. I'm just looking at the ways in which we, as a western society, may force our way of life on other cultures as some sort of exemplar, or ideal of womanhood. Because, come on. We've got a long way to go.
And, I also feel like I should say that there were good parts of this documentary too. I mean, the hair stylist "teachers" were not only Americans. There were a couple of women who had fled the Taliban in the 70s and 80s and had come to America that were just then returning home. Their stories were incredible. And that's the kind of voice that could really make a difference in Afghanistan, I imagine... women who have had the benefit of growing up in that culture, then getting educations in another country, and returning home. They are able to work from within multiple identities and standpoints, and are able to understand the complexities of the lives of these women. I definitely teared up over a few of their stories. I don't want you to think I wasn't touched. I'm not made of stone, after all, sometimes I'm just overly self-righteous and prickly. ;)
I just came back from another documentary, Shakespeare Behind Bars, about incarcerated murderers and sex offenders performing Shakespeare in prison. Unbelievably intense. You can probably expect another soapbox experience in a couple of days once I've processed this one. Hello thoughts on prison reform.