"Women's rights, but...". I can see we're going to have a problem.
I've just stumbled upon one of the most corrupt-thinking, mind-boggling organizations ever. REAL Women of Canada (Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life) is a group currently lobbying the government to eliminate the Status of Women Council and Ministerial position.
Why would a group that purports to "promote equality for ALL women" (my emphasis) want to do away with Canada's main body for ensuring women's rights? Because REAL women feels the Status of Women has "discriminatory practices", in specific they criticize Bev Oda and the council for its "reprehensible policies of consulting with, promoting and funding only feminist organizations and continu[ing] to discriminate against all other women’s grass root organizations."
Their mandate is to promote equality for all women, EXCEPT feminists. Or more interesting, what is this distinction they are making between feminist and grassroots groups? Unless a group is working to limit or take away women's rights and freedoms (i.e. lobbying to ban abortion, to ban tubal ligations (Hey Humboldt!)), I consider it a feminist organization.
Part of REAL's project, in eliminating the Status of Women, would be to do away with funding for over 500 women's shelters across canada. How can they justify removing survival mechanisms? Do only their hated feminists need shelters? Who are the members of this group, and why are they attacking women's rights under the pretense of caring?
Read their Letter to Bev Oda
[They quote Minister Oda's response, which simply states, "This government is committed to promoting women’s human rights and eliminating barriers for women...there is still work to do to make sure women can enjoy full equality in their day to day lives. As Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, I will continue to work with organizations to attain concrete results in achieving full equality for women." REAL's response to Oda's reply? "We were furious. We wrote to Ms Oda on June 8, 2006 stating that her letter was deeply offensive to our organization in that she had either ignored and/or dismissed the main points of our letter of April 4, 2006."]
Women enjoying full equality as infuriating and offensive.
Fascinating, how so?
Who are you, really, for you cannot be sane women. (The president is indeed a woman, though I am suspicious of the membership).
Take their Humanist (I guess? very problematic) official motto:
Women’s rights, but not at the expense of human rights
There is no way to break that statement down in a way that makes it coherent and sensible.
Compare their motto with this popular slogan brought out at all four UN conventions on Human Rights in the Nineties:*
Women's Rights are Human Rights
What emerges is that REAL Women classifies women as extraneous to some human essence.
REAL: Campaigning for "women's rights" on the basis that women are NOT equal to humans. i.e. Uphold Human rights above all else. Who do they think could possibly be negatively impacted by achieving women's rights?.... oh, the Humans. Those neutral, default beings, men, or more accurately, Man. [That's them, not me!]
UN delegates: Campaigning for women's rights on the basis that woman ARE equal to humans. i.e. uphold women's rights because they are human.
Different understandings of Human, or different understandings of women?
Humanist? Feminist? Humanist? Feminist? Can you be one without being the other? Can you call REAL's policy Humanist, when it holds one genera of existence as more important? Can you separate Woman from Human? Have you ever felt yourself to be especially Human, more than you've felt Womanly or Manly???? (or somewhere in-between?)
I don't get it. When I read a novel about a Haixla teenaged girl in Kitimat, BC (Eden Robinson's "Monkey Beach") I enter her world, but I do so from my distinct identity as a Canadian WASPy Woman from the East Coast. I can't say I know what it's like to separate from my distinct existence, to transcend it and experience pure Humanity.
As for the name of the organization, I don't get couching misogyny inside of a friendly label. Why not call themselves Anti-Feminist Group? (or Anti-Women's Group for that matter)? Anti-feminism is clearly stated and upheld as a major tenet of their organization, why shy away from spelling it out?
I can't stand this sneaky proclivity right-wing and corporate organizations have for naming their lobby-groups, in which they create names that are opposite to their actual function. They KNOW they're trying to fool somebody. Groups like "Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions" (a group composed of Canada's trade associations largely opposed to the country's plan to adopt the Kyoto global warming treaty) and "Foundation for Clean Air Progress" (FCAP) (formed specifically to pressure the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to adopt tougher air pollution controls).
So how about you? Are you feeling particularly Human today? Why not act on it and form an organization devoted to depriving a para-human (children perhaps? the blind? can Men be considered as Other than Human?) of their rights.
Begin your motto with "Man's rights, but...."
* World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna 1993; Intl Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, 1994; World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen 1995; and Fourth world Conference on Women in Beijing 1995. From Stephen Lewis "Race Against Time" Chapter IV: Women: Half the World, Barely Represented.
posted by Arty Povera @ 2:17 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Michelle,
While I suffer from a short attention span and specific ignorance to the REAL organization, I still (somehow) feel justifiable in contesting parts of your argument, or defending your "opponents", mainly because they seem to take a similar view to "feminism" as I do.
First, we're dealing with a 50 plus year word with "feminism". There is not really a solid definition for it and really, why should their be? If in its essence it protests the institutions that create binary oppositions, why can't we use a spectrum approach?
And now, (tada) I attempt to break a statement down in a "coherent and sensible way".
Quoting you:
"Take their Humanist (I guess? very problematic) official motto:
Women’s rights, but not at the expense of human rights
There is no way to break that statement down in a way that makes it coherent and sensible."
Though I don't know what specifically they are referring to (ignorance, remember?) I feel safe to agree with this. I'm sorry. I read this as saying the broader set of "human" carries more weight than the subset of "women". Thus, the rights of women must be viewed alongside the rights of all people (men and women and everyone in between). And again, to view this in a binary manner is not possible. I assume this refers to decision making where compromise (yes, compromise in human rights) is necessary and the best possible solution (for all) is made.
Yes, yes, yes... I know you can take offense at that, but I also think that possibly it is really a humanist approach. Or, a personist approach that doesn't want to grant favourtism based on gender, you know... the way society kinda works now? Such as... "men's rights, but not at the expense of human rights?" I think it's a little easier to see it that way. And yes, perhaps that's not the case because we don't care that "inherent" power that men do, but all the same.
Okay, attention span waning. Sorry I can't be more educated or coherent. Mwah.
Hey morg, thanks for posting!
I totally agree that feminism has multiple meanings, and that challenging binaries should be a major concern for all feminists and feminisms. At this point in feminist discourse (as in the "three waves" of feminism) it is often standard practice to write "feminism(s)" when speaking about it (I see this done a lot in academic essays dealing with feminist analysis...).
Your other point in defense of their motto I don't agree with. As the rest of my post clarifies, what I am interested in looking at is that separation REAL makes between woman and human.
As I said, personally, I am not able to make that distinction. I have never felt more human than I have felt women, I don't understand how it is possible to separate one's core-identity in favour of feeling one's generic (as in genera or species) identity. Do you see what I mean?
And when I say this, I assume that men feel the same way, that they can't necessarily separate their "man" identity from their "human" one. Philisophically, I'm interested in this distinction between two ways of being in the world: one human, and one the add-on (either male or female).
I found their motto particularly fascinating in comparison with the "Women's Rights ARE Human Rights" motto. The tension betweent the two mottos illustrates the ideological gap: gender-identity as inseparble from the self vs. inseparable. Which is why perhaps some people are born male yet identify as female, or vice verse. They/I/we are a gendered-entity first and foremost.
That's obviously my particular politics, and many (including you I guess) would disagree.
Also, the multiple-meanings of Humanist in the context of this discussion should be noted:
humanist can mean personist, as you suggest. Or, it can refer to "humanism", the Enlightenment worldview developed in Europe in 16-18th centuries--as in Descartes' "I think therefore I am" and the philosphical and scientific reasoning that grew placing humans at the centre of the universe (top of the kingdom), and placing human consciousness and identity as a sacred and singular thing.
I think this is really important, because while Thomas Paine penned "Rights of Man", the colonial powers of most Western euopean countries were expanding and enslaving populations all over the world. So this perverse understanding of "human" arises, in which Europeans, particularly men of power, are writing about the universal rights and consciousness of man, while completely destroying entire peoples.
So for me, REAL's use of "human" as having more rights than "woman" particularly resonated as frought.
What about the guy from Equus? Hmmm? I think his species identity was likely primary to his gender identification?
... and now that I have made a mockery of your highly relevant points...
Good night.
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