One man struggling against his gendered inequalities: are men scared of ‘hegemonic femininity’?

Today, as usual when I finish my work and entered the tube station, I picked up the Evening Standard to read during my trip; it’s always the best way to survive the claustrophobic, stressed and crowded London Underground.

Today, an amazing first page:

(Read online)

I’m astonished with the way Men’s Movements are growing. In the 60s and 70s western societies saw the growing of feminists movements and activism, and now, in the second decade of the 21th Century I guess we will watch the rise of men’s movements and activism against their inequalities.

Their space is being threatened by women, which are still less payed compared to men who have the same role, have less access to higher roles in business and in other institutions such as the military, have lower access or limitations in competitive sports (in 2012 Women’s boxing will be, for the first time, included in the Olympic Games, but with limitations in the number of athletes and rounds), have a higher rate as victims of domestic violence and rape, and so on.

Call me ‘obnoxious bigot’ feminist, call me radical, whatever, but I think Tory MP Dominic Raab must live in another dimension or maybe just came back from a possible future, where women rule over men. All evidences (stats and studies in Social Sciences)  in western societies (and I’m only talking about the western societies) points to higher inequalities of women, and there’s still men who believe in their social victimization. It would be possible, seeing and accepting men as victims, if we were living in that ‘possible future’, but this is the present, and the ‘reality’ is very different.

Is he afraid of loosing what he imagines as being is ‘masculinity’?

Or,

Is he afraid of a possible ‘hegemonic femininity’?

Body versus militarism: my starting point

I’m in my work break of 2h30, so I decided to study a bit more on gender and violence.

Again my readings led me to transgendering in militarism, this time through the notion of the body.

I remembered my essays about my boxing experience; my body was a category of differentiation. Because my body differences acquired significance within the world was in (boxing), I self was seen as unfit (or less fit) to practice such sport.

I started questioning:

What is the notion of body in the military?  What significance the body carries to allow a definition of who does or doesn’t fit in the armed forces? Does this significance have been changing through time and space? How relevant is the women and transsexuals’ body, to whom western society attributes a different significance, to their acceptance in the armed forces? And so on.

I think the notion of the body will be a good starting point to analyse the gendered world of militarism.

Reading on Gender: how language shapes our world

I’ve been focusing my studies on Gender Studies versus Violence, since I want to write about the relationship of women and militarism, which is institutionally described as masculine and patriarchal.

The more I read on Gender, more I realize how language is important and how discourses shape the way we are constructed and reproduce our world. All I’ve read until now, either by feminists or other theorists, seems to always fall on the same reductionist categorization of the social human being: first, gender; secondly, color of skin, most of times ’race’; third, sexuality; last, social class; even though this last two are fluid and change their position.

I’m using as introductory to Gender Studies: Richardson, Diane, Robinson, Victoria (eds) (2008)Introducing Gender and Women’s Studies, 3rd Ed, Palgrave MacMillan: New York, which is an attempt to demonstrate the development of gender studies without taking sides, but is for me a very feminist approach to gender. In all chapters, which are small articles written by different authors, I always find written: ’white, male, heterosexual, middle class’; to me a radical feminist and western approach of social categories.

After reading, not just this book but also other articles online and from books (through SOAS Library), I’ve been realizing that my own discourse falls in this reductionist categorization, and I’ve accepted, not without criticizing it, that my view of the social world is constructed in this way. Of course, I also reproduce it through my discourse; even thought I recognize its reductionism, I find hard to overpass it.

Foucault was right: discourse constructs the topic, defines and produces the objects of our knowledge, and since knowledge is connected to power, it assumes the authority of ’the truth’ and has the power to make itself true.

But discourse is fluid, and language, the base of discourse, is also a living thing, therefore discourses can change…

 

The way our writings are influenced by our gender

This is interesting and made me think about my own writings on gender.

My study favourite subject – gender, is always influenced by my gender, because I don’t believe in objectivity and it sucks! All I write involves a bit about myself, about the way I see gender and the way I myself gender the world.

Hum… interesting for future analyses.

Looks huge, but in comparison… political participation is gendered!

Country	Prime Minister or President
Australia	Prime Minister Julia Gillard 2010-present
Argentina	President Maria Estela “Isabel” Martínez Cartas de Perón 1974-76
	President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner 2007-present
Bangladesh	Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia 1991-1996, 2001-2006
	Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina 1996-2001, 2009-present
Bolivia	President Lidia Gueiler Tejada 1979-1980
Brazil	President Dilma Vana Linhares Rousseff 2011-present
Bulgaria	Prime Minister Reneta Indjova 1994-1995
Burundi	Prime Minister Sylvie Kinigi 1993-1994
Canada	Prime Minister Kim Campbell 1993
Central African Rep.	Prime Minister Elizabeth Domitien 1975-1976
Chile	President Michelle Bachelet Jeria 2006-2010
Costa Rica	President Laura Chinchilla Miranda 2010-present
Croatia	Prime MInister Jadranka Kosor 2009-present
Dominica	Prime Minister Mary Eugenia Charles 1980-1995
Finland	President Tarja Halonen 2000-present
	Prime Minister Anneli Tuulikki Jäätteenmäki 2003
	Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi 2010-present
France	Prime Minister Edith Cresson 1991-1992
Gabon	Interim President Rose Francine Rogombé 2009
Germany	Chancellor Angela Merkel 2005-present
Guyana	President Janet Jagan 1997-1999
Haiti	Prime Minister Claudette Werleigh 1995-1996
	President Ertha Pascal-Trouillot 1990-1991
	Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis 2008-2009
Iceland	President Vigdis Finnbogadóttir 1980-1996
	Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir 2009-present
India	Prime Minister Indira Gandhi 1966-1977, 1980-1984
	President Pratibha Devisingh Patil 2007-present
Indonesia	President Megawati Sukarnoputri 2001-2004
Ireland	President Mary Robinson 1990-1997
	President Mary McAleese 1997-present
Israel	Prime Minister Golda Meir 1969-1974
Jamaica	Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller 2006-2007
Kyrgyzstan	President Roza Otunbayeva 2010-present
Latvia	President Vaira Vike-Freiberga 1999-2007
Liberia	Interim President Ruth Sando Perry 1996-1997
	President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 2006-present
Lithuania	Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskienė 1990-1991
	President Dalia Grybauskaitė 2009-present
Malta	President Agatha Barbara 1982-1987
Moldova	Prime Minister Zinaida Grecianii 2008-2009
Mozambique	Prime Minister Luísa Dias Diogo 2004-2010
New Zealand	Prime Minister Jenny Shipley 1997-1999
	Prime Minister Helen Elizabeth Clark 1999-2008
Nicaragua	President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro 1990-1997
Norway	Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland 1981, 1986-89, 1990-96
Pakistan	Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto 1988-1990, 1993-1996
Panama	President Mireya Elisa Moscoso Rodríguez 1999-2004
Peru	Prime Minister Beatriz Merino Lucero 2003
Philippines	President Maria Corazon Aquino 1986-1992
	President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 2001-2010
Poland	Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka 1992-1993
Portugal	Prime Minister Maria de Lurdes Pintasilgo 1979-1980
Rwanda	Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana 1993-1994
Sao Tome & Principe	Prime Minister Maria das Neves Ceita Baptista de Sousa 2002-04
	Prime Minister Maria do Carmo Silveira 2005-2006
Senegal	Prime Minister Mame Madior Boye 2001-2002
Slovakia	Prime Minister Iveta Radičová 2010-present
South Korea	Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook 2006-2007
Sri Lanka	Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike 1960-65, 1970-77, 1994-00
	President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga 1994-2005
Switzerland	President Ruth Dreifuss 1999
	President Micheline Calmy-Rey 2007, 2011-present
	President Doris Leuthard 2010
Trinidad and Tobago	Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar 2010-present
Turkey	Prime Minister Tansu Çiller 1993-1996
Ukraine	Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko 2005, 2007-2010
United Kingdom	Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher 1979-1990
Yugoslavia	Prime Minister Milka Planinc 1982-1986

(Source: http://www.ergd.org/Premiers.htm, acceded 18.Jan.2011)

Huge list, hem? Optical perspective, since presently only 18 women are President or PM all over the world, and all the other known rulers are men.

Women’s role in politics is growing, but still far from equality. Possible? Don’t know… maybe one day, when institutions change. But first there’s the need of changing institutions and, therefore, discourses; a change that has to be done by all genders (men, women, lesbians, gays, transgenders, and so on).

As I said before, maybe one day… changing discourses is not the same as changing sweater everyday; there are two factors consider: the way cultures are organized and the way political processes occur; of course, both are related and also involve other categories such as ethnicity and social class.

Definitely equality will not happen during my lifetime, but I’ll keep on struggling with my favourite ‘weapon’: my own discourse through my writings.

Opened to another study focus: transgender in armed forces

My last readings on Feminism and Gender Studies lead me to another interest of study: violence against transgender, especially because in most conflict and war zones transgender is forbidden or totally ignored. I’m talking about Africa and Middle East, where in most cases transgender and transsexuality is totally marginalized and against the law in most cases.

I wonder how many people in these countries which to become accepted as they feel inside them; gays, lesbians, transsexuals having their identities recognized and having the same legal rights as any other ‘coherent gender/sex’ (women as female, and men as male) and heterosexual person.

I know it’s a hard demanding, since in Western (and non-conflict) countries) this is still not a stable issue. We (I say ‘We’ because I identify myself as Western) still have huge acceptance problems and legal issues unsolved, such as the approval of transsexual surgery by the National Health Systems as an important health matter, and not as a luxury surgery with a frivolous character, which most transsexuals from a poor social class can’t afford. ISN’T THIS ALSO VIOLENCE? To me it is.

So, after reading on gender and violence I end up turning my eyes to the Western context, especially on my favourite matter: militarism.

Do Western armed forces consider transsexuals? Many are the European Union countries that accept gays, lesbians and bisexuals  in their armed forces (same in some countries in the American and Asian Continents), since their laws do not allow gender discrimination, but how many transsexuals have been accepted?

As far as I was able to read only Canada, UK, Spain, Czech Republic, Australia and Thailand have legally accepted them. On US transgender situation read http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/01/11/transgender-vets-want-military-access/.

In the country where I now live transsexuals can apply to armed forces and be accepted, but in the country where I was born, and lived 34 years of my life, even the acceptance of changing a name in the Civil Registry is an issue hard to have a simple solution. So, I wonder how many transsexuals are there in Portuguese Armed Forces? Are they registered as gays or lesbians? And with what name?

All these question had taken me to another direction of studies. I don’t know yet if I’ll really follow, but I’m opened to it.

A small step for man and giant step for Portuguese mankind

I may be drunk, because we had a party in the house tonight, but I’m sober enough to write this post congratulating all the Portuguese politicians that didn’t allow a referendum (a waste of money in a pseudo-democracy) and voted today for recognition of the homosexual marriage. Finally a simple human right is being partly fulfilled, the willing of choosing and being socially recognized has maker of the that choice. I know this is only a social matter, but society is everything for Humans and when we are not recognized by our own society we feel like we are not part of it. All people want is to be “normal”, and “normality” means having the same rights because we all are “normal” humans who have the right to be recognized as “normal” citizens. I just hope one day, in a short period, adoption will also be allowed for homosexual couples. A mother figure and a father figure are social constructions and like thirty years ago people thought that children would not be “normal” grownups raised only by one of the parents, and nowadays we can see that they are “normal” human beings, why shouldn’t a child with two mothers or two fathers be a “normal” future grownup?  Please MVA keep on fighting! Don’t give up just because you can marry with the person you love! Keep on fighting for the reconstruction of society’s idea of “normality”!

P.S.: I’m no longer drunk, but tonight really did drink too much and it inspired me to write this post and to write my book review.

Já se tornou uma guerra pessoal!

Caros amigos,

Por acaso alguém viu ontem o debate Prós e Contras, sobre o casamento homossexual?

Nunca vi tantas bacuradas em tão pouco espaço de tempo!

Na minha opinião, sensatez: apenas a Gabriela.

Quem conhece o MVA e o MJR, a esta altura já percebeu que: está aberta uma guerra pessoal!

Eu sei que há muito tempo que eles dois não se gramam, mas desta vez mostraram em público e quem os conhece vai chegar à mesma conclusão que eu: ambos estão a aproveitar uma luta pessoal para se agredirem um ao outro.

Fantástico! E eu aqui a pensar: é porque ambos (mais a CC) escreveram uma carta de recomendação que eu fui aceite na SOAS!

Para quem não viu, aproveite para ver aqui durante esta semana. Para a semana que vem este link termina e eu actualizarei este post.

Women’s boxing in the past

It’s always funny to see women’s boxing in the past, specially because nowadays we do not fight like that. Not only is technicly different but also our attitude towards this sport has changed through times.