Invisible Visibility

There are many images that come to mind when the Westerner thinks about the Middle East; camels, mosques, and oil are likely amongst those that come to mind, but it seems as though there are few images as powerful as the shrouded woman, often likened to phantasmal shadows against city- and desert-scape alike by “outsiders.” The women that occupy these burkas, scarves, veils, and other flowing robes are likewise shaped by the impressions Westerners glean from their attire: the silent, “blacked out,” invisible woman.

This perception is undoubtedly troublesome for the Western feminist. Raised on the concept of loving one’s voice—perhaps, in some cases, at the cost of others—with a very clear focus on liberation as the Western world defines it, the burka-ed Middle Eastern woman finds very little space in “our” brand of gendered emancipation. Indeed, the perceptions delivered in this week’s readings point to something very different from the Western feminist perception: that the burka/veil/scarf is more a symbol of cultural, personal, and political identity rather than a tool of silence. Indeed, the silencing is left to the Western feminist, who all too often projects the outward appearance of the burka onto the testimonies of the women who wear them, rending them either as victim or invisible within Western feminist doctrine.

In many accounts from the Othered Middle Eastern experience, one finds that the veil means much more than a piece of clothing. As Nor Faridah Abdul Manaf states, “the veil is my body,…my mind,…my cultural identity…who I am,” illustrating the multifaceted and layered meanings the veil takes on for Middle Eastern women beyond the simple “piece of cloth” that Manaf describes (Husain 246). Expanding far beyond the Western perception of oppression—though there are certainly Middle Eastern women who would identify with this position—the veil, for many, has become an intrinsic part of their personal identity. Z. Gabriel Arkles, a transgendered Muslim man, proclaimed that the veil was “the only article of ‘womens’’ clothing that [he has] missed wearing,” illustrating not only one of the most poignant of the many meanings the veil can take on, but the importance of the veil in the daily lives of Muslim individuals as a religious marker (Husain 249).

In considering the many different ways a piece of apparel can be culturally demonized and lauded, the veil/burka/scarf teaches an important lesson to Westerners: even when fighting for what “we” define as freedom, “we” have the potential to cling to ethnocentric understandings of another person’s way of life and understanding of themselves. In deeming the veil/scarf/burka as oppressive, “we” succeed in not only deforming what many consider the “true” meaning to be, but manipulate it for “our” own political and social conscience. It seems as though Western outcry about the burka has become a “personal” crusade on the part of “liberated” America, ensuring that all individuals of foreign countries can have access to the same rights and responsibilities North Americans hold (whether cultural definitions of “freedom” match or not). Our ethnocentrisms have “allowed” us to brush aside generations of imbued symbolism of the burka, allowing us to wage war against it as fervently as the terrorism we associate with it. Though there are certainly areas of the Middle East that are in dire need of political reform, who are we, as guardians of an often corrupt, broken, and highly oppressive democracy (which just can’t quite seem to separate Christian church and secular state), to cry “foul!” on a civilization we demonize and claim that we are (unofficially) at war with on a daily basis? Yet I digress. My point here is that room needs to be made in the Western feminist agenda for those we have deemed Other, even when this means understanding and accepting all cultural formulations of an aspect of said culture we may find opposing to our own conceptions and definitions of that which we—and certainly all individuals—hold most dear: freedom to self-express, self-identify, self-liberate.

Man, woman, intersexed, and everything in between:

There is little doubt that society provides minimal "wiggle room" between binary oppositions; North American worldview rarely contemplates the space between oppositions that biological processes don't always make so cut and dry, such as "man and woman," or "white and black." In considering this week's readings, we find that these natural "anomalies" in and of themselves have very little consequence. We find that intersexed individual suffers no medical condition or disease due to their "ambiguous" sex, but does run the risk of suffering social ostracization in a society that does not believe in making room for something in between or outside the bounds of man and woman. In this sense, the intersexed individual finds their liminal gender socially and, in some cases politically, criminalized in a strictly two-gender society.

There are very few taboo actions individuals will take to find a niche within dominating society. Much to the frustration of intersexed individuals, gender ambiguity is no exception. Whether by choice--as we find with intersexed individuals who choose to actively "play the role" of one gender or another in society--or otherwise--as we see with the much more proactive, though rarely productive and always obtrusive infant genital mutilation--we find the ever-persistent two-gender definition of the sexes in society, effectively excluding and erasing approximately 1.7 percent of our population. By continuing to reinforce the two-gender ideal, we are marginalizing (at the very least) and criminalizing (at the very most) those who cannot physically or emotionally adhere to the socially gendered rules set before them.

In understanding the point of view and struggles of an intersexed individual in a very two-gendered society, I can't help but think of the feminist catchphrase of "the personal is political." Though the root of the issue are certainly very different, the main idea behind feminist ambitions and those of intersexed individuals are very much the same. The rhetorically demonized "feminist agenda" often includes ideals such as the end of oppression for all peoples, despite race, class, and sex. While I find it difficult to believe that most individuals who advocate feminism (myself included) immediately consider the asymmetrical gender privileges outside two genders, the personal struggles of intersexed individuals can easily be made political in lobbying more room between the illusive "male/female" dichotomy; intersexed bathrooms and dressing rooms, hair salons (does one go to the barber or the beauty parlor?), sex-segregated activities such as sports teams, and even those pesky M/F boxes on almost every registration form--including federal forms--remind the intersexed individual day in and out that they essentially do not exist in our two-sexed society.

Indeed, as the issues of intersexuality have become more publicized in the last few decades after attempts to surgically "clarify" an intersexed infant's genitals at birth have often failed, we are finding that, finally, the intersexed personal is also becoming political. Protests and lobbying have, at the very least, raised public awareness to the very existence of intersexed individuals (think of it, [an] entirely new gender[s] that American culture is just now coming to acknowledge!) and the oppressive prejudice and erasure they are exposed to on a daily basis. Indeed, by using "the personal is political," intersexed individuals are able to raise awareness to their situation and are working toward "decriminalizing" their ambiguous, yet completely natural sexual situations.

Perhaps one of the most striking (and frightening) aspects the invisibility of intersexuality reveals is how quickly and without second thought individuals make the "choice" to completely modify their physical and emotional selves in order to appear "normal." The idea of surgically modifying parts of myself that I draw meaning and identity from, as many intersexed individuals have, not only terrifies but disturbs me; though it is therapeutic to have coalescing mental images of oneself and one's physical appearance, this identity is still a construction put forth by society (what is the "true" image of man or woman? don't we often find that both of these ideals are slippery to pinpoint and can be left to interpretation?). In this sense, social construction is literally forcing intersexed individuals to choose a completely modified version of themselves over what naturally occurs in their chromosomes, in their self image, and/or between their legs because it does not match what society thinks should occur in these areas. As an advocate of feminism, I wholeheartedly believe that this is just as oppressive as any patriarchal, white, capitalist, heterosexual oppression (thank you, bell hooks) and needs to be included, for better or worse, in the wider "feminist agenda."