Gender and Oppression

Sulmaz Moradi, ayaz@ca.inter.net

The great interest with which issues of gender and politics are received today undoubtedly has its roots in the changes which have taken place in women’s situations in the modern world, particularly in their widespread access to the kind of education which creates a public for ideas. At the same time, this interest is engendered by frustration, for women are a public, which is largely outside public life, with very few and arguable exceptions among industrialized nations; women remain outside the center of decision-making. The paradox, is that women who take part in helping to modify or even revolutionize the system face the same problems as those who simply want to share the benefits on equal terms with men. The new challenge would be how to use the new achievements for further changes? If the goal of women is to achieve equal rights from public life, then greater changes in society and politics are required before this can be achieved. However, it is not easy to agree on what these changes ought to be. The strategies that feminists use depends on what they think the obstacle are. In another world the obstacle has been correctly identified and how willing are women to adapt to these goals.

Beliefs have social consequences. When it is widely believed that women are naturally different from men, social practices will echo that conviction. Whether the nature of that difference is considered in terms of natural inferiority or moral superiority, or social expectation, social roles and social institutions will be shaped in conformity with the contours of the presumed gender uniqueness. Practically every known society is described by social practices that treat men and women differently (Chapman, p.9).

To avoid reproducing a system of power that privileges men, women and men must engage questions concerning the cause of and find solutions for all forms of sexual discrimination. If the discrimination of the past and present time is not to be repeated, the problematic of gender must become a central point of feminist and political activists.

Explaining oppression

The imbalance of power in the family, in the schools, in the workplace … is interrelated. Male control over women’s sexuality and technology of reproduction, over the sexual division of the labor in the domestic and in the public territory, and over the very conceptions of masculinity and femininity constitute the means by which men impose unjust restricts upon women’s freedom. It is most visible in systems that define women existence solely in terms of the roles of wife, mother, domestic labor, and consumer; but it is no less pernicious when it surfaces in societies that encourage men and women to be active, independent to be the master of their destinies, while subtly affording women fewer opportunities for self realization than men. Male dominance had already gained ground before the rise of urban societies. Among the most compelling feminist theories is that the importance of increasing the population and providing labor power in early societies led to the theft of women, whose sexuality and reproductive capacity became the first property that tribes compared for. Warrior’s cultures favoring male dominance as a result appeared. Women’s sexuality was designated the property of men, first to the women’s father then to her husband. Female sexual purity became negotiable economically valuable property. This led to the rise of prostitution and to the enforcement of a severe isolation between respectable women (wives), whose sexuality and reproductive ability belonged to one man, and women who were available to any man.

Urban societies and the population growth saw women becoming further oppressed by easing their exclusion from most of the professional classes, and by declining their economical status. Eventually, the rise to supremacy of gods saw the decline of goddesses. “In any case, throughout the period of successive city-state, power and authority resided exclusively with the husband and father, to whom wife and children owed absolute obedience.” (L.Ahmae, p.13).

For example, the witch burning rituals in Europe in the fifteenth century, Chinese foot binding, clitoredectomy in Africa, all of these primitive practices drew parallels over patriarchal control over women’s bodies, sexuality and physical movement. These rituals across different cultures at different times emphasize the similarities in the forms of patriarchal control exercised over women universally. Men have used force to undermine, oppress, and control women, throughout the world’s history. And although some things have changed because of the determination of many strong and educated women, the oppression still continues in our present “modern times”. The “weaker sex”, as we are often referred to by the male population, has won many battles since the dark ages, and although it may look as if we’ve taken a major step towards liberation, the painful truth remains. The veiled women of the Middle East who are whipped, stoned alive, and imprisoned if not killed for their views. The women of India and Pakistan who are burned alive, stabbed, or sprayed with acid if they disagree or undermine their husbands, fathers or even their brothers. Honor killings that are common practices in many countries such as Turkey, Jordan, and Pakistan only to name a few.

Women all across the world have fought and are still fighting for their pursuit of equality in society. In the industrialized world some of the battles have been won with great success, but we’re still “not there” yet. Unfortunately the women in developing countries are still struggling for their rights and even for their daily survival. In those “third world countries” religious beliefs, social and economical practices, but most of all government policies, promote oppression and violence towards women. Unless the government sees it fit to protect women in those countries by implementing equal rights policies, the women’s movement in such countries would have to fight a fierce battle in order to bring even mediocre change.

Force

Women’s oppression is not natural; but how is the subordination of half the species are to be explained? Feminists identify physical force as second explanatory strain as the cause of women’s oppression. Mary Wollstonecraft suggests, “men used physical force to oppress women and then used wise rationalizations to make such subordination natural”(p.83). In subduing women by force, men used the same tactics that had been successfully applied to defeat and enslave other tribes, nations, and peoples. In fulfilling with commands imposed women were no different from any other oppressed population. From the very earliest twilight of human society every woman owing to the value attached to her by men, combined with her inferiority in muscular strength was found in the state of bondage to some man. Gradually, as political system grew more sophisticated laws entered into legal system.

“That those who were physically weaker should have been made legally inferior.

Is quite conformable to the mode in which the world has been governed. Until

very lately, the rule of physical strength was the general law of human affairs.

Throughout history, the nations, race and classes, which found themselves the

strongest, either in muscles, in riches, or in military discipline, has conquered

And held in subjection the rest.”

However, women’s oppression was caused by men’s use of physical force does not in itself explain why men would choose to use violence against women. Some feminists identify two possible motivations for exploitation of women’s sexuality. In the beginning, and among tribes that are still in the primitive condition, women were and are the slave of men for purpose of sensuality. Therefore, non-bearer of children tried to control the bearer of children in order to define a reproduction territory from which other men are excluded. Consequently, guaranteeing both their having children and their being able to identify them as their own. Men were able to defeat women with the weapons they developed for hunting when it became clear that women were of a more peaceful nature. Furthermore, the first imperialism was male over females: the male claiming the female body and her services as his property. Physical terror, which was a necessary element in process of turning free persons into slaves, took for women the form as rape. As a strategy of domination, rape satisfied men’s sexual appetites while at the same time getting rid of women’s autonomy. “Rape is the kind of terrorism which severely limits the freedom of women and makes women dependent on men.” (p.86) While men got together to form and institutionalize male dominance, rape became the preferred method of social control. Escaping gang rape, women turned to men for protection in terms of providing exclusive sexual services for one male.

In recognition that something more was needed to explain women’s oppression that relates to human biology, many feminists have turned to psychology for an explanation of male dominance. According to some feminist analysis, men’s need for elaboration, and preoccupation with immortality, womb envy, and the psychological scars resulting from the oedipal conflict have been introduced to explain men’s need to oppress women and the action that follows from that need. Similarly, Virginia Wolf suggested that ego overdoing explains the chief reason why men oppress women. To be called inferior, women become looking to have the glass reflecting the magic and appetizing power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.( Buaty Myeh,lj,h). Nature’s seasonal course represents a cycle of birth, growth, maturation, and death, followed by regeneration and repetition of the cycle. When men deal with this natural cycle, they find themselves in a position altogether unlike beast or god. For men’s lives follow a unilinear path from birth to death, without the inherent immortality characteristic of the gods. However, men see women as more tied to the natural cycle of everlasting reappearance that they are themselves. “Female can bleed suddenly and heavily without dying. ” maybe this is the earliest reason for associating women with magic. “The bleeding can stop as suddenly as it starts. Furthermore, the women’s body can change shape and then produce a miniature human being which is then nourished by the female body and grows to start another life.” (p.99). Meanwhile the male body does not change. It does not reproduce; it has no nourishment for children even after females bring them into the world. A feeling of isolation from the natural world creates a lasting sense of inferiority and frustration in men. Female constantly reproduced herself, she had the key to immortality and he did not. The male then had cause to experience him as inferior and mortal, as excluded and cut-off from cycle of ever-regenerating life. Men’s merciless sense of inferiority has dire consequences for women, resulting in jealousy and hostility.

Men decided to seize control of sexual practice and reproduction; by taking control of production, men gained a sense of power and importance. Furthermore, both male technology and patriarchy are based on male’s feeling of inadequacy and mortality in relation to the female. Eva Kittay claims,” both anthropological evidence and clinical evidence supports the existence of such a phenomenon, “womb envy”.” She defines womb envy as an essentially negative and destruction emotion, an anger that men feel because women possess a capacity to give birth, resulting in an envious impulse to take away or spoil women’s unique capacity.

It is very important to uncover the root causes of women’s oppression in order to discover not only biological facts in which social institutions operate to limit women’s choice but also which fact or institution must be changed in order to effect a significant and permanent increase in women’s capacity to choose. To secure women involvement in their own subordination, patriarchy has invented a sophisticated ideology to confuse women’s mind and to control their hope, and expectations. . Differently labeled as philosophy, science, religion, and law, this ideological structure has so distorted women’s perspective that it is impossible to think on terms other than those of the oppressor. Therefore, it is said male’s ideas, voices, interests, and perspectives dominate all thinking. Generally official intellection became as male intellection. In the territory of mind and thoughts, the male is universalized. The value system that has been forced upon women by the various cultural institutions of patriarchy has accumulated to a form of gang rape of minds. Patriarchy produces the decapitated women without mind to think, without eyes to see, without ears to hear, without voice to speak. She exists as a mutilated body.

According to De Beauvoir, there is only one basic human nature, represented in the modern world by that of men. Women’s values and behavior the “feminine” are a misrepresentation of this nature, in the form of pregnancy, childbirth, etc, by men. As a result of this distortion men are capable of being fully human but women are not until they are freed. He states that the real first cause is the nature of existence, which leads human being to see the world in the term of “self” and “others”. This duality encompasses all thought, producing the dichotomy of culture and nature: male and female. Unlike that of the other animals, instead of submitting to nature he tries to control. While male wins to control, women’s reproductive role makes losers of them. Finally, one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Consequently,

In nineteenth century suffrage and women’s social reform movement’s claims concerning the moral superiority of women surfaced. In the 1980s, statements concerning women’s differences have surfaced in politics under the issue of “gender gap”. The exact cause of women’s differences has been the subject of rich assumption, women’s biology, psychology, sexuality, women’s experiences of childbirth, childcare, and homemaking. “However, gender oppression has all been cited as grounds for women’s unique perspective on the world and distinctive code of values.” Thus, the rhetoric of difference offers an explanatory account of women’s past and that emphasizes life choices based upon women’s preference, thereby salvaging the freedom, agency, and dignity of women.

De Beavoir, concludes that the only solution for women is emancipation from the female role and the rediscovery of their real humanity. Women must become educated, economically independent and fully participant in the world of men. The trouble is, of course that this conflicts with their reproductive role. His advice to women is quite simply “not to have children and be men instead.

There is no question that women’s gender theory has extremely improved our understanding of the relationships of reproduction, gender and politics, but it is equally clear that it has failed to provide single, clear sense of direction. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the reproductive issues of motherhood, the family and parental roles, which should be at the core of a feminist program, are actually its weakest point. In fact, the inevitable conclusion of the psychological explanation for gender is that gender difference equals gender hierarchy as far as men are concerned. The only way to minimize the aggressiveness of men, either towards each other or against women, is to reject the difference that they value. In fact the more women value themselves, the more determined they would be to achieve a world where they can simply be themselves. Where there is no institutionalized contradiction or intrinsic contradiction between their motherhood and their nature.

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