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Gender, Sex and Colonialism - Coggle Diagram
Gender, Sex and Colonialism
- Gender is an integral feature of colonialism
- Sandy O’Sullivan (2021): Gender binary is a colonial act; denies/ erases gender diversity within Indigenous peoples; imposes European family formations
- Madi Day (2021): Applies the work of Maria Lugones to ‘so-called’ Australia to emphasise the cultural specificity of heterosexualism and the coloniality of gender
Heterosexualism and the colonial/modern gender system
- Both colonised subjects and colonisers produce and are produced by the modern/colonial system
- hierarchal/dichotomous
- Colonised people labelled male and female (sexual dimorphism), rather than men and women, and those divergent within this model were eliminated
- System denies colonised subjects their full humanity
- Heterosexualism > supported/spread through Christianity, science and patriarchy.
Broad colonial period
- European colonisation, 16th to 20th centuries
- Civilising mission (later White Man’s Burden): condemning and/or reforming native customs (re: sex and gender)
- Colonialists brutally impose ideological frameworks that facilitate access to colonised bodies
- Brutality of colonialism did not go uncontested among Europeans
- Colonisation of the 16th and 17th centuries: Spain and Portugal divided most of the world between themselves
- Colonialism– 18th-20th centuries > ‘Two main forms: Settler (‘white’) colonies and occupation colonies
- Robert Young: imperialism is the theory, colonialism is the practice.
- By the 19th century, science/ social Darwinism adds legitimacy to colonialism and racism
christian colonisation
- Conversions, especially among powerful members of society
- Train local clergy
- ‘Christianise’ local rituals and practices
- Stamp our local religions
- Religious conquest often by violence > eg Goa
- Declare sexual practices other than within marriage a punishable crime/sin
Latin America as a case study
- Consisted of established civilisations (eg Aztec) which tended to be patriarchal (esp Mayan)
- Missionaries condemned the immortality of the ‘Indians’ especially women
- Catholic missionaries were especially zealous about gender roles/regulating sex
- Marriage a target for Christian reformers, eg bride service
- Marriage a target for Christian reformers, eg bride service
- Stearns: the result could be the worst of both Mayan and Spanish Patriarchal worlds
- Other targets of christianity colonists in the americas:
- Same-sex activity; two-spirit/third gender
General features of colonialism
- Christian/European influence greatest in areas formally ruled
- When Europeans went somewhere just for trade, they interfered less with local customs.
- The more foreign/different a religion was, the more effort was put in to stamp it out
- Same for gender roles in religion, family structures, and subsistence lifestyles
- Key differences between Christian/non-christian societies
- Marriage arrangements
- Religious roles
- Indigenous Christianity could differ
- tolerance/acceptance of homosexuality
- Different gender constructs, eg “third-sex” gender
Colonising Marriage
- ‘[S]exual relations between men and women were conducted without concern about ‘illegitimate’ offspring. There could be several trial encounters and temporary unions before a marriage was decided on….’ – Natalie Zemon Davis on Huron and Iroquois
- What happened to one group of Iroquois, the Senecas, after colonization?
- Missionaries & government agents pressured the Senecas to accept White settler social norms, but Senecas tried to retain traditional customs, e.g. retaining aspects of matrilineal social organisation
- Colonists treated men as heads of family
- Women exercised resistance, e.g. against white naming patterns
- Even Christian marriages could end in divorce
- At the onset of 20th century, still discernible differences, e.g. children out of wedlock
sex and colonialism
- Import white women. (e.g. orphans).
- Inter-racial sex not always viewed unfavourably – could help ‘stabilise’ a colony,
- Sometimes marriage encouraged, sometimes extra-marital sex viewed as more favourable for colonisation.
- What to do with the children
- Creation of new racial identities/ categories.
colonial contexts
dutch
- Dutch, 17th-20th century: ruled from afar and/ or via colonial elite
- Strict racial and social structure with Dutch elite at the top, yet notions of ‘native’ and ‘European’ were fuzzy in the colonial context
- Concubinage common, e.g. nyai in Java and Sumutra, congai in Indochina
- Reinforced colonial hierarchies, but also undermined them, e.g. through progeny.
french
- French colonial empire: 17thC-1960s
- 19th century: Africa and Southeast Asia.
- Civilising mission, or ‘la mission civilisatrice’: in Algeria targeted women & the practice of veiling
british
- Late 16th-20th centuries: ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’
- Emblematic episode: 1857 Indian Mutiny / Rebellion
- 19th century: changes in sexual politics of Empire
- Sexual inviolability of white British women stressed
australia
- Patrick Wolfe: settler colonialism: ‘an inherently gendered project, the dormant landscape being unequivocally coded female’
- Aboriginal men and Aboriginal women have been invaded in different ways – not only in terms of sexuality but in terms of their positioning in relation to the settler economy…, whilst white men and white women have invaded in different ways’.
- Modes of settler colonial strategies
- Confrontation
- Incarceration
- Assimilation
- what disrupted the ‘logic of elimination’= sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women, and the children that this produced.
Colonial discourses endure into the present
- Historians/writers have also been criticised for reproducing colonial stereotypes about sex and gender
- Larissa Behrendt (2000): ‘Aboriginal women are still trapped by frontier constructs and assumptions of the availability of their sexuality’ (2000)
- Corrine Tayce Sullivan (2018): ‘For Indigenous women like myself, our sexualities have rarely been discussed, recognised or even considered from our point of view’.
- ‘My lived experience is in conflict with much of dominant discourses about Aboriginal women’s sexuality and intimate relationships’.
Veiling
- Starting point: why has the veil become visual shorthand for ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim women are oppressed’?
- Framing the debates: basics/ Islam/ colonialism/ anti-colonialism/ nationalism; fundamentalism/ ‘clash of civilisations’; secularism; neo-colonialism
- Basics
- Hijab (Arabic) head covering worn by Muslim women and modest dress in general
- Veiling not mentioned in the Quran
- Arab Muslims picked up veiling from Middle East
- Custom did not spread to all classes of women, and process was gradual and not complete
- Debates dated to late 18th/ early 19th centuries
Islam
like other monotheistic religions
- Is not monolithic
- Is highly compatible with patriarchy
- Is male-dominated at the ‘religious authority’ level
- Exhibits traditional and modernising tendencies
- Has lots of female believers, including those offering feminist interpretations
unlike other monotheistic religions
- Understands itself as restoring the strict monotheism of the descendants of Abraham, e.g. as counter to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity
- In Islamic tradition, Jesus’ / Isa’s birth is still immaculate and Mary/ Maryam is still a virgin, but Allah is not Jesus’ father
- Maryam (Mary), along with Hagar, mother of Ishmael = women’s autonomy understood in terms of segregation from men through the ideal of modesty
- Maryam (Mary) as ideal of feminine modesty and model for the scarf (hijab)
gender
- Leila Ahmed, author of Women and Gender in Islam (1992) makes the argument that it is not Islam itself which is patriarchal, but interpretations of Islam that are patriarchal.
- There is more than one Islamic tradition. Muhammad gave Islam two traditions: (1) an ethical structure that advocates the moral and spiritual equality of men and women; and (2) A hierarchical structure as the basis of male/female relations.
- Islam merged with patriarchal, misogynistic society of Abbasid Iraq (750-1258), where Islam became the religion of the male elite. Here Islam picked up some of the practices and attitudes of the Sasanian nobility – e.g. harems and concubines.
- Stearns: the expansion of Islam, after its origins in the Arabian peninsula around 610, is ‘one of the great culture-contact episodes in world history’. In short term, could mean improvement for women compared to more traditional forms of Arab patriarchy, but ‘in the long run…Islam blended with regional variations of patriarchy and rigidified gender relations’.
sources
- Two groups: in Classical Arabic and translated into modern languages
- First source: the Quran (Arabic for ‘the recitation’)
- Women in the Qu’ran
- Only Mary / Maryam mentioned by name
- “Men have authority over women because of what God has conferred on one side in preference to the other”. (Verse 4:34)
- Muhammad: Give her food when you take food, clothe her when you clothe yourself, do not revile her face, and do not beat her.
- Second: Hadiths (‘story, tradition’)
- Shari’a Law:
- the body of Islamic religious law which deals with daily life
- Defenders: Muslim women had more rights than western women, at least until 19th century (e.g. property rights)
- Other interpretations: women must wear the veil, women worth half of what a man is worth
- Has been used to defend ‘honour killing’
marriage
- Within Islamic law, there is more than one type of marriage.
- Nikah: permanent, but can be terminated through divorce. The couple may inherit from each other and a legal contract is signed when entering the marriage.
- Nikah mu-tah: or fixed term marriage, or literally ‘marriage for pleasure’
- Polygamy
- Quran: ‘And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, then marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice (between them), then (marry) only one or what your right hands possess; this is more proper, that you may not deviate from the right course.’
short history of islam
- From Abraham (Ibrahim) to Muhammad: Final Prophet of Allah
- Quran: last word
- Muhammad – 570 CE in Mecca – died in 632 in Medina.
- Last ten years of his life: rose to leadership of virtually all of western and central Arabia
- After he died, the political and spiritual leadership of the majority of Muslims was assumed by succession of caliphs or deputies.
muhammad and women
- Like Jesus, often represented as woman-friendly (e.g. followers, extending some rights)
- Two of his 11-13 wives Khadija and Aisha have been celebrated as pivotal figures in the development of Islam
- Polygamous, Aisha a child-bride, had concubines
- What is the legacy of all of this?
golden age
- Abbasid dynasty of Persia (750-1258)
- Islamic law elaborated
- Major Hadiths
- Islamic Renaissance – philosophy, sciences, technology, literature, e.g. One Thousand and One Nights (compiled from 9th century)
- Islam moves into India (see Stearns)