This is a creative piece of work I put together for my Gender and Development MA at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). It's something I'm really proud of, especially as I received 80/100 for it: a high first in the UK University system.
Enjoy.
“These awakenings are often excruciatingly painful” (Watkins and Shulman, 2008, pg.134).
As I reflected on where the years had taken me since the rupture I realised that I saw myself in the concept of a “feminist warrior within”. Rao (2015) describes “feminist warriors within” as “internal change agents who are avowedly feminist and are specifically focused on changing organisational cultures and outcomes to advance gender equality and women’s rights” (Rao, 2015, pg.180).
Liberation for me, as I move beyond this module, is about reclaiming my wilfulness. Reclaiming the concept of wilfulness.
Enjoy.
Using Liberation Psychologies to ‘do gender’
During this module the concept I have connected with the most is that of ‘liberation psychologies’, particularly ‘liberation theology’. As a Christian, I believe this is a way of living out the “conviction that contemporary scripts have worn thin, and that neighbours must be more creative in the ways they live together in the world” (Watkins and Shulman, 2008, pg.3).
As a result, my learning from this module is laid out in a journey through some of the concepts described in liberation psychologies: that of rupture, wilderness, and the concept of liberation itself.
“First the pain. Then the waiting. Then the rising.
Fall. Winter. Spring.
Dusk. Night. Dawn.
It’s not personal, it’s just the Way of Things.” (Doyle, 2018)
Dusk. Night. Dawn.
It’s not personal, it’s just the Way of Things.” (Doyle, 2018)
I will explore how this “way of things” has helped me to reflect on my feminist journey to this module, through this module, and beyond this module. I write, as Watkins and Shulman (2008) say of liberation psychologies, as a celebration of finding a way to understand, recognise and rewrite an interpretation of the world that has been imposed on me.
RUPTURE
“But something happened post Uni. Through my work at WAGGGS, I was learning about gender inequality and gender-based violence, and instead of sneering as I would have done during Uni, I found myself responding by whispering, and then shouting: “me too. Me too. Me too!” It was like someone was peeling layers off me - faster and faster - revealing to me why everything had felt so horrible and uncomfortable for so long. I wasn’t the problem - the world was. The problem was what the world says about masculinity and femininity, about men and women, about relationships and power, and hope and connection, and voice and community. I realised that these were all boxes, shaped a specific way, that we were all expected to live in. They were cages.” [Extract from learning journal]
I didn’t know it then, but I had been experiencing a rupture. Watkins and Shulman (2008, pg.134) explain a rupture as “the sort of happening that challenges all of one’s capacity to make sense of life”. As they describe, I didn’t have a framework of understanding that I could use to make sense of what I was learning. I had, however, felt a sense of something ‘being wrong’ for quite a while. A feeling of the world being too painful and difficult. Watkins and Shulman (2008) invoke the metaphor of the ‘canary in a coalmine’ to describe people who sense social upheaval before everyone else. Historically, miners used to take canaries down into the coalmines with them to detect when gases were reaching a toxic level. This would give miners the time to get out of the mine before the gases got to a poisonous level for human beings.
I realised I was a canary. I’d been sensing the toxic gases of misogyny and inequality for so long but I hadn’t had anyone to help me identify them.
I wondered - surely I wasn’t the only one?
“Perhaps we all are canaries,
but we have hardened our hearts.
Our cages are of our own making,
Forming insulation,
From the job of co-creating
That we’ve forgotten we have.
Perhaps we all were canaries,
Once upon a time.
But the fumes got too much
And it just got too hard
To try to change
What seemed to make sense
From inside of our cage.
Those who didn’t make it
Only had themselves to blame.
Why be a canary when you can be a blue-capped ifrit,
developing your own poisonous hit?
Protecting what you’ve earned
and feel you deserve
from those whose eyes you avert.
Perhaps we are all still canaries,
Desperately wanting to be brave.
What will it take,
For you to shake,
Off your cage,
and try a different way?” [Extract from learning journal]
“These awakenings are often excruciatingly painful” (Watkins and Shulman, 2008, pg.134).
If we are all latent canaries, the shedding of the insulation we’ve bound around ourselves is likely to be painful. I stepped out from my rupture and was suddenly aware of everything I’d normalised before. I noticed how the cat-calling from across the street made my stomach knot up. I seethed with anger when I found out that my sister’s school had told her not to wear a short skirt because it would ‘distract other students’. I felt anxious when I heard my peers saying phrases like, “man up” or “boys don’t cry”. I now knew the damage of gender stereotypes that objectified girls, normalised harassment and prevented boys from showing their emotions. I’d learnt that “violence against women and girls is rooted in gender-based discrimination and social norms and gender stereotypes” (UN Women, 2018) just like those. A different world had been revealed to me, and I felt raw.
WILDERNESS
Therefore, experiencing a rupture does not necessarily lead straight to liberation. The process towards liberation “begin(s) with a wandering in the desert where one questions and deconstructs in dialogue the fixed compass that has been orienting one’s identifications” (Watkins and Shulman, 2008, pg.47). In liberation theology, this wandering mirrors the journey of the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years before they were ready to enter the promised land. This was a process of reconstruction. A space where they had to let go of their identities as slaves and learn what it meant to be free under the love of a God of justice. They had to learn a new way.
This was the same for me. While it felt like my rupture set me free, it was only the beginning of my journey. I now had to learn what it meant to identify as a feminist and live this out. I had to learn who I was and how I was to survive in a world which would constantly try to quiet my voice and pull me back into a familiar oppression that felt comfortable, and therefore safe. I didn’t know it yet, but just like Watkins and Shulman (2008) describe, I would experience the trial and error of the Israelites as I tried various different arguments for feminism with friends and family, and the feeling of being lost as I tried to rediscover what I wanted for my life if I was in fact not restricted by gender norms and expectations.
“We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.” (Doyle Melton, 2016, pg.11)
As I reflected on where the years had taken me since the rupture I realised that I saw myself in the concept of a “feminist warrior within”. Rao (2015) describes “feminist warriors within” as “internal change agents who are avowedly feminist and are specifically focused on changing organisational cultures and outcomes to advance gender equality and women’s rights” (Rao, 2015, pg.180).
Dictionary definitions of ‘warrior’ include: “fighting the good fight” (vocabulary.com, 2018) and “being engaged in some struggle” (Merriam-Webster, 2018). In my church, my most immediate community, I felt that I was “fighting the good fight” for gender equality, and that I was “engaged in some struggle”. I would ask for more stories of women in the Bible to be highlighted in the services, so that everyone could see themselves in the protagonists’ shoes. I would point out when all the worships songs were written by men. I would speak about my own journey of referring to God as ‘She’. Not only to highlight the traditionally feminine qualities in God, and therefore how we should value those, but to challenge people to question why they were only comfortable with referring to God as ‘He’.
However, as I reflected on this struggle I felt despondent. I felt like I was letting people off the hook. That they should know this already and I wasn’t fighting for enough. A quote from Goetz (2013) on ‘femocrats’ really rang true for me: “Femocrats face horrendous criticism from their feminist sisters and live in an environment of toxic hostility. They navigate between a rock and a hard place in their inability to satisfy any constituency.” (Goetz, 2013, cited in Rao, 2015, pg.182). Although I didn’t have “feminist sisters” offering criticism, I felt that the feminist in me was not satisfied with the ‘progress’ I was making, and wanted me to do, say and challenge more. However, I was conscious of not wanting to push my church family to the point of annoyance and alienation. After all, I loved them.
In fact, what I was feeling was exactly what Ahmed (2017) describes when she speaks about the relationship between being a feminist and being seen as wilful. She explains that “this perception of feminist subjects as having too much will…or just as being too much, has profound effects on how we experience ourselves” (Ahmed, 2017, pg.66). For me, I was back to experiencing myself as the problem, just like before my rupture.
It was time for me to remind myself of what I was fighting for. To “be energised by the words that have been put down [by others]; by the collective refusal to put down our pens” (Ahmed, 2017, pg.77). This module has helped to refocus me in a way I was straight after my rupture. It has helped me to realise that I need a community of feminists to move through my wilderness with. I need others who can give me the strength to be the ‘wilful feminist’ I need to be in my other communities - the ones who I hope to facilitate a rupture for.
LIBERATION
“When histories demand a separation (mothers from daughters, people from people), wilfulness might be required to refuse or resist that separation. Read through this history, reclaiming wilfulness would involve not only a protest against violence but a demand for a return: a return of the child who had been wrenched from her family.” (Ahmed, 2017, pg.79)
“It is because a wilful womanist is responsible and in charge that she exposes sexual as well as racial violence, wherever and whenever it happens; she exposes the violence because she is concerned with the survival of people.” (Walker, 2005, cited in Ahmed,2017, pg.79)
Exodus 9:1 “Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh and say to him, 'This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: "Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”” (The Holy Bible New International Version, 2011)
Liberation for me, as I move beyond this module, is about reclaiming my wilfulness. Reclaiming the concept of wilfulness.
As I sit with Alice Walker’s words about wilful womanism, and connect them with liberation theology, I see my God. I see the God of Israel as a wilful woman. A wilful woman warrior. Responsible. In charge. Exposing the Pharaoh’s oppression of Her people because She is concerned with the survival of Her people. Calling out: “let my people go!” Sending plagues as protest. Flexing Her muscles. Wilfully demanding that Her children, wrenched from Her family, be returned. Returned to Her.
Calling Her people out into the desert so She can show them what it means to no longer be slaves. Giving them space to dialogue, to reconstruct, to discover who they are in Her. To be transformed.
If my God can be wilful woman warrior, then so can I.
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| God as wilful woman [Extract from learning journal] |
I believe that every day the wilful woman of God is revealing to me a little more of what true liberation looks like. Allowing me glimpses “of the better thing for which we are meant” (Tutu, 1999, cited in Watkins and Shulman, 2008, pg.154) that She is moving us towards.
“I feel freedom from male entitlement when my husband asks me if he can touch me, every single time.
I see liberation from individualism when my church gathers together to surround someone in love.
I hear male power and privilege crumbling as my teenage nephew articulates how he benefits from this world in a way his sister doesn’t.
I sense progress as Christians in conservative communities around the world risk their livelihoods to step forward and endorse equal marriage.
I glimpse hope as I pick up the cry of “me too”.” [Extract from learning journal]
Dawn breaks. Spring approaches. Change is coming.
“And I reason that if the Old and New Testaments are any indication, than change is in fact a major part of His aesthetic, a major part of His vision for the world. The Bible itself is an endorsement of change… Many days I reason to myself that change is the point of it all. And that everything we do should be a reflection of that vision of change.” (Okparanta, 2015, pg.322)
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Bibliography
Ahmed, S. (2017) Living a feminist life. USA: Duke University Press, pp. 65-92.
Doyle, G. (2018) ‘“You’re gonna be happy”, said life, “but first I’ll make you strong.”’ Instagram, 29 March. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg4qtT-F5s6/ (Accessed: 19 April 2018).
Doyle Melton, G. (2016) Love warrior. New York: Flatiron Books, pp. 9-34.
Merriam-Webster (2018) Definition of warrior. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/warrior (Accessed: 9 February 2018).
Okparanta, C. (2015) Under the udala trees. London: Granta Publications, pp. 315-323.
Rao, A. (2015) Gender at work: theory and practice for 21st century organizations. New York: Routledge, pp. 179-198.
The Holy Bible New International Version. (2011) Nashville: HarperCollins Christian Publishing.
UN Women (2018) Focusing on prevention to stop the violence. Available at: http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/prevention (Accessed: 19 April 2018).
vocabulary.com (2018) Definitions of warrior. Available at: https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/warrior (Accessed: 9 February 2018).
Watkins, M. and Shulman, H. (2008) Toward psychologies of liberation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-158.
