In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Feminism

Trans In Iran

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not Ms. Lauren, nor was meant to be; I am Charles Johnson, guest blogging on Ms. Lauren’s behalf while she takes a much-deserved break. You can normally find me at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

Here’s a fascinating read (thanks, LiveJournal feminist community) from several days ago in the Los Angeles Times, on the growing acceptance of transsexuals in Iran–a move that has been embraced by, of all people, the radical Islamist clerics who also staunchly defend unflinching patriarchy and violent suppression of homosexuality:

In the Islamic Republic of Iran, gay male sex still carries the death penalty and lesbians are lashed, but hundreds of people are having their gender changed legally, bolstered by the blessings of members of the ruling Shiite clergy.

“Approval of gender changes doesn’t mean approval of homosexuality. We’re against homosexuality,” says Mohammed Mahdi Kariminia, a cleric in the holy city of Qom and one of Iran’s foremost proponents of using hormones and surgery to change sex. “But we have said that if homosexuals want to change their gender, this way is open to them.”

Not that it’s easy in Iran. The Islamic Republic remains a fundamentally traditional, conservative society, laced by harsh judgments and strict mores. A blizzard of clerical decrees is unlikely to make a mother eager to see her son become a woman or enlighten leery co-workers who squirm at hearing their colleague’s voice drop a few octaves. And the government’s response is fractured, with some officials remaining opposed to sex change.

“The people our age, they all know and accept us,” says Toumik Martin, a brusque 28-year-old businessman who was born a girl named Anita, leaning in close to be heard over the cacophony of ambiguous tenors bouncing off the waiting room walls. “Our problem is with the parents. They don’t know how to differentiate between transsexuals, gays and lesbians.”

…

Iran isn’t the only Muslim society that appears to be growing more accepting of sex changes while still shunning homosexuality. … But no Muslim society has tackled the question with the open-mindedness of Shiite Iran. That’s probably because the father of the revolution himself, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, penned the groundbreaking fatwas that approved gender reassignment four decades ago.

Khomeini reasoned that if men or women wished so intensely to change their sex, to the point that they believed they were trapped inside the wrong body, then they should be permitted to transform that body and relieve their misery. His opinion had more to do with what isn’t in the Koran than what is. Sex change isn’t mentioned, Khomeini’s thinking went, so there are no grounds to consider it banned.

“There is no reason why not,” says Kariminia, the cleric. “Each human being is the owner of his body, and therefore he can make changes.” … “Islam has recognized the rights of transgender. We can’t say to anybody that they must be a man or a woman,” Kariminia says.

You really should read the whole thing.

I’d just like to add a few slightly pointed, but entirely non-rhetorical, questions. (I have my own opinions on these things but I think that they’re very tricky topics and I want to raise the questions and hopefully provoke some discussion more than push any particular point.)

  1. On the other side of things, some trans activists have tried to argue that critiques of patriarchy ought to be subsumed, or in some places modified, by critiques of a more fundamental form of oppression: the constrictions imposed by the so-called “gender binary.” I wonder what they think about Iran, where trans acceptance is steadily growing and has support among even the most fanatically conservative sectors of society, but where pervasive, thoroughgoing, and violent male supremacy remain widely defended by some of the very same clerics. The rise of Khomeini have made it possible for people who were born as girls to take up life as a man and people who were born as boys to take up life as a woman. But to become a woman still means to be given a chador; while gender identity has become fluid and changeable, gender politics remains the same, and the growing acceptance of trans people in Iran seems to be proceeding without posing any challenge at all to patriarchal norms or traditions. What does that say about whether or not the “gender binary” is really any kind of fundamental explanation for patriarchy (rather than, say, just a symptom of the way that patriarchy happens to be tricked out in certain periods of American and European history)? Not that trans acceptance isn’t important or good enough in its own right to cheer on–it is!–but shouldn’t, well, something more be happening in Iran if the “gender binary” is fundamental in the way that some people have claimed it is?

  2. On the other side of things, the moderate liberal wing of the gay rights movement–Human Rights Campaign and their crew–have repeatedly defended a political strategy of working for legal protections based on sexuality but not gender identity, and have told the trans community and their supporters that they are framing their demands only in terms of sexuality because it’s better to get something than nothing. I wonder whether they feel the same way about the inverted case in Iran. In Iran, the struggle for trans rights is rocky and uncertain, but there is growing acceptance and support from what you might think are the unlikeliest of sources; meanwhile homosexuality remains a capital crime. Political battles on behalf of trans rights are far more likely to succeed than political battles for gay liberation and trans rights together. Should the gay community in Iran just grin and bear it and chip in their support for trans activism in Iran for the good of the Iranian “TLBG community”?

    Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m demanding all-or-nothing politics here, or saying that the surprising acceptance of transsexuals in Iran is bad or even neutral without gay liberation. (The lack of gay liberation is bad, but that’s not the fault of the growing trans-acceptance.) I may be a radical kook, but I also think that piecemeal progress is the only kind of progress that there is. But there’s a difference between what is better than what you have now, and what you should be demanding; the first is always going to be much broader than the second. And the question here for the HRC crowd is how it makes them feel when the shoe is on the other foot, and prominent trans activists are saying things like “Approval of gender changes doesn’t mean approval of homosexuality. We’re against homosexuality,” or “Our problem is with the parents. They don’t know how to differentiate between transsexuals, gays and lesbians”? Yes, we should cheer on whatever victories we win in this world, but when the demands of trans activists in Iran are framed in such a way as to specifically exclude any questioning of violent oppression on the basis of sexuality in favor of sticking to the more politically palatable questions about gender identity, shouldn’t we find that just a bit problematic, and shouldn’t we insist on these points of criticism even while we cheer on what advances the make? And shouldn’t we feel the same way for precisely the same reasons while the reverse is happening in America?

The moron’s guide to feminism

Hello, flute here, not Lauren. Forget the sexes for a moment. Imagine a society split down the middle for another reason. One half more opportunity than the other. One half has more control in the way “things are”. By doing this, the potential of half the population is unrealised and society as a whole is not acheiving what it could, either culturally or economically. In cold terms, talent is being picked from a smaller pool. In the long run everyone is worse off than if the opportunity is given to all. The haves will continue to bias the system against the have nots. After hundreds of years of this the haves no longer consciously realise there is a problem. Now somehow this has fallen on lines of gender. It is deeply entrenched. The change starts when it becomes accepted by the mainstream that there is an imbalance. The mainstream happens to be controlled by men. So instead of getting defensive about the issue, open your eyes and make a difference. For men with daughters, do you really want your children to grow up facing barriers that you never ever faced just because of their gender? Or have you cast them already in the mould of “homemaker” before seeing what they could achieve? The first stage is acceptance of the problem, and in that we have a long long way to go.

Cats later.

Free Rodi Alvarado and all political prisoners!

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not Ms. Lauren, nor was meant to be; I am Charles Johnson, guest blogging on Ms. Lauren’s behalf while she takes a much-deserved break. You can normally find me at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

If you’re not too busy getting hammered with Roxanne and following the latest jots and tittles from the State of the Union, you might want to take some time to keep track of the decade-old case of Rodi Alvarado (thanks, Amnesty International), who has been held in legal limbo for a decade by the Justice Department’s and the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration bureaucracy.

The terrible facts of Rodi Alvarado’s case are undisputed. She fled Guatemala and applied for asylum in the United States in 1995, after suffering ten years of relentless domestic abuse. Her husband Francisco Osorio, a former soldier, attempted to abort their second child by kicking her in the spine, dislocated her jaw, tried to cut her hands off with a machete, kicked her in the genitals, and used her head to break windows and mirrors. Ms. Alvarado sought assistance from the Guatemalan police and the courts — in vain.

As feminists have urged over and over again, the fact that gender violence is acted out in “private” does not mean that it’s not political. Ms. Alvarado fled to the United States seeking asylum from terror that was nominally illegal but nevertheless systematic, motivated by the desire for control, culturally excused, legally ignored, and impossible to escape within the legal and social framework of her home country. To deport her back to Guatemala would be to send her to her death–just as surely as if she were targeted by death squads or a religious dissident with a fatwa on her head. But in spite of some hopeful developments, the immigration bureaucracy–directed by John Ashcroft’s Justice Department–is dithering over whether to stand by Rodi Alvarado’s human rights or to collaborate with her would-be murderer.

A U.S. Immigration Judge granted Ms. Alvarado asylum in 1996, finding that the abuse that she suffered, together with her government’s unwillingness or inability to protect her, constituted persecution. But a series of subsequent decisions have left her in legal limbo for years. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) appealed her grant of asylum, and in 1999, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) reversed the grant of asylum. In 2001, Attorney General Janet Reno vacated the decision, proposed regulations to recognize gender-related persecution claims, and directed the BIA to decide the case again after the proposed regulations became final. Those regulations never became final, however, since Reno left office soon afterward. Attorney General Ashcroft announced in March 2003 that he would make a final decision in Rodi Alvarado’s asylum case.

Although he had taken over the case nearly two years ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft has now declined to decide whether to grant asylum to Rodi Alvarado, a Guatemalan battered wife. It is still uncertain whether Ms. Alvarado will be allowed to remain in the United States or be deported to Guatemala. Attorney General Ashcroft was expected to issue a ruling that would have had wide ramifications in other cases where women seek asylum for gender-related persecution, like threats of honor killing. The Department of Homeland Security had issued a legal brief formally advising the Attorney General to uphold asylum for Ms. Alvarado.

Rodi Alvarado’s case prompted the U.S. government to issue proposed regulations that will instruct immigration judges on how to deal with such cases. Those regulations have not yet been issued in final form. Attorney General Ashcroft sent Ms. Alvarado’s case back to the same court from which he took it nearly two years ago, the Board of Immigration Appeals. He ordered the BIA to reconsider the case in light of the new regulations, after they are finally issued.

Rodi Alvarado remains in limbo, still unable to petition for her children to join her, although she has spent a decade in the United States without seeing them.

There is no excuse for the Justice Department’s foot-dragging in Rodi Alvarado’s case. The personal really is political; when women face systematic violence and terror, that they cannot escape within their home countries, they must be able to find safe haven across borders. While the United States government proudly talks up freedom and an end to terror to the rest of the world, it must begin by standing for women’s freedom, and an end to gender terror. The over 50,000 letters and messages sent by Amnesty International members and other concerned citizens have helped keep Rodi Alvarado’s case alive and kept her from being deported. While she is held captive by the immigration-control machine in the United States, what could she be called other than a political prisoner? John Ashcroft and the Board of Immigration Appeals is doing nothing less than holding her captive while they deliberate over whether or not to recognize the assaults against her and the threats against her life are politically real. What reason is there for still quibbling about it 10 years later, other than the fact that Rodi Alvarado is a woman, and she was terrorized and assaulted by her politically protected husband.

Rodi Alvarado is a political refugee and today she is a political prisoner while the immigration inquisitors try to determine whether her certain death should matter to them or not. Goodbye to all that.

Free Rodi Alvarado!

Free all political prisoners!

Relax, the battle is won

There is a perception in the Australian media (yes, its Flute here again, not Lauren) perperuated mainly by right wing women that there is no need for feminism anymore, if that is the case then why:
* In 1966 there were 32% of women in full time work, in 1999 this had risen to a startling 34%
* Women hold 72% of part time jobs
* There are 60 female members of federal parliament, 164 men
* Breast feeding is still taboo in public places
* Overall, women earn an average of 67% of male wages. If you exclude part time work this rises to just 81%
* In Australia only 1.3% of executive directors are women
* 28% of women have experience sexual harrassment in the workplace
* There are adverts on the TV to tell blokes to stop hitting their partners…
* …Because 23% of women who have been in a de facto or married relationship have experienced violence.

I’d be interested to know how these figures compare with the US.

By the way I see that the Pope is not so ill after all. Maybe he is just worried that because he lives in a fundamentalist state where there is no democracy that the Holy See might be next target on the list of the coalition of the willing. I wonder what its like becoming Pope. One minute you’re just an average Joe cardinal, then as soon as the smoke changes color, you become infallible. Is there some sort of angelly orchestra thing that accompanies this moment of transformation into someone who can never be beaten in Trivia Pursuit? Instead of the catholic church collecting money from parishoners, why don’t they just send the Pope to a few horseraces with a fat wad of cash. Or stick him on the Wheel of Fortune. Or play a few crap games in Vegas. They’re onto him in the casinos, last time I saw a sign saying, “No card counting, no electronic devices, no cameras, no Holy Fathers”.

Bombing for Choice

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not Ms. Lauren, nor was meant to be; I am Charles Johnson, guest blogging on Ms. Lauren’s behalf while she takes a much-deserved break. You can normally find me at Rad Geek People’s Daily.

While doing a bit of Googling for a citation of the decision in Roe v. Wade, I was reminded of a rather unpleasant fact: anti-abortion nuts have, up to this point, done a pretty good job at getting their agitprop ranked above factual information about Roe v. Wade and abortion in web searches. (On a related topic, see Crisis Pregnancy Centers Move Online.) As of 2 February 2005, the top search result for “Roe v. Wade” on Google (the one you’ll get from “I Feel Lucky”) is not the text of the case; it’s an anti-choice advocacy site called RoevWade-dot-org (I won’t link it here, lest it throw off the Google Bombing) — a one-stop shop for anti-abortion myths such as Post-Abortion Syndrome, the abortion-breast cancer link, and more, along with a heaping helping of wit and wisdom from everyone from Feminists for Life to Dr. James Dobson. You can find similar wingnut sites at the top of many other abortion-related Google searches.

Therefore, I propose that we do something about it. Specifically, I suggest we start throwing bombs.

Google Bombs.

There’s a Google Bombing afoot on the queries Roe v. Wade and abortion to knock the wingnuts off the top position and promote objective, factual, and useful information for people searching on these terms. You can find more information on how you can help at Rad Geek People’s Daily. So…

Anti-abortion ideologues beware: I’m promoting objective, factual information on:

You can too. Join me in Bombing for Choice.

Update 2005-02-02 4:04pm: Broken link back to the Bombing for Choice page fixed! ~RG

More than just a woman’s issue

While I’m on this tirade about the abortion “debate” its important to remember that this issue concerns more than purely women’s rights. Let me make this abundantly clear. The cutting of government funding, or restriction in any way of abortions will not stop those with money from undergoing a procedure, that would be beyond the reach of a person with the same need but not the means. You change the system so that is based on your wallet rather than your need. It is a totally abhorrent social divide that you would come to expect from the right of the political spectrum. What is disturbing is that many on the left also hold anti-abortion views and forget that it is an issue of social equity. A woman of means can either fork out to have it done properly, or go to a jurisdiction where the same restrictions do not apply. Those women without the means are either forced to go full term (which causes a whole other bag of problems) or to get it done on the cheap illegally and risk serious complications, even death.

Anyway, I hope I haven’t bored Lauren’s regular readers, I’m usually a bit more lighthearted than this, but the news just came back to the boil today and got me all fired up. Luckily I do have a couple of cats that you’ll see on Friday.

Tomorrow: Look on the bright side, its not just American women that are second class.

Abortion Debate in Australia

Hopefully the other guest bloggers will be able to maintain the US side of things, as I get my fill of depression from the Australian media alone. If I have to absorb the evil doings of a nation roughly 15 times the size (in population) I think I would end up giving the toaster a waterproof check in the bath. Its an exciting time in Australia for all things female. Only yesterday some politicians and church leaders have informed the public that we are reopening the debate about abortion! We don’t tend to have the same manic nutters blockading abortion clinics here so this came as a bit of a shock. Unfortunately in this kind of “debate” my lines of sorting the good guys from the bad buys becomes slightly blurred. It’s what’s apparently called a matter of conscience, which means there is no party line for the middle aged blokes to follow. So some of the good guys (the left of centre) become bad and some of the bad guys (the right wing lot) don their white cowboy hats and ride of into the sunset with much applause. As a simple atheist it all becomes a bit confusing. Now I have to consider the religous beliefs of a candidate as well as their economic and social polices before voting, in a system in which there is supposed to be a separation of church and state. In any other form of employment, discrimination along religious grounds is illegal, but here I am being forced to play the bigot because some of our politicians fail to recognise that religion is placing belief above reason and has no part in running a country. Bush isn’t the only leader with a slight hankering for the bible.God's finger on the buttonThe future may be bleak as it so happens that the guy in charge of our health system, Tony Abbott, is a raving anti-abortion loon who makes the Pope seem like a harmless old commie fellow in a nice white car. On the cards may be a change to the Medicare system so that the government will not fund abortions. At least the abortion clinics will have a more select clientele with no poor people hanging around. And how did this debate start? One of our Senators (Eric Abetz – also known as Erica Bets) received an impartial survey not from Gallup or Zogby, but our very own Carrie’s mum organisation – The Festival of Light. This was just a few short weeks after our last election which historically handed over both houses of parliament to the Coalition (right wing, John Howard etc). So it was only the result of unchecked politcal power, and the rise of the Christian right as a serious lobby group that made some politicians decide that after 8 years of calm (and a proper house of review), now is the time for debate. I can’t believe I got through that without swearing.

Two Must-Reads

Tired of your musings on parenthood being dismissed as so much fluff? Clancy writes in response to a NYTimes article on parenting blogs for which she was interviewed.

I was interviewed for this story because part of my dissertation research focuses on women’s weblogs, many of whom are mothers. When David Hochman was talking to me about the story, he used the words “narcissistic” and “confessional” to describe parents’ weblogs, albeit in a questioning way (“Aren’t they just kind of narcissistic and confessional?” that kind of thing). As I told him about my dissertation, I tried so hard to explain to and persuade him that “baby blogs” are often — almost always — so much more than “the new baby book,” that they’re a way for parents to express what’s on their minds, but children figure in prominently, obviously.

The Well-Timed Period’s “A Government Guide to Reducing Abortion” dissects the language of President Bush’s recent phone call from Camp David to the anti-abortion protesters gathered at the White House near the anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

according to our most benevolent leaders the way to reduce abortion is to: 1) enact some more laws that don’t work; and 2) lie to women, and offer to increase their intraop risks. [If some of the anesthesiologists out there could blog a little about the difference between administering anesthesia to a pregnant patient vs. a nonpregnant one, the inherent difficulties and risks, drug delivery to the fetus, and what anesthetizing a fetus during an abortion procedure would entail, that would be most instructive.]

To reduce the number of abortions, instead of misguided politics and dreamy religion, how about some science? Emergency contraception (estimated to prevent 800,000 abortions per year). Education [one based on facts, not wishful thinking]. Increasing the availability of existing birth control methods to American women. Encouraging R&D of new methods.

Her look at the president’s speech itself is invaluable. Please read the rest.

Revisiting the Porn Debate

Chyng Sun attends the annual Las Vegas Adult Entertainment Expo for AlterNet:

Pornography encourages people to disregard others’ pain for one’s own pleasure. Many people I interviewed acknowledged that, based on their own experience and knowledge of the human body, certain sex acts they’ve watched in films likely would have been painful for the female performers. However, they argued that since the performers were paid, it was not the viewers’ concern, and they acknowledged that they get aroused watching it. That mentality helps create a world in which a producer can brag about having originated a popular video series that shows women gagging during forceful oral sex.

Although pornography is often rationalized as a celebration of women’s sexuality and liberation, some gonzo pornographers were direct about their anger and contempt (or their imagined customers’) for women. When asked why he used certain brutal sex acts in his films, one producer replied that when a man gets angry at his wife, he can imagine she is the one being violated.

Pornography has been primarily made by men and used by men. Men watch these videos for their own sexual stimulation. Men also told me that they tried acts they learned from pornography with – or on – their sexual partners. However, as pornography becomes increasingly mainstream, it is not surprising that women’s use of pornography is rising. Pornographers are eager to explore the female market, with some claiming to make women-centered pornography. However, looking at the repetitive content, whether male-centered or female-centered, the essential message is the same: All women want sex all the time, in whatever fashion men want them.

There isn’t much differentiating this article from previous criticisms of the porn indistry except for a couple of points. The first is that “Alberto Gonzales told senators he intended to make obscenity prosecutions a focus of his tenure as the nation’s chief prosecutor,” perhaps opening the doors for another round of the porn wars, a la former Attorney General Edwin Meese III.

The second is this, an observation that is largely missing from previous debates that I have read and participated in:

We should be afraid of government forces interested in repressing sexual expression. But we also should be afraid of the influence of misogynist pornography. These two fears are not mutually exclusive and can co-exist. Our fear of the former shouldn’t stop us from critiquing the latter.

I personally don’t want to revive the porn debate unless it is to ask why this is more socially acceptable than this. Most Americans would be disturbed, if not made indignant, by the most obvious of answers.