Dancing to end violence against women – if that sounds flawed to you, you’re not alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a campaign like ‘One Billion Rising’ does, despite its many flaws, is prove that feminism is not the dirty word some would make it out to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Kathleen Barry




I did not set out to write a radical feminist book exposing the masculinity and war.  But with the US and Israeli wars and invasions come daily news reports that over and over again distinguish between innocent (civilian, but particularly women and children) and soldiers' in combat. The former are recognized under the Geneva Convention as a protected class, even though in reality they are the everyday victims of male violence in combat. The latter, soldiers in combat, as I show in Unmaking War, Remaking Men, are killable in combat.  They go into combat knowing that, realizing that they may not come out alive and that there is no law or human right that will protect them. Further, society, politics and the military conspire to put their manhood at stake if they do not put their lives in jeopardy.  They are filled with aggression and violence as well as revenge and weapons to keep from getting killed, protect their buddies.  They believe they are protecting their families, wives and children, their communities, their country.

As I began to absorb the implications of making a class of people killable and therefore training them to kill, I realized that I had to understand this more fully. I had never thought about war and combat in that way before and upon reflection realized that most of us who never fight in war zones have not thought about it either.  I decided to write an article to expose this.  The more I wrote and then began to interview soldiers who have been in combat both in the U.S. and abroad, the more I realized that the very core of all of the violence against women I have spent my life fighting against is tied up with the masculinity of war.  The article morphed into a book and took me down many unexpected paths.  In order to unearth the masculinity of war from patriotic myths and just plain ignorance held by those unfamiliar with war zones, I had to understand what the experience of war is for the soldier in combat and what that means to all women everywhere subjected to male violence.

From my experiences of feminist-consciousness raising in the late 1960s and through the 1970s where the personal became political for us through our identification with each others' experiences of male supremacy, intense empathetic listening to personal stories while looking for the political forces that frame them has been my "methodology."  It took the world a long time to catch up with feminist consciousness raising and for the social and psychological sciences to recognize that empathy is a basic characteristic of being human. 

I am a radical feminist and human rights activist and a sociologist who is a researcher.  I look for patterns and when I identify them, I analyze them.  In interviewing men who live in war zones as well as soldiers who are sent by their state, and here I look particularly at the United States, surprising to me was finding that men in and around combat speak of protection, protecting your Palestinian family from Israeli raids, protecting your country from the threat of another 9/11 attack, refusing to think of oneself as "occupied" because it means you have lost your ability to protect your family.  I began to see that this "protection" men we are talking about was their justification for fighting and killing. And when they are out of combat they speak of losing their soul the first time they killed another human being, their words, not mine. And as I show in Unmaking War, Remaking Men, it is perfectly clear that the justification for fighting requires a socialization into violence that enables boys and men to protect themselves so they can protect women and children, that is what I have called "core masculinity" because it appears to be a socialized universal of male domination.

But they do not protect us as I point out in my book and as every feminist and most women who have been subjected to male violence knows. Their violence in war provokes more violence against their people; they bring the violence of war home to abuse their wives and partners. And if all women recognized this we would be much further along in dismantling male domination.  The tragic consequence of female socialization under every patriarchy is found in women who believe their husbands instead of their daughters who come to them saying that daddy had sex with them, the women who buy pornography for their husband and watch it with them, the sugar babies, young women who seek out sugar daddies to put them through college in exchange for a sexual relationship, the women who return with their children to their abusing husbands, the women who buy toy guns and plastic drones for their boys, poles for pole dancing for their girls ...  Indeed girls are socialized into and many women act out siding with men over any woman or girl.  It is the complicity expected of women that makes the myth of the male protector work so effectively in sustaining male supremacy.

I did not find it particularly easy to empathize with men in combat in order to understand their experiences which are so foreign to my own. Nor do I recommend it.  Instead, from that empathy I was able in my book to speak to men in the first person, to appeal to them personally to reject, renounce the manhood of male supremacy.  Further for the last 45 years one focus of my work has been to get men to take responsibility for getting violent, aggressive, raping men off of our backs. In this book, I appeal to men from a standpoint of empathy, with a very clear insistence that it is not women's responsibility to take care of men again. That is, I am asking men to begin with their own personal experiences that set them on the path of violence and aggression, raping and killing and to make the personal political by refusing and insisting that other men refuse that kind of manhood, that political and social expectation of masculinity.

That I know some men (far too few) who rejected or never followed the violent, aggressive path to manhood makes it possible for me to believe that men can and must change. I have chosen, in writing this book, to make that a demand of them in my political activism because the liberation of women from them is always my primary focus.  See Prostitution of Sexuality and Female Sexual Slavery and my article of a few months ago on Abolishing Prostitution which presents the feminist human rights treaty I developed. It became a model for laws feminists struggled to win in states like Sweden and Norway. Both books brought me into an activism that has had its costs, but its rewards are in seeing and supporting the women who have freed themselves from prostitution and come to the forefront of a global feminist movement to abolish it. 

Feminism is not one singular set of strategies and commitments. As the movement of liberation it cannot thrive under dogmatic beliefs. Many of us come to feminism deeply harmed by men, and far too many turn their anger against other feminists.  I am keenly aware that many feminists will place their commitments elsewhere than the arenas I have chosen.  It’s the optimist in me that makes me believe that when we are all working for the liberation of women at all levels of society and from every kind of domination, we will eventually all meet up together.

Kathleen Barry

Santa Rosa, California

January 28, 2013

http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/Bookstore/book/id=209/
http://www.kathleenbarry.net/ 

 

 

By: Marilyn Dell Brady    

By: Julie Lewis

 

 

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My power only returned about 15 minutes ago – after 36 hours of no power, water, phone and sewers backed up everywhere ... I was about to go into my work, to get access to a hot cup of coffee and enough power to check to my e-mails etc, when the power returned.

The worst hit areas of the fires, were in my district – I live next-door suburb to Duffy – we evacuated along with everyone else in a calm controlled panic – one carload of several thousand fleeing for their lives – I'm still freaking in a quiet way.

I only saw TV news for the first time at my sister's place over north side late last night, it was much, much worse – worst in the nation's history, and no exaggeration, and a miracle that more lives weren't lost– as there were no warnings, there were no firemen ... (we found out later they had been caught on the other side of the fires when they jumped 5,10,15 km in a matter of minutes ...)

A cliche maybe – but it happened so fast...

All week, huge fires raging to the west of us in the mountains, about 50-60 km away – no great drama, pink/orange smoke haze casting peculiar light, eerie shadows – could look directly at the sun, a neon orange ball. Sorta alien and pretty in a way.  Saturday was no different – a bit windier perhaps, a bit smokier maybe – the shadows in the weird light and dimmed orange sun, maybe a bit more peculiar.

At noon – I was returning home from the nearby Weston RSPCA puppy classes and the car radio news mentioned briefly (about item number 3) – that the fires to the west of us had moved closer, about 25-30 km away and firefighters were stressed up in the ranges having been fighting all week to contain them.

At 2.30 pm – my daughter Kara returns home from work, we mention the strange eerie light as most people had done all week.  Still no concern – but we found out later, that some mild "alerts" had gone out at 2.30 pm – asking people in 23 suburbs to return home and make preparations, but no major panic – just a "precaution".

At 3 pm – I hear low-flying fire choppers and look outside and it is as black as midnight on a moonless night, the power flickers, the street lights come on – I wander outside to see what’s happening, its thick with embers, wind screaming – can't see a metre and start choking with the smoke – (I thought I must have blacked out or fallen asleep for about 8 hours it was so black, so sudden – there was no sun, there was not even so much as a pale spot where the sun should be) but at first I wanted to laugh at my neighbour panicking and soaking their house and hurrying their family in their car etc – we are relatively far in from the open bushland a few km away up the ridge above us – those up the hill backing onto the ridge behind us are in danger and then it will burn itself out – if it was a "normal fire" --- but it wasn't a normal fire ...

Until I turned around to look at the western ridge – that sight is burned onto my retinas ---- Holy F&*&*!!! I screamed – a huge wall of flames was racing down the ridge, less than a km away – and huge balls of fire - bouncing like a basketball down the hill...moving so fast ... bounce, bounce ... taking 5 houses here, bouncing another km to the north, then south, then east  – just bouncing and taking another chunk of neighbourhood on each bounce – just engulfing with a *whoosh*....then the explosions, one huge one like an atom bomb a few blocks away – (later found out it was a petrol station – that whooshed in less than 60 secs, taking a 4-storey block of flats with it) ... other explosions were cars, trees etc exploding.

Still there were no alarms – indeed, most of us were told to stay in our homes – I screamed at Kara to pack essentials in the car and we started hosing down the house – she called her fiance – he also lived nearby and was returning on the bus from his work after his workplace relayed an alert for his suburb.

He called to say he was dumped by the bus at a nearby shopping centre – and could go no further – so we were going to pick him up there.  My son and other daughter I thought would be safe on their side of town.  I rang my sister over north side and told her we were on our way just seconds before all the power went down, and phones and water. 

Still the radio was saying for people to stay home – but my entire street had all gone, and we joined the queue – only one road out still clear – and the fireballs were still bouncing, several kilometres inside the so-called "bushland outer suburbs" – then even the mobile phones went down – no signals, and network busy for the next 12 hours ... (the nearby mobile towers had whooshed) it quickly became clear that I wasn't going to get north side in a hurry – with only road out – but no phones made it impossible to get a message through to my sister – one road blocked – all street lights, traffic lights gone – unable to see more than a vague ember lit outline of the car in front or to the lanes each side – but the radio mentioned an evac centre nearby – so we headed there.

My son-in-law to be ... found his parents friends who he was living with at the evac centre – lost everything, so many, so many pouring in to the centre – people we know, families my kids have grown up with – 2 young women I've known since Kindergarten pour in – they had stayed in their house because the radio told them to, their parents at work couldn't call in or get their in time – they had run down the hill for their lives following fleeing cars when the fire-storm reached the house next-door –

5.30 pm – the light clears up – from midnight black to pinky/orange twilight – calls from my neighbourhood have said it’s eased, I choose to head back. Kara and Jessie are collapsed with his family – their whole street whooshed to ash in less than a minute –

I said I was going back to my place – by this stage I was frantic about looters as well – still no fucking phones to be had for love or money.  My son shows up however – he was on the bus to come over to my place to visit for the afternoon when the buses dumped him out at the nearby evac centre bus-stop! 

So my son and I head back to my house – my fence is scorched, and the entire neighbourhood is layered in ash – the bouncing basketball missed us – but still no phones etc – road-blocks everywhere – reports coming in of the bouncing basketball having moved further in to the east – shopping centres over 10 km from any bushland are exploding. The bouncing basketball has jumped 5, 10, 15 km across the city in each bounce flaring every ridge, hilltop and mountain to the south, and east of us. 

At 6 pm – I still can't get through by phone – my sister over north side must be frantic wondering where I am ... the traffic has eased. So Reubs and I head north to my sister's, since I can't call her I may as well tell her in person! She feeds us, but I head back and drive my son to his home which has power at least in a safe area.  Still can't get through to my daughter – but headed back to the evac centre to check with my other daughter and her fiance and his family.

The radio says the evac centre is being evacuated again to the east! The fires have jumped the freeway into the centre – the city-wide emergency defence force coordination centre itself is down! Also, 5000 people have poured into the centre in the hour I was away up north side! 

Couldn't get through on her phone, and thinking I'd never find them amongst a crowd of thousands either by 8 pm – and still worried about looters at my place, I finally get through a dozen road-blocks back to my place (Duffy the worst hit is next-door to me, and like hundreds of others I'm aghast at the devastation) – most of my immediate neighbours have returned by 8 pm, and so I went next-door to my friend and stayed with them glued to a tinny walkman radio until about 2 am, before trying to sleep.

Sunday – the neighbourhood is bad, – I meet up with many more driving around in a daze looking for a shop, a cup of coffee, fresh milk, bread –anything – power was out to about 10,000 homes over a wide section, and even those with power weren't open with so many in confusion and no communications – sewerage had gone, some backing up – no water – although some did – but filthy – phones are patchy – one house has a working phone, next-door doesn't ... mobiles are still all out over a wide section ...

I literally run into my other daughter at the nearest shopping centre with power – apparently, she had been freaking out and looking for me all Saturday afternoon/evening, returning to my house, obviously missing me on each pass through – and had stayed the night at a friend’s house nearby to mine! (I thought she would have been sensible and headed home to her place over north side which was safe, so didn't give her a second thought :) 

We spent Sunday buying some clothes for Jessie, crying with friends and neighbours, trying to find ice, petrol, cold drinks etc – but the entire district for many miles is down – and with so many affected, many workplaces even with power have no staff and are closed till further notice.

But anyway, power returned this morning, but its a sad place – there are still sirens and choppers screaming everywhere.

Mon, 20 Jan 2003

Julie Lewis, armchair feminist, Canberra

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It took many years for much of the Canberra bushland to recover. Many parts of the National Park bordering the western suburbs remain closed ten years later as the damage was so severe, from exploded rock escarpments and mountain earth-slides from the extensive deforestation. 

By Farida Akhter

 

Every day we have to read or hear about some rape and also killing after rape occurring in different areas of the country. Rape and killings are direct physical attacks on a woman’s body but violence against women is more than that. These other forms of violence caused by social, economic and cultural factors and various development policies are often ignored not because that they are not directly physical or invisible but they must be made so to justify systemic violence. Injecting Depo-Provera into poor women’s bodies or implanting Norplant under her skin for population control and keeping garment workers under lock and key and burning them to ashes or burying them alive as ‘accidents’ are some of the examples. Dowry is one of the major social violence on women in all of South Asia. Trafficking in women for various purposes is happening at national, regional and international level. Women’s right to livelihood, seed keeping and food production is threatened by various so-called development interventions and introduction of technologies. Violence against women, therefore, is not only or necessarily, limited to women’s body. It is affecting her entire life. Even when her whole body is targeted for systemic violence they are made invisible.

The women’s movement in Bangladesh has been very strong, although in recent years it has slowed down a bit. There are always protests against the occurrences of violence at local levels or among the groups closer to the victims, however nothing much is happening at the national level women’s movement. This was not the case before. We have seen in the past how the rape of 14-year-old Yasmeen by police on August 25, 1995 sparked outrage among general people and women’s organizations all over the country. Seven men were killed by police in the protest in Dinajpur where the incident occurred. In Dhaka, Sammilita Nari Samaj was formed to work together and termed it ‘state violence’ against women. Begum Sufia Kamal led the movement and brought all the people together. Sammilita Nari Samaj followed the issue for months and years till we got to have the perpetrators brought to justice. Nothing like that is happening now, although many more incidents like gang rape and killing after rape are happening. Yasmeen movement needs to be revisited and revived again.

At the regional and global level, the movement to stop violence against women is taking different shape along with the rise in the incident of rape and killing of women. To stop this, very limited actions are being taken. Recently the gang rape of Jyoti in Delhi has sparked outrage among all the people, including women’s organizations. In Bangladesh incidents of gang rape occurred before and after Delhi incident, but big human chains were organized only after Delhi uprising. In this context, American playwright, and performer Eve Ensler’s visit to Bangladesh has come to the forefront in the name of global action against violence against women.

On the occasion of her visit during January 2013, there were stage performances of Vagina Monologues and also performances by Bangladeshi theatre groups. I found it a very untimely celebration of a western and culturally alien perspective imposed on Bangladesh as a universal women’s issue. I also see in such intervention another form of cultural violence to silence the systemic issues relevant to women’s movements in Bangladesh. Women activists are trying hard to address and by sharing with their sisters around the world to make an indent in the global women’s movement in the era of globalization, war and multiple form of state violence around the world. Women are the main victims of these masculine adventures.

If Eve Ensler’s main contribution is theatre performances to break silence, it should not assume that Bangladesh did not have such events previously. For Bangladesh, it is not new at all. Let me remind all that in the late 1980s, theatre groups in Bangladesh felt the need to enquire into the notions of hegemonic masculinity, gender, and sexuality. In 1989, a Group Theatre ensemble named Theatre produced Kokilara, a monodrama in three parts written and directed by a male (Abdullah al Mamun) but performed by one of the most popular and versatile female performers in Bangladesh Ferdousi Majumdar. The play showed how a univocal and domineering ideology of gender, articulated through the institutions of marriage and divorce in the social field of Bangladesh, attempts to control and silence all women irrespective of classes.  

Kokilara earned much appreciation from home and abroad. The monodrama had hundreds of shows in different parts of Bangladesh and abroad. The play was over two hours long and divided into three phases. Ferdousi performed 16 different characters in the full-length play. This was an extraordinary achievement, as a humble activist I always cherish her contribution not only to the theatre, but addressing the women’s question in Bangladesh within the limits of the urban paradigm.

Yet even a home-grown Bangladeshi stage performance remained in the Bailey Road theatre halls of Dhaka city and could not reach the women who were suffering from such violence. If Kokilara [played in Bangla] could not reach the general women, how can we think that Eve Ensler’s book The Vagina Monologues is going to be relevant to women here in our country? Vagina Monologues has now turned into an international movement, featuring as a film Until the Violence Stops. This is a documentation of how The Vagina Monologues grew into an international ‘grassroots’ movement called V-Day to stop violence against women and girls. In 2002, eight hundred cities around the world participated in V-Day by staging performances of The Vagina Monologues. These are performances and there is no reason for me to undermine the personal achievement of Eve Ensler. But can it be an international movement? That’s too much to claim for a theatrical performance and directly undermines the achievements and the unique contributions of many other performers around the world and Bangladeshi women such as Ferdousi Mojumdar and others.

Eve Ensler is now known as the founder of V-Day in 2002, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. Following V-Day the One Billion Rising campaign was launched in early 2012 and has been announced to culminate the year-long action on February 14 2013 – Valentine’s Day . It is also the V-Day’s 15th anniversary and therefore activists, writers, thinkers, celebrities and women and men across the world will come together to express their outrage, strike, dance, and RISE in defiance of the injustices women suffer, demanding an end at last to violence against women. Are we celebrating the book or expressing our outrage against violence against women?

Eve Ensler has toured to raise awareness about V-Day’s One Billion Rising campaign  since last year in Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Croatia, Serbia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Guatemala, Peru, Mexico, and the Philippines. Ensler and visited Trivandrum, Mumbai, and Delhi in India, and Dhaka in Bangladesh in January 2013.

It looks as though in Bangladesh this campaign of One Billion Rising will be celebrated with the same slogan of “strike, dance and RISE”. Nevertheless, if some women of Bangladesh think they should be part of it, that’s fine. But when it is set to culminate on Valentine Day – the 14 February, it becomes a cultural and political statement.

There are class issues and cultural resistance against Valentine Day in Bangladesh, which may be for both bad and good reasons from women’s perspective. Nevertheless, it is necessary for women’s movements to engage in these debates rather than impose or accept it uncritically. I am not a multiculturalist and do not intend to play on westerns versus Bangladeshi culture, but I engage with women who complain that V-day celebration is an insult to their culture and equally oppressive for women since commodification of human relations such as love is repugnant and has nothing to contribute to achieve women’s dignity. Such resistance complicates cultural politics in a post-colonial society and state which is also violently imposing development interventions and experiments. It is said in various announcements of One Billion Rising that the goal is to have one billion women and men "dancing, striking, rising" across borders to demonstrate their demand to end the global violence against women. The number 1 billion is also arbitrary and based on a computation from the United Nations statistic that one out of three women on earth will be beaten or raped in their lifetime. Deliberately or not it excludes systemic and developmental violence we spoke of earlier as well as war, commercial and technological manipulation and control of women’s reproductive biology and mutilation of bodies. The net political and cultural effect is to make other violence, no matter the degree of their brutality and virulence, invisible and thus provide a justification for the status quo.

In Bangladesh, Valentine’s Day is celebrated on February 14 as Bishwa Bhalobasha Diboshwith lovers greetings each other with roses, heart-shaped cards and other gifts. Mostly, it is celebrated in the capital city Dhaka and some urban areas, the majority of people, especially women, have absolutely no idea about this day? Globally Saint Valentine's Day, commonly known as Valentine's Day also called Feast of Saint Valentine, a Christian event which is observed on February 14 each year. According to Wikipedia, the day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. By the 15th century, it had evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offeringconfectionery, and sending greeting cards (known as "valentines"). Valentine's Day symbols that are used today include the heart-shaped outline, doves, and the figure of the wingedCupid. Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-producedgreeting cards. In Bangladesh, it is essentially commercialization of love. Women become a ‘victim’ of love expressions by men and are commodified in the advertisements and commercials. One has to remember women become the victims of Eve teasing or acid throwing if they reject love-proposals as happened with Eden Girls college student. HowBishwa Bhalobasha Dibosh can be safe for women when it allows commodification of love and creates the condition to express love offer and thereby potentially lead to sexual violence to women?  It is really an insult to injury to have the One Billion Rising against violence against women on this so-called Bhalobasha Dibosh.

Lastly, I would like to mention that I was watching a talk show on a private TV channel with Eve Ensler and several theatre personalities and women’s rights activists in a programme called Jaitu conducted by a man who was asking questions of those women from a male perspective curious about women’s sexuality. It appeared in the discussions as if the cause of violence against women in Bangladesh is due to silence over sexuality issues, taboo of not uttering some words etc. This show represented a highly elite perspective. The show was essentially a promotion of The Vagina Monologues and Eve Ensler, as if she was going to show us the path with performances how should we act against violence in Bangladesh.

It’s utterly wrong to assume that women’s movement in Bangladesh does not address women’s sexuality but has always argued that it should be included within the resistance against systemic violence. We cannot afford to remain silent on the ground realities and ‘dance’ only to single focused issues.

Farida Akhter

http://www.ubinig.org/