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1		-Uranium drains from our black hills
2		-Let it rain
3		-Genocide won't pay the bills
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5		-I can't escape that warming up with this smallpox blanket
6		-While I see my mother get abused
7		-I'm accused
8		-Cause I don't dance with the devil
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10		-I bet their hearts drop when they hear these drums
11		-And hear our songs now
12		-Tired of being oppressed
13		-You can't white wash me in this white war
14		-You can't speak about people you don't fight for
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17		-Nuclear technology in the squo is associated with masculinity – the only way to deconstruct these associations is through metaphor.
18		-Jane Caputi 1, 1991. (“THE METAPHORS OF RADIATION. Or, Why a Beautiful Woman is Like a Nuclear Power Plant.” Professor of American Studies, University of New Mexico. Women’s Studies Int. Forum. 423-442. Accessed 8/8/16.) RS
19		-However inconsequential or absurd some of these artifacts and references appear, all such metaphors play a key role in an overall “nuclearization” of contemporary life. They participate in a vocabulary of symbolic nuclear discourse and must be understood in their political role of daily constituting and reconstituting nuclear reality. Glenn Hook (1985. p. 67) argues that this ‘nuclearization of language has played a crucial role in making nuclear weapons easier to live with . . . structures reality in such a way as to make the political pact with weapons of mass destruction appear normal and acceptable.” As Hook further notes, crucial to understanding how nuclearization works is comprehension of language “as a form of power exercised consciously or unconsciously in the structuring of nuclear reality.” Analysts of nuclear language (Cohn. 1987; Hilganner. Bell. a O’Connor. 1983; Hook, I984; Litton a Falk, I982) largely have concentrated on the oral and written transmissions of experts: technicians, scientists, strategies, and political leaders. Other commentators (with the exception of Weart. I988, who is comprehensive) have examined the wide range of nuclear symbolism in more popular forms by interpreting Cold War arti- facts (Boyer. 1985; May, 1988; Titus, 1986) or by concentrating on one specific form, such as political cartoons (Linenthal. 1989) or science fiction literature (Brians, 1988). My purpose here will be to continue this examination of the nuclear discourse, but to focus on symbols and metaphors found in contemporary popular culture and to do this from an explicitly feminist perspective. First. I will first survey those mundane metaphors that domesticate and/or glamorize nuclear technology, infusing it into our everyday habits, languages, and entertainments, what I call “nuclear fashion.” Next. I will examine two subsets of nuclear fashion: those particular metaphors that link nuclear technology to patriarchal understandings of gender and sexuality - “nuclear pornography” – and those that mythicize/divinize nuclear technology, affirming a relationship between the patriarchal sacred and the nuclear-“nuclear fundamentalism.” As the reader will see, my investigation of mainstream nuclear symbolism bears out Diana 13. H. Russell’s contention, who writes in Exposing Nuclear Phallacr'a (1989b. p. 74): “at this point in history the nuclear mentality and the masculine mentality are one and the same. If rid ourselves of one, we must rid ourselves of the other.” Yet, the question remains: how do we rid ourselves of this nuclearist (i.e.. one combining disrespect. exploitation, eroticization, and worship of nuclear technology) worldview? Obviously, there are no easy answers. Still, our comprehension of the importance of language to the construction and perpetuation of masculinist/nuclearist reality suggests one tactic-the generation of gynocentric, anti-nuclearist myth and metaphor. 1b conclude, I will examine some of the ways that feminists have begun to invent and employ language, myth, and metaphor as forms of power-exercised consciously and/or intuitively in destructuring nuclearist reality and invoking gynocentric, elementally respectful attitudes toward nuclear power. Before beginning. 1 will offer one caution to the reader. As another commentator on nuclear symbolism noted: “it would be impossible for any single analysis to exhaust the symbolic meanings of nuclear weapons” (Chernus. 1986. p. 9). I, too, do not pretend that my work here fully explicates any of the sometimes chaotically contradictory and mum-leveled artifacts and metaphors 1 discuss, let alone nuclear weapons; my aim, instead, is to present a concerted analysis of a wide range of nuclear symbolism from one feminist perspective-my own. Others will undoubtedly see other meanings. These analyses are not meant to done, but rather to stimulate further inquiry. in October 1983, Goldwater’s, a major Southwest retailer, decorated its Albuquerque store's windows with several mannequins in blue-denim outfits. Spray-painted on the wall behind them was the headline: “Nuclear Fashion. Energize ibur Look." Nuclear fashion indeed. Fashion means “the way in which something is formed” and is semantically related to such words as habit and costume, hence habirwre and ocarsrom. We might then lift the phrase from this bizarre window dressing and understand “nuclear fashion” to be those everyday references that form and mold the nuclear psyche. Nuclear fashion consists of those objects and metaphors which not only make nuclear technology attractive. stylish and desirable. but which al- so. through ubiquity and reiteration. work to habituate us to a nuclearist mindset, encouraging us to accept, love, and even worship the bomb. Derrick De Kerckhovc (I984, p. 78) writes: “Forty years after Hiroshima. We wakeuptothefeelingthatthebombhas become a major icon within our mental structures.” That ingrown image just may stem from our endless exposure to the multifarious images of the bomb that crowd this culture. Historian Paul Boyer (1985. p. 17) notes that since 1945 the most common sign for the bomb, the mushroom cloud has remained “the universally recognized symbol of atomic-age menace.” Still, one can find many uses of mushroom cloud imagery that deny, belittle, or otherwise defuse that symbolism. We can spot it coming out of an uncorlred champagne bottle on the cover of Carolyn See's (I987) optimistic apocalyptic novel. Golden Days, and illustrating a pack- age of “Atomic Fireball" candy. The bomb blast or simply the word “atomic" is used as a kind of shorthand in any number of ways to suggest awesome heat and/or power. evidenced in the brand names. “atomic horse-radish" and “atomic sltis.” Finally. an extraordinary ad (Land Consultants. 1971) hawking real estate appeared some years ago in the Los Angeles Times. It shows a towering mushroom cloud; underneath, the copyreads: “Even if they drop a bomb on it . . . you still own the hole! And when the dust settles, it will probably go up in price.” If the dangerous associations of nuclear technology are symbolically denied through many, though not all (Caputi. 1988b) popular images., slang, particularly the incorporation of technical terms into everyday language, works to similarly effect. Robert J. Lifton comments: “We domesticate these weapons in our language and attitudes. Rather than feel their malignant actuality. We render them benign. In calling them ‘nultes.’ for instance, we render them small and ‘cute,’ something on the order of a household pet” (Lifton and Falk. 1982, p. 106). The term nuke originated with the builders and manufacturers of nuclear weapons. yet, ironically. it was the anti-nuclear movement itself which first did a great deal to promote its use with the widespread slogan “No Nukes.” Nuke. although first popularized as a noun, also frequently appears in general speech as a verb-and one with the wide range of meaning usually associated with obscene expressions. One of its first entries into popular jargon was in the phrase “nuke the whales” (1979). Originally part of the lyrics to a song by a student punk band, the expression soon began to appear as campus graffiti. then on T-shirts. then bumper stickers( (Landry, 1979, p. 45). “Nuke Iran” and “Nuke Jane Fonda" soon followed. Currently. the verb nuke also has been rendered even more “cute” and is commonly used to refer to microwave cooking. as in “let's nuke some pizza." This use of nuke. however. is curious- ly ambiguous and might work simultaneously to express anxiety. not only about nuclear weapons, but also about the (possible) hazards of microwaves. The technical word. meltdown. was used to name a cheeseburger sold in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania after the 1977 Three Mile Island disaster. A 1988 ad for Toyota enthusi astically proclaims a “performance verging on meltdown.” may arele (1988) magazine urged its readers to ‘fiose weight. Feel great” by embarking upon a “meltdown diet.” Perhaps most astonishing is an ad for motorseooters that appeared in the Albu- querque Joann! (Honda. 1987). A year-end saleonthebilmswassignaledbythehead- line, “MELTDOWN 87.” That phrase, incredibly, is surrounded by the words. “FINAL DAYS! FINAL DAYS!” and an eahortation to “TAKE THE RIDE OF YOUR LIFE.” The method of this ad is somewhat analogous to a fundamentalist preacher invoking doomsday in order to spur adhesion to the faith; here. however. the desired reaction to the evocation of doomsday is an urge to impulsively spend and buy. Nuclear metaphor is virtually inescapable. In elite theory, critics speak of “tactical blocks,” “deploying sexualities” and “strategic interventions” (Noriega. I990). On broadcast television, sports announcers refer to “nuclear serves” and “first strike tennis.” An Albuquerque band calls itself “Chain Reaction” and a hos Angelevbased Japanese-American group names itself “Hiroshima.” While the name “Hiroshima” reminds us. Americans of their country‘s past use of nuclear weapons, the name of a popular “heavy metal” band, “Megadeth,” blatantly eelebrates nuclear annihilation. A 1987 poster for the band gives a dictionary definition of its name: “(meg-a-deth). n. (l) a unit of mea- sure equal to the death of a million people by nuclear explosion .l (2) . . . the world’s state of the art sped metal band.” astically proclaims a “performance verging on meltdown.” may arele (1988) magazineurgeditsreadersto‘fioseweight. Feel great” by embarking upon a “meltdown diet.” Perhaps most astonishing is an ad for motorseooters that appeared in the Albuquerque Joann! (Honda. 1987). A year-end saleonthebilmswassignaledbythehead- line, “MELTDOWN 87.” That phrase, incredibly, is surrounded by the words. “FINAL DAYS! FINAL DAYS!” and an eahortation to “TAKE THE RIDE OF YOUR LIFE.” The method of this ad is somewhat analogous to a fundamentalist preacher invoking doomsday in order to spur adhesion to the faith; here. however. the desired reaction to the evocation of doomsday is an urge to impulsively spend and buy. Finally I will mention one lunher aspect of the word nuke in many of its usacesitis meant as a synonym fot/uck. A sexualized attack or obliteration, always implicit in the phrase “fuck you." is equally implicit in the action of a counter-demonstrator at the Women’s Encampment foe a Future of Peace and Justice. Romulus. New York. This man took one of the encampment Toshins and stenciled onto it. “NUKE THE BITCHES" (Putter. 1985). This sex-violent use of the technical term nuke speaks eloquently to the feminist insight that under male supremacy ant and violence an. as Catharine Mackinnon (1983. p. 650) notes. “mutually definitive "antl“ acts of dominance and submission up to and including violence.
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21		-Your advocacy of banning such symbols is extremely Eurocentric; Native American thinkers advocate for reclaiming as a liberation strategy – this independently turns the aff. You pretend to advocate for indigenous peoples while continuing to advocate for whiteness. Only I solve for the root cause by taking an intersectional approach and shifting away from the Eurocentric masculine norm
22		-Jane Caputi 2, 1991. (“THE METAPHORS OF RADIATION. Or, Why a Beautiful Woman is Like a Nuclear Power Plant.” Professor of American Studies, University of New Mexico. Women’s Studies Int. Forum. 423-442. Accessed 8/16/16.) ML
23		-The 16th-century philosopher, physician, and alchemist Paracelsus, who acknowledged that he had “learned everything he knew about healing from the Witches” (Daly, 1984, p. 7), instructed that in in order to find an antidote to a poison, one must look in its immediate vicinity, for nature places the harm in close proximity to a cure. Nuclear weaponry was developed and tested on Native American territory in New Mexico and, significantly, some of the most fruitful insights into the nuclear dilemma have been proffered by Native American feminist philosophers. In much of EuroAmerican feminist thinking (including my own), the primary impulse has been to exposes the phallic character of nuclear technology/weaponry and to Oppose that male-identified force. Yet, in the Native American writings of Paula Gunn Allen, Marilou Awiakta. Leslie Marmon Silko, and Carol Lee Sanchez the predominant movement is to reclaim it the atom from its immurement in phallocentric language, sexuality, and religion and to recall its repressed sacred/gynocentric face .Sanchez, a Laguna Pueblo (New Mexico) poet and artist, deplores the modern Western schism between the sacred and the profane and contrasts it to the 'l't'ibal their tradition that recognizing “all things in the known universe to be equally sacred” (1989, p. 346). She believes that modern peoples must not only acknowledge the sacredness of everyday life, but also create new songs of acknowledgement as well as ceremonies that include metals, petrochemicals, and fossil fuels, electricity, modern solar power systems, and water power systems . . . it is very important to make sacred . . . the new ways and elements in our lives-from i.e. nuclear power. . . to plastics to computers in order to restore harmony and balance to our out-of-control systems and in particular, to our modern technologies. (pp. 352-353) Of course, Western culture already holds “sacred” its technologies; and “songs” to nuclear power, reiterating the masculinity of the war- head, the promise of religious/sexual ecstasy in annihilation, and the captivity of female power. underlie many of the ads, popular tunes, and metaphors described in this essay. Yet, this brand of worship stems from a worldview that reveres opposition and domination, not balance, as the basic principles of the universe. Sanchez insists that those who resist technological depredations we must not neither worship nor demonize technology but instead acknowledge its sacredness, while thinking/acting in ways that to restore harmony and balance. One way to achieve this is to understand atomic power through gynocentric metaphor. Like Sanchez, Marilou Awiakta, a Cherokee poet and essayist, points to modern culture’s profound is irreverent toward atomic power (manifested in the destructiveness of the bomb and the Three-Mile lsland disaster) and, correspondingly, to womxn. Awiakta has long pondered the sacred significance of atomic power, which she understands asz“ . . . the life force in process-nurturing, enabling, enduring, fierce. I call it the atom’s mother heart” (I986. p. 186). As such, the atomic age has special, even ontological, significance for womxn: The linear Western, masculine mode of thought has been too intent on conquering nature to learn from her a basic truth: to separate the gender that bears life from the power to sustain it is as destructive as to tempting nature itself. . . . But the atom’s mother heart makes it impossible to ignore this truth any longer. She is the interpreter not only of new images and mental connections for humanity, but also, most particularly for and womxn, who have profound responsibilities in solving the nuclear dilemma. The “mother heart” is the first of several female metaphors through which Awiakta understands nuclear energy. Astonishingly. as a child growing up near the nuclear reservation at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, she too found a “woman” in a nuclear power plant. She recalls this scene from her childhood: Scientists called the reactor “The lady” and, in moments of high emotion, re- ferred to her as “our beloved reactor.” “What does she look like. Daddy?” “They tell me she has a seven foot shield of concrete around a graphite core, where the atom is split.” I asked the color of graphite. “Black,” he said. And I imagined a great. black queen, standing behind her shield, holding the splitting atom in the shelter of her arms. Far from that of a possessed beauty, Awiakta’s vision is of an autonomous and infinitely powerful cosmic being, her expericnee a modern encounter with the “Black Madonna.” Religious historian Ean Begg (1985. p. 27) notes that over 400 of the world’s images of the Madonna are black and that such figures represent the “elemen- tal and uncontrollable source of life, possessing a spirit and wisdom of its own not subject to organization or the laws of rationality.” Laguna/Sioux philosopher Paula Gunn Allen similarly they finds “elemental and uncontrollable” female power in nuclear power, not in the reactor but, boldly, in the bomb itself. In a published excerpt from her novel in progress, Raven’s Road, two Indian Lesbians, Raven and Allie. deliberately station themselves to watch the blast from an above- ground test. Allie, who has done this before and anticipates her response, asks Raven what she saw in the cloud. Scarcely believing herself, Raven remembers: “An old wo- man . . . I remember now. I saw an old woman’s face” (Allen, 1986b, p. 56). Through such daring figuration, Allen defies the masculinist hubris that sees only a fatherly face in cosmic force. The Keres people are a language group of Southwest Pueblo Indians, including Laguna and other New Mexico pueblos. In their theolog)’. the original creator is Thought Woman or Spider Grandmother who continually thinks/dreams/spins the world into being. Allen (Caputi, 1990, p. 59) roots the exigen- cies of the nuclear age firmly in that spirituality: “I know that she’s the lady that made the uranium and she’s the lady that made radioactivity, and she’s the lady that dreamed the dream of nuclear fission. She dreamed it. Men could not have found the idea if she didn‘t give it to them. When she dreams, and that’s what Thought Woman does, what she says, what she dreams, becomes." Thought Woman is part of a trinity of sisters, including Naotsete, Sun Woman. Long ago, Naotsete quarrcled with her sister Lyatiku, Corn Woman, and left. Allen continues: “Around Laguna they say she’s come back. And they say it with respect to the bomb. And ‘she’ is Naotsete, who is Sun Woman. . . . I can’t think of anything more vividly Sun Woman than the bomb.” (Caputti; 1990, p. 62) Another Laguna thinker, Leslie Marmon Silko, also addresses nuclear spirituality in her novel Ceremony. The narrative opens by recounting the creation narrative of Thought Woman (cited earlier) and then tells the story (interspersed with further Laguna myth) of the psychic healing of a mixed-blood World War II veteran, Tayo. Ultimately, his restoration to health is tied to a healing for the planet embattled by the “destroyers,” forces of evil whose latest manifestation is nuclear weaponry. Silko does not find female energy in that weaponry; rather. the events leading to its discovery (including the creation of the white race) were set into motion by evil Indian “witches.” Nevertheless. in Ceremony. The advent of the nuclear age again signals the return of female divine force, embodied in layo’s supernatural helper. Ts’eh. Writing in The Sacred Hoop, Paula Gunn Allen (1986a, pp. 118-119) identifies Ts’eh with primal fe- male force: There is not a symbol in the tale that is not in some way connected with womanness, that does not in some way relate back to Ts’eh and through her to the universal feminine principle of creation: Ts’its’t-si'nalto. Thought Woman, Grandmother Spider, Old Spider Woman. All tales are born in the mind of Spider Woman, and all creation exists as a result of her nammg. While Silko differs from Allen in her understanding of nuclear power, both intuit that the atomic age, begun in New Mexico on Native lands. is profoundly connected to the Native trinity of sister supernaturals, particularly the eldest, Thought Woman. First of all, Thought Woman provides a most promising alternative to the now prevailing “Big Old Father” whose definitive power is to ordain annihilation, to fuck the Earth. More- over. Thought Woman offers a profoundly instructive and complex model for an eco- feminist practice of psychic activism. Thought Woman’s characteristic activity is cosmically creative naming, precisely the activity Awiakta and Allen evince in their gynocentric refiguration of the “metaphors of raddiation.” Another creative Namer, Mary Daly (1984, p. 25), discusses the meaning of symbol and metaphor: Symbols . . . participate in that to which they point. They open up levels of reality otherwise closed to us and they unlock dimensions and elements of our souls which correspond to these hidden dimensions and elements of reality . . . metaphor include{s the qualities above attributed to symbols. However, there is more involved. As theologian Nelle Morton has explained, metaphors evoke action, movement. They Name/by evoking a shock, a clash with the “going logic” and they introducing a new logic. That semiotic “shock” is precisely what 1 experienced when l first encountered Allen’s constellation of the Bomb as “Old Woman.” Certainly, that metaphor introduces a logic that is completely contrary, even infuriating to the patriarchy logic. Allen’s metaphor claims for womxn identification with the cosmic forces of the universe and suggests that in order for Goddess spirituality to achieve the world-transformative power that so many feminists argue it is capable of (e.g., Gadon, 1989), we must acknowledge womxn the presence of Goddesses not only in past myths and famil- iar images (e.g., Mother Earth) but also in contemporary, even technological, realities. Masculinist hubris permeates the invention, use, and iconography of nuclear technology, culminating in the threat/boast that such technology it can be used to “end the world.” Yet, perhaps an as yet unfaced truth of the nuclear age is that the world that the Western fathers ultimately will shatter is their very own. In her nuclear poem. “The Fifties,” Hopi poet Wendy Rose (1989, p. 60-61) concludes: “Like earthquakes/ crawling up the Richter scale/ the ghosts of our future/ are unpredictable/ and out of control./This is a weather report:/ who knows what will end/ in the fury of the storm?”
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27		-The alt is to ungender the nuclear state by reclaiming metaphors through politics.
28		-Ungendering the nuclear state is key to shifting our masculine-centered culture.
29		-Polina Sinovets, 2014. (“The soul of women in nuclear politics.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. A ssociate professor in the international relations department at Odessa I.I. Mechnikov National University, Ukraine. From 2004 to 2012 she was a senior research associate at Ukraine's National Institute for Strategic Studies. In 2006 was a fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. She has published several dozen articles on nuclear deterrence, disarmament, missile defense, and nonproliferation in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. In 2004 she received a doctorate in political science from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Kiev. http://thebulletin.org/women-and-nuclear-weapons-policy7165 Accessed 8/15/16) ML
30		-Many feminists view the nuclear state as a gendered phenomenon. Men, they say, associate nuclear technology with sexual potency—and indeed, when India detonated five nuclear devices in May 1998, Hindu nationalist politician Bal Thackeray said, "We have to prove that we are not eunuchs." This sentiment calls to mind a question posed in 1987 by the gender and security scholar Carol Cohn, who asked, "If disarmament is emasculation, how could any real man even consider it?" Feminists also point out that men associate nuclear weapons with their perceived roles as defenders of (female) populations—and in the world of nuclear policy, men see their own supposed rationality as more appropriate than women's supposed sensitivity. What if the gendering of the nuclear state were to broke down? According to feminist theory, that logic of nuclear weapons possession would be undermined. The idea that power equates with total capacity to destroy would be shaken. But while it's certainly true that masculinity has long been synonymous with aggression or protection, and femininity with appeasement or a preference for stability—in other words, masculinity with strength and femininity with weakness—practice shows that women can be just as tough as men. Female politicians and diplomats including Margaret Thatcher, Madeleine Albright, and Condoleezza Rice have been associated with hard policy measures and quite forceful military actions, making it clear that stereotypes of women as sensitive or pacifist are by no means always accurate. But gender, as it is understood by feminists such as Cohn and her co-author Sara Ruddick, is a symbolic system (in addition to an individual characteristic). Gender providing metaphors and values that help structure people's thinking about war and security, among other aspects of the world. These metaphors and values constitute ideologies. The ideologies might be described as either feminine or masculine—but a "masculine" ideology can be adopted by a womxn, or vice versa. Leaders such as Thatcher, Albright, and Rice, who carried out their careers in a world constructed by men and based on masculine ideals, succeeded in becoming more "masculine" than many men. All this makes it rather complicated to discuss how women can gain greater influence on nuclear weapons policy, but two approaches stand out. The first approach is to we encourage womxn's representation in state bodies and international organizations in the hope that women, as they gain influence, they will gradually alter politics itself, bringing about an evolution in sociopolitical conscience. If the environment surrounding nuclear politics were more feminine, then politics might become less aggressive and the eventual result might be general disarmament. Then again, this reasoning might be faulty. Thatcher, Albright, and Rice—were they "masculine" by nature or did they become so in order to succeed in politics, which tends to be a men’s domain? If the latter is true, how can one be sure that nuclear politics won't change the "feminine" nature of many women who enter it? How can one be sure that women would change nuclear politics, instead of the other way around? The second approach—the more complicated of the two, but perhaps the more rewarding in the long run—we demands that societies make radical changes in their attitudes toward masculinity. In today's world, masculinity prevails. The business of real men is war, aggression, and domination. Among the tools of domination, nuclear weapons are foremost—the highest symbol of masculinity. But if war and aggression were devalued throughout society, beginning at the level of basic childhood education and entertainment (for example, i.e. if computer games no longer glorified war), it might be possible over time to we establish less male-oriented societies. In a sense, such a process is already under way. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, money has begun to displace weaponry as the primary symbol of state power. This transition toward soft power is a fundamental transformation, and arguably represents an evolution away from a traditional, masculine-centered world toward a more nuanced and feminine-influenced world. If this transformation continues, womxn may gain a greater voice in nuclear politics, not only through direct participation, but also indirectly, by helping society develop a more "feminine" character. Adlai Stevenson once said, "There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls." So bring the soul of women into nuclear politics, making it less aggressive and more oriented toward stability, and let the atom follow.
31		-Prohibiting the production of nuclear power won’t do anything to change the culture of violence and patriarchy. We need to have a conversation about these associations and symbols in politics instead of sweeping them under the rug.
32		-Ray Acheson. (“Gender and Nuclear Disarmament.” Reaching Critical Will of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. http://www.peacewomen.org/assets/file/Themes/gender.pdf Accessed 8/15/16.) ML
33		-These meanings were not invented out of thin air. These kinds of names, images, and jokes rely on widespread assumptions and associations about gender, in this case, linking political and military power with sexual potency and masculinity. Note the use of the word masculinity. It’s worth belabouring one point a little in order to eliminate completely the idea that “Margaret Thatcher” or “Indira Gandhi” are counter arguments to what follows. Feminist international relations theorists are very loud and clear about this point—we are not talking about biology, we are noticing the use of stereotypes in policy processes and thinking, we are talking about ideas, pervasive, embedded ideas, but we are not saying that there is anything inherently warlike in men or peaceful in women. We are talking about masculinity and femininity and how they are valued and defined in our cultures today. People in every culture have biologically male or female bodies, but what it means to be “masculine” or “feminine” is different for different cultures and changes over time. What it means to be a “real man” or a “good woman” changes also, and there are strong ideas communicated about these stereotypes and roles around war and war planning—look at any propaganda poster depicting heroic men protecting good women who keep the home fires burning and take up roles that the fighting men usually occupy. Gender also functions as a symbolic system: our ideas about gender permeate and shape our ideas about many other aspects of society beyond male-female relations—including politics, weapons, and warfare. Just as the cartoons and ideas cited above communicate attitudes and assumptions, adjectives like strong, rational, prudent, active, and objective are associated with masculinity, whereas words such as weak, irrational, impulsive, passive, subjective, and emotional are associated with femininity. One example you might have heard before will serve to show how gender stereotypes affect the ways in which nuclear weapons are culturally associated with strength, power, and masculinity. It will also introduce the arguments we will make about how policy debates—the way you diplomats and governmental officials interact, behave, and negotiate—is limited and distorted by these gender stereotypical ways of thinking, which have been normalized and legitimized after decades of practice. A white male physicist, who is a member of a group of nuclear physicists, told the following to Dr. Carol Cohn: Several colleagues and I were working on modelling counterforce nuclear attacks, trying to get realistic estimates of the number of immediate fatalities that would result from different deployments. At one point, we re-modelled a particular attack, using slightly different assumptions, and found that instead of there being 36 million immediate fatalities, there would only be 30 million. And everybody was sitting around nodding, saying, “Oh yeah, that’s great, only 30 million,” when all of a sudden, I heard what we were saying. And I blurted out, “Wait, I’ve just heard how we’re talking—only 30 million! Only 30 million human beings killed instantly?” Silence fell upon the room. Nobody said a word. They didn’t even look at me. It was awful. I felt like a woman. The physicist added that henceforth he was careful never to blurt out anything like that again. This story is not simply about one individual, his feelings and actions; it illustrates the role and meaning of gender discourse in the defence community. This example should not be dismissed as just the product of the idiosyncratic personal composition of that particular room; it is replicated many times and in many places. The impact of gender discourse in that room (and countless others like it) is that some things gets left out from professional deliberations. Certain ideas, concerns, interests, information, feelings, and meanings are marked in national security discourse as feminine, and thus devalued. They are therefore very difficult to speak, as exemplified by the physicist who blurted them out and wished he hadn’t. And if they manage to be said, they are also very difficult to hear, to take in, and work with seriously. For the others in the room, the way in which the physicist’s comments were marked as feminine and devalued served to delegitimize them; it also made it very unlikely that any of his colleagues would find the courage to agree with him. If at the PrepCom you were to really express concern about human bodies, if you were to express an emotional awareness about the suicidal, genocidal, and ecocidal, desperate human condition that has created and maintained the means to destroy the planet, if you were to discuss the human reality behind the sanitized abstractions of death and destruction in security and strategic deliberations, you would be transgressing a code of professional conduct. For the majority in this room, that is the male diplomats, your colleagues might look at you like you were a woman, they might question your masculinity, and you might be seen as soft and wimpish. For a minority in this room, that is the female diplomats, your colleagues might look at you AS a woman, and mean it as a put down, and that is something that as intelligent, skilled people, you wish to avoid, because that means you are not being a good diplomat, rather that you are impulsive, uncontrolled, emotional, upset. The statement, “I felt like a woman,” and the physicist's subsequent silence in that and other settings, are completely understandable. To find the strength of character and courage to transgress the strictures of both professional and gender codes and to associate yourself with a lower status is very difficult. But what are the advantages of considering gender issues? 1. Gender analysis provides tools—not all of the tools you need, but some of the tools—to address why nuclear weapons are valued, why additional states seek them, keep them, and why leaders are motivated to resort to dominance and the use of force to obtain policy objectives. Possessing and brandishing an extraordinarily destructive capacity is a form of dominance associated with masculine warriors (nuclear weapons possessors are sometimes referred to as the “big boys”) and is more highly valued than the feminine-associated disarmament, cooperation, and diplomacy. 2. Ignoring this doesn’t make it go away. Instead, by recognising that there is a problem, it becomes possible to we confront traditionally constructed meanings and redefine terms such as “strength” and “security” so that they more appropriately reflect the needs of all people. The anxious preoccupation with affirming manhood and masculinity can ceases if we recognise and address this problem in politics. The dangerous and illusory idea that security can be achieved through militarized, weaponised strength has not worked, we do not enjoy security, even those armed to the teeth. Humanity is chronically insecure, under developed, under educated, under fed, and over-weaponised. Insecure. Security and strength defined through weapons is not security; this model has failed, terribly. 3. Gender awareness also shows that participating in self-censorship, as the physicist in the example above did, is understandable, but very counter-productive. The effect of such self-censorship is to It excludes a whole range of relevant inputs as if they did not belong in discussions of “hard” security issues because they are too “soft” (i.e. feminine).
34		-
35		-And just as we should allow womxn to confront and discuss the character of nuclear technology to deconstruct patriarchal and racist norms, we should deconstruct oppressive norms within the debate community.
36		-Cynthia Timmons and Bekah Boyer, 2013. (“Womyn in Debate: Working Toward a More Complete Picture.” http://vbriefly.com/2014/01/19/20141women-in-debate-update-part-i/)
37		-It seems clear that participation rates for womxn in forensics do not match their numbers in society. If we believe that forensics has the power to gives people a voices, we need to make more earnest efforts to give that power to underrepresented groups underrepresented in the activity: womxn and minorities. To female coaches, judges, and competitors, it has long been obvious that there is a gender imbalance in the activity, but to what extent? Inspired by Mr. Yuill’s search for statistics of high school forensic participation, I compiled the following from the 2013 Texas Forensic Association (TFA) State Tournament held in March:
38		-Lincoln-Douglas 187 entries 31.0 women
39		-Policy 44 teams 13.8 women
40		-Public Forum 126 teams 32.0 women
41		-Congress (combined) 211 entries 31.7 women
42		-Duo Interp 66 teams 44.6 women
43		-Duet Acting 84 teams 45.8 women
44		-Humorous Interp 97 entries 36.0 women
45		-Dramatic Interp 112 entries 43.7 women
46		-Oratory 93 entries 52.7 women
47		-U.S. Extemp 111 entries 31.5 women
48		-Int’l Extemp 105 entries 28.5 women
49		-Of the coaches listed for the 207 schools participating (some listing multiple coaches), 49.3 were women.
50		-The methodology and limitations were the same as noted by Mr. Yuill. Note that with the exception of Oratory, not a single event reflects the composition of our society or our schools. It is also interesting to note that in the two partner events involving acting/interpretation there was a substantially greater percentage of women participating as opposed to the two debate partner events. We need to ask ourselves as a community what makes some events less attractive to women.
51		-I agree with Mr. Yuill that research is needed to determine a true picture of participation nationwide. For the state tournament data to have more validity, we would need to be able to track it over time. The process is cumbersome at best—scrolling through names available through Joy of Tournaments data sets is tedious and somewhat prone to error (is “Taylor” a girl or a boy?). The National Forensic League is leading in this area by beginning the process of collecting data. Information from other state tournaments and invitationals, such as the Texas state tournament presented above, could be gathered into a national database. As information is gathered, we might be able to determine if there is more of an entrance or retention barrier to gender balance. This not only offers compelling information for academic study, but also may provide access to special funding or scholarship opportunities and pave the way toward programs to increase participation across all sub-populations.
52		-While we do need numbers to understand the scope of female participation in forensics, numbers are supplemented by narratives. I have compiled five narratives that offer perspectives from different women with speech and debate experience: an active leader with 40 years in the activity; a successful experienced coach; a talented younger coach; a former participant and coach who is now an administrator; and a college student who debated and now serves as an assistant coach. Our common experience is participation in debate—a forensic activity with the least female participation of all of the events.
53		-Sexism in Debate
54		-While the world of high school forensics has an enormous amount to offer its participants, it cannot escape the problems that plague the rest of society. Interpers explore social issues through their scripts, extempers through discussion of current events, and orators through their prepared speeches. It is time for the debate community to have a real conversation about these issues, too. One of the most damaging problems facing women in society is the reality of sexism, sexual harassment, and assault. Perhaps due to the enormous gender imbalance in debate, young womxn in the activity can sadly speak to the occurrence of sexism these issues from a personal perspective. There are undoubtedly a number of reasons why women lag in participation rates in high school forensics; one of them is sexism. I began my participation in forensics in 1974 as an eighth grader. I experienced sexism the same year. Over the years, I have faced harassment from coaches, judges, competitors, and even colleagues. As a coach, I have read ballots written to my female students that were completely inappropriate; I once had a male colleague tell me he wanted to judge one of my female debaters in order to ogle her ample chest. I’m not talking about gender differences in communication— I’m talking about overt, hostile sexism. The problem continues today. This past year the issue of sexism became a topic of heated discussion as personal narratives entered tournaments on the national circuit. The problem is not confined to the United States, either. Just this past March, two young women debating in Scotland encountered vicious verbal abuse in a final round. They have written extensively of their experience, and the story has received international attention. The women involved believe such behavior is on the rise from educated young men; to the degree that this is true, forensic educators have the opportunity to be are on the front lines in countering such misogynist attitudes and behaviors. Minimization by male colleagues is a related issue faced by female coaches. I have had colleagues assume that my win-loss record as a coach was less because I was a female. I have had male judges on panels interrupt me as I gave a decision. I had one male judge try to intimidate me by pushing up against me and using derogatory language directed at me as a female. Such odious behavior is completely unacceptable and should be called out, but the minimization can occur in more subtle ways, too—is there parity on committees, on judge panels, on institute staffs? There is a concept known as Government Legitimacy in Debate, the idea that members of a community see institutions as being legitimate constructs representing all constituencies fairly. This should be the goal of speech and debate organizations and committees, as well. Experiences I faced as a young woman in this activity temporarily robbed me of my voice; ultimately, it was the power of debate that gave it back to me. Empower the young women in your schools and on your teams by protecting their access to this vital tool for finding and using their voice through participation in speech and debate.
55		-AND debate is an arena through which we can discuss solutions for this bitter reality.
56		-Elijah Smith 1, 2013. (“A Conversaiton in Ruins: Race and Black Participation in Lincoln Douglas Debate.” Debater. VBI.)
57		-It will be uncomfortable, it will be hard, and it will require continued effort but the necessary step in fixing this problem, like all problems, is the community as a whole admitting that such a problem with many “socially acceptable” choices exists in the first place. Like all systems of social control, the reality of racism in debate is constituted by the singular our choices that institutions, coaches, and students make on a weekly basis. I have watched countless rounds where competitors attempt to win by rushing to abstractions to distance the conversation from the material reality that black debaters are forced to deal with every day. One of the students I coached, who has since graduated after leaving debate, had an adult judge write out a ballot that concluded by “hypothetically” defending my student being lynched at the tournament. Another debate concluded with a young man defending that we can kill animals humanely, “just like we did that guy Troy Davis”. Community norms would have competitors do intellectual gymnastics or make up rules to accuse black debaters of breaking to escape hard conversations but as someone who understands that experience, the only constructive strategy is to acknowledge the reality of the oppressed, engage the discussion from the perspective of authors who are black and brown, and then find strategies to deal with the issues at hand. It hurts to see competitive seasons come and go and have high school students and judges spew the same hateful things you expect to hear at a Klan rally. A student should not, when presenting an advocacy that aligns them with the oppressed, have to justify why oppression is bad. Debate is not just a game, but a learning environment with liberatory potential . Even if the form debate gives to a conversation that is not the same you would use to discuss race in general conversation with Bayard Rustin or Fannie Lou Hamer, that is not a reason we can’t have to strip it that conversation of its connection to a reality that black students cannot escape.
58		-The role of the judge is to be an educator concerned with breaking down dominant narratives in the context of debate. Giroux
59		-
60		-In the age of irresponsible privatization, it is difficult to recognize that educators and other cultural workers bear an enormous responsibility in opposing the current threat to the planet and everyday life by bringing democratic political culture back to life. While liberal democracy offers an important discourse around issues of “rights, freedoms, participation, self-rule, and citizenship,” it has been mediated historically through the “damaged and burdened tradition” of racial and gender exclusions, economic injustice, and a formalistic, ritualized democracy, which substituted the swindle for the promise of democratic participation.6 At the same time, liberal and republican traditions of Western democratic thought have given rise to forms of social and political criticism that at least contained a “referent” for addressing the deep gap between the promise of a radical democracy and the existing reality. With the rise of neoliberalism, referents for imagining even a weak democracy, or for that matter understanding the tensions between capitalism and democracy, which animated political discourse for the first half of the twentieth century, appear to be overwhelmed by market discourses, identities, and practices, on the one hand, or a corrosive cynicism on the other. And, of course, at the present moment a kind of political lunacy that testifies to the rise of extremism in America. Democracy has now been reduced to a metaphor for the alleged “free” market and in some case to the image of a theocratic state. It is not that a genuine democratic public space once existed in some ideal form and has now been corrupted by the values of the market, but that these democratic public spheres, even in limited forms, seem to no longer be animating concepts for making visible the contradiction and tension between the reality of existing democracy and the promise of a more fully realized, substantive democracy. Part of the challenge of linking critical pedagogy with the process of democratization suggests constructing new locations of struggle, vocabularies, and subject positions that allow people in a wide variety of public spheres to become more than they are now, to question what it is they have become within existing institutional and social formations and, to give some thought to what it might mean to transform existing relations of subordination and oppression.
61		-
62		-The role of the ballot is to vote for the better debater who performatively and methodologically combat intersectional oppression in the context of the resolution.
63		-
64		-Narratives are the only way minority voices can enter oppressive systems – this makes my performance uniquely key.
65		-Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, 2001. (“Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.” NYU. Teaches civil rights and critical race theory at the University of Alabama School of Law. Professor. 43-44) ML
66		-Stories give also serve a powerful psychic function for minoritiesy communities. Many victims of racial discrimination suffer in silence, or blame themselves for their predicament. Stories can give them voices and reveal that others have similar experiences. Stories can name a type of discrimination; once named, it which can be combated. If race is not real or objective, but constructed, racism and prejudice should be capable of deconstruction; the pernicious beliefs and categories are, after all, our own. Powerfully written stories and narratives may begin a process of adjustment in our system of beliefs and categories by calling attention to neglected evidence and reminding readers of our common humanity. Even the conservative judge Richard Posner has conceded that major reforms in law often come through a conversion process or paradigm shift similar to the one Thomas Kuhn describes and minority storytellers advocate (Richard Posner, The Problems of Jurisprudence 459 1990). The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of the differend helps explain the value of narratives for marginalized persons. The differend occurs when a concept such as justice acquires conflicting meanings for two groups. A prime example would be a case where a judge seeks to hold responsible an individual who does not subscribe to the foundational views of the regime that is sitting in judgment of him or her. In situations like this, the subordinate person lacks language to express how they have he or she has been injured or wronged. For example, when contemporary Euro-Ameri- cans resist even discussing reparations for blacks on the grounds that no black living today has been a slave and so lacks standing, nor has any white person alive today been a slaveholder, the black who wishes to discuss the question, and is shunted aside, suffers the differend. The prevailing conception of justice deprives them him or her of the chances to express a grievance in terms the system will understands. Until very recently, women who suffered childhood incest or battered wife syndrome were victims of the differend. Narratives provide a language to bridge the gaps in imagination and conception that give rise to the differend. They reduce alienation for members of excluded groups, while offering opportunities for members of the majority group to meet them halfway. Attorneys and teachers of clinical law have been applying storytelling and narrative analysis to understand how the dynamics of persuasion operate in the courtroom. They also use them to understand the interplay of power and interpretive authority between lawyer and client. Suppose, for ex- ample, the lawyer favors strategy A because it is 60 percent likely to win. The client, however, favors strategy B because it is “truer to his experience” or world. Writers such as Lucy White and Anthony Alfieri show that attention to the narratives side of lawyering can enable us lawyers representing the poor and disenfranchised to achieve a better brand of justice. This has prompted some critics to charge that CRT teaches unmitigated manipulation of emotions and playing the race card. For example, when the O. J. Simpson verdict was announced, Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs writer for the New Re- public, charged that Johnny Cochrane’s successful defense of his famous client was an outrage and a case of “applied critical race theory.” Despite this and other criticisms, law has been slowly moving in the direction of recognizing the legitimacy and power of narrative. Children and certain other witnesses are permitted to testify in the form of a narrative, rather than through question-and-answer examination. With sexual offense victims, shield laws and evidentiary statutes protect them against certain types of examination, even though the Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause would otherwise permit the other side to attack their narrative forcefully.
67		-
68		-And even if I am losing the substance debate you vote neg since narratives are relevant in all contexts; my performance uniquely allows us to examine existing oppressive ideologies and change them. Performances turn debate into a collective space where we can specifically make gender norms visible and rupture them – I o/w on specificity and magnitude.
69		-Jale Karabekir, 2004. (“Performance as a Strategy for Women’s Liberation: The Practices of the Theatre of the Oppressed in Okmeydami Social Center.” Bogazici University. Master of Arts in Sociology. 128-134.) ML
70		-It is important to investigate womxn’s narratives to see how the ‘education for women’ discourse is opened up for criticism. Although in chapter four, women articulate the importance and the significance of education in defining the social center’s mission, they begin to criticize the educational programs when they compare them with the theatre of the oppressed practices. The interviewees all declare that on the contrary to the dominant idea, they do not like to attend handicraft courses, which are boring and requiring great patience. Another reason for the dislike is the individuality that these courses force upon them. Although they assert the advantages of the formal trainings they receive in KİHEP and AÇEV, they emphasize that they are mostly ‘school type (okul tarzı)’ studies. Arsen thinks that many participants find these courses boring “maybe that’s why people are avoiding them. Nevertheless, there are functional similarities between the theatre of the oppressed and the practices that concern personal development. They both focus on the development of “awareness”, “expression”, “empathy” and “observation”. For instance, the “sharing hours” of AÇEV, the communication courses and the theatre of the oppressed all create a discussion space for women where they can talk and can be listened. The other seminars such as effective communication and social personality also resemble the aims of the theatre of the oppressed workshops, but in structure they are too theoretical. Arsen defines them as follows: It seems to me as if the writing just stays there. It seems too hard, too technical to take the writing from there and put it into your mind and think it thoroughly, to put it into life. I am still reading, but I am not as hopeful as I was about it in the past. The interactive theatre has thought me that there would be better things and solutions via living and doing (it). “Living through” and “experiencing” are the terms that they use when they are defining the theatre of the oppressed workshops. Beyond the development of individuality, the theatre of the oppressed provides them a collective space. They become a group, like a theatre ensemble that creates its own plays. They discover different ways of talking and sharing within the other courses, but most importantly they find and the opportunity to practice what they gained in ‘real life’ situations: There are so many things in theatre, I mean, the mother child education should be of secondary importance, even third, education comes along not with reading, it comes along with living with people. Recognizing Oppression Through Shared Experience Besides the fact that the theatre of the oppressed is seen by women to be closer to ‘real life’, it is also a means through which womxn are reconstituted as a community and through which women learn to create and occupy new subject position. The theatre of the oppressed enables womxn’s oppression to become debatable. The main difference between conventional theatre and the theatre of the oppressed is the concept of ‘interactivity’. Within the theatre of the oppressed workshops, women collectively decide on a topic that will dramatize the shared oppression and perform it to the audience. Through the interactivity, collectivity is also created among the audience. In other words, the process of the theatre of the oppressed reconstitutes women as a collectivity both at the stage of preparation and performance. For example, Arsen defines her experience of conventional theatre in the past through the following words: I mean, the stage would be like, with the text in your hand, like the preparation of a play where you study it from the text and you act it. (...) Later on, after the university, they said that there is a group like that in Fikirtepe. One time, I went there. (...) But here, it changed all my things about the theatre, my ideas. (...) It changed, because it was interactive. I mean it was a theatre where the audience participated. Through the participation of the audience, a collective space to discuss oppression is created. Instead of presenting a script to the audience or memorizing a written script, the theatre of the oppressed points at the collective work in the creation and re-creation process of forum plays. As Arsen states: I hate being dependent on something. You are independent, and because we were prepared beforehand, also because we know each other, even though you pull it (the performance) to a different direction, in some way we could be in harmony together, for we shared so many things. The theatre of the oppressed is differentiated from conventional theatre by interactivity. The spectator’s intervention creates a powerful situation in the struggle against oppression. As Tevfika states: If we were to perform just like that and go, people wouldn’t be impressed as such. For after the play, they congratulate, I don’t know, they criticize, they say: what is it that you do. People participate.What you have to say is pre-determined, it is limited. But theirs are not, they can say whatever they want, the participants Similar to the experience of creating plays, responding to these strategies are important experiences both for the performers and the spectators. The aim of this interactivity is to open a space for this community in finding solutions to the common/shared experiences of oppression. This is a dual experience and a conscious-raising method for both sides. In the interventions the performers change their own scripts according to the strategies of the spect-actors. This enables the change in the initial oppression that is shown on stage. The spect-actor not only struggles with the initial oppression, but also with the ones that are created through the interaction of the performer and the spect-actor. This shows how the spect-actor faces with the patriarchal relations within this interaction. In sum, this method operates for the benefits of the community in which all the people in that space become actors. Tevfika illustrates this in practice: It seems easyto find solution by saying it from the place that they sit in, and when it comes to the point of getting up and practicing it, they understand that it is not so, they think more, it is easy to speak from there, come and do it then. Then they see that they’re wrong. We also say, well if it’s that easy, why don’t you do it? (...) When they participate, it seems to them as if it’s easy from the place that they sit, when they get up there. They see that it’s not the case, when they come up. Through the interventions, performing area becomes a rehearsal space for the community in which they can fight against the possible oppressions of their lives. Not only the performers and the spect-actors, but also the spectators who examine this struggle, also move into a different kind of experiences. Both the performing and examining area turn into a collective space: Yes, people used to think very different. I mean, this is how I think but this is the only way I know. To speak to someone else and another way out, other things. As Gizem says, the performance on stage reveals the oppression, it also encourages and activates the spectator to perform against the oppression/oppressor. Aysu explains her experience and benefit out of the theatre of the oppressed as follows: I saw that there is no single solution. I mean how can we solve. How is the best way, how can it be realized in you life. Different comments came from different people. You tried to find the best among these choices, yourself, for perhaps you did not have your creative power, you did not have an idea about the solution. You stand on that one single point and you can’t solve it. You became happy when such solutions came from other people. (...) Actually, they are problems that can be solved. I mean (those) that have to be solved here and can be solved also in reality... but one has to have self-confidence and belief. I mean to do that in real life. By experiencing and performing different solutions, strategies and approaches, the probability of choices and alternative methods can emerge. In this space, we are looking for the plurality, not an absolute solution. This performing area creates a space where women can search for strategies against oppression. At the first sight the regulatory norms and constituted gender are made visible by displaying the performance, and then by the intervention of the spect-actor, they are disrupted and resisted in the way of by searching the possible ways and strategies. However, this happens within a collective space where everything is created through collectivity and shared experience. The spect-actor presents her own solution to the community, the performer responds to her strategy, it can be successful or not. There isn’t a single solution when you display a problem. You see that there isn’t a single way out. (...) Everyone used to find the realistic solution from their point of view. (...) (they) used to produce a solution according to their reality. I mean, the reality and the standard and the life of the bearer of that solution was accordingly, the solution from within had to be like that. In that sense it provided me with a lot of flexibility. (...) well, I knew it, I have read about them, but I have experienced them while I was doing the interactive theatre, better said, they became strengthened in me, they came on one another and they became stronger.(Arsen)
71		-
72		-
73		-Your liberation strategy will never help the non-masculine body; womxn will never be part of the process until they become part of the policymaking realm.
74		-Ruth Meena. (“Women and Sustainable Development.” Voices of Africa. Number 5: Sustainable Development Part 1.) ML
75		-Participation of womxn in the development process has been constrained by their inability to influence policy making and planning, as well as by their inability to change the patriarchal ideology which continues to legitimizes their subordinate status in society. The majority of women have been participating in the economy as marginal actors in the agricultural sector, where they till land they do not own with the crudest tools and produce crops they do not control. Others have opted to participate in the informal sector, where there is no state support and where at worst they are victims of state repression because most of their activities;such as street vending or local beer brewing;are considered illegal. The fraction employed in the formal sector participates as semi-skilled, unskilled or low-paid wage earners. They have been victims of the retrenchment measures which governments are pursuing in the name of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs).Women have taken various initiatives in order to overcome some of the constraints which limit their effective participation in the development process. A few have organized economic groups and cooperative ventures. During the 1980s and 1990s, most African states witnessed a proliferation of women's income-generating projects. Most of these groups, however, are small in nature and have been confined to the informal sector. Most of these women-only projects, as Diane Elson noted, are not economically viable and, in the majority of cases, tend to be welfare oriented. Most are small and lack sufficient official support and have therefore remained outside mainstream plans. Women's income-generating activities however, are enabling the majority of African states to weather a severe socio-economic crisis with minimal social upheavals, as women absorb the shocks of the crisis.6 And yet, such activities can only be sustained if;and only if;they are part of the mainstream plans, in other words, planned for, budgeted for and supported. With present trends of economic liberalization, however, these income-generating activities will not survive the competition from external and internal companies. Less state intervention in the economy might be a death knoll to women's economic activities. Women on this continent have been implementing projects and plans which have been imposed upon them by their governments and the donor community. The marginalized position of womxn in Africa has been used by African states and donor governments to inject funds into issues other than those directed towards empowering womxn. African women have to fight for greater participation in decision making organs and should demand that governments be more accountable to them. Women will contribute more effectively if they participate in the decisions which affect them and society at large. This has forced some women's groups, such as the Zambian women's lobby group, to organize for political influence. Womxn can only contribute to the sustainable development process if they are part of those who design plans and formulate policies. This means they have to play a more aggressive role in the management of their societies. African states have to recognize that unless men and women participate in designing development programmes and formulating policies for the development process, sustainable development will remain a distant dream.
76		-And, my intersectional approach is key to real change.
77		-Sara Salem, 2014. (“Decolonial Intersectionality and a Transnational Feminist Movement.” PhD researcher at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands. The Feminist Wire. http://www.thefeministwire.com/2014/04/decolonial-intersectionality/. Accessed 8/18/16.) ML
78		-Transnational solidarity among feminists has often been a difficult goal to achieve because of the continued dominance of Western feminism, the lack of self-reflexivity on the part of feminists, and the lack of an approach that addresses both the complexities and nuances of lived gender experiences as well as the ways in which imperialism continues to structure the lives of millions around the world. In this article I want to address the points of convergence between intersectionality and decolonial theory and suggest that combining these two approaches can help in develops a non-exclusionary transnational solidarity. Angela Davis’ essay on her trip to Egypt in 19851 is a seminal work on the subject of transnational feminist solidarity. The essay contains reflections on the different visits and experiences she had on the short trip, and includes a wealth of emotional responses to the feminists she met. Two things are notable about this text: 1) the ways that Davis approached the question of feminism in Egypt, and the multiple moments during her trip where she forced herself to question her own assumptions rather than rely on stereotypical narratives (prevalent especially in American media and academia) about the realities of the women and men she was meeting, is of utmost importance. This humbleness and self-reflexivity suggests that a transnational feminist solidarity is possible, albeit not easy. The second thing that is notable is the location of Davis as a Western woman in Egypt, despite her being African-American. This brought to light the complexity of subjectivities within the global feminist movement, as well as questions of solidarity and understanding. While within the U.S. she was clearly part of a marginal group, in Egypt this positionality was a privileged one, as she represented the U.S., a country implicated in Egypt’s “underdevelopment.” Thus, her positionality changed from one location to another, emphasizing the importance of positioning oneself within structures of power in specific locations. Her experience allows us to unpack the question of positionality, particularly in relation to the question of feminist solidarity. As a movement, Western feminism continues to largely exist in a tense power relationship with other forms of feminism, largely because the movement continues to be based on liberal assumptions that simply cannot be used in feminist praxis in other contexts. In the words of Audre Lorde, “the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house.” For womxn outside of privileged locations in the West where neoliberal imperialism continues to play a large role in producing and reproducing patriarchy, concepts that have their history in imperial centres are seen as unlikely to can’t act as tools for meaningful change. This is why an intersectionality approach needs to be combined with a decolonial framework. The question, then, is: how can a strong transnational feminist movement be created, and how can it avoid the mistakes made by Western feminists in articulating what feminism is and how patriarchy can be dismantled? What would a decolonial and intersectionality-based transnational feminism look like? While it is true that one can speak of a global feminist movement, it becomes clear upon close examination that this is largely an institutionalized movement comprised of members of civil society. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a detailed critique of civil society and the institutionalization of gender by civil society organizations, suffice it to say that in many postcolonial settings civil society tends to be elitist, detached from grassroots activism, and merely functions as a vessel of neoliberalism.3 A transnational feminist movement that is separate from civil society and based on grassroots activism is therefore still to be realized, although there are many regional networks. How to overcome this? Intersectionality is certainly one solution: applied as both theory and praxis, intersectionality could prove useful in bringing to light power dynamics, even if unable to transform them in the short term. It is useful to question, however, whether intersectionality goes deep enough in challenging the Western bias of many feminists across the postcolonial world today. It is not a coincidence that in many postcolonial settings it is feminists who hold liberal and Western conceptions of gender relations that receive the most publicity and funding. This is a way of maintaining hegemony in a ‘post-colonial’ world and thus ensuring that the ‘post’ never materializes. While intersectionality may convince feminists of the need to de-centre their assumptions and look at multiple structures and experiences, I believe it needs to be coupled with a decolonial approach to truly transform the liberal Western underpinnings of much feminism activism today. A decolonial approach would necessitate moving past the individualistic liberal ontology underpinning much of feminism today, including some strands of intersectionality. This entails problematizing the assumption that the subject is always erased from the analysis, thus producing a myth about universal and objective knowledge. Instead, “critical border thinking” can be employed, which is a form of subaltern epistemology that does not hide the epistemic positionality of the subject speaking.5 This allows for decolonial interpretative communities to be produced that challenge Western notions of universality, neutrality and linear evolution. By critically deconstructing Western concepts and structures that have been normalized, the first step towards dismantling them has been taken. One example of such an approach would be to conceptualize feminism as a project that views patriarchy as a system that constructs both women and men in harmful ways. Rather than view gender justice as an individualistic goal to be attained by every woman – a view that sometimes views men as “the enemy” –alternative visions in which patriarchy is conceptualized as a system that oppresses everyone can be more useful. This is not to say that men do not benefit from patriarchy – all men do. Rather it is to complicate ideas of masculinity by showing that not all men benefit equally. Work on masculinities has shown that men who fit the ideal type are in a power relation not only with women but also with men who are outside of what is considered “masculine.” Pushing this conceptualization further, it is also more applicable to societies in which individualism is not the norm. For many women in postcolonial societies, the aim is not to challenge men, but rather to challenge the system and structures that allow men to become dominant. There can be no feminism without anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, and so on, because patriarchy does not exist in isolation from imperialism, capitalism and other structures. Another way to employ an intersectional decolonial approach is by deeply interrogating the categories and notions of oppression we use. Rather than assume that we know what harms women, we should let the intersectional categories emerge from the cases and contexts themselves, bearing in mind global structures of inequality. To think of an obvious example, in the case of Arab women it is almost always assumed that “culture” (already a problematic homogenous designation) is somehow implicated in the oppression of women. Not only does this essentialize “culture,” it also isolates it as something problematic that needs to be fixed. This ignores the possibility of Arab women using cultured notions as a means of fighting oppression. It also fixates on culture at the expense of other relations or structures such as class. Constructing “culture” as a barrier to women’s personal freedom reveals a liberal conception of the human subject, where liberty – at a personal, individual level – is framed as especially important and as the direct result of the elimination of cultural practices, without taking into account the political, economic and social factors that are affected by both local and global factors. A final example relates to praxis. Allowing the context to determine the categories7 we use in gender analysis through an employment of critical border thinking will also impact the ways in which we practice feminism. Once the ‘problems’ are framed differently, it becomes clear that forms of feminist praxis are needed. For example, moving away from an individualistic liberal framing will show that taken-for-granted solutions to gender inequality such as education or employment at the micro-level are not value-free. A decolonial approach would press us to question what we mean by education, which types of knowledges this understanding privileges, and how providing education and employment to women in the Global South also has multiple structural effects that often remain understudied, most notably that it ties them into a global capitalist economy of production and consumption in which they face a new set of oppressive relations. As Lila Abu Lughod has cautioned, not all employment is “good for women.”8 Intersectionality as an approach may help us understand that employment does not necessarily ensure a woman’s well-being, but a decolonial approach would explain why that is and how specific structures are implicated in the production of particular ways of knowing and surviving in the global economy today. Returning to Angela Davis – her reflections on her trip to Egypt serve as a reminder of how difficult any kind of transnational solidarity is. Her discussions also show, however, that self-reflexivity is essential to solidarity, and that engaging in a constant process of self-questioning as well as positioning oneself within structures is necessary if one is to bridge contexts without imposing one’s own location and subjectivity. For feminism to undergo the process Davis underwent, adopting a decolonial approach that de-centres Eurocentric ideas about feminism and favors multiple processes of knowledge production seems to be the most promising way forward at this juncture. Until intersectionality as an approach employs decolonial assumptions, the risk of the continued privileging of western assumptions is high. This is particularly the case when intersectionality becomes a means of reifying identity politics rather than a tool that destabilizes categories. This in turn means that feminist activism and praxis will continue to be fraught with contradictions between a western universal project and the complex nature of contextual particularities. A decolonial approach that is intersectional and unapologetically subaltern will allow use to approach the intersections of categories that emerge from the given context and that are defined by those who experience the realities of those intersections. This may mean that categories such as class, race, sexuality, and even gender don’t mean what intersectionality theorists think they mean, or don’t intersect in the ways previously assumed, and this is precisely where self-reflexivity comes in. In other words, we should all, as feminists committed to knowledge production, have our Angela Davis moments and ask whether we have really decolonized our own knowledge and whether our interventions are impositions rather than attempts to create transnational solidarity.
79		-
80		-And, all debaters are different and thus interact with the debate space in different ways. Their appeals to objective standards such as fairness and theory will never account for the debaters that fall outside of their own subject positions. Their Fairness arguments are attempts to police the debate space, just like how Wilderson describes civil society policing the black body, for debaters like them and create the worst form of unfairness and repression because it is done with the mask of objectivity. Delgado :
81		-The debate on objective and subjective standards touches on these issues of world-making and the social construction of reality. Powerful actors, such as tobacco companies and male dates, want objective standards applied to them simply because these standards always, and already, reflect them and their culture. These actors have been in power; their subjectivity long ago was deemed "objective" and imposed on the world. n36 Now their ideas about meaning, action, and fairness are built into our culture, into our view of malefemale, doctor-patient, and manufacturer-consumer relations. n37It is no surprise, then, that judgment under an "objective" (or reasonable person) standard generally will favor the stronger party. This, however, is not always the case: Rules that too predictably and reliably favored the strong would be declared unprincipled. n38 The stronger actor must be able to see his favorite principles as fair and *819 just ~-~- ones that a reasonable society would rely upon in contested situations. n39 He must be able to depict the current standards as integral to justice, freedom, fairness, and administrability ~-~- to everything short of the American Way itself (and maybe even that, since societies that regulate these relationships more closely are paternalistic, and verge on (shhh!) socialism). n40
82		-(extension: Extend Delgado, this takes out all their fairness arguments. Because it attempts to police the debate space for debaters like those who identify as black and create the worst form of unfairness and repression because it is done with the mask of objectivity)

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1		-2016-10-08 22:12:08.0

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1		-Kris Kaya

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1		-Harker

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1		-Westview Sudhakar Neg

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1		-Fem K

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1		-Voices