feminist blogs

Dmitriy T.M. sent in a great segment by Rachel Maddow on the difference between living in a democracy and living in a constitutional democracy. The subject: military segregation then (race and religion) and now (sexual orientation). The take-home message: we don’t get to vote on rights.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Robin E. sent us to a downright fascinating set of survey results.   Administered by a Christian website, the survey questions were submitted by “Christian girls” who wanted to know what “Christian guys” think is modest.  1,600 guys then answered the survey, offering both quantitative and qualitative answers.   Why would girls care what guys, as opposed to God, think?  Because Christian guys, their future husbands, are judging them on their modesty.  Ninety-five percent of them say that modesty is an important quality in their future wife (see the question in the upper left corner):

So, how do these “guys” define immodesty?  The most common theme was dressing to draw attention to the body instead of the heart or spirit.

Something that is immodest is something that is designed to arouse lust within me (male, age 24).

Something that is immodest is something that is unnaturally revealing (male, age 20).

Something immodest draws attention to a girl’s body (male, age 28).

Many of the guys stressed that they really wanted to interact with girls as people.  Borrowing language from feminism, they expressed a desire to think of a girl as a whole person, not just a hot body.

Something attractive draws you toward them. It makes you respect the person. Something immodest is usually unattractive. It makes you think less of that person, thinking of them as an object… (male, age 16).

My responsibility is to not treat women as objects for my satisfaction, even if they dress and act like it. It devalues them, and makes me a user of people… (male, age 26).

In a move that is in contrast to (most) feminist values, however, girls are supposed to help men treat them like people by not dressing like an object.  That is, by not dressing immodestly.

So what rules for girls did guys identify?

Well, first, guys largely agreed that revealing clothes were immodest (again, see the question in the upper left corner):

Halter tops and mini skirts, I suppose, are obvious candidates for immodesty.  There were lots more subtle rules, too, though with less agreement.

Forty-four percent of guys think that designs on the back pockets of jeans are immodest (19% aren’t sure):

A minority, 19 percent, think that shirts with pockets are immodest (25% aren’t sure):

Forty-eight percent think that purses should not be worn across the body (19% aren’t sure):

Thirty-nine percent oppose tights with designs (25% aren’t sure):

Forty-seven think that t-shirts with messages across the front improperly draw attention to breasts:

But being modest wasn’t simply a matter of clothes.  Guys defined immodesty, also, as an “attitude” or a “carelessness.”  Attaining modesty was also about how you use your body and the way you act, “sexually or otherwise.”

An immodest lady is loud, proud, and dresses in a way that communicates such an attitude (male, age 24).

Something becomes immodest when the person wearing it has an attitude of carelessness (male, age 17).

As one guy said:

If you are dressing to get attention from a guy, then anything you wear can be immodest (male, age 13; my emphasis).

Some examples of behavior the guys mostly agreed was immodest:

Immodesty, then, is not simply about being vigilant about your clothing (don’t wear a purse that falls diagonally across your body, don’t show your arms or your thighs), it’s a constant vigilance about how you display your body (don’t stretch, bend, or bounce).  “Clothing plays a part in modesty, but it is only a part,” an 18 year old male explains, “Any item of clothing can be immodest” (his emphasis).

In addition, these rules are potentially changing all the time.  A “technically modest” outfit, such as a school uniform, can suddenly have immodest connotations (so watch MTV, girls, to stay on top of these shifting meanings):

This is a great deal of self-monitoring for girls.  Not just when they shop, but when they get dressed, and all day as they move, and with constant re-evaluation of their clothes and how they fit.  But, the rationale is, they must be vigilant and obey these rules in order to protect guys from the power of all bodies (both their own sexiness, and men’s biological response to it).  Guys are burdened with lust, they insist.

A lot of the guys in this survey talked about temptation.  In some cases, the men would use very powerful words, such as this guy defining immodest:

Immodest:  Screams that her body is different than mine. Attempts to manipulate me. Forcefully offers to trade what I want (in the flesh) for what she wants: attention (male, age 30).

This language — suggesting that women’s bodies “scream” at him, attempt to control him, and “forcefully” tempt him — is reminiscent of Tim Beneke’s interviews with men about sexual violence in Men on Rape.  Michael Kimmel (summarizing Beneke in Guyland) discusses how lots of the terms used to describe a beautiful, sexy woman are metaphors for danger and violence: “ravishing,” “stunning,” bombshell,” “knockout,” “dressed to kill,” and  “femme fatale.”  “Women’s beauty,” Kimmel surmises, “is perceived as violence to men” (p. 229).

This is very much like the rationale for the burqa.  Women’s bodies incite men’s sexual desires, sometimes to violence; they must be kept hidden.

These Christian guys, however, did claim responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions.  When asked about their role in avoiding lust, many were adamant that it was their own responsibility.  Many felt that innocent, shameless, platonic interaction between men and women was a team effort:

Sisters in Christ, you really have no concept of the struggles that guys face on a daily basis. Please, please, please take a higher standard in the ways you dress. True, we men are responsible for our thoughts and actions before the Lord, but it is such a blessing when we know that we can spend time with our sisters in Christ, enjoying their fellowship without having to constantly be on guard against ungodly thoughts brought about by the inappropriate ways they sometimes dress. In 1 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul presents believers as the members of one body – we have to work together. Every Christian has a special role to play in the body of Christ. That goal is to bring glory to the Savior through an obedient, unified body of believers – please don’t hurt that unity by dressing in ways that may tempt your brothers in Christ to stumble (male, age 24).

The asymmetry of this project, however, is striking.  The lust is men’s; the bodies are women’s.  It’s an asymmetry built right into the survey design. Modesty is something pertains to only girls and immodesty is something that guys get to define.  This may be even more pernicious than women’s constant self-monitoring.  It erases women’s own desires and the sex appeal of men’s bodies, leading women to spend all of their time thinking about what men want.  By the time they do have sex, and most of them will, they may be so alienated from their own sexual feelings that they won’t even be able to recognize them.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

David Mayeda, at The Grumpy Sociologist, posted a 12-minute video on the debate over state-provided birth control in The Philippines. The Philippines is a largely Catholic society. Accordingly, it’s a good example of the way that individual lives are shaped by state policy, policy that is often influenced by powerful institutions.

And — lest we condemn The Philippines as particularly problematic in this area — let’s not forget the many ways in which religion has influenced family planning in the U.S.: “abstinence only” sex education, the increasing rarity of abortion services, the “conscience clause” that allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control, and many more examples…

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For more examples of pro- and anti-natal policy and ideology, see our posts on Hitler’s “mother’s cross”, sterilizing poor women, God’s stimulus package, Spanish vs. English versions of a pamphlet for new moms, abortion as racial genocide, and pro-natal Prop. 8.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Christina W. alerted us to the availability of the first episode of John Berger’s 1972 BBC documentary, Ways of Seeing.  Berger was is a artist, author, and art critic.  In the first episode of the documentary (in four parts below) he asks how the ease of reproduction made possible by the camera (both still and moving) has changed the meaning of art.  The episode is a bit slow (for my taste), but has some interesting ideas.

First he argues that the ability to reproduce works of art in books, on posters, postcards, and television screens means that art is experienced in a decontextualized way (or in the context of, say, your living room). No longer something we pilgrimage to, to consume in a very specific context, they come to us.  This, he argues, has multiplied a work of art’s possible meanings.

As an aside, he makes an interesting argument that the obsession with authenticity — “usually linked with cash value,” he says, “but also invoked in the name of culture and civilization” — is actually “a substitute for what paintings lost when the camera made them reproducible.”

He then talks about how our experience of art is mediated by media (whether it be an art book or a discussion of art in a television program), so that our reaction to it is inevitably shaped by its re-interpretation.  The art critic, for example, tells us what to think about a piece of art. (No doubt, his call for skepticism certainly can be applied to Sociological Images.)

But reproduction and the multiplication of meaning also makes it easier to make connections and have personalized reactions.

(Btw, there is a pretty awesome moment at 4:38 of the third installment.)

Start watching Episode Two here.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

In May, I wrote about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statement that the United States would not abandon the women of Afghanistan by allowing President Hamid Karzai to make any deals with the Taliban.  Clinton told three senior female Afghan officials that “we will not abandon you. . . . [I]t is essential that women’s rights and women’s opportunities are not sacrificed or trampled on in the reconciliation process.”  Clinton also said that she had promised Karzai that the U.S. would not “abandon Afghanistan in its quest for peace and long-term stability and we will not. And I make the same pledge to the women of Afghanistan. We will not abandon you, we will stand with you always.”

However, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai is still said to be “seeking a rapprochement with the Taliban movement, with the ultimate goal of drawing it into the political process.”  I haven’t heard anything more from Clinton about the situation.  Any rapprochement could have egregious impact on Afghanistan’s women.  For example, the Taliban is against any education of women after an early age.  As a result, in areas under Taliban control, the Taliban has been suspected in a series of poisonous gas attacks against school girls in 2010 and the past few years, including in 2008, when around 15 girls and teachers in Kandahar were sprayed with acid by men on motorbikes.  Female teachers are also being threatened.  One female teacher at a girls’ school in a southern Afghan province received a letter saying: “We warn you to leave your job as a teacher as soon as possible otherwise we will cut off the heads of your children and will set fire to your daughter.”

This past week, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled The ‘Ten Dollar Talib’ and Women’s Rights: Afghan Women and the Risks of Reintegration and Reconciliation. The report was based on interviews with 90 women in districts largely controlled by the Taliban.  The report’s purpose was to show that any claims that the Taliban are mostly influenced by money, rather than ideology, are wrong.  The report summarizes that:

“Afghan women want an end to the conflict. But as the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban draws closer, many women fear that they may also pay a heavy price for peace” and that “Reconciliation with the Taliban, a group synonymous with misogynous policies and the violent repression of women, raises serious concerns about the possible erosion of recently gained rights and freedoms.”

All of the women interviewed for the HRW report said they had lost freedoms. In some cases, women have been killed.  In April, a 22-year-old woman was threatened and then killed for working for an American development organization.  A day after the killing, another woman received a letter saying that she should stop working for the infidels and “in the same way that yesterday we have killed Hossai, whose name was on our list, your name and other women’s names are on our list.”  In late 2009, women were warned not to ring up radio stations and request songs and were told that, if they did, they would be beheaded or acid thrown in their faces.  More generally, women have been forced to give up their jobs and stay at home.  Women active in politics have been targeted and a number of the most prominent assassinated.

Hillary Clinton, please remember your pledge to the women of Afghanistan.

Despite consistent pressure by advocates and victims to change the Vatican's house rules on clerical sex abuse, their newly released revisions of the document doesn't seem to include any of their requests: there are no requirements to report abuse to the police, as well as no mention of sanctions for bishops covering up any abuse. However, they had no problem making a special new addition to the document, via AP:

The rules cover the canonical penalties and procedures used for the most grave crimes in the church, both sacramental and moral, and double the statute of limitations applied to them. One new element included lists the attempted ordination of women as a "grave crime" subject to the same set of procedures and punishments meted out for sex abuse.

So apparently they can't seem to get around to calling for the reporting of sex abusers to authorities, but have no problem excommunicating any woman who is ordained and defrocking any priest that helps her. (Not to mention, of course, equating the horror of sex abuse with women's ordination.) And now that we're on the subject, I think I have a few items that should be added to the "grave crimes" list, if I may do so myself:

• Abandoning poor and homeless people
• Keeping a woman in a 17-year long coma alive as an apparent fetal container
• Spreading lies about birth control
• Dangerously saying condoms actually increase the AIDS problem
• Being a homophobic and anti-choice asshole

Whew, that feels better! I'm sure I didn't get them all though. What did I miss?

UPDATE: The Vatican responds to the uproar this has caused.

The ongoing quest of the French government to preserve their country’s “secular traditions” came to the fore once again Tuesday when the lower house of France’s parliament voted to ban women from wearing any face-covering veil, such as the infamous burqa or the less “extreme” niqab — a move obviously targeting French Muslim women, of which perhaps 1,900 wear a face-covering veil. France has the highest population of Muslims in Europe, comprising about 5 million of France’s population of 64 million people.

I’m sure you remember the “no hijabs in public schools” ban France passed in 2004 after almost a decade debating it, barring students from wearing a headscarf or any other piece of clothing that would indicate the religion of the student wearing it. To be fair, that does include Jewish yarmulkes and cross necklaces, however, the surrounding debate was particularly focused on the Muslim hijab. It just seems that since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Western countries have been not-so-subtly putting their Islamophobia on display.

Of course, this is not to say that all Muslim women disagree with the banning of the burqa or niqab. Some Muslim feminists have spoken out in favor of the ban. I fully support the right of Muslim women to not be forced to wear face-covering veils. However, I think banning religious clothing at the governmental level is taking the issue in a scary direction. I believe in choices, and banning burqas and niqabs eliminates the ability of women who actually wear the veils of their own volition to continue to make the choice to wear them, however few the women may be that make that choice. The author of the Huffington Post article, Caryl Rivers, makes a lot of good points, but I really do believe that in order to truly gain equal rights for Muslim women in their culture it’s going to have to come from changing Muslim men’s “hearts and minds” and not changing Muslim women’s clothing.

In the Salon article linked above, Eqyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy states:

I support banning the burqa because I believe it equates piety with the disappearance of women. The closer you are to God, the less I see of you — and I find that idea extremely dangerous. It comes from an ideology that basically wants to hide women away. What really strikes me is that a lot of people say that they support a woman’s right to choose to wear a burqa because it’s her natural right. But I often tell them that what they’re doing is supporting an ideology that does not believe in a woman’s right to do anything. We’re talking about women who cannot travel alone, cannot drive, cannot even go into a hospital without a man with them. And yet there is basically one right that we are fighting for these women to have, and that is the right to cover their faces. To tell you the truth, I’m really outraged that people get into these huge fights and say that as a feminist you must support a women’s right to do this, because it’s basically the only kind of “right” that this ideology wants to give women. Otherwise they get nothing.

I agree with her on basically every point she makes, yet I can’t reconcile my feelings about government-enforced bans on religious clothing. I just don’t think that simply legally preventing women from wearing burqas, niqabs, or hijabs is going to cause transformative change in Islamic culture. This is a crude analogy, but it seems like banning black women from relaxing their hair. Yes, black women would be unable to cowtow to the oppressive beauty standards forced on us by Western culture, but would their minds be freed as well? Would black men suddenly stop desiring women with long, straight hair? With the banning of burqas and niqabs, are sexist, oppressive Muslim men and the governments they run suddenly going to stop treating women like second-class citizens? I don’t see that happening. Western governments using women’s rights as an excuse to ban Muslim religious garments just smells like Islamophobia couched in “progressive” rhetoric. Some leaders in the U.K. have actually voiced their concern over the “growing threat of Islamism“.

So what can we expect this ban on face-covering veils to do for Muslim women’s rights in France? Eltahawy had this to say:

What I hope it will do is that it will create a situation where a woman can say to a man, look, you know that I have to go out and work so that we can continue to live here, and I can’t go out with my face covered, even though you want me to, because that’s what the law says. I hope the law gives women this kind of out. I have no idea if that’s actually going to happen or not.

I can’t get behind legislation like this when the only benefit for women would be that you get to tell your husband that you’re required by law to not wear the veil, and the many benefits for the government and Islamophobic French people include not having to be visually reminded there’s Muslims in their communities and also stopping the spread of “Islamism”. I don’t trust the women’s rights angle at all from Western governments when it comes to Islam. We continue to ally with countries that do much more than just expect women to cover themselves head to toe when in public — we’re in bed with countries that beat and jail women who have been gang raped and impregnated because the rape constituted the woman committing adultery. I personally don’t think her lack of burqa helped at all in that situation.

So I’m not exactly joining the cheerleading squad because France decided its Islamophobia was good for women’s rights. Of course I don’t want Muslim women to be forced to cover themselves head to toe. But I firmly believe true change in the Islamic world will never come via simply outlawing certain types of clothing, and I question the veracity of France’s reasons for doing so. The fact that they’re mentioning things like “defining and protecting French values” sounds eerily familiar and to me, is more of a nationalist concern than a concern for women’s rights.

There needs to be substantive change in Muslim men’s attitudes towards Muslim women rather than superficial change mandated by a government that seeks to erase those parts of immigrant populations they find distasteful.

An update to my post yesterday about the vote in the French Parliament to ban burqas: The French lower house today passed the bill by a 335 to 1 margin.  (335 to 1???)  The bill must still be approved by the French Senate, which is expected to vote in the week of September 20.

The title is a direct quote from this WND article arguing that atheists should be denied their freedom of speech to protect the delicate sensibilities of fundamentalist Christians who apparently will lose their faith the second someone looks at it sideways.  Her justification for this is that it’s only fair because meanie atheists oppress her by existing.  The story that prompted the article is a situation where some atheist groups ran billboards with the original Pledge of Allegiance on them, the one that didn’t have the phrase “under God”, which was added later as a bit of red scare pandering.  Some vandals spray-painted “under God” on there, a sad but telling act of petulant fear.  I doubt the strength of convictions of those who can’t even stand the existence of atheists, and suspect their own understandable lurking doubts are eating at them.  But that it’s easier for them to lash out at the tempting atheists than to challenge their true oppressors who scare them away from asking questions of themselves and of their faith. 

As a general rule, I’m not really one to get upset at graffiti, which I do think is a form of dialogue with the messages of billboards, and that the public has to be trusted to think for themselves when they see an act of vandalism quarreling with a billboard.  But I also understand the reaction of the atheist and agnostic group that paid for the billboard sending out messages that shame the morons who did this for being afraid of dialogue.  That’s just good P.R., and is to my mind the most legitimate reaction to this particular message, which is basically, “I’m super fucking scared that you’re right that there’s no gods and will flail around like an infant to keep that message from penetrating my brain.” And so the writer at WND supports the vandals, saying:

They probably figured that because the Bible teaches Christians to turn the other cheek, we’ll just take their abuse forever. We will only take so much before we stand up against our oppressors.

Who “oppress” you not by forcing you to mouth beliefs you don’t have; that’s what Christians do to atheists with mandated Pledge recitals in school. Or by forcing dogma on you while calling it science; that’s what fundies do to everyone else by trying to sneak creationism into the biology classroom. They don’t do it by trying to write religious dogma into laws that have to be obeyed by people who don’t believe the same; that’s what fundies and Catholics do when they push abortion restrictions and abstinence-only education.  They’re not even subjecting her to arguments against the existence of any gods, arguments that might cause her pain as she has to work double time to suppress the logic functions of her brain.  They’re simply pointing out that a Pledge that references the Christian god excludes huge percentages of Americans who aren’t Christians, and implies incorrectly that one has to be a Christian to be a patriot.  This isn’t oppression.  And yet:

Atheists are always saying how offended they are by, well … everything. How is this billboard not offensive to me? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Where’s my PC? And who’s protecting my right not to be offended?

This is a pretty common wingnut tactic, claiming that they “get” to call for censorship or get to be big whiny crybabies because liberals did it first wah wah wah.  Or in this case, atheists.  It’s sheer, unadulterated projection used to rationalize what they want to do, which is pitch fits and demand that everyone else recognize their little tribe as the only Real Americans.  Atheist groups aren’t asking for a ban on religion, or demanding that religions people’s right to worship be censored or restricted.  This is a strawman being used to justify actual calls to censor and control and intimidate atheists.  Take, for instance, Mike Adams recent meltdown, chronicled by PZ.  Adams is furious that the Supreme Court agreed that universities can defund student groups that break their anti-discrimination rules and, in classic “wah wah they hit me first I’m so oppressed!” wingnut fashion, is screeching about how he’s going to use this ruling to ruin every atheist group in sight by joining and then refusing to let anyone conduct any business. 

I’m not exaggerating in the slightest.  In fact, I’m downplaying the rhetoric that Adams uses.

I do not seek robust debate. I seek power over the godless heathen dissident.

Again, he’s basically using the “they did it first!” excuse to say what he wanted to say anyway.  But of course, “they” didn’t do anything first.  There has been no attempts by liberals, atheists, gays, or any other group to destroy right wing groups through subterfuge.  Not that every one of those people is an angel pure as the driven snow, but it’s more like it just doesn’t work that way.  The case in front of the Supreme Court was about a Christian student wishing to join a Christian group, and being denied because he was gay.  That’s a lot different than what Adams is proposing here. 

I do think that Adams feels like he can go completely over the top because there’s exactly zero chance his “plan” will work.  As Scott a World-O-Crap noted, Adams’ whole schtick is to make grand plans he has no intention of following up on.  In this case especially, he’d probably run into organizing problems even if he did try.  While the people he intends to gather for this are fueled by resentment and hate, and might initially seem down (for the same reason conservatives troll liberal blogs exponentially more often than vice versa), I think they’d quickly realize that going to a real live group is different than going to a blog’s comments in an effort to shut down conversation.  It’s a lot more boring and time-consuming, and harder to work up the courage when looking people in the eye instead of hiding behind a keyboard.  Plus, you’d be outnumbered, and wingnuts need to maintain the comforting illusion that they’re speaking for the majority in order to muster whatever emotion they use to substitute for courage. 

My main concern with all this is that this wingnut confidence that they can bash atheists in ways that go beyond even their anti-feminist rhetoric at times is that it could very well lead to violent confrontation, as it often does when they’re all hyped up on feminist-bashing.