To express in a creative way what I have learned in Global Feminisms this semester, I have put together a collage of images. This collage is meant to represent what I have learned about privilege and power dynamics across the world.
In the upper right quadrant of the collage, I used a Barbara Kruger piece that reads “Who does she think she is?” I cut the image and, in the middle of the phrase, I placed an image of the eyes of Cynthia Enloe. Cynthia Enloe was one of the first authors we read in this class and wrote something that discussed power and privilege and really stuck out to me. In “Gender Makes The World Go Round,” she explores how things can be viewed through a transnational feminist lens if you keep certain things in the back of your mind. Some of the most important piece of information that I took away was that, especially today with social media, at anytime, any place can become a soapbox of sorts for transnational feminists to organize and make their voices heard. Anyone can do this, too, in any form, from being active in your local government to simply sharing something on your Instagram. I found that it is important to keep in mind that agency and resistance opens up an inclusive investigation of Transnational Feminist politics on any scale. Viewing the world through a transnational, curious feminist lens requires that you view the world outside of yourself while still being conscious of your own privilege and others as well, or lack thereof. It is the recognition of privilege and inclusion that makes it transnational and curious while still holding on to the older ideas of feminism of where power lies and how it is maintained.
I am from the United States in the “Western world” and I identify as a feminist, so that puts me in the category of Western Feminists. Western feminism has its pros and cons and I have learned a lot about this concept in this class. In “Under Western Eyes,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty writes that Western feminists believe that it is their duty as activists to help those that are less fortunate in other parts of the world. While the efforts are well intentioned, it isn’t right to impose one’s culture onto another, whether if it is intended or not. This class has taught me that Western Feminism in the Global South can be dangerous. Women in the Global South are working towards different goals from those of Western women and face different setbacks and obstacles. While it is easy to just go in and put in effort to make a change, one has to do their research before hand on where and what they are striving to fix. Otherwise, one is just putting a band aid over the situation and not fully fixing the problem. To represent this, I have “separated” the collage into “The North” and “The South” with images of road signs.
Another topic that we discussed quite a bit in class was representation and the “other”. In Lila Abu-Lughod's essay "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?", she calls back to Laura Bush's November 17th, 2001 radio speech to explore the ethics of the "War on Terrorism." She specifically explores how the "War on Terrorism" effects Muslim women. Bush's speech mainly focused on what the US has been doing for these women but ignored the many preexisting plights these women faced and pre existing efforts to help them. Abu-Lughod connects this with colonization and "white men saving brown women from brown men."
This article made me think a lot about what we've been discussing in class with the vocabulary of West and East and Global North and South. It also reminded me of the cartoon we saw during one of our first classes. Because of this, I included in my collage an image of a hijabi woman smoking a cigarette. Over here eyes and body is the phrase “Hang in there! We will free you!” in the style of Barbara Kruger. I did this to represent western feminism’s idea of saviorism for Muslim women and how they’ve made the assumption that these women are oppressed because they are covered. I covered her with a phrase that is meant to free her but only harms her even more. It is articles like this that really connect for me everything we have spoken about in class. Abu-Lughod's main point about blaming culture for the oppression of Muslim women helps me make connections to our work in class and in the world outside of class.
Something we talk about in another class I have, Applied Performance: Sexual Consent, is privilege and personal experience. We want create scenarios that can be used to educate people about sexual consent and healthy relationships. That’s the goal of the class. While we want to draw from our own experiences, we also want to recognise the privilege that we all have because most of us students are white Americans. We want to create something universal but we don’t want to make assumptions. This class and the Applied Performance class have equally helped me recognise and process my own privilege in my everyday life.
This class has made me notice connections between feminists across the world. "Militarism, Patriarchy and Peace Movements" is a conversation between celebrated feminist writers Cynthia Enloe and Cynthia Cockburn about gender, war, and peace and what it means to them as feminists. What was fascinating to me about this conversation was that these two women come from different parts of the world (Enloe from the US and Cockburn from the UK) and how their different countries gave them different perspectives about the world at large. Both women come from the Global North and they see domestic violence and war violence as two separate entities. Enloe takes notice of Cockburn's writings about women she has worked with in Okinawa and how they don't see a difference in the two. Cockburn then elaborates off of Enloe's observation with, "it seems to me that a valuable new insight into violence shows up from a feminist standpoint in or close to war. And ultimately what activist women’s thinking adds up to is a fresh analysis of war – yes, capitalism and nationalism cause war, but the patriarchal system of male dominance too gives rise to war-thinking and the war-habit. In particular, it’s the combative, controlling form of masculinity that they need and favour," (552). What I loved most about this reading was that it was a candid conversation between two women who know and care so much about feminism and equality and how their personal experiences around the world have taught them. I also loved how these two women are big fans of each other and were fascinated with what the other had to say. Because of this connection, I included an image of two girls locked together.
In the essay "Code Pink," Judy Rohrer talks about how women can act without reinforcing the "peaceful woman" stereotype. She also talks about how we can "challenge and answer […] critiques of feminist direct action." Something I found the most interesting in this piece were the group called the Raging Grannies. The Raging Grannies started in 1987 in Victoria, British Columbia as part of the anti-nuclear movement. They use the creating and sharing of songs to "rage for peace, social and political justice, and environmental preservation." This network and the other two mentioned in the article work because of the deep desire women have to speak or act on how our disagreements with the conflicts in this world connect to our identities as women (mothers, daughters, sisters, partners, etc.). To connect to this, I included images of a girl with her mouth taped shut and a divided image of activist Angela Davis. I divided her image to show the conflict women feel between the “peaceful woman” and rage.
In "Freedom for Women," Fisher draws from personal stories to answer questions about freedom. What I found in this reading is that the U.S. has a bad habit of arguing the freedom of women as an excuse to "occupy" or advance on other countries. Like I have said before, women, depending on where they are from in the world, have different definitions of freedom or equality. While women in another country may have less or different freedoms than us doesn't necessarily mean that she is being oppressed. That is something that this class has certainly reminded me on.
This brings me to what this class has taught me about my own country. I have set my collage on the background of an American flag made of rifles and airplanes for a reason. In this class I have been able to make more observations on the country I live in and how its history has affected its present. America been through a lot in her short existence. We Americans have experienced genocides, racism, and slavery all before the end of our first 100 years. And it only grows in the coming years. While we are a young country, we have a history chalk-full of violence. We sweep this violence under the rug and act like we are secure at home and nothing could possibly be bad here. We have to bury our fear and shame in order to be this beacon on a hill that every other country in the world needs right now. We feel like we cannot except help because if we do, we will be seen as weak. Since 9/11, those who are considered a minority are in so much more danger than before. Women, people of color, Muslims, Jews, and the LGBTQ+ community, to name a few, are under a greater threat, now more than ever. Because they clash with the heterosexual white men that run our society, they are systematically oppressed. I have purposely put mostly white women on one side and women of color on the other side to give a sense of a divide between the women. I even split an image of Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes to represent the divide between white feminists and feminists of color. I also included an advertisement of a white girl covering the mouth of a black girl. The full image came with the caption “modern feminism.” Minorities and those marginalized are seen as a threat because they break the mold. In relation to the rest of the world, I have learned that systematic oppression is a way of protecting those in power by disenfranchising those who could topple the system.
In summation, Global Feminisms has taught me a great deal about the world around me. I used what I learned and turned it into something visual. While I did some images and styles that I thought looked aesthetically pleasing, I did my best to arrange everything in a way that connects to the topics of privilege and power. One last image that I included in the collage was a headline from U.K.’s The Spectator that reads “Feminism is over, the battle is won. Time to move on.” If this class has taught me anything, it is that this battle is far from over. The best thing I have learned in this class is to stay open and curious to learn and that just doing that can make a change.