The Politics of a Veil

Ok, I know I said I was only going to write about Angola from now until we leave, but I can’t help it, I have to talk about this: because I’ve been having nightmares, ever since seeing Leading Seaman Faye Turney veiled on Iranian TV.


This is no small thing: this is not about having to adhere to ‘cultural sensitivity’ (whatever that is!). This is a symbolically loaded statement-of-intent on a much wider scale than a navy capture, disguised as a banal ‘necessity’ to cultural adherence.

There’s a visual incongruity about seeing a non-Asian western woman in a veil – and that’s no coincidence: the Iranian contrivers of this whole façade know damn well what a visual statement this is – and weight is added to this statement because of her isolated positioning as the only female in a team of male sailors – as well as the fact that she is a sailor at all: only very, very recently is the west beginning to open up its definition of the armed forces to include women into what has always been defined as a masculine sphere. Any such progress within Iranian armed forces was halted long ago: by veiling LS Turney on (what has now become) international television is to say: this is not a man – this is not a sailor – this is a woman – and she cannot be a sailor because a sailor is a man, and she is not a man – indeed she is nothing like a man, nothing close to being a man – they have nothing in common – and you, the West, have clearly forgotten that, so we are going to remind you… with a veil.

For women to integrate into the armed forces there has been a process of gender-blurring: a necessary critique of what is masculinity and how much (if at all) masculinity depends upon an anatomically male body. There has also been serious consideration for what attributes traditionally recognised as ‘feminine’ can contribute to the armed forces. By drawing deliberate attention to LS Turney, using her as the bartering tool, setting her aside, standing her apart, photographing her alone, these Iranians are saying: she is not one of the men, she is different – she is not a Man, she is Other. And she must be marked as Other – her Otherness must be signified and marked… with a veil.

I am appalled and angry. The sight of a non-Asian western woman in a veil might currently be an anomaly, but don’t feel so assured of its distance – of its rarity. Extremist-Muslims want a Britain under Shariah law: this is what Britain will look like under such a regime. The threat of Extreme-Islam is, above all its threats, a gender threat.

Before I post this, I want to make something clear. This is not a post about whether Muslim women should veil or not. Forced unveiling is absolutely no better than forced veiling: it smacks of violent coercion – it smacks of violence full stop – and it smacks of arrogance and western illusions of supremacy. The point here is the insistence upon a very physical, intimate, personal measure being enforced, as a deliberate, political, act of gendering, upon a sailor, who’s normal priorities would be towards her duties as a sailor, and not her sex.

Handmaid's Tale anyone??



For a veiling woman's take on the apparent prejudices of western feminism about the veil, click on the pic below:



shariah
navy
faye turney
veil
extreme islam
LS turney
Turbo Tagger

Regeneration

It sometimes takes me a while to get round to reading stuff – in this case it took me 15 years!! But I couldn’t just put it back on the shelf without a mention…



The psychologist WHR Rivers, in Pat Barker’s novel about the patients Rivers treats during World War I, explains what are the most likely triggers for ‘shell-shock’ during war and conflict:

“…It was prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness that did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition. That would help to account for the greater prevalence of anxiety neurosis and hysterical disorders in women in peacetime, since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities of reacting to stress in active and constructive ways. Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace” (p222).

How refreshing it is to read something that not only treats so-called 'female neuroses' and ‘hysteria’ with a seriousness and thought that is frequently missing in literature, science and psychology, but also reveals how supposedly ‘gendered’ psychological conditions are not gendered at all. According to this analysis, biological or mental difference has nothing to do with hysteria, neurosis, breakdown and depression, and everything to do with lifestyle, environmental and circumstantial conditions, and opportunities for self-expression – afforded to anyone, regardless of sex. What this also implies – and is crucial in my opinion – is the way in which the problems associated with, in this case, ‘shell-shock’, affected women in such a wide spread way – since ‘female hysteria’ is such an historically well-recognised phenomena. Could it possibly be that, outside of war, a woman’s life was (is?) significantly more traumatic than a man’s?

It’s interesting that one of the two main works Barker cites in her Author’s Note is The Female Malady by Elaine Showalter: an important text for feminism. What I think comes across loud and clear in Regeneration, is something feminism has been struggling to get out into wider consciousness for a long time: the ways in which Patriarchal conventions, expectations, attitudes, and behavioural practices are damaging to men. Feminism is not a women’s only zone – it’s neither selfish nor sexist – feminism wants a better world – a healthier society – for everybody. War is abusive: to the bodies it enlists for its services, and to the bodies it commits its atrocities against (and the difference between these is far from clear). I’ve had enough of paranoia and prejudice against feminism: feminism hates Patriarchy; it hates war; it does not hate men!

Technorati Tags:
regeneration, pat barker, war, war neurosis, psychology, shell shock, hysteria, female malady, feminism, gender, elaine showalter

Corsets and Cleavage Vs Shoulderpads and Power-suits


While in South Africa I bought a couple of women’s magazines; something I haven’t even done in Britain for about two years, and I was kind of impressed with what I found.




Firstly, both the South African Elle and Marie Claire included fashion photo shots using black models – nowhere near enough to be representative of the black and coloured demographics of South Africa (although maybe representative of who is the target consumer… which tells another story of culture and class…) and the models were still way too skinny, but nevertheless, an improvement on the last British versions of the same magazines I looked through.

And secondly, the articles were much more socially analytical – engaging with theory and psychology – than I remember their British counterparts being: they did not skirt around issues concerned with what may or may not be ‘women’s culture’ in the way that most, in my experience, hypocritically do. (Hypocritical in that the magazines themselves are frequently posited as the voices of this ‘culture’; maybe even the epitome of it – its foundation and base of replenishment).

The South African Marie Claire and Elle showed themselves, in their March issues alone, not to be afraid to use the ‘f-word’, or to analyses and criticise it. But still, it never fails to amaze me how many, often completely contradictory, forms of so-called feminisms there are. It’s hard to keep up:

One article in March’s South African Elle, and one article in March’s South African Marie Claire, engage with the term, but it’s difficult to see if there would be any place in each article where the two women featured would recognise each other as feminists. On a personal level, I had a hard time finding any place in which my own feminisms might complement either of theirs. Neither of their versions bears any resemblance to mine.

Marie Claire’s is an interview with world famous stripper, Dita Von Teese. When asked if she’d call herself a feminist, Von Teese replies: “…Being a feminist is just embracing your femininity and not trying to get rid of it”. Even though she doesn’t extrapolate, her profession and attitude suggest that she’s coming from the more liberal and/or ‘post-feminist’ end of the feminist spectrum, that tout female sexual assertion and promotion as a way towards empowerment and greater self-confidence.


This deliberate thrust of visibility, of shows of sexual assertiveness, is all-too-regularly conflated with “embracing femininity”. By this, its apparently most popular equation, femininity = (female) sexuality.

Linda Hirshman of the Elle article, on how women must get a share in men's success, on the other hand, explains how her method depends entirely upon “getting rid of” ‘femininity’. As the article’s author, Sheelagh Kolhathar recognises, Hirshman’s brand of feminism, which positively demands that women relinquish - indeed actively reject - child-care and false and contrived domestic-callings in order to belligerently and blinkardly pursue power and money by being driven and deliberately deaf to sexual temptations and (as this leads to…) lures of motherhood, basically requires that we “become men”.

Hirshman might possibly commend the drive and ambition of Von Teese, who is top of a very lucrative field with a lot of the stuff (money, power, success) that Hirshman values above anything else. But Von Teese’s product – her business – is the commodification of (and perpetuation of) much of the aspects of ‘womanhood’ that have kept women in the secondary and objectified positions that Hirshman wants to see obliterated; in order that ‘feminine’ clutter is cleared to reveal the path that will enable them to take their place alongside men in boardrooms and executives' offices. Men are not fluttering their feathers and heels upon bird-swings and parrot perches! So the pursuit of the kind of feminist power Von Teese parades can make no impact upon the world Hirshman wants to see ‘penetrated’ by women.



I definitely don’t support a feminism so dependent upon conventional notions of female sexuality: the suggestion that our physical ‘assets’, our size or our shape (and colour) – what makes our bodies different from men’s bodies – is the most we have to offer (that without them we would have nothing to offer) is abhorrent, especially when the prescriptions for these ‘assets’ – their size and their shape – have been largely defined by and through male objectification of the female body; for the purposes of visual consumption.

The woman may have freely chosen to strip, and for her own economic gain, but she still dances to a male tune, strips to his terms, and despite Pussycat-Doll-style claims to the contrary, is ultimately still giving him everything he wants. How has anything changed? How is this feminism?

On the other side of the spectrum; not only accepting but embracing, and training and conditioning ourselves to attain, the public world as shaped and organised by men for men – a world which never had women in mind – since it didn’t need to – is now desirable all of a sudden! Suddenly it’s fine for women to consider what other women have been doing since we dropped down from the trees as valueless, undesirable, dull, and unprogressive (in other words, everything that many men have deemed ‘women’s work’ since they dropped down beside us!).


And now that a number of radical feminists have decided that, yes, actually men have been right about us all along, and right about the shape of the world all this time, we have to just step down and take the ‘L’ – snap out of our denial – drop everything (including… especially… the babies!) – and run as fast as we can to catch up with the men who are steaming ahead!:- The ones who got it right, the ones who’ve got everything sussed, the ones who apparently deserve a pat on the back for manipulating us into staying at home and keeping a cosy house so that they might further themselves on their self-designed pathways to success… I don’t think so! How is this feminism? How are either of these career paths and ideologies feminist?

Technorati Tags:
black models, cleavage, corsets, dita von teese, elle, feminism, feminist, linda hirshman, marie claire, power suits, shoulderpads, south africa