by John McMahon
Yesterday at Feministing, Maya Dusenbery wrote about an ad from Germany’s International Human Rights campaign that, as she put it, is “a lesson in how not to advocate for women’s rights.”
As Dusenbery writes,
It seems the folks who created this ad not only have a hard time seeing agency but actually went out of their way to erase it as thoroughly as possible and then stomp on it some more. And then equated women who wear the burqa with bags of trash. Literally.
I completely agree, and would like to add some broader context This is not at all surprising, given the recent of attempts in the West to obscure the agency of Muslim women in juxtaposition to their white, Western saviors. One of the more blatant examples of this was the discourse of the United States government that it was going to war in Afghanistan in part to save Afghan women from the Taliban. Laura Shepherd argued in an excellent 2006 article in The International Feminist Journal of Politics (which I’ve cited before) that the US discursively constructed Afghan women as the “Helpless Victim” that was submissive and lacking agency, under the oppressive control of the “Irrational Barbarian.” This discourse, was used, of course, to posit the United States (specifically, its military) as the saviors who could rectify the situation for these women. Much as the agency of the women in the German PSA was erased, this narrative denied the agency of Afghan women, who, as Shepherd writes, are afforded “only pity and a certain voyeuristic attraction” (p. 20).
Of course, this specific discourse hasn’t ended. As this TIME Magazine cover from last year shows, it continues to serve as a means of justifying the US occupation of Afghanistan.
This discourse assumes, obviously, that the US presence in Afghanistan is a clear benefit for women in the country, a position at least some women’s organizations in Afghanistan contest. Samhita Mukhopadhyay at Feministing had an excellent post on this issue last summer.
I should also mention France’s recently-instituted ban on the full-faced veil, which Dusenbery argues – citing Jos Truitt – is a similar erasure of agency. I agree with her, and again would add that this fits in with this general (Orientalist) discourse about Muslim women, their uncivilized oppressors, and their White saviors.
I’m not going to argue that America or the West is an absolute good when we intervene overseas, and I agree we should be cognizant of the fact that some women embrace wearing burqas rather than finding them oppressive.
However, there’s really two ways of looking at ads like the one from Germany’s International Human Rights Campaign. One in which Western forces are attempting to subvert the agency of women and use them as a shield to wage war against an uncomfortable Other. The other way is to see it, of course, is that the folks over at GIHRC (Let’s pretend that’s the right acronym) are trying to convey their belief that some strains within Middle Eastern society are equating women with garbage, not that they themselves see women as helpless. You may argue with the efficacy of the message, or the potential for misinterpretation, but I’m not sure I find it plausible that members of this humans rights group literally feel that burqa wearing women are powerless to do ANYTHING.
In general, when oppression is occurring, does a third party have a right to intercede on behalf of the oppressed, or is doing so always tainted by a veil of arrogance and a supposition of the victim’s incompetence? Is pointing out that someone is being oppressed always equivalent to saying you don’t personally believe they are capable of agency?
I guess what I’m asking is: Is it more morally justifiable to do nothing? And when we do nothing about oppression (even if it’s not categorical oppression), will Ms. Dusenbery then pen another article about the lack of Western compassion abroad?
Adam, thanks for commenting. I would agree that there is another way of looking at the ad, but argue that the visceral message obscures any potentially better meaning. I don’t think that the organization in general, or the designers of this ad, had any conscious intention to construct the representation that I and Dusenbery think they constructed.
If the question is ‘is it justifiable to do nothing,’ then my answer is no. But to act, especially given the power imbalance between those who are acting and those who are ‘being acted,’ one/an organization has to do so exceedingly carefully. I don’t think it’s possible to dichotomize it as it’s either always oppressive/disempowering or always non oppressive/disempowering – probably ever single intervention has elements of both. Given that, I think there are lots of ways to do it that don’t have the effect (and affect too, really) of constructing the kind of discourse that this ad (or the TIME cover) does.
Worth mentioning that the attack on Aisha from TIME’s cover took place *during* the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, undermining their argument.
Another thing: this HR group’s effort to persuade Germans into ‘civilizing’ the Muslim world and fighting fundamentalism takes place at a time when the CIA, using our tax dollars, is trying to propagandize the *citizens* of Germany so that their government becomes a more reliable partner in our occupation efforts in Afghanistan.
Click to access cia-afghanistan.pdf