Long Post 12/1

In each of the texts assigned, the authors focus on women’s issues globally and how U.S. military occupation in other nations, which purports to help those women in states of submission, often imposes its own patriarchal ideologies in place of current oppressive systems. In Cynthia Enloe’s chapter “Updating the Gendered Empire,” the author opens with a discussion of a comparison between contemporary U.S. and previous empires, such as those military powerhouses like ancient Rome, China, Persia, and Great Britain, among many others. With the slew of military invasions including those in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 following the earlier invasions previously discussed in Yugoslavia and Liberia, is the US today considered an empire? Further, Enloe considers the role of women in these empires and says in order to uncover women’s roles, which are crucial to the maintenance of powerful empires, we must observe empire-building structures within parlors, brothels, tea plantations, factories and other “private” places (Enloe 270).

Enloe explains an exercise she completed with several groups of people, including Canadian women of the Innu community living near NATO air force bases and Japanese groups in Okinawa and Tokyo. The exercise involved the people imagining themselves to be a particular woman playing a role in either “sustaining, questioning, or resisting” U.S. military occupation and explicating that experience as that woman in a first-person narrative. From the exercise, it was clear that while there were a variety of women with different societal roles and functions and different personalities and attitudes towards the U.S. military bases, the message was the same for all: international alliances depend on women to maintain their roles as passive agents in an international power structure dominated by masculine supremacy (276).

These unequal roles in international alliances become even more evident when Enloe investigates the status of women in Afghanistan under the U.S. occupation today. She talks about the deputy minister, who, though she wielded much responsibility as a woman in the Afghan post-Taliban government, still put herself and her family in danger due to her role in government as a woman. A woman not used to smiling, the deputy minister gained the “luxury” to smile while in Tokyo, talking to Japanese specialists about those topics that interested her like women’s and girls’ health, education, politics and the economy (278). This example prompts Enloe to look into the gendering of the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan. She explains that the occupation poses problems with security, since the U.S. several times rejected extending peacekeeping activities outside of the city of Kabul, thus endangering women to move outside the city walls to pursue teaching posts. Further, masculinized authority roles pose problems with danger and combat, as peacekeeping was left to UN troops, while combat was left to U.S. soldiers. And, to make this war justifiable to Americans, the threat women faced on a daily basis in Afghanistan made people sympathetic of the dangers they undeservedly faced. However, Enloe points out that this view that U.S. occupation will help elevate the status of women is naïve; in fact, many so-called allies of the U.S. military are often known to be sexist “warlords” (281). These warlords, that comprise the Northern Alliance and on whom the U.S. greatly depends for ground combat, are a masculinized group of soldiers comprised of all males in opposition to modernization (281). Further, these imperialist strategies of securing unequal masculinized alliances has only “hobbled, not facilitated, the genuine liberation of most of Afghanistan’s women and girls,” as these allies held the same views as those in the Taliban, namely that women and girls ought to be subdued and controlled (283).

Further, Enloe explains the result of such masculinized occupation as impacting the subsequent drafting of a constitution in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. While women had a relatively significant presence in the constitutional convention (seven out of thirty-five appointed members), their wishes to implement provisions in the constitution that ensured their full liberation as females in a sexist society were dashed when the final constitution pledged “that Afghanistan’s future law-making will be ‘informed by’ the principles of Islam, which when interpreted by conservatives, treat such gendered equality as anathema” (289).

The same masculinization is present in the “back-door” dealings, including the formation of the post invasion Iraqi Governing Council. Of the three hundred people selected to represent this group, only five were women, Enloe points out (293). This had serious repercussions for the representation of women in the nation, especially in the formation of a constitution. Women also can’t express their discontent with this base status and their condemnation of violence against women because the masculinized threat intimidates them daily. For instance, when the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq spoke out against violence towards women, the lack of female demonstrators prompted one Iraqi to ask, “’Where are all the women?’” (299). And when the final group was selected to draft a constitution, all twenty-five members were men, demonstrating both Iraq and the United States’ acceptance that the governing ideologies of the reordered nation ought to reflect gendered roles.

Enloe stresses that countries should not seek unequal international alliances that reflect solely masculine alliances and expect women to accept masculine military occupation, but instead should pursue a cross-national alliance of equals (303). This, Enloe explains, will solidify solidarity among people cross nationally as well as prompt each party to question the actions and motives of their own nation and military and its impact on women. Cross-national feminist interactions are creating a newer awareness of the unfair dealings in the world and how it impacts a woman’s role as the oppressed. Gendered structures, and in particular masculinization, according to Enloe, are crucial for empire-building and military expansion and viewing the role of women in society is a view into how this is accomplished. Without a view into these topics with gender in mind, Enloe states, there is no opportunity for us to change the structures that limit human well being and flourishing.

In “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,” author Lila Abu-Lughod also examines international justice and wonders whether the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan, for instance, can truly help liberate women. She argues that in order for liberation of Muslim women to occur, we ought to appreciate the differences among women in the world, keeping in mind the various conditions under which women live, and consider that our own responsibilities to reach global justice often shapes this liberation process, often for the worse. Abu-Lughod says that following the September 11th attacks, she, as a Muslim intellectual, was posed with many questions about women in Islam, an obsession based on the belief that knowing something about the culture of the region and treatment of women would somehow explain why the attacks occurred or why the Afghan governments had been overtaken by corrupt forces (Abu-Lughod 784).

Abu-Lughod explains that this obsession with the position of women in Islam and Afghanistan ignores the complex issues of global politics and as a result creates an artificial divide that looks something like “us versus Muslims” (784). Further, U.S. speeches announcing the liberation of women as a result of military occupation within the country reflect contemporary colonialism that in the past sought to “free” women from their male oppressors, “white men saving brown women from brown men” (784). But if American military occupation is freeing women, why are Afghan women still donning the oppressive symbol, commonly thought of as central to the “Taliban-and-the-terrorists” form of submission, the burqa. Abu-Lughod points to the ethnic invention of the burqa, which sought to signify a woman’s respectability and modesty and to indicate her moral responsibility to the home and family. Since this is the case, it is no wonder that such a common dress code, to which women give little thought, would not all of a sudden be thrown out the door when the U.S. began occupying Afghanistan (785). Veiling for Muslim women, she describes, is a custom just as is our unspoken dress codes for weddings, funerals, and everyday life. Further, the obsession with the veil, Abu-Lughod points out, should be given up to consider the varying conditions and issues facing women in the Muslim world today (786).

In addition, Abu-Lughod argues, we must examine what in fact we are supporting when we praise U.S. occupation in Afghanistan and consider the core parts to human justice, which may not include liberation from a piece of clothing, but perhaps instead the right to water, food and property that allows all women and men to live well. We must take into consideration cultural difference when we consider larger, more complicated issues and we must change our attitudes to the U.S.’s role in “liberation” (787). While she does not argue for traditional cultural relativism, she does argue that different social, political and historical circumstances shape the way in which people grow and come to understand their place in the world. As a result, we must respect different cultures and how these people will choose, for themselves, what constitutes true liberation (788). Further, she argues, it is problematic to even see the Afghan women as people in need of salvation (788). This attitude implies Western superiority, which arrogantly purports to save Afghan women from the oppressive culture in which they live. To avoid this problem, Abu-Lughod argues, we ought to “use a more egalitarian language of alliances, coalitions, and solidarity, instead of salvation” (789).

Charlotte Bunch in “Whose Security?” agrees that the U.S. military occupation in Afghanistan is a projection of supremacy in the face of the evil Middle East and argues that women and feminists in American today have little voice in shaping international policy, which was, during the early stages of occupation, dominated by the masculine and corporate-driven administration of George W. Bush. She argues that our current foreign policy in the U.S. does not open up opportunities to build solidarity among women cross-nationally. In particular, the U.S. response to 9/11 has taken the country into war, rather than other directions that could have created greater security and global consciousness of multilateralism (Bunch 2). Further, the US military response to the 9/11 attacks, according to Bunch, has created more problems for women globally, curtailing human rights “in the name of ‘national security’” (2). Further, it has functioned to condemn Islam as an evil institution, rather than fundamentalist groups worldwide, which threaten the lives of countless women globally (3).

In addition, Bunch argues that the U.S. involvement in the Middle East has rejected the observance of human rights in the name of war on terrorism. While Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights suggested, quite intelligently, that rather than the U.S. engage in a war on terrorism, the events of 9/11 ought to be tried as international crimes, the U.S. and the Bush administration in particular sought to hinder her appointment to a second term (4). Moreover, this opposition shows the target of not only one who has in mind international human rights, but also of one who stands to represent women’s interests throughout the world. Bunch wonders why feminists have not had a great impact on global relations and argues that we ought to shape our own government from a woman’s perspective if we want to effectively improve the lives of people in other nations. Therefore, feminist activism in our nation, Bunch suggests, must keep in mind women’s positions in our country and worldwide in order to change the structures than keep women in a state of submission.

Cynthia Enloe, "Updating the Gendered Empire."
Lila Abu-Lughod, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others."
Charlotte Bunch, "Whose Security?"