"Makers": a great feminist website

I just discovered this web site: "Makers." It's a video platform for interviews with "trailblazing" women, and from the few that I've watched, it's pretty awesome. Enjoy!

The Wari

Wari. It is the word used to refer to Indonesian transvestites. The word has its roots in the Indonesian words for woman (wanita) and man (pria). I was first introduced to Wari through an article in Vice Magazine. I enjoyed the article so much I wanted to share it with you all.

However, before you clink on Vice’s link, a disclaimer is warranted: Vice is explicit and raw. A friend calls it tripe – something, especially speech or writing, that is false or worthless; rubbish. Please resist the urge to write-off Hannah Brooks’s article because it appears in Vice. Although Warias, Come Out And Plaayayay: Muslim Indonesian Transvestites are Persecuted but Beautiful is arguably as raw and explicit as the magazines’ content, Brooks gives the reader a rare opportunity to meet real people with complex issues that we would otherwise never have the privilege to meet. The intricacies of the people in her article are not hidden behind the formalities of a politically correct interview or writing style. Rather, Brooks uses the informality of her writing to recreate her interactions with the wari and honor who they are.

Before discussing what I found interesting about the article, it will be helpful to clarify key terms: transvestite and transgender. A transvestite is an individual who cross dresses, but are comfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth. Transgendered refers to an individual who has Gender Identity Disorder. Brooks never explains the distinction, which is extremely important to the identity of the wari.

Transvestites are nothing new. So neither are Wari. They suffer the same social ills as other transvestites: discrimination (as Brooks was informed, some cemeteries have a policy of excluding waris), violence (many wari make a living through prostitution, and unfortunately violence is a real possibility), and health concerns (HIV rates are high because “prostitution, scarcity of and lack of education about condoms, and lack of access to drugs needed to contain the virus” run ramped in the wari community).

However, I was unfamiliar with was the particularities of the wari’s plight, specifically the intense clash many experience between their identity and their religion. Wari push gender norms, which challenges the fundamental practices and beliefs of Islam. Yet, many wari are practicing Muslims. To learn more about the wari, Brooks visits a school for Islamic studies specifically tailored for the wari in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

The school was founded by Maryani, “a mountain-size transsexual who eats with the ferocity of a man just released from a POW camp but applies eyeliner better than any woman” Brooks ever met. The school is called Senin-Kamis, which refers to the two days of the week the school is in session: Monday and Thursday. Senin-Kamis provides waris a safe place to pray. During prayer, Muslims are segregated by gender. Although wari can attend prayers as either men or women, participating in prayer as a female is not all that easy. While visiting Indonesia for the piece, Brooks met only one wari who attend prayer as a man. The others refrain from doing so because it makes them uncomfortable. A wari’s identity pushes the boundaries of gender, which in turn pushes them from their practice. Senin-Kamis provides waris a place to practice their religion free of negativity, and also serves as a safe haven and place to gather.

Brooks’s observation of the wari “beautification” was also a point of intense interest for me. In addition to clothing and make-up, Brooks found that the distinctive wari look is “magnified by silicone injections to their faces and breasts.” They do it because they want a more “softer, feminine” look. Younger wari claim older wari get boob jobs to increase their sex appeal. The face and breast jobs, and the stated reasons are not what shock me. What shocks me is the procedure itself. Brooks was allowed to observe a wari get silicon breast injections. Her description was unsettling to me. “The breast injection takes place in a boiling, unsterilized room … A glass jar of wobbly silicone appears along with ten thick syringes. Then a pair of anonymous hands performs the job with the confidence of someone who’s done this many times before. Even so, some of the syringes get stuck or clogged as the silicone is injected, and it takes a fair amount of force to push the stopper through. There are no bags: The silicone is forced straight under the skin.”

My initial response is a first-world response: “What!?! No gloves!?! No sterile room!?! STRAIGHT UNDER THE SKIN!?!” I understand these women are working with limited resources and procedures such as these are not necessarily at the top of their priority list. However, my heart is wounded by how these women are hurting their health because of their limited resources.

When Brooks asked Maryani if she would get a sex change, I was somewhat startled by her response. She believes that “she doesn’t have the right to change what God has given her.” Maryani’s response leaves me speechless. On one level, I understand what Maryani is saying: she believes God gave her certain things for a reason. What I cannot even begin to wrap my head around is the internal conflict (and the accompanying dialogue) arising from (1) believing you are a woman in a man’s body, and (2) believing that you should not change what God has given you, which happens to be the exact opposite of what you believe yourself to be. The spiritual strength and perseverance women like Maryani exhibit in their daily existence is breathtaking.

After reading Maryani’s response, I found it interesting that the Iran government has subsidized sex changes in an effort to prevent the sin of man on man sex. For example, in 1997 Maryam Hatoon Molkara received assistance from the Iran government to obtain a sex change. The New York Times article also touches upon how the Iran government has slowly opened up to the notion of sex changes.

In searching for more information on wari, I found an article by Prodita Sabarini informative. Lastly, keep your eyes out for Tales of the Wari, a documentary that is to be released soon. Although the film is no yet released, I strongly suggest checking out the trailer or the director, Kathy Huang, discussing the film for more insight into the lives of the waris.

Ani Difranco's remake of "which side are you on"

One of my favorite songs from the civil uprisings of the 1960s is Pete Seeger's "Which Side Are You On." Until today, I always thought that Mr. Seeger himself wrote the song. I was mistaken.

In actuality, "Which Side Are You On" was written in 1931 by a woman, Florence Reece. According to her wikipedia page, the song was written during a protest organized by Reece's husband, Sam Reece, on behalf of the United Mine Workers of America.  Mr. Seeger discovered the song in 1940, and his group, the Almanac Singers, recorded it that same year.

Many artists have covered the song since the Almanac Singers. Today, Ani Difranco released an album, using the song as the title track, which features Mr. Seeger, just for good measure. I have seen Ms. Difranco on tour several times, and on two of the occasions she performed different versions of the song. This version, I think, brings feminism to the forefront in an especially apt way (after, of course, Ms. Difranco makes a few digs against Reaganomics and the 1%). Her most relevant lyrics are:

my mother was a feminist
she taught me to see
that the road to ruin is paved
with patriarchy 

so, let the way of the women
guide democracy
from plunder and pollution
let mother earth be free 

feminism ain't about women
no, that's not who it is for
it's about a shifting consciousness
that'll bring an end to war 

so listen up you fathers
listen up you sons
which side are you on now
which side are you on

Here's a live version of the entire song, recorded live in December.

Ms. Difranco's rendition of the song shows that feminism has a place in the social struggles we are seeing today such as Occupy and gay rights.

The Gift of Gender, Part Deux

Yesterday morning I sat in one of my sister's eminently comfortable lounge chairs in her Washington, DC, home, in wavering stages of wakefulness because of a protracted bout of jetlag and post-exam fatigue. It is a uniquely anguishing cocktail of symptoms, and does little help for sleep. Please try to avoid it where possible.

So there I sat, coffee in hand, marveling at the whirl of childhood vim and hysteria. The stage was set in the form of a Christmas tree bedecked with various discordant designs of glossy paper. Expectation weighed portentously in the air. Chris, my sister's husband, held bleary vigil over the mound of gifts. My sister, Catrin, tended vainly to the children (Lucy, 6, Mimi, 4), who were bouncing up and down in their pajamas, as if little electric bolts shot through their feet every few seconds. Wide-eyed, they awaited a bounty of gifts -- a bequeathment of generosity so excessive as to create, by my lights, decades of subtle psychological damage.

I had in previous years seen both of my sisters in various stages of the gift-buying process: the planning, buying, organizing, wrapping, and so on. I noticed that, no discredit intended to my bothers-in-law, that this was quintessentially my sisters' role. I saw it yesterday morning too. I looked back to my childhood, and remarked at (in the post-Santa years, before which my parents of course had nothing to do with Christmas) the buying and the anxiety over who gets what, and the tending carefully to children's myriad and almost unknowingly selfish "wants." All of this, I saw now with crystal clarity, was my mother's work. Period. And without having to do a study on the subject I would wager that this is the case for most American families and most American mothers.

Some of it may be explained by the fact that many families' private/domestic spheres still belong very much to the mom. Unfair forces still continue to keep many mothers limited to the private sphere of family life, and so gift giving, then, may be but one extension of that world. The parental "sorting process" --an interesting dynamic we covered briefly in one of our class's early discussions-- may also play a part in explaining the mother's dominance of the gift-buying domain. Fathers may end up being the caretaker of the trash, or of temperamental DVD players; mothers may end up in charge of dinners, the garden, or furniture arrangement. These are admittedly hopelessly obvious stereotypes, but it is remarkable how that sorting process often works with such consistency. Maybe gift-buying falls in Mom's hands, but maybe it does so for no greater reason than the presumption (likely flawed) that they are better at it.

At any rate, I have noted time and again my woeful skills at gift-buying. I have always pegged it to my brain --my quixotic and distracted intellectual musings, my acute lack of insight into my friends' evolving "wish lists." I might be misled into thinking that women are just better at this, using as very limited evidence my mother, my girlfriend, and my two sisters. They are all whizzes at it. Yet my brother also has a knack of divining intuitively what someone wants or what they might like. Clearly, then, this is about nurture and not about nature. In my sister's family, at least, Christmas gift-buying lands in her lap. She's good at it, yes, and she clearly enjoys putting thought an love into her children (not just on Christmas and not just in the form of presents). Yet I could sense her relief that this morning spelled the end of another harrowing month-plus of planning and execution.

Now, this isn't what I really intended to write about. I actually wanted to write about gender roles for children, seen in the way we buy things for children. Yet it was covered already, by one of my clever classmates, here. Even worse it was a thoughtful and good read! At least if she had done a rotten job of it, I could rationalize getting around the preemption. Alas, so be it. I will add my two cents anyway.

When deciding what to buy "our" children should we mix it up, and go for so-called "gender neutral" gifts, and allow them to move naturally to those kinds of toys they prefer? On one level, that would appear to make sense, in that there are some things all children love (children's books, DVDs) and there are some things (dolls, princess dresses, footballs, for example) where a child will rarely, though of course not never, be happy to receive and to play with both. The question is, which way will the children lean? According to gender assumptions about pink, dolls, swords, army men, etc.? Or according to the assuption that kids like all kinds of things, and if we allow the kids to choose, then the parents can follow the lead. That is what I think Rose Sawyer was getting at in her post, and it is a great idea to follow the kids' leads.

This article, here, makes a similar point in decrying parents who reflexively suppress or turn a blind eye to a son who takes a liking to playing with dolls, or a daughter who wants to get a mohawk. The article talks about how more and more parents are allowing their children to run with it, and are supporting their choice. If we assume that there ave always been kids who wanted to cross genders by not falling in lockstep with the other football-loving boys --and if we assume that gender proscriptions hurt their ability to be who they want to be with their identities and with their toys-- then removing those restrictions will alllow more fluid toy-gender identities to emerge. Moreover, writes the author of the article, not only should it not be a "bad" thing for a boy to want a barbie, but unnecessarily worried parents should also cool their jets about exactly what that means anyway. A child psychologist interviewed for the column states that kids go through various stages of interest with their toys. It often says only that they like to mix it up, not that they will be straight, or gay, or transgender.

I found that insight a helpful way to get unfairly worried parents to sit back and let things happen, even if they are not yet willing to be enlightened enough to allow their children to be who they intuitively want to be. My niece, Sylvia, asked if I would play with her. I said sure. Little did I know that her main and almost only playmate is her rambunctious older Brother, Alfred, whose sole apparent purpose is to construct elaborate games involving knights, soldiers, and murder-by-sword. So I found it a bit jarring when Sylvia, a lovely little thing who looks as if primed to enter a Janis Joplin look-alike casting, said "Let's play WAR!!" and proceeded to chase me about the apartment with a plastic dagger.

However, I also noted, as may others have, just how uncanny it is for most --and I stress, most, not all-- kids to gravitate to toys according to these strict gender norms. The boys will so often find great glee, without any solicitation, upon building a fort, or throwing balls, and the little girl will so often want to play with dolls (case in point: Lucy and Mimi, who, every two hours or so, seem to demand being changed into a different princess dress!). Still, the fact that most kids act this way proves nothing. Articles like the Ny Times on, and Rose Sawyer's post, alert parents to their responsibility with their children, who can sense the foreboding pressure of parental gender expectations. A great way to understand the dynamic is to listen to his wonderful gem from the 1970s: It is a bit of poignant nostalgia, a great song/skit, from the pathbreaking children's LP, Free to Be You and Me. The skit is called "William Wants a Doll." You should listen to it. I grew up with this album. It is etched forever in my psyche.

enjoy the rest of the holidays all!

TEDxWomen

In a post last month, we learned about Girl Effect, an organization dedicated to empowering girls around the world in an effort to end poverty. In an insightful reply, RoseSawyer highlighted the "The No Problem Problem" in America. People in the United States, she explained, often fail recognize the need for female empowerment on the domestic front. We forget that the same techniques used to inspire confidence in women abroad can greatly improve the lives of women at home. Agreeing with Rose’s statement, I made a note to look out for any news relating to female empowerment in the United States.

A few weeks later, during some late-night procrastination on Facebook, I noticed that a friend posted a link with a message encouraging her network to listen to an inspiring speech for an event called TEDxWomen. As soon as I clicked on the link, I realized that I had found just what I was looking for. It was a piece of empowering, feminist heaven--and all right there on my computer screen.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is an organization dedicated to spreading ideas. Started in 1984, the organization hosts conferences, talks, and “TEDx” projects that provide communities with the ability to host their own, local, independent TED-like events. Central to each event is the accessibility of ideas. To achieve this purpose, each speaker essentially delivers the speech of a lifetime in eighteen minutes or less, and then the organization does its best to make these talks and ideas accessible to others.

TEDxWomen represents one of the independently organized efforts. On December 1st, women from around the world came together to discuss a variety of issues relevant to women and the female experience. Several videos of the event are accessible on the TEDxWomen website at http://tedxwomen.org/videos/. I encourage you to watch them.

The speeches that I watched inspired me to do more than simply discuss the challenges women face—as we did so productively over the course of the Feminist Legal Theory course. They inspired me to do everything from encouraging my little sister to use her vocal talents to sing about the struggles of girls and women like the Girl Up/Project Girl Collective, to thinking more about using the interdependence created by technology to aid other women.

Although criticized for its failure to readily recognize the event as feminist, the events and website provide a space for people to empower women both at home and abroad. By acknowledging the power of women to insight positive change, hopefully more women will volunteer to help each other, to promote inclusiveness, to lead, or to just be nice.

The Sound of Music- A Different Perspective

Ever since I was a little girl, The Sound of Music has been my favorite holiday movie. I had always thought that the story of a young nun, Maria, who leaves the abbey to serve as a governess to the 7 unruly Von Trapp children was a rather innocuous story. While the movie will always be a classic, I noticed this Christmas that several songs in the movie carry many a sexist undertone. In this piece, I think it is fitting to take a new look at these epic songs from a feminist perspective.

The first song, "Sixteen Going on Seventeen," is a duet between Liesl, the youngest of the Von Trapp children, and her boyfriend, Ralph. In this song, Leisl replies to Ralph's serenade with, "I am sixteen, going on seventeen, innocent as a rose. Bachelor dandies, drinkers of brandy, what do I know of those? Totally unprepared am I, to face a world of men. Timid and scared and shy am I, of things beyond my ken." In this famous scene, Leisl is wooed by a "man" one year her senior while dancing in a gazebo at night. As a child, I knew all of the lyrics to this song, and never saw anything fundamentally wrong with this seemingly innocent picture. Upon reflection, I realized that Leisl's character, and the words in this song, paint a different portrait then one I had once seen as a child.

First of all, it is important to contextualize my commentary. Obviously The Sound of Music was produced at a time when gender expectations and roles were drastically different, and the movie is set in a pre-World War II Austria. Leisl is portrayed as a hopeless romantic, enchanted with a young soldier. Though there may be nothing inherently bad about depicting Leisl as a chaste and angelic teenager, I believe that this unrealistic portrayal of the "virgin" teenager is detrimental to young women. I have been searching to figure out what exactly bothers me about Leisl's character, and it appears that I have found the answer. My reasoning is quite circular, but I have found why Leisl's "innocent" character can have a damaging influence on women. As an impressionable child, the words "innocent as a rose" resonated with me. Since I first saw the movie when I was 6 years old, the image of a virtuous Leisl stayed with me for years. The problem with Leisl is that the idea of a flawless virgin at the age of 16, "unfamiliar" with the "world of men", doesn't exist. And it doesn't take a genius to realize that grappling with a childhood make- believe character who sings about being "timid" around men may cause an adolescent girl to become disillusioned with real feelings that often arise during teenage relationships that are not exactly "innocent." When there is no countervailing character in one's most cherished movie who represents real life and the real emotions that surface during teenage lust, one can become disenchanted.

My discussion of "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" does not end with Leisl and Ralph. In the end of the movie, Maria, who has married Captain Von Trapp, sings with Leisl and the two perform a new rendition of the song. Leisl, distraught and frustrated that Ralph no longer wants a relationship, asks Maria for advice about love. Maria replies, "Lo and behold your someone's wife, and you belong to him. You make think this kind of adventure, may never come to you..." As a child, I had never viewed Maria as Captain Von Trapp's property, and to hear Maria openly declare herself as an "item" of Captain Von Trapp almost made my jaw drop. Not only is Maria singing about her husband, but she advertises marriage as an "adventure" that Leisl may some day be fortunate enough to experience. While I see how these lyrics can be beautiful, they may also be sinister. To explain that belonging to a man is an adventure to look forward to in life is damaging to a young girl's ears, for it belies the truth that a woman can find an independent and promising future without the help of a husband. Again, this movie is based in the 1930s, so the context makes the lyrics more understandable. But, the movie also shows how far we have progressed. Imagine a mainstream, popular Glee episode where the characters sang such lyrics. There would be public outrage!

Though I will continue to watch The Sound of Music every Christmas, I now watch it from a feminist perspective. It is with this newfound grace that one can still enjoy the classics, while remaining weary of any messages that promote unrealistic expectations of women.