At Face Value

This week we read Beyond the Global Victim by Cynthia Enloe. In her essay Enloe makes three major points regarding women and how they influence and are influenced by foreign policy and international activism. Her argument speaks out against activists who try and persuade women that they need to be more knowledgeable of and active in foreign affairs.

Enloe discusses how demeaning it is for women to be expected to support activism and help solve these global problems, to help other unfortunate women, when they aren’t allowed to define this activism in their own terms. Enloe writes, “Because organizers aren’t curious about what women’s experiences could lend to an understanding of international politics, many women, especially those whose energies are already stretched to the limit, are wary of becoming involved in an international campaign. It can seem like one more attempt by privileged outsiders—women and men—to dilate their political efforts. If women are asked to join an international campaign—for peace, against communism, for refugees, against apartheid, for religious evangelism, against hunger—but are not allowed to define the problem, it looks to many locally engaged women like abstract do-gooding with minimal connections to the battle for a decent life in their households and in their communities” (497). This point is paralleled in the essay Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? by Lila Abu-Lughod. She too makes the point that women are used as the cavalry when it comes to helping foreign women but never as the generals. However, it seems that the support of Western women is needed for every foreign struggle. Abu-Lughod writes about the idea of American women as the international politics litmus test when she states, “Most revealingly, [Laura Bush’s] speech enlisted women to justify American bombing and intervention in Afghanistan and to make a case for the ‘War on Terrorism’ of which it was allegedly a part” (486).

Enloe also laments the fact that women are always represented as victims and not as fighters. She tells us that this is true of our victimized sisters in developing countries, as well as the white, God-fearing, Western women when she writes, “…The typical ‘women-need-to-learn-more-about-foreign-affairs’ approach usually portrays women as the victims of the international political system… In this worldview women are forever being acted upon; rarely are they seen to be actors” (497). Although many white women who are uncomfortable with upsetting the status quo (as women generally have been for centuries) often turn their heads at this fact, they still have recognized that their power only extends so far in the patriarchy. They acted upon this by overcompensating in their use (abuse) of authority over other women during colonization. Enloe writes, “… [Feminists] have discovered that some women’s class aspirations and their racist fears lured them into the role of controlling other women for the sake of imperial rule… To describe colonization as a process that has been carried on solely by men overlooks the ways in which male colonizers’ success depended on some women’s complicity” (497). The power women exert over other women is still very popular. It is most noticeable with the employment of upper-class women who are difficult employers to women of color. These actions aren’t confined to the wealthy who interact with foreign women and use money to define their status. They occur also within every Western woman who ever thinks that it is her “duty” to save women of others cultures. While acts of compassion are often appreciated, to take on the role of savior is to oneself more capable and competent than those who need to be saved. Often it is simply because we are more privileged.

Enloe explains how important women are to international policy when she states, “Corporate executives and development technocrats need some women to depend on cash wages; they need some women to see a factory or plantation job as means of delaying marriage or fulfilling daughterly obligations. Without women’s own needs, values, and worries, the global assembly line would grind to a halt” (497-498). Women are so crucial to the functioning of so many entities. It is a master’s tool that we are not able to realize this. We are useful to the patriarchy as long as we don’t understand how important we are and how much influence we actually have. Enloe goes on to say, “But many of those needs, values, and worries are defined by patriarchal structures and strictures. If fathers, brothers, husbands didn’t gain some privilege, however small in global terms, from women’s acquiescence to those confining notions of femininity, it might be much harder for the foreign executives and their local elite allies to recruit the cheap labor they desire. Consequently, women’s capacity to challenge the men in their families, their communities, or their political movements will be a key to remaking the world” (498). Only when we are comfortable enough with our own power and rights as women will we be able to gain access to equality of the sexes. We are “victimized” by a tangle of wires, of patriarchal expectations, that when examined individually seem harmless, but cooperatively cage us (Oppression by Marilyn Frye). I believe that Valenti says it best when she states in her essay You’re a Hardcore Feminist, I Swear!, “It pays—literally—to keep women half there” (13).
Although this reading has little to do with female sexuality in the media, it has a lot to do with the misrepresentation of women in a specific forum. Women are portrayed a certain way and we automatically agree with what we are told verbatim. Women are not always the global victim nor are they always hypersexualized. We need to make a point to search for accurate information politically and recreationally so we no longer have a skewed impression of our own gender.

~Katie Frye