í Assignments

In Merry’s discussion with the subject matter, what is realized and noted is the relationship between a woman’s status and her willingness to defend/support the law. Unsurprisingly, this is dependent on the relationship the woman has had with the justice system and her own treatment during such cases. When a woman feels supported and defended in a case of domestic violence or battery, she is more willing to believe in rights and other self-identifying cues when she has been supported; however, when the opposite occurs, she will also abandon the matter (Merry, 2003, 347). When law matters are taken into account, the pendulum swings dramatically with however the woman is treated. For example, women are now reporting domestic violence in higher volumes, thanks to police and society’s encouragement for women to speak out (Merry, 2003, 344). Still, the cases are gathering stronger support from women, because women are feeling that support and the issues concerning law dictate the subjectivity of this sensitive subject.
Law enforcement, criminal justice and the lack of these activities reinforces how women feel on this matter. As mentioned previously, women’s reaction to the system is all relying on how the system treats them. How the law formulates an opinion is unique in the circumstance, considering it is subjective in nature. When women are forced to admit to the law of their current status, they are also going through various motions to “clear” their name. Women are the forced into the criminal justice system, and put through various motions and events to enact possible justice in their case; this includes reporting the crime, talking with the police, discussing the matter with others for the case, writing out statements, and testifying (Merry, 2003, 351). In these actions, women are given various identities, and when it is supported, they feel stronger in the situation. Likewise, if the women are dismissed (thanks to bias against women), they will have less trust in the law and consider all “social justice” to be injustice.
Women depend on the very system that can break or make their lives easier, which is a frightening thought on its own. Despite this, women still manage to faith solace and faith in many situations, if they are respected in the process. Like any other human being, it is expected to not respect authority figures when one is not helped or aided during a crisis or troublesome time. In this matter, women identify with the law, but the matter is unfortunately subjective.

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.

Lila Abulughod argues that discussion on humanitarianism concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare and human rights in the 21st century rely in some way on constructions of Muslim women. The building of  veiled women  was forced upon the Muslim women.  Many saw this veiling as a symbol of freedom.  The veil were suppose to protect these women from being harasses by men, the veil was a symbol signaling to men that women who wore the veil came from a home that could never be dishonored. The burqa or this veil also represented women as modest and respectable.  The veil was a reflection of women  being associated with family and home.   Women who wear this veil also showed that a sense of belonging to a certain community .   This desire for freedom and liberation, there were many feminists that felt like they needed to save afgan women from the Taliban , so that they can have enough rights of having enough to eat, having homes for their families in where they can live and thrive, having ways to make decent livings so that they children can grow in a  decent community.   ” What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, always raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understanding of the world ? (pg.786) Based on the  constructions of Muslim women , ” 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? (Lughod 798)  veiled Muslim women came off as being oppressed by the people who made them wear these veils this can be compared to the other parts in the world, we are part of tat world that can be oppressed.  Like the article states ” we do not stand outside the world looking out over this sea of poor benighted people , living under the shadow or veil or oppressive cultures, we are part of that world. (Lughod 789)  This part  is saying that we may not need to be wearing a veil or burqua to see that we ae being oppressed, by other things that are going on in our communities .  ” A more productive approach, it seems to me , is to ask how we might contribute to making the world a more just place.” ( Lughod 789)

Due Sunday, May 7th, by midnight. Word count: 400 words. Please make sure everything is in your own words. If you paraphrase, make sure to include the proper citation.

If you have missed one or more of our weekly writing assignments, you can make up one assignment this week for full credit.

In the article “Rights Talk and the Experience of Law: implementing Women’s human Rights to protection from Violence” by Sally Engle Merry She mentions how import is for a woman to take action if they are abused by her husbands.
At the beginning of the article, she made as familiarize in the topic of women against violence. As she mentioned a movement called “Battered women” was created to help women to find help if they were abused by their husbands.
Merry Interviewed thirty women about domestic violence, every story was different but with the same domestic violence in their lives. During the interview twelve women were in court for the first time, Some of them feel fear and anxiety about turning to the courts for the first time but they also feel supported in some ways. They also expressed how for them took a long time to decide to go to court and when finally they went most of the time they felt fear in court and the angry face of their husbands.In other cases, women were forced to drop off charges because they didn’t want their husbands going to jail. I believe most of the time men try to put all the fault on women making them believe they are guilty.
The essay also mentions for example in Hilo, cultural patterns justify violence in some cases because men were thinking women deserved that violence. “Men typically defend their violence as justified by the woman’s sexual activities or her failure to care for their children” (Pg.368)
From my point of view, Merry is showing us in this essay how men more of the time were having more support by the law in contrast to the women. I believe this was the reason why most of the women preferred to keep quiet and don’t tell about the abuse they were having by her husbands o partners. Women didn’t believe they were going to be protected by the law.
I believe this is happening these days because not all women get the protection they deserve, and some of them can be controlled by their own husbands to continue in the same domestic violence. Some women don’t say a word about their domestic violence and sometimes family or neighbor are the ones who claim something is happening. I know women who didn’t do anything until her husband hit his own child and send him to the hospital.

Toni Mitchell

Assignment: Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?

In the article Abu-Lughod She explores how the paradigm of saving Muslim women has gained momentum particularly in the aftermath of 9/11. She skillfully deconstruct the symbolic significance of a range of high profile ‘moral crusades’ involving Muslim women which have captured the global imagination. Abu-Lughod highlights how the most basic conditions of these women’s lives are set by political forces that are often national or even international in origin even if they are local in effect. What are often seen as ‘traditions’, therefore, are in fact responses to war and uncertainty, economic and political upheaval and instability. For example, in debates about Afghanistan, there is an overemphasis on cultural practices and little discussion about the effects of the injustices of war and militarization. Against this wider geopolitical background, she argues that concepts such as ‘oppression’, ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ are blunt instruments for capturing the dynamics and quality of Muslim women’s lives in these places.

In the article, Abu-Lughod characterizes the Western framing of women’s rights in Muslim populations as highly contextual. Bibi Aysha for example is an Afghan woman whose Taliban husband and in-laws punished her by cutting off her nose. she the co-optation and manipulation of women’s rights in the politics and justification of the War on Terror. She used Laura Bush’s radio address in November of 2001 constituted a cry to action for the sake of Afghan women, a galvanizing of anti-terror forces in order to “save” the female population of Afghanistan. According to Abu-Lughod, this mobilization of support for the War on Terror through the framing of the conflict in terms of top-layer feminism is a classic example of Western co-optation of women’s rights as a means of bolstering support for the war. Sadly,reports focusing on global gender discrimination consistently ignore the rampant rape culture, unpunished domestic violence, and workplace gender discrimination that regularly takes place in Western countries such as our own.

“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 the world. Islamic movements themselves have arisen in a world shaped by the intense engagements o the Western powers in the Middle Eastern lives” (p.789). Lila Abu-Lughod examines the religious practices of Muslim women in Afghanistan, and the western beliefs that’s Muslim women are controlled by the Taliban (Muslim men). Lila Abu-Lughod talks about the US involvement in Afghanistan targeting the aftermath of 9/11, she talks about Laura Bush’s speech on Muslim women and how the US saved women from the unjust practices of the Taliban. Bush claims that the US interference in Afghanistan helped women and allowed them to “properly’ part take in the community, “white men saving brown women from brown men” (p.384).

Lila Abu-Lughod also highlights that the Taliban did not invent the burqa, “It was the local form of covering that The Pashtun women in one region wore when they went out. The Pashtun are one of the several ethnic groups in Afghanistan and the burqa was one of the many forms of covering in the subcontinent and Southwest Asia” (785). Why doesn’t Americans worry about other religions that use cover ups for women, such as Jewish women and men, I live in area in Brooklyn were there are lots of Hasidic Jews and like in the article I’m sure they don’t ‘enjoy’ wearing long sleeves and pants during a heat wave but they do because it is part of their religion. Lila Abu-Lughod also argues that women were being forced to wear burqa’s, but even after Afghanistan was liberated from the control of the Taliban women continued to cover up. Its interesting and questionable why America is obsessed with Muslim practices, particularly Muslim women. It also seems that Westerners are forcing and encouraging heterosexual norms upon Muslim countries and while doing so US coins themselves as heroic. The veiling of the Muslim women is in fact a choice and a belief that Muslim women follow; they are not being forced to wear a burqa. Instead of focusing on Muslim women and practices Lila Abu-Lughod suggests how we as a nation can make the world better. How we should stop trying to understand and change cultural practices, and realize that it may cause greater harm then good in doing so.

In Lila Abu-Lughod’s essay “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others” she argues that the “saving” of Muslim women has become the main building block and/or stepping stone for debate and communication of human welfare in Afghanistan. This is a problem because it has made Muslim woman the focus of an on going “messy” political battle. It is my understanding that she feels as though American people have decided to take the historical Muslim culture of women and try to change it based on their beliefs and they have done so without taking into consideration the differences of all women around the world. Lila Abu-Lughod also references to Transnational Feminism, which we have touched on before in previous readings. In her essay she makes a point that feminist and activist didn’t take much notice of the “women of cover” also known as Afghanistan women  until after the events of September eleventh two thousand and one. During a radio show Lila Abu-Lughod noticed that all the questions being presented were trying to pin point some underlying issue or cause of both the horiffic and tragic  events of September eleventh two thousand one. However. all the questions were not just speaking to Afghanistan women but to there religion of Islam and/ or Islam. Lila Abu-Lughod was trying to understand as well as make us aware of the fact that the United States of America had been trying to understand the maltreatment of Muslim and Islamic women and its connection with nine eleven, instead of focusing on why and/ or what caused Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden to plan and execute a terrorist attack on the United States of America. During this time the United Stated or America and the late first lady, Laura Bush decided to intervene and try to “save” the Muslim and Islamic women. Stating that Afghanistan “women were rejoicing at their liberation by the Americans”, but was this truly the case or just a fallacy created but the United States of America. Lila Abu-Lughod brings up a very controversial issue of the Burqa and the covering up of Afghanistan women. She speaks on the “veiling” of these women and what the United States of America fails to recognize. They fail to recognize that covering up or the “veiling” of Afghanistan is a choice made by these women not a “maltreatment” forced upon them by Afghanistan men. The Afghanistan women are clearly misunderstood not in the need of saving.