Wrapping Up

My time in Senegal is drawing to a close. I must admit I'm ready for a change. Especially if that change is New Orleans. I've never felt so tired in my life, physically and emotionally.

I recently completed my last round of traveling in West Africa with a close friend from college. We hit some relatively isolated beach areas in a separatist region of Senegal (Casamance) and stayed in a Serer village with a Peace Corps friend. It brought the usual joys and difficulties traveling in West Africa has always entailed. Somehow though, my brain conveniently suppresses the memories of any trouble until met with all the glorious forms of stress.

There's the never knowing what is happening, the waiting, the dangerous car rides, the sickness, the dirty food, the waiting, the discomfort, the aggressive men, the stink of burning garbage and human waste, the holes that acts as toilets, the lack of electricity, the waiting, the day long travel excursions to a location that should only take an hour, the heat, the bamboozling, and the fact that we are walking money-bags in the eyes of most Senegalese.

Most of this I can handle. In fact, most of this I love. This is real life. Away from a computer. Out in the world. Experiencing it. Not everyone gets to eat the oysters they watched being hacked off a mangrove root by a petite 40 year old village woman. Or play the jambes while the rhythm of the collective pounding accompanies the setting sun over a long stretch of deserted beach.

It's the hustling that gets to me. Senegalese men hustle us to buy trinkets, force us in to conversations, follow us down the street, surround us while we're sitting on a beach in our bikinis. I have no way of knowing if this is because we are white, because we are women, because they think we have money, or because it's simply cultural. I wish I could travel as a man to see what annoyances they encounter. If they feel a constant threat, a physical struggle for dominance and assertion that is like a losing battle when you're pitted against so many.

I know much of this hustle is a direct result of poverty. I've never been bothered by a wealthy Senegalese business man. At least not followed down the street (the bar is another story). I also know this hustle is a direct result of the disrespect this country pays to its women. Whether it is because of Islam, because of cultural tradition or because when you're at the very bottom you want to feel like your on top of at least something, so you choose the most vulnerable and powerless to force into supplication (don't get me wrong, America pays women its fair share of disrespect). I also know that the situation in general is a result of colonization and globalization and this time I'm on the winning side:

"Today, national independence and the growth of national feeling in underdeveloped regions take on totally new aspects. In these regions, with the exception of certain spectacular advances, the different countries show the same absence of infrastructure. The mass of the people struggle against the same poverty, flounder about making the same gestures with their shrunken bellies outline what has been called the geography of hunger. It is an underdeveloped world, a world inhuman in its poverty; but also it is a world without doctors, without engineers, and without administrators. Confronting this world, the European nations sprawl, ostentatiously opulent. This European opulence is literally scandalous, for it has been founded on slavery, it has been nourished with the blood of slaves and it comes directly from the soil and from the subsoil of that underdeveloped world. The well-being and the progress of Europe have been built up with the sweat and dead bodies of Negroes, Arabs, Indians, and the yellow races. We have decided not to overlook this any longer. When a colonialist country, embarrassed by the claims for independence made by a colony, proclaims to the nationalist leaders: 'If you wish for independence, take it, and go back to the Middle Ages,' the newly independent people tend to acquiesce and to accept the challenge; in fact you may see colonialism withdrawing its young State the apparatus of economic pressure. The apotheosis of independence is transformed in to the curse of independence and the colonial power through it immense resources of coercion condemns the young nation to regression. In plan words, the colonial power says: 'Since you want independence, take it and starve.' " (The Wretched of the Earth, 96-97)

While Fanon published this in the early 60's during Algeria's struggle for independence, his words are still relevant today. Resources are still exploited by the West, economic sanctions and political strong-arming are rampant.

I believe it is the struggle between my upper hand of being a Westerner and my lower hand of being a broke white woman that is causing me so much inner turmoil. And I'm finished.

I met a man on my travels, a Senegalese engineer and sanitation expert who had started an NGO to help the poorest of the poor in Senegal by bringing them clean drinking water, working infrastructure and education. Women and men like him are Senegal's future and while they might need our help for a little bit, they won't for long. When we can meet each other on equal footing, then perhaps my anger will recede slightly and my energy will return. Someday, but not today.

The Temptress

"While Anada was begging in orderly succession, he came to the house of a prostitute named Maudenka who had a beautiful daughter named Pchiti. This young maiden was attracted by Anada's youthful and attractive person and pleaded earnestly with her mother to conjure the young monk by the magic spell "bramanyika." This the mother did and Anada coming under the spell of its magic became fascinated by the charm of the young maiden and entered the house and her room." (A Buddhist Bible, edited by Dwight Goddard).

This is from one of the most famous buddhist sutra's titled the Shurangama Sutra and according to Wikipedia, was translated in 705. In a religion accepting of all creatures, it demonstrates the deep-seeded mistrust of female sexuality. One of the main practices of Dharma in attaining enlightenment, as stipulated in these ancient texts, is to release yourself from all sensual pleasures. At such an early age, Buddhas were men, and a form of sensual pleasure was the woman. The temptress could comprimise the Mind of True Essence if a man was not strong enough. Consider at the origin of the religion is the tale of the Enlightened One, who abandoned his wife and children to begin his pilgrimage and subsequent transcendence.

Other religions have also laid the blame on women. Some Islamic scholars translate Koranic texts to justify the covering of women from head to foot so that they don't arouse and encourage debasement in men. And one need only read The Scarlet Letter to grasp Christianity's view on women and sexuality.

It might seem a bit anarchronistic to use such early texts to analyse modern religious practices. But what is religion except dogmatic tradition? Culture is not a far cry from this. I dare say that life has changed much. From prostitutes to rape victims, a women is often blamed for the pain her sexuality reaps. I do believe men are scared of the vagina. The placement of blame is a means of control. Considering the origins of philosophy, the course of history, the all pervasive patriarchial system that modern society is built on helps one to considered how intrinsic it is today and how to do away with it tomorrow.

Why has feminism has become a vulgar word?

My vow to post about feminism seems to have given me an excuse to procrastinate. We'll see if 2009 energizes my constitution.

I have been contemplating system-wide change lately and how both women and men can revolutionize their culturalized gender roles in order to bring about both greater equality and a more exciting, inviting and livable world.

For example, the very notion of equality doesn't do much good if women simply demand the ability to participate in the world as men do. Men haven't created a very desirable world, have they? I definitely am not asking for the ability to proposition men in hair salons or make men uncomfortable by grabbing their ass in broad daylight on the beach in front of my friends.

To quote from an online discussion I have been having with some friends: "Radical feminists (often anti-capitalist) have criticized liberal feminists for the latter's characterization of feminism as 'women can do anything men can do.' The basic criticism is that such a formulation leaves the door open for things like 'women can now join the military and go kill brown people on the other side of the planet' (to pick one of the most negative) in addition to more obvious positive opportunities. This is a criticism I tend to agree with; I also think it neatly reveals the distinction between progress inside a larger structural framework (again, US capitalism/democracy) and a change made to that structural framework. 'Allowing' a woman to do a job that has a hand in demeaning women seems to indicate a very limited and specific type of progress/change. To wit: the presence of, say, Condoleeza Rice (or Margaret Thatcher) on the world stage doesn't seem to have helped end patriarchy very much, does it?"

To further the point, this from a recent article discussing the same issue that argues inclusion doesn't necessarily equate to empowerment: " In South Africa, she pointed out, women’s political participation was among the highest in the world – but so were levels of violence against women. Sometimes women’s inclusion into institutions doesn’t resolve the deep-seated problems of gender equality." (http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/6462)

So then what I deem as needing to happen is the reconsideration of a man's role, masculine values and the overall structure of a patriarchal society. But how does one go about recreating masculine values when the men are the ones in power?

My project is running in to this problem. We are providing nonformal education classes about human rights and gender equality. Our goal has more to do with changing the way men perceive their place in society than direct empowerment of women. Men are the gatekeepers, afterall. But men are highly uninterested in attending these classes. About 2/3's of the participants are women, all extremely eager to have their quieted voices heard. But it seems in many ways these women are already there. It is the men who need the changing. So how does one create such change?

To further complicate matters, issues such as gender equality in development perpetuate "the idea that brown men often mistreat their women" and development agencies use this "as a reason for northern interventions. At the same time, romanticizing all brown (or white) men as angels is clearly a problem." (http://www.thevarsity.ca/article/6462)

What the author suggests is that such a type of intervention needs to be lead by local women and their allies, "as they are the ones who have the right to say who is impeding their ambitions and desires." While Senaglese women are asking for this project, I must say it isn't exactly locally initiated. And the white (and brown) men in my country haven't exactly created space for local women either. But is it space that I'm asking for or a new, perhaps even unperceived world?

Most definitely a woman's problems are not the same the world over. But women the world over are locked in to the same system, a system created, secured and sustained by men. So as global citizens, let's not create change that allows us to play a man's game, but to literally change the game.