Excitable Speech and the Politics of the Womb – Wake Up Grrrl!

Abstract

A global  ‘War on Terror’ is being waged against women’s rights.[1] A rancid war waged on a historically notorious terrain of gendered, asymmetrical power relations.  A battle of bugle calls trumpeting forceful state practices of veiling and unveiling the face of a woman.[2] In this continuous onslaught, we are informed of such things as proposed mandatory ‘virginity tests’ in Indonesia to be passed by young women seeking to graduate from high school.[3] This conjunction of women’s war and the War on Terror now compels me to listen.

I, as a student of international relations, occasionally read some texts by feminist scholars critiquing discourses of ‘sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals.’[4]  The ‘Wake Up!’ call issued by feminists to fellow academics in a world that is changing helped articulate fresh insights into a stagnant discipline stifling with boredom and shallowness.[5] As a graduate student I attended a workshop where a professor very confidently proclaimed ‘feminism is dead.’ Several years later, this same professor came out with a book Fast Feminism.[6]  I, on the other hand, was slow to engage with questions, history and practices of feminism. I am no ‘fast feminist,’ described as a ‘gender risk taker going the distance with her body.’[7]  I am perhaps more of a novice caught up with the ‘pure intensity’ of time.[8]  A time in which I wish to re-issue a wake up call with the forceful ‘intensity and movement’ of ‘fast feminism’ proposed by Shannon Bell.[9]

Fast Feminism is an accidental but lively ‘Grrrl’ child representative of feminism and hypermasculinity.[10]  It is a coupling together of the material body with speed, to ‘queer’ the gaze, destabilize and recode ‘how we look at bodies and sexual acts’.[11] It is a ‘high speed exercise’ that ‘propels you through locations’ and is critical of practices that seek to curb ‘the naughty, kick-ass, confident, loud-assertive, active, curious, prepubescent, joy-for-life tendencies that have been toned down, repressed and castrated in turning woman.’[12]

This ‘high speed’ exercise of fast feminism is painfully conscious of the violence endured by the positioning of a female body for political purposes. It carries within it a ‘Grrrl’ child’s sense of bemusement and is watchful of tendencies that ‘morph’ into a desire for an alternative.[13] The dynamism of fast feminism and its ‘Grrrl’ energy are now redeployed to issue a wake up call in international relations. This wake up call proclaimed, ‘rape as a weapon of war’ with fierce intensity and immediately captured the imagination of academics, activists and policy-makers.[14]  Fast feminism responds to this call not simply as a fight with men but rather with fighting injustices.[15]

In situations of armed conflict, rape as a weapon of war generates immense human suffering. In some conflicts women have been raped repeatedly until pregnant and then these pregnant women were held in captivity until abortion was no longer possible.[16] The ‘new wars’ or ‘ethnic conflicts’ waged in Rwanda, Liberia, the former Yugoslavia and other places generated concern regarding religious commitments and military tactics of using the womb to wage a political struggle. These new wars refuted old arguments of rape as a ‘side-effect’ of war and compelled recognition of the fact that ‘Rape, is literally, a weapon of war.’[17] It is further argued that rape is a ‘bio-political strategy’ deployed to ‘stamp directly on the body’ a mark of ‘sovereignty’[18]. Diken and Lausten suggest, ‘the penetration of a woman’s body works as a metaphor for the penetration of enemy lines.’[19]

This understanding of rape as a weapon of war is imperative to grasp the politics of the womb. In the politics of the womb, excitable speech works always in feverish anticipation of the penetration of enemy lines and exhorts women to bear more children to safeguard the freedom of the nation and the state. While ‘rape’ is viewed as an instrument, the ‘politics of the womb’ requires the skillful art of watching a caterpillar weaving an intricate cocoon. The politics of the womb is interested in understanding the manipulation of a woman’s reproductive rights for political purposes. These practices of manipulation have a long global history that demands careful deciphering and codification of this particular form of violence endured by women.[20] This paper undertakes this exercise by focusing on some contemporary developments in an effort to light a candle of watchful vigilance against this continuous struggle.

The active voice of the victim of rape is encouraged by feminists in order to articulate her experiences of rape and the difficult choices that unwanted pregnancies unexpectedly force upon her. The repeated attempt here is at ‘flipping the obscenity of “distilled perceptions”’ through the verbalization of feelings of guilt, shame and trauma experienced by these women.[21] But these expressions do not seem to hinder or halt the continued drama of the politics of the womb. It is a drama enacted everyday in many iterations: in the form of ridicule hurled against the veiled woman, the ‘scientific’ engagement with the idea of ‘immaculate conception’ and then the vainglorious attempts of paying homage to women’s reincarnations in the form of saints and Goddesses.

But the voice of a woman, even a raped woman, does not seem to register among those whipping up religious and sectarian fervor. Feminists have long been aware of ‘how communalism, operating within patriarchal structure of power, often implies the advocacy of sexual violence towards women.’[22] The nevertheless fragile voices of feminists are in a fierce contest with other authoritative voices that carry their influence in as much as ‘rape pollution aims to strengthen a patriarchal structure.’[23] These authoritarian voices persist in exercising their authority over a woman’s womb. They insist on telling women that they must bear more children to maintain the majority status of a particular religious community.

The strategic purchase of religious, communal mobilization to fuel ethnic riots and sexual violence against women has long been registered in the subcontinent of South Asia.[24] But despite this long history of violence, India, the second most populous country in the world, has recently witnessed a spate of statements issued by male political and religious leaders (even from those sitting in jail) advising women on how many children to bear to help maintain or change the demographics of a particular local area or the nation.

Mohammed Qasim, a Muslim separatist leader in India, urges the male members of his community to ‘marry more than once’, and to ‘have as many children as possible.’[25] He justifies his argument by resorting to the Quran to make a claim, ‘The Quranic tenet on justice between wives is only in providing equal provision and not inclination of the heart.’[26] Justice is to be meted out only by the male members of the Muslim community to their women in the respectable guise of marriage. Any consideration of birth control measures, women’s health issues and economic considerations that factor into make choices about carrying a child are dismissed as nonsensical or irrelevant. Anyone unwilling to share this burden is decried for undermining the strength and future of this community in India.

Similarly a Hindu religious leader and Member of Parliament, Sakshi Maharaj, stipulates in categorical terms, ‘ A Hindu woman must have at least four children’ and that she must give one to the army and the others to religious leaders like himself.[27] This proclamation not only shows the temerity of demanding a particular number of children from a woman but also presupposes her willingness to sacrifice her children at the altar of the state and religious leaders as a matter of duty! These outrageous statements publicized by the media unfortunately gain much visibility and voice in society. There is scarcely any resistance or alternative presented to these demands.

On the contrary, there is much support for a political party that has come to power thumping its chest championing nationalism. In this understanding of patriotic and patriarchal nationalism, not a single opportunity is to be missed in reminding the ‘educated and enlightened new woman’ of her responsibility to ‘act as guardians of national culture, indigenous religion and family traditions—in other words to be both “modern” and “traditional.”’[28] A political party can slap a show cause notice on Sakshi Maharaj, its representative, and urge restraint as it damages the image of the party.[29] But the portrayal of a subservient woman, and the community’s subsequent expectation from her as a woman carrying the seeds of a (national) family within her is not to be decried.

This political rhetoric reduces the body of a woman to the status of a kickball tossed between communities and conversations. These conversations, especially among the educated middle class cosmopolitan contingent, are first encouraged with  a look of disbelief, followed by indifference, and then are silenced. There is a quiet assertion to the effect  of ‘Indian women can no longer be taken for a ride. They are much aware and capable of taking their own decisions.’[30] Yet, are they? Which Indian women? Surely if nothing else the statements issued by the leaders of these communities have made it abundantly clear that there are no homogenized Indian women. Their divisive appeals, made on sectarian grounds, play upon the religious differences among women. Their appeals also take note of the cloaks of socio-economic class differences that shroud the world of these women from each other, and at times pit them against one another.

The unifying image of Mother India invoked in a classic Bollywood film served its purpose in representing a woman’s sacrifice and suffering to evoke emotions helpful in consolidating and stabilizing a state structure. It did not necessarily generate conditions of authentic respect and security for women.  Respect for a woman’s autonomy unravels as soon as she steps out of her home and, due to economic necessity, tries to make use of the public transport system. She becomes the victim of six men that abuse her physically and psychologically, and assault her with an iron rod that is left as a memento of their willful act of barbarity inside her body.[31]  The victim died as a result of her catastrophic wounds. The voices of women are now hoarse shouting in anger and frustration making stringent, vocal demands. Nothing less than a ‘death-sentence’ is demanded to punish the perpetrators of the crime, even if one of them is a minor.

This 2012 ‘rape that shocked the world’ and became the pet project of domestic and international media sensationalism labeled and shamed New Delhi as ‘rape capital’ of the country.[32] The victim Jyoti Singh is now labeled as ‘Nirbhaya’ meaning ‘the fearless one’ and she is morphed into an embodiment of women’s struggle for security and justice within the state. Her violated body is now represented as ‘the bridge between India, old and new.’[33]  The suffering of ‘Nirbhaya’ is medicalized as doctors treat ‘the atrocious, unbelievable injuries she had sustained.’[34]  These medical practitioners communicate their sense of shock at the ‘horrific brutality’ experienced by the victim.[35] A violence so intense it startled the sense of resilience cultivated by experienced practitioners of medicine. This is the price the young victim must pay to seek some remedial measures from the state.[36]

The failure of the state in addressing gendered violence is also exhibited in a desecrated church in Rwanda. This desecrated church is now a memorial to the dead, and displays ‘a skeleton of a victim of sexual violence with a pole up her genitalia.’[37] Coomaraswamy notes, ‘There she was preserved for posterity. Such horror in the most sacred of places.’[38]  But unlike the skeletal remains of the ‘victim of sexual violence with a pole up her genitalia’ in Rwanda, the victim of ‘the rape that shocked the world’ has caught the attention of the West. The panoramic view of candlelight vigils, peace marches and popular tactics of naming and shaming deployed by the civil society against the state has captured the gaze of the West. The mobilization of civil society against the everyday practices of rape in the urban life of the city presents a challenge for a democratic country struggling to maintain its respectability and its secular credentials, touting the principle of freedom of speech, even of mavericks, in a language much understood by the West.

The powerful, civilized West that defies the powers of censorship of a state and makes readily available a film on rape culture in India. It shows a particular tenacity of purpose in investigating the particular case of Nirbhaya through the film, ‘India’s Daughters.’ But this film makes little attempt to ‘focus on rape speech that we encounter daily in our socio-political context’, fails to understand the pervasive influence of ‘rape speech’ and the culture of silence around rape deliberately construed in civilized societies.[39] The ‘white savior complex’ of the West is held responsible for in fact giving voice to the rapist with his incendiary observations and silencing a culture of protest that has emerged in India around sexual violence.[40] The film, in addressing the problem of sexual violence, does not even ‘begin to tell the story of how Indian girls are treated even before they dare to emerge from their mother’s wombs.’[41]

While a rapist gets a voice through the film ‘India’s Daughters’, the beseeching voices of teenage mothers in Guatemala finds expression through another documentary, ‘Too Young to Wed: Guatemala.’[42] In Guatemala, the state and the Church sanction marriage at the age of fourteen. This painful documentary of young mothers barely out of their own childhood, pregnant and burdened with the responsibility of caring for another life with no income and no education, compels one to question one’s own ethics in indulging in this spectator sport of viewership. It compels one to think whether the word ‘happy’ should be removed from International Women’s Day and question the violence of a middle class morality that exalts marriage and motherhood, while the price of this morality is often paid by these poor young girls with no right to vote.

While Western film-makers have made strident efforts in depicting sexual violence in developing countries, one cannot ignore the politics of the womb played out even more vociferously in the West. The War on Terror waged from here encourages a proliferation of ‘hero discourses’ in the public sphere.[43] These ‘hero discourses’ deliberately construct  ‘a morality tale where forces of the good combat the evil’ and ‘nation becomes a family; during war more than ever.’[44]  They advocate a ‘vision of a unified nation where women, the protectors of the family at home, serve as the counterpart to the boys on the front, the mighty men in battle.’[45] These hero discourses reinforced in public life through the media have actively marginalized ‘feminism and activism as possibilities for political expression.’[46] They have made the American debate on abortion a ‘spectacle’ a ‘war flick with overtones of melodrama’ for the world to watch.[47]

In this ‘spectacle’ the battle lines are clearly drawn between the pro-life and pro-choice activists and all activism is ‘tarred with the same brush.’[48] These battles have been fought with abortion clinic bombings and continue to be waged against each abortion clinic with Biblical chants and efforts to alter the wording of each piece of legislation on abortion. Followers of the abortion debate in the US argue that it is a ‘tug of war of language’ in which ‘linguistic victories translate into political victories.’[49] The coercive power of law and the moral authority of the Bible are both invoked to the effect that not more than seven abortion clinics are available to women in the state of Texas, and the survival of one in Mississippi is contested.[50] The tenuous survival of these abortion clinics in Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi has raised the question: ‘who calls the shots on abortion laws?’[51] The question of power and responsibility does not clearly reside with women, although their  ‘vulnerability and poverty’ is often conveyed through television shots of ‘Latina and Black women’s bodies.’[52] The burden of travelling long distances to get any medical assistance is visualized as ‘bleeding episodes’ of disempowerment of women.[53]

The question of responsibility is configured more abstrusely. Its history is traced to the struggle for power between the Church and the State, and the politics of the womb is the grey zone encrypted in a play of constitutional provisions that can be written, rewritten and erased. The players are on the one hand,  ‘politicians’ seeing the passage of state laws forcing closure of abortion clinics on the premise that they want to secure safe conditions for women seeking abortion. On the other hand are the stewards of religious diktat asserting their operative hand through the Church and its influence on the State. The Catholic Church’s position has

consistently been outright condemnation of abortion in all cases.[54] Abortion is seen as a sin, and the key to ‘subversion of women’s destiny to be mothers.’[55]

Feminists have long critiqued the Church’s position on abortion as representative of a ‘deliberately misogynistic, power-hungry institution, seeking to extend its reach into every all spheres of social life.’[56] Feminists also express deep concern for the suffering endured by women due to botched up abortions. But the power of the Church over the abortion laws in many places, such as in Ireland, remains enormous. This became obvious in recent times when the medical authorities in a hospital failed to assist Savita Halappanavar, who had been undergoing a painful miscarriage.[57] Her hopeless struggle to exercise her autonomy over her womb came to naught. This despite her pleas that she belonged to a different faith and it was only on medical grounds that she was seeking assistance with an abortion. She was refused and died three days later. The laws of the state promise protection and those that seek to enforce them listen attentively to the ‘fetal heartbeat’, but are mindless towards the tremendous pain experienced by a woman undergoing a miscarriage for several hours, or the septicemia (blood infection) that prolongs her suffering for another few days, and the price of death she pays for her womb.

The laws of the Catholic state of Ireland and those that seek to uphold them promise an investigation based on list of procedures. These ritualistic procedures question legality and illegality of providing medical assistance to a woman seeking medical help with a miscarriage. There is an indulgence of precious time with legal hairsplitting on procedures that permit abortion when a mother’s life is at risk and procedures that prohibit abortion when a woman’s health is at risk.[58] These promises and procedures are normalized to the extent that they benumb the voices of pain and protest endured by those carrying a womb. It is only when a woman shares the pain of her womb, endured seven times and ready for the eighth with a Pope, that she receives an assurance that there is no need for Catholic women to ‘breed like rabbits.’

The Pope argues that the Bible suggests natural birth control measures instead of the use of contraceptives. He exercises his authority in telling women not to breed like rabbits. The authority of his statement based on listening to a woman carrying an eighth child in her womb at great risk to her health emerges as an authoritative statement apparently giving coherence to the Church’s position on birth control. The denigration of the status of a woman to a rabbit does not even evoke the need for an apology. The woman remains anonymous in her suffering. But the Pope is applauded for his penchant for ‘straight talk’ and ‘colloquialism’.[59] It is with convenient ease that one statement from the Pope seems to erase all memory of the active participation of the Church in the politics of the womb and its harmful legacy registered on the body of a woman/rabbit. A persistent participation that once again finds expression in the Pope’s concern with ‘ideological colonization’ interpreted as the imparting of education on gender theory to question the traditional division of male and female roles in developing societies.[60]

The traditional division of male and female roles is a subject of much debate even in the corporate sector. But it is the politics of the womb or pregnancy discrimination that ‘can only be experienced by women’ which is of critical significance in the workplace, as pregnancy discrimination is ‘most prevalent among corporate practices.’[61] The vulnerability of pregnant women in the workplace is the subject of several articles, books and lawsuits registered on how pregnancy discrimination in the workplace undermines women’s self-esteem, increases stress and economic loss. These concerns need to be taken seriously in a neoliberal economy, a neoliberal economy in which corporate bosses exhibit a sense of naiveté or innocence of ‘corporate profiting from women’s work’ while women are still struggling for equal pay and promotions in the workplace.’[62]

This pretentious innocence became starkly visible at a recent corporate conference convened especially to celebrate the skills of women in the high-tech field of computing.

Satya Nadella, Chief CEO of Microsoft as a mentor in high-tech field of computing was questioned on how women should most effectively ask for a raise.[63] His prompt reply was that women should not ask for a raise. He offered reassurance to women that their efforts will be rewarded in the ‘long run’ when their good work was ‘recognized’ and therefore there was no need for them to ‘ask for more money.’[64]  He justified his advice in a warped logic of ‘good karma’ and the operative principles of human resource systems.[65]

This observation drew criticism from some for striking ‘an international high watermark for tone-deafness and being flat out wrong.’[66]  But there were others that continued to dole out trite advice that women entering the workforce must, ‘be prepared to advocate for themselves when they negotiate salaries and subsequent raises.’[67]  These voices are willing to make allowances:

I don’t doubt for a minute that Nadella, along with many other-tech CEOs right now, considers himself a strong advocate for women in computing…But he obviously still has some things to learn, as do many people in this field. There are many hearts and minds that need to be changed across the computing and technology companies, and even some of our best allies have a lot to learn.[68]

A language of ‘best allies’ and ‘strong advocate’ is still being deployed in the defense of Nadella a powerful male executive, despite his gender insensitive comments.

The danger here is of a failure to realize that gender games are ‘deadly games’ played by some that are simply oblivious, and others that are playing with an acute awareness of participating in a ‘cultural hallucination’ undertaken with ‘variations according to time and place.’[69] A month after Nadella’s so called faux-pas, President Erdogan in Turkey, speaking at a forum on Women and Justice, appears to engage with the question,  ‘what do women need?’[70] He responds to this question by endorsing a logic of ‘equivalence’ and not ‘equality’ for women.[71]  These arguments are buttressed by iterating the ‘natural’ differences between men and women. It is emphasized that the same conditions of work cannot be imposed on a pregnant woman than a man and therefore ‘what women need is to be able to be equivalent, rather than equal.’[72]

This politics of equivalence and not equality within the state structure encourages stereotypes and endorses ‘a subordinate role as supporters, but not an equal role as agents.’[73] Thus women as recipients of male exhortations are to bear more children and embrace motherhood. It is only in the status of a mother that a woman is expected to exult in the glory of her sons bowing at her feet, shed her tears, glance ‘coyly’ at her sons sharing her mythical state of ‘paradise.’[74] It is only in this status that a man appears willing to concede ‘motherhood is something else’ and dole out ‘respect’ for a woman.[75] Any resistance to these male exponents on the politics of the womb brings fierce and speedy condemnation against feminists and feminism for their rejection of the concept of motherhood.’[76]

Media sensationalism of such prejudiced statements by corporate and political bosses sometimes evokes an apology, and occasionally expedites a court trial.

Efforts are made through social networking sites to retract particular statements in a face saving exercise. These retractions and apologies qualify their jingoistic observations in terms of lacking in tact and being caught off-guard, on the spur of the moment. [77] But these efforts do not conceal a mind-set operative in the corporate world that acknowledges and plays the politics of womb in practices of hiring, promotion and salaries of women. In the ‘fast-track trials’ the perpetrators of violence sometimes still continue to laugh, crack jokes unashamed and lacking in remorse.[78]

These recent experiences bring center-stage the continuous political battle being waged between the religious-political ideologues and feminists against the politicization of the womb. The feminists are conscious of the painful struggles wrought to bring the voices of women to claim a stake and participate in political discourses. This attempt to map the contemporary terrain of the politics of the womb endeavors to re-issue the ‘Wake Up’ call. We can no longer sit complacently and enjoy the benefits of struggles waged by our predecessors.  Asha Devi, mother of ‘Nirbhaya’ was rendered speechless as she watched her daughter suffer and die. She attested that it was the public protests on the streets that made her feel that humanity still prevails on this Earth.[79] My effort is to no longer remain listless to the calls of ‘fast feminism’ that seek to wage a speedy battle against those engaging in a war of attrition, a politics of the womb, looking to assert their masculine dominance against the body of women.

In re-issuing this ‘Wake up’ call, fast feminism reminds us that ‘we are to the degree that we risk ourselves.’[80] It issues a call to resistance with one’s body, it insists on action that will ‘queer’ the gaze that looks at the womb.[81]  This resistance is not against motherhood, but on a woman’s right to assert ‘ownership’ of her body and demand respect.[82]  The act of resistance performed in writing this text publicly expresses a wistful desire to confront the political violence of the womb.  It is not radical politics, but a demand for respect every day. The persistent lack of respect for the female body incurs the danger of in ‘no way predicting what women influenced by fast feminism will do.’[83] Grrrl!!

The author would like to dedicate this article to Dr. Shannon Bell, Political Science Department, York University, Toronto.

Footnotes

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