Reclaiming the Body AND Soul

There are very few things we can do without our bodies. Consider, for a moment, the very act of getting up in the morning; you need your fingers, hands, and arms to silence the alarm, you need your legs to push you off the mattress and away from the floor, you need your eyes to (squintingly) find the lightswitch, breakfast, and clothing. In considering this, it’s bewildering to think about the ways in which North American culture completely condones the shrinking and diminishing of the female body and the ease with which women accept and feed into this shrinking and diminishing. In this week’s readings, we examined the female body as it fluctuates and shrinks at cultural whims in the form of beauty standards.

And the shrinking body is ever-prevalent. We read many testimonials from women who have battled the bulge and the binge who have stood bravely upon the precipice of diminishing one’s body for the sake of “satisfying” the soul. This powerful “tug of war” manifests itself on many bodies and advertises itself on the fronts of magazines, films, commericals, and throughout the estimated other thousands of advertisements we absorb daily. An additional attack against the female form is prevalent throughout our scholarship (in biology textbooks, sperm are forever “active” and “penetrating,” while the ovum are “passive”), causing little wonder as to why North American culture would create ideal images of the body that match the weakened, passive characterization we have so fervently placed on femininity itself. In this sense, the body and the things that feed the body—food—are forever the enemy and should be shrunk. Of course, our readings this week exposed the dangers inherent in accepting and adopting the shrinking female body and how it stems from larger patriarchal oppression.

In thinking about this, I find it important to recognize the practice of establishing binary opposition North American culture relies upon to create structure and meaning. Bodies are always oppositional to the mind or soul, with the soul being “housed” in the body. In aligning this opposition with others, the soul is characterized with maleness and the body with femininity, falling in line perfectly with how American women perceive, create, correct, and punish their bodies. This concept is by no means foreign to various forms of cultural ideology; even within Christianity, we find the Savior abandoning his body in order for his soul (and others) to succeed in resurrection and join his Father in Heaven. The message sent is ultimately the same we find in Aristotle and North American culture at large: the (temporary, dirty, unworthy) body must defer to the needs of the (eternal, clean, worthy) soul. I feel that the image above (though grotesque, sorry) reflects this hierarchy we place on the body and soul; the body is firmly placed below the soul and, while the soul can exist separately from the body, the body cannot survive without a soul.

So how can we fix this? By recognizing the soul/body dichotomy for what it is—a socialized, unnatural cultural construction—we can begin to correct and diminish the dichotomy and reconnect the body and soul, not as one thing that houses the other, but complimentary elements of the human experience.

Breaking the Cycle

There is little doubt that violence occupies a great deal of the North American’s consciousness. We are a culture that simultaneously adores and abhors violence, packing movie theatres during epic superhero and adventure movies and telling and retelling the stories of our wars and battles as a nation. Violence has become almost second nature in the media, in our politics, and our social stratification. In light of this, it is little wonder that violence has enjoyed a long and comfortable presence in how North Americans interact with each other, particularly in our most personal relationships. In our readings for this week, the unfortunate reality of violence in North American society, particularly in conjunction with constructions of patriarchy, were highlighted, revealing the epidemic of violence so deeply infecting our cultural conscious.

Though there were many voices and viewpoints highlighted in the readings for this week, there seems to be an overarching theme: violence and masculinity are intertwined. This does not exclude women from entering the realms of physical violence, however. As illustrated in Enloe’s article examining the situation in Abu Ghraib, women, when placed in a realm where only social constructions of masculinity are valued—namely the Armed Forces, particularly overseas—are just as likely to adopt behaviors toward captives that are otherwise illegal, both within the United States Constitution and otherwise. But, as Enloe poignantly indicates, the issue with Abu Ghraib wasn’t so much the fact that violent, humiliating actions had been taken against Iraqi soldiers by American military personnel as much as the fact that these personnel were women.

This public outrage reflects the gendering North American culture does to violence. The female officers who so cruelly humiliated the Iraqi prisoners were committing a great social faux pas, taking part in activities typically relegated to men. This concept is reflected in other articles as well, where women have often been victims of violence at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends, and other significant males in their lives. Nonetheless, female batterers (though they do exist), are far outnumbered by their male counterparts, and all have bought into the concept of masculinity’s association with violence, which ultimately translates into domination and control.

The association of masculinity with domination and control is often reinforced by social structure as well. Many of the personal accounts of women who have left their abusers note that there were few outlets for them to turn to. While it must be noted that some of these accounts were outdated (mid 1980’s) and that women’s shelters are now (thankfully) available to many women who would have had no other way out, the very necessity of battered women’s shelters reveals that the association and reinforcement of masculinity, power, domination, and control is far from erased from the North American consciousness.

Amidst all of the accounts of violence, there did exist one moment of empowerment and suggestion at hope. In her poem, Mitsuye Yamada describes a very painful and dangerous process: leaving her home, and her abusive husband, behind. She describes the “club” her husband used to beat her: a statue of a Japanese geisha with sharply curved hemlines on her kimono. Against all expectation, Yamada connects with the “woman” whom her husband uses to beat her. She talks with the statue, forming something of a friendship with the inanimate object her husband uses to brutalize her. Yet, it seems that Yamada connects with this statue because she, too, is a woman being abused with each of Yamada’s husband’s blows. Finally, Yamada packs the statuette tenderly into her bag amongst her other belongings, simultaneously reclaiming the statue—and her independence—as her own and disarming her husband. She acknowledges the grip violence has taken on their relationship and abandons that violence, taking her porcelain sister with her. I feel like this is a process that all victims of abuse must eventually face and complete, regardless of its manifestation. While it doubtlessly takes a great deal of strength and courage, recognizing and putting a stop to the violence in one’s own life is the first step to eradicating the violence in society at large.

Going from Lavender to Purple and Beyond

Borders: boundaries that we create between ourselves and others. Fences. Lines we draw to divide us (or me) from them. There is little doubt that American philosophy is filled with borders; we draw them all the time. In this sense, it may be surprising that one of the social philosophies that touts, among many other things, equal rights between men and women is also rife with borders that become very difficult to manipulate without being able to see beyond them. Feminism is, in this case, a “cause” with limited spectrum, and only by including other perspectives from the marginalized positions that white, middle-upper class, “academic” feminism create can we begin to tear down the theoretical walls that marginalize those who don’t fit the “typical” feminist bill.

These theoretical walls become all too apparent when considering the readings for this week. Reading these testimonials revealed the individuals who, as bell hooks often notes, “advocate feminism” or identify themselves as “feminist”; there were women of different classes, backgrounds, races, and sexual orientation who gave testimonials and definitions of their feminism along side a self-described “wussy boy” who cares a great deal about “pussy power.” The main point? There’s enough feminism to go around, and embracing voices outside the “typical” (read: white, “educated,” privileged) feminist perspective greatly enriches the social ideology.

One of the most striking elements of the “ethnic” approaches to feminism was that of Womanism, particularly in light of Alice Walker’s description of the term. Indeed, “white” feminism can tend to be a little “pastel” in its consideration of exactly whose rights women ought to be fighting for and whose viewpoint ought to be considered “legitimate” in regards to feminism. Womanism, on the other hand, considers the many issues involved in pursuing equal rights—for everyone; not just white women, but everyone. No longer segregated by personal cause, Womanism attempts the struggle of combating both racism and sexism, deepening the lavender to a regal purple. Third World and Mujerista feminisms take this a step further, emphasizing differences in class and race that are often unacknowledged and often not even considered part of “serious” feminism. It is clear that these types of feminisms literally widen the “color” spectrum of feminist consciousness, changing the focus from “me” to “we.”

Despite the flak I’ve tossed at “white academic” feminism, my first encounters with different “schools” of feminist thought were, ironically, in college classes peopled by white women. I was aware of racism, classism, and other rampant sorts of discrimination, but was completely unaware of the feminisms that identified them. Since then, I feel that I understand feminism in terms of Walker’s analogy of purple to Womanism and lavender to feminism; she has, in a sense, helped me to see the different “colors” of causes that effect the way that women, men, and intersexed individuals shape their own roles and the roles of others in society. Setting up borders between gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and other “social dividers” only succeeds in subsequently bordering those individuals who speak from “bordered” perspectives, effectively silencing them in a sea of lavender. Bringing these perspectives together in a larger color spectrum allows—please forgive the over-used image—a rainbow of voices, testimonies, struggles, and causes. In this sense, I feel that the multi-colored eye pictured above has become my expanded awareness concerning feminisms, allowing me to literally see beyond my own lavender identity and begin to understand, appreciate, and advocate other perspectives within the spectrum.

Personalized feminism

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it;” this phrase, credited to poet George Santayana, speaks to the importance of remembering the social ashes from which feminism continually rebirths itself. Being continually conscious of the struggles and causes of women before the “current” third wave of feminism demands that feminists of today build on the foundation laid by our foremothers as they forge on with their own struggles and causes.

As we explored this week’s readings, we gained a better understanding and recognition of the footsteps taken by feminists before us. While feminists have disagreed over the course of the last three waves of feminism over the “noble fights” for men, women, and intersexed individuals of our nation, a focus on basic human rights have been the focus of feminism for generations. The viewpoint has certainly shifted over the waves; as feminism becomes more and more enveloped with humanity rather than “womanity” exclusively, racism, classism, and many more forms of oppression have become the focus and the cause of feminist efforts. Remolding the value system of “femininity” has joined the fight for voting rights, property rights, destruction of the glass ceiling, reproductive and sexual rights, educational reform, and many other causes as the voice of women has been uttered through the Declaration of Sentiments in 1848, The Feminine Mystique, and "The Statement of Purpose" of the National Organization for Women in 1966.

In examining the historical aspects of feminism, I have to admit that I am humbled by my foremothers and fathers. I can hardly imagine the frustration in being expected to uphold laws that I didn't vote on or not be allowed to pursue my education here at Luther by virtue of my anatomy (and not my intellect). While, as Baumgardner and Richards point out, "there's still a lot left to do" when it comes to evening the keel of rights and responsibility between the sexes, races, and classes, the foundation that was laid before us is certainly a strong one, and one that cannot soon be forgotten.

In considering the national feminist foundation, I have been thinking about the feminist foundations in my own life. My grandmother taught me reverence for books (written by both men and women) while my grandfather encouraged me to write a few of my own. My mother and father worked to support their family and cultivate their daughters' and son's educations. My high school English teacher pushed me to believe that my writing was worth reading (a concept, I must admit, I still struggle with today) while building my "feminist library" of female and male authors who poke, prod, and question patriarchy in the canonized texts. Without these feminists, I wouldn't be the feminist I am today. I found the above list online; apparently another feminist has gotten in touch with her feminist roots as well. I found her use of leaves and other plant life in her sketch very symbolic; it communicates to me the formation of a feminist "family tree" that we have sprouted as leaves upon to become branches of our own.