Thinking Global, Thinking Intersectional: Colonization and Patriarchy
Sociological Meanderings Towards Collective Well-Being
A little over a year ago NPR reported that there is a “shadow pandemic” impacting women in Peru. Thousands of women have gone missing in the country, and pandemic shut-downs brought heightened concerns about and calls related to domestic violence. In the United States, Time magazine more recently reported the same: “domestic violence is a pandemic inside a pandemic.”
I was listening to a podcast this morning — an episode of OnBeing with Resmaa Menakem and Robin DiAngelo — and DiAngelo made a point that stuck with me: “how have you managed not to know?” DiAngelo is speaking to white people: how have we (I say “we” here as a white person) managed not to know what happens every second of every day in our own locales; in our own country? It applies in other contexts as well — to any of the ways in which our various privileges shield us from reality. For example, in what ways have our privileges shielded us from having to see or experience the kinds of harassment that the Afro-Peruvian women shared about in Sylvanna Falcón’s piece? In the global context, does living in the U.S. afford privileges, even to those of us who are marginalized inside the U.S. ? Do these privileges keep us from seeing the daily happenings in other countries; from seeing the ways that colonial inequalities are perpetuated into the 21st Century through neo-colonization and continued capitalist exploitation?
For me, the answer is yes — yes my privileges have kept me from knowing. And for me, the challenge is to push beyond the feelings that are evoked (not to ignore them, but also, not to make them more important than what’s happening to others) and to focus on how I can learn more and also how I can act in the world towards change.
Part of our task here in this class is to come to know how social structures (re)produce inequities and how those inequities impact our well-being. We are addressing each level of the gendered social structure that Barbara Risman articulates (structural, cultural, individual) so as to effect social change in our lives and our society. Further, we must do all this while holding an intersectional lens. I’d like to propose a challenge to us all, including myself: let’s try to focus less on our shock and awe and direct more attention to what we are learning about the social structures, how they are organized, and how various inequities are an (unsurprising) impact of said organization. Rather than staying in the space of shock and awe, let’s push ourselves to think about what we can do to attempt to enact change going forward. This isn’t about being perfect, or saying the “right” (or “wrong”) thing. It’s about pushing the conversation ever more towards the sociological.
One of the arguments that Falcón and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí both make is that Western thinkers have often put their own personal mark on their concepts, and then applied them to others. So, Falcón critiques WEB DuBois’ concept of “double consciousness” NOT AS WRONG, but as tied to the male experience, while leaving the male experience unremarked upon and universalized. Thus, she pushes his useful and poignant concept into a new articulation: “gendered double consciousness.” As DuBois articulates it, people of color see the world in two ways: through the eyes of white people and through the eyes of themselves and their community. Falcon writes, quoting DuBois:
Assimilation to white cultural norms and institutional structures has been required of people of color for hundreds of years — an expectation that comes with deadly consequences — and his point about resiliency is crucial.
At the same time, as Sylvanna M. Falcón articulates, gender cannot be separated from race: thus, the “gendered double consciousness” of women of color knows that the white eyes that shape their “double consciousness” see them as women, too, and women of color have unique assimilationist expectations placed on them, as compared to men of color.
This practice of putting a Western lens onto the entire world is a legacy of colonization — it’s a process that highlights that colonization is not something that happened in the past, but it is an ongoing practice of the present. Think, for example, of the land you are currently occupying. Was it land that was occupied through colonial genocide? Has it ever been given back to the Indigenous communities who first lived here, or are those communities still pushed into smaller tribal territories? Think also of how horrified we are at unfamiliar forms of violence against women (ranging from not being able to drive to female genital mutilation), while we live through and do not remark upon this reality in the United States: “every 68 seconds an American is assaulted.”
What Oyěwùmí, in particular, is getting at is that Western feminism has a STANDPOINT and thus, certain and specific investments (e.g. of disrupting the oppression of the gendered division of labor in the home). In other words, the goals of Western feminists might not be the same as the goals of, say, the Afro-Peruvian feminists in Falcón’s article. Thus, we have to widen the lens to include the goals and needs of women across the globe, and not apply one standard to all women. This attempt to universalize is an outcome of colonization; it is a way to continue to colonize.
Oyěwùmí argues that the nuclear family needs to be seen as a legacy of colonization, too, and that we need to widen our framework to see that there are other ways to organize family life. If we are really going to do this, then we have to allow for various practices that those of us in the West tend to criticize. Polygamy comes to mind, as do arranged marriages. In her piece she outlines the Yoruba family and it’s reliance on age. While it is still a hierarchical structure (and not an egalitarian utopia!), she argues that it is more fluid, whereas gender is more static. What she means is that age is constantly shifting due to, well, aging, and the ensuing life and death that comes with the life cycle. Marriage also causes shifts in age hierarchies.
Oyěwùmí does not articulate how gender is also fluid, in that we can in fact change our gendered identities throughout our lives, but it can still be argued that age changes with much more regularity than our gendered identities do. So, for example, while my preferences towards masculine or feminine activities or interests change all the time along with my mood, my preferred identity as “female” has remained stable. Even as age has changed my body, and my hierarchical position in an ageist society, my gendered identity has remained the same. This is the case for most transgender people as well — their bodies may change, their personal practices around “doing gender” may change, but their identities have been the same most of the time (even if others were unaware of this identity). And, once you are placed into the gendered hierarchy as “female”, your position remains “inferior” even as your roles shift with age (from daughter to wife to mother). That said, in an age hierarchy, you can shift from “inferior” to “superior” and back and forth again many times as a result of marriage and death and birth.
The point here is not to say which is better. The point is to say that gender is not a universal social system. It is not required, or natural (essentialism is an ideology while gender is socially constructed). And colonization has carried Western gender across the globe. This historical fact — that colonization has carried the Western gender system across the globe — highlights the illogic in statements such as, “it’s always been this way.” Really, these kinds of arguments just function as an escape hatch for those of us who don’t really want to do the work of social change. Nothing has always been the way it is today; the way things are today don’t have to exist tomorrow; BUT WE HAVE TO BE THE ONES TO DO THE WORK TO CHANGE. Thus, we can’t be lulled by the seduction of “it’s always been this way,” which really just asks us to shrug our shoulders and commit to the inequality.
This is how hegemony works: it asks us to be complicit with power and inequality.
This is how sociology works: it asks us to develop a wider lens and expand our critical thinking capacities so that we can analyze the ways in which our structure(s) and culture(s) engage us within hegemony, so that we can start to do the work to disengage and practice social change.
Take good care of yourselves and each other,
Dr. Monica
References:
Falcón, S. M. (2008). Mestiza double consciousness: The voices of Afro-Peruvian women on gendered racism. Gender & Society, 22(5), 660–680.
Oyěwùmí, O. (2002). Conceptualizing gender: the eurocentric foundations of feminist concepts and the challenge of African epistemologies.
Risman, B. J. (2004). Gender as a social structure: Theory wrestling with activism. Gender & society, 18(4), 429–450.
