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| Dear Western Feminism... |
Mohanty, Pratt, and Riley discuss the
impact of war on women and how women in Afghanistan are used as a means to justify
US military involvement. The US uses “white savior saving the brown women from
the brown man” to make a case for the war on terrorism and “is used to justify
US imperial aggression because this fulfills the rescue mission of a civilizing
and civilized nation”.
This is the
orientalist narrative that the West uses to justify crimes committed against
Arab lands or Middle Eastern lands. Orientalism is the idea that the West is civilized
while the East is an uncivilized, barbaric place. So, with the idea that the
East is a home of uncivilized people, it is easy for the West to justify their
actions because Arabs and Middle Easterners are dehumanized. It’s so twisted
and messed up to learn that they literally use women’s rights or whatever
notion they have of women’s rights as a reason to go to war and then commit
violence against those same women.
The authors
also mention how war disproportionately impacts women of color living in the
US. Before reading this article, I didn’t think about how the US going to war
also affects women of color in the US because my first thought goes to the
women being directly impacted by war, like Iraqi women. But women of color, specifically
poor women of color living in the US, are negatively impacted by military
spending. Money for security and health resources is being taken out of the
federal budget and put towards the military and war. It’s just a downward spiral
of violence and abuse.
In a Leila Ahmed book on women and
gender in Egypt, she discusses the British intervention in Egypt and how Lord
Cromer urged British women to support the invasion of Egypt in order to save
their brown sisters from their backwards men. Colonialist feminism at its
finest. Similarly, Laura Bush used that orientalist narrative to call US women
to “action” in order to help liberate the brown women. The image of Lord Cromer
and Laura Bush coming to Egypt and Afghanistan to “free the brown women” with
military troops behind them is ridiculous.
This is really well written, and I enjoy the great detail you went into. I think a great point you brought up about white women using the orientalist narrative to "save" brown women from brown men. It's something that is merely skipped across and ignored, and it is important to acknowledge the racism behind that thinking.
ReplyDeleteSiham, I like how you decided to talk about women of color within the United States and how they are economically affected by the war. This is a concept that is ignored when trying to advocate for women during war. Like you said a lot of times the focus goes to the women within the opposing country instead of women within their own country that suffer of poverty. Like the Feminism and War confronting US imperialism states, "sometimes women are visible, sometimes they are not" ((Riley, R., Mohanty, C., P, M., pg. 7). Women of color are the ones that are not visible within this spectrum of helping women in the military. Their needs are not being advocated for which is why I found it interesting that you decided to take this route.
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