5 Assignment 11

The article “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?”  by LiMa Abu-Lughod examines the way that individuals visualize the ideal of a “typical” Muslim woman. This ideal that is given to the that hey need the rest of the world to save them, is just simple minded. The stereotype that is given to them always sees them as victims. The idea that these  brace and strong woman are t fragile and may sometimes choose to wear burkas simply is mind boggling to them. Muslim woman are accustomed to wearing and covering their traditional religious veils. From societies perspective they’re being oppressed. From other societies perspectives they are being oppressed and not given their human rights. The question is how can we say this without questioning how with our assumptions we are neglecting them from their freedom as humans. They’re human rights are being taken away for the simple fact that other societies are not understanding their culture.

In Lila Abu-Lughod’s essay, “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and It’s Others” she gives some insight as to how and why Americans came to relate the burqa, amongst other forms of covering, with the Taliban and other forms of terrorist groups. In addition, she argues whether or not Muslim women really need saving from where they are, or if they chose the life they have and are living out. She starts off by writing that we should consider the meaning if the burqa and other forms of covering , as well as veiling. While reading I have come to learn that women who cover themselves do so in order to show their social and economic standing. Although also for religious reasons, Muslim women have become accustomed to covering themselves because that is the society and community in which they live in.
These women say that only “good women” can wear burqa’s or veils. As a woman who makes a living as a street vendor had said, “If I did [wear the burqa] the refugees would tease me because the burqa is for ‘good women’ who stay inside the home (Fremson 2001:14)” (Abu-Lughod 2002: 786). Here we see that it is actually considered as sort of honor to be able to wear such coverings. However, after the Americans freed people from Taliban control, they assumed the women would no longer cover themselves with scarfs or veils, but were mistaken in thinking that they were being forced to cover themselves. They were not and as Abu-Lughod points out, it is rather that Westerners would have Muslim women adopt Western attire instead of maintaining the attire that they have been used to their whole lives.
Abu-Lughod gave an example of a time when French colonialism existed in Algeria and wished to enlist women’s help in order to move forward with their cause. That cause being that they wished to “… transform Arab women and girls” (Abu-Lughod 2002: 785). The French wanted the Arab women and girls to like the French, Christian women, much like when the British ruled Egypt. This is meant to show that whenever another country went into a Muslim country to “liberate” or “free” them, it doesn’t always bode well for the people who are supposedly meant to be “liberated”. Abu-Lughod implores us to look at the bigger picture, the fact that there are much larger problems to be worried about an need to be dealt with. Rather than wanting these modest Muslim woman to be someone they are not, they need to be left alone so that they may live their lives freely, since that was the initial intention.

Before the Resolution 1325 women’s issues weren’t integrated in the council’s activities and also the council never recognized the women’s roles of “agents of space”. After Resolution 1325, women became equal participants in negotiation, and women and girls were able to be protected during armed conflicts. Resolution 1325 was used by women and peace groups throughout the world. Since the Resolution 1325, women’s organizations occurred, NGO produced documents monitoring of its implementation, and the Inter- Agency Taskforce on Women, peace and security at the UN has coordinated a system-wide implementation strategy. It ensures that women groups receive concrete financial and technical support and a result of the Resolution 1325 there was a high demand for women to be included in decision making, and woman have been included in the discussion about reconstruction of Afghanistan and in the Inter- Congolese Dialogue. In October 2001, the Security Council reaffirmed its strong support for for increasing women’s role in decision making with regard to conflict prevention and resolution. Also, women were allowed to be a part of peace accords, constitutions, and strategies for resettlement and rebuilding. Before Resolution 1325, women weren’t even thought about or considered doing anything important in their community but as soon as Resolution 1325 was passed women were able to do more than just be in the background. They were now able to make decisions, have and voice their opinions. “On March 8, 2011, IA’s Women Building Peace campaign handed Specil Advisor Angela King more than 100,000 signatures from more that 140 countries, from women, women’s organizations, and civil society groups working for peace and social justice, in support of women’s demand for protection, participation in decision making, and an end to impunity for crimes committed to women.” Crimes committed towards women sometimes to most of the time go without justification and just because they are women is one of the reasons as to why they go without justification. I under sat and why women would sign something that could and will give them a further foot up in the world and would allow them to have their rights that they deserve and that are supposed to be their natural rights. In 2002 working group members held 12 events to bring attention to Resolution 1325. More than 100 people advocate and implement the resolution. They also organized International Women’s Day which gets a lot of attention. Thanks to Resolution 1325 women are now and have been for a while to have a say and their own opinion and much more in modern day society.

In this work Parisi’s initial question is asking how does the cast type of male and female normalize heterosexuality as the meaning of human. Since the history of man it has been clearly understood what makes a man and woman different biologically but this piece examines how because of these cast into male and female dictate a hierarchy in which men are over women. She talks about how the coding into masculine and feminine is generated right after birth it is even included in all of language. Hetero-sexism  is what has been considered normal by western culture. The struct of the house in which the man is the head of the house hold the woman is to serve the man and to take care of the house and the children while the man is the provider for the family. She talks about how heterosexuality and the family recreate the human rights discourse in which the public and private spheres are naturalized and the state is supposed to be bother protector and violator of rights. We have seen this in other works are well. Her reasoning for the belief that heterosexism is a more precise way of analyzing to relationship of gender difference and human rights is already fore stated. She puts a big emphasis on the effect of the normalizing of even the idea. It has been written that the man is the head, adopted by not just the western cultures but we can clearly see how it has been adopted by the eastern cultures as well , accepted by the woman and understood by society. The characteristics that define masculine and feminine has been almost set in stone that that any deviation causes concern and puts the normalization factor at risk of forever being tainted. Women have been told of there role pre put in a sphere a told this is how life must be at the expense of the safety of women. You as a woman are to be safer in the house not in the public eye and because it was adopted and accepted and not question or questioned but never out loud and never openly objected to, this is why it is so easy for heterosexuality to be the defining factor in how things should be. When someone tells you something who is supposed to have the best interest at heart you don’t think to question it. The spheres were created by men who control the state so is it any question women would believe that this is the way things have to be.

Ruth Gilmore argues that expanding the prison population should be connected to a restructuring of the state. The crisis that Gilmore joins to the prison population in the United States is that the more people that are imprisoned the more women and children are without husbands and fathers.  There is a social crisis because a lot of African American men are the ones that’s mostly going to prison and is making the social structure of things unbalanced.  It seems like prison is this so call ” fix” for all of the chaos in society. “Until the 1960’s virtually all riots in the United States were battles instigated by white people against people of color, or by public or private police (including militia and vigilantes, also normally white) against organizing workers of all races. ( Gilmore 175) A good question was brought up in the test, “if crime rates peaked before the proliferation of new laws and new cages, what work does prison do”? and the test is right if crime rates were decreasing what was the point of having all these prisons being made? The test explains that the reason for this prison expansion were related to racism, racism especially towards blacks.  This whole prison system treated the different races unjustly and the black were the ones getting the shorter end of the stick.

This prison expansion was a way to put a end to the socio-economic problems which of course was created by the state, it was not done to help the people of society but more to help the people in the state. “the state has used its enormous capacity to raise money, buy land and build and staff prisons. It also makes new laws that guarantee incarceration for more and more kinds of offences, old and new.” (Gilmore 185)  Its like it was their solution (the state) to lock out someone and throw away the key so you wouldn’t have to deal with them again in society.  Over all there were many different explanations for the expansion of the prison population, drug epidemic, structural changes in employment opportunities,  however when the prison round ups began crime did indeed start to decrease, the public wanted a decrease in crime and they was in fact getting what they wanted.  Even though the crime was going down the state was still making more and more prison beds. It still comes into question, was prisons really the fix? or the cover up.

The conduction of Merry’s research along with her assistants in the article “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: Implementing Women’s Human Rights to Protection from Violence” points out that women are placed in a domain where personal feelings of the law (executed by mainly men) are interfering with how women should be fully protected by their rights. It should not be a matter of the law having conditions, whether the victim should or not be defended, and as well the aggressor whether persecuted to full extent of the law or place it as a slap on the wrist.

The author terminated a close attention in how the representatives executing the law, view women, specifically in the situation as described as battered women, as being good victims and bad victims. Such informal titles used to categorize women across the board, clearly enables those who are applying the rules of the government to view the people in need of the law with a bias and subjectively. The method of which battered women have been victimized has established a number of individuals to collectively band in an effort to better support women of whom been victims of domestic violence. The activist not only place their supportive effort in educating them of what their legal right is as a woman, but also contribute in promoting enhancing skills where the couples can mutually find a common ground and acquire a preferred safe relationship.

Needless to say, the matter of the state, community and family members, interfere over-proportionately in private circumstantial affairs of couples’ relationship. A detriment set onto women, that if by having a situation that could lead them to a bad experience for enabling their right to defend themselves under the supposedly fair judicial law, then such act of pinpointing the problem becomes to women a much greater concern. That’s why it is important the emphasizes of such community outreach programs that can provided support in dire situations for women who have become victims of domestic violence. Not only should such programs that aide women in times of violent moments be viewed as supplemental establishments, but as necessary means of combating the privatized enclosed torture that women are encountering on a day by day basis. That the publicization of domestic violence towards women, be there in bringing out the issue at which women who also attribute in such cases in being unwilling participants by their male partner, lead to a transparency of awareness for all women and not selectively held as a mockery for women to just bear with it.

In the “Caliban and the witch” Siliva Frederici investigates the transition from federalism to capitalism. This had a major impact on women. Women could not afford living status because the land was being privatized. This transition to capitalism degraded women and it allowed the men to have full control.

Women didn’t work the land for long, they worked more inside the home. Women were a major part of producing children. They couldn’t abort any pregnancies or take any form of birth control, if they did then they would be committing a crime. Women worked to reproduce the next generation of workers. They forced to reproduce and take care of their husbands needs and to take care of the house. This in not really work it’s just wifely duties.

Women were not respected in the waged labor Felid because they were denied entrance. The money that she did make was not enough for her to survive off of. This led women to the lower class. This made women vulnerable and defendant on men. They were seen as some sort of breeding machine.

In Human Rights Fifty Years on: A Reappraisal by Tony Evans, there is a piece in this work written by V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi titled “Are Women Human? It’s not an academic question.” In this piece V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi speak about heterosexism, androcentrism and its relationship to women’s rights and human rights. Heterosexism is defined as the “normal sexual orientation”, a sexual relationship between a man and a woman. Androcentrism is defined as main “focus or center on man.” In this piece feminist argue that men or part of humen rights and women are part of “other” rights, women are not seen as human, so they are under represented and devalued when it comes to Human rights. Both V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi feel differently from other feminist because, they feel human rights should be linked to heterosexism rather than focus on the relationship between the domination of men have with human rights. All throughout history men have dominated and/or been the center of focus when it comes to rights that are created and given and women have always been an after thought. Feminist today try to separate the men from the women when speaking of human rights. V. Spike Peterson and Laura Parisi speak of two spheres. There is the private/family sphere and the public/state sphere. The private sphere embodies women and children, the public sphere is designated for men. These spheres further divide men and women. Human rights were created by men for men, they do not address the rights of women. Human rights are not really the rights of women. These spheres further enforce the separation between men and women by keeping them apart. Too look at just women’s rights or the lack that there was of women’s rights we begin to see just how hidden their rights have become. Keeping them in a private/family sphere and/or realm separates them from the public and/or state. They were seen as property. Using heterosexisum allows women to be seen with men when addressing human rights because it connects them. Heterosexisum leads to reproduction, which leads to family. Family is a “natural gender binary.” It’s composed of two things and those two things are men and women. Just like most things heterosexisum is seen to have more privileges for men than women. The masculinity of men takes strong hold over the femininity of women leaving the two genders separated.

In “The Sexual Contract”, Carole Pateman discusses how women are excluded from the social contract. Pateman is not referring to contract law nor does she refer to property in the literal sense. Rather she refers to the social contract in which authority is granted to state and civil law and property in the sense of personhood. Meaning, the system in which we surrender some natural rights in order to live and participate in a civil society and to have our political rights protected. From the social contract, we have social relationships, including the relationship between husband and wife (the marriage contract) and employer and employee (the employment contract). We are taught that these freedoms and protections are universal in a civil society, however due to society’s patriarchal structure, women are excluded.

When Pateman refers to patriarchy, she is not referring to the literal definition of paternal rule. Rather, she refers to society where women are subordinate to men not as fathers and husbands but simply due to the fact that men are men. In the patriarchal society, men have the freedom to move between the private and public sphere freely, to fully engage in the social contract, the marriage contract, the employment contract, the prostitution contract. Women are not. They are largely relegated to the private sphere, which is viewed as apolitical. As a result, their rights, particularly in such contracts as the marriage contract, are almost nonexistent. This results in further subjugation and a furthering of a patriarchal society.

While the public sphere is the only sphere as existing in a political sense, the sphere which benefits from the civil law, freedom, and equality brought about through the social contract, the public sphere and the private sphere cannot exist without one another. Just as ‘natural’ and ‘civil’ depend on one another for their existence, yet remain in opposition to one another, so do the private and public sphere. Because women exist in the private sphere rather than the public sphere, they are excluded from the social contract. However, they are not (and cannot) be excluded from the sexual contract. They are not equals in the sexual contract though. Their exclusion from the social contract results in a subordinate position within the sexual contract. To maintain this separation and subjugation, the public/civil sphere is viewed through a masculine lens, while the private/natural sphere is viewed through a feminine lens. Again, this furthers patriarchal rule and leaves women existing in a space that both is and is not political, enforcing subjugation and oppression.