Feminist Struggles: NOW

Have you noticed fashion this summer?  In addition to the summer of skirts where women are swinging fabric from their hips like it's 1955, everything "woman" is tied up in little bows, from shoes to shirts to skirts.  Walking down the street the other day, a friend of mine said "What, like we're all little packages waiting to be unwrapped?"  Hmmmm....women like candy wrappers...women like packages...

Twisty has me thinking about multicultural feminism today.  She has 2 provocative posts on Swaziland King Mswati III's continued heteropatriarchal agenda for women in his country, partially in response to Winter Woods recent post on feminism and the left.

This brings us to the age old question of "doing feminism" within a world of global capitalism.  I'm not moving to Swaziland anytime soon.  Under this King's leadership, women have suffered indignities far and wide including:  lack of legal status for women, banning women virgins from having sex, & not allowing women to wear pants (among other things).

I agree with Twisty's critiques of King Mswati's government.  However, I really question how feminists can successfully engage in dialogues about global feminism without imposing a largely left, white agenda on other countries and groups.  How do we "do" feminism in an increasingly complicated and interconnected world? 

In King Mswati's recent "bid" for a 13th wife, 50,000 "bare breasted" virgins danced for his attention.  So, where would we begin to dialogue with those women about their roles and lives? 

As a practioner of multicultural feminism, I have come a long way from the touchy-feely "everything okay" era of multiculturalism.  I agree with Winter Woods that feminists have to continue--more vigorously--the work of claiming space for our voices and our agendas.  We have lost a lot of ground culturally in a world where women are neat little packages all tied up for the taking.  I think we do need to pose the conversation in terms of equality and rights.  I think we do need to create a community definition of what we mean by global women's rights. 

However, Alexander and Mohanty's Feminist Genealogies poses some thoughtful questions about feminism in a post-colonial world.  Not only am I not moving to Swaziland, where the sight of my bare-breasted reed dance would prove immensely uninspiring to the Kind, I'm also not jumping on a plane to go to Swaziland anytime soon.  My feelings about my own inability to successfully navigate the waters of international feminism were further confirmed last spring when an acquaintance of mine from Costa Rica came to the UN to participate in the Women's Summit.  Over dinner, she shared her outrage with me that the "U.S. feminist" group at the summit was "obnoxious" in their attempts to get the UN to criticize Bush's stance on women.  As a frequent blog-spewing critic of Bush's war on women, she and I had a long distance to travel toward one another over dinner.  We, in short, could not agree.

There are a lot of interesting, embryonic feminist groups emerging in Africa & they are certainly thinking a lot about places like Swaziland.  I think grassroots is always the way to start & this is where the real work is done.

No clear answers here, really only more questions. 

Thanks to Twisty and Winter Woods for the provocative moment this morning!

Read On:

M. Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Mohanty's Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures.

On the Web:
Swazi Women Dance to Catch King's Eye
For Women, Constitution is a Curate's Egg
Women's Chastity Precondition for Scholarships

Comments

[Angela]

Are we REALLY complaining about SHOES?! Then why aren't we bitching that our son's have to wear ties? I argree with the rest of the article but if we're going to complain about fashion let's not be biased to see only our own plight.