Dear all In response to the key question: "Where does culture end and violence against women begin?"
I think the question is inappropriately phrased. In male-supremacist societies, or in other words, in societies where only men count as fully human, and their idea of being 'human' is dependent on dominating women, 'culture' and 'male violence' are inextricably intertwined. It is not a matter of culture 'ending' and male violence 'beginning', but rather one of "which cultural practices, if any, are 'gender-neutral' "? Unfortunately, most aren't. Even things as apparently 'neutral' as food practices (types of cuisine etc) associated with particular cultures will have gendered dimensions: who cultivates/ buys/ collects/ prepares the food/ who clears up/ who gets the most to eat/ who is not allowed to eat certain things/ who bears the economic and physical brunt of ensuring that food is available/ who gets the kudos for being a great chef while others are 'great chefs' on a daily basis to feed their husbands and children, etc.... Even the simple and necessary daily act of eating will have cultural dimensions and many of those dimensions will somewhere contain elements of violence against women. The UN put out a Fact Sheet in 1995: "Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children" (Fact Sheet Number 23). This Fact Sheet focuses specifically on primarily nonwestern practices affecting women's health in overt ways - and primarily although not exclusively their physical health (rather than other damage done to women - so that the mutilation of women's sexuality by the practice of female genital mutilation, for example, is hardly mentioned, while difficulties urinating, in childbirth and so on, are....). At the same time, the Fact Sheet does include a generic category of 'violence against women', including prostitution, rape, domestic violence and other practices common the world over, with the implication that these practices are 'cultural practices'. The previous year, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, linked cultural practices and male violence in her preliminary report (November 1994). Section D, Paragraphs 63-69, of Coomaraswamy's preliminary report is devoted to 'cultural ideology', and explicitly links the cultural construction of masculinity with male violence against women. It further states that 'those customs and traditions which involve violence against women must be challenged and eliminated as violating the basic tenants [sic] of international human rights law' (Paragraph 68). It also condemns media glamorising of the culture of male violence, and includes pornography in this. So the UN has in the last decade explicitly taken on board what feminists have been saying for several decades: male violence is imbricated in the cultures of the world, as the cultures of the world are male-supremacist (or patriarchal if you prefer that term) - and that domination can only be perpetuated through coercion of various sorts: in short, physical and psychological violence, which are invariably also internalised by women themselves. As concerns religious practices that are oppressive to women, justified in the name of Islam or Christianity or Hinduism or any other religion one cares to name: it is important to point out that while some women will certainly claim, as the list moderators suggest, that such religious practices are central to their cultural and personal identity, not *all* women claim this. Many women in muslim and christian countries alike (not to mention others), campaign vigorously against religious practices that are discriminatory against women or explicitly or tacitly condone and support male violence. Such religious/cultural identification also needs to be understood within a situation of racial/ethnic oppression. If women are part of a community that is racialised and harassed because of this, then they are more likely to claim certain aspects of a religion that is vilified as their cultural identity. I know a number of atheist Muslim and Jewish women for example, for whom religious festivals remain important for this reason. Following September 11, hijab-wearing Muslim women in Australia, where I live, have been harassed and vilified - even stoned - in the streets by white Australian men. This is male violence with a racist dimension. These men do not attack Muslim men - they attack young women - a more visible and vulnerable target. Such racist male violence will only serve to push these women further into religious practices that may by other criteria be considered harmful or oppressive. Many many Muslim feminists vociferously oppose hijab-wearing and the oppression of women that it symbolises. As concerns the appopriateness of the role of 'outsiders': Many women have been helped in their struggle for liberation because some men with power to effect change (legislators, trade unionists, doctors and so on) have been courageous enough to stand against other men in fighting for women's rights - particularly in countries or at times in history when women have not had access to these structural means of change. This should not mean that men appropriate women's struggle and deform it in doing so (although some, sadly, will attempt to): this is disempowering. But it does mean that the concept of 'outsider' is unhelpful. Feminism is not genetic: right-wing, antifeminist women exist in all cultures, and feminist women exist in all cultures. Extreme cultural relativist positions which support non-interventionism of any sort - or worse, defence of harmful cultural practices on the basis that one cannot interfere with another 'culture' - is racism of the worst sort. I say 'of the worst sort' because it is usually women-specific. The would-be antiracists align themselves with the most conservative, male-supremacist elements of a racialised culture and happily support those elements in crushing women underfoot. Yet these same would-be antiracists would never condone such practices being carried out against white women. (although many, sadly, do celebrate the culture of violence as played out in the West in the name of 'freedom of choice' - hence the bizarre concept of 'free' prostitution. It is a little bit like talking about the 'freedom' to work in a factory or to be someone's maid.) It is a sign of singular contempt for women from 'within' racialised cultures for women 'outside' those cultures to sit by and do nothing while feminists from 'within' are fighting so hard to eradicate certain practices. This is not 'valuing' another culture. This does not mean that 'outsiders' should appropriate the struggle or dictate to 'insiders' how to wage it. Women have to live where they live and wage their struggles in their own way. This is what 'valuing another culture' means. So I cannot tell an Afghan or an Algerian woman how to fight for liberation. But I *can* agree or disagree with values and ideas she defends. We don't have to agree with everything someone says just because they are from a different culture to us. For fundamentally, feminism is about meanings and values, not about personal location or identity. Those who embrace feminist meanings and values have a moral obligation to defend them in *every* context. Otherwise the concept of 'global sisterhood' is just so much empty rhetoric. On the question of women being coerced into silence. Indeed, this is the case in many situations, including, of course, the West (which is often erroneously portrayed as somehow nonviolent or significantly less violent to women than other places). In that case, once again, those feminists who have access to a voice - to the power to speak brought by money, education, an accident of birth leading to certain citizenships and not others - have a moral obligation to do what they can, if the opportunity is available to them, to give those women who are silenced access to a voice. Hence RAWA, for example, runs literacy classes for girls and women and lobbies western countries both for financial assistance and so that the international community will take notice of the extreme silencing of the majority of Afghan women. They did not start doing this on September 12, 2001. they have done it for 25 years. And still Afghan women do not have a voice. But at least they are occasionally noticed now. The silencing of women the world over is so massive and so effectively policed, that it takes enormous and sustained efforts by many people to break those silences. For women to have a voice, they need to feel safe. And so many millions of women are kept unsafe, at every level. It is imperative that women are provided with safe spaces to speak. As concerns practices that are effective in changing cultural values: - providing as many women as possible with a voice, through all means possible - legislation. sometimes the legislation has to drive cultural change. it is somewhat of a cop-out to say 'we have to wait for cultural shifts before we can legislate'. Certainly, there is outreach/educational work that needs to accompany legislation, but while such legislation is not adopted and enforced, women are left to suffer. This is unacceptable. In many western countries, for example, marital rape is now illegal. This does not mean that the culture of male violence which makes it acceptable to rape women has disappeared, nor that men have stopped raping their wives. But it does mean that wives now have access to some sort of voice, however limited that may be, and to laws that also create moral and cultural pressure on men to change. - feminist women with voices, and those men who support them, promoting alternative values in whatever fora possible. Bronwyn -- Dr Bronwyn Winter Senior Lecturer Dept of French Studies Brennan Building University of Sydney NSW 2006 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. 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