Martha Nussbaum has written very logically about why it should not be acceptable for liberal democracies to ban the burqa. I particularly liked this comment from a reader.

Basically, isn’t the case against the burqa making others uncomfortable, similar to the case, in some Islamic countries, against incompletely covered women making others uncomfortable? In both cases, the problem is with the person who feels discomfortable, who instead tries to make the (female) target of his discomfort responsible for removing the source of this discomfort.

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Yesterday one of the Fword members sent around an article in the New York Times Magazine about young girls’ sexuality today. The article comments on a, what I think is extremely disturbing, video of prepubescent girls suggestively dressed and dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.”

One Fword-er commented that the video is disturbing because it demonstrates the ready availability of inappropriate sexuality on the Internet to young girls:

My little sisters are 9 and 6, so this is terrifying. It’s scary the accessibility of inappropriate sexuality these days, particularly through the internet. Think about everything you can watch on youtube… kids have access to everything we do, and most parents don’t seem to understand what you can find (or stumble across) on youtube.

The discussion then shifted into an argument over the restrictiveness of defining sexual appropriateness. Chloe, another Fword-er, countered that the girls depicted were exploring their sexuality; and that the materials’ accessibility allows other girls watching to explore their sexuality on their own terms, instead of being subjected to a double standard in which sexuality and porn are okay for young boys but not young girls:

Obviously there is a heavily patriarchal, “male gaze” oriented sexuality presented in the media, but who is really to say what is inappropriate sexuality? I think Internet porn, in all of it’s diversity, is a great way for young girls to explore their sexuality and have access like never before. I mean it’s okay for boys to be sexual and watch porn at a young age, yet when girls do the paternalistic attitude always arises. Maybe, due to the ’sacred’ and ‘unspoiled’ notion of the young female body, were still scared of ‘ruining’ our young girls with the ‘dirtiness’ of sex…

Just a thought….

However, the former commenter responded that neither the performance in nor the consumption of these videos are healthy forms of sexual exploration for girls too young to discern the difference between exploitation and exploration:

Internet porn IS a problem because since it is targeted toward men the vast majority of it is humiliating and demeaning to women. If a person is mature enough to recognize this then there is no problem, but it is so easy for young girls to get the wrong idea. When they see inappropriate things on the internet or on TV they think that they should act that way. Lets face it – the girls in the video are not embracing their sexuality in a healthy way (it’s difficult for girls whose bodies are not physically ready to have sex to have any grasp on their own sexuality), they are merely doing what they think will please the crowd. There is a huge difference between sexiness and sexuality – these girls are too young to know the difference and shouldn’t have to learn by objectifying themselves in this way.

In my response to their responses, I wrote:

I wouldn’t concur that society necessarily makes it okay for young boys to be sexual. The comments to this article in a New York Times blog included parents who were concerned about the early sexualization of both their sons and daughters. Also, in the autobiographical essay “Such, Such Were the Joys,” George Orwell’s schoolteachers had the fear of masturbation planted firmly in the minds of him and his peers through punitive measures – “There were summonses, interrogations, confessions, floggings, repentances, solemn lectures of which one understood nothing except that some irredeemable sin known as ‘swinishness’ or ‘beastliness’ had been committed.”

I would also not interpret the young girls in the video as the ones exploring their own sexuality – it wouldn’t seem to me that they have any agency over this, as I would think that they were not the ones who put in the order for the costumes or choreographed the dance, but rather the teacher/choreographer. From my own ballet/tap/jazz lessons in childhood, I would say it’s not unusual for a dance teacher to order similarly stomach-baring/skimpy (though perhaps with less suggestive color schemes than the example in the video) costumes for prepubescent girls, and while at the time I didn’t think much of it, I distinctly remember my sister and me looking back on one of my class’s old group photos a couple years ago and wondering what the hell the teacher had been thinking when she bought them.

As the article points out, Beyonce herself wears more modest attire, and I would add, has more modest dance moves in her video.

Chloe adds:

Though much mainstream pornography focuses on the mainstream heterosexist audiences it reaches, the pornography available on the internet today diversifies a market which before the internet almost SOLELY consisted of that representation of sexuality. Today virtually every form of sexuality, with all forms of ‘gender,’ is represented on the internet. Moreover, the prejudice and taboo against ‘women,’ and young ‘girls,’ exploring their sexuality via pornography, masturbation etc… is in many ways made irrelevant by the internet because young people of any sex have the option of anonymously exploring their various sexual desires. It is a sociological fact that young ‘girls’ masturbating or exploring sexuality at any young age is a social taboo, mostly not talked about, and considered ’strange’ or ‘gross,’ at least publicly, by the young people themselves, whereas young ‘male’ sexuality, whether exploring Playboy magazines, masturbating, or attempting to woo ‘girls’ is a timeless and very social cliché.

Sexual exploration at a young age is necessary for a healthy adult sexuality, and if it weren’t for internet pornography, many ‘women’ would be kept completely in the dark. Pornography is a great way to see and learn about various sexualities, and even young children have some sexual instincts and can benefit from some exposure. As various alternate societies and time periods have shown, children’s sexuality and sexual development is very much regulated by the moral norms of the society in which they live, and a puritanical, censoring approach to sexuality and its representations can only serve to reinforce patriarchy by upholding the exclusively ‘male,’ ‘public sphere’ access to sexuality that has always existed, while socially denying ‘women’ and ‘girls’ the chance to see for themselves, so to speak.

As for pornography being humiliating to ‘women,’ that all depends upon the nature of the specific sexuality. Some people enjoy being humiliated and objectified as part of their sexual fantasy, so even a sexuality that would be considered demeaning by some can be considered liberating and pleasurable by others. The desperate and alarmist attempt to censor sexuality itself in its representation on the internet is a misguided and paternalistic approach to try and protect the ‘innocent’ and ‘pure’ young ‘girls’ who couldn’t possibly have sexual instincts at say the age of 10. Rather we should push for more diverse representations of sexuality, and gender, a more bold, head-on, unashamed look at sexuality which educates and enhances all of our sexual lives. A censoring, fearful approach can only teach the message that there is something ‘unpure’ or ‘dirty’ about sex itself. At bottom, there is no such thing as inappropriate sexuality as long as the parties involved are willing and able, so the more exposure our young, especially ‘girls,’ get, to all kinds of sexuality the better.

However, Aviva, another Fword-er, adds that it is necessary for both parties not only to be willing and able, but also protected. As important as it is to have a healthy attitude towards sex, the content from one of her Health and Societies classes showed that, on a practical, public health level, earlier onsets of sexual intercourse for young girls lead to a greater statistical likelihood of teen pregnancy and greater number of total sexual partners per lifetime, which is a risk factor for contracting more STDs and certain cancers. Careless exposure to erotic materials outside of context would not promote responsible sexual practices among young audiences.

Moreover, I note that the above-mentioned examples of male sexuality have not in fact had timeless social acceptance. Frank Wedekind’s 19th-century German play, Spring Awakening, portrays a culture that is sexually repressive towards adolescent boys as well as girls. The very censorship of the play, due to a scene of explicit male sexuality, demonstrates society’s discomfort both with aspects of male sexuality, and with the artistic representation of those acts.

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In reflecting back at some of the opposition towards the Vagina Monologues earlier in the semester, I’m inclined to feel that the real point of contention ought not to be the degree of extremity but rather the direction of it. Depending on the specific range of one’s experiences, or lack thereof, some audience members may feel alienated from the already pervasive discussions of sexual topics. Moreover, I wonder if the emphasis on sexual violence in women’s-issues-related campus events privileges the centrality of these problems above other women’s issues, and draws attention away from discussing non-sexual abuse or domestic violence.

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Interesting article about stress levels in 2-parent-working homes, may reveal what is responsible for some aggressive behavior.

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When I worked in the live-in component of a summer academic program for pre-teens one summer, I was reminded of how much taller twelve-year-old girls are than their male counterparts. It made me think of how different the reactions you evoke from people are as your height changes. Though my sister is three years younger than I, most people treated us as if we were twins because she spent much of her childhood near my height. I never received the deferential treatment I imagine most elder siblings do.

In response to a question in my math textbook, my second-grade teacher once determined that I was the shortest person in my class. As a consolation, she predicted that one day I would be even taller than her. She was correct, as I became one of the tallest students in my eighth-grade class. At the time, the other girls and I would make ourselves even taller with multi-inched platform shoes. For commencement and our formal graduation boat trip across Lake Michigan, we competed over the lengths of our heels.

As some eighth graders competed over height, others implicitly idealized their prepubescent petiteness. People often say that a girl can be tall, as long as she’s not too tall. In response to the Common App diversity question years later, one friend recalled being made to feel ‘oversized’ (she was not) in contrast with the daintiest, porcelain-doll-like little girls. I had not expected my friend to feel this way, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized people do associate physical smallness and consequent, so-called cuteness with femininity. I suppose such ideas should not surprise me, given the social pressure for women to be look younger, and the preference for neoteny in women.

Expectations of smallness are not that far removed from expectations that girls be skinny. When we first discovered e-mail addresses in middle school, the kids forwarded so many chain-letter surveys to each other. They would regularly fill out class superlatives—‘smartest,’ ‘most talkative,’ ‘skinniest.’ I remember never being considered the skinniest compared to those kids, which has made me feel taken aback every time someone in college has called me skinny. But I suppose body image is relative. It seems we’re always negotiating the relationship between our sizes and our reactions from others.

Perhaps I had especially short high school classmates, male and female, but I continued to tower over many a 5′ peer in my adolescence. I felt like a giant standing among them. By the time I reached college, however, I lost the height advantage. While I am still above the average height of a woman in the US (5′ 3.8″, according to About.com; I am 5′ 4.5″), even my little sister now considers me ‘little’ (today, she is 3.5″ taller than me).

The height difference between the average matriculating Penn freshman and the average graduating senior from my high school was enough that I hadn’t anticipated that other Penn students would call me small. I was unused to it because it was not how I positioned myself relative to others in high school. Being treated as a petite person made me feel as if others inferred some corresponding docility based on my size. It’s disconcerting when people in a new environment interpret your size differently from the self-construction you’ve developed in your original environment. Being thought of as diminutive as an adult is also socially belittling, as if you’re a child or cartoon character, instead of a respected, full-grown human being to be treated seriously as an equal (indeed, there are other, more serious cultural precedents for women being treated as permanent children). Hopefully, I don’t shrink too much when I get old.

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I got an email about this event through a listserve and I thought it sounded interesting (I guess there is a gender-bending female soldier other than Mulan):

“Wednesday, October 28, 4-6PM, Annenberg 110 (3620 Walnut Street)

“AUTUMN GEM: A Documentary on China’s First Feminist

“AUTUMN GEM explores the extraordinary life of the Chinese revolutionary heroine Qiu Jin (1875-1907). An accomplished writer, women’s rights activist, and leader of a revolutionary army, Qiu Jin boldly challenged traditional gender roles and demanded equal rights and opportunities for women. Compared to a ‘Chinese Joan of Arc,’ she emerged as a national heroine who redefined what it meant to be a woman in early 20th-century China.

“Join us for a free screening and Q-and-A session with filmmakers RaeChang and Adam Tow.

“Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies
Co-sponsored by Asian Pacific American Heritage Week”

Qin Jin tried to overthrow the Qin Dynasty and was sentenced to death. She is famous in China for having been a martyr.

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I first heard of Rachel Simmons through a profile in Time magazine.

We’ve all heard the stereotype that girls treat each other with greater underhanded cruelty than boys treat each other, à la Mean Girls. Instead of attributing such behavior to biological differences, Rachel Simmons makes the interesting argument that this actually results from girls facing greater social pressure to be nice than boys face. She seems to suggest that because the repressed hostilities need to have expression somewhere, they come out in the manipulative and catty behavior that we recognize.

She writes:

“the pressure girls face to be nice all the time leads them to repress some of their most powerful emotions and deprives them of skills to express those feelings. As a result, a lot of anger gets expressed indirectly, like online or behind someone’s back, earning girls a reputation for being sneaky and cruel. Again, that’s not about girls themselves but about the culture that they’re growing up in.”

While we’ve all noticed that girls can partake in those rituals, I am not sure myself whether I would agree that it is culturally conditioned—or maybe I just never noticed it myself.  In my elementary school (and for me, elementary school in Chicago is 1^st-8^th grade) girls did place indirect social pressure on each other to be nice. I heard my peers say, “Laura is the nicest girl in the class… Michelle is the second-nicest,” as if it were some competition.  It did make it seem like niceness was something to aspire to.

On the other hand, I didn’t interpret it as something girls had to aspire to more than boys, but I guess the boys weren’t standing around trying to compare who was nicest (maybe because women are expected to be more nurturing?).  I suppose teachers may have been complicit in the stereotype that girls are the nice, well-behaved ones, and there’s a greater expectation that boys will misbehave, but those descriptions never seemed prescriptive to me. I am personally wary of the suggestion that the social pressure pre-exists the stereotype, because I never felt that I had to try to be nice BECAUSE I was a girl.  It just seemed like the basic human-being way to behave.  Even if boys were thought of as the troublemakers in class, I didn’t feel as if teachers were more lenient towards them when they misbehaved; I didn’t sense a different standard for behavior between boys and girls. Then again, there are limitations in drawing conclusions from personal anecdotes.

Simmons’ generalization about Asian girls and families in the last paragraph also makes me uncomfortable, especially since I find it untrue of my extended family. Furthermore, Asia is such a large continent that such a sweeping generalization cannot accommodate either the subtle or pronounced cultural variations that occur (besides, when I think of Asia, I think of Uzbekistan). It is not clear to me why she thinks she has the authority to make the statement in the last paragraph either, since on her web site she doesn’t seem to have any specialization in Asia-related matters.   Even if she had restricted her writing to a particular region of Asia, such as East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, or Asia Minor specifically, I think there is still considerable variation within those subregions. I have found that other journalism about psychological or social attributes about Asians also neglects to take into account noteworthy variations in Asian cultures.

However, I was still curious about her other writings, so I decided to look up her book, Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls.  She writes about girls’ underhanded forms of aggression towards each other, the result of societal pressure to be “nice.” I don’t find the prose or the content especially engaging, but I thought these lines were interesting:

“Annie was so afraid of isolation that tolerating abuse seemed like her only option” (61).

“Annie tried to please her friend at any cost, wanting only to save the relationship. Her unremitting focus on staying friends with Samantha allowed abuse to take over the relationship” (61).

“With meanness so intermixed with the relationship, Annie lost the capacity to tell the difference” (61).

Simmons suggests that girls are under a lot of pressure to be nice, regardless of how they are treated.  Is the relationship she describes above true of girls? If so, are girls afraid of isolation because it is intrinsically unpleasant, or because they feel social pressure not to be isolated? Is the stigma of isolation worse than the intrinsic negative effects? Which is the greater motivating factor that keeps girls in abusive friendships with each other?

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During a meeting of the Fword board this evening, the board members discussed a view of feminism that is inclusive of women as sexual beings, countering the stereotype that feminists seek to be desexualized. I understand the logic that it’s not pro-woman to expect others to  suppress the very attributes that define womanhood for them. However, the point of feminism is also to question a narrow definition of femininity, especially when no one lives up to an exact feminine ideal. In widening our definition of feminism, we have to be careful not to narrow our definition of femininity. When we make an emphatic point of including a particular expression of feminism, it is hard not to make that come across as an implicit exclusion of others, even if that is not the intention. In defining what a feminist is, are we also defining what a feminist isn’t? If so, how are we defining that? Is a definition meaningful without a clear articulation of its opposite? And what would someone who is not a feminist look like?

Ultimately, how a feminist looks is secondary to the substantive issues he or she stands for. Ideally, feminism is about liberation—making people feel as if they are not confined to prescribed social roles. I think of the e. e. cummings quote, “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” Feminism should serve the function of freeing individuals to actualize themselves in ways that society otherwise restricts them from doing. It should, in fact, fill a void by giving individuals the strength not to conform to the world. By empowering individuals to make more difficult choices, it would make room for broader expressions of femininity.

As important as it is for feminism to acknowledge the validity of women’s sexual self-expression, I think that that is something that society already validates. In a society that already sexualizes the performance of femininity, it requires greater strength for a woman to deviate from that paradigm. If a feminist community does not make room for that, then where is there room?

I am reminded of a new play I saw at the Royal Court in London this past winter. Entitled Shades, the play is written by a young British Muslim woman. Though the main character, Sabrina, seeks liberation from Islamic strictures in secular mores, Islam or religious conservatism appear to have a more refreshing potential in the course of the play.  Although her love interest, Reza, refrains from drinking, clubbing, and sex, thus initially suggesting that he is more repressed, he ultimately comes across as the more liberated individual.  In behaving within religious constraints he in fact liberates himself from mainstream social pressure.   Sab and Reza’s relationship is charmingly unburdened by sexual pressure. While religion is often seen as making impositions upon gender roles and sexual relations, its potential to provide an alternative from accepted social roles can make it, perhaps paradoxically, a “law of liberty” (James 1:25). Maybe in some cases, sexual self-expression can both be something that liberates, and something to be liberated from.

For example, at our submissions meeting last fall a former board member posited that sexualized Halloween costumes empower women to use their self-expression to achieve a specific objective; other board members felt that they did not need to share this same objective in order to don the same attire, and still others suggested that sharing that objective did not require a stereotypically sexual display.  When another senior announced that she herself just ended up dressing up as a toilet-paper mummy, the reaction from the others seemed to imply that doing so required extra courage, as if it defied Penn social norm. Their reactions struck me as odd at the time.  But what does it say about Penn when a girl dressing as a toilet-paper mummy for Halloween is read as a deviation from the norm?

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When I first read The Fword I was not sure what the magazine meant by the “feminist void” on Penn’s campus.

But this week, when I was representing the Fword table during the NSO Student Activities Fair and the Kelly Writers’ Open House, a student came up to us and challenged us with the idea of a male advancement group, under the assumption that feminism inherently implies a desire to advance female interests over male interests. Other passersby also seemed to have similar reactions to The Fword without having read the magazine first or asked what, if any, position the members of Fword had on feminism.

I realized that the adverse reaction of some members of the Penn community towards Fword’s existence  is proof itself that there is a feminist void– that people challenge the beliefs of feminists without finding out what those beliefs even are.  There is an assumption that all feminist thinking falls within a more constrained and narrow-minded framework than it actually does, when in fact Fword defines its objective as the opposite of that.  And I realized that this is in fact the feminist void: the discrepancy between what others assume The Fword to be and what it actually is.  The goal of The Fword board in the past has been to attempt to unpack and remedy the misconceptions out there about feminism.

It made me think of an article I read in Psychology Today, which seemed to summarize the ideas held by some Fword board members in the past.

More importantly, however, The Fword serves a function beyond feminism, per se.  It’s also about learning more about the role that gender plays in our lives, sometimes in ways that we may even take for granted– and I think unpacking those questions does turn out to be a worthy investigation, regardless of whether you call yourself a ‘feminist’ or what your ideological position is.  Sex and gender continue to be relevant issues in the news, as we these recent test results suggest.

Just because there are now women serving in high political offices and attending Ivy League institutions doesn’t mean these other issues don’t matter.  It doesn’t mean that feminism is past its period of relevance.  We continue to publish pieces ranging from creative prose exploring a physically abusive relationship to an academic essay about depression in incarcerated women.  So that is my answer to students who turn away from the Fword table just because they think they’re not feminists.

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