23.4.11

white women + the privilege of solidarity

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- Net-a-Porter Magazine

'i am not speaking as a Sociologist, a Researcher or a Theologian. in other words, i am no expert. i am an activist and I am speaking as a result of my experience as a political activist and, i might add, my own personal sensibility. truth be told, until today, i hadn’t really thought about the question of Islamic Feminism. when i was invited, i made it quite clear that i lacked the authority to speak about Islamic Feminism..that is why i thought i would lay out a few questions that could prove useful for our collective questioning.

IS FEMINISM UNIVERSAL?
what is the relationship between white/Western Feminisms and Third World Feminisms among which we find Islamic Feminisms?
is Feminism compatible with Islam?
if it is, then how can it be legitimised and what would its priorities be?

first question: is Feminism universal?
for me, it is the question of all questions when adopting a decolonial approach and when attempting to decolonize feminism. this question is essential, not because of the answer but rather because it makes us, we who live in the West, take the necessary precautions when we are confronted with ‘Other’ societies. let’s take, for example, so-called, Western societies that witnessed the emergence of feminist movements and have been influenced by them. the women who fought against patriarchy in favour of an equal dignity between men and women gained rights and improved women’s circumstances, which i, myself, benefit from. let’s compare their situation, that is to say our situation, with that of so-called “primitive” societies in Amazonia for instance. there are still societies here and there that have been spared by Western influence. i should add here that i don’t consider any society to be primitive. i think there are differing spaces/times on our planet, different temporalities, that no civilization is in advance or behind on any other, that i don’t locate myself on a scale of progress and that i don’t consider progress an end in itself nor a political goal. in other words, i don’t necessarily consider progress to be progressive but sometimes, even often, it is regressive. and, i think that the decolonial question can also be applied to our perception of time.

getting back to the subject at hand, if we take as our criteria the simple notion of well-being, who in this room can state that the women from those societies (who know nothing of the concept of feminism as we conceive of it) are less well-off than European women who not only took part in the struggles but also made available, to their societies, these invaluable social gains? but yet again, the answer is of no importance. the question itself is, for it humbles us, and curbs our imperialist tendencies as well as our interfering reflexes. it prevents us from considering our own norms as universal and trying to make other’s realities fit into our own.

in 2007, women from the Movement of the Indigenous of the Republic took part in the annual 8th of March demonstration in support of women’s struggles. at that time, the American campaign against Iran had begun. we decided to march behind a banner that’s message was 'no Feminism without anti-imperialism'. we were all wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs and handing out flyers in support of three resistant Iraqi women taken prisoner by the Americans. when we arrived, the organisers of the official procession started chanting slogans in support of Iranian women. we found these slogans extremely shocking given the ideological offensive against Iran at that time. why the Iranians, the Algerians and not the Palestinians and the Iraqis? why should you, white women, have the privilege of solidarity? you are also battered, raped, you are also subject to men’s violence, you are also underpaid, despised, your bodies are also instrumentalised..

what we were saying seemed surreal, inconceivable. it was like the 4th dimension. it wasn’t so much the fact that we reminded them of their situation as Western women that shocked them. it was more the fact that African and Arabo-Muslim women had dared symbolically subvert a relationship of domination and had established themselves as patrons.

another example: after a solidarity trip to Palestine, a friend was telling me how the French women had asked the Palestinian women if they used birth control. according to my friend, the Palestinian women couldn’t understand such a question given how important the demographic issue is in Palestine. they were coming from a completely different perspective. tor many Palestinian women, having children is an act of resistance against the ethnic cleansing policies of the Israeli state.

IS ISLAM COMPATIBLE WITH FEMINISM?
this question is purely provocative on my behalf. i can’t stand it. on the one hand, because it comes from a position of arrogance. the representative of civilization X is demanding that the representative of civilization Y prove something. Y is, therefore, put in dock and must provide proof of her/his 'modern-ness', justify her/him-self to please X. on the other hand, because the answer is not simple when one knows that the Islamic world is not monolithic. the debate could go on forever and that is exactly what happens when you make the mistake of trying to answer.
i cut to the chase by asking X the following question: is the French Republic compatible with Feminism? in France, 1 woman dies every 3 days as a result of domestic violence. the number rapes per year is estimated around 48 000. women are underpaid. women’s pensions are considerably less substantial than those of men. political, economic and symbolic power remains mostly in the hands of men. true, since the 60’s and 70’s, men share more in household duties: statistically, 3 min more than 30 years ago!

HOW TO LEGITIMISE ISLAMIC FEMINISM?
for me, it legitimises itself. the simple fact that Muslim women have taken it up to demand their rights and their dignity is enough for it to be fully recognised.

what do Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian women want? peace, the end of the war and the occupation, the rebuilding of their national infrastructures, legal frameworks that guarantee their rights and protect them, access to sufficient food and water, the ability to feed and educate their children under good conditions. what do Muslim women in Europe and more generally those who are immigrants and who, for the most part, live in lower income neighborhoods want? a job, housing, rights that protect them not only from state violence but also men’s violence. they demand respect for their religion, their culture. why are all of these demands silenced and why does the issue of leading the prayer make its way across the globe when Judaism and Christianity have never really made apparent their own intransigent defense of the equality of sexes?

i conclude here and hope to have shown the ways in which a true decolonial Feminism could benefit women, all women when they, themselves, deem it to be their path to emancipation.
'
- Houria Bouteldja, Madrid, 2010, speech @ the 4th International Congress of Islamic Feminism

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more often than not, i can draw more inspiration and general design/every-day clothing choice influence from menswear, due to the greater attention to detail. men are rarely overpowered by their clothing, in the way that women often are.

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