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Feminist Issues - Race, Class and Sexuality - Nancy - 240219 - 163507
Feminist Issues - Race, Class and Sexuality - Nancy - 240219 - 163507
Issues
Race, Class, and Sexuality
FEMINIST ISSUES:
RACE, CLASS, AND
SEXUALITY
Nancy Mandell
York University
Jennifer L. Johnson
Thorneloe University, federated with Laurentian University
Toronto
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [V0RY]
ISBN 978-0-13-359366-2
Dedication
Micah, Eli, Charlotte, Brooke, and Emily
and
Leandré, Rhys, and Maël
Brief Contents
iv
Contents
Notes on Contributors xi
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvii
v
Some Definitions: Colonialism, Imperialism, and Race 37
Race and Representation 41
Racialization 43
Race and Culture 44
Tracing Intersectionality 45
The “How” of Intersectionality 49
Some Possibilities and Limitations of Intersectionality 53
Conclusion 57
Endnotes 57
Discussion Questions 58
Bibliography 58
3 Transnational Feminism 62
Corinne L. Mason
Introduction 62
Globalization, Local/Global, and the Transnational 63
Local/Global 65
Transnational 66
Global Feminism and Transnational Feminism: Knowing the Difference 68
Migration 72
Representation 74
Decolonizing Feminist Thought 74
Decolonizing Feminist Research 75
Violence Against Women 77
Globalization and Violence against Women 78
Representing Violence against Women 78
Activism and Solidarity 80
Saving Other Women 80
The United Nations As a Site for Advocacy 83
Worker Solidarity 83
Conclusion 84
Endnotes 85
Discussion Questions 86
Bibliography 86
Contents vii
Weight and Eating 153
Eating Distress 155
Skin 157
Hair 160
Breasts 164
Conclusion: Recovering Beauty? 167
Endnotes 168
Discussion Questions 168
Bibliography 169
viii Contents
Endnotes 223
Discussion Questions 223
Bibliography 223
Contents ix
Teachers and Principals 285
Students 286
Contemporary Research 289
Higher Education 293
Students 294
The Professoriate 295
Women’s Studies and Feminism in the Academy 299
Feminist Pedagogies 300
The Rise of the McUniversity 301
Conclusion 301
Discussion Questions 302
Bibliography 302
Index 340
x Contents
Notes on Contributors
xi
is focused on historical perspectives on Canadian men, boys, and masculinities.
Feminist analyses of social, political and economic periods and contexts inform Greig’s
research, which appears in journals such as Educational Review, Discourse: Studies in the
Cultural Politics of Education, and the Alberta Journal of Educational Research and include
a co-edited book, Canadian Men and Masculinities: Historical and Contemporary
Perspectives (2012) and Ontario Boys: Masculinity and the Idea Boyhood in Postwar
Ontario, 1945–1960 (2014).
Jennifer L. Johnson is Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
at Thorneloe University federated with Laurentian University. Her research and teaching
include feminist geographical approaches to the study of social reproduction and global
economies; gender, race and racism, and feminist pedagogy. She sits on the editorial board
of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice/Études critiques sur le genre,
la culture, et la justice. Her current research explores how gender and race are socially
constructed through the spatialization of work, and in particular, the nuclear family home.
Susanne Luhmann is Associate Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender
Studies at the University of Alberta. Her teaching/research interests and published work
concern feminist and queer pedagogies, sexuality studies, the formation of Women’s and
Gender Studies, and German cultural memory. She is currently finishing a book manu-
script tentatively entitled “Domesticating the Nazi Past: Familial Legacies of Nazi Perpe-
tration in Contemporary German Memory,” which examines representations that restage,
recover, and narrate legacies of perpetration from within the space of private and family
life in Germany.
Nancy Mandell is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, York University. She is
a faculty associate at the Centre for Feminist Research (CFR) and the Centre for Excel-
lence for Research on Immigration and Settlement (CERIS). Her research and teaching
interests include gender, aging, qualitative methods, schooling, and family. Recently she
has published on life course analysis of midlife Canadian women, senior immigrants, and
transnational family patterns, gendered and racialized forms of carework, and academ-
ic-community research partnerships. She is completing a SSHRC grant entitled “Worked
to Death,” which examines patterns of economic security among aging immigrant families.
Corinne L. Mason is Assistant Professor of Sociology and the Coordinator of Gender &
Women’s Studies at Brandon University. She conducts transnational critical-race feminist
analyses of development discourses and popular news media, focusing specifically on
representations of LGBT rights, violence against women, reproductive justice, and foreign
aid. Her work has been published in Feminist Formations, International Feminist Journal of
Politics, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Surveillance & Society, and Canadian
Journal of Communication. She is currently working a book-length project on sexuality
rights and development, and exploring the connections between race, social media, and
humanitarianism.
J. Maki Motapanyane is Associate Professor of Women’s & Gender Studies in the
Department of Humanities, Mount Royal University. She teaches courses on global
gender issues and transnationalism; colonialism and de-colonization; Hip-Hop culture;
We are very pleased and proud to bring forward the 6th edition of Feminist Issues. Signifi-
cantly revised, the new edition provides an in-depth analysis of key issues facing women
in Canada. Politics, sexuality, social media, intimate relationships, life course challenges,
and institutional barriers are some of the issues the authors address. While the text is
aimed at the new undergraduate reader, seasoned students and practitioners of femi-
nism(s), anti-oppression, and related areas of study will also find rich and engaging discus-
sions of current feminist topics. No matter who you are, where you are or what your life
circumstances, young girls and women experience oppression and omission. Sensitive to
differences in age, gender, sexuality, language, region, and ethnicity, in this book our
authors examine both continuing and new challenges facing women.
Since the 5th edition, there has been a veritable groundswell of media interest in
feminist issues in Canada and transnationally. The continued widespread existence of
sexual assault on university and college campus campuses, ongoing sexual harassment
in workplaces, unyielding calls by Indigenous people and allies that challenge
Canadian society to account for literally hundreds of missing and murdered Indigenous
women, ongoing violence against women transnationally, and genuine engagement
from feminist men’s groups in shifting dominant ideas about masculinity have all
come to the forefront of popular discussions about feminism. In order to ensure that
media interest is more than fleeting, students of feminist ideas need to continue to
build capacity for action. Whether your feminist action happens in your teaching, on
social media, at your child’s daycare, in the streets, at the kitchen table, or on the
floor of the House of Commons, we think it is important that readers continue to
have access to in-depth feminist discussion of the topics addressed in this book as a
part of their/our reason to act.
The 6th edition includes nine new authors from across Canada who have singly or
collaboratively authored new material for this introductory text. These wonderful new
contributors broach the topics of critical race and Indigenous feminisms, transnational
feminist theory, critical masculinity studies, sexuality and gender identity, violence against
women, and health. Returning contributors have substantially revised and updated five
chapters within the thematic areas of education, aging, beauty culture, mothering and
work, education, and historical trajectories of select types of feminism. Every chapter is
theoretically grounded and contains contemporary examples.
With the writing of this preface, we have also to mark the passing of our colleague,
friend, and previous contributor, Dr. Sharon Rosenberg (July 31st, 2010). We remember
Sharon as an internationally recognized, controversial, challenging, and well-loved theo-
rist of cultural and feminist studies. We also remember her as a mentor of new feminist
thinkers.
xv
As always, we have sought contributors who are both seasoned academics as well as
new-entry scholars in an effort to further collaborative research and teaching about
feminism. We have done this by reaching out to scholars in universities of all sizes across
Canada, who have deep commitments to the intellectual communities they work within.
The production of knowledge about feminism can be a minefield of politics, social
tensions, and debate, both within communities that already consider themselves “feminist”
(and there are many) and those who baldly oppose gender, racial, class, and sexual equal-
ity (and sadly, there still exist some of those as well). In other words, the production of
knowledge about feminism is messy and often partial and incomplete. One of the most
important features of this book is that authors write the material for this collection, draw-
ing upon their own original research and assessment of their fields as they stand today.
They have sifted through mountains of literature, firsthand interviews, popular media,
policy and legal documents, and records of individual/collective experiences to distill for
the reader some key ideas about their topic. Authors have been asked to present answers
to the following questions: Why is the topic an issue for feminism? Why discuss it now?
How have some of the core issues for feminists been taken up within this topic? How
would/how do feminists working on this topic define problems that exist for women?, and:
What solutions does are posed for these problems? In their answers, authors challenge our
ideas about what topics feminism can be applied to and where feminist understandings of
these issues still need to grow.
Putting together this collection of ideas, arguments, and research has been a privilege
and a pleasure. The contributors and peer reviewers of this text have been generous with
their time, constructive criticism, and written work. We thank each one of them for their
work. For one of us—Jen Johnson—work on this collection represents a full circle return
to a text that was first introduced to her as a student in 1995. Working with Nancy
Mandell, the originator and editor of this text, has been a privilege and a tremendous
learning experience. For Nancy, bringing Jen on board was an inspired choice as she has
completely revitalized the discussion and moved it in new and fascinating directions. We
each do our part in the ongoing struggles for women’s equality in Canada. We the editors
and the contributors are very proud to offer this edition as our small contribution to
these movements.
xvi Preface
Acknowledgements
Numerous people have read versions of these chapters and generously offered rigorous
and thoughtful critiques. Given their attention to peer review, we are confident that
these chapters represent the best possible versions of the contributors’ work and for this
we are extremely grateful. We thank also the seven anonymous reviewers of the previous
edition, feminist scholars from all over Canada who teach about feminism to ‘new’ audi-
ences and to those students who have given invaluable feedback over the years—we are
listening. At Pearson we would like to thank Madhu Ranadive, Matthew Christian, and
Keriann McGoogan for their guidance and timely suggestions on the composition
and framing of the collection. To Pearson’s staff and copy editors, especially Ruth Chernia
and Garima Khosla, we are grateful for your attention to detail and for bringing this
collection to fruition.
Nancy would like to welcome Jennifer Johnson on board and thank her for agreeing
to co-edit Feminist Issues. Jen’s lively sense of humour and her considerable energy and
enthusiasm for the project have made her an ideal collaborator. The sixth edition is
markedly stronger because Jen has joined the team. Nancy also thanks the people from
whom she gains strength and affection: her long time partner Lionel; her ‘boys’—Jeremy,
Ben, and Adam—and their partners—Marissa, Caroline, and Jamie—and now their
children—Micah, Eli, Charlotte, Brooke, and Emily. As Feminist Issues has grown, so too
has Nancy’s family!
Jen is very thankful to Nancy for the opportunity to join her in co-editing this text—
thank you for taking a chance on me! Working with you afforded me the opportunity to
learn far more than I ever could have on my own. I am extremely thankful also to my
research assistant, Taynia Rainville: thank you for your exceptional work ethic and ability
to ask good questions fearlessly. To Shana, thank you for your patience into the many
months of drafts and editing. My hope is that this book is one small part of shifting our
culture to allow our trio of proto-feminists: Leandré, Rhys, and Maël, a chance at living in
a more just society.
xvii
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Chapter 1
Theorizing Women’s Oppression and
Social Change: Liberal, Socialist,
Radical, and Postmodern Feminisms
Shana L. Calixte, Jennifer L. Johnson, and J. Maki Motapanyane
IntroductIon
Although feminism has come to mean many things to many people, we prefer the words
of bell hooks who wrote: “Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist
exploitation, and oppression” (2000, p. 1). Feminism begins with the premise that women’s
and men’s positions in society are socially, economically, culturally, and historically
shaped, not biologically predetermined. It is also premised on the idea that not all women
experience gender inequalities in the same way. An understanding of this unequal distri-
bution of power inevitably exposes other oppressions based on factors such as race, sexual-
ity, class, dis/ability, and nationhood (St. Denis, 2007, p. 47). Feminism is political in that
it aims to achieve gender equity in all spheres—social life, politics, economic conditions,
language, culture, and many other areas. But feminists remain unclear about how best to
achieve both general and specific redistribution of social and economic power.
In this chapter, we outline several historical and contemporary approaches to defin-
ing women’s oppression, their means for remedying this oppression, and the ways in which
each perspective judges whether equity has been achieved. The first three of these theo-
ries are decidedly modernist and challenge oppression within the framework of gender
dichotomies, while the fourth theory presented—postmodern feminism—attempts to
shatter these altogether. Although not exhaustive, this chapter follows several historical
trajectories of feminism in Western nations revealing how fundamental assumptions and
ideas about gender have emerged and changed over time.
1
women be integrated into existing social, political, religious, and economic institutions in
order to achieve equality with men. Specifically, liberal feminists use liberal ideas of ratio-
nality, meritocracy, equality of opportunity, and freedom of choice as core principles on
which to achieve women’s equality.
First, liberal feminists emphasize women’s capacity for rational thought and thus their
shared humanity with men. Early feminist thinkers argued strenuously that women’s
capacity for reason was the same as that of men. Mary Wollstonecraft, in A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman (1792) scandalized her contemporaries by refuting the widely held
idea that women were inherently simple, irrational, and emotional. Through formal edu-
cation, Wollstonecraft claimed, women can develop their innate capabilities for intellec-
tual thought and thus become better wives and mothers. Wollstonecraft’s ideas anticipated
arguments put forward by women in later centuries.
Second, liberal feminists endorse the concept of meritocracy. This principle emerges
clearly in the works of Harriet Taylor Mill (1807–1858) and her long-time companion, the
political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Harriet Taylor Mill argued radically for
the desirability of women to earn and have control of their own property and money that
she saw as the basis for achieving equality between the sexes. Only by earning their own
status (instead of relying upon a man for their keep) and controlling their own property
would women have a chance of realizing equality of opportunity with men in other spheres.
These two principles—rationality and meritocracy—have been particularly important
in facilitating women’s access to formal education. Early liberal feminists understood that,
without a formal education, women could not advance in social status or political
participation, and could not acquire other social and legal rights unless they held
educational credentials equal to those of men. But in 19th century Canada, women faced
many challenges in this regard. First, women who wanted further education
found themselves up against the view that educated women compromised their natural
roles as child-bearers (Garvie & Johnson, 1999). Second, some 19th century white women
who wanted an education, particularly married women, were accused of “racial suicide”
because the racial theories of the time presumed the moral superiority of white people and
women’s obligation to reproduce that “race” instead of going to university (Valverde,
1992). As well, some ethnic minorities and people of colour, such as members of the Black
communities of eastern Canada and southern Ontario, found themselves unwelcome in
white Protestant or Catholic schools. Black women were key in establishing separate
schools as early as 1830, even prior to the formal abolition of slavery in Canada. Separate
schools were not only a site of women’s education but also a form of resistance to the
racism Black people experienced from white Canadians (Kelly, 1998; Sadlier, 1994). In
Canada West (now Ontario) and East (now Quebec), female teachers proliferated
throughout the 1850s, providing what little education was considered necessary for girls,
such as writing, reading, and needlework (Prentice et al., 1996). In 1858, Canada’s first
female university students studied at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. They
studied a limited range of topics that typically included literature, languages, rhetoric,
history, and home economics (developed specifically for female students’ entry into
2 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
post-secondary education). Typically, women students were segregated in all-female
classrooms and required to sit apart from male students in adjoining rooms where they
could hear the lecture but not be seen by the men (Garvie & Johnson, 1999). By the early
1900s in Canada, through informal but highly effective networks of women graduates,
education for women came to be thought of as an enhancement of the young middle-class
woman’s “natural” qualities (Garvie & Johnson, 1999). The principles of rationality and
meritocracy were thus exercised incrementally in the fight for early access to education.
Third, liberal feminists advocate equality of opportunity for women in all areas of social,
economic, legal, and political life. This principle was critical in shaping liberal feminists’ goal
of getting women in Canada the vote. Between 1850 and 1920 liberal feminists pushed for
women’s suffrage.1 Feminists lobbied the state, held demonstrations, and staged mock
parliamentary debates to ridicule the men who upheld women’s political and legal inequality.
Suffragists used a variety of tactics to challenge the familiar dichotomy of “passive” femininity
versus the “active” and political masculinity thought appropriate for political decision-
making (Roome, 2001). Some felt that petitioning, letter-writing, and public speaking were
the best tactics to achieve their goals. The work of maternal feminist and journalist Nellie
McClung (1875–1951) in Manitoba is a good example of effective public speaking; she used
wit to ridicule male politicians in the press. Maternal feminists argue that women’s essential
role as mothers imbues them as moral and caring people who have the best interests of
children and communities at heart, thus making them well-suited to political participation.
Canadian women gained equality of opportunity to participate politically unevenly.
Although most women were granted the federal vote in 1918, this still excluded most Indig-
enous people and people of Chinese origin (Cleverdon, 1974, p. 108). After 1918 the federal
government divested itself of responsibility for granting the provincial franchise, so while
some Manitoban women could vote provincially in 1916, others, such as their Québécoise
counterparts, had to mobilize to bring 14 separate bills in 13 years to the Quebec legislature.
Finally, under the leadership of Thérèse Casgrain (1896–1981) they enjoyed success in 1940.
For Status Indian women, enfranchisement under the Indian Act required that they give up
their association with a band, their status, and any land or property entitlements, a deeply
unjust trade. Status Indian women achieved the vote in 1960 when the universal right to
vote was introduced, though this cannot be attributed to the legacy of liberal feminism.
The movement for universal suffrage was often combined with women’s attempts to
correct other social inequities such as poverty. Maternal feminists and liberal feminists
worked together along with socialist and conservative women toward the goals of social
reform and, ultimately, the vote (Roome, 2001). Led by Dr. Emily Howard Stowe
(1831–1903), the Toronto Women’s Literary Club (established in 1876) reorganized as the
Canadian Women’s Suffrage Association in 1883 when some minor rights for women to vote
in municipal elections were won (Prentice et al., 1996). In Quebec, women’s organizing
around suffrage and social problems such as poverty and health took place largely through
women’s Roman Catholic organizations, reflecting the appeal of Christian-based public ser-
vice organizations such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the
Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA). Their work centred on providing shelter
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 3
and educational programs for young, single, and poor women. With the slight increase in
women’s access to formal education and legislation such as the 1884 Married Women’s Prop-
erty Act (allowing married women to hold property exclusive of their husbands’ ownership),
feminists built the capacity for their movement (Prentice et al., 1996). Social reformers and
religious organizations such as the WCTU were concerned about the state of urban dwellers,
reacting to the poverty and malnutrition of the masses that came with urbanization and
industrialization. In Western Canada, for example, where milk was more costly than alcohol,
women began to make the connections between poverty, the availability of alcohol, and the
violence of men toward women and children (McClung, 1915/1972).
While a national women’s movement advocated for the vote for women, it did not
advocate for every women to have the right to vote. Social Darwinist ideas of racial purity as
the basis for building a strong nation meant that Indigenous peoples, people of Chinese ori-
gin, and new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe were viewed as biologically
inferior and denied the vote (Strong-Boag, 1998). Even social reformers argued for white
women’s superiority. Flora MacDonald Denison, a Canadian suffragist, was particularly criti-
cal of the morals of recent male immigrants (Prentice et al., 1996), while Emily Murphy
(1868–1933), one of the “famous five” women who won women’s right to take up public
offices, such as appointment to the Senate of Canada in 1929 (Cleverdon, 1974, p. 149),
wrote extensively on the threat of Chinese and Black men’s corruptive tendencies to the
moral purity of white women (Valverde, 1992). The white ribbons worn by WCTU activists
signified white racial purity as much as they did the purity of milk over alcohol (Valverde,
1992). Despite the extensive political organizing of Black women such as Harriet Tubman
(1820–1913) in the suffrage movement and of other women of colour in organizations such
as the WCTU, white suffragists and social reformers persisted in the belief that their partici-
pation was additional, not central, to its eventual success (Sadlier, 1994; Valverde, 1992).
Maternal feminists in particular embraced and applied the principles of equal opportunity
and meritocracy but felt that white women had a superior moral and racial integrity, indicat-
ing white female suitability for political participation (Roome, 2001; Valverde, 1992).
Fourth, freedom of choice is a principle of liberal feminism. Freedom of choice is
often understood as being closely related to the concept of equal opportunity, for without
the opportunity to do so, you cannot freely choose anything. For example, the question of
whether to stay home and care for your children or seek paid work is often understood as
a question of choice for liberal feminism, a choice that requires equal opportunity in order
to be exercised. The federal government had briefly empowered women to join the paid
workforce during the Second World War by investing in subsidized daycare and encourag-
ing women to join the war effort in traditionally male forms of employment (Timpson,
2001). After the war, women were encouraged by the media, religious institutions, and
school systems to go back to the role of homemaking. In addition to the existence of sexist
job descriptions and the lack of labour laws to prohibit sexist hiring practices in most
fields, the post-war welfare state did not include a national daycare program (nor has any
federal government since then), so many women had little choice but to fulfill their
unpaid roles as mothers and wives. Women, who had previously worked outside the home,
4 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
and even those who had not, became increasingly focused on exercising their freedom of
choice to engage in paid labour.
Liberal feminist principles and, in particular, equality of opportunity are evident again
in the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, 1970 (RCSW), which is a benchmark
moment of Canadian women’s rights. It is important to understand the groundswell of
activism leading up to the RCSW was not only an undertaking of liberal feminists but also
included the efforts of many involved in other inter-related struggles, such as new immi-
grant activist networks (Brown, 1989; Calliste, 2001); renewed challenges to the federal
Indian Act raised by First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples; and the revitalization of Indig-
enous women’s leadership in their communities (Maracle, 2003, p. 71). Simultaneously, the
gay and lesbian liberation movement was challenging the criminalization of homosexuality
and in 1969 achieved its decriminalization (Kinsman, 1987). As well, gender-based labour
organizing was gaining strength (Luxton, 2006). These movements provided a new base of
women dissatisfied with their relationship to the state and ready to do something about it.
Strategically, the RCSW proposed a human rights framework that had equal opportu-
nity as its goal (Timpson, 2001, p. 29). Headed by Florence Bird (1908–1998), the RCSW
spent over a year touring the country receiving briefs and hearing presentations from indi-
viduals and groups that had something to say about the status of women in Canadian
society. The entire process was televised so that the nation watched; feminists were hope-
ful that the public nature of the RCSW would help them hold the federal government to
carrying out the recommendations.
Based on the input of more than 300 women’s organizations across the country and
many more individuals, the RCSW identified four major areas of importance for Canadian
women: the right to choose homemaking or paid employment; the shared responsibility
for child care among mothers, fathers, and society at large; the special treatment of women
relating to their maternity; and the special treatment of women to help them overcome
the adverse effects of discriminatory practices in Canadian society (Paltiel, 1997, p. 29).
These recommendations supported the central liberal feminist principle of equality of
opportunity for women. The RCSW made 167 specific recommendations to the federal
government as to how the social, political, and economic status of women could be
improved. Some were implemented; many more were not. For example, Canada still lacks
a national daycare program that would allow more women equal participation in the
labour force. Many liberal-feminist organizations, although recognizing that many more
issues have been added to the agenda, still use the RCSW recommendations as a measuring
stick for women’s equality with men in Canada.
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 5
1940s, when Canada’s participation in the Second World War necessitated more doctors.
Although some female physicians did practice medicine in Canada before the Second
World War, the number of female students did not immediately approach the number of
male students. After the Second World War the number of women seeking higher educa-
tion in general arts increased dramatically. Women have worked their way slowly into uni-
versities and colleges and into traditionally male-dominated areas of study, such as the
sciences and engineering, such that their numbers have begun to approach those of men or
exceed them in some fields, such as in the arts and in the study of law at some universities.
Access to education is one of the major accomplishments of liberal feminism.
As a result of high levels of education, Canadian girls and women enjoy high overall
labour force participation (62%) when you consider that in many countries women over
the age of 15 account for far less than half of the active labour force (for example, 15% in
Algeria and 40% in Italy) (World Bank, 2014). In contrast to Canada’s relatively stable
paid labour force access for women, current trends tell another story. In fact, Canada now
ranks 19th in a measure called the Global Gender Gap set out by the World Economic
Forum, where it lags behind countries that have experienced major wars and social upheavals
in the late 20th century, such as Nicaragua (6th), Rwanda (7th), or large economic crises
that have necessitated periodic mass migration, such as the Philippines (9th). Whereas in
the 1990s it ranked among the top countries in the world according to the United Nations
Gender Equality Index, Canada now ranks 23rd globally (Prasad & Freeman, 2015).
Why the change? Among many other factors, these statistical tools look at the sig-
nificance of persistent gender wage gaps as a main indicator of equality between men and
women in the prime of their work lives. Statistics Canada reports that the percentage of
women ages 25 to 54 years old in the paid workforce was 81% in 2005 and has approached
that of men, which was 91% in that same year (Statistics Canada, 2006b). Whereas wom-
en’s earnings relative to men even narrowed until the late 1990s, their average hourly
wage rate has stayed consistent at 82 to 83% of men’s average wage, where it appears to be
stuck (Drolet, 2011, pp. 6, 14). Of course, women cannot choose the average wage they’d
prefer—the male dollar ($1.00) versus the female dollar ($0.82)—so the wage gap contin-
ues to be a liberal feminist issue.
It is also quite remarkable that despite women’s achievements in the labour force,
Canada has not been able to elect equal numbers of men and women to the House of
Commons. Canada currently lags behind other Western nations with comparable
advantages in the global economy including the United States (43%) and New Zealand
(40%). By comparison, countries such as the Philippines (55%) and St. Lucia (52%)
surpass gender parity among elected legislators (United Nations, 2012). At a very basic
level, outright sexism is still actively directed at female Members of Parliament, the most
evident of these being through social media (Ryckewaert, 2015). Green Party leader
Elizabeth May noted, “Our looks are attacked more, our clothing is attacked, the notion of
sexual attractiveness and sexual violence . . . some of it is quite vile,” and MP Megan Leslie
reports tweets made by members of the public on official social media for their offices,
referring to sexual violence against female MPs of all political backgrounds: “‘CPC skank
6 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
Michelle Rempel needs to eat a dick,’ read one example. ‘Eve Adams is a skanky-ass bitch,
a younger Playboy version of Belinda Stronach’,” read another (Ryckewaert, 2015). Others
suggest these sexist attitudes extend to their daily participation in the House of Commons
with MP Laurin Liu observing that her party’s finance critic was heckled during one speech
with comments such as “learn to read” (Ryckewaert, 2015).
Unfortunately, if standards for gender equality are taken to mean that governments
should continuously protect and support gender equality, then Canada has recently been
set on a very different path. The 1990s saw repeated cuts to social funding under a Liberal
government and the eventual dissolution of the National Action Committee on the
Status of Women, then Canada’s only national feminist lobby group. In 2006 Status of
Women Canada had its operating budget reduced by 43% by a Conservative federal
government. Ironically, the responsibility of announcing and carrying out the extraordinary
cuts fell to a woman, then Minister Bev Oda, responsible for Status of Women, who also
removed the word “equality” from the agency’s main goals (Brodie, 2008).
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 7
opportunity, meritocracy, and freedom of choice is therefore heavily mediated by the ways
in which their legal and political history are gendered and racialized.
A primary criticism of liberal feminist theory is its selectivity and privileging of the
objectives of white middle- or upper-class women. In the past, women’s equality with men
has not always been the primary consideration of women whose social class was far
removed from that of the average middle- or upper-class wife. If a person is subject to leg-
islation such as the Indian Act, arguing for gender equality with men makes little differ-
ence without racial and class equality (Arneil, 2001, p. 54). This short-sightedness is
demonstrated by the argument of some early Canadian feminists that only white women
of Canadian birth should be allowed the vote (Prentice et al., 1996).
At the same time, liberal feminism has often been written about without attention to
the contributions made by Indigenous women and women of colour whose participation
in equality-seeking activism is significant (Dua, 1999). Acknowledging the complexity of
obtaining goals for all women, such as equal access to education and political and labour
force participation, is necessary. Liberal feminist understanding of women’s oppression
and methods of social change incorporate women into existing political and economic
institutions without necessarily transforming the relations of power between men and
women within those organizations or even in society at large.
socIaLIst FemInIsm
defining socialist Feminism
Socialist feminism originates in Marxist theory and uses class and gender as central catego-
ries of analysis in its explanation of women’s oppression. Socialist feminism has several key
goals in its analyses and activism. First, socialist feminism relates the oppression experi-
enced by women to their economic dependence on men. One of the goals of socialist
feminism is therefore to advocate for women’s economic independence. In addition, social-
ist feminism provides a materialist analysis of gender inequality by identifying the relation-
ship between systems of patriarchal oppression in which women are subordinated to men,
and class relations in capitalist economic systems in which the working classes are subordi-
nated to the upper classes. A second goal of socialist feminism is to expose and challenge
the devaluation of women’s unpaid labour in the home. In doing so, socialist feminists
advocate for the acknowledgement of the value of women’s domestic work, a sharing of
domestic responsibilities in the home, and state involvement (financial and legislative) in
creating a society that is equitable and just for everyone. A third, related goal of socialist
feminism is to highlight and do away with continuing gendered pay inequality (a major
contributor to women’s financial dependency on men and the over-representation of
women among the total number of poor), as well as the gendered division of labour within
the wage labour market (which is responsible for the over-representation of women in ser-
vice industries and feminized employment). Socialist feminism uses analyses of class to
explain the ways in which social, economic, and political power is distributed in varying
8 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
amounts to members of society, and how this process is influenced by factors such as gen-
der, racialized and ethnic identity, age, sexual orientation, and ability.
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 9
consequently, certain levels of pay, to individuals based on their gender. The result is a society
in which men are over-represented in the highest-paying professional jobs, women’s (unpaid)
domestic contributions are not regarded as work, and women are over-represented in service-
oriented jobs at lower pay. These hierarchies have an impact on women’s ability to achieve
economic independence, pay for health care, receive pensions, exercise child care and
maternity leave options, and make them susceptible to violence (among other factors).
Marx’s discussion of the process of industrialization and the concentration of the pro-
duction of goods outside the home is used by Marxist feminists to expose a shift in the popu-
lar understanding of what constitutes productivity. Working in a factory producing goods is
viewed by capitalist states as productive but cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and taking
care of children are not (Waring, 1999). Value is judged by wages. Women’s inability to turn
their work in home into a marketable product makes it less economically valued even
through their work is socially necessary (Tong, 1998). Furthermore, as Mariarosa Dalla Costa
and Selma James (1975) have suggested, to argue for the equal inclusion of women within
the labour force (as liberal feminists have done), without socializing or making a public
responsibility of child care and housework, will only increase the oppressive conditions
under which women live. The result is that waking up in the morning to prepare breakfast
and lunch for the kids and husband, going to the office, and returning home in the evening
only to cook dinner, finish the laundry, and clean, means a double day of work for women
(Mitchell, 1971). In order for women to be liberated, domestic labour must be equalized.
Socialist feminists, like Marxist feminists, consider capitalism a significant factor in
the oppression experienced by women. They also consider the oppressive role of patriarchy.
Patriarchy is an analytic category and system of distributing power in society that hierar-
chically ascribes importance to all things male or masculine over all things female or femi-
nine. Socialist feminists find Marxist feminism problematic in that it locates most aspects
of women’s oppression within the bourgeoisie/proletariat (owner/worker) paradigm,
neglecting the more complex aspects of relationships between women and men. Using an
intersectional analysis that considers the interplay of gender, racialized and ethnic identity,
sexuality, and age (among other factors), socialist feminists have also looked to the ways
that women participate in the oppression of other women in the context of capitalist econ-
omies. In Canada, for instance, the persistent need for child care and the government’s
failure to adopt universal child care are key reasons that so many middle- and upper-class
women rely on the exploited labour of racialized women from developing countries.
Two foundational concepts to social feminist thought are unpaid labour and the fem-
inization of poverty. In the case of unpaid labour, socialist feminist analysis has provided
important insights into the fundamental contribution of housework done predominantly
by women to the unfolding of the daily activities of individuals. Current statistical trends
on this topic are reviewed in Chapter 10 of this book (Gaszo). As housewives and workers
in the home, women contribute to the profits of the capitalist economy by ensuring that
present-day and future workers in the paid labour force, be they teenagers or adults, are
cared for in the home in ways that prepare and support them in their positions within the
paid labour force (Morris, 2000). Whether by doing family laundry, preparing meals,
10 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
cleaning, and maintaining organization in the home; or transporting household members
to and from school, work, and play, women provide an important service—not only to
their families, but also to a capitalist patriarchy that benefits from the present and future
labour of these family members. By seeing housework as women’s expression of their love
for their families, capitalist and state institutions can enjoy benefit and profits from wom-
en’s unpaid labour. These benefits include the reproduction of members of the future
workforce and the maintenance of their physical, emotional, and mental health allowing
them to continue to be productive. Despite an increase in men’s participation in unpaid
domestic work over the last three decades, 2011 Statistics Canada data indicate that
Canadian women continue to do the majority of household work and feel more time-
stressed as a result than their male counterparts (Milan, Keown, & Urquijo, 2011).
The feminization of poverty is a term used by socialist feminists to identify the dispro-
portionate majority of women who are poor, linking their poverty to patriarchal and capi-
talist sexist and profit-based initiatives that segregate the labour market. This segregation
is carried out based on constructed notions of gender (“women’s work” vs. “men’s work”);
by devaluing labour in the home; by not factoring home work into official national labour-
based calculations such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 2; and by reinforcing
notions of household labour as a “natural” consequence of a woman’s love for her family.
Canadian women are the majority of part-time workers (Canadian Women’s Foundation)
and continue to outnumber men in the Canadian population of low-income earners
(Employment and Social Development Canada).
Since women’s responsibilities for and within the home are not recognized as “real” work,
women are not compensated by the state for reducing their wage labour to part-time work in
order to take care of children, or for losing job training and seniority upon taking maternity
leave from waged work. The relegation of women to lower-paying employment sectors, long
accepted as more suited to women’s “feminine” characteristics (teaching, nursing, cleaning,
cooking, typing), has contributed to women’s disproportionate poverty while maintaining the
wage gap between men and women. Canadian women not only earn less on average than
their male counterparts, but also continue to earn less than their male peers in full-time posi-
tions of comparable or same professional training (Morissette, Picot, & Lu, 2013).
The increased presence of women in the paid labour force and in post-secondary edu-
cation, along with the increase in single-parent homes led by women (Statistics Canada,
2012), highlight the complicated constraints that wage working women continue to
negotiate outside of adequate state and social support. It is important to note that an
increase in women’s wage labour participation is not an indication of equitable labour
relations as a whole. Statistics Canada data indicate that, despite their increased partici-
pation in the wage labour market, women continue to do the majority of unpaid work in
the home, at an average of 50.1 hours per week compared to Canadian men at 24.4 hours
per week (Milan, Keown, & Urquijo, 2011). For socialist feminists, eradicating poverty
and the oppression of women involves not only the equal sharing of domestic responsi-
bilities between men and women, but also policies that create flexibility in determining
when and under what conditions one re-enters employment (Harman, 2000).
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 11
Poverty does not affect all women in the same way. Indigenous women, non-white
women, and women with dis/abilities are particularly vulnerable to poverty. According to
a 2011 Statistics Canada report, First Nations girls and women disproportionately live in
substandard housing compared to non-First Nations women and girls. Furthermore, First
Nations women consistently earn less than non–First Nations women in Canada
(O’Donnell & Wallace, 2011). The history of the Live-In Caregiver Program in Canada
also reflects the ways in which women’s experiences of oppression differ within the
capitalist system. The interconnectedness of “race” and racism, gender, class, and
sexuality—all in relation to labour—is visible in the disproportionately large number of
immigrant and non-white women occupying low-wage, non-unionized jobs with no
benefits (Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2007). With limited childcare spaces and
a general increase in the working hours and responsibilities of employees, resorting to
privatized domestic service becomes one way Canadian women manage the responsibilities
of a household and employment in the labour market (Morris, 2002).
12 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
“global care chain” (Hochschild, 2000) thrives, shaped significantly by the negative
consequences of the structural adjustment programs (SAPS) and lending conditions to
which many developing nations find themselves tied. This global care chain is
characterized by the migration of women from lesser economically developed regions of
the world to the wealthiest countries. Canada, for example, remains dependent on female
migrant labour for its agricultural, sex, and domestic service industries. A complicated set
of dynamics, involving rigid immigration and labour rights restrictions, perpetuates and
compounds the vulnerability of women in these domains.
Second, socialist feminists have highlighted the transformation of the industrial
economy of the 20th century into service and information-oriented economies. Develop-
ments in technology and a shift toward information-based work has introduced greater
flexibility into the labour market, leading to what some political economy feminists
(Fudge & Owens, 2006) call “precarious work” (lack of income and job security, part-time
employment, temporary work, home work, on-call work, low wages, few benefits, and
absence of union representation). However, it is not only technological development that
is influencing labour trends and shifts. The historically feminine and domesticated work
responsibilities of women have a sharply increased presence in the paid labour market.
Indeed, political economy feminists have noted a new economy of women’s work (in
which working-class men are now also increasingly participating). Hence, the increase of
service-oriented jobs, many of which are precarious in nature, is termed the feminization of
work (Fudge & Owens, 2006). As socialist feminists indicate, responsibility for domestic
work has not decreased as more women have entered the wage labour market. The burden
of an increased number of obligations without (any or in-) adequate state support in
wealthy countries is negotiated at the expense of more vulnerable women (Thistle, 2006).
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 13
of activism that have used the “ideology of separate spheres for men and women” (Mandell &
Elliot, 2001) as a key component of materialist analyses of oppression.
radIcaL FemInIsm
defining radical Feminism
Have you ever wondered when women started to “Take Back the Night,” rallying for safer
streets and demanding that violence against women be stopped? These demonstrations,
along with demonstrations for abortion rights as well as anti-violence protests, sprang
from radical feminism. Radical feminists have contributed much to feminist theory by
concentrating on sexuality, control, and violence, and by making clear the ways in which
men’s power over women can be seen in all areas of women’s lives.
Many scholars attribute the rise of radical feminism to New York–based groups such
as the Red Stockings, the Furies, and the Radicalesbians, yet Canadian-based radical
feminist groups such as the New Feminists of Toronto are also important to the devel-
opment of radical feminist action in Canada (Echols, 1989). Groups like these orga-
nized around many issues through consciousness-raising (CR) sessions where women
came together to share stories of sexist oppression and gendered exploitation to dis-
cover that “the personal is political” (Crow, 2000, p. 6). The CR group or “rap session”
appealed to many women. They could share accounts of oppression across class and race
lines, link those accounts to a larger theoretical framework in order to build critical
organizing skills, and publicly air their goals. Radical feminists active in the 1960s and
1970s also used manifestos as a revolutionary method to “speak bitterness” (Freeman,
1975, quoted in Crow, 2000, p. 6). Collectively, radical feminist activities seek to form
the basis for a global sisterhood, spreading feminism internationally and building alli-
ances around concrete concerns such as violence and pornography (Morgan, 1970).
14 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
women, radical feminists theorize from women’s everyday lives. They believe that patriar-
chy, a “sexual system of power in which the male possesses superior power and economic
privilege,” is what shapes everyday life and what specifically affects women, for the benefit
of men (Eisenstein, 1979, p. 17). Patriarchy, they argue, is constituted in and through
various social structures and is reproduced and activated in everyday relations, having
impacts on a global scale. It can be found in all aspects of society, including the state, the
family, and other institutions, such as schools, the media, and religious institutions. In
order to free themselves from the “Father Land” of patriarchy, an autonomous social, his-
torical, and political force created by men for their own benefit, women must resist and
undermine this system (Daly, 1978, p. 28; Donovan, 2000, p. 156).
Radical feminists argue that the state (which includes political institutions, the legal
system, and elected representatives) is founded on, and is emblematic of, male interests.
Therefore, radical feminists believe that entrusting women’s liberation to the state will
result in their being taken for granted. Although the state assumes objectivity as its norm,
in practice, “women are raped by the state just as they are raped by men” (Andersen,
1997, p. 359). Engaging with the state through state-sponsored initiatives is seen as futile.
Violence against women has not diminished despite considerable state-funded initiatives.
Male power and control also resides in the family, which represents another site of
oppression for women. Radical feminists see the sexual, social, and economic energy
women provide to reproducing the family as sustaining their oppression. Ideologies of
romance and love and heterosexual marriage function as “opiates,” keeping women
drugged and under male control. Romantic love, beauty, dieting, and other cultural
practices are seen as tools used by patriarchy to uphold and support heteronormativity,
keeping women reliant on men’s sexual attention and affection and by making women
promote and service the desires of men (Firestone, 1970, pp. 131, 146). Ti-Grace Atkinson
(1970), an early radical feminist, stated that love, as an institution of male power and
control, supports violence and also “promotes vulnerability, dependence, possessiveness,
susceptibility to pain, and prevents the full development of a woman’s potential” (p. 117).
Traditional mothering ideology and practice also come under radical feminist scrutiny.
As Rich has argued, mothering under patriarchy is an exploitative responsibility (Rich,
1976). The seeming naturalness of motherhood and its institutionalization has become a
normative obligation for women in patriarchal society. In the 1960s and 1970s, radical
feminists pointed to the idea that women were supposed to be on the mothering job
24 hours a day, every day, with no outside contacts (Tong, 1998, p. 83). Patriarchal order
dictates that women’s ability to mother becomes conflated with their worthiness as
women. If you are not a good mother, you are not a good woman (Kreps, 1973, p. 236).
Radical feminist analyses of motherhood have been critiqued, especially by feminist
theorists who have formulated mothering as an empowering feminist enterprise. Many
feminists have reclaimed motherhood as an important step in the formation of their
feminism. As Andrea O’Reilly (2000) states, “[t]hough I had identified myself as a feminist
for a number of years; motherhood made feminism real for me and radically redefined it”
(pp. 182–183).
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 15
Women’s Bodies: Reproduction, Pornography,
and Violence
Many early radical feminist theorists looked to women’s reproductive roles to discover the
root problem of women’s oppression (Firestone, 1970). Biology separates the sexes, a divi-
sion that relegates an enormous amount of reproductive labour to women. As women
nurture and care for children, men are free to participate in public life and in social insti-
tutions, where they can acquire power, privilege, and property which emboldens their
superior social status (Hamilton, 1996, p. 20). This seemingly “natural” sexual division of
public from private labour (men in the public, women in the private) means that women
are at the mercy of their biology (Firestone, 1970). Within this sexual division of labour,
women’s bodies become objects, passed down from father to husband, placing the owner-
ship of their sexuality squarely in the hands of men (Hamilton, 1996, p. 65). According to
radical feminists, the only way to end women’s oppression is to end these types of exploit-
ative relationships.
In order to dismantle patriarchy, some radical feminists call for a re-evaluation of
women’s reproductive roles and an elimination of the traditional family. Women had little
control over their reproductive functions because abortion was illegal in Canada until
19883 and birth control was hard to acquire in the early phases of the women’s movement
in the 1960s and 1970s. Many, therefore, suggested that freeing women from the “tyranny
of reproduction” and relying on technological advances would diminish clearly marked
and oppressive gendered differences (Firestone, 1970). As a remedy, some radical femi-
nists believed that in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and eventually cloning
would separate women from their wombs, therefore breaking the oppressive tie of women
to biology. Others countered that although women would be liberated from reproduction
through new reproductive technologies, these new techniques would only lead to male
control as men tended to own the technologies. Margaret Atwood’s famous novel The
Handmaid’s Tale (1985) tells a story of a dystopian future where women become uniquely
defined and controlled by their reproductive roles.
Radical feminists question the meaning of masculinity and femininity, arguing that
masculinity is linked to dominance and that femininity is linked to subordination. These
unequal relations of power are eroticized in traditional heterosexual relations in which
women are positioned as objects of male pleasure, constantly available, constantly ready,
and constantly scrutinized. Anne Koedt (1970), in her well-known article “The Myth of
the Vaginal Orgasm,” says that a male defined view of sexuality assumes women can only
achieve orgasm through male penetration and that those who cannot must be frigid.
Clearly this model ignores women’s needs and desires (MacKinnon, 1989).
In popular media and online pornography, the male gaze further constructs women’s
sexuality and structures male and female sexual relations. As a result, many young people
define their own ideas around sexuality and sexual relations only through these sources.
Some radical feminists think that male violence against women stems from an intake of
violent pornography, making it acceptable to see women as purely objects of sexual
16 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
gratification rather than as mutual players of love and intimacy (Tong, 1998). Popular
feminists such as Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues (1996), argue that these
relations of power can be linked to global violence against women, such as incest, honour
killing, and rape as a war crime.
Radical feminist theories have been successful in providing a framework for
understanding what is and is not considered criminally obscene in Canada. In 1992, a
landmark Supreme Court decision in Butler v. the Queen brought into debate the definition
of what constitutes criminal obscenity (Donald Butler was arrested for selling hard-core
pornographic videos in his Manitoba store). Catherine MacKinnon (1946–) and Andrea
Dworkin (1946–2005), two very famous radical feminists from the United States, along
with the Canadian organization Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF),
were instrumental in shaping the Canadian obscenity law. These anti-pornography
proponents used earlier radical feminist ideas that viewed pornography as essentially
violent and degrading to women and a facet of the patriarchal order. The court found that
any images that portrayed “degrading” sex, especially of women, could be criminalized
(Cossman, Bell, Gotell, & Ross, 1997, p. 18). This was seen as a victory for many anti-
pornography feminists, who insisted that these images were detrimental to women.
According to the 1992 decision, the goal of outlawing certain types of material and
defining them as obscene was to protect people, most notably women, from harm. What is
considered pornographic and what is considered obscene is decided through one simple
test: whether or not images are degrading to women. Obscenity laws were no longer seen
as a matter of public morality or decency, but were evaluated according to questions of
harm, especially harm to women (Cossman et al., 1997).
This 1992 judgment also affected gay and lesbian materials in unforeseen ways. What
is considered “obscene” in a homophobic society, critics argue, often means demonizing
images, ideas, and texts that transgress the normative bounds of heterosexual sex. Many
gay and lesbian bookstores across Canada (for example, Little Sister’s Book and Art Empo-
rium in Vancouver and Glad Day Books in Toronto) maintained that Canadian customs
officials were more heavily scrutinizing, seizing, and destroying shipments intended for
their stores, searching for contraventions to the 1992 ruling. A small victory occurred in
2000 when the courts agreed that customs officials were overwhelmingly heavy-handed in
their appraisal of lesbian and gay material (McCann, 2007a).
Radical feminist theorists have also spoken strongly against rape, seeing it as a crime
resulting from, and maintaining, male power. If domination and subordination are the basis
for unequal sexual relations between men and women and if these unequal sexual relations
go unchallenged, what is the difference between sex and rape? (Brownmiller, 1976;
Dworkin, 1974; MacKinnon, 1989). If women and men are not equals in society, and if
men wield power over women, then loving and sexual relationships between the two are
always mediated by unequal power exchanges, where one person (man) controls the other
(woman). Radical feminists conclude that women cannot experience their sexuality as
pleasurable, because sexuality is male-coded and controlled. How then, they ask, do women
construct their own sexuality? What would woman-defined sexuality look like?
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 17
Female separation: Lesbian Feminism
and cultural Feminism
Lesbian feminism sprang from radical feminists’ desire to discover and value women’s
contributions to society. Lesbian feminists shifted the debate from analyzing and react-
ing to male structures of power to focusing on how passionate bonds between women
can foster a politics of emancipation. Lesbianism connotes sexual relations between
women. But it also represents a political stance, a support system that allows women to
turn to other women to escape from an oppressive male-dominated world. Lesbian
feminists argue that every culture is infused with phallocentric social and cultural val-
ues forcing women to live lives geared toward men and heterosexual and monogamous
pairings (Rich, 1980). In part, women are taught that self-worth comes from hetero-
sexual marriage and mothering. The idea of compulsory heterosexuality—where
women are understood to be naturally sexually oriented toward men—restricts women
socially and economically. Originally, alternatives to this model, such as lesbian sexu-
ality, were not well received by mainstream society and cast aside as deviant (Rich,
1980, p. 4).
Lesbian feminism suggests that the main way women can resist male domination and
power is to refrain from having sexual relations with men. Arising from this idea is the
famous slogan “feminism is the theory and lesbianism is the practice.” Or, as Catherine
MacKinnon said, “feminism is the epistemology of which lesbianism is ontology” (quoted
in Heller, 1997, p. 22). Adrienne Rich, a well-known American lesbian feminist,
advanced the idea of the lesbian continuum in order to operationalize that slogan. In
order to separate lesbianism from being solely a sexual relation between women, Rich
(1980) described a continuum, a position of compromise where all relations between
women (friendships and caring relationships such as elder care) can be placed within the
definition of lesbian and lesbian feminist politics. Not all feminists were comfortable with
Rich’s suggestion that lesbian be adopted as a political slogan. In Canada particularly,
homophobic responses led to the ejection of many lesbians from feminist organizing
groups, as some believed that the prominent presence of lesbians would undermine the
movement (Grant, 1998; Ross, 1995).
Radical cultural feminists, successors of radical feminists in the 1970s and 1980s,
banded together and mobilized around what they see as women’s uniqueness: their
femaleness. Cultural feminists espouse a “politics of disengagement,” a breaking out of a
male-dominated society by providing women-only cultural spaces (Adamson, Briskin,
& McPhail, 1988, p. 192; Donovan, 2000, pp. 255–256). By concentrating on the
positive features of women-only cultural spaces—care, sympathy, and nurturance—
women would be able to promote and celebrate these relationships. Often seen as the
“separatists” in the feminist movement, cultural feminists believe that valuing women
demands a woman-centred culture, where goddesses are worshipped, and bookstores,
co-ops, and centres—run by women for women—can counter the negative effects of a
male-dominated society.
18 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
Global and contemporary dimensions of radical
Feminist thought
Radical feminists argue that the sexual dominance of men over women stretches around
the world. Globally it is estimated that 79% of all human trafficking is done for the purposes
of sexual exploitation and that the majority of those exploited were women and children;
18% were trafficked for the purposes of other labour (United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime 2009, p. 57). Despite the adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (United Nations, 2003) that 117
out of 167 member nations have signed, human trafficking persists. The Protocol seeks to
“suppress, prevent and punish trafficking in persons specifically women and children”
(Dozema, 2005, p. 62). With 44 000 victims of trafficking being identified in a single year,
an estimated 20 million more may have been missed (United States Department of State,
2014). This complex and illegal industry generates an estimated US$7 to 12 billion per
year (United Nations Development Fund for Women [UNIFEM], 2007; Valenta, 2007).
Radical feminists often focus on sex trafficking over other forms of human trafficking and
argue that these industries thrive on an international capitalist system based on sexist and
racist ideas about women and sexuality. The sex industry and sex tourism are profitable
international businesses founded on exploiting women and girls (Barry, 1984).
Radical feminists believe an international or global feminism is needed in order to
combat sex trafficking. Global feminism would link actions of women around the world in
challenging patriarchal and sexual exploitation of women that crosses state and national
borders (Barry, 1995; Jeffreys, 1999; Morgan, 1984/1996). Global feminist views of
prostitution and human trafficking have been heavily influenced by radical feminist
thought and have played a pivotal role in some countries’ adoption of laws that criminalize
the purchasers of sex (primarily men) and recognize the sellers of sex as victims (Jeffreys,
2009). Although cross-border movement often comes to mind, it is important to note that
a large portion of victims are often trafficked regionally or domestically (United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime, 2009, p. 57), making this an issue that women’s organizations
also act locally upon. In comparison to other countries, Canada is not considered to have
high rates of sex trafficking (United States Secretary of State, 2014) but radical feminists
have agitated for it to adopt much tighter legislation and policy that attempt to combat
these problems. Inevitably, recent contemporary shifts in Canadian laws on trafficking
and prostitution have come to reflect deep conflicts between sex worker advocacy groups
and radical feminist opponents of sex trafficking.
In 2007, some Canadian sex workers4 sought the outright decriminalization of prosti-
tution in Ontario on the basis that existing laws force sex workers into dangerous and
criminalized environments and inhibit sex workers from seeking resources they are other-
wise entitled to. In 2010, the challenge launched by Terri Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch,
and Valerie Scott enjoyed partial success at Ontario’s Superior Court. It was then appealed
and sent to Canada’s highest court where three provisions of Canada’s Criminal Code
were struck down. These included: s. 210 (keeping or being found in a bawdy house),
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 19
s. 212(1)(j) (living on the avails of prostitution), and s. 213(1)(c) (communicating in
public for the purpose of prostitution). The Supreme Court of Canada struck down the
three laws as unconstitutional because they violate section 7 of (the right to security of
the person) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada v. Bedford, 2013).
Radical feminist organizers responded with swift intervention at the level of the then
federal Conservative government. They partnered widely with organizations such as the
Native Women’s Association of Canada, the Elizabeth Fry Society, and others. Their inter-
ventions made a lasting impression that resulted in the development of a new law on pros-
titution that criminalized the purchasers of sex, but not the prostitute, Bill C-36. Although
sex worker organizations and women’s legal and health organizations also intervened, argu-
ing for the complete decriminalization of prostitution as a harm reduction approach to sex
work, these were largely excluded from the development of new legislation.
Radical feminist ideas have provided a theoretical framework for understanding wom-
en’s everyday lives and continue to be relevant to contemporary theorizing. Organizations
such as The Sisterhood Is Global Institute (sigi.org), Women Against Pornography (WAP),
Always Causing Legal Unrest (ACLU), and the RadFems conference in the United States;
popular media interveners such as Europe-based Stop Porn Culture (stoppornculture.org);
and journals such as Off Our Backs continue to uphold radical-feminist theoretical tenets.
Taking up similar topics to those of 40 years ago, contemporary radical feminists remain
committed to providing an analytical framework around women’s oppression as a result of
patriarchal domination. It is significant that even after the advent of Slutwalk (Teekah,
Scholz, Friedman, & O’Reilly, 2015), which has connected these issues for new generations
of young feminists, many women and allies still gravitate to “Take Back the Night” in order
to demand safer streets and harsher penalties for sex offenders.5 Across Canada in the 2010s,
a spate of public accusations of sexual assault against male celebrities and public figures,
including music and radio celebrities, football players, and even some Members of Parlia-
ment, seems to have re-ignited popular interest in the issues highlighted by radical feminists.
20 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
Many women of colour challenge white radical feminists on their imperialist and
universalizing notions of women under the banner of “global sisterhood,” in which
women of colour and Third-World women are often cast as “backward” and in need of
“saving.” Black American feminist Angela Davis has taken white radical feminists to
task for writing about non-white communities as deviant, writing about Black men and
rape, and naturalizing the myth of the Black rapist, so prevalent during and after slavery
(Tong, 1998, p. 223). Others also argue that the radical feminist attacks on the family
are Euro- and ethnocentric and undermine the importance of family for many non-white
people. As Linda Carty states, “[f]or Black people and people of colour, the family served
as protection against, and a central source of resistance to, racist oppression” (Carty,
1999, p. 42).
Transgender feminists argue that gender becomes politically problematic when it is
defined through biology alone (MacDonald, 2000, p. 289; Stone, 1991). They respond in
part to radical and cultural feminists who question the “dangers” of transgendered people in
general and of transsexual women in particular, invading women’s spaces and bodies.
Rather than broaden their ideas about gender, a vocal minority of radical feminists consider
transsexual women to be committing violence: Janice Raymond (1998) says, “Rape . . . is a
masculinist violation of bodily integrity. All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing
the female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves . . . Rape, although it
is usually done by force, can also be accomplished by deception” (p. 308). This idea
underpins resistance to the inclusion of trans people in some types of feminist organizing.
Not all self-proclaimed radical feminists uphold transphobic ideas, but are perceived as
doing so on the basis of high profile cases such as that of Kimberly Nixon. In 1995 the
Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter refused to let Nixon, a transsexual woman,
become a rape crisis counsellor out of the conviction that being born a woman is the basic
and primary definition of being a woman (Wente, 2000). Initially, Nixon was awarded
$7500 by the BC Human Rights Tribunal on the basis that she had been discriminated
against. The case was appealed and finally taken to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2007,
where it was refused a hearing (McCann, 2007b). On this landmark case and so many
instances of trans people’s rights activism since then, radical feminism has largely failed to
work through its essentialism, sometimes garnering the largely pejorative term TERF (a
trans-exclusive radical feminist) (Goldberg, 2014).
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 21
“truths,” including the deconstruction of identities assumed to be stable such as that of
“woman” and “man.” Instead of assuming that sex (female/male) is a fixed biological iden-
tity, postmodern feminism deconstructs sex (and our assumptions about biology), placing
all of human identity in the domain of social construction. This means that in postmod-
ern feminist theory, all identities and any “truths” are regarded as already implicated in, if
not products of, a person’s culture. It also means that postmodern feminism seeks to chal-
lenge sexism and gender-based oppression by questioning all dominant cultural norms and
accepted truths, including taken-for-granted norms of feminist thinking and practice.
Postmodern feminism challenges the idea of analyzing social relations according to
simplistic oppressor/oppressed models: for example, men oppress women, the rich oppress
the poor, white people oppress Black people, and so on. Rather, postmodern feminists
suggest that people in positions of vulnerability are not in a permanent state of victimhood.
We are invited to reject the idea of utter victimhood, and encouraged to consider and
recognize the many ways in which the oppressed have the capacity for and often exercise
their own oppositional/alternative gaze, voices, and forms of resistance. In considering the
issue of power, we are also asked to think about the ways in which power is not something
people hold in measurable quantities. Those in positions of power may exercise certain
forms of power even as they embody a marginalized identity marker (e.g., a gay white man
who benefits from the privileges afforded by whiteness and maleness at the same time as
he experiences homophobia, a heterosexual black man who experiences daily racism even
as he benefits from straight male privilege), and members of marginalized groups can
exercise agency as well as power over others in certain circumstances (e.g., women who
are invested in patriarchal ideology in ways that support their own oppression or the
oppression of other women).
An important example of this is postmodern feminism’s engagement with sex work.
The landscape of contemporary postmodern feminism and its global dimensions reveals an
on-going set of debates surrounding the international realm of sex work, where “choice,”
autonomy, and victimhood remain key points of contention (Dozema, 1998, 2002;
Kempadoo, 2005), as discussed in the previous section. Postmodern feminist perspectives
consider sex work as neither a wholly empowered choice or form of sexual expression, nor
a completely victimizing and inherently oppressive experience. While a radical feminist
perspective might argue that objectification and the predominance of women in the sex
industry in the context of sexist heteropatriarchal culture makes the exchange of sex for
money fundamentally oppressive, from a postmodernist view, there is nothing inherently
oppressive in the exchange of sex for money. Sex work can be a subversive alternative to
heteropatriarchal sexual scripts that serve to direct women’s sexuality toward the gendered
norms of monogomous marriage (Scoular, 2004). Postmodern feminism contemplates the
multiple points of meaning making related to a subjective experience, as well as the possible
points of agency for sex workers. Postmodern perspectives on sex work resist the broad
stroke meta-narrative of victimization and oppression that modernist feminist approaches
present, yet must simultaneously contend with a context of unequal relations between
gendered human beings and countries, a context that visibly places women, children, and
a range of marginalized people in a position of marked vulnerability to sexual exploitation.
22 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
Historical Influences
Although they are often used interchangeably, there are some distinctions to be made
between poststructuralism and postmodernism. Poststructuralism developed out of inquiry
into the relationship between language, reality, and what and how we know things. This
work is credited to structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009), philoso-
pher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981). Their
insights into the symbolic order of the human mind have been applied in theories of lan-
guage, knowledge production, and literary criticism. Postmodernism has tended to occupy
the interdisciplinary domain of cultural and social philosophy, history, and sociology
(Agger, 1991). The rejection of meta-narratives that seek to explain history and social
relations in broad strokes, for instance, is evident in French philosopher and sociologist
Jean-Francois Lyotard’s (1924–1998) rejection of German philosopher Karl Marx’s theory
of historical materialism, on the basis that it reduces and over-simplifies dynamic histori-
cal events; such a critique is typical of postmodernist interventions.
In Discipline and Punish (1979) postmodern French philosopher Michel Foucault
(1926–1984) proposes that a core characteristic of the development of modern societies and
the associated major social institutions with which we are accustomed (schools, medicine,
the military, the media, organized religion, and law enforcement and courts) is that they are
deeply invested in cultures of discipline. These cultures of discipline reflect the particular
power dynamics and social trends of any specific historical period. According to Foucault, the
main function of discipline in modern societies is to produce obedient and compliant bodies.
Note here the connection to postructuralism—Foucault’s obedient bodies are enacting their
compliance to fit into Derrida’s or Lacan’s notion of a “symbolic order.” The function of
discipline in modern (Western) societies is thus linked to Foucault’s analysis of power as
diffuse, being everywhere and nowhere at once. Examples of this include means by which we
are under constant real and perceived regulatory surveillance (e.g., street/traffic cameras and
lights, sexual objectification, and body judgment) to the point that we self-regulate/
self-discipline even when no one is looking. This self-discipline is a reaction to the diffuse
operation of power, to not knowing for sure whether one is or is not being watched. We
comply with what we are “supposed” to do because the penalties for non-conformity to
established norms are made clear over and over again (receiving a speeding ticket in the mail;
or, in the case of bodily discipline, romantic rejection, not getting a job or promotion, and so
on). According to Foucault, it is the scattered operation of power that encourages individuals
to impose forms of self-discipline (e.g., stopping at a red light in the middle of the night even
though no one else is around; starving oneself or obsessive exercise in order to be thin even
though no one is explicitly demanding this of that individual), the ultimate function of
which is to meet the regulatory blueprint of that society at that particular historical moment.
Poststructural and postmodern feminism reveal a number of influences, including
existential and deconstructionist (early poststructuralist) philosophy; and psychoanalytic,
linguistic, and literary theory. Links to existential philosophy, particularly the work of
existential feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir are readily evident in postmodern
feminist theory. De Beauvoir’s assertion in The Second Sex (1949/1973, 301) that “one is
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 23
not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” is a consistent theme in contemporary postmodern
feminist writing and is clearly evident in one of postmodern feminism’s most applauded
publications, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990). Moreover, the deconstruction of sex
itself, and not only ascribed gender, harkens? back to the work of deconstructionist
philosophers, among them Jacques Derrida (1967/1980), who questioned the existence of
a unified “Self ” and the ability of language to tell us anything “true” about what it describes
(Tong, 1998). If we examine the identity “woman” from a postmodern feminist perspective,
we are called to see that there is nothing essentially/biologically “true” in the identity
“woman.” To the extent that we use gendered and essentialist language to describe the
existential realities of womanhood, we further reproduce the socially constructed norms
and fictions that present “woman” as a stable and fixed identity.
Indeed, Butler proposes deconstructing and destabilizing the very identity of “woman” as
a unified subject; hers is one of the best-known feminist contributions to postmodern theory.
Butler (1990) reads gender identity as unstable, maintained only by a series of stylized
repetitive acts that have no basis in a profoundly rooted biology. She states, there is “nothing
about femaleness that is waiting to be expressed; there is, on the other hand, a good deal
about the diverse experiences of women that is being expressed and still needs to be
expressed,” asserting that language sets out the very conditions for one’s experience of the
world as a “woman” (Butler, 2010, p. 429). This proposition raises important questions for
feminists. If, as Butler suggests, the identity “woman” is grounded in a series of repetitively
performed acts rather than in biology, can anyone claim to be a woman? What are the political
implications of accepting the instability of “woman” as an identity, while still attempting to
organize collectively against the real material consequences of sexist oppression? How is the
subject of these collective political efforts to be represented and talked about in matters of
policy and electoral politics? Who, exactly, is the subject of these collective efforts? We see
these matters manifested in the realm of day-to-day relations all the time. For instance,
should a women’s shelter accommodate female-to-male or woman-to-man transsexual and
transgender persons in crisis?6 In fact, since the case of Kimberly Nixon, referred to above,
many now do either include women and trans people or all women, including trans women,
in their scope of service and employment. This shift marks a tremendous incursion of
postmodern thinking and trans feminist activism into women’s organizations, many of which
were established under the strategically essentialist goal of “serving women only.” Serving
women “only” was a strategic goal that met a desperate need for disproportionately female
survivors of sexual and physical violence, but from a postmodern feminist perspective, this
goal was never meant to further oppress other marginalized groups and thus it has shifted
slowly. This is just one example of the ways in which the postmodern question of what and
who constitutes a “woman” plays out in our day-to-day relations with one another.
A poststructuralist understanding of the relationship between language and reality is
also visible in the work of postmodern feminists such as Hélène Cixous, who critiques the
exclusion of “the feminine” from Western language (Tong, 1998). Here we find feminist
critique directed at a male-centred, or phallocentric, language that excludes feminine
expression, or écriture feminine (Cixous, 1976). Included in this vein of postmodern
feminist writing is the work of Julia Kristeva, who also critiqued the phallocentrism of
24 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
language while cautioning against the essentialist tendencies reflected in Cixous’s writing
(i.e., assuming a fixed definition of the feminine that is always tied to female biology). In
the realm of psychoanalysis, engagement with and critique of the work of Sigmund Freud
and Jacques Lacan are also observable in Luce Irigaray’s This Sex Which Is Not One (1977).
Irigaray challenges Freud’s male-centred and sexist assertions regarding women’s “penis
envy,” arguing the plurality of women’s sexuality, and that women have many sexes (the
clitoris, vagina, breasts). Irigaray insists that this multiplicity in women’s sexual pleasure,
or “homo-sexuality,” should not be regarded as a pathological sexual fragmentation, as is
often done when human sexuality is read from a heterosexist point of view.
Postmodern feminist work also highlights the gaps in postmodern theory more broadly
when gender is left out of accounts of discipline, discourse, and power in modern societies.
Postmodern feminist philosopher Sandra Lee Bartky (2010), for instance, has contributed
insightfully to the expansion of Foucauldian theories of discipline and power by pointing
out that gender is key to distinguishing the ways in which women and men experience
established cultures of discipline. Bartky points out that in the larger scheme of the
overarching symbolic order, men and women are expected to manifest their corporal
docility in different ways; that there are particularly feminine forms of discipline that differ
from those more specifically directed at producing a certain type of masculine subject.
Bartky calls attention to a specifically feminine “disciplinary project of bodily perfection”
(p. 407). Aside from the gendered and anxiety ridden practices of dieting, exercise, and
costly beauty regimes evident in many women’s routines, the disciplinary project of
perfection to which Bartky refers can also be observed in the trained physical gestures,
postures, and movements of women as they attempt to take up as little space as possible in
both public and private places. Minimizing one’s girth on subway trains and buses, keeping
one’s arms close to the body and giving way while walking down the street, and lowering
one’s gaze/avoiding direct eye contact when passing others, particularly men, are, according
to Bartky, all manifestations of a specifically feminine culture of discipline. These behaviours
manifest in the context of a sense of being under constant surveillance, or what Bartky
describes as women’s sense of being under constant and inescapable (sexist) judgment. The
resulting self-imposed disciplinary behaviours on the part of women are encouraged and
sustained by “technologies of femininity” (Bartky, 2010, p. 410) such as media, the beauty
industry, and social pressure that often produce a condition of alienation from the self and
varying degrees of self-hate in women (Bartky, 1990). It is interesting to note here the
combination of both postmodern analyses of power and discipline, with the Marxist
concept of alienation (see the preceding section in this chapter on Marxist/Socialist
feminism) to produce a specifically feminist postmodern theory of gendered oppression.
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 25
function of identity categories as social constructions embedded in power relations. One
such critique is that postmodern feminism borrows from more politicized bodies of feminist
theory such as critical-race and anti-racist feminist frameworks, with little to no
commitment to the politics corresponding to the material realities represented by these
frameworks. For example, postmodern feminism has absorbed theories of intersectionality
coming out of critical race and anti-racist feminism, these being theories that have long
troubled simplistic definitions of “woman” and “man,” particularly when these definitions
ignore intersection with other markers of identity such as “race,” class, sexual orientation,
and ability. Yet, postmodernism’s categorical rejection of unified subject positions
(“woman,” “Black”), even where intersectionality is taken into account (Black woman on
disability benefits; middle income, gay white man etc.), begs the question of how the social
realities of inequality and discrimination experienced by people in such subject positions
might be articulated in concrete terms within the realms of law, public policy, and
government legislation.
Postmodernism problematically threatens to do away with feminism within a broader
social context in which feminism and its main political subjects “women” are still very
much needed (Di Stefano, 1989). Sandra Harding, a feminist philosopher, further argues
that “socially situated knowledge” or a feminist standpoint theory (2005, p. 218) endangers
the social justice objectives of feminism. The tendency, then, of postmodern theory to veer
into relativist stances (i.e., there is not one, but many “truths”; bodies are the stuff of per-
formance, not grounded “truth”) can present particular challenges for feminist efforts to
directly attend to the material realities of sexist power dynamics. In the face of this, and to
the extent that postmodernism gives rise to unyielding relativism, feminist scholars such as
Seyla Benhabib, Susan Bordo, and Nancy Harstock have maintained that just “as human
bodies cannot be understood as endlessly mobile and flexible, so human understanding also
possesses necessary boundaries and rigidities” (Nicholson, 1989, p. 9). A related critique of
postmodernism is that its advocates deconstruct ad infinitum while offering no concrete
solutions to pressing social and political problems (e.g., concrete action plans).
concLusIon
This chapter provides an introduction to liberal, socialist, radical, and postmodern femi-
nist theoretical approaches to understanding women’s and gender oppression. The theo-
ries are examined in terms of their central principles, their methods of challenging
women’s oppression, their practical goals, and their achievements.
Liberal feminism is based on the principles of women’s capacity for rationality,
meritocracy, equal opportunity, and freedom of choice. From the application of liberal
philosophy to inequalities between men and women, we learn that at the source of
women’s oppression is an inequitable integration of women into society’s institutions such
as schools and universities, government, professions, and economic organizations. Liberal
feminists have thus concentrated on achieving equal opportunity for women by ensuring
that all the rights, benefits, and responsibilities that accrue to men also accrue to women.
26 C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e
Socialist feminists explain and advocate for women’s liberation through a theoretical
framework that places the interconnectedness of capitalism, patriarchy, and more recently,
race, sexuality, and globalization, at the centre of its analyses of women’s oppression.
Socialist feminists challenge women’s oppression through unions, advocating for equal
pay for work of equal value, increased state investment in social services, and the eradica-
tion of poverty. The theoretical and activist contributions of socialist feminists have been
instrumental in influencing the Canadian state to include, for the first time in the 1996
census, questions on unpaid labour. In addition, many workplaces have passed paternity-
leave provisions (although women continue to take the majority of parental leaves).
Radical feminists investigate what they believe to be the root cause of women’s oppression:
that is, sex oppression of women by men. They argue that sex oppression can be found in social
structures such as the state and the family. Radical feminists identify how women’s sexuality is
directly controlled by men, through an analysis of reproduction, pornography, and rape, but
also through other institutions of social control in everyday relations such as heterosexual
love, marriage, and motherhood. Lesbian and cultural feminists argue that women need to
break free from patriarchal culture, through an endorsement of lesbian relationships and
women-only cultural spaces. Radical feminist theorizing has been influential, bringing to light
issues such as rape, pornography, and violence against women in a misogynist society.
Poststructural and postmodern feminist approaches have contributed important
critical tools to feminist theory, particularly in the areas of deconstructive and anti-
essentialist critique. They have elaborated on the notion of power as diffuse, and have
applied gender-based analysis to illustrate the ways in which power is not only visible
through obvious brute force, but also through the use of language and the ways in which
the symbolic realm creates the possibilities and limitations of our reality. These theories
have also, importantly, suggested that language presents opportunities for agency and
resistance. Yet, these theoretical contributions have also presented particular challenges
for feminism, for, if “strictly speaking, ‘women’ cannot be said to exist” (Kristeva quoted in
Butler 2005, p. 145), what is the basis of the subject identity that feminist politics seeks to
represent? Postmodern feminist approaches do not deny sexist inequality and exploitation
but consider spaces of subversion and agency simultaneously, and generally avoid the
unified, broad sweeping explanations of sexist oppression that are more suited to pushing
for concrete legal reforms within modernist state structures.
endnotes
1. It should be noted that most suffragists did not actually call themselves feminists until the
early twentieth century (Roome, 2001).
2. The GDP is a calculation of the total economic value of a country’s yearly output of goods
and services.
3. Abortion was first decriminalized in 1969, yet initially access was only granted by committees
composed usually of men who had to determine if the procedure would preserve a woman’s
C h a p t e r 1 T h e o r i z i n g W o m e n ’s O p p r e s s i o n a n d S o c i a l C h a n g e 27
“health,” an ill-defined term. The full decriminalization of abortion occurred in 1988,
although accessibility across the country is limited due to geography, provincial under-
funding, and a limited number of physicians willing to provide the service.
4. Sex worker, advocate, and organizer Carol Leigh of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Eth-
ics) has been acclaimed as the creator of the term “sex worker” as opposed to prostitute,
which has been seen to have “connotations of shame, unworthiness or wrongdoing”
(Bernstein, 1999). “Sex worker” is seen by many feminist thinkers as a more useful term,
as it promotes a sex-positive politic in its attempt to normalize those involved in the indus-
try as simply “service workers and care-giving professionals” who require rights similar to
others as workers (Bernstein, 1999).
5. Slutwalk is a sex-positive contemporary protest march that originated in response to the
rape victim–blaming of a Toronto police officer in 2011 (see www.slutwalktoronto.com).
6. See, for example, the article, “Transsexual and Transgender Women Denied Access to
Shelters as Temperatures Drop in Montreal” (February 6, 2013), by Sherbrooke-based
non-profit organization Head & Hands.
discussion Questions
1. Define each of the four theories (liberal, socialist, radical, and postmodern feminism) in
your own words. Which one do you most identify with, if any?
2. Discuss how each theory defines the source of women’s oppression and their approaches
to social change.
3. Identify an accomplishment or goal of each group of feminists. How did theory inform
their actions?
4. What are the main criticisms of each theory? Are they valid critiques? Why or why not?
5. Do you see evidence of these theories at work today? Give examples.
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Chapter 2
Race, Indigeneity, and Feminism
Carmela Murdocca
IntroductIon
Feminism has a race problem. Who counts as a “woman” in the women’s movement? How
have women of colour and Indigenous women been included and excluded in feminist
movements and feminist theorizing? What are the particular issues faced by women of
colour and Indigenous women? What would it mean to write the history of Black femi-
nism or Indigenous feminism as the history of the women’s movement? What would it
mean to build a solidarity movement across the lines of gender, sexuality, class, and race;
and include a framework of decolonization? What are the tensions between different
approaches to feminism? These are the kinds of questions that challenge the history
of feminism and women’s movements in Western Europe and North America. Indeed, the
fact that these issues are framed as questions suggests a history of contestation within the
women’s movement and within feminist theorizing. In this chapter, I explore some of
the debates raised by these questions. The chapter prioritizes contributions to feminist
theorizing made by Indigenous women and women of colour.
In the first section, I outline connections between the concept of race within histori-
cal processes of colonialism and slavery. The politics of race and representation and the
relationship between race and ideas about “culture” are explored. The representation of
race and notions of culture have different implications for Indigenous women and women
of colour. In the second section, I situate the feminist concept of intersectionality as one of
the most significant contributions that feminist theorists of colour have made to the wom-
en’s movement and to feminist theorizing. I also explore Indigenous feminist challenges to
the concept of intersectionality. As fair warning to the reader, this chapter contains dis-
turbing material about historical and contemporary events. Legacies of colonialism and
racism are, of course, in themselves disturbing. I urge readers to reflect on and share their
thoughts with other trusted readers. Specifically, I ask readers to think about the reasons
why it has been so important for feminism to engage directly with these events and ideas.
This chapter draws upon the fields of feminist theory, critical race theory, Indigenous
theory, post-colonial theory, and cultural studies in order to provide insights into how the
historical processes of colonialism and racialization have contributed to feminist theorizing.
Scholarly and activist interventions about race, Indigeneity,1 and feminism use different
categorizations. Some of these descriptions include critical race feminism, Indigenous
35
feminism, Native feminism, anti-racist feminism, post-colonial feminism, transnational
feminism, and global feminism, among other formulations. Each of these descriptions signals
distinct points of entry into the debates concerning race, Indigeneity, colonialism, imperial-
ism, and feminism. Drawing on these contributions, this chapter prioritizes the substantive
engagements of these fields rather than tracing their distinct and overlapping genealogies.
In prioritizing contributions by feminists of colour and Indigenous feminists, certain
challenges and tensions arise. The historical context of the approach of feminist theorists
of colour, Black feminists, and Indigenous feminists emerges from different historical and
experiential processes and are distinct bodies of work. Indigenous feminists, for example,
often examine experiences of genocide, forced assimilation, dehumanization, colonial vio-
lence, and land theft. Black feminists often write through histories of enslavement, dehu-
manization, anti-Black racism, and particular forms of exploitation in the context of
capitalism. Other feminists of colour may focus on forced migration; indentured labour;
and experiences and processes of immigration that result from histories of colonialism,
imperialism, and capitalism. In addition, where Black feminists and other feminists of
colour often use the category of “race” as a starting point in their feminist analysis, Indige-
nous feminists “often spend less time focussing on questions of race and racism per se, and
more on issues of land and sovereignty” (Emphasis in original. Stewart, 2013, p. 50). These
approaches are therefore distinct in terms of orientation to gender and feminism. Rather
than resolving these tensions, the chapter attempts to keep these complexities alive.
the Mi’maq people of Gaspé began killing the Iroquians who crossed within their trade
territories . . . Meanwhile the Innu nation in the sixteenth century became embroiled
in two different trade wars—the Naskapi fought the Inuit for access to furs in Labrador
while the Montagnais fought the Iroquois for control of the rich Saguenay River route
to James Bay and the Great Lakes. (Lawrence 2002, p. 27)
A white settler society is one established by Europeans on non-European soil. Its origins
lie in the dispossession and near extermination of Indigenous populations by the con-
quering of Europeans. As it evolves, a white settler society continues to be structured by
a racial hierarchy. In the national mythologies of such societies, it is believed that white
people came first and it is they who principally settled the land; Aboriginal people are
presumed to be mostly dead or assimilated. European settlers thus become the original
inhabitants and the group most entitled to the fruits of citizenship. A quintessential fea-
ture of white settler mythologies is, therefore, the disavowal of conquest, genocide, slav-
ery, and the exploitation of the labour of peoples of colour. In North America, it is still
the case that European conquest and colonization are often denied, largely through the
fantasy that North America was peacefully settled and not colonized. (2002, pp. 1–2)
When the category of “sexually oppressed women” is located within particular systems in
the third world which are defined on a scale which is normed through Eurocentric
assumptions, not only are third-world women defined in a particular way prior to their
entry into social relations, but since no connections are made between first- and third-
world power shifts, it reinforces the assumption that people in the third world just have not
evolved to the extent that the west has. This mode of feminist analysis, by homogenizing
and systematizing the experiences of different groups of women, erases all marginal and
resistant modes of experiences. (Mohanty, 1988, p. 80)
Ideas about race and processes of racialization are interwoven into institutions, social
structures, and systems of representation. Race is a polyvalent concept that changes over time
and through geographical places. In our contemporary world, we see the residues of 18th- and
19th-century views on race in that we often consider racial difference as biologically fixed.
The legacy of scientific or biological racism supports the view that race largely and exclusively,
refers to phenotype (observable traits such as skin colour). Following critical race and post-
colonial scholarship, the concept of racialization challenges this view. Focusing on the process
of racialization helps us to see how what we know about the concept of “race” comes from the
stories that we tell about race and the forms of governance that assist in the organization of
tracIng IntersectIonalIty
Intersectionality is one of the main contributions that feminists of colour have made to
feminist theorizing. Intersectionality refers to the study of the interconnections between
different systems, social processes, and representations of discrimination and oppression.
As social and cultural forms, race, gender, sexuality, dis/ability, and other forms of social
identification shape these systems, processes, and representations. Intersectionality largely
emerges from the United States feminist context. This section charts the emergence of
intersectionality in United States scholarship and provides examples of the use of inter-
sectionality (the “how” of intersectionality) when analyzing torture in the context of war
and violence against Indigenous women. Finally, this section also addresses some critiques
of intersectionality (limitations and possibilities) made by Indigenous and other scholars
of colour.
In the United States, feminist approaches to race coalesce around three social and
political processes: 1. The exclusion of Black women and other women of colour in the
first and second waves of feminism; 2. Black lesbian feminist writings in the 1970s and
80s; and 3. An emerging Black feminist critique of civil rights and discrimination laws.
Pre-dating these interventions is a much longer Black female intellectual history that
emerged out of survival and resistance to slavery and its attendant forms of discipline and
control dating back to the work of Sojourner Truth (c.1797–1883), an abolitionist and
women’s rights activist. Lee Maracle’s celebrated I Am Woman was partly inspired by
Truth’s anti-slavery feminist speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” suggesting historical links
between ideas that inspired reclaiming women’s knowledge across racial lines and differ-
ently situated women (Maracle, 2003; see also Stewart, 2013).
Jennifer Nash suggests that intersectionality has advanced feminist theorizing in
three ways: 1. Intersectionality challenges dichotomous and binary thinking of the race/
gender systems of domination and subordination; 2. “Intersectionality seeks to demonstrate
the racial variation(s) within gender and the gendered variation(s) within race” through
a focus on recognizing the complexity of subjects and identities (2008, 2); and
3. Intersectionality challenges the legacy of excluding racialized and marginalized subjects
from anti-racist and feminist work (2008). One could argue that feminist theory is a theory
of intersectionality. Or, as Leslie McCall explains: “One could even say that
intersectionality is the most important theoretical contribution that women’s studies, in
conjunction with related fields, has made so far” (2005, p. 1771). Indeed, the related
fields—Black feminist theory, critical race theory, anti-racist feminist theory, Indigenous
theory, Latina/Chicana feminist theory, post-colonial feminist theory—have made the
most significant contributions to a theory of intersectionality.
Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any
analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address that
particular manner in which Black women are subordinated. Thus . . . the entire framework
that has been used as the basis for translating “women’s experience” or the “Black experi-
ence” into concrete policy demands must be rethought and recast. (2011, p. 26; 1991)
Crenshaw uses the analogy of the traffic accident to consider the real world conse-
quences of the concept of intersectionality:
The point is that black women can experience discrimination in a number of ways and
that the contradiction arises from our assumptions that their claims of exclusion must
be unidirectional. Consider an analogy to traffic in an intersection, coming and going
from all four directions. Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow
in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection,
it can be caused by cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from
all of them. Similarly, if a black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection,
her injury could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination. (2011, p. 29)
For women of colour, intersectionality accounts for the experience of “double dis-
crimination” or the “double bind” of discrimination. Importantly, J. Kéhaulani Kauanui
examines how this civil rights genealogy of intersectionality does not address the issues of
“territory, sovereignty and nationhood (that) structure colonized peoples’ relationship to
the nation-state” (2008, p. 635–636). Furthermore, Kauanui argues that “conflating race
with indigeneity” is another symptom of a civil rights or legal framework that makes it
difficult, if not impossible, for Indigenous people to advance claims of sovereignty to the
land (2008, p. 635). This is an important illustration of where Black feminist or critical
race feminist approaches to civil rights, for example, may be complicit with the ongoing
project of settler colonialism.
The photographs tell it all. In one, Private England, a cigarette dangling from her
mouth, is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi,
who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other
hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their
genitals. A fifth prisoner has his hands at his sides. In another, England stands arm in
arm with Specialist Graner; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a
cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other
in a pyramid. There is another photograph of a cluster of naked prisoners, again piled
in a pyramid. Near them stands Graner, smiling, his arms crossed; a woman soldier
stands in front of him, bending over, and she, too, is smiling. Then, there is another
cluster of hooded bodies, with a female soldier standing in front, taking photographs.
Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner, head
momentarily turned away from the camera, posed to make it appear that he is per-
forming oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded. (Hersh, 2004)
In seeking to analyze the events at Abu Ghraib, and the thousands of photos that
circulated, some scholars and mainstream analysts sought to “exceptionalize” the violence
and torture committed by male and female soldiers who were portrayed by Western media
as being on the “right” side of the war (Puar, 2005a; Razack, 2008). For example, com-
mentators suggested that the torture was just the result of a “few bad apples” in the army
(Puar, 2005b; Razack, 2008). As Puar explains, these accounts viewed the racialized and
sexualized torture as rare, extreme bodily and sexual violence (“the site of violation as
extreme in relation to the individual rights of privacy and ownership accorded to the body
within liberalism”) (Puar, 2005a, p. 14).
Razack asks the following questions of the torture at Abu Ghraib: 1. Why take photos
to record the torture and prisoner abuse? (And, why did soldiers send nearly 2000 photos to
their families?); 2. “Why record evil?”; 3. “Why the sex? (This last question is often con-
nected to the women’s participation)” (2008, p. 67). Razack proposes that an interlocking
approach facilitates an analysis of how we each, individually and collectively, come to par-
ticipate in racialized and historical processes of subordination and domination. Razack
advances an interlocking analysis of the torture at Abu Ghraib in the following way:
The fact that the status of Iraqis is so evidently subhuman, so culturally different, and so
in need of discipline, crowds our newsreels. Unless we have become numb to it all, we
will need to find an explanation for the sexualized terror and for the ways that ordinary
people participate in it. Pyramids of naked men forced to simulate having sex should
not baffle us, but neither should we believe they are trivial or exceptional moments in
a giant clash of civilizations. To grasp their import, we will have to attend to prisoner
abuse as a publicly enacted, sexualized ritual of racial violence and track the trade in
mythologies signalled by our persistent marking of ourselves as modern and the non-
West as culturally different . . . We will need to consider how race, class, gender, and
sexuality give each other meaning [in the context of racialized and gendered violence],
Several features of this analysis are significant. Razack seeks to historicize the sexualized
racialized violence enacted at Abu Ghraib. In so doing, historical processes of sexualized
racialization (human/subhuman) coupled with particular forms of Enlightenment thinking
(pre-modern/modern, civilized/uncivilized) make the torture possible. The potency of the
images of torture from Abu Ghraib is rendered “coherent” through historical and
transnational processes of imperialism, racialization, and sexualization.
Of particular interest in analyses of the torture was the participation of female soldiers.
As noted in the Abu Ghraib memo, Private Lyndie England was depicted in photos smiling
and giving a “thumbs-up” to the camera next to naked prisoners piled in a pyramid and
pointing to a man’s genitals. Some white liberal feminist scholars and commentators were
bewildered by the presence and active participation of female soldiers. As Puar explains:
The picture of Lyndie England, dubbed “Lyndie the Leasher,” leading a naked Iraqi on
a leash (also being referred to as “pussy whipping”) has now become a surface on which
fundamentalism and modernization, apparently dialectically opposed, can wage war.
One could argue that this image is about both the victories of liberal feminists, who
claim that women should have equal opportunities within the military, and the failures
of liberal feminists to adequately theorize power and gender beyond male-female
dichotomies that situate women as less prone toward violence and as morally superior
to men. (Eisenstein in Puar, 2005a, p. 20)
Puar suggests that the failure to adequately account for gendered racial violence is
part of a version of white liberal feminism that is rooted in binary gender categories and
essentialist ideas about women (i.e., women are less prone to violence). A more complex
account of the violence and torture at Abu Ghraib would reveal the ways in which forms
of subordination and domination travel transnationally across geopolitical space in order
to position certain bodies in historical hierarchies racialization and sexualization.
In the Canadian context, the murder of an Indigenous woman is another violent
episode that can be examined through an intersectional analysis. Razack’s analysis of the
brutal murder in Regina of Pamela George, an Indigenous woman and mother from the
Saulteaux nation who was working as a sex worker on the night of her murder, provides
another example of the possibilities of an intersecting analysis. In particular, the case of
Pamela George demonstrates the ways in which the law fails to adequately address violence
against Indigenous women. George was murdered by two young white university students
who “took turns brutally beating her and left her lying with her face in the mud” (Razack,
2002, p. 121). Razack argues that George’s murder should be understood as gendered racial
violence where “the racial or colonial aspects of this encounter are more prominently
brought into view by tracing two inextricably linked collective histories: the histories of the
murderers, two middle-class white men, and of Pamela George, a Saulteaux woman”
(Razack, 2002, p. 126). By reviewing the transcripts from the murder case, Razack asks the
I deliberately write against those who would agree that this case is about an injustice
but who would de-race the violence and the law’s response to it, labelling it as generic
patriarchal violence against women, violence that the law routinely minimizes. While
it is certainly patriarchy that produces men whose sense of identity is achieved through
brutalizing a woman, the men’s and the court’s capacity to dehumanize Pamela George
came from their understanding of her as the (gendered) racial Other whose degrada-
tion confirmed their own identities as white—that is, as men entitled to the land and
the full benefits of citizenship. (Razack 2002, p. 126)
Through analyzing the court transcripts, Razack’s analysis concludes that forms of
racialization, representation, and regulation resulted in George’s “absence” from her own
murder trial: “If this exploration of Pamela George’s murder trial, does anything at all, my
hope is that it raises consciousness about how little she mattered to her murderers, their
friends and families, and how small a chance she had of entering the court’s and Canadian
society’s consciousness as a person” (Razack, 2002, p. 156).
The murder of Pamela George is one episode in a long history of violence against Indig-
enous women. According to the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC), “approx-
imately 60% of 3000 women that have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since 1980
are Native, with approximately 500 cases outstanding in BC alone . . . The discrepancy
between these numbers can be attributed to a lack of funding for widespread research, most
recently manifest in the government’s cutting of funds to NWAC’s Sisters in Spirit cam-
paign” (NWAC, n.d.). Many Indigenous and non-Indigenous advocacy groups, including
Amnesty International, are calling on local, provincial, and federal governments to address
these cases. The Stolen Sisters report, produced by Amnesty International calls upon the state
to address the following root causes of violence in the lives of Indigenous women in Canada:
1. The role of racism and misogyny in perpetuating violence against Indigenous women;
2. The sharp disparities in the fulfillment of Indigenous women’s economic, social,
political, and cultural rights;
3. The continued disruption of Indigenous societies caused by the historic and ongoing
mass removal of children from Indigenous families and communities;
4. The disproportionately high number of Indigenous women in Canadian prisons,
many of whom are themselves the victims of violence and abuse; and
The theory of intersectionality argues that all identities are lived and experienced as
intersectional—in such a way that identity categories themselves are cut through and
unstable—and that all subjects are intersectional whether or not they recognize
themselves as such. But what the method of intersectionality is most predominantly used
to qualify is the specific “difference” of “women of color”, a category that has now
become, I would argue, simultaneously emptied of specific meaning on the one hand and
overdetermined in its deployment on the other. In this usage, intersectionality always
produces an Other, and that Other is always a Woman Of Color (WOC), who must
invariably be shown to be resistant, subversive, or articulating a grievance. (Puar, 2005b)
Increasing our collective vocabulary alone is not a sign of success. What matters is the
impact this has on the movement and through this on wider society as a whole. Yet,
many of us seem to have decided to prioritise tweeting about or writing about or talking
about theoretical concepts instead. Social media creates a tendency to be sucked away
into discussions rather than making conscious decisions to do so. I cannot be the only
person to have become engrossed in writing or tweeting only to realise that it is 3am in
the morning, I have not done the activist work I planned to do and I have to be up in a
few hours. What are we not doing because so many of our resources as a movement are
taken up with this? There has not been enough of a coherent, concerted feminist
response to closures of violence against women services, the removal of legal aid, the
conditions in factories overseas where the clothes and equipment we use are made,
attacks on the rights of immigrants, or changes in the benefits system. (Nagarajan, 2014)
Indeed, Indigenous feminists have long demonstrated the fault lines inherent in an
intersectional approach. In the Canadian context, there has been a robust dialogue con-
cerning the relationship between Indigenous knowledge and the feminist concept of
intersectionality. Although some Indigenous people find that “intersectionality has been
useful for making connections between Indigenous knowledge and other epistemologies,
or for making sense of colonial ideologies and institutional frameworks” (Intersectionality
Research and Social Policy, 2012, p. 3; see also Simpson, 2009), others suggest that “aca-
demic terms such as ‘intersectionality’ should not be needed to legitimize Indigenous
knowledge, particularly as the revitalization of Indigenous language and concepts are inte-
gral to self-determination (Intersectionality Research and Social Policy, 2012, p. 3).
Indigenous women have expressed how an idea of intersectionality has always been a part
of Indigenous ways of knowing: “this is a new term, but I’ve been living it since I was a
child” (p. 2–3). In addition, many Indigenous feminists and activists experience a large
gulf between the priorities of academic feminism and the real issues in the lives of Indig-
enous women and other women of colour.
Because the United States is balanced upon notions of white supremacy and heteropatriar-
chy, everyone living in the country is not only racialized and gendered, but also has a rela-
tionship to settler colonialism. Indigenous feminist theories offer new and reclaimed ways
of thinking through not only how settler colonialism has impacted Indigenous and settler
communities, but also how feminist theories can imagine and realize different modes of
nationalism and alliances in the future. (Smith in Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013, p. 9)
conclusIon
This chapter has addressed some of the ways in which feminist interventions about race,
Indigeneity, and colonialism challenge, rearticulate, and redirect feminist theory and fem-
inist projects. Identifying race and Indigeneity through a historical framework that con-
siders the emergence of race through colonization and slavery in the Western world
permits and compels an analysis of the centrality of the writing of women of colour and
Indigenous women to feminist projects. Intersectionality is a paradigmatic feature of femi-
nist concerns about race (The Combahee River Collective, 1977; Crenshaw, 2011; Puar,
2005; Razack, 2008). Yet, intersectionality fails in its obfuscation of settler colonialism
and processes of globalization. The writers and theorists in the chapter inspire a reconsid-
eration of feminist engagement with social, legal and political struggles.
endnotes
1. The word Indigeneity is derived from the word Indigenous. Legally, politically, socially, and
culturally, Indigenous peoplehood is generally based on: 1. “Self-identification as indigenous
peoples at the individual level and accepted by the community as their member;” 2. “His-
torical continuity with pre-colonial and/or pre-settler societies;” 3. “Strong links to territories
and surrounding natural resources;” 4. “Distinct social, economic or political systems;”
5. “Distinct language culture and beliefs;” 6. “Form non-dominant groups of society;”
7. “Resolve to maintain and reproduce their ancestral environments and system as distinctive
peoples and communities.” (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, n.d.)
2. Retrieved from New World Encyclopedia, Definition “Colonialism.”
Discussion Questions
1. What are “race” and racialization? What are colonialism and imperialism? What is settler colo-
nialism? Why are land and sovereignty central to Indigenous women’s lives and resistance strategies?
2. What is intersectionality? What is the genealogy of the concept of intersectionality in
feminist theorizing? What are some of the critiques of intersectionality?
3. What challenges does Indigenous women’s theorizing pose for mainstream feminism and
for critical race and anti-racist feminism?
4. Look for images in the dominant culture that depict particular ideas about race and racial-
ization, or ideas about Indigenous people. How might some of the ideas advanced in this
chapter assist in analyzing these images? How can feminist perspectives on race, Indige-
neity, and colonialism assist with providing an analysis of these images?
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(pp. 105–136). New York, NY: Springer Publishing.
Amnesty International. (2004). Stolen sisters: A human rights response to discrimination against Indig-
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IntroductIon
The late 20th century saw a global explosion of attention to women’s rights. In 1975, the
United Nations announced the United Nation’s Decade for Women to raise awareness of
international women’s rights. Four world conferences were held between 1975 and 1985
during which women from all over the world gathered to discuss such issues as gender
discrimination, violence against women, poverty, health, armed conflict, the economy,
the rights of girls, and the environment. Since these initial meetings, research on global
gender inequality has increased immensely. Of women worldwide 35% have experienced
gendered violence in their lives (UN Women, 2014). Of all women who are employed,
50% work in vulnerable employment in the informal economy where there are no working
regulations or protections for workers, such as sexual harassment policies and the range of
other workplace protections from injury and exploitation that some take for granted (UN
Women, 2014). There is now growing consensus around the world that mobilizing for
gender equality is a global project for the 21st century as well.
Transnational feminism constitutes a framework that can be used to address the
challenges of working toward gender equality globally. Transnational feminism can be
thought of as a two-pronged approach that analyzes shifts and changes in gender relations
globally and builds feminist communities of resistance across and against borders. As a
theoretical paradigm, transnational feminism examines how gender equality is manifested
geographically (in various locations), and also traces historical structures of inequality.
Transnational feminism is specifically concerned with how colonialism and imperial-
ism map onto current forms of global gender inequality. According to Ania Loomba
(2005), colonialism can be defined as “conquest and control of other people’s lands and
goods” (p. 8). It may include the direct or indirect control of land and people by foreign
occupiers, and in some cases, the settling of foreign populations and the displacement of
those indigenous to the land (for example, Canada). Imperialism can be understood as the
cultural and economic dependency and control over people and land that ensures that
labour and markets are opened to imperial powers (p. 11). Transnational feminists work
from the assumption that colonial and imperial projects have and continue to alter gender
relations in significant ways that intersect with issues of health, poverty, the economy, and
the environment (for more on colonialism and imperialism, please refer to chapter 2).
They also acknowledge that colonial and imperial projects have an impact on how these
62
global issues are represented and discussed in feminist scholarship. Transnational feminists
contend that current imperial projects, including dominant forms of economic globaliza-
tion, affect women’s lives and the ways in which feminists can align themselves in acts of
global solidarity against systems of oppression.
This chapter offers an introduction to transnational feminist theories and activisms.
First, this chapter will explain the concept of “transnational” by distinguishing transna-
tional feminism from the terms “global” and “international” feminism. Second, this chap-
ter will explore the differences between “global feminism” and transnational feminism.
Third, the chapter will outline three issues of global significance where transnational
feminists have made specific interventions: migration, representation of global women’s
issues, and violence against women. Fourth, feminist mobilizations across borders will be
explored. By working through these key questions and issues, this chapter focuses on how
power operates transnationally and how—with both successes and failures—transnational
feminists are organizing and agitating for gender equality across borders.
GlobalIzatIon, local/Global,
and the transnatIonal
Globalization is a highly contested term and yet an essential one for transnational
feminists.1 Globalization can be described as the increased movement and flows of peoples,
information, and consumer culture across borders (Naples, 2002, p. 8). For many, the term
globalization might conjure images of the United States’ companies such as McDonald’s
opening in Tanzania and Starbucks serving its coffee in Shanghai. The term might also
evoke images of people crossing borders for holiday travel, of bananas from Latin America
being imported into Canada, and of receiving cold calls from a United States’ company
that has outsourced its work to India. The term globalization appeals to people’s optimistic
visions of an interconnected world, where national identities and borders are becoming
less important to the ways in which individuals move and interact, the services and goods
people can access, and how companies do business. The largest corporations in the world,
including Nestlé and Shell, are called multinational corporations (MNCs) or transnational
corporations, meaning that these companies spread their work around the world, which is
facilitated by processes of globalization.
Importantly, globalization has winners and losers. Critics of globalization say the costs
outweigh the benefits since the benefits are not equally distributed. For Marchand and
Runyan (2011), the term “globalization” is coded language that gives a positive spin
on projects and processes that are actually imperialist in nature. They use the term
“globalization-cum-imperialism” to denote the ways in which the term globalization
masks the powerful forces behind changes in economies and cultures that create conditions
in which some win and some loose. For example, while goods may flow across national
borders more frequently, these flows are unequal in their volume and the profits are not
shared in equitable portions with producers. For example, many Northern governments
are known to subsidize domestic farmers in their agro-industries. Government subsidies, or
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 63
small amounts of money distributed in various ways to local producers, allow domestic
farmers to sell their goods on the global economy at lower costs. These cheaper goods can
then flood Southern markets and push domestic farmers in poorer countries out of business
because they were produced at a much lower cost by the original producer. This situation
likely means that a Jamaican farmer is more vulnerable to unemployment while a farmer
in the United States can be more assured of a market for her product, due to the ways that
food production is now globally orchestrated.
Globalization has shifted cultures, social interactions, political structures, and national
economies. Taken together, the complex processes of globalization have resulted in jobs for
women opening up worldwide. Unfortunately, the most under-paid, under-valued, and
exploitative jobs seem to be designated for women. A feature of current forms of globalization
is that it is highly gendered, in that many women around the world, who are formally
employed, work in export manufacturing and/or must migrate for work and leave their
families behind. Feminist scholars use the term “feminization of labour” to mark this shift in
the global economy. The pressure to reorient national economies to manufacture for export
has feminized the global labour force. International financial institutions, including the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank, often require poorer countries to gain capital
through a reorientation of their economies for the export of goods and services. Low wages
are attractive to investors in export-oriented economies because more profit can be derived
if lower wages are paid. Given that many export-dependent countries are located in the
Southern Hemisphere, these economic advantages come through the increasing exploitation
of racialized women as the employees of choice in manufacturing and low-paid service and
informal economies. The stereotype of nimble-fingered, inherently docile, and hardworking
Third-World2 women is used to justify their suitability for repetitive and monotonous work
(Bergeron, 2006; Eisenstein, 2009; Erevelles, 2006; Fernandez-Kelly, 1983).
For feminists concerned with the negative impact of globalization on gender relations
and on women in particular, globalization is neither inevitable nor unchanging, but rather
a project shaped by social and political forces. In other words, globalization is a process,
and therefore, it can be resisted. Marchand and Runyan (2011) find the term “global eco-
nomic restructuring” a more accurate and effective one to describe the project of global-
ization-cum-imperialism. This process generally includes the dismantling of nationally
funded social services and health care in favour of putting these services into an open
market for private sector companies to own, deliver, and profit from. By seeing globaliza-
tion through the lens of economic restructuring, the gendered impacts are more visible for
study and can be challenged. For example, a major impact of globalization has been the
increase in women’s unpaid labour. Women do about 70% of the household work globally
(Desai, 2002). Due to global economic restructuring, women are doing more unpaid care
work than ever before. When countries liberalize their economies, many state supports for
reproductive labour are effectively removed and women end up picking up the slack. Fem-
inists have termed this the “double-burden” or “triple-burden” of labour where they per-
form not only paid work in the market and unpaid work for their families, but also the
caregiving and domestic labour that might otherwise have been subsidized by the state.
Among the impacts of global economic restructuring is also the increase in the price of
64 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
goods, including food, that makes women more vulnerable to malnutrition as they often
eat last after providing for family members (Desai, 2002, p. 20).
Transnational feminists conceptualize global economic restructuring as a useful way
of understanding global power systems and cultural flows—and as a starting point for
enacting change. This way of thinking about globalization is important for transnational
feminist theories because scholars are interested in mapping changing politics, cultures,
and economies and contributing to positive change.
Transnational feminist theory invites people to think differently about how culture is
also subject to globalizing forces. Globalization has not meant that cultures have become
homogeneous nor has it meant that the flow of Western products, services, and ideas
proceed uniformly from the West to other countries (Marchand & Runyan, 2011).
Certainly, colonialism and imperialism shape the ways in which culture and capital flow,
and it is important for transnational feminists to map how this happens as well as to note
resistance to it. One way to think about how culture flows unpredictably under
globalization is to take the example of the Mattel toy, the Barbie doll. In their canonical
text Scattered Hegemonies: Postmodernity and Transnational Feminist Practices, Grewal and
Kaplan (1994) use the example of the consumption of Barbie in India to describe the
globalization of culture. Challenging the assumption that cultural flows are unidirectional
(i.e., from the West to “the rest”), Grewal and Kaplan ask where, by whom, and for what
reason some elements of culture are consumed and not others. Since Barbie is sold in
India dressed in a sari while Ken is dressed in “American” clothes, some American culture
is being consumed, but India’s culture is also changing Barbie. Grewal and Kaplan ask
that people think about what a Barbie dressed in a sari might communicate about the
interplay between the global and the local, suggesting that although an American
multinational corporation can impose culture, so can the recipient influence its production
to a certain extent.
More than Barbie’s dress, Grewal (2005) notes that most Barbie dolls sold in the
United States in the 1990s were made in China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The plastics of
the doll were made in Taiwan from oil bought from Saudi Arabia. Her hair was made in
Japan and the packaging was made in the United States. According to Grewal, the labour
cost associated with Barbie was about 35 cents per Barbie and the labour was performed
primarily by poorly paid Asian women in assembly line work. Most of the cost of Barbie
is associated with shipping, marketing, and profit for Mattel. The example of Barbie
demonstrates that the globalized production and consumption of Barbie is multidirectional
and gendered in both labour and consumption. It also shows that the poor, Southern
nations are positioned as sites of resources for the West where captive labour and markets
are opened to Western powers through the project of globalization-cum-imperialism.
local/Global
Transnational feminists are particularly concerned with the terms “local” and “global.”
Global is often used to denote the workings of globalization at a level that is supra-
national, or transgresses state borders. You may have heard the phrase “think global, act
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 65
local,” which promotes resistance to globalization. Resisting the harmful effects of global-
ization has involved taking local action, such as purchasing food at farmer’s markets or
checking the labels on clothing to ensure it has been traded fairly. These are complex
consumer practices, and transnational feminists help us understand that the local and the
global are not two distinct entities; instead, they are mutually constitutive spaces that
cannot be separated (Grewal & Kaplan, 1994). In other words, the local and global are
two interconnected aspects of the same phenomenon.
The division between thinking globally and acting locally makes little sense to
many people who are already integrated into structures of globalization in their locality.
For example, in 2013, a garment factory (Rana Plaza) in Bangladesh collapsed killing
over 1000 people and injuring thousands of others (BBC, 2013; Uddin, 2013). Although
a crack in the building was known to be dangerous, workers were encouraged to return to
work after being evacuated a few days before the collapse. Over 4 million people work in
clothing factories in Bangladesh. According to the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers
and Exporters Association, 85% of the workers are women and over four-fifths of its $20
billion in production is sent to the West (NBC News, 2013; The Guardian, 2013). The
collapsed Rana Plaza building paints a disastrous but informative example of the interplay
between local, national, and global events. Indeed, the Rana Plaza buildings were due for
upgrades and structural renovations that were put off by the local companies overseeing
the manufacturing of garments. Afterwards, numerous local people were arrested on
charges of negligence. Nationally, the government of Bangladesh closed 18 other
factories due to safety issues (BBC, 2013). Transnationally, activists called for boycotts of
multinational corporations working in Bangladesh, such as The Gap and Canadian
retailer Joe Fresh. Since the collapse of Rana Plaza, almost 200 transnational garment
retailers have signed the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (2013). This
disaster, and the response to it, involves global economic systems, multinational
corporations, national policies and legislation, local and global patriarchies (especially
since most precarious work in this industry is done by women), historical forms of
colonialism, imperialism, and consumer culture in the West. For transnational feminists,
the collapse of Rana Plaza and the response to its collapse are indeed transnational since
they cannot be made sense of without an understanding that the local and global
are interconnected.
transnational
According to Swarr and Nagar (2010), transnational feminist theory has grown out of two
interconnected dialogues in the field of feminist studies: first, it has been employed by
those seeking to question globalization and neo-liberalism, and to underscore social justice
issues, including the creation of alliances across borders; and second, it has been used in
feminist debates about Eurocentrism since the 1980s in feminist theory and writing, espe-
cially regarding issues of how stories of Other women lives (including questions of voice,
authority, identity, and representation) cross borders. But the very meaning of the term
66 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
transnational is contested among scholars in the fields of postcolonial, Third World, and
international feminisms. Laura Briggs, Gladys McCormick, and J. T. Way (2008) suggest
that transnationalism is an overused term, taking on very different meanings in multiple
disciplines (p. 625). For example, the term transnational can indicate migratory processes
and capital circulations, or transnational flows of people and goods. The term is sometimes
used to signal the apparent powerlessness of the state to control trade and flows of people
across its own borders. The term is also used to describe the world as borderless and inter-
connected. In fact, in the post–9/11 period especially, borders are very real and worthy of
attention. Since passengers on commercial airlines attacked the New York World Trade
Center on September 11, 2001, the way in which individuals cross some borders has
changed dramatically. Some argue that in contrast to opening, borders are more entrenched
and closed to some people than ever, and yet more open to capital. As Walia (2013) writes:
“Capital, and the transnationalization of its production and consumption, is freely mobile
across borders, while the people displaced as a consequence of the ravages of neoliberalism
and imperialism are constructed as demographic threats and experience limited mobility”
(p. 4). Border crossings, and our varied experiences with crossing borders based on gender,
race, class, sexuality, ability, and citizenship status, can tell us how borders continue to mat-
ter under globalization. Feminist interpretations of the transnational that do not take bor-
ders, boundaries, and inequalities seriously risk hollowing out the concept. So rather than
abandoning the term on account of its multiple and often conflicting usages, the term
allows its users to challenge the flattening of power relations between states.
The use of the term “transnational,” instead of “international” or “global,” marks
some feminist theorists’ refusal to valorize inequitable global systems. International usu-
ally refers to relations between nations. Transnational does a better job of getting at the
social, economic, cultural, and political flows that transcend the boundaries of the nation-
state (Mann, 2012, p. 356). Karen Booth (1998) suggests that the term international
denotes Western power systems founded by global inequalities, including the United
Nations. As Radika Mongia (2007) argues, the term “international” denotes equality
between nations and does not take into account the power differentials between nations.
Nor, I would add, can it adequately acknowledge cases where multiple nations (some
acknowledged, some unacknowledged) may exist within a single state, as in the case of
many Indigenous nations. Using an anti-colonial analysis, she argues that the term inter-
national does not allow scholars to take into account the way in which nation-states are
“co-produced through a complex array of related and relational historical events”
(p. 384). Mongia (2007) sheds light on the inadequacy of the term international by
exploring the work of the United Nations. At the United Nations (UN) only recognized
sovereign nations can negotiate with other nations that are understood to be “equivalent”
to one another. The UN and its many agencies, as an example of the “international,” have
a membership of only recognized sovereign nation-states. The functioning of the UN
ahistoricizes the uneven co-production of nations in the post–Second World War period.
Importantly, many former colonies and occupied territories were not sovereign at the time
that the United Nations was established and could not obtain membership. Significantly,
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 67
the UN Security Council is an unequal space where the United States has the power of a
veto vote, and where the Western world holds the most power (Mongia, 2007, p. 410).
For many transnational feminists, the term “transnational” is also a corrective term for
the “global” in some feminist studies. According to Naples (2002), the term “transnational”
intertwines the global and the local and pays attention to the interplay between both sites,
paying specific attention to how power operates within and between nations, and among
and between women. “Global,” on the other hand, has come to represent theorizing and
political organizing that assumes natural and inevitable solidarities among women globally.
For transnational feminists Grewal and Kaplan, “global feminism has elided the diversity of
women’s agency in favor of a universalized Western model of women’s liberation that
celebrates individuality and modernity” (1994, p. 17). In other words, global feminism has
come to represent a kind of theorizing and organizing among feminists that presents
Western women as more advanced, modern, and liberated than their Third World sisters,
and enables them to “save” their sisters from backward, patriarchal, and traditional men.
Post-colonial theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) coined the phrase, “White men
saving brown women from brown men” to describe the ways in which Third World women
are too often positioned in Western scholarship as agentless and waiting to be rescued.
While the term “global” is not always understood so negatively, transnational feminists
have chosen the word “transnational” to repair what they see as the failures and shortcoming
of global feminism, as discussed below.
To review, while a variety of scholars use the terms global, international, and transna-
tional in many different ways, transnational feminists use the term transnational because
they find it useful for feminist theorizing and organizing across and against borders, and for
understanding globalization. Importantly, transnational feminist theorists continually
reflect on the term transnational itself, especially its usage, and what it communicates.
68 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
issues nation by nation, they can see that women around the world have connections to
one another on the basis of their shared experiences under patriarchy. Learning about
experiences of oppression other than your own is clearly a very desirable political goal, but
Morgan, as the anthology editor, invited certain women to publish in the text and had
control over the publishing of the anthology. A Western feminist, she collected and
controlled women’s stories for the anthology and provided the language of sisterhood to
bring the chapters together, thus allowing it to be framed through a Western lens. This is
significant because transnational feminists not only question what stories about Other
women are being told, but who has the power to tell these stories.
Transnational feminists are concerned with how stories are told. According to Chandra
T. Mohanty (2003), academic curricula—including the very text you are reading—“tell[s] a
story—or tells many stories” (p. 238). As already explored in this chapter, how feminists
think about the local and the global, and think about, or do not think about, the connection
between these two sites, matters. In the classroom, these stories matter as much as academic
research on globalization. In her chapter “Under Western Eyes Revisited” from Feminism
without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, Chandra T. Mohanty (2003)
criticizes the process of “internationalizing” the gender and women’s studies curriculum
(p. 238). As demonstrated in the first section of this chapter, globalization, or what Marchand
and Runyan (2011) call “global economic restructuring,” has had a negative impact on
women’s lives transnationally. In the 1980s, gender and women’s studies programs in the
United States and Canada shifted their focus from centralizing North America to examining
the impact on women of globalization. While the geographical focus of many classrooms
changed during this period, global feminism often dominated studies of global women’s issues.
The “internationalizing” of gender and women’s studies curricula has often meant a
narrow focus on a set of topics including garment export factories and female genital
mutilation, and a destabilization of dominant subject positions, but through inclusion
frameworks that stabilize almost everything else (Fernandez, 2013). This restricted
outlook in feminist classrooms reflects some of the most troubling aspects of global
feminism according to transnational feminists. Global feminist scholarship on the body
and sexuality, and specifically on what in the West is commonly described as “female
genital mutilation,” is routinely embedded in what Grewal and Kaplan (2001) call “the
binary axis of tradition-modern” (p. 669). In other words, scholarship on this subject
habitually produces “traditional” subjects that are agentless in a backward culture in order
to establish more “modern” Western subjects. For the authors, “the global feminist is one
who has free choice over her body and a complete and intact, rather than a fragmented
or surgically altered body, while the traditional female subject of patriarchy is forcibly
altered . . . and deprived of choices or agency”(Grewal & Kaplan, 2001, pp. 669–670).
Mohanty’s (2003) and Fernadez’s (2013) analyses about how feminists teach and learn
about Other women is a central feature of transnational feminism.3 As a way of decolonizing
curriculum, Mohanty offers a “comparative feminist studies” or “feminist solidarity” model
for the classroom. To understand why this model is most successful for teaching and learning
through a transnational feminist lens, it is important to first explore two less nuanced
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 69
pedagogical models that are based on the premise that the student of gender and women’s
studies is universally white, middle class, and Western. What Mohanty calls the “Feminist
as Tourist Model” involves “forays into non-Euro-American cultures” and showcases
particularly sexist practices in those cultures. In this global feminist approach, students are
encouraged to metaphorically travel around the world and learn how patriarchal,
misogynist, and backward Other cultures are when compared with their own. In this model,
it becomes the “white women’s burden” to liberate her ‘sisters’ from oppression (Mohanty,
2003, p. 239). Difference and distance between women in the West and the “Third World”
are solidified, and Western women confirm themselves as powerful, modern, and
progressive. A second pedagogical model is the “Feminist as Explorer Model,” wherein
Other women are both the object and subject of knowledge, and the entire curriculum is
devoted to countries other than the one in which the classroom is located. For example, a
class using this model would teach about Latin America and Latin American women, but
would not discuss the connections between where students are located and the places and
people they are studying. This pedagogical strategy “internationalizes” the curriculum by
emphasizing “distance from home” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 240).
Transnational feminist teaching practices suggest instead that a learning and teaching
model based of feminist solidarity is desirable. Beginning from the premise that the local and
global are defined as interconnected, rather than separate geographical territories, means
that curriculum can help students discuss commonalities and difference among and between
women. This pedagogical strategy also foregrounds the women’s and gender studies classroom
as a possible site for transnational solidarity and creates a space for teacher activism—by
centring mutual responsibility to ending transnational oppressions, defining what Mohanty
(2003) calls “common interests” around which feminists? globally can rally, and anchoring
action in solidarity (and not saving, as is often the goal of global feminist curriculum).
The difference between global and transnational feminism might be best understood by
looking at scholarship and claims for women’s rights during the so-called War on Terror. In
the aftermath of the attack on the New York World Trade Center, global feminism has been
particularly occupied with the “binary axis of traditional-modern” that Grewal and Kaplan
(2001) identify. Some Western feminists have concerned themselves with the alleged
subordination of women under Islamic laws and governance, focusing specifically on
women’s bodily autonomy and even more specifically on veiling practices. Using the hijab,
burqa, and niqab as a stand-in for nuanced analyses of women’s lives, and specifically their
religious and cultural practices, some Western feminists claim that “Eastern” women are
pawns in a grand patriarchal scheme. Muslim women, especially those who wear the hijab,
burqa, and niqab, are used as symbols for the cultural backwardness, social conservatism,
and extremism of Islamic fundamentalism of the “East.”
Jennifer Fluri (2009) uses the term “corporal modernity” to describe the ways in which
the visibility of the female body has become a yardstick to measure a nation’s level of
modernity or “progress” in the post–9/11 era. She critiques the association of visibility of the
female body with power, suggesting instead that lack of cultural and historical context
ignores the ways in which the War on Terror has provided a political context for using the
70 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
body and its coverings or lack thereof as a measure of liberation. In other words, women
living in cultures that glorify the uncovering of the body are considered progressive, while
those that support the covering of the body are regressive. This is a problematic and over-
simplified formula for understanding gendered relations of power and women’s agency.
Fluri’s work can be read as a criticism of global feminism’s inattention to geography and
history, and the lack of attention paid to the interplay between “home” and “abroad.” Fluri
and other scholars including Mahmood (2005), Thobani (2007), and Moallem (2005)
maintain that what some Western feminists ignore is that the burqa and other veiling
practices provide corporeal privacy in public space, and have allowed women to resist public
patriarchal structures in their lives. Isolating veiling practices as symbolic of oppression does
not accurately trace the cultural and political changes that lead women to wear, or take off,
burqas, niqabs, and hijabs. Ignoring contextual analyses and the voices of Muslim women,
global feminists have overwhelmingly argued that Muslim women are forced to act against
their own human agency, or the innate sense of individual autonomy and desire for freedom
against the weight of custom and tradition. Muslim women in this strand of global feminist
theorizing are thought of as living with false consciousness or internalized patriarchy, and in
need of saving by their liberated Western sisters (Abu-Lughod, 2002; Razack, 2008).
What is also missing from this global feminist discourse is an acknowledgment of the
United States’ role in women’s loss of freedom in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan—a
regime they supported during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s. In feminist rescue
narratives, no mention is made of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan
(RAWA) that was established in 1977 and remains active in promoting human rights,
health care, education, and democratic and secular rule in Afghanistan (Naples, 2002,
p. 267). Instead, by employing the “traditional-modern binary axis,” global feminist
scholarship assumes that women are waiting to be saved (Grewal & Kaplan, 2001).
Given that transnational feminism is often presented as a reparative theoretical
framework for “previous” feminisms (including global feminism), it is important to
acknowledge the limits of this framework. While transnational feminist theory emerged out
of theories from women of colour feminisms, third world feminisms, multicultural feminisms,
and international feminisms, a variety of deployments of transnational feminism both
continue and depart from these political and intellectual histories. Transnational feminist
theorists often reflect on the field, how the term “transnational” is deployed, and the kinds
of analyses and activism that the term transnational makes possible. As Swarr and Nagar
(2010) maintain, transnational feminism is an unstable field that is critical of its own
definitions and practices. Desai, Bouchard, and Detournay (2011) offer one such critique.
They suggest that transnational feminism “is often seen to subsume women of color
feminism” (p. 49). As explored briefly in Chapter 2, transnational feminism pays attention
to the role of race, class, gender, and sexuality beyond the confines of the state borders.
However, transnational feminists note that it is incorrect to assume that transnational
feminism resolves racism and/or transcends the contributions of critical race or postcolonial
feminisms. Some argue that transnational feminism removes the emphasis on race
altogether. This critique has led scholars, including Adrien K. Wing (2000) to claim their
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 71
work as “transnational critical race feminism” as a way to ensure that their scholarship is
read and located within critical race and transnational feminist theoretical traditions.
Although the field is too broad to outline extensively here, this chapter turns now to
sketch three focal issues of transnational feminism: migration, representation, and violence
against women.
mIGratIon
The movements of culture, capital, and people under globalization are contradictory and
complex. The tension between opening borders for the flows of global capital and culture
and the desire of states to protect their borders from immigration is a major concern (Harvey,
2003; Walia, 2013). For transnational feminists, the increasing security measures at borders,
especially in the post–9/11 period, is a concern. They argue that there are racist and
imperialist dimensions to border security and control of individuals’ movements, and a lack
of justice-based responses to the effects of globalization (Magnet, 2011; Puar, 2007; Walia,
2013). While border crossings may be increasingly restricted by Western states, globalization
simultaneously displaces people from poorer Southern regions due to instability, violence,
and poverty. Migration has been and will likely continue to be a survival strategy for many.
“Care work” provides a good example of the ways in which migration is gendered and
racialized. Care work is labour that is reproductive in nature, namely childrearing, elder
care, and home care. One of the impacts of global economic restructuring has been the
movement of women into the global workforce. These movements have resulted in a “crisis
of care” that affects women around the world in different ways. In poorer Southern
countries, global economic restructuring has pushed women into the workforce, and in the
Western world, more women are working than ever before. While this represents increased
economic independence for women, household duties have not been redistributed among
members. In her foundational work, Arlie Hochschild (1989) found that women in the
United States were working, on average, a full extra month above and beyond their
productive duties. Calling this phenomenon the “second shift,” Hochschild showed that
unequal distribution of workload within households falls on women, or their community
and family networks. When women are unable to work this “second shift,” households seek
employees to do this work for them. Families often hire low-paid child-care, home-care,
and elder-care workers who are often un-unionized and have very few working rights and
protections. Many women, in addition to taking care of their own children, provide child
care for other families in their own homes because child care is un- or under-subsidized.
Since most child care occurs within private homes, this issue remains a “private” issue and
is considered a woman’s personal responsibility. In Canada, this idea is reinforced by the
fact that the Canada Revenue Agency (2015) provides a meagre universal child care
benefit to individual families so they can choose their own child care options, rather than
subsidize public child care across the country.
Global economic restructuring in the United States and Canada shapes the
transnational migration patterns of women. Welfare state retrenchment in both countries
72 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
means most families lack an adequate social safety net. In the United States, there is no
guarantee of paid maternity or paternity leave, no public child care, and no universal
health care system. In Canada, women working in the most precarious, piecemeal labour
do not qualify for paid maternity leave, while paternity leave is often less valued, and
women spend upwards of 30% of their annual income on publically available child care
due to the lack of subsidized child care nationally (with the exception of the province of
Quebec) (Macdonald & Friendly, 2014). Under increasing pressure from work and
household-related needs, middle-class families have the option of hiring migrant workers
to care for their children, especially relatively inexpensive live-in caregivers provided
through the Canadian government’s Live-in Caregiver Program (Citizenship and
Immigration Canada, 2014).
Some families in economies like those of Canada and the United States find that
public child care is too expensive, and they can only afford to hire private caregivers as long
as they are inexpensive. Less privileged women from the poorer Southern nations are called
on to fill this gap. Migration, according to Marchand and Runyan (2011), is “fashioned as
the solution to child-care, eldercare, and healthcare crises in the North and un- and- under
employment in the South” (p. 14). Ehrenreich and Hochschild (2003) use the phrase
“global care chain” to denote the migration of women from poor, developing countries to
developed ones as maids and nannies. Many countries, due to global economic restructuring
and national debts, depend on remittances as a way to further develop their own economies
(Rodriquez, 2008). Remittances are monetary transfers from foreign workers to their home
country. For example, the Philippine state relies on the export of labour through national
migration apparatuses. As Rodriquez (2008) suggests, “brokering workers” in this way
ensures remittances; women who leave poorer countries for richer ones, as caregivers, send
money home to their families, especially to their own children and to bolster their nation’s
economy. However, this leaves a major care gap in their home nations and households.
As I alluded to, the global care chain is not an informal network of gendered and
racialized labour. Rather, governments in the West are responding to the known crisis of
care by investing in transnational recruitment of women as maids and nannies. Ehrenreich
and Hochschild (2003) call this the “female underside of globalization,” where women in
poorer countries migrate to do what is considered women’s work in richer countries. The
state is involved in this aspect of migration as governments, such as in the Philippines, for
example, train women for “women’s work” outside of the country, which includes training
to conform to norms of gender and sexuality (Rodriquez, 2008). While care work is
available transnationally, poorer nations must promote and market their women as the
best in the field, and often the cheapest, to compete on a global scale. For Ehrenreich and
Hochschild (2003), the international division of labour is about more than reproductive
labour such as caring for infants and children. In fact, they claim that feelings are
“distributive resources” (p. 23). In other words, migrant domestic workers also engage in
emotional labour. Similar to women workers in export processing zones who are expected
to perform a “docile and dexterous” femininity along the global assembly line, nannies
and maids are expected to perform femininity by nurturing and acting lovingly.
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 73
representatIon
Transnational feminists emphasize the study of representation as a key site of feminist
thought and activism. As Swarr and Nagar (2010) remind us, transnational feminism is a
theoretical framework that intervenes in feminist debates about the issues of how stories
of Other women’s lives cross borders. Transnational feminists concerned with
representation are particularly interested in questions of voice, authority, and identity
since Western feminists are often telling stories of Other women’s lives in their scholarship
and in classrooms. They borrow from cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall (2013) and
agree that studying representation is about understanding how “the words we use about
them, the stories we tell about them, the images of them we produce, the emotions that
we associate with them, the ways we classify and conceptualize them, and the values we
place on them” give meaning to things (Hall, 2013, p. xix). To study the “production and
circulation of meaning” of text, talk, and images about global women’s issues, and more
specifically Third World women, is important, particularly as certain types of research and
media coverage may have harmful results. As such, they understand the study and use of
representation as a very useful political strategy to effect change as well as an important
practice in and of itself.
74 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
include feminist scholarship, as well as popular media, humanitarian and international
development campaigns, and global feminist activisms. As Mohanty maintains in “Under
Western Eyes,” Western feminist scholarship too often engages in representational
practices that collapse differences between Third World women and erase their agency. In
particular, she argues that women’s experiences of oppression in specific contexts are erased
in favour of more simplistic renderings of their lives. She terms this overused representational
practice “third world difference.” Here, Western women are represented as secular, modern,
and in control of their bodies and lives in contrast to Third World women who are
represented as traditional, backward, and oppressed by patriarchal culture and violent
men. Third World women are rarely represented as resisting oppression from multiple
levels and sites of power, and it is often traditional and patriarchal culture (embodied by
men) that stands in for women’s subordination, rather than deep analysis of global
structures of power.
Mohanty is also concerned with how this category of Third World women allows
Western feminists to assume expertise in Third World women’s issues. Often, feminist
scholars assume that all Third World women have common experiences, problems, and
needs, and so, they must have similar goals. Western feminist scholarship needs to be his-
torically specific and take into account the differences between Third World women and
the concrete reality of their lives. She writes: “These arguments are not just against gener-
alization as much as they are for careful, historically specific generalizations responsive to
complex realties” (Mohanty, 2003, p. 377). For Mohanty, the first prong of a two-pronged
project toward liberating all women from oppression globally is “deconstructing and dis-
mantling” representations and the second is “building and constructing” new coalitions of
feminists across borders (Mohanty, 2003, p. 17).
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 75
located in publishing’s First World (the United States and Europe, with access to
international publics) and Third World (where knowledge, however erudite, seems to be
of strictly “local” provenance)” (p. 44). This kind of collaboration would dramatically
change the relationship of women to knowledge production across borders, and help to
build solidarities among women while paying attention to power and privilege differentials.
One powerful quality of transnational feminism is the scholar’s dedication to
reflexivity. Feminist reflections have frequently revolved around questions of how feminists
produce knowledge through research, how researchers can be accountable to those they
study, and how to represent these stories ethically and within a social justice framework
when academics publish their work. In the academy, researchers often use the “grassroots”
or the “local” as sites of knowledge to be excavated. Transnational feminists complicate the
term “grassroots” to constantly decolonize representations of women’s issues transnationally.
Naples (2002) argues that the idea of the grassroots is too often romanticized as a site
where individuals are always resisting and never desiring or benefiting from globalization.
The grassroots is also largely defined as a site for intervention by Western experts. For Priti
Ramamurthy (2003), the grassroots is a site of both agency and contradiction. Using the
term “perplexity,” she maintains that desire, benefit, and resistance are all experienced by
those who inhabit this site.
As Mohanty (2003) maintains, “testimonials, life stories and oral histories are a signifi-
cant mode of remembering and recording experience and struggles” (p. 77). However, she
warns that the current diversification of the Eurocentric canon by publishing culturally
diverse stories—a marked academic trend—can contribute to an exoticization (the process
of making something or someone seem different, alien, or Other) of “different” stories from
women who write as “authentic truth-tellers.” Thus, the mere presence of more writings
from Other women within the academy does not mean a de-centring of knowledge produc-
tion. The ways in which stories are shared, heard, read, and institutionally located are critical
for scholarly interrogation. Mohanty argues that the point of transnational feminist praxis is
not only to record Other women’s stories in order to create cross-border connections. Rather,
it is to take seriously how stories and memories are recorded, the way they are shared and
read, and the way in which they are disseminated to a broad audience (2003, p. 78).
Sangtin Yatra/Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism through Seven Lives in
India (2006) outlines some of the problems and possibilities of cross-border collaborations
between Third World grassroots activists and Western academics. With few exceptions,
Nagar (2003) claims that there are very few tools to execute transnational feminist proj-
ects, and thus, she proposes collaborative border crossings. SangtinYatra/Playing with Fire is
set in Uttar Pradesh, India. It involves workers of a non-governmental organization with
the pseudonym Nari Samata Yojana (NSY) who came together to write about their expe-
riences of their individual social locations and their work. The Sangtin Collective brought
together eight community-based activists with Richa Nagar, a women’s studies scholar
from the University of Minnesota. The writers composed autobiographies about issues
such as childhood, womanhood, and sexuality in an intersectional analysis of class, caste,
regional inequalities, and gender (Mohanty, 2006).
76 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
When the collective decided to publish their stories as Sangtin Yatra in India in 2004,
the stories were braided together to avoid collapsing the stories into a singular narrative.
The collective claims that the book represents a “blended but fractured ‘we’” (Nagar,
2006, p. xxxiv). Nagar (2006) writes: “The chorus of nine voices does not remain constant
throughout the book. As one speaks, the voice of the second or third suddenly blends in
to give an entirely new and unique flavour to our music” (p. xxiv). Nagar (2006) notes
that the process of sharing, braiding, and editing was often bitter and caused anger,
suspicion, and conflict within the collective. The members assumed no shared experience
of womanhood and “collectively crafted individual stories shaped through painful
dialogue” (Mohanty, 2006, p. xiii). Working with and through difference was essential to
the collective’s success in producing a collection of individual but connected stories and
to building solidarity with one another.
Sangtin Yatra is one example of transnational methodology that has aimed to disrupt
dominant ways of coming to know about Other women. And yet, as Nagar (2006) claims,
“no act of translation is without problems of voice, authority and representation and no
act of publication comes without risk and consequences” (p. xxiii).
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 77
Globalization and Violence against women
As noted at the outset of this chapter, globalization has meant an increase in women’s
paid employment in a range of sectors, including in the informal sector and in export
manufacturing. Export processing zones (EPZ) are contradictory sites for women. While
they may provide women with income, and perhaps more economic autonomy within the
household, they are connected to violence against women in complicated ways. One of
the most well-known EPZs is the maquiladoras of the borderlands between the United
States and Mexico. The majority of maquiladora employees are young women. According
to scholar Kathleen Staudt (2008), who studies EPZs near Ciudad Juarez, this city and
women’s work here are situated within a matrix of “femicide” (the killing of women).
The Mexican government’s Programa industrial fronterizo (border industrialization pro-
gram) was established in 1960 to facilitate foreign direct investment and global free trade
regimes to be globally competitive and to develop. In 1994, Canada and the United States
solidified the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico. One of many
results of these two major trade programs is the growth of Ciudad Juarez, which has become
home to hundreds of factories employing more than 200 000 workers, over half of them
women (Staudt, 2008, p. 7). Although profitable for factory owners and investors, feminists
have argued that the workers experience structural violence at the hands of “a global economy
that has shrunk the real value of earnings in the export-processing economic development
model that dominates in Juarez” (Staudt, 2008, pp. 7–8). Although there are more jobs in the
city, they have come at a high price. On top of inadequate shelter, food, and wages, the fact
that over 370 women have been murdered since 1993 within and around the EPZ has inflicted
terror on the population (Staudt, 2008, p. x). While families of those missing, raped, and/or
murdered in Juarez have rallied for justice, there has been little response nationally or interna-
tionally by governments, global institutions, or the development community. Serial killers
and drug cartels are popular explanations among some scholars, and yet, violence within the
home has simultaneously become commonplace. This suggests feminists should broaden their
understanding of the systemic causes of violence in a community where gender conflicts have
been sparked by changing patterns of labour for meager wages—all of which is couched in the
heavily increased security of the United States and Mexican borders (Staudt, 2008, p. 143).
Since transnational feminists are interested in understanding the negative effects of
global economic restructuring on women, they pay attention to the manifestations of vio-
lence. In particular, the example of violence in Ciudad Juarez connects the local and global
since the violence experienced in the site is not one or the other, but rather connected to
local manifestations of patriarchy, as well and transnational economic and political forces
that are also deeply invested in maintaining these interlocking systems of oppression.
78 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
feminist, has made foundational contributions to transnational feminism. Using the
concept of “border crossing,” Narayan suggests that information about dowry murders in
India is shaped, distorted, and decontextualized when it crosses borders. The practice of
dowry (transferring parental property to a daughter at the time of her marriage), and the
violence associated with dowry (the abuse by husbands and in-laws related to this property
exchange), is both complicated and changing, and yet, it is represented in Western contexts
as a traditional and static practice that occurs regardless of class and caste. Narayan argues
that only certain kinds of information about dowry and dowry-related violence is passed
through a filter when it crosses borders, producing simple, quick facts and media-friendly
sound bites. There is little coverage of violence against women in India in North American
media, and dowry-related violence is rarely framed in terms of the general issue of domestic
violence. This means that stories of dowry murder tend to cross borders with more frequency
and currency than more complicated and nuanced reports of violence against women.
Narayan maintains that while dowry is a social, economic, political, religious, and
cultural practice that varies over time and space, a “cultural explanation” is most often
given when women experience violence related to this exchange (Narayan, 1997, p. 101).
Western media’s focus on widow/wife burning, and even on the dowry itself—a relatively
lesser-known or misunderstood practice—as “alien,” codes the practice as “Indian,” and
therefore Other. For Narayan, phenomena that seem “different,” “alien,” and “Other” cross
borders with more regularity than do problems that seem to also affect so-called Western
women. Unlike dating violence or domestic abuse, for example, dowry murders are misrep-
resented as foreign and unlike anything “at home” (Narayan, 1997, p. 102).
In Canada, popular discourse does not often represent violence against women as a cul-
tural issue, even though the issue is systemic, as discussed further in Chapter 8. According to
Statistics Canada (1993), half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident
of physical or sexual violence.4 In Canada, approximately 1200 Indigenous women have been
murdered or gone missing since 1999, and over 200 of these cases remain unsolved (RCMP,
2014). With the exception of Indigenous communities and anti-violence advocates, popular
discourse has not framed the violence as an issue of Canadian culture. While systemic in
nature and related to gender and racial inequality, media reports of violence against women
use individualized explanations related to mental health, stress, alcohol and drug abuse, or
provocation. While these explanations are problematic in their own right and are compli-
cated by feminist theorizing on the issue, it is important to contrast this framing of the issue
in Canada with “cultural explanations” offered in regard to violence against Indian women.
In all social justice organizing, certain issues are highlighted over others in order to
mobilize attention and resources. In the case of dowry murders, the United States and
Indian women’s anti-violence movements focused their attention in asymmetrical ways,
leading to Western feminists’ over-emphasis of dowry deaths as the issue of Indian
women. More recently Elora Halim Chowdhury (2011) has mapped the activism around,
and transnational representation of, acid attacks in Bangladesh. Chowdhury describes
the complicated relationship between anti-violence organizing in Bangladesh and the
ways in which this issue is taken up transnationally. Borrowing from Elizabeth Friedman’s
(1999) phrase “transnationalism reversed,” Chowdhury is specifically concerned with
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 79
local or grassroots organizing against acid attacks and its transnational affects. Similar to
Narayan (1997), Chowdhury’s (2011) extensive analysis points to the ways in which
rhetoric around violence against women, including how violence is made visible and
mobilized by activists in the locality, has global resonance. These scholarly works
demonstrate how misrepresentations of violence against women create opportunities for
feminist saviour narratives, but also feminist mobilizations across borders that are based
on the misunderstanding that Western women need to save their sisters.
80 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
These two terms are distinctive, and the difference is telling. When feminists speak and
write about rape culture, they often refer to the ways in which sexual violence against
women is explicitly and tacitly accepted in Western culture. This may include
representations of violence in movies, jokes, and even colloquial ways of speaking (e.g., “I
just raped that exam”). When feminists and others speak and write about “cultures of
rape,” as they did in the case of India following the 2012 gang rape, anti-violence advocates
drew on stereotypes of Indian culture as inherently hyper-violent, misogynist, backward,
and traditional. As in the discussion of dowry murder from earlier in this chapter, the
2012 gang rape that happened on a bus in South Delhi was given a cultural explanation.
In practice, cultural explanations of sexual or domestic violence do not allow for
women to build solidarities transnationally. In the case of “the Indian gang rape” as it is
ubiquitously known, a cultural explanation disallowed for connections to be made
between North American and Indian women, in particular, about the different manifesta-
tion of gendered violence at a local level. As Mohanty (2003) articulates, solidarities
among and between women require the mapping of power and difference, and an explora-
tion of common interests. When “the Indian gang rape” was described as a cultural issue,
many feminists in North America positioned themselves as saviours.
One of the most explicit examples of Western feminist attempts to “save their global
sisters” comes from the Harvard College Women’s Center when it announced a policy
task force entitled “Beyond Gender Equality” just following the highly publicized rape and
murder in South Delhi. The Harvardites presumed a stance of superior knowledge and,
implicitly, culture, as they offered “recommendations to India and other South Asian
countries.” Understandably angered by the assumption that Indian feminists needed
North American expertise, the following letter was written to the Harvard task force and
published online on the blog Kafila by Nivedita Menon (2014):
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 81
put in place that can help the Indian State in its implementation of the recommendations
of the Justice Verma Committee, a responsibility the Indian State must take up. This is
clearly something that we, Indian feminists and activists who have been involved in the
women’s movement here for several decades, are incapable of doing, and it was with a
sense of overwhelming relief that we read of your intention to step into this breach.
You might be pleased to know that one of us, a lawyer who led the initiative to put
pressure on the Justice Verma Committee to have a public hearing with women’s groups,
even said in relief, when she heard of your plans, that she would now go on holiday and
take a plane ride to see the Everest. Indeed, we are all relieved, for now we know that
our efforts will not have been in vain: the oral evidence provided by 82 activists and
organizations to the Justice Verma Committee—and which we believe substantially
contributed to the framing of their report—will now be in safe American hands!
Perhaps you are aware that the Indian State has put in place an Ordinance on Sexual
Assault that ignores many recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee? If not,
we would be pleased to furnish you a copy of the Ordinance, as well as a chart prepared
by us, which details which recommendations have been accepted and which not. This
may be useful in your efforts to advise our government. One of the greatest things
about sisterhood is that it is so global, feminism has built such strong international
connections—such that whenever our first world sisters see that we are incapable of
dealing with problems in our countries, they immediately step in to help us out and
provide us with much needed guidance and support. We are truly grateful for this.
Perhaps you will allow us to repay the favour, and next time President Obama wants
to put in place legislation to do with abortion, or the Equal Rights Amendment, we can
step in and help and, from our small bit of experience in these fields, recommend what
the United States can do.
Adding to the conversation, United States feminist scholar Carol Vance (2013) asks:
What lessons can be learned from feminist organizing and activism in India in the
wake of the Delhi rape (especially since it could be said that feminist activism is much
more vibrant and effective in India)? What reforms in law and its implementation are
effective, given different legal systems and historical contexts? How do we understand
the (relative) lack of response to horrific rapes in the US? (n.p.)
What this case demonstrates is how global solidarity cannot be assumed. Instead,
global solidarity must be built through negotiations of power and difference across borders.
82 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
It should go without saying that Third World women, to use Mohanty’s (2003) term, are
not waiting to be saved.
worker solidarity
While criticizing global feminist saviour models and international organizing that remains
inequitable, transnational feminism also provides a renewed hope in feminist organizing
though solidarity movements. Transnational feminist scholars stress the myriad of ways
that women who may never meet “can draw strength from each other and organize across
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 83
differences” (Naples, 2002, p. 270). For example, Mohanty’s (2003) chapter, “Women
Workers and the Politics of Solidarity,” in Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory,
Practicing Solidarity sheds a positive light on transnational feminist organizing by under-
scoring solidarity through common interests rather than assume common experiences.
Solidarity organizing through common interests takes into account women’s varied
desires and needs while acknowledging women’s social circumstances as workers. Both the
Working Women’s Forum (WWF) and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)
in India are examples of successful organizations of women workers. The Self Employed
Women’s Association was one of the first organizations to conceptualize women’s infor-
mal work as work—that is, work done in the private or outside formal working regula-
tions, including vegetable vending and producing goods from home. In 1972, SEWA
unionized informal women workers and formed cooperatives to share resources. The
women have formed support networks, trained community health workers, and estab-
lished a SEWA university, where women are trained in production and managerial skills
(Desai, 2002, p. 19). SEWA not only provides leadership training, but also has women’s
banks and producer cooperatives (Mohanty, 2003, pp. 164–65). By defining common
interests, sites of power, and complicity, as well as the needs of Third World women as
workers, SEWA provides a transformative basis for collective struggles (Mohanty, 2003).
In addition to mapping the negative effects of globalization, feminists are also
concerned with mapping women’s resistances to globalization, even if they may seem
small. Scholars, including Fernandez-Kelly (1983) and Ong (1987), have traced resistances
in workplaces by women organizing in solidarity. Although women surely have been
exploited by labour conditions in EPZs, they have also been active resisters, engaging in
work stoppages, resisting long hours without breaks, and using religious or cultural
celebrations to refuse work and to organize workers in these areas (Ong, 1987; Fernandez-
Kelly, 1983). These local actions have transnational effects, and can lead to larger
transformative solidarity actions among workers (Mendez, 2002). For example, the
Central American Network for Women in Solidarity with Women Workers in the
Maquilas (“The Network”) has utilized communication technologies to launch national
and international campaigns pressuring factory owners to sign codes of ethics. Their media
campaign, “Jobs, Yes . . . but with dignity,” has helped to decrease what is known as shop-
floor violence, and has in turn helped The Network to negotiate with factory owners to
monitor conditions for workers. It is important to note that most of The Network’s funding
has come from non-governmental organizations in Northern countries. This means that
The Network’s activism is funded by, and therefore partly accountable to, Northern
countries, which may affect how they do their work.
conclusIon
Transnational feminist theories aim to repair the failures and shortcomings of global femi-
nism and the “internationalization” of gender and women’s studies curriculum. Western
feminism has too often homogenized all Third World women as an uncivilized Other, in
84 C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m
need of empowerment and saving. For transnational feminists, representing women’s
issues within ongoing global economic restructuring, attending to the nuanced facets of
women’s lives, is necessary for cross-border coalitions. While global feminism tends to
assume that women are natural and inevitable sisters in struggle against a universal form
of patriarchy, transnational feminism uses a framework of analysis that emphasizes power
and differences among women within the context of shifting global power relations, in
addition to paying attention to gender inequalities within localities.
This chapter has outlined some of the major concerns for transnational feminists
including the concept of globalization and flows of culture and capital; the mutually
constitutive relationship, or the interplay, between the local and the global; the politics of
representing the stories of “Third World women” in scholarship and in classrooms;
collaborating across borders in research practices; migration and the international division
of care labour; violence against women; and women’s organizing. It is important to
remember that transnational feminism is not a homogenous subfield of feminist theory
with shared values, meaning, ideas, and languages (Swarr & Nagar, 2010, p. 3). Instead,
transnational feminism is a diverse field of study in which theorists have intervened in a
variety of questions pertaining to global women’s issues. It is a field of inquiry into
globalization and its effects, with no single, coherent position or strategy. As scholars
remain reflexive and the flow of goods and cultures shift and transform, the field shifts and
changes. As global economic restructuring continues to alter transnational systems of
oppression, new opportunities for solidarity open up. Transnational feminists concerned
with solidarity at the global level will continue to reframe their analyses of the world and
women’s place within it.
endnotes
1. Watchel (2001) has collected over 450 definitions of the term (as cited in Desai, 2002, p. 15).
2. The term “Third World” originated during the Cold War, a conflict that occurred between
capitalist and communist states after the Second World War. Countries that had been
previously colonized by European or North American countries were constructed as a third
world in reference to the inequalities between them. Third world countries may have
found formal independence from colonial powers during this period but colonialization
left profound disparities in wealth, capacity to compete in a globalizing economy, the
health and life expectancy of populations, and the political status of these nations. The
comparable wealth and status of “First World” countries, such as Canada, Great Britain,
and the United States, led these types of countries to exercise a great deal of power glob-
ally. The “Second World” referred to the Communist countries (Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Cuba, China, and others), although this term was only meant by implication, as
it was with these countries that the United States and its allies were silently engaged in a
major nuclear arms struggle. The term “Fourth World” has also emerged to refer to Indig-
enous societies that may be geographically and politically located in any of these countries.
The term Third World has been problematized and also periodically reclaimed. Where Third
World is used in this article, it appears as the language used by scholars under discussion.
C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 85
3. Put simply, to “other” someone is to distinguish “them” from “us.” It is a process of
demarcating difference, but also superiority and inferiority among groups of people. In
this case, Other women are understood to be different and inferior to Western women.
4. Although more up-to-date data would be preferable, no Statistics Canada surveys since
1993 have asked women about their lifetime experience of violence.
5. In compliance with Indian law, the real name of the victim was initially not released to the media.
discussion Questions
1. What are two major critiques of global feminism offered by transnational feminism? How
are global feminist frameworks replicated in the classroom?
2. Manisha Desai suggests that at UN conferences first world delegates outnumber third
world women. If there were more third world women at the table, would women’s orga-
nizing at this forum be different? If so, how?
3. Since the events of September 11, 2001, how have Muslim women been represented by
the popular and news media? How could you use a transnational feminist framework to
challenge these portrayals?
4. The Canadian Live-in Caregiver program is controversial, with some transnational femi-
nists claiming that the “global care chain” is exploitative. How might someone who is not
a migrant worker advocate for this group in solidarity with them?
5. Taking into consideration the response of Indian anti-violence advocates to the Harvard
Policy Task Force, how might transnational feminists concerned about global violence
against women approach this issue differently?
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timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/SC-stays-death-penalty-of-2-in-Nirbhaya-case/
articleshow/38398073.cms
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18447688-bangladesh-factory-collapse-why-women-endure-danger-to-make-clothes-for-
the-west
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from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/48/a48r104.htm
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what-is-wrong-with-this-picture-carole-vance-2/
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C h a p t e r 3 Tr a n s n a t i o n a l F e m i n i s m 89
Chapter 4
Stitch the Bitch
#girl#socialmedia#body#human
Katie Warfield, Fiona Whittington-Walsh
#IntroductIon
On October 9, 2012, while riding home from a school exam in the Swat Valley of Pakistan, a
Taliban soldier boarded the bus carrying a young, girl’s rights and social media activist. He called
out her name and said if she didn’t identify herself, he would shoot everyone on the bus. Malala
Yousafzai identified herself, and the soldier shot her in the head. One day later, on October 10,
2012, halfway around the world, a teenager from British Columbia, Canada, Amanda Todd,
took her own life after an extensive period of stalking, sexual exploitation, and cyberbullying.
Malala survived, Amanda did not.
Two moments of physical violation and two turning points in the narrative of girls’
rights globally. After Malala’s shooting and recovery, her continued legacy has affected
United Nations policy on girls’ right to education. After Amanda’s death, the Canadian
government passed a federal bill to regulate cyberbullying and expand police contacts at
high schools throughout Canada to report instances of unwanted cyber activities.
Further and most significantly for this current work, two days after Malala’s shooting,
and one day after Amanda’s death, on October 11, the world celebrated the first anniver-
sary of the UN’s freshly inaugurated International Day of the Girl.
Amanda and Malala’s stories reveal the complexity of theorizing about “girlhood” in
an age of social media. The stories of these plugged-in girls are extraordinary but, when we
pore over them and listen to them, the stories reveal the many forces that play upon girls as
they attempt to construct their identities simultaneously offline and online through various
forms of social media. For those girls, life is mediated, meaning girlhood is mediated.
Some of these forces have a long history: the gaze, objectification, patriarchy,
institutionalized oppression, lack of rights, gender norms, and control and power dynamics.
Many of the forces still play out online. Social media have contributed to a re-negotiation of
our relationship to these forces, our command of the medium, and an ontological rethinking
of our conception of girlhood and the lived experiences of girls in all their diversity, including
race, sexuality, dis/ability, body size, and nationhood. Even though the media of
communication change, every time the language we use to conceptualize its components and
our interaction with media remains the same. Technology changes quickly, but how we talk
about it does not. Online space is conceived of as different, separate from, and less valuable
90
than offline space. Layered on this divide are discourses that cleave and subordinate women
from the masculine high ground of technology and the public arena. Online communication
is reinforced as being textual and disembodied rather than lived and embodied, which shapes
the manner in which online violence is addressed—as symbolic and not real.
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines cyberspace as “the forum in which the global
electronic communications network operates.” Interestingly, early discourses about cyber-
space presented it as a playful realm of science fiction and gaming, therefore shaping
online space as “unreal” and unimportant. Until recently in media discourse, online space
continued to be treated as less serious, less real, with less impact than offline space and
offline interactions (Robins, 1995).
Mary Anne Franks states the following about the paradoxical “realities” of online
exploration:
Franks maintains that the virtual self-representation central to digital media sets
women and young girls up to be targets for sexual predators by having their images manip-
ulated. Franks refers to this process of identity sextortian as being an “unwilling avatar,” an
avatar being a person’s virtual self-representation. Despite its liberatory promise, much of
the public discourse surrounding the online world paints cyberspace as a new public place
only men can handle and inhabit. This masculinization of cyberspace through discourse
reinforces classic notions that men can manage the public realm and women should be
relegated to the domains of the private (like the home) (Bailey & Steeves, 2013).
Contemporary research on women and technology sees emancipatory potential in the
future of mobile technologies. Lee and Sohn’s study (2004) reveals that young women are
active in adopting new multimedia functions with mobile phones. Some feminists see
media products as empowering and liberating for young women (Kearney, 2006). Amy
Shields Dobson (2014) argues that social media can act to challenge Judith Butler’s (1990)
and Angela McRobbie’s (2009) notion of gender melancholia1 by providing space for girls to
show agency through “shameless” photos or sexy activities that challenge gender norms.
These efforts are often met with mixed reactions as they unwittingly align closely with the
sex-positive versus anti-pornography feminist sex wars of the 1980s. The same critiques from
the 1980s can be applied to the representations of sexiness online through social media. On
the one hand you can argue that girls taking control of their bodies and showing themselves as
sexually liberated and exposed could be sex-positive and progressive as Gayle Rubin (1987)
and Wendy McElroy (1996) advocated. On the flip side, however, you can also argue that the
patriarchic lens remains so embedded within all media that any woman who presents
Men have functioned as subjects in the mode of governing; women have been
anchored in the local and particular phase of the bifurcated world. It has been a condi-
tion of man’s being able to enter and become absorbed in the conceptual mode, and to
forget the dependence of his being in that mode upon his bodily, that he does not have
to focus his activities and interests upon his bodily existence. (1990, p. 18)
At the centre of this female oppression is patriarchy, dominating fathers and men in
general, all of whom are seen as deeply connected with material power relationships that
flourish and take shape under a capitalist economic system. Under this oppressive system and
the ruling relations that organize it, men are positioned as rather abstract “knowers” alienated
from corporeal subjectivity. Women are relegated to all things irrational and involving the
#socIal#medIa
There are several ways SNS, or the more contemporary and comprehensive term “social
media” differ from older media:
1. by reconfiguring the relationships between message maker, message, and audience;
2. by being multimedia; and,
3. by reconfiguring conceptions of public and private space.
Stuart Hall (1973) argued that when it came to broadcast media (TV, radio, and
newspapers), major media conglomerates encoded, imbued, or authored mainstream, nor-
malized, hegemonic ideas into the messages broadcast on these media. Once the message
reached the audience, the audience could make sense of or “decode” the message in differ-
ent ways: hegemonically (where the audience aligns with the ideologies of the message
producer); oppositionally (where the audience directly challenge the ideologies); and mixed
(where the audience negotiates the ideologies).
Although Hall argued that the audience was active in the act of decoding and could
challenge and negotiate the hegemonic messages of media producers, what the audience
lacked was the force to make those oppositional readings known by a larger audience. This
is not the case with social media and it’s exactly the power of broadcasting coupled with
the back and forth dialogic nature of social media communication that differentiates
social media from the old broadcast media (Fuchs, 2014).
At the point when Stuart Hall introduced the encoding/decoding model, individuals
couldn’t just buy a newspaper, a TV, or radio station and get their opinions out to the world.
Only a privileged group could—an economically privileged elite group—and so the power
of broadcasting rested in a few hands. However, widespread broadcast ability is possible with
social media. Founded on the dialogic, bullet-proof, multi-modal, and hub-based system of
the internet, any member of the “audience” is also a potentially powerful “broadcaster.”
With the diversification of messengers and media messages also comes a diversifica-
tion of audiences. Not only can media messages be tailored to a wide variety of niche
groups perhaps not previously recognized as financially worthy in the heyday of classic
media, but previously powerful media outlets also become audiences to—and co-dependent
upon—citizen journalists, independent bloggers, and instagramers whose cameras were in
In talking about “super publics,” I want to get at the altered state of publics—what publics
look like when they are infused with the features of digital architectures. What does it mean
to speak across time and space to an unknown audience? What happens when you cannot
predict who will witness your act because they are not visible now, even though they may
be tomorrow? How do people learn to deal with a public larger and more diverse than the
one they learned to make sense of as teenagers? How are teenagers affected by growing up in
an environment where they can assume super publics? I want to talk about what it means to
speak for all time and space, to audiences you cannot conceptualize. (boyd, 2006)
#plugged-In#gIrls
Teens have historically looked for the convergence of back and front stages; social media
is the perfect medium. One of our plugged-in girls said the following about how space is
experienced online:
The essence of adolescents in Western, capitalist society is the drive and desire to be both
independent and autonomous, resulting in a “healthy self-governance” including the ability
for decision-making, self-reliance, and conformity (Russell & Bakken, 2002). Central to this
desire is securing “space” in which teens can stake ownership claims away from the prying
eyes of parents and other adults. Digital social media sites have finally offered teens a space
that, for the most part, is condoned by adults with minimal contact or interference. In this
virtual world, teens are actually engaging more but these interactions are mediated through
technology. Warnings have emerged claiming that over-use of digital media is somehow
associated with higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, depression, hyper-sexuality, and anti-
social behaviour (Frank, et al., 2010; Leena, 2005; Yen et al., 2009; Yuan-Sheng, et al., 2010).
Youth are becoming the main consumers of SNS with young women more active users
than men (Duggan, 2013). According to a recent United States study, 95% of youth aged
12 to 17 are avid internet users, and 80% of those are using SNS with Facebook and Twitter
being the most popular (Madden et al., 2013). The same study found that girls (aged 14 to
17) are highly engaged users with 93% vs. 85% of boys using Facebook and 31% vs. 21%
using Twitter. Similarly in Canada, 32% of students in grades 4 to 6 (approximate age 9 to
11 years) have Facebook accounts and 16% use Twitter8 (Steeves, 2014a; 2014b). Facebook
gains popularity by grade 11 (16 years) with 95% of students having accounts while just
under 47% of students in grades 7 to 11 have Instagram and Twitter accounts (Steeves,
2014a). Little gender variation exists in younger students (grades 4 to 6), but by the time
students are in grade 11, more girls are using Twitter (53% vs. 41%) and Instagram
(55% vs. 32%). Facebook remains at 83% for both boys and girls (Steeves, 2014a).
But the online world is far from easily malleable and controlled. Seventeen percent of
teens report being “approached” by unknown persons who triggered uncomfortable feelings
and fears about safety (Madden, et al., 2013). Mirroring or perhaps acting as an extension
for the real embodied world, the online experience seems more dangerous for girls as they
are more than twice as likely as boys (24% vs. 10%) to experience interactions with strang-
ers that cause them to feel uncomfortable and scared (Madden, et al., 2013). There is a lure,
or perhaps a belief, for teens that somehow the online world is a private, easily controlled
world where its virtual nature allows for more and more freedom in order to develop an
I do chat with them. I’ve been on social media for a long time so chatting with strang-
ers (only if we’ve followed each other for a while) doesn’t seem strange to me. I’ve
made a lot of good friends through chatting. Of course, I have received negative
remarks as well. Especially with the ‘anonymous’ feature on Tumblr Ask.9
#Iam#amanda
Perhaps one of the most compelling life stories exemplifying these concerns is the story
of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old teen from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, who
experienced all aspects of the negative side of SNS. Her poignant story is often used as a
cautionary tale for teens. Her story also points to the importance of feminism for young
girls and how feminist inquiry and theory need to adapt to a rapidly changing social
Source: Todd, A. (2011). A still from Amanda Todd’s YouTube video telling
the story of years of bullying after having a nude photo sent to classmates.
[Online Image]. Retrieved from http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/
2014/04/17/21611366.html
Hello!
I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story In 7th grade I would go with
my friends on webcam To meet and talk to new people. Then got called stunning,
beautiful, perfect etc . . . Then wanted me to flash . . . So I did . . . 1 year later . . . I got
a message on facebook from him . . . Don’t know how he knew me . . . It said . . . If you
don’t put on a show for me I will send ur boobs . . . He knew my address, school, rela-
tives, friends family names . . . my photo was sent to everyone . . . I then got really sick
and got . . . Anxiety, major depression and panic disorder . . . I then moved and got into
Drugs & Alcohol . . . My anxiety got worse . . . couldn’t go out
A year past and the guy came back with my new list of friends & school. But made
a facebook page . . . My boobs were his profile pic . . . Cried every night, lost all my
friends & respect people had for me . . . again . . . Then nobody liked me name calling,
judged . . . I can never get that Photo back . . . Its out there forever . . . I’m not con-
stantly crying now . . . Everyday I think why am I still here . . . cant go to school . . .
Meet or be with people . . . constantly cutting. I’m really depressed . . . I overdosed . . .
in hospital for 2 days . . . I’m stuck . . . what’s left of me now . . . nothing stops . . . I have
nobody . . . I need somebody ||
My name is Amanda Todd . . . 10
“I’m struggling to stay in this world, because everything just touches me so deeply. I’m
not doing this for attention. I’m doing this to be an inspiration and to show that I can
be strong. I did things to myself to make pain go away, because I’d rather hurt myself
then someone else. Haters are haters but please don’t hate, although im sure I’ll get
them. I hope I can show you guys that everyone has a story, and everyone’s future will
be bright one day, you just gotta pull through. I’m still here aren’t I?”11
On October 10, 2012, 33 days after posting her story, Amanda took her own life. The
now famous video (to-date there have been over 9 million downloads) is filmed in black
and white and shows a partially hidden Todd holding up her hand-written message on
numerous pieces of paper. Her young age is apparent by the slightness of her build, her
long hair curled at the ends, and the numerous string bracelets, ironically referred to as
friendship bracelets, adorning her wrists.12 The film is silent, or rather Amanda is silent
with just the soundtrack she chose herself: “Hear You Me,” by Jimmy Eat World. Amanda’s
silence is understood to somehow be a projection of the debilitating, gendered-based
violent attacks she experienced at the hands of sexual exploiters and schoolyard bullies.
Although Amanda’s story is tragic on so many levels, her story also points to the
major negative aspect of social media: the sexual exploitation of young women and girls
and the growing phenomenon of cyber bullying. Michelle Dean (2012) brilliantly
connects Amanda’s story to Franks’s by maintaining that she was an unwilling avatar. As
previously introduced, Franks documents the fact that in many cases of online harassment
According to Hinduja and Patchin (2010) the most common social media sites for
cyberbullying to occur are through email (18%), instant messaging (18%), MySpace
(14%), and chat rooms (10%). As with all areas of our social world, girls are more likely
than boys to have something mean said about them and boys are more likely to engage in
mean or cruel behavior toward someone online (Steeves, 2014a).
Another key aspect to Amanda’s story is the fact that she engaged in self-harming
behaviour (suicide) but also non-suicidal self-harm. Amanda refers to this in her story as
“constantly cutting” (Todd, 2012) referring to intentional self-poisoning or other forms of
self-injury behaviour, which is widely believed to be a coping device when experiencing
high levels of stress. Deliberate self-harm (DSH) is very common in adolescents with
younger females (12 years) engaging in higher rates than males at 12:1. By 18 years of age
the rate becomes 2:1 (Hawton, et al., 2012). Most significantly, DSH is an important risk
factor for future suicide (Hawton, et al., 2012). Cutting is the most commonly used
technique, although Amanda engaged in all forms of self-injurious behaviour: self-
poisoning (drinking bleach), self-injury (cutting), and suicide.
Non-suicidal self-harming behaviours have moved out of the shadows of clinical
diagnosis (such as border-line personality disorder) and are now beginning to be conceptualized
as a social phenomenon. James (2013) found in her survey of 38714 girls aged 13 to 16 in
New Zealand that self-harming is more normalized than previously thought and is being
heavily influenced by peers. Most significantly, 23% of girls who engaged in self-harming had
done so in front of other people, most notably peers and a shocking 12% had harmed together.
Interestingly, self-harming girls are more likely to be popular at school, which further dispels
another image and discourse—that harmers are believed to be highly troubled (James, 2013).
In Canada, self-harming behaviours, most commonly cutting, are also on the rise.
According to the division chief of community-based psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of
Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, teens aged 12 to 17 are engaging in cutting behaviours at twice
the rate as seen in previous years. Kim St. John, divisional head of child and adolescent
psychiatry at the Janeway Children’s Hospital in St. Johns, Newfoundland, contends that
cutting has become “almost a fad . . . And many of the young people that I see that cut do it
to belong to a group or to stay within a group. They post it on Facebook” (The Canadian
Press, 2014). Social media has become a key medium in which self-harming behaviours occur
and are documented and shared. Young girls are reported to be engaging in what is being
referred to as copy-cat behaviour where they send a video to YouTube and/or photo-sharing
sites of self-harming, causing self-harming competitions (Adams, 2013). Further, there is a
correlation between the amount of time spent online with self-harming (Mitchell & Ybarra,
2007). Self-harmers have higher rates of online use, and most significantly, online use that
exceeds five hours per day was associated with suicidal ideation and planning (Kim et al.,
2006; Lam et al., 2009; Messias, et al., 2011; Mitchell & Ybarra, 2007).
#Iam#malala
While Amanda’s story is read and positioned as a cautionary tale of either shameful
behaviour (as wanton as Lolita’s) or victimization by sexual predators, Malala Yousafzai’s
story is based on a survival narrative. Malala was born the same year as Amanda but in a
vastly different country. Malala was born in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. Her father was
a huge proponent of girls’ right to education and owned and operated a school for both
boys and girls. Malala’s first contact with the media was in 2008 at the age of 11 (Ellick,
2012). The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist political movement, had already banned
TV and music (Peer, 2012) and a website for the BBC Urdu was interested in presenting
a novel way of covering the Taliban’s increasing presence. The BBC contacted Malala’s
family and she posted her first blog post January 3, 2009, under the pseudonym “corn-
flower” (Boone, 2012). Malala narrated her thoughts about everyday life under the
Taliban and in her blog under the name Gul Makai, she began to focus on the on again,
off again availability of education for girls in the region. The Taliban originally closed
girls’ schools but then boys’ schools closed their doors in solidarity. Local boys returned
to school and girls were permitted to attend co-ed classes but not girls’ only schools.
When tensions and Taliban control of the region increased, Malala’s blog went silent
mid-March 2009.
After the publication of the blog posts, New York Times reporter Adam B. Ellick
approached Malala and her father to produce a documentary. The film recounts Malala’s
vision of education for all girls. Following the documentary, Malala began to gain traction
in mainstream media as a political figure. She was interviewed locally by several national
news stations as well as internationally by the Toronto Star. She received several awards for
her efforts for girl’s education.
Not all the attention she received, however, was positive. Malala began to
experience harassment both on- and offline. Similar to Amanda, Malala was an active
user of Facebook and several anonymous users created fake profiles for her (Peer,
2012). The harassment escalated and she started receiving threatening messages,
including death threats. Local police communicated to her that the Taliban were
targeting Malala and two other female activists. Strangers were constantly seen
outside the family’s house, lurking in the shadows despite nightly police patrols.
Malala recalls this general, day-to-day fear by describing what happens while the
bus they were riding hit a large pothole jerking her sleeping brother awake. Startled,
his first question was “Was that a bomb blast? This was the fear that filled our daily
lives. Any small disturbance or noise could be a bomb or gunfire.” (Yousafzai & Lamb,
2012, p. 84).
At night I would wait until everyone was asleep—my mother, my father, my brothers,
[ . . . ] then I’d check every single door and window. I’d go outside and make sure the
front gate was locked. Then I would check all the rooms, one by one. My room was at
the front with lots of windows and I kept the curtains open. I wanted to be able to see
everything.” (Yousafzai & Lamb, 2012 p. 118)
On October 9, 2012, the online threats and the offline fears were realized. While rid-
ing a bus home from a school exam, a Taliban soldier boarded and called out her name.
Threatening to kill all girls on the bus if she did not identify herself, Malala stood up and
was shot. One bullet went through her head and neck and became lodged in her shoulder.
She went through intense medical treatment, which included temporarily removing part
of her skull, but her recovery was relatively quick, given the nature of the injury, and by
October 17, she emerged from a coma.
Media outlets around the world covered the shooting. The United Nations, the
United States government, celebrities all proclaimed their hope for Malala’s recovery and
their support for her causes. In October of 2012, the UN Special Envoy for Global Educa-
tion Gordon Brown launched a petition in her name and using the slogan “I am Malala.”
The petitions demanded that no child be left out of school by 2015.
At the outset, Malala’s words, then her image, and then her body, became the site of
political debate. The words of her blog were used to add a personal connection to the
political turmoil in the Swat Valley. The BBC Urdu service reporter responsible for set-
ting up Malala’s first blog, said that in choosing her name “corn flower,” which harkens to
a traditional Swat Valley folk tale, he “wanted to give an indigenous, symbolic attach-
ment to Swat so that people could own it journalistically” (Rahman, 2014). It also meant
that they could own or at least attach themselves directly and rhetorically into Malala’s
plight. Her face and her body on the screen of the documentary became the embodiment
of her political motives that quickly, through other media outlets, began to network amid
more global political motives and movements. She was reproduced and rebroadcast
through global media outlets, which individually curated and manicured her words, image,
and body in different ways.
Malala’s words, image, and body were copied and redistributed digitally around the world.
Did she become a willing avatar because her body became a symbolic site for the battle over
girls’ right to education? In a post-colonial analysis of Malala’s story, author Fauzia Rahman
wrote, “The message around her was always, imagine: if a girl can rise out of their current
contents of patriarchy, repression, cultural backwardness, and poverty, and claim their rights
not only as Pakistani citizens, but also global citizens for the 21st century?” (Rahman, 2014).
Her narrative, when retold in Canada and the United States, presented her as an example of
the plight of a girl who represented a struggling but hopeful developing nation.
The image of Malala watching TV and fighting with her brothers over the remote control
was never a part of the public discourse that surrounded her, but was a key part of her autobi-
ography, being mentioned several times. Malala’s favorite show was Ugly Betty, and she wrote
45 notes
In April 2012, just months before both Malala and Amanda’s online identities went
viral, on the Duke University campus in North Carolina, 16 young women enrolled in a
“Women in Public Space” class as part of their women’s studies course. Inspired by feminist
theory and history, they decided to use social media as a way to “fight back against popular
misconceptions surrounding feminist movement” and created an online media campaign to
expose stereotypes surrounding feminism and challenge the belief that feminism is no longer
needed (Beattie et al., 2012). Through interactive social media sites such as Twitter,
Facebook, and Tumblr they launched a campaign that showcased young women holding up
hand-written signs stating “I need feminism because . . .” finished with a personalized reason
why they needed feminism to draw attention to issues at the heart of gender ideology. A year
later the Duke University group had 29 000 Facebook likes and universities across the
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even Pakistan quickly followed
and started their own campaigns taking over cyberspace (Seidman, 2013).
Young women and girls who attempt to claim an equal amount of space in the public/
private realms experience backlash, which demonstrates why feminism is necessary and how
the collapse between cyber- and offline space is complete. For example, a group of 16-, 17-,
We were told that our “militant vaginas” were “as dry as the Sahara desert”, girls who
complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10,
details of the sex lives of some of the girls were posted beside their photos. And others
were sent threatening messages warning them that things would soon “get personal.”
The school issued a statement similar to Franks’ contentions: women who experience
harassment need to leave the site. The blame lies solely on the young women for daring to
claim space, any space in the name of equality:
We are committed to protecting the safety and welfare of our students, which extends
to their safety on-line. We consider very carefully any society that the school gives its
name to and support to. As such, we will take steps to recommend students remove
words or images that they place online that could compromise their safety or that of
other students at the school. (Younis, 2013)
In the summer of 2014, another online campaign trended and served as a backlash to
the I Need Feminism Because . . . campaign.18 #WomenAgainstFeminism and #idontneedfemi-
nism started on Tumblr but soon took over other SNS including Facebook and Twitter. Stuart
Hall could not have anticipated how his encoding/decoding model could be reconfigured in
the age of social media. The messages produced by the originators of the #idontneedfeminism
meme suggested that certain young girls believed that “feminism” was not necessary anymore
because women are equal. Furthermore, these authors conceived of “feminism” as reinforcing
gender inequalities and continuing to position women as less than men. Some of the most
popular #idontneedfeminism memes showed selfies with girls holding up signs that read:
“#idontneedfeminism because they reject femininity but try to feminize men and demand
equality but ask for special treatment.”
“#idontneedfeminism because it demonizes traditional family constructs, because I do not
blame men for an action I am responsible for, and being whistled at or complimented on the
street is not oppression.
“#idontneedfeminism I am not a target of violence and there is not war against me.”
Although the meme garnered enough hegemonic followers for it to gain traction,19 the
majority of the news coverage and public uproar was a result of oppositional readings. Many
girls, vehemently challenged the original viral message by creating the oppositional hashtag
#idoneedfeminism. These hashtags reminded girls that they wouldn’t have the privilege they have
right now had it not been for the hard work and history of feminism that came before them.
#cyborg
In the face of a waning period of social feminism in the 1970s, Donna Haraway, a critic of
power constructs in the natural sciences, penned an ironic paper chastising the Cartesian,
patriarchic, and capitalist dualisms that shape the oppressive structures in which feminism
operates. Rather than suggesting working within the existing systems, Haraway proposed an
ironic linguistic ontological paradigm shift. She said that the way we think about and conceive
of concepts like nature/technology and man/woman shape the way we talk about and treat
them in their material forms. She clearly lays out the relationship—as we have throughout
this chapter—how ideology shapes discourse that then controls bodies in the material world.
The power of her ironic propositions is evident when she says that high-tech culture
(cyberspace before cyberspace existed) could help in erasing, discursively, and thus ideo-
logically, the borders between these dualisms:
High-tech culture challenges these dualisms in intriguing ways. It is not clear who makes
and who is made in the relation between human and machine. It is not clear what is mind
and what is body in machines that resolve into coding practices. In so far as we know
ourselves in both formal discourse (for example, biology) and in daily practice (for exam-
ple, the homework economy in the integrated circuit), we find ourselves to be cyborgs,
hybrids, mosaics, chimeras. Biological organisms have become biotic systems, communi-
cations devices like others. There is no fundamental, ontological separation in our formal
knowledge of machine and organism, of technical and organic. (Haraway, 1991, p. 179)
We can apply this idea to the real dynamics of social media today. Whereas broadcast
media (a major manufacturer of dominant discourse) is so deeply rooted in a capitalist,
patriarchal, and Cartesian dualistic matrix that its ideology and discourses seem immov-
able and fixed, the fluid and dialogic nature of social media changes these dynamics. If, in
the traditional model, dominant ideology (e.g., capitalism) shaped dominant discourses
(e.g., public/private domains), which in turn orders bodies (e.g., women in private abode
and men in the public arena), in the realm of social media the model is reversed. Without
sounding too utopian in our own proclamations, we must fully acknowledge that major
conglomerates still do control SMSs and mine our conversations, status updates, tweets,
and tags for metadata to sell to advertisers. But unlike broadcast media, the gatekeeper sits
more at the point of the medium and less at the point of the message.
She must write her self, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which,
when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispens-
able ruptures and transformations in her history . . . It is by writing, from and toward
women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the
phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved
in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence . . . (1976, pp. 880–881).
In the constantly connected lives of plugged-in girls who are adding to online
discourse and challenging ideological structures, under this new operative system, text is
not static and disconnected. Text is reconnected to producer and to a physically embodied,
living being. The dualism between body and technology is erased and a new accountability
and respect for text is absolute and necessary. Under this paradigm shift, we can see how
the textual and symbolic violence against Amanda is simply violence like any other kind
that occurs in the offline world. We can also understand how the physical violence against
Malala’s body is also symbolically important because it relates not to just one girl but to
the integrated circuit of all the bodies labelled as “female.”
Haraway suggests that cyborgs are a product of the imagination and flesh, a substance in
the material world. She says that women are cyborgs—a combination of the imaginary and the
real. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and
fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs” (1991, p. 150).
Haraway suggests that women have always been mediated. We have always been part
flesh and part imaginary, part media construction and part lived flesh. She proposes a
endnotes
1. In The Aftermath of Feminism, McRobbie (2009) explains how melancholia, illness, and dis-
content have become key identifying elements of contemporary girlhood. Embodying this
melancholy doesn’t challenge norms; rather, we are melancholically accepting of our
place within the heterosexual matrix.
2. The research for this chapter involved in-depth narrative interviews with four cisgender
girls, with a variety of different gender expressions, who were between the ages of 13 and
16 all located on the west coast of Canada. Ethics approval of this research was granted
by Kwantlen Polytechnic University in August of 2014.
3. We are utilizing D. E. Smith’s contention that despite co-writing The German Ideology with
Friedrich Engels, the work is most notably that of Marx. See Smith, 1987.
4. For a thorough discussion of this please see D. E. Smith, 1990.
5. Most significant that they are Lords not Ladies.
6. Interview, Plugged-in Girl One, September 16, 2014.
7. Interview, Plugged-in Girl Two, September 24, 2014.
8. Steeves (2014) notes that both Facebook and Twitter have age restrictions of 13+ but the
restrictions are ignored, as the statistics suggest.
9. Interview, Plugged-in Girl One, September 16, 2014.
10. Published on September 7, 2012 under the YouTube username TheSomebodytoKnow
11. Published on September 7, 2012 under the YouTube username TheSomebodytoKnow
12. Bracelets are also used to hide self-injurious behaviours such as cutting and are sometimes
worn as act as inspirations to not self-harm. Retrieved from https://self-injury.net/self-injurers/
in-their-own-words/how-do-you-hide-your-self-harm/bracelets-help-hide
13. In April 2014, a 35-year-old man living in the Netherlands was arrested and charged with
extortion, internet luring, criminal harassment, and child pornography in connection to
Amanda’s suicide and in dozens of other cases involving the sextortian of underage girls.
See Culbert & Hager, 2014; White, 2014a, 2014b.
14. 303 non self-harmers and 84 self-harmers.
discussion Questions
1. Watch Amanda Todd’s YouTube video and Malala Yousafzai’s New York Times documentary.
What do you think about the way the two women are portrayed in the different styles of
videos: one camgirl-style and one documentary style?
2. We suggest that all women are mediated and have always been mediated. Discuss this
statement. Do you believe it’s true? How do you see media affecting you?
3. Discuss the concept of the “unwilling avatar.” Can you think of a case in the news where
a person has become an unwilling avatar or turned into a meme?
4. Do you have different personae for different social media accounts? What are your differ-
ent personae?
bibliography
Adams, S. (2013, January 29). Teens using mobile for self-harming competitions: children are
using smartphones to film themselves self-harming before sending pictures to their friends in
new trend, parents and teachers have warned. The Telegraph. Retrieved from www.telegraph.
co.uk/health/healthnews/9835457/Teens-using-mobiles-for-self-harming-competitions.
html?mobile=basic
Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1972). Dialectic of enlightenment. New York, NY: Herder and Herder.
Alper, M. (2014). Digital youth with disabilities. Cambridge, UK: The MIT Press.
Arbuthnot, L., & Seneca, G. (1990). Pre-text and text in gentlemen prefer blondes. In P. Erens
(Ed.), Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, (pp. 112–125). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Bailey, J., & Steeves, V. (2013). Will the real digital girl please stand up? Examining the gap
between policy dialogue and girls’ accounts of their digital existence. In G. Wise and
H. Koskela (Eds.) New visualities, new technologies: The new ecstasy of communication. New York,
NY: Ashgate Publishing. Retrieved from http://ssrn.com/abstract=2316907
IntroductIon
Sex always makes the news. As I am writing this, in Alberta in the summer of 2014, a
hotly debated news topic is: Who should teach sex ed in high school and what should it
entail? Earlier in the summer, Edmonton teenager Emily Dawson and her mother success-
fully filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission after Emily’s public
high school, like many others in Edmonton, invited a Christian fundamentalist organiza-
tion to teach sex ed. Although, according to Dawson, the organization’s instructors more
accurately taught “anti–sex ed,” as they emphasized abstinence as the only viable option
for young people. According to Emily, the instructor emphasized the dangers of sexuality,
shamed girls and held them responsible for keeping boys’ supposedly unbridled sexual
urges at bay, refused to talk about LGBTQT2-S issues, and bashed single parent families.
(CBC, 2014).
119
to speak very little about sexual pleasure, fearing that “all hell will break loose” if they do.
This mode of emphasizing sex as hazardous, while downplaying the role of pleasure, is a
central mode of regulating sexuality in the wider culture—with serious consequences,
especially for people who already face sexism, homophobia, and/or transphobia. For
students who don’t identify as heterosexual and/or cisgendered, most school-based sex ed
has nothing to offer beyond feeling alienated. By cisgendered I am referring to everybody
whose sex assignment at birth (female or male) matches their gendered presentation
(feminine or masculine) and their identity (woman or man).
In this chapter I explore how the regulation of sexuality works historically and in the
contemporary moment and how feminist analyses and activisms both intervene in this
regulation, as well as participate in it, at times. This chapter contests the assumption of a
predestined “natural” sexuality; even though feminists and queers (these terms are not
mutually exclusive) have often argued that repression of sexuality is a major problem in
society. Instead I demonstrate how and where sexuality is socially constructed. I turn to
feminist and queer scholarship to argue that policing, regulation, and resistance to/of sex-
uality, are part of the ongoing construction of sexuality. Everybody’s sexuality is regulated
in some form or other. Some modes of sexuality are privileged, socially valued, and
rewarded while others are deemed “unnatural” and “immoral” and are subject to various
forms of punishment. I also explore in detail how the regulation of sexuality works cen-
trally through the policing of gender.
120 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
everything else as “abnormal,” as unimportant, inauthentic, or deviant. Heteronormative
understandings of sex, for example, make same-sex sexual practices seem unimaginable.
(Indeed, lesbians often find themselves confronted with the question of “what do lesbians do
in bed?”.) But the heternormative understanding of what counts as sex also makes a whole
range of practices between heterosexuals not seem to be sex either.
Maybe you are old enough to remember former United States President Bill Clinton
infamously declaring publicly that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman” in
the aftermath of his affair with Monica Lewinsky? By reducing sex to heterosexual pene-
trative intercourse, many folks can maintain that they are not having sex, thus are “not
cheating,” or are “saving sex” for marriage and are still “virgins,”—even if they engage in
all kinds of sexual activities, including oral and anal sex, and affairs like Clinton’s. (Note:
virginity and “saving sex for marriage” also seem highly prized by a lot of folks, as is hav-
ing only one partner.) So let’s summarize: “Having sex” obviously involves a wider spec-
trum of practices than generally is recognized; some of these practices are physical, while
others are primarily or exclusively mental, like fantasizing or sex talk. Having sex usually
involves one or more people. Let’s keep in mind that having sex with oneself is a common
sexual practice and some people like to have sex with more than one person. Let’s also
remember that the very limited understanding of what “counts” as having sex is already a
mode of regulation.
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 121
Sex vs. Gender
The English language complicates matters because sex always potentially refers to two dif-
ferent things that are often confused: “having sex,” but also as “being” a sex—as in female,
male, intersex, or transsexual. I am writing this with some trepidation because an important
critical contribution of feminist gender studies has been to focus on gender more so than on
sex. Gender studies broadly build on the idea that gender refers to the socially constructed,
historically and culturally specific expectations attached to being female and male. Sex was
long understood to refer to the presumed biological and physical differences between female
and male, such as genitals, anatomy, and chromosomes. (We will see later in this chapter
that these biological differences might not be as clear-cut as commonly assumed.) The ini-
tial idea was that sex is biological, while gender is social. Distinguishing biological sex from
social gender meant, for example, to recognize that many (but not all) women have the
ability to get pregnant and give birth, which is biological and related to their sex.
However, the ideas that women by and large are the primary caregivers of children,
both at home and professionally, and are considered more nurturing, are entirely social
and related to their gender. Who carries a pregnancy and gives birth is biological and one
marker of sex; who nurtures and raises the kids and is considered more suited to this com-
plex task is socially constructed and relates to socially defined genders. This means that
different cultures might construct very different parenting roles. One example is the par-
enting practices of the Aka Pygmy people, a traditionally nomadic people who live in
both the Central African Republic and the Republic of the Congo. Among them, moth-
ers and fathers share parenting nearly equally, including men suckling the infants
(Hewlett, 1991; Moorhead, 2005).
You probably can already see why the insight that gender is socially constructed has
appealed to feminists for a very long time. The possibility that vastly unequal shares of
work and social and political status could be re-distributed among men and women is
repeatedly proven by this and many other examples. Feminists have thus long argued
against biological determinism, which is the idea that a woman’s biology, her sex, prede-
termines her behaviour, temperament, abilities and justifies a second-class social status.
122 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
and men were violent, selfish, and aggressive, behaviour often associated with masculinity
in the West. Mead found Tchambuli (now Chambri) women and men had distinct tem-
peraments, but roles were reversed: women were dominant and managerial and men were
emotionally dependent and rarely in charge.
Although some of Mead’s findings and descriptions have been modified and her refer-
ence to “primitive societies” speaks to a problematic colonial mindset, cross-cultural and
cross-historical research continues to be an important source of knowledge for under-
standing how gender (and sexuality) is constructed and experienced very differently in
specific historical and cultural contexts.
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 123
we begin to get a glimpse of sexuality as not just a “private issue.” Instead what counts as
“normal” or “civilized” sexuality plays a central role in historical and contemporary modes
of oppression and in the constructions of national and racial self and Other.
In the next section, we question mainstream Canadian culture’s investment in a devel-
opmental model that neatly lines up birth sex with gender identity and sexual desire. The
foundational (albeit wrong) assumptions of this model are that every child is born male or
female, will develop a gender identity coherent with their sex, ideally will desire a person of
the other gender, and will come to understand themselves as heterosexual. Judith Butler
(1990) critically calls this “the heterosexual matrix”: a dominant and coercive meaning
making system that assumes, even demands, a coherence between sex, gender, and desire/
sexuality. Butler turns this model on its head to argue that in order to maintain the vision
of a supposedly “natural” reproductive heterosexuality, gender identity is both enforced and
enacted, which retrospectively serves to make sex assignment seem natural and biological.
124 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
dancers. In mainstream Canadian culture, we use rather blunt categories to distinguish
girls from boys and women from men. If you are familiar with queer culture, you may be
familiar with a much more nuanced and elaborate gender and sexual identity vocabulary
that includes butch lesbian, faerie, femme dyke, tomboi, lipstick lesbian, bear, butch
bottom, femme top, stone femme—each term denoting more finely tuned articulations of
gender identity, sexual preferences, and erotic attraction.
Based upon the problematic reduction of human variation to only two sexes, our culture
largely insists on recognizing only two binary genders. This has grave consequences for any-
body who does not fit this neat binary system—boys who don’t measure up to the “tough-
ness” required to pass as “male” and girls who are regarded as “too” assertive and strong. Girls
and boys and women and men who don’t fit the stereotypes associated with their gender face
near daily homophobic name calling (“sissy,” “pussy,” “dyke,” “lesbian”) and all too often,
physical violence, not only from their peers but also, too frequently, from their own families.
It is worth noting that gender non-conformity is policed by way of sexual shaming.
Gender non-conforming and queer youth face immense risks. They constitute as
much as 25 to 40% of all homeless youth (Abramovich, 2012). Gender non-conforming
youth and adults attempt suicide in much higher numbers than any other population—
41% as compared to 4.6% of the overall United States population and 10 to 20% among
lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults (Grant et al., 2011). Life is dangerous for gender non-
conforming people and even more so if the person is young, not white, Indigenous, has
little education, and/or is poor.
Part of the problem is the misguided assumption of the “natural” coherence of sex and
gender, namely that the sex assignment at birth or in utero can correctly predict the gen-
der identity and behaviour of kids as they grow up. Privileging heterosexual sexual orien-
tation and condoning homophobia doesn’t make things better. The boy who plays with
dolls is “feared” to be gay; the girl who refuses to wear dresses and is tough is “feared” to be
lesbian. As long as gayness and lesbianism are considered undesirable in children and
adults, or are merely “tolerated,” rather than celebrated and welcomed as part of human
sexual variation, gender non-conforming kids are gravely at risk not only for social pres-
sures to “conform,” but also for physical violence. An alternative view would be to see
gender on a much wider spectrum beyond masculine and feminine, boy and girl, man and
woman, beyond a binary construction of supposedly oppositional differences. There is no
knowing what range of gender expression we might see if children and adults alike were
encouraged to express their gender in any way they want.
The policing of gender-conforming behaviour is not just problematic for trans folk,
but for nearly everybody. Think of the female politician or businesswoman who gets called
aggressive and power hungry for behaviour that is acceptable in men. Consider the boy
who is not allowed to cry or is shamed for wanting to take ballet rather than play hockey.
While those of us who are most gender conforming do reap some benefits, such as social
acceptance, to do gender normatively requires a lot of “gender work.” Gender work could
include dieting and grooming regimes and other exhausting activities involved in
producing, meeting, and maintaining the standards set for conventional femininity and
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 125
masculinity. So most of us “fail” in some way at doing gender, as long as we still “pass,” we
are much safer than those who don’t. (Although of course, another argument is that
inhabiting conventional femininity poses other dangers.) But given the work involved in
getting gender “right,” the often violent efforts at gender patrolling, and the increasing
number of children, some as young as three and four years old, who actively challenge
their assigned gender, we should question whether the assignment of sex at birth or in
utero is a reliable indicator of the future gender identity of the child. Still, the guiding
assumption is that the presence or absence of a penis in utero indicates the sex of the
embryo and, in turn, the future gender of the child and the eventual adult. Think of pink
and blue cribs, names, outfits, nursery colours, baby toys, baby showers, and pronouncements
about what the child will be when they grow up. Indeed, shopping for any baby or kids’
item that is not gender colour-coded has become close to impossible. The intense need to
gender children from a young age should make us question how natural the division into
female and male really is. If it were a purely biological division, as many still claim, why
spend so much effort on reinforcing it through symbols, language, and social structure and
demanding that children and adults get it right? Beyond the intense gendering to which
children and adults are exposed, even from before birth, sex assignment in utero or at
birth is not always correct or successful in forecasting the gender identity a person might
develop over the life course.
We might want to ask why human gender variation beyond girl/boy or woman/man is
such a site of anxiety. What is at stake when we accept that there are more than two
genders, that a person’s gender identity might not neatly match their genitals and
chromosomes, that over the life-course an individual’s gender identity may change? Besides
challenging some fundamental assumptions about the relationship between bodies and
identities, accepting more than two genders and some fluidity in gender identities centrally
challenges the “naturalness” of heterosexuality.
A few years ago, after asking my class to imagine a world in which gender identities
would not exist or would be truly fluid and changeable, a rather panicky-sounding (male)
student interjected, “I would not know who to be attracted to!” This seems a telling
response that affirms Judith Butler’s (1990) more analytical claim that the construction
and policing of binary genders, whether done violently or in seemingly more benign modes,
is ultimately about solidifying and securing the presumed “naturalness” of heterosexuality.
126 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
Biological matters on the other hand, unless we take the long view of evolution, do
not seem to change that much. Sexuality certainly has a biological, or at least physiologi-
cal, component. Think, for example, of the lubrication of the vagina, the enlargement of
the clitoris and penis during arousal; the release of oxytocin during orgasm; or female and
male ejaculation. These physiological aspects are not unrelated to social and discursive
constructions of sexuality. What counts as sexual and as erotic, as appropriate or inappro-
priate sexual feelings and behaviour, is certainly socially defined—and thus varies drasti-
cally across various historical (and cultural) contexts. Your own family’s social expectations
regarding appropriate sexual behaviour (who, when, with whom, where, at what age, in
what kind of context, what kinds of practices) have changed significantly from your grand-
parents, to your parents, to you. If in the 1950s oral sex was scandalous, and one step away
from being a Communist, today it might be regarded as good sexual etiquette—or not as
sex at all. In the late 19th to early 20th century, women who showed their ankles were
considered indecent. Today short skirts and hot pants seem de rigueur for many young
women. On the other hand, until quite recently nude baby pictures were considered cute
and were widely shared. Now in the context of rising anxieties around sexual abuse and
child pornography, these no longer seem innocent. Sexual mores not only change across
time, they are always profoundly gendered, meaning they differ for women and men. And
sexual mores do gender: they are a mode by which gender is produced and maintained.
Cross-historical and cross-cultural comparisons allow us to see variations in how sex-
uality is lived and experienced. For example, many take it to be a biological “fact”—and
evidence of a “natural sexual difference”—that men desire sex frequently and with various
partners. Women are often described as desiring intimacy, closeness, connection, and
friendship. Indeed, socio-biology claims that women’s monogamy and men’s promiscuity
are natural imperatives, all allegedly driven by different strategies required for securing the
survival of their respective genetic material. Assuming that the survival of genetic mate-
rial is what drives humans—and thus their sexual behaviour—the argument is that men
seek “to spread their seed,” while women seek a single male protector around for their
offspring. Note that sexual behaviour in this explanation is once again directly tied to
reproduction. All the other motivations for sex seem to fall by the wayside. But also note
how sexuality is profoundly linked to reproducing gender.
Interestingly enough, ideas about women’s and men’s “nature” were distinctly differ-
ent in earlier centuries. The European Renaissance (1440–1680), for example, prized
friendship as the most valued relationship. Only men were deemed mentally equipped for
such important and demanding connections. Women, understood to be intellectually
inferior to men, were deemed incapable of such an evolved relationship form. Instead
women were seen as driven by insatiable sexual appetites. Marriage and motherhood were
deemed appropriate ways for controlling these inclinations. And men were seen as being
in need of protection from being lured by women’s sexual urges (Fone, 2000). Even though
we continue to see resonances of the contemporary image of the female seductress or the
sexually controlling woman, these ideas differ radically today. All of these changing con-
structions are deeply shot through with gendered expectations.
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 127
One-Sex and Two-Sex Model
Another important and perhaps even more surprising difference to contemporary views
can be found in the medieval period. According to Thomas Laqueur (1990), early medical
knowledge insisted that male and female genitalia were practically the same. Laqueur calls
this the “one-sex model,” as compared to our “two-sex model.” Today medical textbooks
present entirely different female and male bodies. My students are incredulous as to how
early anatomists could have seen similarities. But perhaps they were onto something.
According to Laqueur, women’s genitals were understood as corresponding with male
genitalia, only less developed. Thus the vagina was described as an inverted penis folded
up inside the body, while men’s had dropped down. The clitoris was presumed to be a
shrunken, external penis. The notion that women were really underdeveloped males cor-
responded with women’s inferior social status, confirmed somatically by their supposedly
immature genitalia. Women, like young boys, were seen as lacking sufficient heat to make
the genitals drop down. Did the early anatomists deliberately misinterpret what they saw
in dissections in order to maintain the belief of women’s inferiority? The one-sex view was
the dominant model for understanding sexual difference for hundreds of years. It was not
until the discoveries of Gabriel Fallopius (1523–1562), after whom the fallopian tubes are
named, that this model was seriously challenged.
The insistence on absolute sexual difference and absolutely distinct sexes, which may
be taken as a biological “truth” grounding gender difference and all it stands for (“boys
will be boys”), is not quite scientifically accurate either. Distinct genitals (penis and
vagina/clitoris) are seen as indication and proof of dimorphism.4 How does the “truth” of
natural absolute sex and gender difference shift when we understand that these different
external genitals develop from the same tissue? The insistence on the absolutely dimor-
phic body is foundational to naturalizing heterosexuality. Here penis and vagina are con-
structed in a “key-lock analogy” (Valverde, 1985), according to which the key (penis) is
presumed to be a “natural” fit for the lock (vagina). This is a problematic construction in
many different ways, not least because it ignores the role of the clitoris for sexual pleasure.
So we also have to consider, what difference does it make to understand the clitoris, as
opposed to the vagina, as the penis equivalent?
128 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
located on the Y chromosome, activates the development of the undifferentiated gonads
into testes. If this gene is missing, the gonads develop into ovaries. If the fetus has testes, if
the testes produce a certain level of testosterone, and if the tissue responds to the testosterone,
the outer two folds will swell and fuse to grow into the scrotum. The protuberance in the
middle grows to form the penis, with the inner folds fusing around the penis to form the
penile urethra. Without exposure to certain levels of testosterone the tissue develops into
clitoris, vagina, and vulva. So genital development is shaped both by chromosomal makeup
(XX or XY combinations in the fertilized egg cell) and the exposure to in utero hormones.
Needless to say, there are a lot of “ifs” involved, as hormone levels vary. Thus there
are instances in which despite an XY chromosome makeup, the tissue does not develop
into a penis or does not develop in ways that are seen as sufficient for what is considered
“normal” penis size—meaning the tissue turns into what can variously be identified as a
micro-penis or a large clitoris.
There is some evidence that exposure to high levels of chemicals or artificial hormones
during pregnancy may affect birth outcomes, resulting in higher than statistically expected
ratios of babies born with a clitoris and a vagina, assigned as girls (Lean, 2006; McDonald
et al., 2014). Exposure to environmental pollutants can affect genital development. How-
ever, to determine gender identity based upon visual impressions of the genitals is always
problematic, since not everybody’s genitals match their gendered self-understanding.
Given that female and male genitals develop from the same tissue and genital struc-
ture, perhaps the early anatomists and their one-sex body model were not so wrong after all.
Seeing women as underdeveloped males, as they did, and using this to justify women’s
social inferiority is certainly not something to embrace today; however, the later move to
the two-sex model did not alleviate women’s social inferiority and secondary status. From
then on, women’s alleged “absolute” difference to men and male bodies became justifica-
tion for inequality. But the notion of the “absolute” difference of women and men does not
hold at the level of genital structures. As we have seen, bodies are not as dimorphic as many
believe, thus confirming once more that gender equality or inequality is not a biological but
a social issue. Throughout history, social and discursive constructions of male and female
bodies have been mobilized to justify social status differences between women and men.
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 129
such as XXY, XO, XYY, XXYY, and XX males or XXX females). Altogether, based upon their
extensive survey of the medical literature from 1955 to 1998, Blackless et al. (2000) note that
up to 2% of the population deviate from the “ideal” female or male. This number is still small,
but not insignificant, especially when we compare it to some other anatomical variations. For
example, 2% of the world’s population has green eyes or red hair. While red-haired or green-
eyed humans are a minority globally, we see these as “normal” human variations rather than
as pathologies in need of fixing. So why is intersex considered a “condition”?
In fact which sex anatomical variations are considered “intersex” is up for debate, as
people, even in the medical community, disagree.5 The disagreement is rooted in the fact
that what counts as “intersex” and what counts as “female” or “male” is humanly defined.
These are socially constructed categories, based upon an ancient Platonic ideal “that for
each sex there is a single, universally correct developmental pathway and outcome”
(Blackless et al., 2000, p. 151).
By deviating from the imagined ideal female and male developmental pathway, inter-
sex challenges this Platonic ideal. Understood as a “condition” in need of “medical inter-
vention,” an intersex “diagnosis” also confirms the ideal of absolute difference. Alice
Dreger (1995) has shown that since the late Victorian period, medical professionals have
been hard at work to keep women and men distinct and to settle once and for all every-
body’s “true sex.” This also means an attempt at settling, once and for all, the question of
what makes a person female or male. Intersex interrupts the desire to settle these ques-
tions. How can we know women’s place in society when we don’t even know what makes
one a woman? And how does one distinguish “normal” (aka heterosexual) relations from
same-sex relations, if one cannot clearly distinguish woman from man? These are espe-
cially pertinent issues at a time when feminists as well as lesbians and gays (not mutually
exclusive) are challenging their respective secondary social status. Ambiguous genitalia
throw social certainties into relief and thus contest the social order. The social epitome of
the two-sex body requires the assimilation of every body into this ideal, through whatever
surgical or medical interventions are deemed necessary.
In the 21st century, visibly ambiguous genitalia are still seen as pathological and in
need of “fixing.” The “fix it” approach is based on the assumption that both the parents
and the child will not be able to cope with genitalia that don’t match the ideal. While
ambiguous genitalia are not medical problems in most cases, they are considered a
“psychosocial emergency” by the medical profession, potentially leading to depression,
suicide, and possibly “homosexuality.” (Note here that same-sex sexuality is seen as a
problem.) The common practice since the 1950s has been early medical intervention:
genital surgery and hormone treatment. The decision on what genitalia to create has been
based on ideal penis size and heterosexuality: to be assigned male, the penis at birth must
be larger than 1 cm; smaller size leads to female assignment. A clitoris regarded as too large
may be surgically altered, again, to fit the female ideal, often with negative consequences
for the experience of sexual pleasure later in life not to mention immediate surgical trauma
to the infant. Since constructing a sizeable penis is more difficult, “normalizing” surgery
often involves creating “female” genitalia (Fausto-Sterling, 2000).
130 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
A major problem is that these assignments are not always correct, grounded as they
are in “genital ideals” and a presumed heterosexuality, leading to enormous pain and suf-
fering for those who find themselves at odds between their assignment sex and their own
gender identity. Moreover, genital surgery can lead to loss of genital sensitivity and seri-
ously impede the ability to experience sexual pleasure. Since the 1990s, intersex activists
have lobbied fiercely against current treatment protocols, especially against surgical inter-
vention during infancy. Arguing that ambiguous birth genitalia constitute a crisis primar-
ily for the parents and not, at least initially, for the child, the Intersex Society of America
(ISSA) offers a distinctly different treatment protocol. Citing the baby’s inability to grant
surgical consent, ISSA’s protocol forgoes irreversible genital cosmetic surgery during
infancy in favour of assigning a social gender initially, while leaving any later medical
intervention to the purview of the intersex person.
Mainstream treatment protocols tell us something about the ways in which sex differ-
ence is surgically manufactured in cases when genitals do not fit an imaginary ideal and
when somatic differences are not as clear as our culture presumes them to be. Intersex
understood as a form of human variation, on the other hand, challenges the deeply rooted
belief in absolute dimorphism and absolute differences between female and male anatomy.6
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 131
relations is central to the emergence of the middle class. The middle class defines itself
against the presumed sexual excesses of the upper class as well as against the supposed
sexual disorders of the working class, and against what was considered the uncivilized,
licentious sexual abandon of non-white and non-Western people.
132 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
constructing Sexuality cross-culturally
Looking cross-culturally, Blackwood’s (2000) anthropological survey of women’s sexualities
demonstrates that various “sociocultural factors . . . produce sexual beliefs and practices”
([emphasis added] p. 224), including but not limited to: gender, religion, age, marriage, and
family systems. Blackwood offers examples of socially sanctioned same-sex practices and
relationships between girls and women in various non-Western cultural contexts. These
range from intimate erotic and educational friendships between girls in rural Lesotho, a
small country surrounded by South Africa, to erotic ritual practices during initiation into
adult womanhood among Australian Aborigines prior to colonization, as well as adolescent
sex play among the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa. Each of these are
culturally distinct and complex formations of sexuality; some may be surprising and
challenging to current Western assumptions about sexuality, especially to the presumption
of stable sexual identities and concerns about the sexuality of young people.
The so-called “mummy-baby” relations among younger and older girls in Lesotho are a
socially sanctioned context for girls to experience their first romantic and sexual encounters
with each other. They precede heterosexual marriage and are the site of a practical sex edu-
cation. According to Blackwood, mummy-baby relations are the result of a cultural negotia-
tion between Indigenous pro-sex views that value women’s sexual agency, and the Roman
Catholic instance on girls’ virginity. They emerge out of older Indigenous traditions, such as
both married women and men having sex with people other than their spouses and intense,
long-lasting affective partnerships between women alongside heterosexual marriage.
Other examples of quite “practical” sex education could be found among Australian
Aboriginal women prior to colonization when adult women taught girls about sexuality by
way of homoerotic dances and movements during erotic initiation rituals. The !Kung of
Southern Africa constructed adolescence as a phase of sexual experimentation with both
same-sex and other-sex partners, as a time of exploration and learning about sexual feel-
ings and desires, prior to heterosexual marriage.
These brief examples entail very different constructions of sexuality, shaped by factors
such as age, gender ideologies, religion, marriage, and family. My students are frequently
surprised by the centrality of women’s sexual agency in these examples and by the sex-
positive views concerning young people in these cultures. This surprise arises from the
ethnocentric assumption that women and girls in the West are the most “liberated”; but
also, from students’ experiences with (anti-sex) education in high school, which does not
sanction sexual experimentation.
The most challenging example Blackwood raises concerns the Sambia people of
Papua New Guinea for whom femininity is something inherent and stable with which girls
are born, while masculinity and manhood must be acquired. Masculinity is understood as
unstable and in constant threat of being overtaken by women, who are perceived as domi-
nant. Masculinity is acquired through rituals that involve ingesting adult men’s semen.
My students respond with shock when they learn about this ritual production of
masculinity. For the Sambia this is a necessary practice for becoming a man and for
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 133
accomplishing and maintaining masculinity. In a Western cultural context, these practices
are understood as pedophilia and sexual abuse. We usually have very lively discussions
around this practice, because it raises complex questions about how different cultures
construct what counts as sexual. These examples also raise interesting questions about
how our understanding and assumptions about gender shape constructions of sexuality in
Canada today.
Blackwood’s second example of gender ideologies shaping sexuality are the Chinese
marriage resisters of the 19th century. Young women working in the silk factories achieved
economic independence that allowed them to postpone heterosexual marriage indefi-
nitely. Instead of marrying men, they lived in sisterhoods with other women. They vowed
publicly to remain unwed and to not engage in sex with men. They lived together and
formed sexual relationships with each other, including “ménage à trois” (Sankar cited in
Blackwood, 2000, p. 279). The Chinese marriage resisters were responding to gender ide-
ologies in ways that shaped their sexual practices. Chinese men at the time were granted
a wider range of sexual options, including male lovers. Women’s sexuality was subordi-
nated to men’s desires. This inequality also produced the kind of resistance that sisterhood
represented. (Sisterhoods were banned after the victory of the Red Army in 1949.)
Another example given by Blackwood are the tombois in West Sumatra, who are
physically female but see themselves as men attracted to normatively feminine women.
Tombois behave in the manner of the men in West Sumatra culture. They smoke, play
cards, drive motorcycles, and model themselves in all aspects in terms of the construc-
tions of masculinity. They love feminine women; in couples tombois and their lovers refer
to each other as mami and papi. The tomboi identity is a blended sexual and gendered
construction that is grounded in a gender ideology that sees women and men as inher-
ently different. It is also a construction grounded in a matrilineal Muslim culture, mean-
ing that people trace their family line through the mother rather than the father. While
men in this cultural context enjoy different rights and privileges, they are not considered
superior. Instead, women are traditionally the leaders and reproducers. Within a pretty
strict two-gender order, tomboi as an appropriation of the masculine gender is the only
alternative for girls who do not conform to the standards of conventional femininity.
Being called tombois by others becomes an explanation for their own behaviour. Tomboi
is a blended gendered and sexual identity. Gendered behaviour preferences come to deter-
mine sexual identity.
The point of these cross-cultural examples is not to idealize “non-Western” sexualities
and genders as somehow “freer,” “more authentic,” or unfettered by social regulation.
Rather, the point is to show that while all cultures construct—and regulate—sexuality
and gender, they do it uniquely. The categorization used in the West today to organize
sexuality, namely by discrete sexual categories (hetero-, bi-, and homosexuality) does not
hold in other cultural contexts. Indeed in the examples above, same-sex and different-sex
relations exist in parallel. Same-sex sexual practice in adolescence does not preclude
heterosexual relations in adulthood—in some cultures it is seen as making them possible.
In some contexts same-sex sexual practices continue alongside heterosexual marriage.
134 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
Sexual monogamy is not a universal cultural value; neither is limiting sex to reproduction.
Cross-cultural comparative studies show a range of human sexual diversity.
Local concepts of sexuality, however, are changing with globalization. Prior to the
internationalization of lesbian and gay discourses, for example, tombois did not easily
translate into any Western category. They seem neither clearly lesbian, butch, transgen-
der, woman, nor man. Now they are increasingly seen as only a sexual orientation. This
changing understanding of tomboi in West Sumatra today is an example of how local,
national, and transnational discourses shape the construction of sexuality, constructions
that certainly are shifting over time and across different contexts.
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 135
ConstruCting sexual normalCy
At this point, I hope you have become suspicious of the concept of “normal” sex—and its
“second cousin,” “healthy sex.” Sexual regulation in the West today works perhaps less
through the moral terms of “good” and “bad” and more often as “healthy” or “unhealthy.” But
there is really very little that is inherently “healthy” or “unhealthy” about sex. Whether kiss-
ing is a “normal” and important part of sexuality and intimacy or regarded as unhygienic and
disgusting as in Burma (Levine, 2002), whether intergenerational sex is deviant and abusive
or an accepted precursor to adult heterosexuality (as in mummy-baby relationships in Leso-
tho or in man-boy marriage among the Azande) is not universal but culturally specific. Thus
our sexuality and our sexual behaviour, like many other aspects of our daily life, such as what
we wear, eat, do for entertainment, and find beautiful, is shaped by what our culture deems
appropriate and normal. Our sexuality is not just individual and unique to each of us. Instead
it is profoundly shaped by the world around us by books, art, movies, television, advertising,
what our friends and family say, social institutions (church, school, legal system). I suggest
then that sexuality is shaped, not determined, by the discourses that circulate around us.
136 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
and forgotten over and over again. By calling this a “strategic forgetting,” Tuana argues
that knowledge of the role of the clitoris “gets lost” intentionally rather than accidentally.
The attention to the clitoris distracts from the cultural narrative of sex being about
reproduction. Ignoring the clitoris in favour of a supposedly “natural fit” of penis and
vagina, on the other hand, aids the cultural construction of reproductive (hetero)sex.
Sadly, even four decades after Koedt’s analysis, the rates of women not achieving
orgasm during partner sex continue to be high. Vaginal orgasms, preferably simultaneous
with a person’s lover, continue to be mythologized and idealized. Think about representa-
tions of orgasm in mainstream movies and on TV. Here clitoral stimulation, for example
by way of oral sex, is represented as foreplay at best, while “real” sex still means penile
vaginal penetration with no clitoral stimulation involved. (How often is the role of the
clitoris for women’s sexual pleasure mentioned in sex ed curricula?)
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 137
priority in your life. Lesbian identification is a consciously chosen bond, something that
allegedly all women already experience in their deep emotional connection with each other
as sisters, mothers, best friends, teachers, and so on. Lesbian identification then becomes a
choice: to honour and make legible the ways women bond with each other.
Leaving aside for a moment that Rich takes deep bonds between cisgendered women
as a given, the text is radical, provocative, and strategic all at once. Rich called out straight
feminists for their homophobia. She strategically challenged a feminist movement that
had become deeply divided over the issue of lesbianism by asking straight women to iden-
tify politically with and as lesbians—instead of telling lesbians to shut up. Rich called out
to feminists to critically analyze heterosexuality, question its naturalness—even when it
may feel natural and normal—and begin to understand how heterosexuality benefits
(most) men and hinders (many) women. Within feminist communities, this evoked lively,
even divisive debates, which arguably are ongoing.
By suggesting women can choose to identify as lesbian, rather than “being born that way,”
Rich introduced the radical notion of political choice into sexual identity discourses and
moved away from what Eve Sedgwick (1990) later would call a “minoritizing” view. Within
a minoritizing view only a “distinct population ‘really are’ gay.” A minoritizing view assumes
that one either is or is not lesbian/gay. Contrary to this, a universalizing view, like that of
Rich, recognizes that anybody could engage in homo or heterosexual acts and that sexual
desire is much more fluid and not easily predictable. Rich endorses lesbianism as a universal-
izing position, one that anybody can choose to take up. Understanding lesbianism as a radi-
cal (political) choice as compared to an inherent condition of a distinct population, while
simultaneously daring to question the naturalness of heterosexuality, Rich’s text became an
important building block for queer theory—albeit one frequently unacknowledged.
Thoroughly productive as Rich’s text has been, it also garnered well-deserved criti-
cism. Her political, non-sexual lesbianism makes erotic desire between women invisible
once more. She implied that lesbians are all political freedom fighters against patriarchy.
She failed to outline how compulsory heterosexuality does not benefit all men, but
oppresses gay men too. She made problematic use of transhistorical and transcultural evi-
dence to demonstrate heterosexuality’s compulsory and violent nature (Sullivan, 2003).
heterosexual Privilege
One critical and productive response to Rich is the concept of “heterosexual privilege,”
an analytical term that suggests that heterosexuality does not only limit women as Rich
had claimed. Instead, heterosexual privilege names the benefits straight people accrue
when complying with the compulsory nature of heterosexuality. Privileges associated with
heterosexuality may include the right to have a person’s relationship socially and
economically recognized and supported; never having “to come out” to friends, family,
and co-workers; not being discriminated against for being straight; access to varied and
many positive representations in the media of your relationship; never having to hide
your partner for fear of discrimination. (Of course, heterosexual privilege does not
138 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
necessarily protect a person from discrimination and violence on the basis of race,
ethnicity, class, or religion. Thus not all heterosexuals accrue the same privileges.)
For many straight-identified feminists, then and now, to question heterosexuality poses
personal and political dilemmas. Particularly troubling is the suggestion that heterosexuality
supports male dominance. Many straight women ask themselves how to love men and be a
feminist committed to gender justice. Canadian Christine Overall (1990) proposes a “femi-
nist heterosexuality.” Refusing to accept heterosexuality as either innate, which is the popular
view, or as forced upon women, which is Rich’s suggestion, Overall argues that heterosexual-
ity can also be a choice you make without just “acquiescing in it, or benefiting from hetero-
sexual privilege, but actively tak[ing] responsibility for being heterosexual” (p. 266).
Overall encourages moving beyond a demoralizing choice according to which hetero-
sexual feminists either have to feel guilty about loving men or accept that heterosexual
desire and attachment are always already anti-feminist. Instead, Overall, with other femi-
nists, paves the path to changing both the institution and the ways in which heterosexual-
ity is lived. Recognizing its privileged position and the rewards attached to heterosexuality
is a first step. The next step may be to “queer” heterosexual norms.
Queering heterosexuality
For Lynn Segal (1994) queering heterosexuality involves challenging traditional understand-
ings of gender and sexuality. This includes looking at how women’s and men’s bodies are coded
in ways that support a binary model of oppositional genders that are then supposedly attracted
“naturally” to each other. Segal encourages us to recode bodies differently so as to move away
from an understanding of (heterosexual and cisgender) women’s bodies as only “passive,”
“receptive,” “penetrable,” and “vulnerable” and of (heterosexual cisgender) men’s bodies only
as “active,” “determined,” “penetrating,” and “impenetrable.” (Keep in mind that lesbian and
gay bodies and practices have always included both sexual receptivity and penetration.)
If we stop and think about this for a moment, we can perhaps begin to imagine talk-
ing about women’s and men’s bodies during heterosexual penetrative sex quite differ-
ently—not in terms of a “quasi militarized invasion and occupation of the female body”
(Sullivan, 2003, p. 130) in which the aggressor/penis pushes its way into a defenceless but
fortified vagina.7 Maybe instead we can see the vagina as actively pulling in and enfolding
a penis, as holding it and pushing it in and out.
To learn how to recode bodies in ways that veer away from a conventional gendered
and naturalized script, straight folks might learn from queer folks. Within butch/femme
culture, femme femininity and sexuality has long been celebrated as active and aggressive
rather than merely passive and receptive. Within trans communities and among lovers of
trans women and men8 it is common to recode bodies too, especially pre-operative bodies
that don’t match normative and idealized cis-male or cis-female genitalia. For example
pre- or non-operative trans men (and their lovers) may produce male bodiedness when
speaking of their pre-operative genitalia, particularly those changed by testosterone, in
their difference in size rather than structure from cis-male genitalia. This focus on size and
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 139
structural similarity invokes the anatomical continuum between clitoris and penis we dis-
cussed earlier. What would be identified as clitoris, breasts, and vaginal opening respec-
tively in cis-female identified humans, by way of vernacular may be recoded by trans men
as dick, man boobs, and bonus hole, respectively.9 This recoding is part of discursively
producing bodies that match gender identity.
If we understand that all bodies are coded through language, we can see that coding
plays a central role in the construction of gendered and sexual difference. If trans and
queer folks can recode bodies, then straight and cis-bodied folks should be able to do the
same. In so doing they may be able to unsettle the unequal discursive constructions of cis-
male and cis-female bodies in ways that allow for less restrictive gender roles, both sexu-
ally and in the world. Such unsettlement also might undo the transphobic distinction
between bodies and genders that pass as “real” and those considered “unreal,” by showing
that all bodies and genders are discursive and linguistic constructions.
When we talk about such queering of bodies, my feminist, cis-female, and heterosex-
ually identified students are quite intrigued. They want to think about ways to expand
and undermine restrictive gender scripts, knowing how these limit their own sexuality
and pleasure. (After all, how pleasurable is it to always imagine sex as a militaristic male
invasion of female defences?) However, they have a hard time imagining how to win over
their cisgendered boyfriends. Indeed, imagining male bodies as vulnerable, receptive, and
penetrable is deeply threatening to many cis men—and to many cis women too.
This anxiety tells us how deeply rooted homophobia still is in our culture, despite the
increased tolerance towards LGBTQT2-S people and despite the wider recognition of
same-sex relationships. Penetrability of men continues to signify gay masculinity in our
culture and thus is something that most straight men seek to distance themselves from,
even if they tolerate gayness in others. The fear of being read as gay may well be at the
heart of sex that is not only heterosexual but heteronormative, sex constrained in the
name of reproducing normatively gendered sexual practices.
Such constraint tells us something else. Sadly conventional sex is rarely just about
pleasures. Nor is sex “just” an expression of some inherent orientation. Instead, sex prac-
tices play a central role in the production and consolidation of coherent identities (for exam-
ple as heterosexual, as “normal” woman and man, as cisgendered). Calvin Thomas (2000)
critically calls this “fucking to assert identity.” That is, sex that seeks to assert the unequal
construction of sex, gender, and sexuality, and the privileges associated with these subject
positions. Such sex cannot tolerate how during consensual sex the boundaries of gendered
subjectivities are often transgressed. “Fucking to assert identity” cannot bear that one
of the pleasures of sex might precisely be the loss, rather than the assertion, of a self, of
boundaries and dichotomies of self and other, of supposedly complementary bodies, of
active/passive, and of inside and outside (Bersani, 1987; Segal, 1994; Thomas, 2000). That
is to say, sex itself has queer potential, if we understand “queer” not just as a convenient
short form for the identity diversity that the acronym LGBTQT2-S represents. Instead,
“queer” here represents a move to undermine the normative and coercive coherence of
sex, gender, and sexuality—and the violent efforts involved in producing such coherence.
140 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
Accordingly, sex’s potential to undo us can be queer even when it involves cisgendered
and heterosexually identified women and men. Sex is “queer” when it is not about the
assertion of straight identities. But, similarly, sex can be straight and heteronormative,
even if it involves same-sex lovers. Indeed, for Thomas (2000) sex is heteronormative when
it is “teleologically narrativized sex: sex with a goal, a purpose, a product” (p. 33); when it
is reproductive, with the product being an identity, a sense of self, or a child. Merri Lisa
Johnson (2002, p. 49) provides us with a quite concrete list of what queering heterosexuality
might entail: sex with less restrictive gender roles; pleasure; recognition of heterosexuality
and the nuclear family as one relationship/family form among many; body integrity; and
sexual practices that are less coitus, penetration, and penis-centred.
While many of my students can see the value of opening up a wider spectrum of gen-
der and sexual practices for everyone, they often voice concerns that identifying as “queer”
when one is not really lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or intersex is an appropriation of some-
body else’s identity in ways that does not acknowledge sufficiently the discriminations
that real queer folks experience. Ultimately, they argue identifying as a queer straight per-
son is just about being trendy, and this straight queerness only gets articulated in contexts
where being queer is cool. I think their concerns are legitimate. However, these are based
upon notions of stable identities and assume that real queers are somehow unified in their
experience of similar hardships. But are they really?
If we think about progress and equality, lesbian and gays in North America certainly
have had much to celebrate over the last two decades as access to marriage, adoption,
military service, and survivors’ benefits have been won. These are significant accomplish-
ments that extend social recognition and human rights protection. However, these equal-
ity measures have in common that they were won by insisting that lesbians and gays are
“just like straight people.” And that claim is the crux. Basically, these equality measures
are for those same-sex couples who most closely resemble straight folks in terms of their
gender, their relationship model, and their modes of reproduction. Rather than challenge
the heteronormative institutions of marriage, monogamy, procreation, and gender,
recently won gay rights simply assimilate and sustain them. Calling this critically “homo-
normativity,” queer theorists and activists, following Lisa Duggan (2000) and Martin F.
Manalansan (2005), have argued that these socio-legal successes ultimately benefit only
that small segment of queer communities who are in monogamous relationships and can
afford weddings and property, who have access to pension and health care plans, and who
wish to procreate. Indeed, Duggan argues that these rights ultimately depoliticize gay cul-
ture by reducing equality to equal access to “domesticity and consumption” (p. 50). Simi-
larly, Manalansan offers the criticism that these kinds of rights put queer communities “to
sleep,” after having recoded “freedom” and “liberation” to mean merely “freedom and
liberty to consume” (p. 142).
These are harsh critiques and in my class we have lively discussions about whether these
rights constitute progress of some sort or not. Certainly, for (some) students who grew up
lesbian and gay and suffered from social exclusion and violence, the idea of finding true love,
getting married, having a family, and getting recognition for being “just like everybody else”
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 141
is very appealing. Yet others recognize that the right to marry will not fix economic or racial
injustices or lessen the harassment they may experience for not “doing gender” conventionally.
Indeed, the right to marry and other equality measures might most benefit white and middle-
class lesbian women and gay men, while it does not end homelessness for poor queers, provide
trans-specific health care options, or decrease violence against gender-nonconforming
queers. Then again, marriage might give some queers access to benefits and immigration, the
kinds of security that might otherwise remain unattainable.
More broadly speaking, we can conclude that constructions of sexuality in the contem-
porary moment are wildly contradictory. On the one hand, we note more cultural visibility
of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and, to a lesser degree, of trans folk, intersex folk, and other
queers. At the same time, marginalization, violence, and homo- and transphobia persist
raising the question of whether visibility really equals legal protection and greater safety.
142 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
(and communicate them) about when, how, and with whom to be sexually active.
Teaching only abstinence implies erroneously that when people are ready to have sex,
ideally only once they are adults and married, they will know what to do and how to
protect themselves from pregnancy, infections, emotional harm, and violence. What we
fail to account for when we do not educate children and teenagers on matters of the body,
gender, sexuality, and pleasure is that all learning takes practise. Judith Levine (2002, p. 110)
observes astutely “maturity, including sexual maturity, cannot be attained without
practice, and in sex, as in skiing, practice is risky.” Young people, straight and queer alike,
deserve to practise with as much information at their disposal as possible. Without
effective, comprehensive, and inclusive sex education, we abandon young people to
learning about sex from overwhelmingly sexist, heteronormative, and transphobic
mainstream and online representations of sexuality.
Endnotes
1. Androcentric means cis-male centred: the privileging and centring of the specific view-
points and experiences of cisgendered men of the world, of culture, and of sex as if these
reflected a universal viewpoint shared by everybody.
2. There is some disagreement between Lang and earlier anthropologists such as Fulton and
Anderson (1992) and Roscoe (1991) about the terminology itself and whether the chosen
gender or the birth sex should come first.
3. If you google hijra you will learn that large parts of South Asia socially recognize a third
gender and India also does so legally.
4. The vagina is not the name for the entire genital area. The vagina is the internal orifice, the
canal that extends from the exterior genitals (the vulva) to the cervix and the uterus. If you
use tampons or engage in genital intercourse with a penis, a dildo, fingers, or something
else, you insert these into the vagina. The external genitals are the vulva and include the
clitoris and the labia (majora and minora). As an aside, if women “vajazzle,” they don’t
decorate their “vagina” as it is often claimed. Instead vajazzling involves decorating the
shaven or waxed pubic area. Decorating the vagina, it being an interior canal, would be
rather difficult, to say the least. But the fact that the vulva regularly gets misnamed vagina
should give us pause. Also, if you have a vulva, I suggest that you take a mirror and look
at it. You also might want to google vulva images to get a sense of the wide variation of
what vulvas look like.
5. The Intersex Society of America describes intersex in the following way:
a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual
anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. For example, a person
might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the
inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female
types—for example, a girl may be born with a noticeably large clitoris, or lacking a vaginal opening, or
a boy may be born with a notably small penis, or with a scrotum that is divided so that it has formed
more like labia. Or a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX
chromosomes and some of them have XY. (www.isna.org/faq/what_is_intersex)
C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y 143
6. Recent biological research supports the view of a wider spectrum of human sexual varia-
tion beyond XX and XY options. Indeed, this research suggests that there is a spectrum of
sexual difference within many individuals (Aintsworth, 2015).
7. Cameron’s (1992) study of male American college students’ use of slang words for their
genitals found, quite disturbingly, a predominant use of militaristic metaphors for the
penis, such as torpedo, missile, snake, or jack hammer. Such language masculinizes a very
sensitive body part and seeks to deny the penis’s intense vulnerability.
8. Trans men typically were assigned female at birth or in utero, but come to identify at
some point in their lives as male. Trans women on the other hand were assigned male
but identify as female. Trans people choose a variety of ways to “transition” from MtF
(male birth assignment to female identity) or from FtM (female birth assignment to male
identity) over their life course. Some undergo full genital reassignment surgery to bring
their bodies in line with their identity. Others, particularly FtMs—due to limited funds
and/or lack of effective surgical solutions—might undergo top surgery and take testos-
terone but refrain from bottom surgery. Other trans folks might only transition socially
but don’t undergo any medical or hormonal interventions. Some folks identify as gender-
queer and have no desire to produce any form of coherence between appearance, body,
and their gender identification. Like cisgendered folks, there is an enormous diversity
among trans folks.
9. For a recent study of discursive framing of trans embodiment see Edelman and Zimman (2014).
10. For a discussion of sexual antinomies in late modernity see Jackson and Scott (2004).
11. Unique to Alberta, according to the 2009 Human Rights Act, schools have to inform par-
ents when religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation are to be discussed in class. Parents can
then pull their children from these classrooms.
discussion Questions
1. Explain the difference between the strong and weak social constructionist position with
regards to sexuality. Which one do you find more convincing and why?
2. Make a list of the privileges associated with heterosexuality. Discuss what “taking respon-
sibility” for these privileges could look like.
3. Ask your friends to draw and name the different parts of the vulva, including the location
and size of the clitoris. What do you note, especially when comparing this to your friends’
knowledge about the location and size of the penis?
4. Should sex education in high school entail discussions of sexual pleasure? Why or why not?
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146 C h a p t e r 5 C o n s t r u c t i n g G e n d e r, R e g u l a t i n g S e x u a l i t y
Chapter 6
Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture
Carla Rice
IntroductIon
The body is an important identity project for girls coming of age in Westernized cultures.
As a key self-making medium, many girls and women also experience their bodies as
significant obstacles and sources of distress. On the positive side, bodies are sites of agency
and empowerment, primary vehicles through which individuals explore, interact with,
and understand the world. On the negative side, bodies are objects of social scrutiny and
sanction, fuelling girls’ dissatisfaction and deprecation. In this chapter, I explore the
contradictory meanings young women hold regarding their bodies. Using the concept of
the “material culture of beauty” and my own research on adult women’s body histories,
I reveal the ways in which cultural imaginings and gazes have shaped their body self-
images. Narratives of embodiment from 100 ordinary Canadian women of varying body
sizes and racial backgrounds and with and without disabilities and physical differences
illustrate the fact that, although women of all ages have greater freedom to play with their
appearance, cultural codes of beauty have become more narrowly defined over the past
few decades. The result is a curious situation in which women are told to be and look
however they wish all the while experiencing social sanction and derision if they step
outside narrow boundaries of acceptable bodily self-presentations.
There is an upsurge of feminist writing about beauty, both critical and celebratory.
Although feminist commentary on beauty has mushroomed since the 1970s, writers
continue to wrestle with the same old debate: Are beauty practices manifestations of
sexist, racist, and market oppression of women? Or, do they afford women opportunities
for self-expression, empowerment, and pleasure? Some critics contend that patriarchal
and commercial interests push women into painful beauty work to satisfy our culturally
created desires and assuage fears of difference (Clarke & Griffin, 2007; Gill, 2009; Stuart &
Donaghue, 2011). Others argue that women are not cultural dupes but active agents who
strategically alter their appearance in their best interests (Davis, 1995; Gimlin, 2006;
Holliday & Sanchez Taylor, 2006; Scott, 2005). Body stories reveal the ways in which
women of all shapes, sizes, and hues take up body ideals and identify multiple motivations
for their beautifying practices, ranging from pleasure and convenience to self-esteem and
economic advantage. The stories further disclose that although all women grapple with
the contradictions of body practices that may oppress even as they empower, not all
confront the same cultural looks and gazes. For example, young, thin, white women are
147
more likely to be seen as the epitome of beauty; visibly disabled women as undesirable
and sexless; Black women as sexually wild and aggressive; and Asian and South Asian
women as meek or mysterious and exotic. The interplay of these stereotypes with body
ideals calls for more intersectional understandings of the role that cultural imagery plays
in women’s lives. To help develop these sorts of interpretations, I explore the differing
cultural gazes that diverse women confront then move to examine the body projects
they take up.
“I wasn’t doing very well in ParticipACTION or Canada Fitness. I hated gym class. I didn’t
like being tested in front of everybody. . . .” (Yolanda, 23, Dutch-Indonesian Canadian)
eating distress
Although only about 3% of young women in North America have eating disorders
according to medical criteria (Woodside et al., 2001), 50% admit to extreme weight
control, including fasting and vomiting (Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2002). The high
prevalence of problem eating notwithstanding, eating disorders are interpreted as mental
illness (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). However, feminist critics have long
noted that an eating disorder, like all diagnoses, is a social construct (Rabinor, 2004). The
term disorder incorrectly establishes a clear dichotomy between mental illness and wellness.
Yet given the pressure for women to control their appetites and weights, it is often difficult
to distinguish normal from pathological eating (Cohen, 2004; Rice & Langdon, 1991).
Unfortunately, few experts consider the concept of a continuum of eating problems.
Beyond debates about eating disorder diagnoses, there are many problems with psychiatric
labelling more generally—not only do labels stigmatize people, they also tend to be
applied to the least powerful groups in society (Caplan & Cosgrove, 2004). Young wom-
en’s emotional struggles tend to be pathologized more than young men’s, so that there are
fewer diagnoses to capture the downsides of masculinity (like excessive risk taking and
inability to express emotion) than of femininity (depression and eating problems). Exam-
ples of psychiatric labels that have been proposed—such as dressing disorder and compul-
sive shopping disorder—expose how power relations often arbitrate what is considered
stereotypical behaviour and what is labelled a psychiatric condition.
Further, many feminists have been critical of psychiatric treatment for eating disorders
that positions women as pathological for adopting socially induced behaviours (Fallon,
Katzman, & Wooley, 1994; Rice, 1996). In her ethnographic research, Helene Gremillion
(2003) has found that treatment programs tend to substitute one set of disciplinary
At least I felt normal enough and desirable enough [when bulimic] that I could actu-
ally contemplate a sexual relationship. I could actually let go of protecting myself and
enter into a relationship. (Gayle, 29, English-Métis Canadian)
The times I have felt love are times my body has been the most socially acceptable
[through starving and purging]. It makes me profoundly sad that the only ways of
accessing those feelings are through having a conventional body. (Sylvie, 36, Italian-
Scottish Canadian)
Many people mistakenly believe that only privileged white girls have eating problems.
Weight restriction became a way of life for a majority of women of all sizes and shapes I
interviewed, whether Black, Asian, South Asian, or white. Some racialized participants
told how ultra-thinness was viewed more critically in their communities, where images of
attractive bodies spanned a broader range of sizes. However, most had grown up during a
time when communities of colour constituted a small portion of the Canadian population,
and thus many had little access to an alternative beauty aesthetic that called into question
white weight standards. With stereotypic portrayals of starving African bodies circulating
in Western media throughout the 1970s (such as in children’s charity commercials),
slenderness also became abject for Black women interviewed. According to post-colonial
scholars, Western images have mythologized Africans since the colonial period as
innocent yet savage; as less human than animal; as dark presence and ghostly absence
(Kaspin, 2002). By portraying emaciated Africans as abused and coarsened victims of
starvation and civil war, Western photography has reduced a complex continent of
cultures and peoples to a few simple stereotypes. In an attempt to scare Western girls out
of self-starvation, only a few years ago one eating disorder campaign unwittingly drew on
these injurious associations to render the emaciated African form, faded and ghostlike, as
an abject sign of strife and famine.
Growing up in a racially charged image environment, some Black women describe how
they got caught between racist stereotypes of starving African bodies in mainstream media
A girl at school said I looked like starving kids in the World Vision commercial. That
was the most hurtful thing anybody ever said to me. I thought, “I should be bigger and
more normal because I look like those poster kids.” (Rhonda, 32, West Indian Canadian)
I was heavier than most girls because I was muscular. So I went on these crazy diets,
where I’d only eat yogurt. I consumed so much that the bacteria started to affect my
stomach. So I ended up in the hospital with “anxiety attacks.” But I was just trying to
make myself look the way I was supposed to look in society. (Marcia, 37, African, First
Nation, Scottish Canadian)
skin
Historically, skin became women’s first body project as they learned the power of complexion
to advance or undermine their social inclusion. From ancient times, pallour was associated
with high social status; women at work outdoors were tanned and aged faster, whereas women
of high social status were not obliged to work in the fields but stayed indoors and were pale-
skinned. From the 17th century onward, this superiority of white over dark was scientifically
proclaimed, as white Europeans needed a convincing justification for systems of slavery and
Being in the West Indian community I was more attractive, and with people who
weren’t West Indian I was more acceptable because I wasn’t as dark. So I had an easier
time from all groups because I am supposedly that ideal. (Salima, 30, West Indian,
South Asian Canadian)
We have a family friend who is a lot darker than we are. She bought Fair & Lovely and
when everyone found out, they used to say, “Oh, she uses Fair & Lovely.” The fact that
we talked about it is mean. The fact that she feels she has to use it is terrible. (Preeta,
29, South Asian Canadian)
Many white women are well aware of the cultural associations of dark skin with devalued
status. Yet in a cultural context where race is read off multiple body sites (skin colour, facial
features, and so on), tanned skin may be viewed as a temporary, detachable adornment
rather than an essential feature that signifies someone’s racial status (Ahmed, 1998). It is in
this context that white women often see skin darkening as a beauty project. After the First
World War, tanning became a statement about high social status; a tan proclaimed the
leisure to lie out in the sun and the money to go to tropical beaches in midwinter. White
women who tan can thus connect their bronzed skin to health, wealth, and attractiveness,
secure in the knowledge that they still are seen as white, regardless of the health implications
(such as the increased risk of skin cancers and premature skin aging). These experiences,
too, generate many questions: Why is there emphasis on white women’s attainment of a sun-
kissed glow while racialized women feel pressured to aspire to the glow of fairness? Is the
obsession with fairness a bad case of a “colonial hangover,” or is it an example of a Western
cultural imperialism that uses global media to spread white beauty ideals?
hair
Within a racial hierarchy of beauty, Black women encounter complex messages about hair
due to associations of long, flowing hair with social mobility and femininity. Beauty entre-
preneur Madame C. J. Walker, who is credited with popularizing the “hot” comb for
straightening hair, sold such products as Black women’s “passport to prosperity” (Rooks,
1996, p. 65). She saw Black women’s beauty in a political light—as a “vindication of black
womanhood” demeaned by slavery and as a pathway to prosperity and respectability
denied by white society. Many Black feminist and critical race scholars have debated
whether Madame Walker preyed on African American women’s feelings of inferiority or
promoted pro-Black beauty through dignifying their beauty practices (Byrd & Tharps,
2001; Rooks, 1996). In her personal letters and public talks, Walker clearly did not seek to
embody white ideals. Instead, beauty was a way to challenge stereotypes of Black women
as unfeminine and unattractive, and in so doing, to raise Black women’s self-confidence
and contribute to their collective advancement.
Today, an estimated 80% of African American women straighten their hair (Swee,
Klontz, & Lambert, 2000). In 1993, the World Rio Corporation marketed a hair-
straightening product on its late-night infomercials that targeted these women. In the
Rio ads, good hair was equated with straightened hair and bad hair with untamed curls.
Ads used the now familiar format of abject before and ideal after shots featuring women
In high school, people would say, “What are you?” I realized if I blow-dry my hair to get
it straight I might not identify as anything separate. . . . The less I try to visually look
like some stereotypes from the media or their beliefs, the less I am singled out. (Ada,
27, Trinidadian Canadian, African and Chinese)
Those who think that stigmatization of natural hair is a thing of the past might
consider this: in October 2007, Glamour magazine developed a presentation called
“The dos and don’ts of corporate fashion” that showed an African American woman
sporting an Afro with a caption reading, “Say no to the ’fro” (Dorning, 2007). The
presenter told a women’s luncheon at a Wall Street law firm that Black female attor-
neys should avoid wearing “political” hairstyles like dreadlocks or Afros, because these
styles were seen as unattractive and unprofessional. Members of the audience were jus-
tifiably upset with the replay of stereotypes about “natural” hair as overly political,
unfeminine, and unprofessional.
Not only do these attitudes have an impact on Black women’s beauty perceptions but
they also are linked to blocked educational and economic opportunities. Many African
Canadian girls report witnessing or experiencing harassment in school arising from
perceptions of their hue and hair. Some school boards in the United States have suspended
African American students for wearing cornrows, dreadlocks, and other hairstyles seen as
making an overly strong political statement (Rooks, 2001). Black women have even been
fired from corporate jobs for styling their hair in dreadlocks and braids. Virtually all Black
women I interviewed worried that if they wore their hair naturally, they would not succeed
in their career or romantic aspirations. Seen in this light, it would be a mistake to interpret
hair straightening as another example of women’s internalization of sexism and racism.
Instead, their stories suggest that managed hair could carry social benefits, including
boosting status and success.
Along with the presence of long-flowing hair on a woman’s head, the absence of body
hair is a critical characteristic of the acceptable female body. Few North American women
removed their underarm or leg hair before the 20th century; with the rise of beauty culture
and body-baring fashions, hair removal became commonplace by the end of the Second
World War (Hope, 1982). To convince female consumers to buy depilatory products, early
marketers framed any hair not on a woman’s head as unsightly and ugly. At the same time,
physicians began to label as pathological “excess” hair on parts of the female body typically
associated with hair growth in men (Herzig, 2000). However, sorting the normal from the
pathological has proven to be difficult: there remains no agreed-on measure of normal
amounts of hair in women and no clear markers to distinguish male from female hair
growth. Men are thought to be naturally hairier, though patterns of hair growth overlap
since women have the same number of hair follicles as men and, like men, produce testos-
terone (Ferrante, 1988). There may be more variation within than between the sexes
because hair growth differs based on age, climate, lifestyle, and genes. The number of hairy
women who have an endocrine problem is unknown, with rates ranging from 1 to 80%
(Azziz, Carmina, & Sawaya, 2000). (The high percentages should be treated with caution
since they may reflect renewed medical attempts to pathologize female body hair.) Whether
or not an underlying medical condition is present, any fuzz deemed excessive is labelled
“hirsutism,” a word related to the Latin hirsutus, an adjective meaning rough, shaggy, and
bristly (Barber, 2004). This suggests that in parts of the Western world, female body hair
has been imagined as repellent, and the unaltered womanly body as feral and unfeminine.
From the pages of fashion magazines to illustrations in biology textbooks, the image
of the hairless woman has emerged as a pervasive norm (Schick, Rima, & Calabrese,
2011). Although unshaven men are considered acceptable and their body hair removal
optional, studies show that in Anglo-Western countries between 80 and 100% of women
spend an average of 30 minutes per week removing unwanted face or body hair (PR Web,
2011). A strong cultural connection exists between hair and sex—the absence of body hair
is interpreted as a sign of femaleness, whereas its presence signifies maleness (Toerien &
Wilkinson, 2003). Despite feminist challenges to sexual dualism, Western thinking still
understands femaleness and maleness as opposites that do not overlap. In this context, the
vast majority of women, for whom hairlessness is not a natural state, must remove their
hair or have their sex called into question. A lucrative market in hair removal products
has resulted, with global sales in shaving gear topping US$25.7 billion in 2010 (PR Web,
2008). So ubiquitous is the puberty rite of shaving that Nair launched Nair Pretty, a depil-
atory aimed at “first-time hair removers,” that is, girls 10 to 15 years old (Newman, 2007).
A majority of women in this study committed at puberty to a lifetime of hair removal,
which became a routine part of the hidden work of having an acceptable female body.
I remember looking in the mirror thinking “Oh my God! Why are these hairs hanging
out of my face?” I never thought of myself as woman. I thought of myself as a girl strug-
gling. I didn’t feel normal. I would think, “What if I really am a boy? What if I have
internal male genitalia? I look like a woman on the outside but I have hair on my face.
So what does that mean?” (Erum, 22, South Asian, African Canadian)
Studies of racial differences in body hair are contradictory with some researchers
claiming that Black, South Asian, and “Mediterranean” women are hairier than northern
European women and others, that whites are the hairiest and Asian women the least
hirsute of all (Toerien & Wilkinson, 2003). A majority of South Asian women identified
body hair as a problem trait, far more than any other group I interviewed. Most assumed
they were naturally hairier. But their accounts point to sexual dualism and racist stereotyping
as the more likely roots of their hair worries. Historically, certain groups of racialized
women, including darker-skinned African and South Asian as well as Indigenous South
American women from the colonized world (and to a lesser extent, those from southern
Europe), have been imagined as more hairy than white northern European women. In the
wake of Darwin’s theories of evolution, scientists began to see body hair as a measure of
racial difference and to classify amounts and thicknesses of hair according to a racial
hierarchy. By the Victorian era, scientists and the lay public exhibited great interest in
racialized bearded women because they were seen to represent the missing link between
animals and humans. In this context Julia Pastrana, a Mexican-American Indigenous
woman, became a freak show performer in Europe due to her excess facial hair (caused by a
rare condition called hypertrichosis). Hypersexual advertising used to attract audiences
exaggerated her female, male, and supposedly ape-like features (Browne & Messenger,
2003). Associations between race and hair haunt the stories of South Asian Canadian
women today who tell how their body hair conjured up ideas about racialized women as
hairier, more masculine, and hyper-sexual within white-dominated culture.
The 1970s feminist movement brought an acceptance of body hair, but hairlessness has
become a thriving industry today. Consumer capitalism combined with the growing
availability of free online pornography and demand for body-baring fashions have influenced
where and how often women today depilate. The cohort I interviewed came of age before the
popularity of pubic hair removal. Over the last several years, the Brazilian wax, which leaves
behind a strip of hair above the pubic bone or takes all hair away, has gone from being a
Breasts
Despite headlines to the contrary, cosmetic surgery rates in North America remain greatly
skewed by gender: in 2010, over 91% of cosmetic procedures were performed on women by
mostly male doctors who made up 91% of surgeons (American Society of Plastic Surgeons,
2011). According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (2011), demand
for plastic surgery increased by 9% in 2010 and by a whopping 155% since statistical
collection began in 1997. Breast augmentation topped the list (318 123) beating out breast
reduction (138 152), which placed fifth in popularity. It is difficult to get an accurate read
on how many Canadian women seek breast surgery because the government does not keep
track of procedures (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News, 2008). However, it is
estimated that between 100 000 and 200 000 Canadian women have implants. Little
reliable data is available on the race of those undergoing reductions and augmentations,
but statistics indicate that 30% of all North American procedures in 2010 were performed
on non-whites, who make up a growing percentage of recipients (American Society of
Plastic Surgeons, 2011). The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (2011) reports that
reductions are popular among African American women, while Asian American women
most commonly request augmentations. These statistics do not reflect actual numbers,
however, since the rise of medical tourism means more people seek out cheap surgeries in
places like India, Costa Rica, and Thailand (Morgan, 1991, 2009; see, for example, http://
www.worldmedicalandsurgical.com). As surgery goes global, augmentation has become
the second most sought-after procedure, with reductions coming in sixth worldwide
(International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 2010).
Techniques used in cosmetic surgery were originally developed to treat the facial burns
and soft tissue wounds of male soldiers returning from the First World War. During the 20th
century, doctors gradually drew a distinction between plastic surgery, aimed at restoring the
body’s normal appearance or functioning, and cosmetic surgery, intended to enhance features
already deemed normal (Heyes & Jones, 2009). Breast augmentations involving silicone gel
or sacs were introduced in the 1960s, but it was not until 1991 that controversy about the
possible effects of these implants lead to a moratorium on their general use (Heyes & Jones,
2009). Almost two decades after fears that leaks could cause connective tissue diseases (such
as rheumatoid arthritis), North American governments approved a new generation of “safer”
implants (for more information go to www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/med/implants-eng.php).
Endnotes
1. Unless otherwise noted in a citation, all historical advertisements discussed in this chapter
were retrieved from Ad Access On-Line Project, Duke University, at http://library.duke.edu/
digitalcollections/adaccess/
Discussion Questions
1. List the image-based technologies you use and the image-based media you consume in
your daily life. How have technological developments increased the pressures and oppor-
tunities for body- and self-scrutiny in the 20th and 21st centuries? Applying feminist the-
ory introduced in this chapter, explain why the proliferation of visual technologies and
images has a particular significance for women. To what extent are men being similarly
affected by the image system?
2. In what ways has the body become “an important identity project”? Do body modifi-
cation techniques such as surgeries or fitness/beauty regimes work primarily to
enhance the self-esteem of people who seek them out? Or do they conscript consum-
ers into prescribed roles in a patriarchal, racist, and classist world? What are the pos-
sible effects of makeover shows and body modification products on diverse female
and male audiences?
3. Debate the origins and implications of the “obesity epidemic” and the “epidemic” of
disordered eating within Western and global contexts. Why have Western populations
become so concerned about weight? Are poor countries really facing an “epidemic” of
Bibliography
Adapted version of “Chapter 7: In the Mirror of Beauty Culture,” which is an adapted version
of Rice , C. (2009a). Exacting beauty: Exploring women’s body projects and problems in the 21st
century. In N. Mandell (Ed.), Feminist issues: Race, class and sexuality (pp. 131–160). Toronto:
Pearson Canada. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, University of Toronto Press.
Ahmed, S. (1998). Animated borders: Skin, colour and tanning. In M. Shildrick & J. Price (Eds.),
Vital signs: Feminist reconfigurations of the bio/logical body (pp. 45–65). Edinburgh, Scotland:
Edinburgh University Press.
All historical advertisements discussed in this chapter were retrieved from Ad Access On-Line
Project, Duke University, at http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess
American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery. (2009). AACS 2009 consumer survey patients’
openness full report. Retrieved from www.cosmeticsurgery.org/media/position.cfm
American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders:
DSM-5. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. (2011). Demand for plastic surgery rebounds by
almost 9%. Statistics, surveys & trends. Retrieved from www.surgery.org/media/news-releases/
demand-for-plastic-surgery-rebounds-by-almost-9%
American Society of Plastic Surgeons. (2011). Report of the 2010 plastic surgery statistics: 2010
cosmetic demographics. Retrieved from www.plasticsurgery.org/x1673.xml?google=
report+2010&x=0&y=0
Associated Press. (2006, March 2). Surgeon General: Obesity epidemic will dwarf terrorism
threat. CBSNews.com. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obesity-bigger-
threat-than-terrorism/
Azziz, R., Carmina, E., & Sawaya, M. E. (2000). Idiopathic hirsutism. Endocrine Reviews, 21(4), 347–362.
Barber, K. (Ed.). (2004). Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd ed.). Toronto, ON: University Press.
Bennett, W., & Gurin, J. (1983). The dieter’s dilemma: Eating less and weighing more. New York, NY:
Basic Books.
Berger, J. (1980). Ways of seeing. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.
Bindel, J. (2010, August 20). Women: Embrace your facial hair! The Guardian Online. Retrieved
from www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/aug/20/women-facial-hair
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture and the body. Los Angeles, CA:
University of California Press.
Bordo, S. (2009). Not just “a white girl’s thing”: The changing face of food and body image
problems. In H. Malson & M. Burns (Eds.), Critical feminist approaches to eating dis/orders (pp.
46–59). New York, NY: Routledge.
Masculinity studies have a fraught and tense history when addressing feminism, yet today
they have become an important component of many women’s and gender studies programs.
Although later writings on men and masculinities are feminist inspired and critically
oriented, too often early writers aggravated rather than advanced the project of achieving
gender equality. In this chapter, we present an overview of the study of masculinities in
North America as a social and historical category, distinguishing between early and later
writings in the field of masculinity/ies studies. Our purpose is to show how the complexity,
tensions, and contradictions within the history of the study of men and masculinity
contribute to the feminist study of gender oppression.
We discuss early North American writings on men and masculinities to help contextu-
alize and situate the later, most recent feminist-inspired, critically oriented research on men
and masculinities. Next the chapter discusses the work of Australian sociologist Raewyn
Connell, whose theorizing of gender has profoundly shaped contemporary academic research
on men and masculinities (Beasley, 2005). We highlight and discuss the recent explosion of
research on masculinities informed by Connell’s work that has centred on analyses of power
relations and intersectionality. Finally, to illustrate the connections between Connell’s work
and the everyday experiences of men and boys, we highlight a key social site for the produc-
tion and reproduction of masculinities: sport. The overriding goal of this chapter is to show
how a feminist perspective on men and masculinities has made significant contributions to
challenging dominant models of masculinity that work against the best interests of men and
boys, with a view to securing gender justice for women and girls.
175
and behave in certain narrow ways came under increased scrutiny by the early 1970s,
triggering a wave of popular writings on men and masculinity.
undersTanding MasculiniTies
Over the past two or more decades, critical theories of masculinity have become very
important. In this section we discuss several of these. We begin with Australian sociologist
Raewyn Connell’s theory of multiple masculinities, widely acknowledged as one of the most
influential theories in the study of men and masculinities (Beasley, 2005; Glaser, 2004;
Messerschmidt, 2000). Connell’s theory of masculinities rejects the idea that there exists a
fixed, monolithic, unitary, asocial, ahistorical version of masculinity (1995). Rather, Connell
advances an argument that there exist many varied and competing socially and historically
constructed models of masculinity at any given time; a few hegemonic, some marginalized,
some complicit, some subordinated. All types are shaped and influenced by the social
locations of particular men or groups of men differentiated by race, ethnicity, social class,
sexuality, age, bodily abilities, and so on (Connell, 1995, 2000). As with other social identities,
masculinities are continually in flux, shifting, and fluid, situated in relations of power, always
in the moment-to-moment process of being made and unmade depending on the context.
Connell engages masculinities through the prism of feminist theory and thus under-
stands them as embedded in relations of power. She theorizes that gender is a socially
organized set of practices forming relationships between and among men and between
men and women. Masculinities are situated in relations of power and produced together
in “gender regimes.” Gender regimes are patterns found within institutions such as reli-
gious institutions, families, schools, corporations, and the military that are formed through
relations of power and that structure everyday experiences of gender relations. Institution-
alized gender regimes are coupled with the overall gender patterns found in culture and
personal life that Connell calls the “gender order” of a society (Connell, 1995, pp. 71–86).
The overall structure of the current gender order found in Western societies privileges
men as a group over women as a group in ways that are hegemonic, that is, dominant
masculinity and its hierarchies are so normalized as to be practically invisible.
hegemonic Masculinity
Connell’s theory of multiple masculinities and its key concept of hegemony borrows from
the work of scholar Antonio Gramsci (1971). In order to better understand class and class
formations, Gramsci theorized that the continuing dominance of certain class formations
was not secured by physical force or through ideological compulsion. Rather, Gramsci argued
that dominance or hegemony was secured largely through persuasion by the dominant class
engaged in various forms of cultural and social leadership. For Gramsci, the dominant class
effectively secures key economic and political processes in society, and extends and expands
its control in such a way that its interests are met, its values and beliefs internalized.
Masculinity as Performance
It is now common to understand gender as a performance. Conceptualizing gender as a
performance emerged from the work of Candace West and Don Zimmerman in their sem-
inal article “Doing Gender” published in 1987 in Gender and Society. In the paper, West
and Zimmerman argued that gender is not a “property of individuals,” rather gender is best
thought of as an individual’s stylization or “routine accomplishment” of gender “situated”
in everyday interaction (pp. 125–126). Performing one’s gender is something men and
boys have to work at constantly as the project of constructing an appropriate identity is
never complete but always in process. Indeed, queer theorists of the 1990s, including
Judith Butler (1990/1999), convincingly argued that gender is inscribed on the body
through continual performance. Butler wrote that gender was produced both within one-
self and for other people as “a stylized repetition of acts” (p. 179).
A man’s gender performance is assessed and evaluated by other men against socially
accepted norms of what it means to be a man. Other men watch, provide surveillance, and
issue the man a tentative acceptance into the realm of an assumed “acceptable” masculinity
(Martino & Pallota-Chiarolli, 2003; Mac An Ghaill, 1994). For example, world champion
marathon runner Alberto Salazar doggedly chased after running glory in the 1980s. In
Salazar’s case—he was a three-time winner of the New York City Marathon, in 1980, 1981,
and 1982—he did it in order to “prove his manhood” to his father (Brant, 2006, p. 69).
Masculinity then, is a homo-social enactment, a performance where other men, including
fathers, function as the audience. Many men and boys test themselves, perform heroic feats,
take enormous physical risks, work hard to secure enormous wealth and status, all because they
want other men and boys to grant to them an “acceptable” manhood (Kimmel, 1994, p. 129).
Understanding gender as a performative act helps to explain in part why men’s public
and private practices of gender sometimes differ radically. Some men and boys find their
actual practice of masculinity is at odds with their internal values. For instance, some men
and boys may not desire or be able to engage in aggressive physical acts to demonstrate an
“appropriate” masculinity. However they may do so in order to secure status among their
ConCLusion
North American writings on men and masculinity produced in the 1970s looked critically
at the male sex role. These early writings began to see men as explicitly gendered rather
than as innately driven to be “hard,” unemotional, and driven only by work. However,
early writings on men and masculinity did very little to advance the cause of gender equal-
ity between men and women. They failed to consider power relations, reducing issues of
gender to individual men, rather than analyzing the systemic and structural issues that
privilege men as a group over women. Moreover, the early writings on men and masculin-
ity largely assumed a white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle-class male as the norm. By
making this assumption, early writings failed to take into consideration the complexity,
fluidity, and intersection of masculinities with other significant categories such as race,
social class, able-bodiness, and sexual identity.
Later writings on men and masculinity provided a much-needed corrective to popular
writings produced by writers identifying with the men’s liberation movement. By taking into
careful consideration feminist, queer, and other critically oriented scholarship, and by under-
standing men and masculinities as plural, socially and historically constructed, and by under-
standing masculinity as performative and embodied, rather than somehow just “naturally”
one way or another, the later writings on men and masculinities provided new key insights
into the making of masculinities. Certainly, Connell’s conceptualization of masculinity as
relational between and among men has helped students of gender and gender relations under-
stand that as a culture, we come to understand what it means to be an “appropriate” man by
“setting” the definition against a group of Others, including racial minorities, differently
abled, sexual minorities, and women (Kimmel, 1999, p. 4). Unfortunately, the fear of emascu-
lation or being viewed as a sissy or gay, continues to fuel men’s active and ongoing desire to
meet hegemonic standards of masculinity. Relief from these forms of gender anxieties will
only be achieved once we begin to help men and boys understand that it is in their own best
interest and the interest of others, including those women and girls they love and care for, to
begin to dismantle hegemonic models of masculinity.
discussion Questions
1. What are some of the key differences between the early and later writings on masculinity/
masculinities?
2. Performing masculinity is demonstrated and displayed for other men in the hope of being
granted an “acceptable” masculinity. Describe examples from your own experiences
where you felt a man or a boy was working hard to construct an “appropriate” masculin-
ity for others?
3. How does the pain principle manifest itself in the everyday lives of boys and men? Give as
many examples as you can think of in relation to various social institutions that you par-
ticipate in (such as sports, health care, education, paid work, and others).
4. How has an intersectional approach to analyzing masculinities helped researchers theorize
about overlapping systems of oppression and power? Can you think of examples from
your own life in which an intersectional approach helps you to better understand a man’s
or boy’s identity?
Bibliography
Adams, M. L. (2011). Artistic impressions: Figure skating, masculinity, and the limits of sports. Toronto,
ON: University of Toronto Press.
Anderson, E. (2005). In the game: Gay athletes and the cult of masculinity. New York, NY: State
University of New York Press.
IntroductIon
In 1982, during Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons, New Democratic
Member of Parliament Margaret Mitchell asked how the government was planning to
respond to a recent report on wife abuse. She was greeted with a chorus of male laughter.
As Mitchell later recalled, “The uproarious and outrageous response by many male
MPs . . . sent shock waves across the country.” (Mitchell, 2007, p. xiii). This infamous
incident was a defining moment in the Canadian women’s movement. Today, we would
be unlikely to hear such an open public dismissal of the issue of woman abuse. Yet well
over 30 years later, the statistics do not give us reason to celebrate the end of violence
against women. Women today are 5% more likely to be targets of any violence than
men are, and 83% of that violence is perpetrated by males. Women are eleven times
more likely to be the victims of sexual assault and four times more likely to be the target
of stalking behaviour and intimate partner violence. The vast majority of violent
offences (84%) were perpetrated by a man who the woman already knew rather than a
stranger. Almost half (45%) were her husband or boyfriend (Sinha, 2013). In Canada,
violent crime has declined overall, but sexual assault rates have remained stubbornly
consistent. Statistics Canada, while reporting these figures, acknowledged that the
actual rate of crimes involving male violence against women is likely much higher due
to under-reporting (Sinha, 2013, p. 26). If we look at violence against women through
an intersectional lens, this is compounded. Immigrant women and women of colour face
particular challenges in reporting violence due to language barriers and ethnic and
racial prejudices. Women with disabilities have a rate of spousal violence that is nearly
double that of the general population (Brownridge, 2009). Indigenous women are esti-
mated to suffer from a frequency of abuse that is 2.5 times than that of the general
population (Sinha, 2013, p. 19). For those who do not conform to sexual and gender
binaries, such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and gender queer and trans people, the rela-
tionship to violence is greatly multiplied (Barrett & St. Pierre, 2013, p. 5; Grant et al.,
2011, p. 100). How can we understand this disturbing reality, and is there anything that
can be done to change it?
201
IdentIfyIng the Problem
Starting in the late 1960s, with the growth of the Second Wave of feminism, women gath-
ered to talk about the realities of their lives in what were called “consciousness-raising”
groups. They soon discovered that domestic violence, sexual harassment, and rape were
not uncommon. The early critics of men’s violence were radical feminists who saw
patriarchal society as the root cause of women’s oppression, and violence against women
as the key mechanism by which men exercised power and control over women. The critics
worked hard to bring this to public view, which was an uphill battle. Former Liberal
Member of Parliament Monique Bégin has noted that the Canadian Royal Commission
on the Status of Women, which was formed in 1967 in response to feminist pressure for
change, shied away from dealing with issues connected to violence. She later noted that
“The commission did not even identify violence towards women—physical, sexual, and
psychological—as a feminist issue” (Bégin, 1992, p. 31). Women’s access to child care,
abortion services, and workplace equality were the concerns that were considered the
appropriate mandate of the Commission. Violence was seen as a social or criminal matter
that the legal system should address. The number of charges placed and convictions
gained in crime victimization data indicated that domestic violence was a problem that
was thought to happen only in severely dysfunctional families at the lower end of the
socio-economic order. Rape was seen as a rare event that happened in dark alleyways
where predators lurked. Sensible middle-class women who stayed away from dangerous
places, it was assumed, were not likely to be victimized. The Commission was criticized by
many feminists who felt that the final recommendations did not adequately challenge
such stereotypes or address questions of violence against women.
Unwilling to simply wait for government action, feminists moved forward to address
woman abuse issues directly. In 1972 the first shelters for battered women and rape crisis
centres were opened across Canada. They fought hard for government funding, which was
eventually granted reluctantly, but their financial viability was precarious (Janovicek,
2007, p. 5). One of the recommendations of the 1970 Commission Report was the
establishment of the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. In 1980,
responding to persistent pressure from the women’s movement, the Council published a
study by Linda MacLeod, Wife Battering in Canada: The Vicious Cycle. This was the report
that Margaret Mitchell had referred to in Parliament. MacLeod worked closely with bat-
tered women’s shelters to obtain information about the women who used their services.
Extrapolating from their records, she concluded that a conservative estimate of the pro-
portion of Canadian women abused every year by their male partners was 10% (MacLeod,
1980, p. 21). Seven years later an update was published, also relying heavily on data from
shelters. McLeod pointed to several advances since her last report, including a new law
passed in 1983 that made it illegal for a husband to rape his wife. Formerly consent to sex
was considered to be part of marriage. She also noted the ever-increasing number of
shelters, which had tripled to 264 across Canada, as well as the corresponding increase in
the number of women who used their services (MacLeod, 1987, p. 113).
The CTS has been criticized for failing to provide the context, intentions, or meanings
needed to provide accurate interpretations, for equating less severe acts with more vio-
lent ones, for equating a single act with chronic on-going violence meant to terrorize,
for leaving out sexual assault and violence after separation, for failing to distinguish
between offensive and defensive acts, and for ignoring gendered power imbalances in
intimate relations and society more generally. (Johnson & Dawson, 2011, pp. 55–56)
Some 65 per cent of the women were assaulted more than once, and 26 per cent
reported being assaulted more than 10 times. Forty per cent of women compared to
13 per cent of men reported being physically injured as a result of the violence in the
five years preceding the interview and women were five times more likely to require
medical attention as a result of the violence. Four out of ten women are afraid for their
lives, as compared to one out of ten men. (Jiwani, 2002, p. 68)
By 2012, the results were very similar, with very nearly equal rates of 6% for both men
and women. However the same pattern of women experiencing more severe forms of
assault, being almost four times more likely to report to police and more likely to suffer
from chronic abuse, still held true (Status of Women Canada, 2013). If violence against
women in intimate partner relationships is truly decreasing, this is a positive sign, but the
idea that there might be parity is inconsistent with what we know from other areas of
gender-based violence. As Johnson and Dawson have noted, “Given that there are no
other situations in which women and men are equally violent, it would be very surprising
indeed if women were violent on par with men in intimate relationships and no others”
(Johnson & Dawson, 2011, p. 57).
Despite the assertions that men also suffer from domestic violence, there has yet to be
any demand to have shelters established for them. Fortunately, despite government cutbacks
and years of uncertain funding, the numbers of shelters for women has continued to grow.
In 2010, there were 593 across Canada that had over 46 500 admissions in the previous
year. Most of these abused women (60%) had not contacted the police ( Burczycka &
Cotter, 2011, p. 5). In a study of Canadian women’s help-seeking behaviour in response to
intimate partner violence, it was found that only 11% went to shelters, although 66%
sought out some and often multiple types of formal support. Some contacted counsellors
(39%), police or court based services (6%), crisis lines or centres (17.3%), community
centres (15.5%), or women’s centres (11.2%). Despite the fact that the Canadian
government had adopted a comprehensive plan for gender equality in 1995, there has been
little fiscal commitment to coordinating and stabilizing this patchwork of services. It is not
surprising that most women who have been abused seek less formal channels of support
such as family (66.5%), friends or neighbours (66.5%), co-workers (27.8%), and religious
or spiritual advisors (11.5%) (Barret & St. Pierre, 2011, p. 57). For those dedicated workers
who provide essential crisis support with uncertain funding to those suffering from violent
partners, the task can be extremely stressful. Its effects have been called “vicarious trauma”
or “compassion fatigue.” Stephanie Martin, a Toronto psychologist, has pointed out,
“Canadian frontline anti-violence respondents literally bear witness, on a daily basis, to the
pain and suffering experienced by the victims of woman abuse.” She calls for “anti-violence
advocates, agency administrators, and policy-makers to prioritize the welfare of frontline
anti-violence responders as an important aspect of our collective effort to eradicate woman
abuse in Canada” (Martin, 2006, p. 11).
sexual harassment
The types of sexual harassment that women experience vary greatly. In the wake of relation-
ship break-ups, some women are stalked, threatened, or experience violence. This is called
criminal harassment and is against the law. Bothersome but still frightening behaviours can
include stalking on social media, harassing texts and phone calls, following or showing up in
the same public places, and making threats. These may skirt the edges of illegal behaviour,
but it is possible to obtain a restraining order to prevent the offender from coming into con-
tact with his target. However, as noted earlier, restraining orders have little practical effect
and mainly serve as a deterrent. Of the violent offences that women reported in 2011 to
The Committee noted that this negative atmosphere was particularly accentuated when
the workplace was a male-dominated one (Le Blanc, 2014, pp. 57–58). Particularly notorious
are the military and the legal professions (Gill & Febbraro, 2013; Leskinen et al., 2011).
Canada’s federal parliament is also a well-known location for sexual harassment, both in
Margaret Mitchell’s time and today (Ditchburn, 2014). Ironically, having very few complaints
filed does not mean that a workplace is harassment-free, but may indicate the opposite. It may
be that women are afraid to come forward. A workspace where many complaints are filed may
correspondingly indicate a more open and gender-sensitive atmosphere. Experiencing sexual
harassment is psychologically traumatic for the victim. It may cause her to become
apprehensive and fearful, undermine her confidence in her work, and cause her stress and ill
health. This in turn may negatively affect her work performance (Cortina & Berdahl, 2008).
Of course, not all harassing behaviour happens in the workplace. In the VAWS, 89% of
the respondents had experienced some form of sexual harassment in their lifetime (Johnson,
1996, p. 70). Women experience harassment in the streets; from landlords, police, and other
officials; and in all levels of school. One study of high school students in grades 9 to 11 found
that 46% of the girls had experienced sexual harassment (Wolfe & Chiodo, 2008, p. 3).
One Canadian study on help-seeking behaviours of women who have been subjected
to intimate partner violence indicated that women of colour faced “unique barriers” to
seeking help. “Common deterrents to service utilization” included “a perceived lack of
cultural sensitivity and inaccessibility of services, social isolation, distrust of service pro-
viders, and lack of specialized services” (Barrett & St. Pierre, 2013, p. 48). When inter-
viewing women who had reported their partners to the police, one study reported that
“not one woman of colour reported positive experiences within the legal-judicial system,
indicating that racist stereotypes and cultural barriers were in play” (Barrett & St. Pierre,
2013, p. 1163). If all women are seen as potentially inviting sexual assault, women of
colour are doubly so. Popular racial stereotypes portray women of other races as “exotic”
and more animalistic. They are seen as less reliable witnesses and their testimony is given
less weight. They do not fit the image of the stereotypical innocent victim to the police or
in court (Pietsch, 2009/10). Very often, they also do not fit the image of the innocent
“battered woman” (Goodmark, 2008) or the violence is seen to come from “the pathology
of particular cultural traditions” and thus is minimized (Jiwani, 2006, p. 106).
Immigrant women also experience obstacles in seeking help. Researchers who inter-
viewed immigrant women in Toronto found they “faced additional linguistic and cultural
barriers that prevented them from contacting the police. They often did not have access
to sufficient legal information and were unable to communicate their situations to
English-speaking police officers” (Gillis et al., 2006, p. 1158). Many were unfamiliar with
Canadian laws and what their rights were. “Some immigrant women believed that involv-
ing the police in domestic disputes could risk deportation of themselves and their partner”
(Gillis et al., 2006, p. 1152). Immigrant women are also vulnerable to violence from their
Canadian employers, since leaving a bad work situation may result in deportation. The
live-in-caregiver provision that allows women to enter the country on work visas requires
that they continue to be employed to stay in the country.
One particularly vulnerable Canadian group is Aboriginal women. In 2009, the GSS
reported that Aboriginal women had a rate of violence that was 2.5 times that of the gen-
eral population (Sinha, 2013, p. 19). In cases of spousal violence, more were likely to suffer
severe injuries than the non-Aboriginal population (59% to 41%) and to fear for their lives
(52% to 31%). “According to the 2011 Homicide Survey, between 2001 and 2011, at least
8% of all murdered women aged 15 years of age and older were Aboriginal, double their
representation in the Canadian population (4%)” (Status of Women Canada, 2013). These
figures do not include the high number of missing Indigenous women whose fate may never
be known. In 2005, The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) received
$10 million in funding over five years from the federal government to investigate this
issue. This was known as the Sisters in Spirit initiative. They developed a database of over
The 2009 GSS indicates that women who self-identified as lesbian or bisexual were
significantly more likely than heterosexual women to report violence by a current or
previous spouse in the previous five years (20.8% versus 6.1%). . . . It should be noted
that the sex of the abusive spouse was not asked; therefore, the prevalence rates for les-
bian or bisexual women could include some opposite-sex spouses. (Sinha, 2013, p. 59)
Barrett and St. Pierre note that a 2011 American National Violence Against Women
Survey found that bisexual women were most likely to be victimized by their opposite-sex
partners, but warn against applying a heteronormative model to these relationships, that
is, assuming that their experience is just like that of heterosexual women (Barrett &
St. Pierre, 2013, pp. 17–18). The higher rate of violence experienced by bisexual women
is not just because they are women in a patriarchal society. It is also because their bisexu-
ality challenges the dominant heterosexual norm. As with other forms of intersectional-
ity, it increases their vulnerability to relationship violence. The same has been observed of
transsexual persons. An American survey found that:
A recent large Canadian internet survey on IPV found that just under 30% of those
who did not identify as heterosexual were being abused in current relationships, although
further details on their sexual identity were not provided (Wathen et al., 2014, p. 5).
discussion Questions
1. How does the intersection of oppressions based on factors such as ability, gender, race,
class, ethnicity. and sexual identity affect gender-based violence?
2. What are “rape myths”? How do they disadvantage women of many different
backgrounds?
3. What is “slut-shaming”? How have different groups of women responded to this problem?
4. Why do some women stay in violent relationships? What would allow them to leave?
5. What actions have been undertaken by feminists to end violence against women?
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Violence, Achieving Equality Ending The Final Report of the Canadian Panel on Violence Against
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Barrett, B. J., & St. Pierre, M. (2011). Variations in women’s help-seeking in response to intimate
partner violence: Findings from a Canadian population-based study. Violence Against Women,
17(1), 57.
Feminists have long been aware of ageism in their ranks. Barbara Macdonald, an
American radical feminist of the second wave, first identified the problem of ageism in
feminism. During a “Take Back the Night” march to end violence against women, one of
the young feminist activists organizing the event asked Macdonald if she would be able to
keep up with the other marchers. Enraged, Macdonald later reflected on her anger and
concluded that for years she had put up with discrimination because she was a woman,
only to find she now had to put up with discrimination from other women because she was
old (Macdonald & Rich, 1991).
229
Feminists contribute to ageism by perpetuating a false dichotomy between the young
and the old. A 20-year-old woman is frequently described as energetic, vigorous, strong,
and resourceful while a 60-year-old woman is more likely to be characterized as tired,
weak, feeble, and ineffective. The former describes qualities ascribed to the powerful while
the latter are those traits associated with the powerless. Given that the most sought-after
and desirable women are those between ages 25 and 35, the farther we drift along the life
course from this standard, the less desirable we become as women. Look at who makes the
red carpet on movie, television, and music award nights and you quickly see the prefer-
ence for youth or, at least, a youthful facsimile (Freixas, et al., 2012, p. 54).
By seeing young/old as binary opposites, we see how the young get their meaning and
power from what they are not, namely old (Bennet & Gaines, 2010). It is also easy to see
why young women often side with patriarchy and male privilege since both of these struc-
tures imbue youth with feelings of power: a fleeting, but intoxicating, feeling and status
that lasts as long as women remain literally young.
As women begin to approach the age of 40, the first twinges of anxiety often emerge and
age management techniques take hold of many women’s time and resources. By 50, women
have begun to see themselves as “mature.” By 60, women know they are being socially
defined as the “young old” in contrast to the “old” (75 to 90) and the “frail elderly” (over 90).
Attempts to avoid ageism are generally futile. Young or old, the mandate for women
is to remain small and subjugated. The belittling term “little” is applied from their earliest
years as “little girls” until their oldest years as “little old ladies” (Reinharz, 1997, p. 84).
Gender-specific discriminatory attitudes and behaviours are always present, even if young
women feel momentarily powerful.
In this chapter we look at how ageism structures women’s paid and unpaid work and
their embodiment of age. Feminism seeks to increase women’s involvement in societal
decision-making, empower women, recognize their intrinsic value, increase their self-
esteem and quality of life, and protect their right to equal treatment. Ageism has made it
difficult for all women to achieve these goals. Women can begin to confront ageism by
unlearning their own biases and addressing the absence of age in so much feminist analysis
(Mandell, Wilson, & Duffy, 2008; Ray, 2006).
TransnaTional seniors
Although most senior migrants age in place, Canada is also home to a second type of
migrant senior: those who move to Canada, either permanently or for part of each year, as
a senior. Globalization has precipitated this new category of the mobile aging migrant
who follows the migration paths of their adult children in order to live with them or close
by (Mandell et al., 2015). Recent data indicate that about 5% of seniors aged 65 and over
lived with relatives in 2011—79% of women and 3% of men. About 7% of senior women
and 2% of senior men live as lone parents with adult children who have no spouse, part-
ner, or children while about 2% of senior men and women live with non-relatives such as
a roommate (Milan, et al., 2014; Statistics Canada, 2012b).
Migrant seniors play a significant role in the lives of their adult children and grand-
children providing crucial financial, care, and emotional support for adult children and
grandchildren. Most report gratitude to Canada for providing them with homes, pleasure
aging: embodimenT
Our examination of paid and care work highlights the importance of the material in struc-
turing the lives of old women. However, age is more than the sum total of material condi-
tions. Age arises from the recursive interaction between structure, culture, and agency. In
this view, age is less a biological prescription—years lived—than a social and cultural
inscription. Aging is not a “natural” process but occurs within culture and history. It is
through our involvement in culture that we give age meaning. Media images, representa-
tions, symbols, and metaphors offer important cultural descriptions from which women
construct identities of aging.
Age is a key way in which women perform or accomplish gender. Like gender, age is
not a property of individuals but rather a socially prescribed relationship, a process, and a
conclUsion
In this chapter, we have looked at the material and social effects of the double standard of
aging and the ways in which ageism is embodied. Why is it that men are “allowed” to age
naturally without social penalties but the aging female body arouses revulsion? As
Reinharz (1986 to 1997) reminds us, the double standard is more than a matter of aesthet-
ics; it is the beginning of a whole set of oppressive structures that keep women in their
place. And as women age, the gap between men and women, young and old, widens.
The development of feminism and ageism owes a huge debt of gratitude to disability
studies (Overall, 2006). Disability, like age, is socially and materially constructed. This
does not deny the reality of the aging body, but says that how we define it is socially
constructed. Positive definitions of aging seem to have disappeared historically just at a
time when women gained the possibility of achieving social capital by way of their own
personal and professional development. The energy women could have used to affect their
lower status and dependency has been re-channeled into worries about aging—worries for
which the consumer economy offered resources such as makeup, surgery, and fashion
discussion Questions
1. An aging o u ation tsuna i is about to hit anada. hat ar th a or socia issu s
g n rat d b this d ogra hic nt and h is it articu ar r ant to o n.
2. onsid r th a s in hich o d r o n ar i act d b oth r id ntiti s such as i i-
grant status, rac thnicit , socia c ass, and s ua id ntit
3. ritica a in t o i s about aging. hat i ag s o o d o n ar ortra d o is
ag r or d Ar th di rsiti s int rs ctiona iti s in o d r o n s id ntiti s r s nt d
4. hat t s o car or do o d r o n r or and h o do s this ar b i i-
grant status, rac thnicit , socia c ass, and s ua id ntit
IntroductIon
Since the mid-20th century, there have been significant and observable changes in the
market and family care relations of Canadian families. Women have entered the labour
force in ever-increasing numbers and are combining paid work with raising and caring for
children, either with a partner or alone. Canadian families are also increasingly racially/
ethnically heterogeneous. This diversity is reflected in differences in women’s labour mar-
ket participation and provisions of caregiving and is linked to changes in immigration
policy. In addition, ever-growing awareness of the market and family care relations of les-
bian and gay couples has coalesced with the legalization of their marriages in 2005, greater
recognition of their reproductive rights, and entitlement to social programs and benefits
(e.g., pension and health benefits) associated with maintaining families. Finally, for all
families, there is the pressing economic need for all adult earners to be involved in some
form of labour market attachment.
Intricately related to many of these changes is the neo-liberal weakening of the
Canadian welfare state. As both an economic doctrine and a political ideology (Hartman,
2005), a neo-liberal agenda demands governments’ increasing openness to national and
international market competition and the reduced role of the state in individuals’ lives.
Since the 1980s, governments have spent less on social programs and more greatly prioritized
individuals’ responsibility for their own and their family’s social and economic well-being.
For example, core social policies and programs that provide much needed income support to
families, such as social assistance (or welfare) and Employment Insurance (EI) have been
scaled back. Families therefore have a much weaker safety net to turn to in times of need.
In the contemporary political economy, the way mothers maintain their families,
including their dependent children, through their market and family care relations is a
challenge. In addition to their participation in paid work, mothers who share parenting
with male partners continue to perform the bulk of domestic labour and manage their
child care needs with limited state support to do so. Regardless of the family structure,
mothers’ disproportional engagement in gender-segregated employment accompanied by
256
few benefits (e.g., paid leaves, and health and dental coverage) translates into fewer
resources to provide for their own and their children’s income security. This is particularly
problematic for lone mothers, who must often stretch limited resources to meet food, shel-
ter, transportation, and child-care demands. Bringing all of these trends together, it is
apparent that mothers experience a complex state-family-market nexus in the organiza-
tion of their daily lives. Mothers’ maintenance of families by participating in the labour
market and providing care—and juggling both—is indeed the stuff of feminist concern.
In this chapter, I take these changes in Canadian families as our starting point. I focus
on how families—in whatever shape or form—are maintained through mothers’
engagement in and managing of market and family care relations. Whereas I use the term
“market relations” to refer to the structure of the labour market and mothers’ paid work
experiences, “family care relations” encompasses the caregiving relationships mothers
have with their children and other family members. In this chapter, I specifically outline
mothers’ contemporary labour market and child-care experiences, the challenges associated
with these, and the strategies mothers adopt to manage them. I also show how the state,
via federal and provincial social policies and programs, intersects with mothers’ market
and family care relations. In doing so, I assume a focus on mothers who engage in paid and
unpaid work. I resist focusing on only heterosexual mothers who are part of white, middle/
upper-class, nuclear families with children and instead adopt a more inclusive definition of
the family, drawing attention to mothers of varying sexuality and race/ethnicity and how
they engage in similar or different ways of maintaining families. I focus primarily on
Canadian mothers, but where national scholarship is limited, I draw upon literature from
other “liberal welfare states,” such as the United States, that share with Canada these
changes in market and family care relations and lesser state responsibility for citizens (see
also Baker, 2006; Esping-Andersen, 1990). This chapter unfolds with a brief review of
some of the ways feminists have understood the connections between women’s participation
in paid and unpaid work, including housework and child care.
1
Source: Marshall (2006, p. 5), using data from the 1986 and 2005 General Social Surveys.
2
Numbers may not add up due to rounding.
1 hour a day doing housework in 1986, Generation Y men spent 1 hour and 30 minutes in
2010. What is interesting about this data is that the number of minutes spent in housework
differs by only about a half hour, whether an increase or decrease. Further, Marshall (2011)
observes that the presence of children had no significant effect on men’s time in paid work
whereas it significantly lowered the hours of paid work for women. In essence, while men
in nuclear families may have increased their time helping around the home, they have not
necessarily shifted their orientation to paid work as their primary responsibility.
Feminist scholars have devoted considerable energy to offering explanations for the
unequal amounts of paid and unpaid work performed in nuclear families, especially given
women’s increased labour force participation. For example, many scholars point to women’s
greater family responsibilities or gendered workplace structures (e.g., glass ceilings) as
contributing to their less than equal experiences compared to men (see, e.g., Cotter,
Hermsen, Ovadia, & Vanneman, 2001). Other scholars argue that the gendered division of
paid and unpaid work is linked to stereotypical distinctions between the types of work
women and men perform as well as women’s and men’s “doing” of gender in everyday
1
s P c
Federal
Medicare
Employment Insurance
Maternity and Parental Leave
Compassionate Care Benefit
Canada Child Tax Benefit
National Child Benefit Supplement
Child Disability Benefit
concluSIon
This chapter began with a brief overview of how feminist scholars have devoted
considerable attention to how mothers manage their family’s economic and social well-
being through an intricate juggling of labour market participation and provisions of
care to all members. The contemporary labour market experiences of mothers were
shown to not equal those of men, reflecting structural and discriminatory barriers in
workplaces and policies that inhibit their labour market participation, as well as
mothers’ choices about meeting their families’ care needs. Mothers’ experiences of a
time crunch, overload, interference, and stress were strongly linked to their unequal
responsibilities for meeting market and family care demands. The challenges mothers
face vary with their race/ethnicity or sexuality and can be further exacerbated by low-
income and ideological expectations of nurturing and caregiving, in addition to
available employment, weak state support, and their own choices. Furthermore, some
of the coping strategies mothers use to juggle demands and alleviate conflict may have
the desired impact of relieving time pressure, while other strategies may have
problematic implications, such as perpetuating gender roles in two-parent families or
denying mothering to domestic workers who are part of transnational families. Still
other policy-endorsed strategies, such as mothers’ entitlement to parental leave, reveal
how state support is not adequately available to all.
To conclude, I have used a feminist political economy lens in this chapter to high-
light how mothers’ maintenance of families through their market and family care relations
is related to the unequal structural conditions that characterize workplaces in the capital-
ist labour market and the constraints imposed by social policy subject to a neo-liberal
agenda. I also showed how mothers’ maintenance of families is linked to their own choices
and opportunities in light of these social, political, and economic forces that affect their
everyday material realities. Clearly, a state-family-market nexus informs and shapes labour
market and family care relations—relations that are predominantly maintained and man-
aged by mothers and thus continue to be of feminist concern.
d
1. What is one way in which each feminist perspective reviewed in this chapter has been
concerned with women’s experiences of inequality in their market and family care rela-
tions, compared to men’s (and other women’s)? Which perspective do you think best
explains this inequality?
2. How do gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and class intersect to influence women’s and
men’s experiences within the Canadian labour market and of work-family conflict?
3. How are the strategies used to balance work and family demands by lesbian mothers dif-
ferent than those adopted by mothers in heterosexual unions? Could the strategies used
by lesbian mothers be the basis for a more equitable work-family balance model adopted
by mothers in heterosexual unions?
4. In what ways has the Canadian state worsened or facilitated mothers’ and fathers’
negotiation of their market and family care relations?
IntroductIon
In this chapter I challenge the prevailing discourse of education as the great equalizer. Despite
our best attempts to ensure equity, schooling continues to display gendered, raced, and classed
practices that have both material and social effects. Schools, through their organization,
interactions, and curricular materials, are engaged in the work of re/producing and regulating
particular normative constructions of masculinity and femininity that are associated with
middle-class, heterosexual, white bodies. Both the organization of schooling and people’s
experiences of schooling demonstrate that the privileging of masculinity, which is generally
afforded an advantaged social position over femininity, continues to afford men and boys with
social capital, earnings, and so forth. Through a hidden curriculum, girls still learn that they are
not as important as boys, which can affect girls’ self-esteem and occupational aspirations. Further,
women are graduating in increasing numbers with university degrees, yet this does not seem
to translate into wide occupational rewards as women still earn less than their male counterparts
(with comparable levels of education) and are not well represented in the top positions of
power hierarchies. Gender inequality, as it intersects with race, class, and sexuality, persists.
This chapter explores gender, race, and class in relation to both lower and higher
education, predominantly focusing on Canada. First, I trace the history of the gender debate in
education, beginning with a brief overview of feminist perspectives on education. I show how
gender is a persistent concern for educators. Then I turn to the contemporary situation and
examine what happens in schools today at both lower and higher education levels. I explore
the differential treatment and experiences of girls/women and boys/men as students, teachers,
and faculty at the elementary, secondary, and university level. Also examined are contemporary
preoccupations and emerging areas in gender education research: the so-called crisis for boys,
intersections of race and gender in schools, sexuality and schooling, and the corporatization of
higher education. The development of women’s studies and feminism in the academy is also
considered alongside a brief discussion of feminist pedagogies.
HIstorIcal Background
The preoccupations of researchers in the field of gender research in education have
shifted. Early work in the 1970s focused on sex roles. Social relationships were seen as tied
to biological differences between men/boys and women/girls. Feminist work critiqued the
284
socializing role of schools as promoting behaviour that conformed to essentialist notions
of gender distinctions (Dillabough, 2006). Critiques were launched against patriarchal
language used in textbooks and calls for the equal representation of girls and women in
both curriculum and the education profession itself arose (Dillabough, 2006). This early
work relied on a liberal feminist framework that assumed cognizance of injustices in the
educational system was sufficient motivation to engender change (Reynolds, 2001).
Wanting to expand the liberal feminist framework, British feminist scholars of sociol-
ogy and education sought to highlight “larger, macro-questions of structure and their role
in shaping gender relations as a historically grounded set of gender relations and codes”
(Dillabough, 2006, p. 49). In this approach, which came to be known as feminist repro-
duction theory, schools were understood as sites for both possibilities and limits for the
“democratization of gender relations” (Dillabough, 2006, p. 49). In other words, schools
are sites where changes can be enacted and realized.
A more culturally oriented concern emerged in the 1990s when gender education
research began to explore how culture, discourse, and identity intersect with macro con-
cerns about men’s and women’s positions in education (Dillabough, 2006). In addition to
critiques about the sex/gender distinction, researchers are critical of “singular or binary
notions of gender identity as they have been expressed through schooling” (Dillabough,
2006, p. 53). One strand of this critique aims to disrupt the notion that there are singular
categories of “girl” or “boy” (Arnot & Dillabough, 1999); multiple femininities and mas-
culinities exist in our classrooms at any given time. Another critical strand aims to under-
stand how colonialism, culture, race, and gender intersect for youth identity formation
(Dillabough, 2006). Someone working in this area might, for example, be concerned with
how colonialist and racialized discourses shape students’ subjectivities.
Contemporary feminist approaches to theorizing gender and education remain diverse.
We continue to see the enduring relevance of feminist reproduction theory as well as the
significant increase of studies influenced by poststructuralist and culturalist approaches to
the field of gender and education (Dillabough, 2006). This chapter uses a poststructuralist
approach in that it deconstructs the prevailing discourse of education as the great equalizer.
lower educatIon
In this section, I explore the ways in which lower education is gendered, racialized, and classed.
By examining schooling practices—including teachers’ behaviour and expectations, parental
behaviour and expectations, and curricular materials—I show how students remain schooled
in gendered practices despite widespread acceptance of the importance of gender equality.
students
differential treatment Historically, Canadian educational institutions were
organized to prepare boys and girls for particular societal roles (Davies & Guppy, 2006). In
the mid-1800s, citizens were encouraged to commit new tax monies for compulsory
schooling for girls and boys. Education leaders lobbied the public on a platform of needing
a common moral education. This “common” education was not, however, to be understood
as the “same” education (Davies & Guppy, 2006). Even though schooling for students in
the early years was similar, by age 10 boys were directed to vocational training and higher
education in preparation for the labour market and girls were streamed into domestic
science courses (Davies & Guppy, 2006).
Even though boys and girls attended the same schools, they were often segregated
within those schools. There were separate entrances and separate playgrounds (often with a
curriculum As early as 1970, the Royal Commission on the Status of Women took
up the issue of gendered practices within schools. By examining the curricular materials
used in Canadian schools to teach reading, mathematics, and social studies, the
Commission argued:
The commission offered a liberal feminist critique of gendered schooling—boys and girls
are being treated differently—and a liberal feminist solution—treat them the same. Following
the commission’s report, numerous studies examined curricular materials and noted the
virtual absence of women and girls (Gaskell, 1977; Gaskell, McLaren, & Novogrodsky,
1989). When present, women and girls were constructed traditionally as mothers who baked
cookies or girls who played with dolls. Boys were subject to equally sexist treatment as active
and powerful people, playing sports while their fathers worked outside of the home, preferably
as educated professionals (Gaskell, McLaren, & Novogrodsky, 1989). Clearly, liberal
feminists argued, sexist images prevailed.
As a result of feminist agitation around sexist curricular materials, guidelines were
developed to create non-sexist materials. Has this intervention been successful? More
diverse gender images are present in contemporary materials; however, a study 20 years
ago by the Ontario federation of women teachers argued that many problematic images
remain (Federation of Women Teachers Associations of Ontario, 1988). The authors of the
study argued that school materials need to portray an idealistic world, free from gender
segregation, such that children are able to imagine a future for themselves full of possibility
(Federation of Women Teachers Associations of Ontario, 1988; Gaskell, McLaren, &
Novogrodsky, 1989). Gaskell, McLaren, and Novogrodsky (1989, p. 38) argue that
textbooks should not go to an extreme where children are only exposed to “androgynous
superpeople” but rather there should be a balance of images. An inclusive approach should
contemporary research
crisis for Boys? Are girls outperforming boys? Some critics argue that there is
widespread male underachievement in schooling. What do the Canadian statistics tell us?
Every three years, Canadian students take part in the Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) (run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,
OECD). “PISA is designed to provide policy-oriented international indicators of the skills
and knowledge of 15-year-old students” (Bussière, Knighton, & Pennock, 2007, p. 9).
The phenomenon of school achievement gaps between boys and girls exists only in
industrialized countries, where there are co-educational and democratic public educa-
tion systems that give girls (and children who do not come from well-to-do families)
access to the same education as boys (and the well-to-do). In the past, each gender
received differentiated—and hierarchical—training in different venues. For the first
time, it is now possible to compare boys and girls enrolled in the same school programs.
Kimmel directs us not to see feminism as the root of boys’ “problems”; rather he wants
us to see that feminism can help us address male entitlement in such a way that we can
“confront racism, sexism and homophobia—both in our communities and in ourselves”
(Kimmel, 1999, p. 90, as cited by Reynolds, 2001, p. 247). The current debate about boys
is really about “restabilizing power and authority that . . . has never actually been unseated”
(Kehler, 2007, p. 261).
Intersections of race and gender Many scholars are undertaking research that
recognizes the simultaneity of race and gender in the area of education. These researchers
argue that education continues to be a site for reproducing racialized notions of gender
(Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler, 2005; Codjoe, 2001; Kenny, 2002; Rollock, 2007; Youdell, 2003).
In her review essay, Phoenix (2001) presents results from numerous studies docu-
menting educational performance in the U.K. by ethnicity. Bangladeshi, Pakistani, and
Black Caribbean students are the most poorly performing groups, although girls from these
minority groups fare better than the boys (Phoenix, 2001). As stated earlier, Chinese girls
and boys are the highest achieving subgroups in the U.K. (Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler,
2005). In one Canadian study, Jun Li (2004) shows how parental expectations by Chinese
immigrants strongly affect their children’s school achievements. There is also much evi-
dence documenting “a positive relationship between parental expectations and children’s
school achievement” among Asian immigrants in North America (Li, 2004, p. 167).
Several researchers (Codjoe, 2001; Dei, 1997, 2008; Phoenix, 2001) argue that students
from racialized groups are treated differentially from white students, and that students
themselves actively contribute to reproducing gendered and racialized disadvantage.
sexuality and schooling Researchers are finally turning their attention to how
schools work to reproduce gendered sexualities. A main focus in this area examines how
schools (through both social and curricular practices) are heterosexualized institutional
spaces. Further, schools’ assumed heterosexuality often goes unchallenged.
Louisa Allen’s 2007 research in New Zealand schools demonstrates how schools both
produce and regulate students’ sexual identities. Allen points to the “official culture” of
schools as a discursive strategy for producing students as “non-sexual.” Allen traces how a
discourse of sexual “risk” and an absent discourse of desire in sexual education simultane-
ously produce students in contradictory ways as both “childlike” and as “sexual decision
makers” (Allen, 2007, p. 231). Allen encourages schools to change their official culture such
that student sexuality is understood as “legitimate and positive.” Understanding students’
sexuality in this way “may open up more spaces for young people to be the kinds of sexual
subjects desired by the Health and Physical Education curriculum” (Allen, 2007, p. 232).
Michael Kehler’s research on young men in Canadian high schools demonstrates that
male students are expected to perform a “coherent heterosexual masculinity” (Kehler,
2007, p. 262). Those youth who attempt to resist practices associated with masculine het-
eronormativity often find themselves cast to the periphery—subject to homophobic
taunts. Kehler argues that as a result of such practices, young men avoid developing close
friendships with other male youths for fear of being labelled homosexual.
HIgHer educatIon
We now shift our attention to higher education, which also remains gendered, racialized,
and classed. Women are graduating with university degrees in increasing numbers, yet this
has not yet translated into wide occupational rewards as women continue to earn less than
men (with comparable education) and are not well represented in the top positions of
power hierarchies in their respective fields (Abbott, Wallace, & Tyler, 2005; Hogan,
Perucci, & Behringer, 2005; Mandell & Crysdale, 1993). Despite popular sentiment, edu-
cation does not appear to be the great equalizer.
In this part of the chapter I look at contemporary trends in student enrolment and
the professoriate as well as people’s experiences of higher education. I then turn to address
the development of women’s studies and feminist pedagogies in the academy, which both
spatially and practically challenge the masculinism of the university. Lastly, I examine the
rise of the McUniversity and how such corporate challenges are problematic for women
and feminism on campus.
The field of women’s studies is now firmly entrenched in Canadian universities, with
over 40 institutions across the country offering programs or housing women’s studies
institutes. Around the globe, there are over 700 women’s studies programs, departments,
institutes, and/or research centres (Korenman, 2007).
Women’s studies is not a static monolith; rather, vigorous debate among feminists
pushes its boundaries and landscape (HCWSC, 2005). We have seen how women students
and faculty of colour, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans* people have criticized feminist
Feminist Pedagogies
The impetus for addressing the importance of pedagogical practices came not from theo-
retical deliberations on feminism (or education or teaching) but from practical concerns
of both feminist academics and schoolteachers who wanted strategies to be able to attend
to gender, as well as other equity issues, in their classrooms (Weiner, 2006). Interest in
feminist pedagogy surfaced from a dissatisfaction with masculinist schools and universities
as well as dissatisfaction with non-existent analysis of gender in pedagogic theory (Luke &
Gore, 1992; Weiner, 2006).
Building on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy as developed in The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (Freire, 1972), feminist pedagogies revolve around intentions to understand
and make visible gender relations/gender oppression (also, as connected to race, class,
sexuality, and so forth), value the realm of experience, be aware of and attempt to recon-
struct power relations in classrooms, interrogate the status quo, and engender social
change/social transformation (Bignell, 1996; Briskin, 1994; Fisher, 2001; hooks, 1988;
Hornosty, 2004; Lewis, 2012; Morley, 2001; Pereira, 2012; Rinehart, 2002; Welch, 2002).
In her work on queer pedagogy, Deborah Britzman (1995; 2012) calls for pedagogies that
go beyond binary constructions of “the tolerant and the tolerated and the oppressed and
the oppressor” (Britzman, 1995, p. 164) in order to have pedagogies that make “all bodies
matter” (p. 165). Such an approach requires an engagement with “difference as the
grounds of politicality and community” (Britzman, 1995, p. 152).
Feminist pedagogies are not above criticism. One of the core tenets of feminist
approaches to teaching is the inclusion of personal experience in the classroom (of both
faculty/teacher and student) (Briskin, 1994; Welch, 1994). Yet in these prescriptive writ-
ings, the use of experience is rarely troubled; there is rarely a discussion that takes up how
expressions of experience are discursively constructed (Webber, 2006b). Another goal of
many feminist pedagogues is to create “safe” and “respectful” classroom spaces (Lewis,
1992; Shrewsbury, 1998). While a laudable goal, classrooms “like all social spaces are
imbued with spoken and unspoken assumptions about sexuality, gender and ‘race’” (Nairn,
ConClUsion
Education in Canada and elsewhere is gendered, racialized, and classed. Through differen-
tial experiences (based on interactions with teachers, administrators, and curricular mate-
rials), girls still learn that they are not as important as boys. Girls and boys learn to conform
to the desired dominant forms of femininity and masculinity or risk marginalization.
Rather than education acting as the great equalizer for girls/boys/women/men, schools
(through their organization, interactions, and curricular materials) re/produce and
regulate particular normative constructions of masculinity and femininity that are
discussion Questions
1. In your own institution, find out the gender enrolment breakdown by discipline. Does this
breakdown reflect national statistics? How does it vary? What might account for variations?
2. What is the educational history of the women in your family (sister/s, mother, aunt/s,
grandmother/s, great grandmother/s)? Are their educational experiences likely to be simi-
lar or different from your own? In what ways?
3. Does your institution have a women’s studies program? How is it viewed on campus? Do you
have a Gender Issues Office or a Diversity Office? What kinds of initiatives does this office
undertake? If your campus does not have such an office, how might you go about lobbying
for such an office? Why should administrators support such an endeavour on your campus?
4. Think back to your elementary and secondary schooling. Can you name instances where
there was overt differential treatment of girls and boys? Can you reflect on subtle ways
that gender operated in your schools?
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IntroductIon
Feminism and health are inexorably linked. Historically, feminist movements have
grappled with diverse views on women’s health, health care, health policy, sexuality, and
the role that medicine (particularly biomedicine) plays in women’s lives. Even when they
disagree about the movement’s goals, values, ideologies, and strategies, feminists are
united in their attempts to understand how gender and sex are implicated in our under-
standing and treatment of women’s health. Moreover, many feminists recognize that social
constructions of race and class intersect with other social determinants of health to con-
tribute to different health outcomes for women around the globe.
This chapter examines the intersection of feminism and health. It defines “health”
and examines social determinants of health—emphasizing the role social environments
play in generating and maintaining health, and the connections between oppression and
health. The theory of intersectionality demonstrates how identities and lived experiences
intersect to create both inequity and opportunities (Cho, Williams Crenshaw, & McCall,
2013). We argue that race is a social construction and that Indigenous people, in particu-
lar, but also racialized minorities experience poorer health outcomes than their white
Canadian counterparts because gender, race, and class combine in complex ways with
socio-economic determinants of health in producing health outcomes. In order to help us
understand gender inequities in health in relation to other social identities and circum-
stances, we provide a brief overview of international and national health trends as well as
specific information pertaining to Canadian immigrant and Indigenous women.
The chapter concludes by examining women’s health policy, contemporary women’s
health activism in Canada, issues of cultural safety, and women-centred health care.
defInIng HealtH
As early as 1948, the World Health Organization (WHO, 1948) defined health as “a state
of physical, mental, or social well-being, not merely an absence of illness or disease.”1
Definitions of health continually evolve and are influenced greatly by individual and
societal values, experiences, and worldviews. Individuals and communities understand
311
health and well-being differently as culture, geography, and time shape our interpretations.
Even though people have individual definitions of health, commonalities exist across
regions and groups of people, confirming that our perspectives on health are partially
developed, maintained, and altered socially by both history and culture. As an example of
a cultural influence on health, many Indigenous populations in the Canadian plains
traditionally held eco-centric views of health. In these communities, the environment
(Mother Earth, plants, animals, the air) is inextricably connected to both an individual’s
and a community’s well-being. Another example can be found in manifestations of mental
illness. In the United States, Asian Americans are more likely than other Americans to
express psychological distress as physical complaints (Kramer, Kwong, Lee, & Chung,
2002). Symptoms of mental illness and depression are reported as physical complaints and
pain, rather than as emotional or mental distress. Although common discourse outlines
health and ill health as objective, consistent, and diagnosable, we see that, in fact, how
we understand health and how illness manifests itself is subjective and influenced by who
we are and the environments in which we live.
For much of the 20th century, a biomedical model of health dominated the health
field, focusing largely on physical illness, symptoms, and cures. In this model, individual
genetics and behaviour were seen as causes for ill health. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s
that mainstream health discussions began to acknowledge the impact of environment on
well-being. Contemporary conceptualizations of health often extend beyond a biomedical
illness-based model to include holistic elements, which encompass emotional, spiritual,
and social aspects of health (Smylie, 2013). In this way, everyday life is seen as inter-
twined with producing health and well-being.
In 1974, Marc Lalonde, then minister of National Health and Welfare in Canada,
authored a paper for Canada’s Department of Health entitled “A New Perspective on the
Health of Canadians.” This influential document shifted perspectives of health from a
focus on biomedical care to consideration of the social and environmental determinants
of health (Groff & Goldberg, 2000). Focusing on four main areas of health determinants—
lifestyle, health care organization, human biology, and the environment—the report
acknowledged the complexities affecting health, and argued for the conceptualization
of health beyond that of medical care (Glouberman, 2001). By moving conversations of
health promotion beyond individual risky behaviour, the report discussed the role of
communities as advocates for social and economic change, and encouraged policy that
generates “good” health. The report’s overemphasis on lifestyle did, unfortunately, limit
comprehensive consideration of the social environment.
In 1980, this deficit was addressed by the Black Report; published in the United
Kingdom by the Department of Health and Social Security (McIntosh Gray, 1982). This
report outlined that even though the overall health of the United Kingdom’s population
had increased with the introduction of the welfare state, significant health inequalities
still existed. These health inequalities and differences in disease rates were associated
largely with economic inequities. The Black Report initiated global consideration of the
effect of income and socio-economic status on health.
Kim Anderson (2010) explains that Indigenous feminism is rooted in our traditional
understandings and responsibilities as Indigenous women. Indigenous women are, after
all, the carriers of our culture and the strength of our nations. We are the mothers of our
nations and honoured for our abilities to give birth and nurture our children and female
authorities within families. Gender roles, traditionally equitable until colonization, forced
patriarchal notions onto Indigenous communities. “Feminism of all stripes,” Anderson
says, “can help us to tease out patriarchy from what is purportedly traditional and to avoid
essentialist identities that are not to our advantage as women” (p. 86).
Like gender, Indigenous feminism also sees race as a social construction. Race and
ethnicity, or rather, racism and ethnic discrimination, have an impact on the well-being of
both immigrant and Indigenous women. Race is not seen as biologically innate or
inevitable. Rather, it is a tool, a social construction, an arbitrary classification of persons
into categories based upon real or imagined characteristics. Without empirical validity or
scientific merit, race is a concept used to manipulate people and “reinforce unequal
relations between dominant and subordinate groups” (Fleras & Elliott, 2003, p. 386). Race
in society permeates our political, economic, and social structures. It is found in our insti-
tutions including the state, justice, health care, business, work, and education, to name
but a few (Bourassa, 2004) and complicates even basic discussion about its definition.
Terms such as race, “immigrant,” and ethnic or “visible minority” are often used
interchangeably in problematic ways. We do not intend to further this error but note that
the use of these words in a great deal of health and statistical literature should be made
visible and critiqued. For instance, the term “immigrant” simply means one who has
recently moved to a new country, such as Canada. It says nothing directly about whether
a person is white or a person of colour. Likewise, the term “ethnicity” may or may not
refer to someone who happens to be a person of colour, and has more to do with national
The expropriation of property, the denial of political rights, the introduction of slavery
and other forms of coercive labor, as well as outright extermination, all presupposed a
worldview which distinguished Europeans—Children of God, human beings, etc.—
from “others.” Such a worldview was needed to explain why some should be free and
others enslaved, why some had rights to land and property while others did not. Race
and the interpretation of racial differences, was a central factor in the worldview. (Omi &
Winant, 2004, pp. 13–14)
canadIan demograpHIcS
Although Canada continues to experience economic growth, one in seven women live in
poverty (CRIAW, 2006). Furthermore, 38% of lone female parents had after tax incomes
that were less than the low-income cut-off (LICO) compared to only 13% of lone male
parents and 7% of two-parent families (CRIAW, 2006). In Canada, according to 2006
census data, visible minority women were generally more susceptible to unemployment
than their male counterparts as well as non-visible minority women. In the week prior to
the 2006 census, 8.4% of visible minority women ages 25 to 54 were in the labour force but
unemployed compared with 5% of non-visible minority women and 6.2% of visible minority
men. In fact, there was a bigger gender gap in unemployment rates between visible minority
women and men (2.2%) than between non-visible minority women and non-visible
minority men (0.1%). Finally, there was an earnings gap between men and women. The
median employment income of visible minority women ages 25 to 54 who worked full-time,
full-year was close to $7000 less than that of visible minority men, whose median earnings
were $40 800. This difference revealed that visible minority women of core working age
earned about 83% of their male counterparts’ earnings (Statistics Canada, 2010–2011).
According to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW),
visible minority women are also overrepresented in precarious (part-time and temporary)
work and often have to live in substandard and segregated housing. They are also more
vulnerable to violence and other health risks (CRIAW, 2005, p. 2).
cultural Safety
Cultural safety is a concept that originated in the 1980s in New Zealand and is rooted in
the strength of Maori self-determination and decolonization as a response to their unpleas-
ant experiences with nursing care (National Aboriginal Health Organization, 2006).
While transcultural nursing promotes the idea that nurses (and other health practitio-
ners) should provide the same care to everyone regardless of differences, cultural safety
espouses that that nurses become respectful of differences including nationality, culture,
age, sex, and political and religious beliefs (NAHO, 2006).
Cultural safety is a post-colonial approach to interactions between subjects and
researchers or patients and health care practitioners (Anderson, et al., 2003). Recognizing
the power differentials that exist among cultural groups is the key to ensuring fair and equi-
table care and research. Reflecting on the political, social, cultural, and historical relation-
ship between the groups reduces the risk of re-victimization, oppression, and power
imbalances. Cultural safety is most commonly used in the health care field, where providers
are encouraged to reflect on historical relationships in order to eliminate their own preju-
dices that might impede their ability to treat and care for a patient (Anderson et al., 2003).
While cultural safety opens the dialogue on power imbalances based on race, some
may argue that it does not address class, gender, or sexuality, all of which affect the treat-
ment and care of patients. Although in theory cultural safety does expand to address these
points, often a unilateral focus is placed on culture when it is implemented. The impor-
tance of acknowledging all of the power imbalances that exist between patients and
health care providers is critical to ensuring the safety of clients (Anderson et al., 2003).
Many health practitioners are being made aware of and applying the concept of cultural
safety. The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada include the concept in their
Indigenous Health Values and Principles Statement released in 2013. They note that cultural
safety can reveal the underlying causes of health inequities for Indigenous people—oppression
and a legacy of colonization. Through critical thinking skills and self-reflection, physicians
can nurture cultural safety and better understand upstream barriers (e.g., structural racism,
discriminatory laws, historical legacies, uneven distribution of economic opportunities, and
so on) and their connection to downstream effects (e.g., person-to-person mediated racism,
classism, cycle of poverty, and so on) influencing the health and healing of those defined as
under threat (Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, 2013).
In 2009, the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada (IPAC) produced a
curriculum framework entitled First Nations, Inuit, Métis Health Core Competencies: A
Curriculum Framework for Undergraduate Medical Education. The curriculum framework was
developed based on a joint IPAC and Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada
(AFMC) meeting in 2005 to increase the content of Aboriginal curricula. Strategies include
content that is culturally safe and engaging in patient and community-centred approaches.
CONCLUSION
This chapter has provided an overview of important discussions within the feminist move-
ment regarding health. We have argued that feminism and health are linked and that all
feminist movements have grappled with the concept of health. Important theories and
frameworks including intersectionality, the social determinants of health, gender-based
analysis, culturally relevant gender-based analysis, cultural safety, and intersectional femi-
nist frameworks. All of these are important when either examining or addressing the
health disparities among women in Canada and around the world. We argued that it is
critical to look beyond biology when examining both individual and community health
and examining root or systemic factors including gender, race, class, sexual orientation,
and a whole variety of social determinants of health that interact in complex and multiple
ways to create a variety of health outcomes for women. These different health outcomes
were measured using socio-demographic data to demonstrate these complex interactions.
Endnotes
1. Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the Interna-
tional Health Conference, New York, June 19–22, 1946; signed on July 22 1946, by the
representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2,
. 00) and entered into force on A ril , .
2. Dr. Loutfy provided the authors with permission to discuss her work. More about her work
can be read at www.mlmedical.com. See also Loutfy, Dr. Mona. “They Call Her Dr Mona.”
Retrieved from an online video cli . outube, January 2, 20 .
3. htt : youtube Mbak e fBA
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340
Black feminism, 36, 47, 56 Bouchard, D., 71 Canadian federal and provincial
Combahee River Collective trace Bouchard, P., 290 policies, 275
origins of, 47 bourgeoisie, 9 Canadian frontline anti-violence, 213
history of, 35 Bourne, P., 289 Canadian government’s Live-in
theory, 45 Bourrier-LaCroix, B., 331 Caregiver Program, 73
Black Feminist Thought, 48 Bowlus, Audra, 209 Canadian health trends, 323–324
Black lesbian feminist, 45 Brazilian wax, 164 immigrant women’s, 324–325
Black people, 22 breast augmentation, 164–167 indigenous women’s, 325–327
Black racism, 192 Bridges, J. S., 269 Canadian Journal of Women and
Black Skin, White Mask, 43 Briggs, Laura, 67, 75 Law, 47
Black women, 26, 148, 259, 289 Brigham, S. M., 273 Canadian Labour Code, 215
beauty, 160 Brown, Gordon, 106 Canadian mothers’ management, 260
Black mothers, 271 Brownridge, Douglas, 218 Canadian Nurses Association
intersectionality matrix, 259 burdens, 232 (CNA), 333
lives, 46 Butalia, Urvashi, 81 Canadian Old Age Security, 238
long-standing ghettoization in butch/femme culture, 139 Canadian Research Institute for the
service professions, 48 Butler, Judith, 24, 91, 124, Advancement of Women
mainstream/white feminist 126, 185 (CRIAW), 321, 329
movement, 47 Butler, Robert, 229 Canadian sex workers, 19
political organizing of, 4 BWS, 207 Canadian welfare state, 256
sexually wild and Canadian Women’s Health Network
aggressive, 148
Blackwood, Evelyn, 132, 133, 134
C (CWHN), 330
Canadian Women’s Suffrage
Canada
bloggers, 95 cultural explanations, 79 Association in 1883, 3
BlogTV, 104 Disabled Women’s Network, 218 caregivers
BMI. See Body Mass Index (BMI) female university, 2 ailing parents, 244
bodies foreign-born, population, 324 objective/subjective burdens, 245
beauty (See beauties) gay and lesbian bookstores, 17 of parents, 244
Black feminists, and Indigenous health insurance to cover, 166 of spouses and children, 244
feminists, 36 immigrant women, 262 unpaid, 245
breasts, 164–167 labour force participation, 6 caregiving, 241–245
cis-male and cis-female, 140 lone-mother families, 268 care work, 72, 232
fit, 149 minority students, 294 for adult children, 263
hair, 160–164 mother’s duty, 149 gendered, 243
hyper-sexualizing looks, 151 reserves and residential schools, 44 global economic shifts, 245
ideal, 246 same-sex marriage, 124 migration, 72
projects today, 151–152 violence against women, 201–222 quality of life, 245
projects, women, 151–152 woman abuse, 213 shaped by social structures, 242
skin, 157–160 women’s equality with men, 5 shaped by state policies, 245
victimization, 104 women’s health activism, 311 unevenly distributed, 243–244
vs. #mind#technology, 93–95 working-class, 149 caring, 241–245
weight, 153–155 Canada Child Tax Benefit, 274 global economic shifts, 245
women’s (See women) Canada Pension Plan, 238 quality of life, 245
bodily perfection, 25 Canada Research Chairs Program receiving, 241–245
Body Mass Index (BMI),153, 154 (CRC), 296 social structures, 242–243
body projects, women, Canada’s Criminal Code, 19 state policies, 245
151–152 Canadian Association of University work, gendered, 243
body weight, eating, 153–155 Teachers (CAUT), 294 work, unevenly distributed,
Boily, I., 290 Canadian-born populations, 324 243–244
bondage, 161 Canadian Charter of Rights and Cartesian philosophy, 94
Booth, Karen, 67 Freedoms, 20 Cartesian dualism, 92, 93–95, 111
border crossing, 79 Canadian families Cartesian dualistic matrix, 111
Bordo, Susan, 26, 101, 157 market and family care Cartesian separation of mind and
Boscoe, M., 331 relations, 256 body, 91
Index 341
Carty, Linda Communist Manifesto (1848/1998), 9 CWHN, 330
Linda Carty states, 21 comparative feminist studies, 69 cyber-and offline space, 108
Casgrain, Thérèse, 3 “Compulsory Heterosexuality and cyberbullying, 102
CAUT, 294 Lesbian Existence,” 137 cyberspace, 91, 92
celebrated, 152 Conference Board of Canada, 234 post modern quilt-like nature
CEO, 183 conflating race with of, 92
Chapin, Harry, 177 indigeneity, 46 cyborgs, 111–113
chief executive officers (CEO), 183 conflict tactics scale (CTS), 211 cycle of abuse, 207
child-bearers, 2 Connell, Raewyn, 175
child care, paying, 272
Children’s Aid Society, 209, 211
consciousness-raising (CR)
groups, 202
D
dangerous sexual offender, 206
children’s charity commercials, 156 sessions, 14
dark skin, 159, 160
Chilly Climate, 216, 298 constantly cutting, 103
Darwin’s theories of evolution, 163
Chilly Collective, 298 contemporary Davis, Angela, 21
Chowdhury, Elora Halim, 79 conceptualizations, 312 Dawson, Emily, 119
chromosomal make-up, 130 context collapse, 97 Dawson, M., 205
chronic traumatic encephalopathy contingent faculty, 297 Dean, Michelle, 100
(CTE), 193 Cooky, C., 191 de Beauvoir, Simone, 23
cis-bodied folks, 140 corporal modernity, 70 Declaration on the Elimination of
civil rights, 46 Cosmo, 150 Violence against Women, 77
Cixous, Hélène, 24, 112 Costa, Mariarosa Dalla, 10 decolonizing anti-racism, 48
class Coulombe, S., 261 Dekeseredy, Walter, 214
capitalist economic foundation, 93 CPP/QPP payments, 237 Deleuze, Gilles, 53
Marxist theory and, 8 CR, 202 deliberate self-harm (DSH), 103
and masculinities, 186–187 Cranswick, K., 241 Democratic Republic of
multiple oppressions, 318 CRC, 296 Congo, 77
social, 231 Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 46, democratization, of gender
classroom 216, 317 relations, 285
all-female, 3 CRIAW. See Canadian Research Denison, Flora MacDonald, 4
feminist solidarity model, 69 Institute for the dependents, 232
safe and respectful, 300 Advancement of Women depression, 312
Clinton, Bill President (CRIAW) Derrida, Jacques, 23, 24
United States President Bill critical race theory, 35, 319 Desai, J., 71
Clinton, 121 cross-cultural sexuality studies, Desai, Manisha, 83
clitoris, 129 123–124 Detournay, D., 71
cluttered nests, 272 Papua New Guinea, 122 diabetes, 325
CNA, 333 CTE, 193 Dialectic of Enlightenment, 94
Codjoe, Henry, 289 CTS, 211 disabilities, 188–190
Coleman, Rebecca, 168 cultural feminism, 18 disability, 45
Collins, Patricia Hill, 48 cultural genocide, 40, 218 Black woman, 26
colonialism, 12, 36–37 cultural historians, 148 Disabled Women’s Network of
definitions, 37–41 culturalization of racism, 44 Canada, 218
legacies of, 35 culturally different, 50 disciplining, 23
settler, 40, 57 Culturally Relevant Gender lifelong project, 246
social and/or economic status, 329 Application Protocol norms, 247
colonial racism, 319 (CRGAP), 328 distributive resources, 73
colonization cultural norms, 150 Dobson, Amy Shields, 91
families’ historical experiences cultural safety, 332–334 Doe, Jane, 206
of, 268 cultures Domestic Abuse Intervention
multiple oppressions, 318 and race, 44–45 Project, 208
strategies, 42 of rape, 81 domestic violence, 221
Combahee River Collective, 47 culture values, 148 domestic workers, 273
common interests, 70 uneasy primacy of images, domination of nature, 94
Communist, 127 148–151 dowry murders, 77, 79, 81
342 Index
DSH, 103 enlightenment, 1 gerontologists, 230
Dua, Enakshi, 7 Ensler, Eve, 17 girl-power, 110
Duggan, Lisa, 141 epidemiologists, 153 “global” and “international,” 63
Duggan, M., 98 EPZ, 78 intersectionality, 45–49
Dworkin, Andrea, 17 Esmail, A., 265 lesbian, 18, 125
essentialism, 20, 21, 46, 75 Marxist, 9–12
E ethnic, 318
ethnicity, 236, 317
myriad of, 260
post-colonial, 36
eating disorders ethnocentrism, 320 race problem, 35
psychiatric treatment, 155 European Institute for Crime scholars, 257
young women in North Prevention and Control, 221 Marxist, 258
America, 155 European liberal democratic socialist approaches, 258, 260
economic benefits, 186 rule, 7 socialist, defining, 8–9
economic privilege, 15 European scientific racism, 37 social reproductive work, 232
economic self-reliance, 235 exhaustion, 298 Western/white, 42
education export processing zones (EPZ), 78 writing, 147
challenge, 284
Feminism Blog, 108
global partnership for, 104
higher (See education, F Feminism without Borders:
Decolonizing Theory,
higher) Facebook, 44, 93, 98, 103, 105,
165, 216 Practicing Solidarity, 69
Hornosty’s market-based feminist
approach, 301 Fallopius, Gabriel, 128
Faludi, Susan, 179 anti-violence, 210
lower (See education, lower) health issue, 311–334
McUniversity, rise of, 301 family, 14–15
family care, 266 intersectionality, analytical
pedagogies, 300–301 tool, 186
relations, 257
education, higher, 293 pedagogies, 300–301
transnational management of,
professoriate political economy, 13
273–274
Chilly Climate, 298–299 perspectives, 230–232
family friendly policies, 271
faculty experiences, postmodern feminism
family penalty, 267
297–298 challenges, 22
family policies
statistical overview, poststructural and postmodern, 21
in Canada, 2014, 274–277
295–298 sex positive, 220
Family policies in Canada,
education leaders, 286 work critiqued, 284
2014, 274
contemporary research, 289–293 feminist aesthetic, 167
Farrell, Barry, 176
crisis for boys, 289–291 Feminist as Explorer Model, 70
Farrell, Warren, 176
race/gender, intersections of, feminist faculty, 299
fashion magazines, 152
291–292 feminist pedagogies, 300
Fateau, Marc Feigen, 176
schooling, 292–293 female body, excess hair, 162 feminist political economy, 231
sexuality, 292–293 female genitalia, 131 reproduction, 232
gender research, 284–285 female-headed households, 320 feminist scholars, 264
students, 286–289 female separation, 18 feminist solidarity model, 69
curriculum, 288–289 female sexual relations, 16 Feminist Theory: From Margin to
differential treatment, 286–287 female transitioned to male Center, 48
teachers/principals, 285–286 (FTM), 219 feminization of poverty, 11
Ehrenreich, B., 73 feminism, 1, 109, 229–230 feminization of work, 13
Ellick, Adam B., 105 in academy, 299–300 femme femininity, 139
embodied offline, 102 American radical, 229 Fernadez, L., 69
embodied world, 102 anti-racist and Black, 36, 259 Fernandez-Kelly, M. P., 84
embodiment, 245–247 critical-race and anti-racist, 26 Figueroa, Mónica, 168
Employment Equity Act, 319 cultural, 18 Fiske, J., 272
Employment Insurance (EI) Act, decolonizing research, 75–77 FitFat, 154
256, 275 decolonizing thought, 74–75 Fluri, Jennifer, 70
empowerment, 147 docile and dexterous, 73 Focus on Black Women, 47
Engels, Friedrich, 9 gender and education, 285 football safety, 192
Index 343
forced marriages, 77 Ghomeshi, Jian, 184 Harstock, Nancy, 26
Foucault, Michel, 23, 101, 131 Gill, Rosalind, 150 Hartmann, H., 258
Frank, B., 293 Gimlin, Debra, 166 having sex, 120
Franklin II, Clyde W., 187 girlhood health
Franks, Mary Anne, 91 age of social media, 90 Canadian demographics, 321
freedom of choice, 2, 4, 5, 7 girls’ dependence, 287 Canadian health trends, 323–324
freer, 134 Glamour, 161 immigrant women’s, 324–325
Freire, Paulo, 300 global care chain, 13, 73 indigenous women’s, 325–327
Frenette, M., 261 global economic restructuring, 72 cultural safety, 332–334
Fresh, Joe, 66 impacts of, 64 defining, 311–313
Friedman, Jaclyn, 80 global feminism, 68–72 as feminist issue, 315–320
FTM, 219 Global Gender Gap, 6 gender bias, 320–321
globalization, 12 gender equity, 320–321, 321–322
critics of, 63 social determinants, 313–315,
G cultures, social interactions, 321–322
Garland-Thomson, Rosemary, 151 political structures, and transnational concerns, 322–323
Gaskell, J., 288 national economies, 64 healthy self-governance, 97
gay baby boomers, MetLife survey feminist scholarship, 80 healthy sex, 136
of, 235 modern world system, 37 hegemonically, 95
Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), 142 negative effects of, 80 Hernandez Jarvis, L., 269
gay teachers, 293 role of gender, 12 Hess, Amanda, 99–104, 107
Gazso-Windle, A., 265 transnational feminists, 63–65 heterosexual privilege, 138
GBA, 328 violence against women, 78 The Hijabi Girl, 292
GDP, 11 globalization-cum-imperialism, 63 Hinduja, S., 103
Gee, James Paul, 246 global sisterhood, 21 Hindustan Lever Limited, 159
gender, 42, 45, 317 global warming, 153 historical materialism, 23
based materialist analysis, 13 Goffman, Erving, 96 HIV/AIDS treatment, 322, 323, 326,
binary constructions, 124–126 Goldberg, David Theo, 36 333, 334
coherence of, 124 Google Plus, 98 Hochschild, A. R., 72, 73
conforming behaviour, 125 Govender, V., 331 Hollywood action movies, 182
cross-culturally, studying, 123–124 Gramsci, Antonio, 181 Homicide Survey, 217
differences in cultural context, grandmothering, lesbians’ enactment homophobia, 184
122–123 of, 242 homophobic name calling, 125
distinctions, 285 grassroots, 76 dyke, 125
hierarchies, 191 Green, Joyce, 318 pussy, 125
identity, 131 Gremillion, Helene, 155 sissy, 125
inequality, 284 Grewal, I., 65, 70, 80 homosexuality, 25, 130
inequity, 321 gross domestic product (GDP), 11 American males, 177
intersections of, 291–292 Grover, Vrinda, 81 compulsory institution of,
looking relations, 148 Grzywacz, J. G., 269 137–138
multiple oppressions, 318 GSS (Statistics Canada General grandmothers, 242
organization of subjectivity, 95 Social Survey), 203, 218 naturalness of, 126
regimes, 181 Guendozi, J., 267 penetrative sex, 139
research, 284–285 homo-social enactment, 185
specific discriminatory, 230 H honour killings, 17, 77
teachers/principals, 285–286 hair, excess, 162 Horkheimer, Max, 94
vs. sex, 122 Hall reading, 104 housework, paying, 272
work, 125 Hall, Roberta, 298 HRSD, 276
gender-based analysis (GBA), 328 Hall’s media model, 102 Huffington Post, 107
gender equity, health, 321–322 Hall, Stuart, 74, 95 humanize, 43
George, Pamela, 51, 52 Handmaid’s Tale, The, 16 Human Resources and Social
German Ideology, The, 9 harassment, 161, 215 Development Canada
Gerschick, T. J., 189 Haraway, Donna, 92, 111, 112 (HRSD), 276
Ghaill, M., 292 Harris, Angela P., 46 human sexual variation, 124
344 Index
human trafficking, 77
Hunt, Sarah, 48
J Levine, Judith, 143
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 23
Jackson, S., 93
hygiene, 243 Lewinsky, Monika, 121
James, Carl E., 187
hyper-capitalism, 183 LGBTQT2-S people, 119, 140
James, Lebron, 188, 192
hyper-heterosexual playboy, 182 liberal feminism, 1–5, 4
James, Selma, 10
hyperpigmentation, 158 contemporary, 5–7
Janeway Children’s Hospital, 103
critiques of, 7–8
Jemimas, Aunt, 48
I Jiwani, Yasmin, 212
global dimensions, 5–7
liberal feminists, 1, 3, 5, 8, 257
identity John, Mary E., 81
liberal welfare states, 257
kits, 246 Johnny, R., 272
LICO. See low-income cut-off
sextortian, 91 Johnson, H., 205
(LICO)
terrorist, 188 Juarez, Ciudad, 78
Liu, Laurin, 7
ideological construction, in social
Live-In Caregiver Program
roles, 316
IFFs, 329–330
K (LCP), 273
Kaplan C., 65, 70, 80 Loppie Reading, C., 315
image technologies, 149
Kassam, Alnaaz, 292 L’Oréal, 159
imagined community, 39
Katz, Jonathan, 131 Loutfy, Mona, 333, 334
immigrant women, 236–237, 263, 318
Kauanui, J. Kéhaulani, 46 low-income cut-off (LICO), 262,
immigration, 72
Kehler, Michael, 292 268, 321
imperialism, 37
key-lock analogy, 128 low-income lone mothers, work-
definitions, 37–41
Kimmel, Michael, 290 family conflict experiences
incest, 17
Kimmel, M. S., 175 of, 268
Indigenous feminists, 48, 55
King, Tiffany Lethabo, 56 Lyotard, Jean-Francois, 23
Indigenous Physicians of Association
Kobayashi, K. M., 272
of Canada (IPAC), 332
Indigenous societies, 123
Koedt, Anne, 16, 136–137
Kontos, P. C., 246
M
Indigenous theory, 35 MacKinnon, Catherine, 17, 18, 47
Kozyra, Katarzyna, 150
inferiority complex, 158 MacLeod, Linda, 202
Kristeva, Julia, 24
informal support, exchanges, 271 MacMurchy, Helen, Dr., 316
Innes, Robert Alexander, 188 Madden, M., 99
Instagram, 93, 96 L Mahmood, S., 71
International Day of the Girl, 90 labour, gender-based division of, 241 Makai, Gul, 105
International Monetary Fund, 64 Lacan, Jacques, 23, 25 male-headed households, 320
internet, hub-based system of, 95 land theft, 40 male sexual relations, 16
interrupt unequal power relations Lang, Sabine, 123 Malson, Helen, 157
(IPAC), 333 Laqueur, Thomas, 128 Manalansan, Martin F., 141
Intersectional Feminist Frameworks Latina/Chicana feminist theory, 45 Mandell, N., 262
(IFFs), 329–330 Lawrence, Bonita, 38 Manet’s Olympia, 150
intersectionality, 47, 49, 55 LCP, 273 maquiladoras, 78
concept of, 49–53 LEAF, 17 Maracle, Lee, 45
possibilities and limitations, 53–57 learned helplessness, 207 Marchand, M., 73
intersectionality, tracing, 45–49 Lebovitch, Amy, 19 marginalized populations, 317
intersex, 130 Lee, D.-H., 91 Married Women’s Property Act, 4
inter-sex challenges, Platonic Legal Education and Action Fund Marshall, Katherine, 263, 264
ideal, 130 (LEAF), 17 Martino, W., 293
Intersex Society of America Lerner, G., 259 Martin, Stephanie, 213
(ISSA), 131 lesbians, 125, 132, 289 Marxist feminists, 9–12
intimate partner violence, 219 feminism, 18 Marx, Karl, 9, 23, 93
IPAC, 332 and cultural feminism, 18 masculine elite, 193
Irigaray, Luce, 25 gay movements, 136 masculinities, 175
Islamophobia, 188 identification, 137, 138 acceptable manhood, 185
Islamic fundamentalist political MetLife survey of, 235 anti-feminist arguments, 291
movement, 105 mothers, 271 appropriate, 185
Islamic laws, 70 teachers, 293 class, 186–187
Index 345
masculinities (continued) migration, 72–73 National Football League
disabilities, 188–190 Miller, A. S., 189 (NFL), 193
early writings, 175–180 Mill, Harriet Taylor, 2 National Hockey League (NHL),
hegemonic, 191, 193, 194, 289 Minh-ha, Trinh T., 42 191, 193
concept, 181–185 minoritizing, 138 National Women’s Studies Association
heteronormative, 182 Mire, A., 158, 159 of the United States
intersectionality, 186 Mirza, H. S., 292 (NWSA), 299
later writings, 180–181 misogyny Native Women’s Association of
manual labour, 186 mainstreaming misogyny, 180 Canada (NWAC), 52, 217,
marginalized, subordinate, and Mitchell, Margaret, 202, 215 221, 328, 331
complicit, 184 MNCs, 63 nature body vs. media technology,
North American writings Moallem, M., 71 93–95
on, 175 modernity, 36–37 neo-colonialism, 12
as performance, 185–186 modern world system, 37 neoliberal globalization, 183
race, 187–188 Mohanty, C. T., 41, 69, 74–76 neo-liberal policies, 12
social location, 190 mommy track, 271 neo-liberal weakening, 256
social production of hegemonic, 190 Mongia, Radika, 67 NFL, 193
sporting culture, 190–195 Montreal Massacre, 203 NHL, 191, 193
subordinate, concept of, 184 Monture, Patricia, 40 Nichols, Jack, 176, 178
understanding, 181–195 Morgan, R., 68 Nixon, Kimberly, 21, 24
maternal feminists, 3, 4 Morimura, Yasumasa, 150 Nomaguchi, K., 268
Mattingly, M. J., 266 Morris, E., 287 non-Aboriginal populations, 326
Maxim, P., 262 motherhood, 14 non-permanent faculty, 297
McAfee survey, 216 marriage and, 127 non-suicidal self-harming
McCall, Leslie, 45 naturalness of, 15 behaviours, 103
McClung, Nellie, 3 work–family conflict, 267 non-Western sexualities, 134
McCormick, Gladys, 67 mothers’ experiences of, North American Free Trade
McCoy, L., 289 266–270 Agreement (NAFTA), 78
McDonald, D. A., 269 mummy-baby relations, 133 Novogrodsky, M., 288
McElroy, Wendy, 91 mother’s duty, 149 Nuclear families, 263
McGibbon, E., 331 Mount Allison University in New
McLaren, A., 288
Brunswick, 2
MRM, 179, 180
O
McMullin, J. A., 265 Obama, Barack, 192
multiculturalism, 48
McPherson, C., 331 Obeng Gyimah, S., 262
multinational corporations
McRobbie, Angela, 91 obesity epidemic, 154
(MNCs), 63
McUniversity, 293, 301 objectivity, 96
Mulvey, Laura, 101
Mead Old Age Supplement, 239
Murderball, 189
Tchambuli, 123 Ong, A., 84
Muslim culture, 134
media ideology, 93 online space, 90, 91
MySpace, 103
media technology vs. nature body, On Male Liberation, 176
“Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, The”
93–95 Ontario Human Rights
16, 136
Mediterranean, 163 Commission, 330
Mytho-Poetical Men’s Movement, 179
Memmi, Albert, 319 O’Reilly, Andrea, 15
Men Organisation for Economic
early writings, 175–180 N Co-operation and
liberation movement, 177, 178 Nagar, R., 66, 71, 74, 75, 76, 77 Development (OECD),
sport, social location, 190 Naples, N., 68 289, 290
Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), Narayan, Uma, 78, 79 post-secondary education, 295
179, 180 Nari Samata Yojana (NSY), 76 orientalism, 41
mental ill health, 312 Nash, Jennifer, 45 Origin of the Family, Private Property
Messner, M., 191, 192 Nasser, Mervat, 157 and the State, The, 9
MetLife survey, of lesbian and gay National Basketball Association Orza, A. M., 269
baby boomers, 235 (NBA), 192, 193 Overall, Christine, 139, 184
346 Index
P poststructuralism, 23
poverty, 232–235
radical feminism, 14, 20, 259
analyses, 15
paid labour force, 10
racialized, 236–237 critiques of, 20–21
paid work, transnational management
rates, among Canadian racialized definition of, 14
of, 273–274
groups, 236 global and contemporary
Panjabi, Kavita, 81
Power and Control Wheel, 208 dimensions, 19–20
parental leave policy
primitive societies, 123 male violence against women, 16
role of state, 277
Programme for International pornography, 16–17
ParticipACTION, 154–155
Student Assessment reproduction, 16–17
partner
(PISA), 289 sites of oppression, 14–15
care to, 261
proletariat, 9 theoretical engagement, 13, 17
and children, 205
Pronger, Brian, 191 Raewyn Connell’s theory, of multiple
sexual demands, 214
prostitution, 220 masculinities, 181
stalking behaviour, 201
Proulx, M., 290 Ramamurthy, Priti, 76
violence, intimate, 207–214
psychological distress, 267 rape, 17, 21, 202
Pastrana, Julia, 163
psychosocial emergency, 130 in Canadian law, 204
Patchin, J. W., 103
Puar, Jasbir, 53 crisis centres, 206
patriarchy
Pygmy, Aka, 122 gang, 80
Father Land, 15
heteropatriarchy, 56 gang raped, in South Delhi, 80
male privilege, 230 Q illegal for husband, 202
by men, 15, 184
sites of oppression, 14–15 Quebec legislature, 3
traditional female subject, 69 Queer Assemblages, 54 rape-prone/rape-free, 222
patriotism, 320 in South Delhi, 80
the Indian gang rape, 80, 81
Peiss, Kathy, 149
Pelley, Scott, 193 R Vancouver Rape Relief and
Penha-Lopes, V., 272 Raby, Rebecca, 293 Women’s Shelter, 21
Penn-Kekana, L., 331 race, 2, 12, 35, 36–37, 45, 180, Raymond, Janice, 21
187–188, 317 Razack, Sherene H., 39
pensions, precarious, 238–241
and culture, 44–45 RCMP, 218, 327
Phadke, Shilpa, 81
definitions, 37–41 Reality TV, 165
Phoenix, A., 291, 292
physical violence sexual, 208 feminist scholars of, 41 Reay, D., 292
PISA, 289 ideas and representations, 41 reformulation, 189
Plaza, Rana, 66 intersections of, 291–292 refugees, 324
plugged-in girls, 97–99, 113 masculinities, 187 Registered Retirement Savings Plans
police attitudes, 211 multiple oppressions, 318 (RRSP), 238, 239
political-economic analysts, 234 racial hierarchy, of beauty, 160 Renold, Emma, 293
pornography, 16–17 racialization, 43–44, 158 representation, 41–42
anti-pornography proponents, 17 genealogy of, 43 Results-Only Work Environment
child, 127 racialized immigrants, poverty rates (ROWE), 271
popular media and online, 16 among Canadian, 236 retirement, postponed, 238–241
and prostitution, 220–221 racially/ethnically diverse revolutionary, anti-colonial, 43
post-colonial theory, 35 families, 272 Revolutionary Association of
postmodern feminism racism, 12, 40, 324, 328 Women of Afghanistan
defining, 21–22 adolescent girls, 166 (RAWA), 71
feminist critiques, 25–26 anti-black, 36 Rice, Ray, 184
historical influences, Black people, 2 Rich, Adrienne, 18, 137–139
23–25 colonial, 319 Riel, Métis Louis, 40
postmodernism, 23 culturalization of, 44 Ritzer, G., 301
poststructural feminism gender-based oppression, 12 Roehling, P. V., 269
definng, 21–22 social and institutional Rooks, Noliwe, 158
feminist critiques, 25–26 manifestations, 320 ROWE, 271
historical influences, systemic, 259 Royal Canadian Mounted Police
23–25 radical cultural feminists, 18 (RCMP), 218, 327
Index 347
Royal Commission on the Status sexual assault, 207, 217, 327 SFS, 234
of Women, 1970 services, 316 Shuttleworth, R., 189
(RCSW), 5 victims of, 201 Silver, C., 241
RRSP, 238, 239 Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, 205 Sisterhood Is Global Institute, 20
Rubin, Gayle, 91, 135 sexual attraction, 124 skin complexion, 157
Rubinstein, Helena, 149 sexual coercion in a dating skin-lightening market, 159
Ruhm, C., 276 relationship, 77 skin-whiteners, 159
Runyan, A., 73 sexual disqualification, 246 skin whitening, 159
sexual exploitation, 246 slavery, 2, 35, 157
S sexual harassment, 62, 184,
214–216, 316–317
slut-shaming, 220
SlutWalk, grass-roots action, 206
Sabo, Don, 191
sexual identity vocabulary, 125 Smith, Andrea, 40, 123
Said, Edward W., 41
sexuality, 45, 135, 180 Smith, D., 289
Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 222
assault underage girls, 184 Smith, Dorothy E., 94
Sandler, Bernice, 298
charting human sexual diversity, 132 SMSs, 111
Sangtin Yatra, 77
coherence of, 124 Snapchat images, 96, 98
SAPS, 13
concepts, 135 SNS, 92
Sawyer, Jack, 176
constructing, 119–120 social anxiety, 124
Sayer, L. C., 267
Schellenberg, G., 241 cross-culturally, constructing, social censure, 242
Schwartz, Martin, 214 133–135 social class, 180
Scott, S., 93 expendable, 136 social determinants
Scott, Valerie, 19 first thoughts, 120–121 health, 321–322
Second Sex, The, 23 heterosexual socialist feminism, 8, 11, 258
Sedgwick, Eve, 138 compulsory institution of, contemporary analyses, 12–13
Segal, Lynn, 139 137–138 critiques of, 13–14
Seitz, Shannon, 209 invention of, 131–132 defining, 8–9
Self Employed Women’s Association privilege, 138–139 global trends, 12–13
(SEWA), 84 queering, 139–142 historical background, 9–12
self-harming behaviours, 103 history of, 126–127 situated knowledge, 26
self-harming competitions, 103 human variation, 129–132 social media, 90, 95–97, 111,
self-identified Third World intersex, 129–132 112, 113
feminist, 79 one-sex model, 128 shameless photos, 91
self-injury behaviour, 103 sexual differentiation, perilous social mobility, 188
self-starvation, 156 route of, 128–129 social networking sites (SNS), 92
self-surveillance, 101 sexual normalcy social reproductive work, 232
Settler colonialism, 40 constructing, 136 social transformation, 300
SEWA, 84 feminist challenges, 136–137 socio-economic structure, 231
sex strong social constructionist Sohn, S.-H., 91
assignment, at birth, 120 view, 135 somatic dimorphism, 129
coherence of, 124 two-sex model, 128 Somerville, Siobhan, 131
first thoughts, 120–121 young people’s, antinomies of, spaces in-between, 96
needs, 121 142–143 speak bitterness, 14
oppression, 14 sexually transmitted infections Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 42, 68
response, 121 (STIs), 317 sporting culture, 190–195
vs. gender, 122 sexual orientation, 189, 317 Staples, Robert, 187
sex/gender distinction, 285 sexual potential, 132 state, 14–15
sexism, 328 sexual regulation, 136 parental leave policy, role of, 277
cultural approaches, 44 sexual stereotypes, 102 Status of Women Canada (SWC), 331
sexist visual society, 148 sexual undifferentiation, 128 Steeves, V., 102
sex role, 177 sex vs. gender, 122 STIs, 317
sex trafficking, 19 sex work, 22 Stobert, S., 241
sexual abuse, 127, 134, 135, 218, sex worker advocacy groups, 220 Stowe, Emily Howard, Dr., 3
219, 221, 289 sexy activities, 91 stress, chronic, 315
348 Index
structural adjustment programs Tuana, Nancy, 136 Violence Against Women Survey
(SAPS), 13 Tuten, T. L., 269, 271 (VAWS), 203
stylization, 185 Twitter, 44, 93, 98, 192 Canadian anti-violence policy, 209
subjectivity, gendered organization Tyack, D., 286 women’s fear of violent sexual
of, 95 tyranny of reproduction, 16 assault, 216
Sumatra, West, 134 visible minority, 258, 318
surveillance, 96
Survey of Financial Security U Vogue, 150
Ugly Betty, 106, 107
(SFS), 234
Swarr, A., 66, 71, 74 “Under Western Eyes”, 75 W
Unemployment Insurance (UI) Walia, H., 67
Swat Valley of Pakistan, 90, 105
Act, 275 Walker, Madame C. J., 149, 160
Valley, Swat, 106
UNIFEM, 19 Wallcott, Rinaldo, 187
Swift, John, 188
United Nations Department of War on Terror, 70
Swope, H. E., 269
symbolic order, 23 Economic and Social Affairs, Way, J. T., 67
2010, 320, 322 Wedgewood, N., 189
United Nations Development Werbin, Kenneth, 96
T Fund for Women Western colonization, 158
Taguba, Antonio M., 49 (UNIFEM), 19 Western cultures, 147
Take Back the Night, 14, 229 United Nations Gender Equality uneasy primacy of images, 148–151
Taylor, Sanchez, 166 Index, 6 weight/eating, 153–155
teachers’ gendered, 287 United Nations, site for women, 148
TERF, 21 advocacy, 83 Western societies, 184
terrorist identity, 188 Wheaton, B., 267
Third World women, 75
This Sex Which Is Not One, 25
V White Ribbon Campaign, 181
White, S., 331
Vachani, Shweta, 81
Thobani, Sunera, 39, 71 Wiegman, Robin, 55
vaginal orgasms, 137
Thomas, Calvin, 140 Wien, F., 315
VAWS, 203
Thomas, W., 141 Williams, George, Sir, 299
veiling practices, isolating, 71
Thornhill, Esmeralda, 47 Willis, Paul, 186
Todd, A., 99, 104 victims, of sexual assault, 201 Wilson, N., 189
Toronto Women’s Literary Club, 3 Vines, 96 Wilson, S. J., 262
traditional-modern binary axis, 71 violence, 40, 194 Winant, Howard, 37
trans-exclusive radical feminist dating violence, intimate Wing, Adrien K., 71
(TERF), 21 partner, 214 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 2
transgender feminists, 21 domestic, 221 Woman Of Color (WOC), 53
transnational, 68 gender symmetry, intimate partner, women
business masculinity, 183 211–213 Aboriginal, 39, 40, 217, 218, 221,
families (See transnational identifying problem, 202–204 245, 262
feminism) against Indigenous women, 218 Canadian-born, 262
transnational seniors, 237–238 intimate partner, 207–214 CRC Program, 296
transnational feminism, 62, male violence free society, 222 health statistics and health
76, 273 men’s, 222 indicators, 326
globalization, 63–65 offline threats of, 107 Métis lone mothers, 268
international/global, 67 types of, 204 absolute difference, 129
learning and teaching model, 70 intimate partner, 207–214 Canadian immigrant, 324–325
local/global, 65–66 sexual assault, 204–207 Canadian indigenous, 325–327
representation, 74 sexual harassment, 214–216 experience in film, 101
solidarity activism, 80 against women, 16–17, 77–80 globalization and violence, 78
teaching practices, 70 women and intersectionality, health activism in Canada, 330–332
transnational feminist theory, 54 216–220 help-seeking behaviour, 213
transnationalism against women in Canada, heterosexual, 219
role of gender, 12 201–222 immigrant, 236–237
Truth, Sojourner, 45 women internationally, 221–222 labour force participation, 264
Index 349
women (continued) Women’s Christian Temperance World Conference on Social
minority immigrants, 237 Union (WCTU), 3 Determinants of
racial and ethnic representation, 295 Women’s Health Contribution Health, 313
saving, 80–83 Program, 331 World Economic Forum, 6
sexual urges, 127 Women’s labour force World Health Organization (WHO),
single-parent homes, 11 participation, 263 221, 311
studies/feminism in academy, women teachers, Ontario World Rio Corporation, 160
299–300 federation, 288 WWF, 84
unattached, 235–236 Woodward, Kathleen, 231
violence against, 77, 208 worker solidarity, 83–84 Y
violence in Canada, 201–222 strategies for managing, Young, M., 267
Women Against Pornography 270–272 Young Women’s Christian
(WAP), 20 Working Women’s Forum Association (YWCA), 3
Women in Public Space, 108 (WWF), 84 Yousafzai, Malala, 90, 104–111,
Women’s and Gender Studies et workplace policies, family-friendly, 105, 106
Recherches Féministes 266 YouTube, 93
(WGSRF), 300 World Bank, 64 YWCA, 3
350 Index