GDI Gender IR K

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007
Gender and International Relations K
1 Gender
**Gender IR - 1NC Shell** ..........................................................................................................................................6 1NC Shell ......................................................................................................................................................................7 1NC Shell ......................................................................................................................................................................8 1NC Shell ......................................................................................................................................................................9 1NC Shell ....................................................................................................................................................................10 **Links** ....................................................................................................................................................................11 LinkIR Ignores Gender ............................................................................................................................................12 LinkState..................................................................................................................................................................13 LinkState (Africa Specific)......................................................................................................................................14 LinkWomen = Peace............................................................................................................................................15 LinkForeign Aid/Disease.........................................................................................................................................16 LinkForeign Policy (1/2) .........................................................................................................................................17 LinkDevelopment (1/2) ...........................................................................................................................................19 LinkDevelopment/Education...................................................................................................................................21 LinkDisease .............................................................................................................................................................22 LinkTuberculosis .....................................................................................................................................................23 LinkMalaria .............................................................................................................................................................24 LinkSexual Politics..................................................................................................................................................25 LinkReproductive Health Care ................................................................................................................................26 LinkHumyn Rights (1/2)..........................................................................................................................................27 LinkEconomy (1/2)..................................................................................................................................................29 LinkRepresentations of Instability...........................................................................................................................31 LinkDemocracy (1/2) ..............................................................................................................................................32 LinkSecurity ............................................................................................................................................................34 LinkWar...................................................................................................................................................................35 LinkWar Rhetoric ....................................................................................................................................................36 LinkFree Market/Trade Liberalization ....................................................................................................................37 LinkTrade ................................................................................................................................................................38 LinkUN....................................................................................................................................................................39 LinkLanguage..........................................................................................................................................................40 LinkOverpopulation.................................................................................................................................................41 LinkFeminine Victims .............................................................................................................................................42 LinkProstitution/Sex Trafficking.............................................................................................................................43 LinkPublic/Private Partnerships ..............................................................................................................................44 LinkEnvironment.....................................................................................................................................................45 LinkEnvironmental Security....................................................................................................................................46 LinkEnvironment/Development ..............................................................................................................................47 LinkAnthro ..............................................................................................................................................................48 LinkPositivism.........................................................................................................................................................49 LinkSexual Rights ...................................................................................................................................................50 LinkGlobalization/Corporations ..............................................................................................................................51 LinkCorporations/Development/Econ .....................................................................................................................52 LinkConflation of Sex/Gender ................................................................................................................................53 LinkPomo/Non-feminist IR Ks................................................................................................................................54 LinkMilitarism.........................................................................................................................................................55 LinkGender ..........................................................................................................................................................56 LinkCapitalism ........................................................................................................................................................57 LinkRealism vs. Idealism.....................................................................................................................................58 **Impacts** ................................................................................................................................................................59 ImpactLaundry List .................................................................................................................................................60 ImpactWar/Domestic Violence................................................................................................................................61 ImpactExtinction .....................................................................................................................................................62 ImpactWar ...............................................................................................................................................................63 ImpactConflict .........................................................................................................................................................64 ImpactEnvironment .................................................................................................................................................65 ImpactPerpetuates Domination................................................................................................................................66 ImpactRape..............................................................................................................................................................67
2 Gender
ImpactCapitalism.....................................................................................................................................................68 ImpactNuke War......................................................................................................................................................69 ImpactColonialism...................................................................................................................................................70 Patriarchy ImpactLaundry List (Extinction)............................................................................................................71 Patriarchy ImpactDiscrimination.............................................................................................................................72 Patriarchy ImpactNuke War ....................................................................................................................................73 Patriarchy ImpactWar (1/2) .....................................................................................................................................74 Patriarchy ImpactHuman Rights..............................................................................................................................76 Patriarchy ImpactNationalism .................................................................................................................................77 Patriarchy ImpactEnvironment ................................................................................................................................78 Patriarchy ImpactArab/Israeli Conflict....................................................................................................................79 **Alternatives**..........................................................................................................................................................80 *Gendered Perspective ................................................................................................................................................81 Alt SolvencyGendered Perspective (1/7).................................................................................................................82 *Other Alts ..................................................................................................................................................................89 AltFeminist/Gendered Approach.............................................................................................................................90 AltCritique Masculine IR ........................................................................................................................................92 AltGender Focus......................................................................................................................................................94 AltRevealing Gender ...............................................................................................................................................96 AltReject Static Gender ...........................................................................................................................................97 AltGendered Approach............................................................................................................................................98 AltRecognizing Gender Differences........................................................................................................................99 AltReconceptualize Democracy ............................................................................................................................100 *Alt Solves Impacts...................................................................................................................................................101 Alt Solves Violence ...................................................................................................................................................102 Alt Solves Security ....................................................................................................................................................103 Alt Solves Poverty .....................................................................................................................................................104 Alt Solves Sustainable Development.........................................................................................................................105 Alt Solves Militarism.................................................................................................................................................106 Alt Solves Otherization .............................................................................................................................................107 Alt = More Accurate Reality .....................................................................................................................................108 **Answers To Aff Answers** ..................................................................................................................................109 *Perm.........................................................................................................................................................................110 AT: Perm (1/2) ..........................................................................................................................................................111 *Realism ....................................................................................................................................................................113 AT: Realism...............................................................................................................................................................114 Realism Patriarchy................................................................................................................................................120 Realism = Masculine .................................................................................................................................................121 Realism Nuke War................................................................................................................................................122 Realism War .........................................................................................................................................................123 **Other Stuff .............................................................................................................................................................124 AT: But We Incorporate Gender!...........................................................................................................................125 AT: Claims About Biological Sex .............................................................................................................................126 AT: We Include Womyn ...........................................................................................................................................127 AT: Essentialism .......................................................................................................................................................128 AT: Gender Neutrality...............................................................................................................................................131 AT: Womyn in Power................................................................................................................................................132 AT: Intersectionality..................................................................................................................................................133 AT: Pacifism..............................................................................................................................................................134 Africa Key .................................................................................................................................................................135 IR Key To Fem ..........................................................................................................................................................136 Gender Dichotomy Spills Over .................................................................................................................................137 Discourse Key ...........................................................................................................................................................138 Race/Class/Location Key to Gendered Perspective...................................................................................................139
Gender and International Relations K - Aff Answers

**Aff Answers**.......................................................................................................................................................140
3 Gender
Tickner IndictEssentialism ....................................................................................................................................141 No Link......................................................................................................................................................................142 No Alt Solvency (1/2)................................................................................................................................................143 Perm Solvency (1/3) ..................................................................................................................................................145 Perm SolvencyState...............................................................................................................................................148 K Links to Itself.........................................................................................................................................................149 No Gender Bias In IR ................................................................................................................................................150 AT: Speaking for Others............................................................................................................................................151
Western Feminism K
*****Western Feminism K***** .............................................................................................................................154 K of Western Fem 1NC (1/5) ....................................................................................................................................155 K of Western Fem 1NC (2/5) ....................................................................................................................................156 K of Western Fem 1NC (3/5) ....................................................................................................................................157 K of Western Fem 1NC (4/5) ....................................................................................................................................158 K of Western Fem 1NC (5/5) ....................................................................................................................................159 **Links ......................................................................................................................................................................160 Link African Identity ..............................................................................................................................................161 Link Capitalism/Development................................................................................................................................162 Link Development/Empowerment..........................................................................................................................163 Link - Dichotomies....................................................................................................................................................164 Link - Discourse on Africa ........................................................................................................................................167 Link Essentialism of African Womyn ....................................................................................................................168 Link Feminist .......................................................................................................................................................170 Link - FGM................................................................................................................................................................171 Link Gender .........................................................................................................................................................172 Link Humyn Rights ................................................................................................................................................175 Link - Intersectionality ..............................................................................................................................................176 Link - Omission of African Women ..........................................................................................................................177 Link Patriarchy.....................................................................................................................................................178 Link Population Control .........................................................................................................................................179 Link - Reproduction...................................................................................................................................................180 Link Reproduction/Family......................................................................................................................................181 Link Social Categories............................................................................................................................................183 Link Third World.................................................................................................................................................184 Link - Western Feminism ..........................................................................................................................................187 **Case Turns .............................................................................................................................................................189 Case Turn - Biodeterminism......................................................................................................................................190 Case Turn Gender Hierarchies................................................................................................................................191 Case Turn Gender Inequality..................................................................................................................................192 Case Turn Gender Dichotomies..............................................................................................................................194 Case Turn - Imperialism ............................................................................................................................................195 Case Turn Loss of Rights .......................................................................................................................................196 Case Turn - Otherization ...........................................................................................................................................197 Case Turn Kills Movements ...................................................................................................................................198 Case Turn Gender Binaries.....................................................................................................................................199 Case Turn Male Dominance ...................................................................................................................................200 Case Turn Colonialism ...........................................................................................................................................201 Case Turn Re-Entrench Patriarchy .........................................................................................................................202 Case Defense .............................................................................................................................................................203 **Internal Links.........................................................................................................................................................204 WF Patriarchy.......................................................................................................................................................205 WF Dehumanization.............................................................................................................................................206 WF Colonialism....................................................................................................................................................207 WF Orientalism ....................................................................................................................................................208 WF Imperialism ....................................................................................................................................................209 WF Impose Dichotomies ......................................................................................................................................210 WF Dualism..........................................................................................................................................................211
4 Gender
WF Eurocentrism..................................................................................................................................................212 WF Body Becomes Sexual ...................................................................................................................................213 WF Body Focus ....................................................................................................................................................214 WF Biological Binaries ........................................................................................................................................215 WF Gender Binaries/Biological Focus .................................................................................................................216 WF Biological Determinism.................................................................................................................................217 WF Homogenizes Gender.....................................................................................................................................218 **Impacts ..................................................................................................................................................................219 WF Categorization + Hierarchies .........................................................................................................................220 Impact - Body Focus..................................................................................................................................................221 Impact - Orientalism..................................................................................................................................................223 Impact - Colonialism .................................................................................................................................................224 Impact - Western Imperialism ...................................................................................................................................225 Impact - Whitewashes Culture / Universalize Gender...............................................................................................226 Impact Essentialism/Gender Hierarchies................................................................................................................227 Impact - Patriarchy ....................................................................................................................................................228 Impact - Patriarchy / Distancing Other ......................................................................................................................229 Impact - Hurts Self-representation.............................................................................................................................230 Impact Hate Crimes ................................................................................................................................................231 **Alternatives............................................................................................................................................................232 Alt Re-examine African Hierarchies ......................................................................................................................233 Alt African Womanism .......................................................................................................................................234 Alt - Motherhood .......................................................................................................................................................237 Alt - Rethinking .........................................................................................................................................................238 Alt Solvency Discourse Maps Culture....................................................................................................................239 Alt - Representing history..........................................................................................................................................240 Alt - Indigenous Fem.................................................................................................................................................241 Alt solves Questioning Imperialist Discourse.........................................................................................................246 Alt - Reconceptualization ..........................................................................................................................................247 Alt - Intersectionality.................................................................................................................................................248 Alt solves Incorporate Marginalized.......................................................................................................................249 Alt Solves - Black Feminism.....................................................................................................................................250 Alt solvency Recognize Difference ........................................................................................................................251 **Answers to Answers ..............................................................................................................................................252 At: Disappearance of Womyn Identity ......................................................................................................................253 At: Essentialism of African Countries .......................................................................................................................254 At: Good Intentions ...................................................................................................................................................255 At: They Want Representation ..................................................................................................................................256 At: Perm.....................................................................................................................................................................257 Epistemology First.....................................................................................................................................................259 Movements Dont Solve............................................................................................................................................260
Western Feminism K - Aff Answers

**Answers .................................................................................................................................................................261 At: Gender is Constructed .........................................................................................................................................262 Alt Links to K............................................................................................................................................................263 Western Fem Solves Public Participation..................................................................................................................264 Coalitions Key ...........................................................................................................................................................265 Turn: K of W.Fem Increased Exclusion ...............................................................................................................266 Women are represented now (in Africa)....................................................................................................................267 Women Have Status in NGOs ...................................................................................................................................268 Political activism key to solve ...................................................................................................................................269 Media Attention turns the K ......................................................................................................................................270 At: Feminist Solidarity Good.....................................................................................................................................271 Political action not key ..............................................................................................................................................272 Grassroots mobilization key to solve.........................................................................................................................273 Western and Indigenous Fem Differ..........................................................................................................................274 Alt Causality..............................................................................................................................................................276
5 Gender
Differences Key.........................................................................................................................................................280 Women Key to Development ....................................................................................................................................281 African Women Key..................................................................................................................................................282 **Alternative Doesnt Solve......................................................................................................................................283 Plan key / Alt doesnt solve .......................................................................................................................................284 Alt Doesnt Solve - Indigenous Fem .........................................................................................................................285 Alt Doesnt Solve African Womanism ...............................................................................................................286 Alt Doesnt solve Analysis of Colonial Discourse .................................................................................................287 Alt Doesnt Solve - Motherhood Alt. ........................................................................................................................288 **Perm Solvency.......................................................................................................................................................289 Perm solvency ...........................................................................................................................................................290 State Key ...................................................................................................................................................................298
Butler K
***Butler**** ...........................................................................................................................................................299 1NC (1/5)...................................................................................................................................................................300 1NC (2/5)...................................................................................................................................................................301 1NC (3/5)...................................................................................................................................................................302 1NC (4/5)...................................................................................................................................................................303 1NC (5/5)...................................................................................................................................................................304 Link: Discourse Reinforce Gender Binary .............................................................................................................305 Link: Discourse Reinforce Gender Binary .............................................................................................................306 Link: Discourse Language of The Body .............................................................................................................307 Link: Discourse Gender is Constructed ..................................................................................................................308 Link: Discourse Non-Western ................................................................................................................................309 Link: Gender Socially Constructed.........................................................................................................................310 Link: Homosexuality .................................................................................................................................................311 Link: Gender Root of Racial, Ethnic, National ID .................................................................................................312 Link: Gender Root of National Hegemony.............................................................................................................313 Link: Ethnic and National Identity ............................................................................................................................314 Implications: Gender Binaries Reinforce Masculine ..............................................................................................315 Implications: Difference Precludes Democracy ........................................................................................................316 Alternative Genealogy............................................................................................................................................317 Critique of Feminism Identity Precedes Feminism.................................................................................................318 Critique of Feminism Internal Contradictions ........................................................................................................319 Critique of Feminism Fem Domination.............................................................................................................320
Butler K - Aff Answers

Affirmative Answers: ................................................................................................................................................321
6 Gender
**Gender IR - 1NC Shell**
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 1NC Shell

A. Links
7 Gender
1. IR constructs hegemonic masculinity. The subtexts of the theories exclude all other ideas. Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics, p219-20 ASKING the question What role does international relations play in the shaping, defining, or legitimating of masculinity or masculinities? entails making a shift from the standard practice of taking identities (whether gender or otherwise) as givenswhich might then inform international relations, toward a more sophisticated, constructionist view that sees cross-cutting influences in both directions. The simple answer to the question is that international relations has played an important part in not only reflecting and legitimating specific masculinities, but also in constructing and defining them. In particular, this book has argued that the discipline of IR is heavily implicated in the construction and promotion of AngloAmerican models of hegemonic masculinityand that this role continues in connection with globalization. Particular models of masculinity are hidden in the methods; they inhabit the theories as shadowy subtexts to the stated subject matter, and rivalries between different masculinities inform paradigmatic and methodological debatesall in a glamorous international arena that is symbolically separated off from the rest of society as an all-male sphere. Like other feminist approaches, this perspective has refused to accept international/domestic and public/private boundaries to politics as relevant. In this case, it is because they obscure the relationships between the international and the private, and render the question of gendered constructions of identity outside the remit of international relations. Such boundaries both construct international relations as a masculine space and then hide the crucial role that its theory and practices play in the construction of specifically masculine identities.
2. Development aid marginalizes and excludes women, fostering even more inequality. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/)
While feminist economists are just beginning to explore the differential effects of the operation of the market economy on men and women, one area where these effects have been examined in some detail is in studies of Third World women and development. 12 Liberal modernization theory, a body of literature that grew out of assumptions that free markets and private investment could best promote economic growth in the Third World, saw women's relative "backwardness" as the irrational persistence of traditional attitudes. For example, the United Nations' Decade for the Advancement of Women (1975-85) assumed that women's problems in the Third World were related to insufficient participation in the process of modernization and development. In 1970, however, Esther Boserup, the first of many women scholars to challenge this assumption, claimed that in many parts of the colonial and postcolonial world, the position of rural women actually declined when they became assimilated into the global market economy. 13 Women's marginalization was exacerbated by the spread of Western capitalism and culture. In the preindependence period, Western colonizers rarely had any sympathy for the methods women used to cultivate crops; assuming that men would be more efficient as agricultural producers, they attempted to replace women's cultivation practices with those of men. Boserup and others claim that development aid in the postcolonial period has actually reduced the status of women relative to men. After World War II, Western development experts taught new techniques for the improvement of agriculture to men who were able to generate income from cash crops. When land enters the market, land tenure often passes into the hands of men. Hence women's access to land and technology actually often decreases as land reform is instituted and agriculture is modernized. Land reform, traditionally thought to be a vital prerequisite for raising agricultural productivity, frequently reduces women's control over traditional use rights and gives titles to male heads of households. During the early years of development assistance, the concept of male head of household was incorporated into foreign assistance programs; according to the traditional Western sexual division of labor, imposed on societies with quite different social norms, women were seen as child rearers and homemakers, thus further marginalizing their productive activities.

B. Impacts
8 Gender
1. The lenses through which we see the world filter our perceptions - by looking through an unfiltered lens of international relations the harms become an inevitable self-fulfilling prophecy V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 1-3
Whenever we study a topic, we do so through a lens that necessarily focuses our attention in particular ways. By filtering or "ordering" what we look at, each lens enables us to see some things in greater detail or more accurately or in better relation to certain other things. But this is unavoidably at the expense of seeing other things that are rendered out of focus-filtered out--by each particular lens. According to Paul Viotti and Mark Kauppi, various theoretical perspectives, or "images," of international politics contain certain assumptions and lead us "to ask certain questions, seek certain types of answers, and use certain methodological tools." 1 For example, different images act as lenses and shape our assumptions about who the significant actors are (individuals? states? multinational corporations?), what their attributes are (rationality? self-interest? power?), how social processes are categorized (politics? cooperation? dependence?), and what outcomes are desirable (peace? national security? global equity?). The images or lenses we use have important consequences because they structure what we look for and are able to "see." In Patrick Morgan's words, "Our conception of [IR acts as a] map for directing our attention and distributing our efforts, and
using the wrong map can lead us into a swamp instead of taking us to higher ground." 2 What we look for depends a great deal on how we make sense of, or "order," our experience. We learn our ordering systems in a variety of contexts. From infancy on, we are taught to make distinctions enabling us to perform appropriately within a particular culture. As college students, we are taught the distinctions appropriate to particular disciplines (psychology, anthropology, political science) and particular schools of thought within them (realism, behavioralism, liberalism, structuralism). No matter in which context we learned them, the categories and
ordering frameworks shape the lenses through which we look at, think about, and make sense of the world around us. At the same time, the lenses we adopt shape our experience of the world itself because they shape what we do and how and why we do it. For example, a political science lens focuses our attention on particular categories and events (the meaning of power, democracy, or elections) in ways that variously influence our behavior (questioning authority, protesting abuse of power, or participating in electoral campaigns). By filtering our ways of thinking about and ordering experience, the categories and images we rely on shape how we behave and thus the world we live in: They have concrete consequences. We observe this readily in the case of self-fulfilling prophecies: If we expect hostility, our own behavior (acting superior, displaying power) may elicit responses (defensive posturing, aggression) that we then interpret as "confirming" our expectations. It is in this sense that we refer to lenses and "realities" as interactive, interdependent, or mutually constituted. Lenses shape who we are, what we think, and what actions we take, thus shaping the world we live in. At the same time, the world we live in ("reality") shapes which lenses are available to us, what we see through them, and the likelihood of our using them in particular contexts. In general, as long as our lenses and images seem to "work," we keep them and build on them. Lenses simplify our thinking. Like maps, they "frame" our choices and exploration, enabling us to take advantage of knowledge already gained and to move more effectively toward our objectives. The more useful they appear to be, the more we are inclined to take them for granted and to resist making major changes in them. We forget that our particular ordering or meaning system is a choice among many alternatives. Instead, we tend to believe we are seeing "reality" as it "is" rather than as our culture or discipline or image interprets or "maps" reality. It is difficult and sometimes
uncomfortable to reflect critically on our assumptions, to question their accuracy or desirability, and to explore the implications of shifting our vantage point by adopting a different lens. Of course, the world we live in and therefore our experiences are constantly changing; we have to continuously modify our images, mental maps, and ordering systems as well. The required shift in lens may be minor: from liking one type of music to liking another, from being a high school student in a small town to being a college student in an urban environment. Or the shift may be more pronounced: from casual dating to parenting, from the freedom of student lifestyles to the assumption of full-time job responsibilities, from Newtonian to quantum physics, from East-West rivalry to post-Cold War complexities. Societal shifts are dramatic, as we experience and respond to systemic transformations such as economic restructuring, environmental degradation, or the effects of war. To function effectively as students and scholars of world politics, we must modify our thinking in line with historical developments. That is, as "reality" changes, our ways of understanding or ordering need to
change as well. This is especially the case to the extent that outdated worldviews or lenses place us in danger, distort our understanding, or lead us away from our objectives. Indeed, as both early explorers and urban drivers know, outdated maps are inadequate, and potentially disastrous, guides.
9 Gender
2. Unequal gender relations in the IR system perpetuate poverty, violence, ethnic conflict, and environmental destruction. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
In previous chapters I have argued that traditional notions of national security are becoming dysfunctional. The heavy emphasis on militarily defined security, common to the foreign policy practices of contemporary states and to the historical traditions from which these practices draw their inspiration, does not ensure, and sometimes may even decrease, the security of individuals, as well as that of their natural environments. Many forms of insecurity in the contemporary world affect the lives of individuals, including ethnic conflict, poverty, family violence, and environmental degradation; all these types of insecurity can be linked to the international system, yet their elimination has not been part of the way in which states have traditionally defined their national security goals. Previous chapters have also called attention to the extent to which these various forms of military, economic, and ecological insecurity are connected with unequal gender relations. The relationship between protectors and protected depends on gender inequalities; a militarized version of security privileges masculine characteristics and elevates men to the status of first-class citizens by virtue of their role as providers of security. An analysis of economic insecurities suggests similar patterns of gender inequality in the world economy, patterns that result in a larger share of the world's wealth and the benefits of economic development accruing to men. The traditional association of women with nature, which places both in a subordinate position to men, reflects and provides support for the instrumental and exploitative attitude toward nature characteristic of the modern era, an attitude that contributes to current ecological insecurities. This analysis has also suggested that attempts to alleviate these military, economic, and ecological insecurities cannot be completely successful until the hierarchical social relations, including gender relations, intrinsic to each of these domains are recognized and substantially altered. In other words, the achievement of peace, economic justice, and ecological sustainability is inseparable from overcoming social relations of domination and subordination; genuine security requires not only the absence of war but also the elimination of unjust social relations, including unequal gender relations. 1

C. Alternative
10 Gender
Our alternative is to incorporate a gender conscious lens to international relations this challenges traditional international relations and creates a focus on individual security V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 50-51
Politics itself has to be redefined in view of the wide range of political activities in which women and men are involved. Neither can politics be defined narrowly as an activity of governmental officials and elite influence-peddlers, nor can popular participation be reduced to voting and membership in political parties. Instead, politics is about differential access to resources--both material and symbolic--and how such power relations and structures are created, sustained, and reconfigured. According to this broader definition, politics operates at all levels, ranging from the individual and her identifications, to family and community, and to the state, transnational agencies, and global dynamics. All people act politically in their everyday lives. When feminists claim that the "personal is political," they mean that all of us are embedded in various kinds of power relationships and structures that affect our choices and aspirations on a daily basis (see Box 2.2 ). Most important, changes among individuals and communities both affect, and are affected by, inter- and transnational processes. In Cynthia Enloe's words, "the personal is international" and "the international is personal." 26 Recognition of gender inequality as a global phenomenon with global--and local--implications challenges traditional definitions of IR. Sarah Brown argues that "the proper object and purpose of the study of international relations is the identification and explanation of social stratification and of inequality as structured at the level of global relations." 27 Compared to a standard definition, Brown's draws greater attention to political, economic, and social forces below and above the level of the state, thereby revealing the greater complexity of global politics, which cannot be reduced to the actions of state leaders and their international organizations. It also highlights inequality as a significant source of conflict in international relations in addition to, but also in tension with, notions about the inevitable clash of states with differing ideologies and interests. Finally, it speaks to global patterns of inequality operating across states, creating divisions among people along not just national lines but also gender, race, class, and culture lines. The corollary of this is that people are finding common cause with each other across national boundaries and, thus, creating a different kind of international relations, or world politics, from that of elite policy-makers. Whereas world leaders and those who study them concentrate on sustaining the balance of power among the most powerful--in the interests of stability--nonelites around the world and those who study them focus on the imbalances of power that are created in the name of stability and that compromise the security of the majority of the world's people. People around the world struggling against the tyrannies of sexism, racism, classism, militarism, and/or imperialism seek justice, which requires upsetting the status quo. An IR lens focused exclusively on elite interstate actors and narrow definitions of security keeps us from seeing many other important realities.
11 Gender
**Links**
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkIR Ignores Gender

International relations is male-orientedit excludes and ignores women. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey, 2001, p.94-95)
12 Gender
Turning the tables, standpoint feminist explorations of cooperation in international relations would start by describing the ubiquitous presence of professional men and norms of masculinity in the world we study and among the studiers (Tickner, 1992). Male dominance ensures that many aspects of the theorized system are controlled, ordered, and ruled within the discourse of anarchic relations. The invisibility of women in international relations or one could say the evacuation of women from a global human habitat is one such manifestation of control. Gender power in IR is fixedly unipolar; it is also untheorized as such. One might say that there exists in IR circles a generalized principle of masculine standpoint that exemplifies diffuse reciprocity among ingroup members of the field; and that standpoint tends to exclude realms of women from true international relations. Put differently, relational autonomy from feminism and women reigns among insider colleagues of IR, protected by a barrier of reactive autonomy towards outsiders.
IR as a whole is masculinised even postpositivists promote hegemonic masculinity Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics, New York. p226 The arguments put forward here suggest that the masculinism of IR is even deeper and more entrenched than feminist commentators have so far revealed: the discipline has constructed an all-male space for the production of masculinities, and it is involved in embodying and promoting particular constructions of Anglo-American hegemonic masculinity, which have wider cultural relevance and influence. Even some postpositivist critics continue in the tradition of masculine rivalries and promoting new forms of hegemonic masculinity.
International relations as a discipline is gendered. Success is determined only by masculine virtues. Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics p 1] ONE of the achievements of feminist contributions to international relations has been to reveal the extent to which the whole field is gendered. 1 The range of subjects studied, the boundaries of the discipline, its central concerns and motifs, the content of empirical research, the assumptions of theoretical models, and the corresponding lack of female practitioners both in academic and elite political and economic circles all combine and reinforce each other to marginalize and often make invisible women's roles and women's concerns in the international arena (Enloe 1990; Grant and Newland 1991; Tickner 1992; Peterson and Runyan
1993, 1998; Sylvester 1994; Pettman 1996). The world of international relations appears to be truly a man's world, both through the predominance of men in practice and through the masculinist underpinnings (Tickner 1992, xi) of the discipline, whereby success
is
measured in terms of the masculine virtues of power, autonomy, and self-reliance.
IR is masculinised. Masculine views are represented and feminine conceptions are ignored Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics, p13] By default, then, if international relations are deemed to be about the very public world of high office at state, interstate, and multinational business level, they have reflected the interests and activities of men. In addition, as mentioned above, much of IR theory is itself infused with gender bias, in that it reflects and celebrates interests and values that are associated with masculinity. The principles of realism are drawn from classical and renaissance theories that similarly ignore or downgrade both women and femininity in favor of masculine qualities (Grant 1991; Tickner 1992). The twentieth-century search for a science of IR has exacerbated this historic bias toward masculinity. For example, Morgenthau privileged masculine conceptions of objectivity, rational interests, power as control, and the separation of instrumental political goals from morality over more feminine conceptions such as interdependence and power as mutual enablement (Tickner 1991). The same goals of scientific objectivity, emotional distance, and
instrumentality have infused postwar international-relations practices, especially in the United States, where academics and political appointees tend to have close links.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkState
13 Gender
The structuring of the masculine states sovereignty legitimized by the control of autonomy in decision-making excludes womyns voices and focusing on this flawed map makes lifethreatening conflicts inevitable Peterson and Runyan, professor of political science at the University of Arizona and professor of womens studies at Wright State University, 1999 (V. Spike and Anne, Global Gender Issues, 2
edition, p. 54-55) In IR, the concept of political actor--the legitimate wielder of societys power--is derived from classical political theory. Common to constructions of political man--from Plato and Aristotle to Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau--is the privileging of mans capacity for reason. This unique ability distinguishes man from other animals and explains his pursuit of freedom-from nature as well as from tyranny. Feminists argue that the models of human nature underpinning constructions of political man are not in fact gender neutral but are models of male nature, generated by exclusively male experience. They are not universal claims about humankind but masculinist claims about gendered divisions of labor and identity that effectively and sometimes explicitly exclude women from definitions of human, moral agent, rational actor, and political man. Conceptually, woman is excluded primarily by denying her the-rationality that marks man as the highest animal. Concretely, women have historically been excluded from political power by states limiting of citizenship to those who perform military duty and/ or are property owners. Under these conditions, most women are structurally excluded from formal politics, even though individual women, in exceptional circumstances, have wielded considerable political power. In this century, women have largely won the battle for the vote, though definitions of citizenship continue to limit womens access to public power, and their political power is circumscribed by a variety of indirect means (discussed elsewhere in this text). Most obvious are the continued effects of the dichotomy of public-private that separates mens productive and political activities from womens reproductive and personal activities. These constructions--of power, political man, citizenship, public- private, and so on--reproduce, often unconsciously, masculinist and androcentric assumptions. For example, sovereign man and sovereign states are defined not by connection or relationships but by autonomy in decision-making and freedom from the power of others. And security is understood not in terms of celebrating and sustaining life but as the capacity to be indifferent to others and, if necessary, to harm them. Hobbess androcentrism is revealed simply when we ask how helpless infants ever become adults if human nature is universally competitive and hostile. From the perspective of child-rearing practices-necessary for life everywhere--it makes more sense to argue that humans are naturally cooperative: Without the cooperation that is required to nurture children, there would be no men or women. And although Aristotle acknowledged that the public sphere depends upon the production of lifes necessities in the private sphere, he denied the power relations or politics that this implies. Gender is most apparent in these constructions when we examine the dichotomies they (re)produce: political-apolitical, reason-emotion, public-private, leaders-followers, activepassive, freedom-necessity. As with other dichotomies, difference and opposition are privileged and context and ambiguity are ignored. The web of meaning and human interaction within which political man acts and politics takes place remains hidden, as if irrelevant. The point is not that power-over, aggressive behavior, and life-threatening conflicts are not real but that they are only a part of a more complicated story. Focusing on them misrepresents our reality even as it (to some extent unnecessarily) reproduces power over, aggressive behavior, and life-threatening conflicts.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkState (Africa Specific)
14 Gender
Focus on the state as the center of politics in Africa justifies violence in the name of maintaining state legitimacy Fatton, Jr. Professor of Government and Foreign Policy at the University of Virginia Gender, Class, and State in Africa Women and the State in Africa, 1989 ed. Jane L. Parpart p. 59 60
Such a situation of political insecurity has transformed the one-party state into a system that breeds disorder rather than order. This in turn has generated a process of escalating repression as those ruling the state have sought to maintain and preserve their absolute monopoly of power. Political instability in Africa is therefore rooted more in the extreme politicization of the state as an organ to be monopolized for absolute power and accelerated economic advancement than in the softness of the state as Hyden would have it. To characterize the state as soft is to miss the class relationships and class struggles that provide the social context that molds and shapes the state itself. Thus, if the state in Africa is relatively weak in terms of its capacity to impose its authority on all sectors of society, it is nonetheless powerful enough to unleash its violence against particular groups and classes.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkWomen = Peace
15 Gender
Associating women with peace and men with war devalues women and reinforces the gender hierarchy. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
In a context of a male-dominated society, the association of men with war and women with peace also reinforces gender hierarchies and false dichotomies that contribute to the devaluation of both women and peace. The association of women and peace with idealism in IR, which I have argued is a deeply gendered concept, has rendered it less legitimate in the discourse of international relations. Although peace movements that have relied on maternal images may have had some success, they do nothing to change existing gender relations; this allows men to remain in control and continue to dominate the agenda of world politics, and it continues to render womens voices as inauthentic in matters of foreign policymaking.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkForeign Aid/Disease
16 Gender
Foreign aid for disease control creates a political fixation on boundedness that reinforces the idea of masculinity as superior Mona Harrington, Program Director of the MIT Workplace Center, What Exactly Is Wrong with the Liberal State as an Agent of Change? Gendered States ed. V. Spike Peterson, 1992 p. 71
The window is one of many images of holes in this tradition. We often hear about US strength draining away out of various holes. Foreign aid, for example, is money poured down a rathole. And the politics of isolation has focused obsessively on danger entering the nation through various holes dangerous ideas entering with foreign intellectuals, dangerous spies penetrating secret spaces, Central American communist armies marching through Mexico into Brownsville, Texas, illegal aliens filing through unguarded borders, foreign disease (AIDS from Africa) infecting America, and so on. The connection between these fears for the autonomous body politic and the penetrable female body seems clear enough, as does the connection between strong, tough borders and masculinity. The point is that a political fixation on boundedness does seem related to anxiety about masculinity, but, at least in US history and politics, it relates also to a material condition of insecurity. In this age, the strongly bounded nation-state is the political form preferred by the relatively powerless, not the powerful. And since it is the powerful who shape the behavior and uses of the state, we cannot conclude that the state must necessarily reflect the masculinist political pathologies feminists have identifiedexaggerated suspicion, distance, hostility, relentless competition, propensity to violence.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkForeign Policy (1/2)
17 Gender
Foreign policy-making ignores and marginalizes women because it focuses entirely on men and masculinity. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
While the purpose of this book is to introduce gender as a category of analysis into the discipline of international relations, the marginalization of women in the arena of foreign policy-making through the kind of gender stereotyping that I have described suggests that international politics has always been a gendered activity in the modern state system. Since foreign and military policy-making has been largely conducted by men, the discipline that analyzes these activities is bound to be primarily about men and masculinity. We seldom realize we think in these terms, however; in most fields of knowledge we have become accustomed to equating what is human with what is masculine. Nowhere is this more true than in international relations, a discipline that, while it has for the most part resisted the introduction of gender into its discourse, bases its assumptions and explanations almost entirely on the activities and experiences of men. Any attempt to introduce a more explicitly gendered analysis into the field must therefore begin with a discussion of masculinity.
Women have no voice in foreign policyit is associated with the hegemonic masculine. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
While critical-security studies has emphasized the importance of identity for understanding state behavior, feminist theorizing is distinctive insofar as it reveals how these identities often depend on the manipulations of gender. An examination of the historical development of state sovereignty and state identities as they have evolved over time does indeed suggest deeply gendered constructions that have not included women on the same terms as men. Early states in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe were identified with the person of the sovereign king. Hobbess depiction of the Leviathan, a man in armor wearing a crown and carrying a sword, serves as a visual representation of this early-modern form of sovereign authority. With the advent of republican forms of government in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the identity of the people remained limited; women were incorporated slowly into the political process and it is still questionable whether they have achieved a legitimate voice in the construction of foreign policy.60 We must conclude, therefore, that the historical construction of the state, upon which the unitary-actor model in international theory is based, represents a gendered, masculine model. In the West, the image of a foreign policymaker has been strongly associated with elite, white males and representations of hegemonic masculinity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkForeign Policy (2/2)
18 Gender
US foreign policy is empirically masculinecold war proves. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
From the time of their foundation, states have sought to control the right to define political identity. Since their legitimacy has constantly been threatened by the undermining power of subnational and transnational loyalties, states survival and success have depended on the creation and maintenance of legitimating national identities; often these identities have depended on the manipulation of gendered representations that are constructed and reconstructed over time. While there is a close coincidence between states and types of hegemonic masculinity, nationalist identities are more ambiguously gendered. Drawing on metaphors that evoke matrimonial and familial relations, the nation has been portrayed as both male and female. The ideology of the family has been an important metaphor on which states rely for reinforcing their legitimacy; it also provides a powerful symbol for individuals need for community. Images of motherlands, fatherlands, and homelands evoke a shared sense of transcendental purpose and community for states and their citizens alike. Nevertheless, the sense of community implicit in these family metaphors is deeply gendered in ways that not only legitimate foreign-policy practices but also reinforce inequalities between men and women. For example, during the postWorldWar II era in the United States, these gendered images evolved over time and adapted to new understandings of gender relations; however, they continually served as legitimators of U.S. foreign policy. In her examination of the culture of the early Cold War, Elaine Tyler May claims that the postWorld War II reinstantiation of traditional gender roles served to uphold U.S. containment policy.61 The containment doctrine was articulated through the U.S. white, middle-class family consisting of a male breadwinner and a female housewife. Female domesticity was lauded as serving the nation as women were encouraged to stay at home and stock pantries and fall-out shelters in the event of nuclear war. The U.S. family was portrayed as a safe, protected space in a dangerous nuclear world; consumerism highlighted U.S. superiority over the Soviet Union. In contrast to this feminized domesticity, real men stood up against the Communists. The witchhunts of the McCarthy era frequently associated U.S. Communism with homosexuality and other types of behavior that did not conform with middle-class respectability.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkDevelopment (1/2)
19 Gender
Attempts to encourage development towards the global economy in Africa ignore womyns contribution to the agricultural work force and serves as a cause to the widespread hunger problems as well as the marginalization of womyn Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 145-146
When the household is taken to be the basic unit, another kind of bias is introduced. Around the world, approximately one-third of all families are supported by women. As was stated earlier, in many cases assumptions about gender relations and the model of the male bread-winner role have served to deprive women of access to land and resources. The idea that women are dependants can serve to deny women access to pension rights or employment. It might also encourage the view that women should be recipients of welfare rather than incorporated into policy-making. Throughout the developing world, but particularly in Africa, women are heavily concentrated in subsistence agriculture. Here, the degree to which women are dented access to land has been highlighted as a significant barrier to womens full participation in economic reconstruction.57 Even though women are often the main farmers, they are still frequently ignored when development schemes are designed and implemented. It is simply assumed that men, and not women, are farmers. Furthermore, because the value of womens work is overlooked, the introduction of new technologies may not significantly benefit women. The Western assumption of a harmonious family unit also disguises the fact that conflicts of interest can exist within the family group. This may in itself result in women being displaced from their land and so deprive many communities of their source of food. Men may have very different interests in cash-crop production, for example, and so be willing to sell the rights to forest land to timber merchants. This can deprive women of not only the means to grow food but also the means to provide for their energy requirements.58 It has been claimed that a major cause of the current crisis in food self-sufficiency which affects many Third World states is a consequence of the neglect of the needs and interests of the majority of women farmers. It is often the case that progressive farmers are selected for schemes and real farmers are disadvantaged. Since subsistence farmers are often also small traders who produce a surplus for sale, when they are forced out of production the local community loses a vital source of food supply which had previously helped to meet seasonal and regional shortfalls.59 In Africa, poor economic performance and high population growth rates have left the majority of the population in a marginal position with respect to mainstream development processes. In the name of development, African states have been encouraged to move to the production of cash crops. This has particular implications for rural women who constitute the major part of the labour force in African peasant agricultural production. In part, then, the reluctance of women farmers to invest can be explained by cultural practices. However, it is clear that the widespread hunger which exists in many parts of Africa is not simply a consequence of the failure of crops, or cultural practices, but connected to the global power structures and global economic processes.
Development attempts fail to recognize the differences between cultures and incorporate a genuine focus on gender equality Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 144-145
It has been argued that development agencies are still largely dominated by white, middle-class men who base their policies on assumptions about households, families and gender relations drawn from Western experience. As such, development strategies frequently reflect ignorance about the role of women in many societies and are not sensitive to how prevailing gender relations both influence and are influenced by the impact of development strategies. For example, as was stated earlier, in recent years the notion of trickle down has once again become popular in the discourse of development. However, in nearly all states, it is women as a group who are at the very bottom of society in terms of wealth, income and access to resources. Women as a group are, therefore, at the bottom in the so-called trickle-down process. In the past, trickle-down strategies have benefited only those at the top of the social ladder.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkDevelopment (2/2)
20 Gender
Development programs spread the gendered dichotomy of the West to the rest of the world. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Nevertheless, it is also true that Western forms of patriarchy spread to much of the rest of the world through imperialism, where civilized behavior was often equated with the behavior of Western men and women, particularly behavior based on appropriate gender roles. Often, native inhabitants of colonies were described in gendered and racialized termsas childlike, emotional, and dependent, vestiges of which still appear in todays political and academic discourse about the South; liberal modernization programs of the 1950s and 1960s held up an ideal of what it meant to be modern that conformed with an idealized Western masculinity. Modernity was portrayed in opposition to a feminized and traditional household; it required the emergence of rational and industrial man, an individual receptive to new ideas and to beliefs that rewards should be distributed on the basis of universalistic rules.82 Even when devising schemes for the betterment of womens lives, development programs have often drawn on Western assumptions about the gendered division of labor. Although, as Gordon suggests, African women do not identify with the Western public/private dichotomy, development planning is permeated with sexist assumptions, including the notion, often untrue, that households are nuclear, having a male breadwinner and a woman who is primarily a housewife.83 A flourishing and diverse literature on women and development supports these claims that Western attitudes about women are being transmitted to the South. This scholarship has much to say about the effects of contemporary economic globalization and earlier modernization programs on the lives of women. While generally ignored by IR and IPE, it is a literature from which much feminist IPE has drawn, and its evolution provides an
The idea of development treats the Third World woman as ignorant and victimized, assuming that Western standards are the benchmark to which they must be held.
Arturo Escobar, assoc prof of anthropology at University of Mass, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, 1995, p.7 The West had come to live as though the world were divided in this way into two: into a realm of mere representations and a realm of the real; into exhibitions and an external reality; into an order of mere models, descriptions or copies, and an order of the original (32). This regime of order and truth is a quintessential aspect of modernity and has been deepened by economics and development. It is reflected in an objectivist and empiricist stand that dictates that the Third World and its peoples exist out there, to be known through theories and intervened upon from the outside. The consequences of this feature of modernity have been enormous. Chandra Mohanty, for example, refers to the same feature when raising the questions of who produces knowledge about Third World women and from what spaces: she discovered that women in the Third World are represented in most feminist literature on development as having needs and problems but few choices and no freedom to act. What emerges from such modes of analysis is the image of an average Third World woman, constructed through the use of statistics and certain categories: This average third world woman leads an essentially truncated life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and her being third world (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domestic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I suggest, is in contrast to the (implicit) self-representation of Western women as educated, as modern, as having control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make their own decisions. (1991b, 56) These representations implicitly assume Western standards as the benchmark against which to measure the situation of Third World women. The result, Mohanty believes, is a paternalistic attitude on the part of Western women toward their Third World counterparts and, more generally, the perpetuation of the hegemonic idea of the Wests superiority. Within this discursive regime, works about Third World women develop a certain coherence of effects that reinforces that hegemony. It is in this process of discursive homogenization and systematization of the oppression of women in the third world, Mohanty concludes, that power is exercised in much of recent Western feminist discourse, and this power needs to be defined and named (54).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkDevelopment/Education
21 Gender
Development and education do not serve to promote womyns rights and the position of the feminine but rather work to reinforce the capitalist notions of inequality based on inclusion in the public sphere of economics and politics V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 103-104
Similarly, it is often assumed that levels of literacy, education, and paid employment are positively correlated with acceptance and promotion of women as equals and with equal rights to political participation. But this easy (liberal) generalization obscures the different ways that religion, colonial history, electoral systems, alliances, militarism, and so forth, interact to generate historically particular gender relations that may or may not enhance women's identification with politics. Particularly significant are the ways in which cultural belief systems and conservative forces--sometimes based on religion but increasingly on nationalism/ethnicity--shape gender stereotypes and determine "appropriate" gender activities. This is most obvious when cultural beliefs prevent women from assuming roles outside of the family/household sphere: Where women are defined primarily as mothers and wives, and social ideologies define their "place" as the private sphere (whether or not women are agents outside of that sphere), opportunities for women's "political" action are severely limited. All religious fundamentalisms-Jewish, evangelical Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim--are masculinist insofar as they promote "traditional" (heterosexist) family structures, privilege the power of males (as heads of families, community leaders, and religious authorities), and reserve the greatest power/sacredness/ authority to a definitively male deity or prophet. Predominantly Islamic countries tend to restrict women to familyoriented activities, so they have less visibility--and power--in publicsphere activities. Women in countries strongly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church are similarly restricted--in this case by expectations that women conform to maternal and/or saintly stereotypes. These are not the components of "conventional" political power, though individual women may sometimes take on "moral" leadership by embodying the qualities of saintliness. In sum, the power of fundamentalisms worldwide has significant implications for women's political participation. Democratization that does not address the masculinism promoted by fundamentalisms and nationalisms is not democracy for women. 94 It is also important to note the negative effects that colonization (the imposition of European rule throughout the Americas, Africa, and Asia) and externally imposed modernization (industrialization, urbanization, and export-oriented economic strategies) have had on women's status-including, in some cases, the elimination of political rights and power previously held in "traditional" societies. 95 In Norway, which has the most balanced gender representation, a long tradition of legal equality-dating from the Viking period--has facilitated the relatively strong legal position of women and their right to political participation. 96 Nigeria also has a long tradition of women as politically and economically powerful agents, but its colonial experience had negative effects on the power that women previously held through political leadership and/or women's centrality in the marketplace. Eurocentric constructions of masculinity and femininity transformed indigenous political practices and gender divisions of labor in ways that denied the legitimacy of women's public roles and diminished their economic power. In general, processes of industrialization in the First World and dependent development (or underdevelopment, by which economies and societies of the First World benefit at the expense of those in the Third World) have two negative gender consequences. First, these processes involve the expansion of monetary exchanges as the basis for social systems, often referred to as the development of cash economies. In contrast to men, women's association with the private sphere restricts their participation in wage labor, especially in high-wage labor. Industrial capitalism's focus on paid labor diminishes the significance of "women's work" and contributes to a deterioration in women's status. The second negative consequence is closely related to the first. Not only paid labor but also publicsphere activities gain in prestige during processes of industrial capitalism. But the gendered division of public and private spheres tends to exclude women both formally and informally from the sphere of activities that is gaining status. As noted earlier, the public-private dichotomy works in many ways to exclude women from political activities and to minimize the significance of power relations--and therefore politics--in the private sphere. Women lose out as the public sphere of waged labor and political power becomes increasingly distinguished from and considered superior to the "merely" private sphere.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkDisease
22 Gender
Communicable disease prevention is a gendered issuecurrent medical resources ignore the considerations of gender. Hartigan 99 (Pamela, Department of Health Promotion, World Health Organization, Communicable Diseases,
Gender, and Equity in Health, Working Paper Series, Number 99.08, July, http://www.globalhealth.harvard.edu/hcpds/wpweb/gender/hartigan.html) The purpose of this chapter is to examine one aspect of the sea change that must occur. Medical and social scientists must take seriously considerations of gender,1 its interaction with physiological/immunological factors, and how the outcome of that interaction can protect men and/or women from communicable diseases, or, conversely, place them at risk. Interventions in communicable diseases must be planned with cognisance of the way in which gender influences the degree to which men and women, as individuals and population groups, have access to and control of the resources needed to protect their own health and that of family and community members. Finally, those involved in communicable diseases, whether they are working in control of vectors, vaccine and drug development, improvement of surveillance and monitoring systems or as health care workers in disease endemic countries, must be mindful that gender structures the way they assess the problem. Gender affects the research questions they ask, the way they examine the data and the manner in which they treat the male or female client coming to the health center. Gender is more than a variable to be manipulated; it is an organizing principle of society (West, 1993). To include a gender perspective in communicable disease thinking and practice will not be an easy shift. The disciplines that today rule the world of infectious diseases are grounded in a biomedical perspective characterized by a reductionist and narrowly technical approach. However, there is an increasing recognition on the part of those that adhere to such thinking that their horizons need to be widened beyond the molecular level, to include behavioral and social aspects of individuals and population groups. What remains barely acknowledged by medical and social scientists is the fact that individuals and populations are either men or women, and that this distinction is of critical importance in addressing communicable diseases. Likewise, the influence of gender on institutional structures and scientific and technical paradigms needs much more critical reflection.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkTuberculosis
23 Gender
Tuberculosis treatment is a gendered issuethe aff ignores the gendered implications. Hartigan 99 (Pamela, Department of Health Promotion, World Health Organization, Communicable Diseases,
Gender, and Equity in Health, Working Paper Series, Number 99.08, July, http://www.globalhealth.harvard.edu/hcpds/wpweb/gender/hartigan.html) Tuberculosis, is the biggest infectious disease killer in women and the one with the greatest burden of disease for both sexes worldwide. In 1997, TB killed.3 million people, approximately half of whom were women (WHO, 1998). Individuals who are HIV positive have a relative risk of developing TB of between 2 and 100 times higher than those who are HIV negative (Murray, 1990). A number of studies indicate that prevalence of HIV infection among smear positive TB cases is higher in females (Holmes et al, 1998). TB has a different natural history in women and men. Women between the ages of 15 and 40 are almost twice as likely to progress from infection to disease than men of the same age, and men are more likely to progress from infection to disease after age 40. One frequent explanation, now discounted, has been the stresses of pregnancy and possible breakdown of immune resistance, which make women more susceptible (Styblo, 1991). Other reasons include the lower prevalence of infection in women during and after adolescence, making women more likely to be newly infected during their reproductive years. Newly infected persons have a greater chance of progressing to disease than those with an older infection (Holmes, op cit). Case-fatality rates likewise seem to be greater in women (Holmes, op cit). Reasons for this include decreased immune function due to poor nutritional status and delays in care seeking, both a function of gender. The low status accorded to women in most societies, their limited decision-making ability and access to health resources place them at a particular disadvantage in comparison to infected men. The influence of gender on surveillance and monitoring is evidenced by the consistent finding that more women are detected through active than passive case finding. On the other hand, gendered behavior associated with masculinity such as alcohol abuse and smoking may account for the higher progression rates found among older men. Treatment of TB also has gendered implications. The widely acclaimed method of Directly Observed Treatment-short course (DOTS) has been successful in some areas with some populations, and not so in others. Little has been done to examine the gendered aspects of compliance with DOTS. Men reportedly are less inclined to comply with any indications if these require curtailed alcohol consumption. Moreover, often it is women who are charged by the health provider with ensuring that their male partners comply with DOTS, as with other health prescriptions. Whereas when women are infected men are less likely to assume a similarly supportive role.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkMalaria
24 Gender
Malaria programs fail to take into account gender inequity and view them only as mothers and caregivers. Hartigan 99 (Pamela, Department of Health Promotion, World Health Organization, Communicable Diseases,
Gender, and Equity in Health, Working Paper Series, Number 99.08, July, http://www.globalhealth.harvard.edu/hcpds/wpweb/gender/hartigan.html) Whereas biology is largely responsible for aggravating the severity of the consequences of malaria for women, gender colors the experience of women at risk and suffering from the disease. In Africa, where the problem is greatest, infection co-exists with extreme poverty, malnutrition, and poor access to antenatal and other health care services. Some studies find that women with malaria are more likely than men to delay treatment due to lack of time or childcare arrangements (Tanner and Vlassoff, 1998). Womens multiple gender roles include work related to maintenance of the home and the support of family members, whether or not they are sick. Health interventions that seek to reduce malaria in endemic areas actively seek out women to ensure that family members, particularly infants and young children, are protected from the disease. For example, insecticide-impregnated bednets have been found to effectively protect household members from malaria in endemic areas, spurring control programs to find ways to induce women, not men, to wash and impregnate the nets. Likewise, efforts to train mothers in the detection and early intervention of fevers in their children often fail to take into account that women may not control the resources needed to seek anti-malarials or bednets. Malaria prevention programs, similar to others in disease control, are often oblivious to the multiplicity of tasks women in resource poor situations juggle, and may inadvertently exacerbate gender inequity and womens sense that the only reason they are valued is as mothers and care-givers.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkSexual Politics
25 Gender
Focus on sexual politics ignore the matrix of experience that leads to gender inequality Robert Fatton, Jr. Professor of Government and Foreign Policy at the University of Virginia Gender, Class, and State in Africa Women and the State in Africa, 1989 ed. Jane L. Parpart p. 49
These few successful women should not mask the overall African reality that men and women of the same class are fundamentally unequal. In general, a womans access to state resources and hence to class power hinges upon her male linkages. Women therefore lack the political and material autonomy that transforms individuals into full citizens. Womens subordination in the public and political realms of society is reinforced by the equally repressive environment of the private and intimate domain. This domain that Catharine MacKinnon has identified as the common ground of [womens] inequality and as the sphere of battery, marital rape, and womens exploited labor, embodies the most immediate site of male supremacy. To this extent all women share the common experience of degradation, humiliation, and isolation that inheres in the private and intimate domain. The private, as it were, becomes a political battlefield; womens oppression is also the politics of womens personal lives and of highly individual relations of subordination. Sexual politics as MacKinnon suggests, is at the core of the womens struggle for equality, but her stress on its centrality detracts her from analyzing the material matrix that envelops it.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkReproductive Health Care
26 Gender
Reproductive health care does not function as an emancipating feat for womyn but rather gives the state, the masculine, the ability to order birth as having importance only when it deems fit and to establish control for womyn through a marriage of capitalism and patriarchy Mary OBrien, feminist and political theorist, Reproducing the World 1989 p. 22-25
It is in this way that I came to develop the notion that not only were the cultural forms of the social and legal relations of reproduction historical, but that actual process of reproduction, the integration of doing and knowing which women experience and the separation which men experience, are historically developed forms of consciousness. I was nervous of this judgment--would I ever dare to show it to my already nervous thesis committee--did I actually believe it myself? If so, why? I was outraged that none of the works I had read paid any attention to the historical and philosophical aspects of human reproduction, the meaning of the event, the necessity for womens labor to reproduce the species in history. (In political theory, the state is defended as mans supreme achievement, that which transcends such dubiously human events as birth, livelihood, bodily well-being in the glory of law, order and power. In making the state, men believe themselves to be making history.) Yet, surely birth is a substructure, a condition of history, surely it is an act, a conscious act of labor? Surely it is not mere biological event but human action? But of course, it is a womans act, and few women had written any of the books I had been reading for years, and few formulated the power and the glory of the state. Why is it important that birth be understood as historical? Because it is the ground of certain sets of social relations which, I was convinced, needed to be changed, and change is what history is about. Birth
itself may be a natural phenomenon, but in fact, a great deal of history in culture, certainly in law, in ideology-has been piled on it. Yet birth process itself was regarded as changeless, and therefore by definition historical, natural, contingent, occasionally
miraculous but usually uninteresting. In and of itself, birth process has no meaning--until men give it one. In my analysis of the history of birth process, as opposed to the social construction of child rearing or marriage or legal forms which arise from it, I discovered that birth process, when understood as a unity of knowledge and practice, rather than an animal accident, had changed only twice. The first change, a long time ago, was the discovery of> paternity, with all its contradictions of alienation and freedom. Paternity is not present to consciousness in an immediate way, and therefore must have been discovered in historical time and discovered in the mode of causality. The second, indeed the historical condition which I believe has led many feminists to turn to the process of birth with new understanding, was the change wrought by contraceptive technology on a potentially universal scale in our time. In 1975, I and many others could see that this development was enormously significant, that it was what Hegel called a world-historical event, a happening which would transform not only ancient institutions but which would bring about transformations in our consciousness of ourselves, our bodies, our historical and social being. The questions were: what kind of changes, and who would control and direct these changes? How could a state designed to transcend mere birth, crude biology, deal with this historicization of the ahistorical with the politicization of the pre-political? In fact, the state has no difficulty in doing this, for its willing surrogates, the medicine men, the legal establishment and the scientists, are all ready to face down the possibility that reproductive technology might serve to establish reproductive control for women. I should note that then, just ten years ago, what I meant by contraceptive technology was the pill, but I had read Brave New World, and knew it would not stop there. Frankly I had no perception of the speed of development, that in 1985 we would be dealing with artificial insemination by donor, contract mothering, freeze-dried sperm and a scientific dramaturgy played out on the stage of petri dishes. I had rather naive visions that reproductive technology would liberate women, usher in reproductive choice and transform the social relations of reproduction fairly directly. I dont believe this was fundamentally wrong, but my timetable was a little sanguine. What was inseparable from the technology question was the question of power and of control.
Men have always defined the social parameter of the forms of reproductive relations. They have also controlled technological development. It is this old male control of production combined with newer control of reproduction which makes the development of reproductive technology a political question, a historical
event of a momentous kind and a renewed struggle for reproductive power. The implications are awesome. There is no single issue which unifies the human need to produce for survival on an individual basis and to reproduce for survival on a species basis in the way that reproductive technology does.
Reproductive technology makes the marriage of capitalism and patriarchy fecund. There is no issue which throws down the challenge to women to seize control of their usurped reproductive power in the way that this issue does. There is no issue in which the holding in balance of the laws of the natural world and the law of the historical world
offers us radical choices and possible transformations of such a fundamental kind. I believe that the powerful development of the womens movement in recent years is grounded in the transformation of our reproductive experience and is not a wave or a spasm but a new unity of species and selfconsciousness: feminists understand that these changes require a newer, braver, more just world if they are to be humane and liberating. They also know that we do not have a just world, we do not have the rule of justice. We
have the rule of men, patriarchy, a historical megalosaur which does not yet recognize that it has earned extinction. This mans world has consigned the condition of history--birth--to the world of nature, which man understands as enemy. It has constructed the institution of the private realm in which the tasks of birthing and rearing can be controlled by mans grandiose projection of his universality into the state, the public realm. This mans world, in which birth is animal and death is splendid, in which destruction is noble and conservation soft-headed, this mans world in which control of production and reproduction are the political and economic tools of patriarchal survival, this mans world in which the unifying concept of species itself is fractured into divisions of gender, race, wealth, sexuality in a mammoth exercise of divide and conquer: this is the world which created the processes in which women could be oppressed but not obliterated, in which children could be claimed and named but not necessarily cared for, the process in which the alienated fathers consolidated a legal claim to real power ~over their reproductive lives. This power over women is clearly Reproductive technology and the technology of species destruction are conjoined in a lethal alliance which would negotiate the gap between individual and species by destroying both.
not enough: mankind now aspires to buttress that control with the mastery of the natural world, the scientific and technical control of species reproduction, the ultimate I triumph over the treacherous inconstancy of nature and her accomplice, woman.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkHumyn Rights (1/2)

Striving towards humyn rights ignores the cultural traditions of rights in Africa and cannot occur without understanding of the context of the lives of African womyn Diana J. Fox, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Susan B. Anthony Women's Center
27 Gender
Womens Human Rights in Africa: Beyond the Debate Over the Universality or Relativity of Human Rights African Studies Quarterly, vol. 2 issue 3, 2003 http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i3a2.htm Perspectives proffered by Canadian Africanist Rhoda Howard and political scientist Jack Donnelly represent some of the well-known challenges to the position of ethical relativism. Donnelly recognizes that there are other trajectories for human rights within the liberal tradition, outside of the conception of the individual as "atomistic and alienated from society and the state." Howard's position, according to Matua, however, represents an ethnocentric critique of relativism. Matua says of Howard that: [S]he refuses to acknowledge that pre-colonial African societies knew human rights as a concept ... Howard is so fixated with the Western notion of rights attaching only to the atomized individual that she summarily dismisses arguments by African scholars, some of whom could be classified as cultural relativists, that individual rights were held in a social, collective context (19). Howard does point out that while women and men have more formal rights in post-colonial Africa, the western model has essentially deprived women of the political influence they had in many indigenous societies. Her example of the 1929 "Women's War" in Nigeria is a case in point, in which tens of thousands of Igbo women attacked chiefs appointed by the British, as a protest against the abrogation of their traditional power. Moreover, Howard also insists that there can be no adequate analysis of the human rights of African women, or improvements made for their effective implementation without understanding the sociohistorical context of women's lives. Legislation that does not recognize the influence of culture and tradition on male and female perceptions of each other will be ineffective (20). While Donnelly and Howard are two examples of engagement with human rights in the African context, the more widespread challenge to relativism which has swept the discipline has just begun to move more seriously into the realm of human rights, emanating especially from feminist circles. The context for this challenge, as I have stated throughout, is within the increasingly prominent place of women's rights issues on the general agenda of the human rights movement. Since feminism aims to connect the academic world with social change, feminist anthropologists work not only to describe and analyze the lives of women and gender relations, but to generate strategies to improve them. The feminist agenda is antithetical to relativism--but not subsequently, cultural context--since it depends on judgments in order to develop strategies for change.
Discussions of human rights ignore women and posit their rights as womens issues, allowing them to be marginalized and ignored. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era, 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Despite these important advances, womens human rights have continued to face discrimination. As long as they are dealt with in special conventions and institutions, they tend to be labeled as womens issues and, consequently, be marginalized, allowing the mainstream to ignore them. Womens voices are still struggling to be heard by mainstream human-rights organizations, and the prioritizing of civil and political rights, reinforced by the liberal agenda, tends to obscure the discriminatory practices faced by women. The institutions that deal with womens human rights are more fragile than those in the mainstream; they are underfunded and have weaker implementation possibilities. For example, when ratifying CEDAW states have attached more reservations than they have to any other UN convention. 58 Charlesworth has argued that even CEDAW is based on a male measure of equality since it focuses on womens rights in public life, such as in the formal economy, the law, and education.59 Indeed, certain feminists have claimed that the whole notion of rights is based on a Western male norm and male experience; typically, rights do not respond to the risks that women face by virtue of being women. With certain exceptions, rights-based discourse has generally ignored oppression in the private sphere, thus tending to reinforce the public/private distinction that, while it is defined differently in different societal contexts, is consistent in its devaluation of womens rights. In other words, the definition of human manifests a male bias.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkHumyn Rights (2/2)
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Struggles for humyn rights that ignore sources of abuse outside of culture are ineffective and allow for the continued discrimination of African womyn through state-sponsored violence Diana J. Fox, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Susan B. Anthony Women's Center
Womens Human Rights in Africa: Beyond the Debate Over the Universality or Relativity of Human Rights African Studies Quarterly, vol. 2 issue 3, 2003 http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i3a2.htm Women's struggles for human rights often position them in opposition to family and social networks where their roles and rights have been defined; however, because of the sanctity of the family, they often choose not to seek empowerment and freedom which sets them against their kin. It is therefore crucial to find ways for women to be protected as individuals against abuses. Doing so should not mean that the family will be undermined as an important social institution. Coomaraswamy makes a fundamental observation when she asserts that "the family is the place where individuals learn to care, to trust and to nurture each other. The law should protect and privilege that kind of family and no other" (11). Although attention to the realm of the family in Africa is central to any discussion of women's human rights, this focus should not distract from other sources of abuse against women which occur outside the local cultural context. To place a spotlight on the family as the exclusive source of discrimination against women puts disproportionate blame on this particular cultural domain, to the exclusion of other violations of women's integrity. For example, in many parts of Africa discriminatory practices remain unnoticed as such, and many states--Algeria, for instance--uphold patterns of conduct which some deny are disadvantageous to women, claiming instead that the attitude toward women is essential to the cultural integrity of those countries and significant constituents of national identity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkEconomy (1/2)
29 Gender
Focusing on macroeconomic issues masks the unequal power relations within the economy and individual economic insecurity J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at University of South California, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security 1992 pg 74
Generalizing from rational economic man to the world economy, liberals believe that world welfare is maximized by allowing market forces to operate unimpeded and goods and investment to flow as freely as possible across state boundaries according to the laws of comparative advantage. Critics of liberalism question this belief in openness and interdependence, claiming that it falsely depoliticizes exchange relationships and masks hidden power structures. They challenge the notion of mutual gains from exchange by focusing on the unequal distribution of gains across states, classes, and factors of production, and argue that in fact gains accrue disproportionately to the most powerful states or economic actors. For example, critics of liberalism would argue that liberal economic theory obscures the unequal power relations between capital and labor: since capital is mobile across interstate boundaries and controls strategic decisions about investment and production, it is being rewarded disproportionately to labor, a trend that was on the rise in the 1980s when labor was becoming increasingly marginalized in matters of economic policy. 9 If capital is being rewarded disproportionately to labor in the world economy, then men are being rewarded disproportionately to women. A 1981 report to the U.N. Committee on the Status of Women avers that while women represent half the global population and one-third of the paid labor force and are responsible for two-thirds of all working hours, they receive only one-tenth of world income and own less that 1 percent of world property. 10 While much of womens work is performed outside the formal economy, these data suggest that women are not being rewarded to the same extent as men even when they enter the market economy. Although no systematic data on mens and womens incomes on a worldwide scale exists, an International Labor Office study of manufacturing industries in twenty countries, conducted in the mid-I 980s, showed that womens wages were less than mens in each case. 11 Earning lower wages and owning an insignificant proportion of the worlds capital puts women at an enormous disadvantage in terms of power and wealth and thus contributes to their economic insecurity.
Focusing on the global economy obscures the view of significant actors towards the masculine state and its extensions, rendering gender invisible Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 132-133
Feminist interventions have taken place in the context of a greater degree of self-reflexivity within GPE. Most feminist scholarship in GPE criticizes statecentric analysis and positivism and points to the ideological nature of so-called value-free economic theories. Feminist scholarship in the field has both highlighted the problems of bias and distortion, which occurs when theory is written from the perspective of dominant groups, and challenged the boundaries of legitimate research in the field. Christine Sylvester, for example,
has argued that there is a hidden gender to the field which affects how we think about empirical political economy. For example, in neo-realist analyses, politics dominates economics. Hegemonic states are seen to create and maintain order in the international economy. In this context, transnational corporations and other significant actors are viewed only as instruments of foreign policy or extensions of state power. By concentrating on the impersonal structures of states and markets, it is not possible to see how womens activities have been demoted to the private sphere. One might add that it also impossible to see that women and men enter into the formal economy as bearers of a gender identity. Ann Tickner has argued that ignoring gender distinctions hides a set of social and economic relations characterized by inequalities of power.7 Gender is rendered invisible because of the way in which both economic and political activity has conventionally been defined. In capitalist economies the market is viewed as the core of economic activity. Participation in the labour force and the inclusion of production in measurements of global economic activity has been defined only in relation to the market, or to the performance of work for pay or profit. Unremunerated work and the person performing it (usually a woman) is not included because it is not part of the market of paid exchanges for
goods or services and so is not viewed as economically significant. This is based on a commonsense view of what constitutes economic activity. GPE has also explored particular kinds of power relationships which underpin economic activity, but the measure of power and what may be construed as political has not been expanded to include areas outside of what is conventionally defined as the public sphere. Much feminist analysis in global political economy is involved in working towards new definitions of economic and political which will reunite what has conventionally been set off as separate.8 ~,
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkEconomy (2/2)
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Focusing on the economy ignores the segregation of labor markets and the lack of a feminine place in the global economy, ensuring reproduction of discriminatory structures V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 9-10
Gender shapes not only how we identify ourselves and view the world but also how others identify and relate to us and how we are positioned within social structures. For now, we will look at gender divisions of labor as exemplifying the either-or construction that constitutes the dichotomy of masculine and feminine. Consider that women are traditionally associated with childbearing, child rearing, emotional caretaking, and responsibility for the physical maintenance of the household. In contrast, men are associated with the activities of wage labor, physical prowess, intellectual achievements, and political agency. This gender labeling is so strong that even when women work for wages (and women have been wage workers as long as men have), they typically do so in areas regarded as "women's work": taking care of others and providing emotional and maintenance services (counseling, welfare services, clerical support, cleaning). Labor markets are thus segregated horizontally by gender, with women and men clustered in different occupational roles. They are also segregated vertically, with women concentrated in the lowest-paid, leastprotected, and least-powerful positions. And when individual women move up corporate ladders, they run into a "glass ceiling" that obstructs their access to the most powerful positions. This horizontal and vertical gender segregation accounts in part for the fact that women-about 40 percent of the paid workforce worldwide--earn approximately 74 cents for every dollar earned by men. 8 The point is that stereotypes of gender (masculinity and femininity) have consequences for the difference between men's and women's experience in, for example, earning money and exercising public power. Around the world, women are relatively absent from the top decisionmaking positions of political, economic, and ideological power: Consider the leadership of nations, militaries, corporations, religions, and media. And women are absent in part because gender stereotypes establish leadership as a masculine activity and in part because gender labeling and structures discriminate against women seeking positions of power (as illustrated in Chapter 3). It is in this sense that where women are absent, principles of gender are at work. That is, the disproportional presence or absence of women (or men) does not suggest gender neutrality but in fact demonstrates the personal, political, systemic, and structural effects of gender differentiation. The latter involves defining different qualities, roles, and activities for men and women and ensuring the reproduction of these discriminatory structures.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkRepresentations of Instability
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Framing the foreign as unstable portrays them inferior and perpetuates relationships of domination and subordination J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at University of South California, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security 1992 pg 8-9
Extending Scott s challenge to the field of international relations, we can immediately detect a similar set of hierarchical binary oppositions. But in spite of the seemingly obvious association of international politics with the masculine characteristics described above, the field of international relations is one of the last of the social sciences to be touched by gender analysis and feminist perspectives. 1 The reason for this, I believe, is not that the field is gender neutral, meaning that the introduction of gender is irrelevant to its subject matter as many scholars believe, but that it is so thoroughly masculinized that the workings of these hierarchical gender relations are hidden. Framed in its own set of binary distinctions, the discipline of international relations assumes similarly hierarchical relationships when it posits an anarchic world outside to be defended against through the accumulation and rational use of power. In political discourse, this becomes translated into stereotypical notions about those who inhabit the outside. Like women, foreigners are frequently portrayed as the other: nonwhites and tropical countries are often depicted as irrational, emotional, and unstable, characteristics that are also attributed to women. The construction of this discourse and the way in which we are taught to think about international politics closely parallel the way in which we are socialized into understanding gender differences. To ignore these hierarchical constructions and their relevance to power is therefore to risk perpetuating these relationships of domination and subordination. But before beginning to describe what the field of international relations might look like if gender were included as a central category of analysis, I shall give a brief historical overview of the field as it has traditionally been constructed.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkDemocracy (1/2)
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Western traditions of democracy exclude and devalue women. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
As discussed in chapter 3, feminist literatures on globalization are nearly unanimous in their claim that structures of patriarchy, evidenced in a global gendered division of labor and certain international institutions, as well as within states, democratic and otherwise, can operate in various ways to constrain womens life chances. Therefore, feminists have claimed that transitions to democracy and the literature that describes and celebrates it must be treated with caution. Reexamining democratic transitions through gendered lenses reveals the extent to which definitions of democracy are constrained and limited. Feminists are also suspicious of efforts to link the democratic peace with the gender gap in political opinion and an increased participation of women in the political process. Since there are very few states, democratic or otherwise, where women hold positions of political power anywhere close to parity with men, this hypothesis is hard to test. Feminists are particularly skeptical about the influence of women on security policies and, as discussed in chapter 2, they are very suspicious of arguments that link women unproblematically with peace. Moreover, linking the peacefulness of democracies with womens participation does little to further more important agendas of trying to reduce oppressive gender hierarchies at all levels.29 Nevertheless, since democratization does open political space for groups not previously heard and offers possibilities for political change, it has been a central focus for feminist scholars. However, the mainstream literature on democratization has rarely acknowledged this feminist literature or focused on what happens to women during democratic transitions. The orthodox political-science literature on democratization has made little mention of gender and women; its top-down focus on leadership and agency gives primacy to the actions and decisions of political leaders during democratic transitions.30 Analyses of democratization are built on traditional definitions of democracy that are based on the legacy of Western liberal democracy, a legacy that has been problematic for women. Feminist political theorists have reexamined the meaning of democracy and its gendered implications by going back to the origins of Western democratic institutions. In her reevaluation of social contract theory, Carole Pateman has outlined how the story of the social contract as articulated by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European political theorists has been treated as an account of the creation of a public sphere of civil freedom in which only men were endowed with the necessary attributes for entering into contracts. Liberal definitions of citizens as nonsexed autonomous individuals outside any social context abstract from a Western male model. Evolving notions of citizenship in the West were based on male, property-owning heads of households: thus, democratic theory and practice have been built on the male-as-norm engaged in narrowly defined political activities.31 Women, Pateman claims, were not party to the original contract; rather, they were incorporated into the private sphere through the marriage contract as wives subservient to their husbands, rather than as individuals. The private sphere, a site of subjection, is part of civil society, but separate from the civil sphere; each gains meaning from the other and each is mutually dependent on the other.32 This separation of the public and private spheres has had important ramifications for the construction and evolution of political and economic institutions at all levels; feminists see them as intimately related, however. What goes on in the public sphere of politics and the economy cannot be understood as separate from the private. Historically, therefore, terms such as citizen and head of household were not neutral but associated with men. Even in states where women have achieved formal or near-formal equality, feminists have claimed that this historical legacy still inhibits their political and economic participation on an equal basis with men. As feminists from the South have pointed out, what is public in one society may be private in another; it is true, however, that womens activities, such as reproduction and child rearing, tend to be devalued in all societies.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkDemocracy (2/2)
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The public/private divide inherent in democracy keeps women subordinated despite any legal gains made. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Nevertheless, the evolution of democratic practices and institutions and their attendant notions of individual rights have certainly had benefits for women; the concept of rights and equality were important rationales for the suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the West as well as for movements for womens liberation and human rights in various parts of the world today. But, as Patemans analysis suggests, the liberal tradition continues to present particular problems for women; as she points out, aspiring to equality assumes that individuals can be separated from sexually differentiated bodies.33 Deep structures, upheld by the public/ private divide, have continued to keep women in positions of subordination, even after the acquisition of the vote or other legal gains; despite the fact that women have always participated in the public sphere as workers, they do not have the same civil standing as men in most societies. For example, in twentieth-century welfare laws in the West, men have generally been defined as breadwinners and women as dependents; likewise, immigration laws and rules governing refugees define women as dependents with negative implications for their legal status. In the United States, the concept of firstclass citizen has frequently been tied to military service, a disadvantage for women running for political office.34
Western democratic tradition is patriarchalspreading it only disassociates women with political power. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
In an era characterized by the hegemony of neoliberal ideology, structural- adjustment policies have placed further burdens on women as government programs have been scaled back and women have taken on unremunerated welfare and caregiving functions previously assumed by the state. Gender analysis highlights that structural-adjustment programs, along with other economic policies and consequences of economic globalization, are not gender neutral. Local resistances to these adverse effects, which often go unnoticed, are acting as generators of new knowledge upon which feminists are drawing to counter the growing neoliberal consensus. Globalization involves more than economic forces; it has also led to the spread of Western-centered definitions of human rights and democracy. Feminist scholars are questioning whether these definitions are gender biased: for example, until very recently violence against women was not considered part of the international communitys human-rights agenda. Additionally, postcolonial feminists are drawing attention to the ways in which Western feminism may itself be complicit in imposing a Western view of democracy and rights that ignores issues of race and cultural differences. Conversely, it is important to recognize that cultural reassertions against Westernization are often framed in terms that result in the regulation and control of women. Feminists also claim that, while democratization is being celebrated by Western liberals, new democracies are not always friendly toward women. Feminists have traditionally been suspicious of what they see as the legacy of the Western liberal-democratic tradition that they claim is patriarchal and that, historically, has favored mens over womens interests. Additionally, since women have traditionally had less access to formal political institutions, the focus on state institutions by scholars of democratization may miss ways in which women are participating in politicsoutside formal political channels at the grassroots level.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkSecurity
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The security-seeking behavior of states is an extension of hegemonic masculinity. Conflictcausing state identities are gender constructions that can be broken down because they are social constructions. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Challenging the myth that wars are fought to protect women, children, and others stereotypically viewed as vulnerable, feminists point to the high level of civilian casualties in contemporary wars. Feminist scholarship has been particularly concerned with what goes on during wars, especially the impact of war on women and civilians more generally. Whereas conventional security studies has tended to look at causes and consequences of wars from a top-down, or structural, perspective, feminists have generally taken a bottom-up approach, analyzing the impact of war at the microlevel. By so doing, as well as adopting gender as a category of analysis, feminists believe they can tell us something new about the causes of war that is missing from both conventional and critical perspectives. By crossing what many feminists believe to be mutually constitutive levels of analysis, we get a better understanding of the interrelationship between all forms of violence and the extent to which unjust social relations, including gender hierarchies, contribute to insecurity, broadly defined. Claiming that the securityseeking behavior of states is described in gendered terms, feminists have pointed to the masculinity of strategic discourse and how this may impact on understanding of and prescriptions for security; it may also help to explain why womens voices have so often been seen as inauthentic in matters of national security. Feminists have examined how states legitimate their security-seeking behavior through appeals to types of hegemonic masculinity. They are also investigating the extent to which state and national identities, which can lead to conflict, are based on gendered constructions. The valorization of war through its identification with a heroic kind of masculinity depends on a feminized, devalued notion of peace seen as unattainable and unrealistic. Since feminists believe that gender is a variable social construction, they claim that there is nothing inevitable about these gendered distinctions; thus, their analyses
often include the emancipatory goal of postulating a different definition of security less dependent on binary and unequal gender hierarchies.
Security rhetoric props up the legitimization of the state to a point where elimination of all that is foreign to maintain the safety of the inside is justified Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 108-109
Critical approaches to International Relations criticize the state centrism of realism, not only because it is inherently reductionist, but also because it presents a view of the state as a concrete entity with interests and agency. Not only does the state act, but the state acts in the national interest. Those who adopt critical approaches 15 view the state in dynamic rather than static terms, as a process rather than a thing. The state does not exist in any concrete sense; rather it is made. The state is made by the processes and practices involved in constructing boundaries and identities, differentiating between the inside and the outside. Andrew Linklater has recently argued that critical approaches to the study of International Relations centre around
understanding the processes of inclusion and exclusion, which have in a sense always been the central concerns of the discipline.16 However, as Linklater contends, critical theorists understand that these processes have also worked to include and exclude people on the basis of race, class and
the making of the state the construction of the hostile other which is threatening and dangerous is central to the making of identities and the securing of boundaries. Indeed, David Campbell argues that the legitimation of state power demands the construction of danger outside. The state requires this discourse of danger to secure its identity and for the legitimation of state power. The consequence of this is that threats to security in realist and neo-realist thinking are all seen to be in the external realm and citizenship becomes synonymous with loyalty to the nation-state and the elimination of all that is foreign.8 Jean Elshtain has argued that the problems of war and the difficulties of
achieving security in the so-called anarchy of the international realm, should not be seen as problems which are not rooted in the compulsions of interstate relations as such.9 Rather, they arise from the ordering of modern, technological society in which political elites have sought to control the masses by the implementation of the mechanism of the perfect army.20 Elshtain argues that to see war as a continuation of politics by other means, is to see a continuation of the military model as a means of preventing civil disorder.2 In critiquing dominant conceptions of security in International Relations, feminists have, to some extent, echoed the arguments of non-feminist critical thinkers, but have been concerned to show what is lost from our understanding of security when gender is omitted. As was noted in chapter 4, feminist political theorists have demonstrated that in much Western political thought the conception of politics and the public realm is a barracks community, a realm defined in opposition to the disorderly forces which threaten its existence.22
gender.7 In
This same conception of politics is constructed out of masculine hostility towards the female Other. One sees in the development of this political discourse a deeply gendered subtext in which the citizen role is in all cases identified with the male.23 Hartsock believes that this sets a hostile and combative dualism at the heart of the
community men construct and by which they come to understand their lives.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkWar
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War, which ignores and excludes women and the feminine, is the most significant part of the way that we perceive international relations. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security,1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
Just as the image of waging war against an exterior other figured centrally in Machiavelli's writings, war is central to the way we learn about international relations. Our historical memories of international politics are deeded to us through wars as we mark off time periods in terms of intervals between conflicts. We learn that dramatic changes take place in the international system after major wars when the relative power of states changes. Wars are fought for many reasons; yet, frequently, the rationale for fighting wars is presented in gendered terms such as the necessity of standing up to aggression rather then being pushed around or appearing to be a sissy or a wimp. Support for wars is often garnered through the appeal to masculine characteristics. As Sara Ruddick states, while the masculinity of war may be a myth, it is one that sustains both women and men in their support for violence. 54 War is a time when male and female characteristics become polarized; it is a gendering activity at a time when the discourse of militarism and masculinity permeates the whole fabric of society. 55 As Jean Elshtain points out, war is an experience to which women are exterior; men have inhabited the world of war in a way that women have not. 56 The history of international politics is therefore a history from which women are, for the most part, absent. Little material can be found on women's roles in wars; generally they are seen as victims, rarely as agents. While war can be a time of advancement for women as they step in to do men's jobs, the battlefront takes precedence, so the hierarchy remains and women are urged to step aside once peace is restored. When women themselves engage in violence, it is often portrayed as a mob or a food riot that is out of control. 57 Movements for peace, which are also part of our history, have not been central to the conventional way in which the evolution of the Western state system has been presented to us. International relations scholars of the early twentieth century, who wrote positively about the possibilities of international law and the collective security system of the League of Nations, were labeled "idealists" and not taken seriously by the more powerful realist tradition.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkWar Rhetoric
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Placing the masculine as the protector and the feminine as the inevitable victim to be protected ignores the violence womyn suffer in response to those showings of manhood and nationhood and the fact that the placement of the protector makes womyn vulnerable Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 99-101
The image of the state as protector is particularly powerful in realism, although realists do not regard the gendered distinctions between the protected and protectors as interesting in themselves. However, the conventional distinction between protected and protectors has long been challenged by feminists. The reason for challenging this distinction is partly because it obscures the degree to which women are involved in war. Not only are women frequently participants in war, but ideologies about masculinity and femininity are necessary for the conduct of war. However, the distinction between protectors and protected also disguise the particular ways women suffer in wars. Both internal conflicts and international wars cause displacement among civilian populations. As careers, the lives to women are greatly complicated. Women are often left with sole responsibility for the welfare of the elderly and disabled relatives as well as children. Women and children constitute on average 80 per cent of refugee populations, although the smaller percentage of male refugees frequently gets disproportionate access to food, clothes, land, jobs and legal identity papers, water, livestock and tools. Decision-making structures within refugee camps are also maledominated which has important consequences for the protection, or lack of protection, for women against sexual and domestic violence in this context too.95 While most commentaries on war concentrate upon the political or strategic objectives, or the heroics of the battlefield, feminist researchers have strived to uncover the unknown testimonies of women who have suffered greatly in war but whose suffering is unrecorded. By listening to womens testimonies and post-war stories, feminists have also come to understand the unboundedness of war unbounded in the sense that wars have no neat beginnings and endings. Women who bear the burden of picking up the pieces at the formal cessation of hostilities have come to see that wars do not simply end with the signing of peace treaties. Women are left to deal with the task of rebuilding the physical infrastructure, along with men, but also they must also cope with the terrible consequences. Women must deal with the aftermath of war; the physical, psychological and emotional damage, which people suffer. A feminist analysis of war thus emphasizes the connections between war as an instance of state-sanctioned violence and other forms of violence. Seeking a feminist understanding of violence in warfare, particularly war rape, pushes us back to the connections between proving manhood and nationhood, between mascu1inity, militarism and violence.96 It facilitates an understanding of why the core identity of the military is necessarily male. Furthermore, as Stiehm argues protectors usually control those whom they protect: and, as Jan Pettman notes, the protector/protected relationship makes women vulnerable to other mens/states violence.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkFree Market/Trade Liberalization

Free trade and market liberalization only oppresses Third World women. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
37 Gender
Liberals, believing in the benefits of free trade, have generally supported export-led strategies of development. But since states that have opted for export-led strategies have often experienced increased inequalities in income, and since women are disproportionately clustered at the bottom of the economic scale, such strategies may have a particularly negative effect on women. The harsh effects of structural adjustment policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund on Third World debtor nations fall disproportionately on women as providers of basic needs, as social welfare programs in areas of health, nutrition, and housing are cut. When government subsidies or funds are no longer available, women in their role as unpaid homemakers and care providers must often take over the provision of these basic welfare needs. 19 Harsh economic conditions in the 1980s saw an increased number of Third World women going overseas as domestic servants and remitting their earnings to families they left behind. These feminist studies of Third World development and its effects on women are suggesting that liberal strategies to promote economic growth and improve world welfare that rely on market forces and free trade may have a differential impact on men and women. Since women's work often takes place outside the market economy, a model based on instrumentally rational market behavior does not capture all the economic activities of women. Therefore we cannot assume that the prescriptions generated by such a model will be as beneficial to women's economic security as they are to men's.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkTrade

Trade causes a gender-biased process of privatization to the private sector Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
38 Gender
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 In spite of these grim realities, the policy preference for the international community controlled by the North and the IMF and World Bank, the major international financial institutions is to develop strategies for poverty reduction within the context of the market and the instruments of liberalization and privatization. The mantra is trade not aid. Free trade is now well recognized as being anything but free, and trade liberalization is viewed as a major contributor to poverty in Africa with serious gender implications. According to Dembele, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where poverty has steadily increased during the last two decades and all development indicators reveal a continuing deterioration. Trade liberalization is a major contributor to this human crisis. The political economy approach offers one of the best explanatory models for full understanding of the political economy of African countries that is shaping gender relations. According to Pheko, multilateral financial institutions are forcing insidious policies of liberalization and globalization, market ascendancy and the diminished roles of the state, that have been unsuccessful in industrialized countries. She urges African women to be aware of the dangers of trade liberalization and resist it. The role of gender research and gender researchers as activists in this process is crucial since privatization and the private sector are notoriously gender biased. The public sector has been the most advantageous for womens formal sector employment but Structural Adjustment Policies mandate retrenchment in the public sector and cut backs in the social sector, such as health and education, that are of extreme importance to women. As women, we need to continue applying a gender analysis to all trade agreements and globalization processes. The human rights analysis should also be applied while strong South/South dialogue among women should be promoted, especially regarding the impact of international trade and macroeconomic policies, in particular, their formulation and implementation. African women should also call into question, the liberalization and globalization agenda by building civil societys understanding of the issues and by bringing about mass mobilization in a global, regional and coordinated fashion. (Pheko, 2002, p. p.105)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkUN
39 Gender
Intergovernmental organizations like the UN exclude women. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Womens low rate of participation in the United Nations, particularly in states diplomatic missionsa pattern that has been replicated in many other IGOssuggests that womens attempts to gain leverage at this level has, in many cases, been less successful than at the national level. As Anne Runyan warns, there is a danger of trading gendered nationalism for gendered internationalism. 49 Since intergovernmental organizations represent the views of governments of their member states rather than their populations, this lack of transparency compounds the underrepresentation of womens voices, as well as those of men from excluded or marginalized groups. As the United Nations has begun to pledge to mainstream a gender perspective, the question becomes: Whose perspective will be represented, when groups with the most resources are the most likely to gain access? 50 International organizations such as the United Nations have played an important role in promulgating universal norms and standards of conduct that, as discussed earlier, have been seen by certain world-order scholars as indicating the beginnings of a global society or an extension of the boundaries of political community beyond the nation-state. 51 While feminists also assume the possibility of community beyond statist boundaries, they question the extent to which these universalizing norms are based on male experiences. Both feminist theorists and women organizing through social movements and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have worked hard to bring these gender biases to light and to try to reframe norms and rules in ways that get beyond them. One such example has been the reformulation of the meaning of human rights.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkLanguage
40 Gender
Terms, like lenses shape our realities - using terms like hardheadedness, rationality, and strength relates positive connotation to masculine terms, excluding womyn and furthering the conception of the feminine as inferior V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 8-9
Here we make two points in regard to this relationship in order to elucidate what we mean by gender dichotomy and hierarchy. First, masculinity and femininity are not "independent" categories, such as fruit, children, or labor, but are defined in oppositional relation to each other: More of one is understood to mean less of the other--as with ripe versus unripe fruit, active versus passive children, mental versus manual labor. Specifically, the dominant masculinity in Western culture is associated with qualities of rationality, "hardheadedness," ambition, and strength. To the extent that a man displays emotionality, "softheadedness," passivity, and weakness, he is likely to be identified as nonmasculine, which is to say, feminine. Similarly, women who appear hardheaded and ambitious are often described as masculine. Second, the relationship between masculinity and femininity shows considerable constancy in assigning greater value to that which is associated with masculinity and lesser value to that which is associated with femininity. Again, the terms are not independent but form a hierarchical (unequal) relation that we refer to as a dichotomy (explored further in Chapter 2). Thus, in most--but not all--situations, rationality, hardheadedness, ambition, and strength are perceived as positive and admired traits that are in contrast to less desirable feminine qualities. This hierarchy is readily observed. Consider (in the United States) how different our response is to women wearing pants and even business suits compared to our response to men wearing dresses, ruffles, or flowery prints. Similarly, girls can be tomboys and adopt boyish names, but boys avoid behaving in ways that might result in their being called "sissies" or girlish names. And we applaud women who achieve success in previously maledominated activities (climbing mountains, becoming astronauts, presiding over colleges), but men who enter traditionally female arenas (water ballet, child care, nursing) are rarely applauded and often treated with suspicion. Females dressing or acting like males appear to be copying or aiming for something valued--they are attempting to improve their status by "moving up." But because feminine characteristics are less valued, boys and men who adopt feminine dress or undertake female roles are more likely to be perceived as "failing" in their manhood or "moving down." Because of the interdependent nature of this relationship, we learn about both men and women when we study gender. When we look at activities associated with masculinity (e.g., team sports, politics, the military), it appears simply that men are present and women are absent. Moreover, it appears that we can explain what is happening simply by attending to the men engaging in these activities. Gender analysis offers a more comprehensive explanation; it enables us to "see" how women are in fact important to the picture (enabling men's activities, providing "reasons" for men to fight), even though women and the roles they are expected to play are obscured when we focus only on men (see Figure 1.2). Through a gendersensitive lens, we see how constructions of masculinity (agency, control, aggression) are not independent of, but rely upon, contrasting constructions of femininity (dependence, vulnerability, passivity). In a sense, the dominant presence of men depends on the denial and absence of women. Because of this interdependence, a gender analysis of women's lives and experiences does not simply "add something" about women but transforms what we know about men and the activities they undertake. Hence, we study gender to enhance our understanding of the conventional foci of IR: men, masculinity, and masculine activities (power politics, war, economic control).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkOverpopulation
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Scapegoating womyn in developing countries as the cause of environmental damage on a worldwide scale ignores the structural causes to environmental concerns and replicates the harms Jessica LeAnn Urban, Womens Studies Program and for the Multicultural Queer Studies Minor at Humboldt
University, Constructing Blame: Overpopulation, Environmental Security and International Relations August 2001 http://www.wid.msu.edu/resources/papers/pdf/WP273.pdf To avoid responsibility for ecological destruction, proponents of the Western population paradigm, which is characterized most fundamentally by neo-Malthusian sensibilities, essentially scapegoat Third World women, poor women and women of color in the US by highlighting their unrestrained right to breed as the cause of environmental damage on the world scale. By virtue of the arguments highlighted in the analytical framework for this project, one is able to recognize that this scapegoating takes place in order to avoid accepting responsibility for the history of colonialism, contemporary neocolonialism and internal colonialism as well as the inequities that characterize the current world system. Raced, gendered and classed bodies are constructed as backwards and in need of Western intervention in fact, the well-being of the world is assumed to hinge upon such intervention. This scapegoating is played out in the form of population control policies that also serve to reaffirm colonial constructions of the other, as well as (neo)colonial relations of power. As Hartmann suggests, the modern-day proponents of population control have reinterpreted Malthusian logic, selectively applying it only to the poor majority in the Third World, and in some cases, to ethnic minorities in the West (Hartmann 1995:15). The pessimist perspective is also inherently anti-woman; women especially women of color are constructed as irrational, over-sexed, passive baby-makers who must be taught proper moral responsibility and behavior by outside experts. Such representations allow the justification, for instance, of more Mississippi appendectomies and similar practices. Tong explains that in the 1960s, gynecologists applied the rule of 120 to white, middle class women to prevent them from having sterilization procedures unless their age multiplied by the number of their children equaled 120 or more (1998:231). On the other hand, in some southern states the sterilization of women of color, especially indigent women, was so common that they came to be known as Mississippi appendectomies (Tong 1998:231). Similarly, such representations serve to justify policies that now attempt to compel welfare mothers to accept Norplant as a requirement for financial assistance (Tong 1998:232), as well as policies focused on promoting sterilization and chemical contraceptives around the world rather than programs committed to addressing womens health overall. As Hartmann explains, images of overbreeding single women of color on welfare and bare-breasted, always pregnant Third World woman are two sides of the same nasty coin (Hartmann 1999a:2). Rather than irrational overbreeding, those included in my analytical framework tend to characterize the development paradigm itself as inherently destructive of the environment (Shiva and Shiva 1993:1). As Bandarage notes, rather than relying on social constructions of the other which suggest that rapid population growth is the result of ignorance and irrationality, the fundamental reasons for rapid population growth in the South and decline in the North rests in the advancement of industrial capitalism and Western imperialism (Bandarage 1999:24) as well as neocolonial practices and policies such as the proliferation of Third World debt and Structural Adjustment Programs. Blaming womens overbreeding like blaming immigrants for environmental destruction ignores the larger picture, including the role of the white supremacist capitalist-patriarchal system in perpetuating poverty, alienation, war, environmental devastation and hunger; otherwise stated, it ignores the structural causes of all the above. Nevertheless, it is the greening of hate (Silliman 1999:xii), or contemporary linkages between environmental security and overpopulation (as well as illegal immigration), that has captured the imagination of many mainstream environmental security scholars, and it is the greening of hate that reflects and supports the enemy creation process characteristic of mainstream IR security discourse environmental security included.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkFeminine Victims
42 Gender
Depicting situations of crisis places the feminine into the ever-present position of victim while the masculine, state actor is necessary to be the protector which reinforces gender stereotypes V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 98-99
These effects are not simply an academic concern because the definitions they take for granted are promoted outside of academic disciplines as well. Consider the focus of television news on "spectacular" (rather than everyday) events: wars, weapons, violence, crises, men as leaders/ legislators/protectors and women as dependents/victims. The leaders we see tend to be heads of government of countries that are geopolitically powerful or of foreign policy significance. Otherwise, international news is almost exclusively viewed through the lens of various crises: seemingly hopeless extremities of governmental, military, economic, refugee, population, health, food, water, fuel, and/or ecological breakdown. (The exception is international sports, which foster instead nationalist "ownership" of outstanding performances of individuals and teams--virtually all men except during the Olympics.) In these accounts, gender issues remain invisible in various ways. Attention to wars and spectacles is at the expense of everyday, maintenance activities that in fact are a precondition of the world's continuing to "work." The latter are largely ignored, yet they are the activities occupying women's--most people's--lives. To the extent that women appear in depictions of politics, they tend to be acting "like men" ( Thatcher) or in supporting roles to the main/male actors (for instance, as wives, secretaries). In depictions of crises, women (or what Cynthia Enloe has termed "womenandchildren") 80 are the ever-present victims in need of protection by men or through male-defined programs. Not inconsistent with the crisis picture, women occasionally appear as saints and crusaders ( Mother Theresa, Princess Diana), whose model of sacrifice and commitment spurs men on to greater feats of protection (or competitive performance). Here, the "value given to female roles emphasizes gender polarity, thus strengthening male roles as the dominant structure." 81 Again, not only are women and their activities depicted as secondary to (or merely in support of) men's publicsphere pursuits, but also the way in which women make an appearance tends to reinforce rather than challenge conventional gender stereotypes. From manner of dress and demeanor to lifestyle and sexual orientation, we rarely observe any blurring of rigid gender boundaries in the mainstream media. Left in place are androcentric accounts that obscure women as powerful actors/leaders across a spectrum of political activities, that deny the politics and societal importance of ostensibly private-sphere activities, and that mystify the role of masculinism (ideologically and structurally) in the continued subordination of women and perpetuation of multiple social hierarchies. In short, the gender dynamics of politics--especially international politics-remain invisible as long as women "appear" only when they adopt masculine principles or epitomize feminine ones.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkProstitution/Sex Trafficking
43 Gender
Attempts to eradicate sex trafficking and prostitution without a gendered analysis on the promotion of these services by the global economy fail and continue to reinforce masculinity Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 137-138
A further aspect of global political economy which has attracted the interest of feminist scholars, is the rapid growth of sex tourism, or prostitution, which is linked to the expansion of the tourist industry. In a number of countries tourism has become an important earner of foreign currency. In Thailand, the Philippines, the Caribbean, West Africa and Brazil, the growing sex industry is linked closely with the expansion of tourism and is inextricably linked to the problems of debt and development strategies.27 Sex tourism does not just involve women, although it is overwhelmingly women who are drawn into this particular form of prostitution frequently women who have been displaced as a direct consequence of development strategies. Nor can prostitution be viewed solely from the perspective of tourism. Nevertheless it is conditioned by the demands of a stratified global market and the impact of development policies which are themselves conditioned by global economic processes.28 Thahn Dan has suggested that prostitution is itself becoming a globally traded commodity. The growing integration of the tourist industry which links countries, hotel chains and package-holiday firms is a crucial enabling factor which allows spare capacity in airline seats and hotel beds to be matched with the demand for esoteric sexual services. With the growing globalization of capital, one finds the spread of prostitution. It is, Thahn Dan claims, no accident that Bangkok and Manila, both major cities which have experienced massive growth in prostitution in recent years are also both major centres for multinational corporations and regional centres for global organizations. Increasingly the issue of prostitution needs a global analysis.29 Enloe argues that sex tourism is both a part of the global political system and the global economy and the fact that it is not taken seriously says more about the ideological construction of seriousness than the politics of tourism.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkPublic/Private Partnerships
44 Gender
The incorporation of the private sector into the public sector further marginalizes womyn completely disassociating them from positions of power V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 103-104
Globalization is significantly complicating where power is located. We have focused in this chapter on women as state and interstate actors because, in international relations, power is traditionally assumed to be concentrated in the "public" bodies of states and IGOs. However, as we have indicated, the corporate or "private" sector now exercises an inordinate amount of power in the international system. Numerous commentators on globalization have observed that states and IGOs are increasingly more accountable to corporate interests than to citizens or the world community. 97 Many feminist observers have also noted that just as women are making gains in national legislatures and international parliaments, power is shifting from these politically accountable electoral bodies to largely autonomous, economically driven actors such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the European Commission, to which few or no women have been appointed at senior levels. 98 Moreover, the paucity of women at senior levels in corporation boardrooms ensures that women have little influence over either corporate or economic IGO policies. Under these conditions, the traditional public-private gender dichotomy is somewhat altered. Women remain associated with the "private sphere" of the home and family; however, they are almost completely disassociated from the rising power of the "private sector," which is characterized as highly masculinist. In relation to the masculinized private sector, the "public sector" of the state appears more feminized (that is, increasingly beholden to private sector interests), even though women are still not heavily represented in most states. Nevertheless, the state, in the contemporary rhetoric of neoliberal globalization proponents and conservative budget cutters, is increasingly criticized for being economically inefficient and "too soft" on such "domestic" issues as social welfare and crime. In such scenarios, the state or the public sector is characterized as "too feminine" and, thus, must be disciplined by "hard" economic austerity measures. This discipline typically takes the form of privatization, 99 in which many activities that have been traditionally state funded and controlled--such as education, social welfare, health care, social security, prisons, and even some forms of law enforcement and national defense--are given over to private corporations to run. It is associated with the erosion of the welfare state, turning public citizens into private consumers and reducing political (and moral) issues to matters of economic efficiency. (The gendered effects of privatization and resistances to it will be discussed further in Chapters 4 and 5.) This devaluation and diminution of the public sector is a very ominous trend, especially in policy and program areas where women are most heavily concentrated as state leaders, workers, and social welfare recipients. Not only is it creating what many are calling a "democratic deficit," but it also substantially reduces the political space for women to gain power and use it to achieve feminist goals of equity, nonviolence, social and economic justice, and environmental protection.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkEnvironment
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Attempts to modify the environment entrench the masculine states repressive control and exploitation over everything natural which is inclusive of the feminine Anne S. Runyan, is director of womens studies and associate professor of political science at Wright State
University The "State" of Nature: A Garden Unfit for Women and Other Living Things Gendered States ed. V. Spike Peterson 1992, p. 123-124 Like nature, women, too, have served as central and omnipresent symbols underpinning justifications for political authority. In particular, it is women's long association with nature in Western political discourse that has given them a "privileged" position in the construction of not only the political, but also the patriarchal authority of the state. As Donna Haraway has pointed out, by writing "the themes of race, sexuality, gender, nation, family, and class ... into the body of nature," 2 Western political and scientific thought can be seen as a story about "the construction of the self from the raw material of the other, the appropriation of nature in the production of culture, the ripening of the human from the soil of the animal, the clarity of white from the obscurity of color, the issue of man from the body of woman, the elaboration of gender from the resource of sex, the emergence of mind by the activation of body." 3 In Western political thought, the state becomes both representative of and a mediator for the production of white, Western, patriarchal culture from nature. By taking on the perceived role of nature as orderer and balancer, the state has made women, people of color, and the natural world with which they have become associated the objects of its taming function. Given this dialectical relationship between those things deemed "natural" and the political authority of the state, it is contended here that anthropomorphic, androcentric, and racist metaphors of "nature" have been instrumental in the construction of the metaphysics of the modem, Western state. Whether the state has been viewed as continuous with nature (as in pre Enlightenment ideologies) or juxtaposed to nature (as in Enlightenment ideologies), its metaphysics has read order, unity, and an intolerance of difference into both nature and the body politic. This has led to a suppression and exploitation of all those things that are defined as "natural" (including, for example, animals, women, and people of color) and that do not fit into the designs of the white, Western man and his state. It is also argued that more ecocentric and gynocentric conceptions of nature, designed to counter the repressive characteristics of modem state control over the "natural," are also problematic, for they, too, assume that nature is a source of order, unity, and harmony. There are, however, some ecofeminist perspectives that resist unified metaphors of nature, choosing to exit from the cultivated "garden" of white, Western man and his state and to enter into a more "fractious" and just politics through which people's relationships with each other and with nature can be redefined.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkEnvironmental Security
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Environmental security discourse mimics national security discourses gendered creation of the other that justifies the genocidal eradication of the other which is often presented as being those in developing countries Jessica LeAnn Urban, teaches in the Womens Studies Program and for the Multicultural Queer Studies Minor at
Humboldt University Constructing Blame: Overpopulation, Environmental Security and International Relations August 2001 http://www.wid.msu.edu/resources/papers/pdf/WP273.pdf Historically, ecological concerns have not been a primary area of focus for mainstream IR scholars, and similarly, issues of gender and race have garnered little, if any, attention. The androcentrism, anthropocentrism and hegemony of whiteness characteristic of much mainstream IR scholarship, however, have been exposed and challenged from a variety of positions. In response, many scholars have broadened the scope of IR to include issues of gender, race, class and the environment and have drawn attention to the necessity of expanded definitions of security and violence within the field definitions which recognize environmental security and other issues of low politics as legitimate, if not essential, components of IR. In this paper, I argue that despite these strides, the discourse of the emerging mainstream environmental security paradigm mimics traditional IR security discourse. In both, gender, class, nation and race are crucial to the political mobilization of identity and the enemy-creation process characteristic of IR; raced, classed and gendered others are represented as threats to national security. For mainstream environmental security discourse, overpopulation in non-Western countries captures a lions share of attention and, like traditional security discourse in IR, the bodies of women act as an important site for its construction. The creation of raced, classed and gendered others serves to legitimize Western neocolonial efforts in so-called developing (read backwards) countries. As a result, often coercive if not genocidal population control programs targeting non-Western women (and women of color and poor women in the US) have been justified by virtue of the status of these women and communities as other.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkEnvironment/Development
47 Gender
Representations of nature, especially in terms of development, render womyn as a piece of objectified nature and constitute a threat to life itself Jessica LeAnn Urban, teaches in the Womens Studies Program and for the Multicultural Queer Studies Minor at
Humboldt University Constructing Blame: Overpopulation, Environmental Security and International Relations August 2001 http://www.wid.msu.edu/resources/papers/pdf/WP273.pdf Postcolonial feminists as well as many indigenist and ecofeminist scholars also scrutinize mainstream representations of nature as previously noted and their link to representations of women. Sturgeon explains that analysis of womens oppression through the lens of environmentalism suggests that if women are equated with nature, their struggle for freedom represents a challenge to the idea of a passive, disembodied, and objectified nature (Sturgeon 1997b:263). The Western development model and as Shiva notes, the dominant mode of organizing the world more generally views nature and women as subservient and disposable, and the universalization of these constructions has led to the destruction of nature and the subjugation of women (Shiva 1989:223). Furthermore the foundations of the global capitalist economy are themselves antiecological with the oppression of women, racism and ecological destructiondirectly linked to economic exploitation (Kirk 1997:349). The sources of environmental degradation are the motives, worldviews and priorities afforded by dominant economic and political institutions (Kirk 1997:346) or, in other words, white supremacist capitalist-patriarchy. Womens survival struggles, such as the Chipko movement in India and the Kenyan womens green belt movement, among others, challenge the dominant Western model of knowledge production, arguing that the exclusion of life as a central organizing principle in society has rendered it, as well as the dominant Western paradigm of development and white supremacist capitalist-patriarchy more generally, a threat to life itself (Shiva 1989:224; Kirk 1997:346).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkAnthro
48 Gender
Attempts to extend humyn rights to nature without a gendered lens creates a world where humyns are simply members of the biotic community, allowing for the monitoring and exploitation of womyns reproduction Anne S. Runyan, is director of womens studies and associate professor of political science at Wright State
University The "State" of Nature: A Garden Unfit for Women and Other Living Things Gendered States ed. V. Spike Peterson 1992 p. 129-130 This attempt to return home in order to counter the instrumentalist project of trying to recreate home by defining "nature" (and all those creatures associated with it such as women, people of color, animals, etc.) "as a standing reserve" is fraught with problems of its own. Even though natural holists effectively critique environmental managers for their thoroughgoing anthropomorphismwhich leads to a logic of mastery over nature at any costanthropomorphism also lurks in the heart of natural holism. This is most obvious in attempts to extend human rights to animals, insects, plants, and rocks. Not only does this impose human purpose upon nonhuman life, but it also continues to construe nature's "rights as human conveniences." 32 The anthropomorphism of natural holists may check the Promethean urge towards mastery, but it does not eradicate it. Moreover, as philosopher of science Kristin Shrader-Frechette has observed, where all have the same rights, there is no way to adjudicate whose take priority when these rights come into conflict. 33 This question becomes particularly problematic when we see how women's rights have become juxtaposed to nature's rights, both despite and because of women's continual association with nature. As Lin Nelson points out, "the bleak, sometimes horrific, conditions that oppress us are created not only by polluters, but also by the architects of policy, science, and health care who at best patch things up with distracting, ineffective, and sometimes dangerous 'solutions.'" 34 These solutions entail ever greater control over women's bodies and lives. Construed as more vulnerable to contaminants, women's bodies become sites of inspection to determine ecological health or illness. As Nelson notes, "many of us would applaud the undertakings of selective researchers, provided that we are guaranteed our rights as research subjects, or, better yet that we are involved in initiating and guiding research. But all too often it doesn't happen that way." 35 Moreover, women's reproduction is closely monitored by state policymakers and scientists because female fecundity represents the danger of overpopulation, particularly in the Third World. Finally, for the good of their own "reproductive environment" and the "rights of the fetus," women workers are treated as a special protected class, denied jobs in the swiftly proliferating polluted workplaces of the world economy. Even when the anthropomorphic (and androcentric) extension of human rights strategy is elided into a more ecocentric or biocentric view commonly espoused by deep ecologists and many ecofeminists, there still lurks a logic that "nature is designed for us and we designed to fit it." 36 J. Baird Callicott, for example, acknowledges that the notion that human beings "are only 'plain members and citizens' of the biotic community" can lead to an "environmental fascism," wherein human beings, who put the greatest pressure on the environment's carrying capacity, would be required to cut back their numbers. 37 The lack of any gender analysis in this context, once again, places special burdens and controls on women, particularly women of color.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkPositivism
49 Gender
Positivism and postpositivism are tools used to exclude feminism Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p59]
I think, however, that the previously mentioned issues are only part of the answer. The real problem goes much deeper. The disciplining of the discipline is carried out through the dominance of positivistic and neopositivistic epistemologies, which have the power to define what counts as an answer to the questions asked by the discipline. 15 This dominance and the realist agenda filter research; thus only liberal feminist concerns have been considered acceptable in IR theory. Many feminist writings in IR have shared a common fate with a host of radical perspectives determined to challenge the dominance of realism.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkSexual Rights
50 Gender
Allowing the masculine state to determine the legality and morality of sexual choices sustains the notion of security that is prioritized by hegemonic societies and leads to cultural violence Jessica Horn, manages women's rights and minority rights granting, Sigrid Rausing Trust, UK, Re-righting the sexual body Feminist Africa: Issue 6 September 2006, www.feministafrica.org/Feminist%20Africa%206.indd.pdf
In a direct challenge to the othering of homosexuality in Africa, there is a growing body of research, documentation and artistic expression by and about same-sex desiring African women. The recently released edited collection Tommy Boys, Lesbian Men and Ancestral Wives (Morgan and Wieringa, eds. 2005), reviewed in this volume, captures some of these stories from women in East and Southern Africa. Contributions from South Africa and Kenya document the presence of customary marriages between women, despite attempts by colonial rulers and missionary churches to suppress them. This adds to research by Chacha (2003) and others into traditional forms of same-sex marriages between women, which are socially recognised and often entail the formal exchange of bride price. Individual narratives also reveal the discovery and creation of new names and new sub-cultures that transgress gendered and sexual norms, affirming womens roles as authors of culture. It must be borne in mind that in all the contexts under review, women do this amidst the constant policing of their sexuality by friends, family and the public. Appraising the situation in Tanzania, for instance, Sophie Musa Mohammed (2005: 54) points out that contemporary heteronormative culture results not only in social ostracism for lesbians, but that lesbian womens rights to health, work, education, and meaningful participation in society can be disregarded with impunity. Many women interviewed in her collection assert the need for a right to privacy concerning the intrusion of the state into their personal decisions. This includes the right to choose whether and how to express their sexual identity, and with whom. But such sexual agency is often exercised at a heavy personal cost. There is also little institutional or social support for individuals facing discrimination or simply navigating their own emotions and possible choices. Needless to say, the extent of the negative attention the issue of sexual choice has received at a legislative level and in popular discussion across Africa suggests the degree of threat it is believed to pose to the functioning of hegemonic societies. Such hegemony endows otherwise subaltern men with a sense of being entitled to police womens sexuality and commit hate crimes against same-sex desiring women in the name of a so-called collective good. This hegemony also makes it possible to accuse anyone who unveils the history and presence of other sexualities in our midst of cultural treason. And as hate crimes against lesbians and threats against vocal activists persist, we know that death is often set as the sentence.9 It seems clear, then, that the use of culture to sanction the erasure of dialogue about alternative sexualities, and to condone homophobia, constitutes a form of cultural violence.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkGlobalization/Corporations
51 Gender
Corporate involvement in developmental projects in Africa replicates colonial domination, reinforcing gender-based hierarchies and racism Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 The majority of African countries are in crisis. Economic domination through corporate globalization is the primary global strategy for economic growth. The resulting development paradigm is re-colonization through the reproduction of hegemonic tendencies that facilitate the movement of trans-national capital. Protracted recession, the debt burden, Structural Adjustment Programmes, externally-controlled privatization and an emphasis on exports are creating a cultural crisis of major proportions. The marginalization of Africa through corporate globalization has led to widespread poverty, the destruction of many African economies, social dislocation and civil strife. This is compounded by the erosion of the life- supporting capacities of many African ecosystems. Authoritarian regimes and gender-based discrimination complete the picture. Global economic processes are producing new dimensions of structural racism through North/South and Black/White polarizations. The United Nations conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa last year recognized the correlation between corporate globalization and racism and emphasized the gendered dimensions of this correlation. Racialized women, become recruited into the international labor force as cheap sources of unprotected and migratory labor and as objects of sex tourism, trafficking and domestic servitude. The overwhelming evidence seems to suggest that gender based hierarchies and gender subordination combined with structural racism are being reinforced by globalization African women are among the most severely affected. (Steady, 2002). The study of gender in Africa cannot escape the realities of post-colonial domination. Through the reproduction of coloniallike policies supported by international financial institutions and international corporate laws, the patriarchal ideologies of colonization are being reproduced through globalization. It is no surprise then that despite significant epistemological challenges of the post-modernist era, Eurocentric concepts, methodologies and paradigms in the study of gender in Africa over the last 30 years continue. They remain the compelling and pervasive force in presenting one dimensional, frozen and simplified writings about women in Africa. This paper examines the impact of external concepts, methodologies and paradigms in the study of gender in Africa as supporting academic structures validating the exploitation of Africa. It also proposes African-centered approaches based on an understanding of African socio-cultural realities, feminist traditions and philosophies. The aim is to develop gender-focused frameworks of analysis that can bring out the multiple and varied social locations of African women while maintaining their specific identities and priorities and developing linkages with other women. Hopefully, this will allow for new approaches in gender research that will promote greater understanding of gender issues, gender equality, social transformation and womens empowerment. In this regard, the paper uses historical, cultural and post-modernist analyses to argue for an emphasis on culture. It also makes a case for the relevance of oppositional discourses. These approaches can best address and challenge both the continuities of patriarchal myths and tradition and the impact of colonial patriarchy and racism as they continue to be expressed in global economic domination.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkCorporations/Development/Econ
52 Gender
Corporate involvement and attempts to develop and integrate Africa into the global economy marginalizes African countries and womyn due to the structural disadvantages of distribution of power Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 Post-colonial and postmodern discourses are providing a revisionist examination of epistemologies and paradigms. They are challenging and reframing many of the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings that are derived from a strongly positivistic, universalizing and evolutionary tradition of Western scholarship. They are concerned with the historical and modern imperatives of the global political economy. It is within this trajectory that gender research in Africa can yield the best results. Eurocentric paradigms can lead to an abstract mapping of systems of stratification rather than to a more profound interrogation of the very institutions that determine such lines and parameters of social inquiry. The widespread poverty among women in Africa requires an understanding of the construction of social inequality at the global level which privileges some countries and its men and women, (primarily among groups in the North) at the expense of others, notably in the South. Revisionist historiography and the work of Diop, Bernal, UNESCO, Black Studies programs and Afro-centric paradigms are challenging the tenacity of scientific racism posing as scholarship. Revisionist historians, economists and other social scientists focusing on the impact of the international political economy on Africa have made significant contributions in challenging the scientific colonialism and racism inherent in Eurocentric scholarship. Rodneys How Europe underdeveloped Africa was a major milestone in this development and has been reinforced by dependency theorists. Their studies provide a basis for understanding how and why the underdevelopment of Africa has continued and how it has become intensified through corporate globalization. (Rodney, 1981; Amin, 1974; 1997; Bernal, 1987; Asante, 1990; Amadiume, 1997; Fall, 1999; Pheko, 2002). Corporate globalization, supported by neo-liberal paradigms, is the process that directs the market with the aim of ensuring the unfettered flow of transnational capital. In this process, nation states are rendered powerless through laws that protect multinational cooperation and that are regulated by the World Trade Organization. International financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF impose conditionalities of Structural Adjustment Programmes designed to promote macro-economic stability and through loans that stifle the economic growth of countries of the South. The result is a reverse resource flow thought debt servicing of at least 14 billion U.S. dollars a year from Africa to the affluent nations in the North. This is greater than the amount received in real international aid. Corporate globalization is increasing marginalization of African countries in the global economy, a process that transcends gender but that has gender implications. Globalization has a compounded effect on women because of certain structural disadvantages in the global and national division of labor and inequalities in the distribution of assets and power.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkConflation of Sex/Gender
53 Gender
Conflating sex and gender ignores that gender is a social construct, assuming that gender is fixed like biological sex reinforces masculine domination J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
Masculinity and politics have a long and close association. Characteristics associated with "manliness," such as toughness, courage, power, independence, and even physical strength, have, throughout history, been those most valued in the conduct of politics, particularly international politics. Frequently, manliness has also been associated with violence and the use of force, a type of behavior that, when conducted in the international arena, has been valorized and applauded in the name of defending one's country. This celebration of male power, particularly the glorification of the male warrior, produces more of a gender dichotomy than exists in reality for, as R. W. Connell points out, this stereotypical image of masculinity does not fit most men. Connell suggests that what he calls "hegemonic masculinity," a type of culturally dominant masculinity that he distinguishes from other subordinated masculinities, is a socially constructed cultural ideal that, while it does not correspond to the actual personality of the majority of men, sustains patriarchal authority and legitimizes a patriarchal political and social order. 6 Hegemonic masculinity is sustained through its opposition to various subordinated and devalued masculinities, such as homosexuality, and, more important, through its relation to various devalued femininities. Socially constructed gender differences are based on socially sanctioned, unequal relationships between men and women that reinforce compliance with men's stated superiority. Nowhere in the public realm are these stereotypical gender images more apparent than in the realm of international politics, where the characteristics associated with hegemonic masculinity are projected onto the behavior of states whose success as international actors is measured in terms of their power capabilities and capacity for self-help and autonomy. Connell's definition of hegemonic masculinity depends on its opposition to and unequal relationship with various subordinated femininities. Many contemporary feminists draw on similarly socially constructed, or engendered, relationships in their definition of gender difference. Historically, differences between men and women have usually been ascribed to biology. But when feminists use the term gender today, they are not generally referring to biological differences between males and females, but to a set of culturally shaped and defined characteristics associated with masculinity and femininity. These characteristics can and do vary across time and place. In this view, biology may constrain behavior, but it should not be used "deterministically" or "naturally" to justify practices, institutions, or choices that could be other than they are. While what it means to be a man or a woman varies across cultures and history, in most cultures gender differences signify relationships of inequality and the domination of women by men.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkPomo/Non-feminist IR Ks
54 Gender
Postmodernism and non-feminist criticisms of realism merely perpetuate existing power structures Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p225-6 However, postpositivist contributions to IR still tend to perpetuate the abstract rationalism of Western philosophy, and many remain gender-blind. Through the examination of some of the intersections between academic discourse and popular culture, some postmodern scholarship has also been shown to resonate with a masculinist discourse of globalization that promotes a new, informal, technocratic form of Anglo-American hegemonic masculinity. This is an important point because it undermines some poststructuralist claims to be radically undermining the disciplinary power structures of modernity. Clearly, a number of nonfeminist poststructuralists are failing to disrupt, effectively, one of the major disciplinary power structures of modernitythat of gender difference and gender inequality. Not only are they in fact failing to challenge the gender order, but in the case of contributors such as Der Derian and Virilio, their playfully ironic technolanguage games are probably actually helping to update and reinvigorate an AngloAmerican hegemonic masculinity. What is being challenged, in gender terms, is not the overall disciplinary effect of modern IR discourse, but rather the specific, arguably outdated, models of hegemonic masculinity that inhabit modern perspectives within the discipline. This challenge merely perpetuates existing masculinist rivalries, albeit with a new twist, and offers continuity with modern perspectives in IR, rather than the promised radical upheaval. This has implications not only for the unequal position of women, but also does little to help marginalized groups of men and subordinate masculinities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkMilitarism
55 Gender
Militarism utilizes misogynistic rhetoric to build up their desired masculinity in order to fight and control the feminine Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 93
It has been argued that the military plays a special role in the ideological structure of patriarchy because the notion of combat plays such a central role in the construction of manhood and justification of the superiority of men in the social order.59 In the armed forces there is a deliberate cultivation of a dominance-orientated masculinity. A boy is not born a soldier, he becomes a soldier. Becoming a soldier means learning to control fears and domestic longings that are explicitly labelled feminine.60 The army seems to engender in men an infantile sexuality.61 Effeminate young soldiers are also frequently the victims of bullying, because of the intense loathing of homosexuality that exists among both the officer corps and regular soldiers.62 Militarists use the myth of wars manliness to define soldierly behaviour and to reward soldiers. Ruddick argues that boot-camp recruits are ladies until trained in obedient killing.63 Only then do they become real men. Misogyny is a useful element in the making of a soldier as boys are goaded into turning on and grinding down whatever in themselves is womanly. This dominanceorientated masculinity is cultivated in the rigours of basic training and in the manners of the officer corps.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkGender
56 Gender
The term gender has been depoliticized preventing radical restructuring of political, economic, and social structures. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
The shift from women to gender has occurred not only in the feminist development literature but also in development policy circles; however, this move is not without its critics, who claim that it has refocused attention away from women, sometimes even back to vulnerable men, an issue that was raised about feminist theories more generally in chapter 1. The mainstreaming of gender has also created a disjuncture between the feminist intent behind the term, which was to focus on hierarchical and unequal social relations, and the way gender is being employed in certain policy circles to talk only about womens issues; this has the effect of minimizing the political and contested character of relations between women and men. When gender is used descriptively to refer to women rather than analytically to underscore unequal relations between women and men, questions of power can easily be removed; critics suggest that it is ironic that a term intended to carry a political message has been so depoliticized in many policy arenas.89 This has the effect of removing from debate any radical restructuring of political, economic, and social relations, a goal to which many IR feminists have dedicated their work.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkCapitalism
57 Gender
Capitalism disadvantages women by relegating them to low-paying jobs and roles. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
While some liberals would celebrate a borderless world, feminists today see a world in which boundaries divide rich and poor. These are boundaries that cannot be eliminated by market forces alone; frequently they are racialized and gendered. Although feminists disagree over whether there is a necessary connection between patriarchy and capitalism, most of them believe that women continue to be disadvantaged relative to men by a global gendered division of labor that relegates them disproportionately to unremunerated subsistence or household tasks or to low-paying jobs and roles; these jobs/roles, in responding to new demands for flexible labor, are effectively subsidizing global capitalism. While these roles change in response to international competition and the needs of states trying to compete in the face of the forces of economic globalization, they are not always contributing to womens economic security or well-being (or, for that matter, to underpaid mens). Feminists are particularly interested in the local/global dynamic. Using analysis that starts at the local level, they have examined the extent to which global economic forces penetrate as far down as the household and how activities in the local arena sustain and support global capitalism, often at the expense of those on the margins.
The combination of patriarchy and capitalism creates an ideology of what a good woman should be. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey. Cambridge University Press. 2001, p.169 - 70
Maria Mies (1986) explores this proposition using a feminist empiricist adaptation of world-systems theory. She traces the historical emergence of two male-identified societies in the world-system: the class society of capitalism, which world-systems theorists acknowledge, and the unacknowledged society of patriarchy. Of the two, patriarchy is older, perhaps for reasons of biology: women could produce without tools through pregnancy and lactation, while men could not and became the more tool-oriented, nature-dominating sex. Patriarchal society conditions women to be primarily household caretakers rather than keepers of the tools, symbols, and offices of the public sphere. Capitalism devalues women's traditional economic activities and remunerates women less when they become paid laborers. With this two-fisted structure in the foreground, Mies looks closely at the new international division of labor. She argues that a capitalist patriarchal redivision of the world encourages third world women to enter income-generating export sectors, and western women, increasingly involved in non-household production, to define themselves as consumers, often of those third world products. A seeming differentiation of tasks, however, belies a commonality across both sites of women: the intensification of the sexual division of labor such that women everywhere become defined mostly, and most disceptively, as housewives. In her words: The housewife is the optimal labour force for capital at this juncture and not the free proletarian , both in the underdeveloped and overdeveloped countries. Whereas the consumer-housewife in the West has to do more and more unpaid work in order to lower the costs for the realization of capital [like bringing her own bags to food stores], the producer-housewife in the colonies has to do more and more unpaid work in order to lower the production costs. Both categories of women are increasingly subjected not only to a manipulative ideology of what a modern , that is, good woman should be, but even more to direct measures of coercion, as visible in the Third World as far as birth control is concerned. (Mies, 1986:126) Women thereby form an unintended aggregation (Rosenau, 1981) separate from the real breadwinners. In revealing this separate society, Mies adds another, women-relevant logic to an already useful model of international political economy.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 LinkRealism vs. Idealism
58 Gender
The construction of realism versus idealism is a gender construction that posits the feminine as the weaker, disempowered idealism. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Feminist IR scholars, many of whom are skeptical of IRs scientific turn for the same reasons that postliberal feminists are skeptical of empiricism (discussed earlier), have tended to identify with the reflectivist side of the third debate. Even though scholars in the third debate have been slow to introduce gender into their analysis, this debate has opened up space for feminist perspectives in a way that previous debates did not. Most IR feminists firmly reject identification with either side of the first debate; even though IR scholars have frequently associated feminists with the idealist position, feminists see this association, like that between women and peace, as disempowering and likely to further reduce their being taken seriously.74 Just as Schmidt noted that defining the realist/idealist divide as a debate that delegitimized the idealist position, current attempts to associate feminists with idealism has a similar effect on delegitimizing feminist perspectives. Moreover, as feminists have pointed out, the construction of the realist/ idealist dichotomy is in itself implicitly gendered.75
59 Gender
**Impacts**
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactLaundry List
60 Gender
Masculine IR causes militarism, exploitation, environmental destruction, and scientific crises Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p86]
Whereas we think it important to avoid what Halliday calls "precipitate totalization," 9 we also think it worthwhile to recognize the very real connections between the domination of masculine paradigms in intellectual debate, on the one hand, and personal insecurity in the late twentieth century, the development of industrial capitalism, and ecological destruction, on the other. The recognition of these connections is nothing new; both Peterson and Tickner unpackage IR in this way ( Peterson 1992, 32; Tickner 1992). However, the relation between these connections and the dispute between realist and liberal forms of masculinity must also be recognized (see Chapter 1). The shift from hierarchical to spatial world orders that occurred after the Middle Ages created an international realm in which the hypermasculinity of the warrior developed and finally flourished as realist hypermasculinity within the discipline of international relations. The intellectual response to conservatism from the Enlightenment produced a conception of reason that laid the foundations of the "rational man" of the following centuries of capitalist development. Finally, the liberal conception of progress as the natural outgrowth of increasing rationality produced the critical liberal conception of the gradual mastery of man over nature. The consequences are readily itemizable: (1) realist hypermasculinity is responsible for the emergence and eventual militarization of the state system with its imagery of protector/protected, inside/outside, and order/anarchy--a situation in which security for the few is bought at the cost of insecurity of the many ( Luckham 1983); (2) liberal masculinity's notions of competition, individuality, and rational economic man has meant prosperity for the few and exploitation of the many ( Wallerstein 1974; Amin 1974); (3) liberal conceptions of progress have fostered a split between man and nature where nature is to be dominated and is consequently responsible for the widespread degradation of the global environment ( Crosby 1986); (4) both liberal and realist conceptions of masculinity have been responsible for the fostering of the belief in the discovery of predictable regularities through which "science" can reveal eternal truths about "man" and "nature." This has allowed (hu)manity to ignore the myriad warning signs of imminent catastrophe ( Peterson 1992; Tickner 1992).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactWar/Domestic Violence
61 Gender
Privileging masculinity without recognizing the linkages between different types of violence makes womyns oppression, war and domestic violence inevitable Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 101-102
Radical feminists claim that so long as the privileging of masculinity is inherent in the political system women will face the consequences, while at the same time being seen as part of the innocent, the weak and the protected. As such, war for women will be inherent in the system. In this view, to continue to draw an absolute distinction between war and other forms of male violence without recognizing the linkages obscures the real problem, which is patriarchy. The links between domestic violence and war go deeper than soldiers, brutalized by their experiences, beating their wives. Rather, there is an intricate relationship between the construction of masculinity and patriotism and violence. War and domestic violence are, in a symbolic but still meaningful sense, linked. Many radical feminist thinkers involved in the peace movement believe that the insights that arise from womens particular relation to violence mean that issues of war, peace and security can be approached from a feminist standpoint. That is, the particular experiences of women can be used as a point of departure from which to construct an understanding of violence that makes gender central to the explanation, not because of womens traditional roles or essential biology, but because women stand in a relationship to violence which is unique among oppressed groups. Feminist peace activists claim that for women the oppressors are found among immediate family or lovers, and that terror for women is the quiet pervasive ordinary terror which happens in the home.100 In this view, not only is war part of womens daily existence, but war, violence and womens oppression all grow from the same root. Military institutions and states are inseparable from patriarchy. War is not then, as realists and neo-realists would hold, rooted in the nature of man or the anarchy of the international realm. However, the hegemony of a dominance-orientated masculinity sets the dynamics of the social relations in which alLare forced to participate. Some feminists argue that patriarchal societies have an inherent proclivity towards war because of the supreme value placed on control and the natural male tendency towards displays of physical force.101 Though primarily concerned with the discourse of war, politics and citizenship, Hartsock argues that the association of power with masculinity and virility has very real consequences. She argues that it gives rise to a view of community both in theory and in fact obsessed with the revenge and structured by conquest and domination102 Furthermore, according to Hartsock, the opposition of man to woman and perhaps even man to man is not simply a transitory opposition of arbitrary interests, but an opposition resting on a deep-going threat to existence. She argues that we re-encounter in the context of gender, as in class, the fact that the experience of the ruling group, or gender, cannot be simply dismissed as false.103 This raises the question of how we conceptualize and understand not only the patriarchal state, but also the relationship between the patriarchal nation-state requiring in the context of competitive struggle with other states militarism and internal hierarchy.04
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactExtinction
62 Gender
Without rejecting the system of dominance by the masculine and the prevalence of patriarchal power extinction is inevitable Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 102-103
If liberal feminists are correct in their view of the state as a neutral arbiter, rather than a patriarchal power, and if womens inequality is largely a consequence of bias, it is possible that attitudes towards women in the military would change over time as women proved themselves, just as they have in other spheres from which they were once excluded. However, for many feminists the proper question to ask is not how womens status can be furthered by participation in the military, but how women and other outsiders might focus their opposition to military institutions and strengthen institutions to build peace-orientated communities. As Stiehm acknowledges, even if women were to participate in combat roles, and were accepted, it would not solve the problem of their relation to other states protectors and protected, a relationship which feminists should be concerned to problematize. It seems that, while recognition of the close linkages between citizenship and participation in combat is an obvious starting point for feminists in their quest for gender equality, it may be that NOWs brand of equal opportunity or integrationist feminism could merely function to reinforce the military as an institution and militarism as an ideology by perpetuating the notion that the military is central to the entire social order and thereby perpetuate a gendered order which damages both women and men. Human survival may depend upon breaking the linkage between masculinity, military capacity and death. It is for feminists and others committed to peace to provide new thinking about the nature of politics, to redefine political community and our ideas of citizenship and, in so doing, confront the barracks community directly with its fear of the feminine . Feminist challenges to dominant conceptions of citizenship, political community and security and feminist revisions are the subject of chapter 5.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactWar
63 Gender
Constructions of masculine identities as preferable make war inevitable as a construction of hostility for the female other Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 99
Those working from within the assumptions of the orthodoxy, do not make gender an explicit part of their analysis of war. However, it is clear that there is a crucial linkage between the construction of masculinity, femininity and the making of war. Chapter 3, in part, touched on the way in which struggles to carve out a place and identity for the imagined community of the nation-state involve practices which demarcate the boundary between insiders and outsiders, citizens and foreigners. War is central to the process of carving out political spaces and identities. War has been understood in social and political terms, resulting from social conflict and intimately connected to constructions of national identities and the pursuit of national interests. However, radical and psychoanalytic feminist thinkers have argued that this process of constructing identities and boundaries can be seen as but one manifestation of an underlying psychosexual drama in which masculinity is forged, affirmed and reaffirmed. In this view, therefore, if, as Clausewitz maintained,93 war is the continuation of politics by other means, it has been constructed out of hostility towards the female other.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactConflict
64 Gender
Eliminating gender hierarchies is a prerequisite to reducing the likelihood of conflict. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Feminists have claimed that the likelihood of conflict will not diminish until unequal gender hierarchies are reduced or eliminated; the privileging of characteristics associated with a stereotypical masculinity in states foreign policies contributes to the legitimization not only of war but of militarization more generally. Wary of what they see as gendered dichotomies that have pitted realists against idealists and led to overly simplistic assumptions about warlike men and peaceful women,17 certain feminists are cautioning against the association of women with peace, a position that, they believe, disempowers both women and peace. The growing numbers of women in the military also challenges and complicates these essentialist stereotypes. To this end, and as part of their effort to rethink concepts central to the field, feminists define peace and security, not in idealized ways often associated with women, but in broad, multidimensional terms that include the elimination of social hierarchies such as gender that lead to political and economic injustice.
Their system of masculinisation results in conflict among all groups Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p220-1 While deriving insights from feminism on the construction of gender identities and the nature of masculinism, masculine gender identities have been theorized here in a more fluid way than is generally found in feminist literature. Relationships between masculinities have been characterized as not only hierarchical, but also as involving much rivalry, jostling for position, change, and synthesis. In the micropolitics of masculinities, multiple interpretive wars are waged using strategies of masculinization and feminization, a few of which have been mapped above. Thus masculinism can be seen to involve not just the elevation of masculinity over femininity, but also the elevation of some types of masculinity over others. This type of theorizing has the advantage of capturing some of the complexity of gender politics. It avoids both an overly static picture of what is actually an everchanging reality and the dualism that has dogged much feminist scholarship. It can also avoid the pitfalls of voluntarism, on the one hand, and cultural determinism, on the other, through careful attention to historical context and an awareness of the ongoing interplay between all three dimensions of embodiment, institutional practices, and discursive formations in the construction of gender identities. It is to be hoped that future feminist theorizing of gender identities will continue to move away from static conceptions and toward more open-ended analyses of the processes of gender identification. The perspective developed here is hopefully a step in this direction, and although the focus of this book has been on the relationship between masculinities and international relations, the approach is intended to have more widespread applications.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactEnvironment
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Maintaining flawed conceptions of gender allows for the continuance of the logic of domination all systems of oppression are interlinked and without attempting to change our conception of gender ecological and social crisis will be inevitable Cuomo, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Womens Studies at the University of Cincinnati, 2002 (Chris,
Ethics & the Environment, p.3) I take that phrase power and promise, an unusually optimistic measure for anything in the contemporary discipline of philosophy, from the title of Karen Warrens widely-read and often reprinted 1991 essay, The Power and Promise of Ecological Feminism. That essay includes an argument that is basic to Warrens Ecofeminist Philosophy, and that is commonly characterized as the fundamental insight of ecofeminism. The view argued for is that a logic of domination that divides the world into bifurcated hierarchies is basic to all forms of oppression and domination. This logic (which Warren also calls a conceptual framework) is a way of thinking that encourages separating from and mistreating nature and members of subordinated groups, for no good reason. In addition, the conceptual frameworks that are used to justify racism, sexism, and the mistreatment of nature (etc.), are interwoven and mutually reinforcing. Some ecofeminists find that the very aspects of identity and otherness (gender, race, class, species, etc.) are created through conceptual frameworks that encourage domination rather than connection, but Warren remains agnostic about such ontological issues. Her emphasis instead is on a more basic point - that the morally loaded concepts through which we understand ourselves and reality (and through which we humans have historically constructed knowledge) are at the core of the terrible ecological and social messes we currently face.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactPerpetuates Domination
66 Gender
Ignoring the hierarchical constructions of gender inherent in international relations and in society in general perpetuates them, allowing continued domination and subordination. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
Scott claims that the way in which our understanding of gender signifies relationships of power is through a set of normative concepts that set forth interpretations of the meanings of symbols. In Western culture, these concepts take the form of fixed binary oppositions that categorically assert the meaning of masculine and feminine and hence legitimize a set of unequal social relationships. 8 Scott and many other contemporary feminists assert that, through our use of language, we come to perceive the world through these binary oppositions. Our Western understanding of gender is based on a set of culturally determined binary distinctions, such as public versus private, objective versus subjective, self versus other, reason versus emotion, autonomy versus relatedness, and culture versus nature; the first of each pair of characteristics is typically associated with masculinity, the second with femininity. 9 Scott claims that the hierarchical construction of these distinctions can take on a fixed and permanent quality that perpetuates women's oppression: therefore they must be challenged. To do so we must analyze the way these binary oppositions operate in different contexts and, rather than accepting them as fixed, seek to displace their hierarchical construction. 10 When many of these differences between women and men are no longer assumed to be natural or fixed, we can examine how relations of gender inequality are constructed and sustained in various arenas of public and private life. In committing itself to gender as a category of analysis, contemporary feminism also commits itself to gender equality as a social goal. Extending Scott's challenge to the field of international relations, we can immediately detect a similar set of hierarchical binary oppositions. But in spite of the seemingly obvious association of international politics with the masculine characteristics described above, the field of international relations is one of the last of the social sciences to be touched by gender analysis and feminist perspectives. 11 The reason for this, I believe, is not that the field is gender neutral, meaning that the introduction of gender is irrelevant to its subject matter as many scholars believe, but that it is so thoroughly masculinized that the workings of these hierarchical gender relations are hidden. Framed in its own set of binary distinctions, the discipline of international relations assumes similarly hierarchical relationships when it posits an anarchic world "outside" to be defended against through the accumulation and rational use of power. In political discourse, this becomes translated into stereotypical notions about those who inhabit the outside. Like women, foreigners are frequently portrayed as "the other": nonwhites and tropical countries are often depicted as irrational, emotional, and unstable, characteristics that are also attributed to women. The construction of this discourse and the way in which we are taught to think about international politics closely parallel the way in which we are socialized into understanding gender differences. To ignore these hierarchical constructions and their relevance to power is therefore to risk perpetuating these relationships of domination and subordination. But before beginning to describe what the field of international relations might look like if gender were included as a central category of analysis, I shall give a brief historical overview of the field as it has traditionally been constructed.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactRape
67 Gender
Militarized IR spills over into society causing rape and domestic violence against women. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
The pervasiveness of internal conflict within states in the latter part of the twentieth century and the threats that militarized states pose to their own populations have called into question the realist assumption about the anarchy/order distinction. Critics of realism have also questioned the unitary actor assumption that renders the domestic affairs of states unproblematic when talking about their international behavior. Claiming that militarism, sexism, and racism are interconnected, most feminists would agree that the behavior of individuals and the domestic policies of states cannot be separated from states' behavior in the international system. 70 Feminists call attention to the particular vulnerabilities of women within states, vulnerabilities that grow out of hierarchical gender relations that are also interrelated with international politics. Calling into question the notion of the "protected," the National Organization for Women in their "Resolution on Women in Combat" of September 16, 1990, estimated that 80-90 percent of casualties due to conflict since World War II have been civilians, the majority of whom have been women and children. In militarized societies women are particularly vulnerable to rape, and evidence suggests that domestic violence is higher in military families or in families that include men with prior military service. Even though most public violence is committed by men against other men, it is more often women who feel threatened in public places. 71 Jill Radford suggests that when women feel it is unsafe to go out alone, their equal access to job opportunities is limited. 72 Studies also show that violence against women increases during hard economic times; when states prioritize military spending or find themselves in debt, shrinking resources are often accompanied by violence against women. Feminist theories draw our attention to another anarchy/order distinction-- the boundary between a public domestic space protected, at least theoretically, by the rule of law and the private space of the family where, in many cases, no such legal protection exists. In most states domestic violence is not considered a concern of the state, and even when it is, law enforcement officials are often unwilling to get involved. Domestic assaults on women, often seen as "victim precipitated," are not taken as seriously as criminal assaults. Maria Mies argues that the modernization process in the Third World, besides sharpening class conflict, has led to an increase in violence against women in the home as traditional social values are broken down. While poor women probably suffer the most from family violence, a growing women's movement in India points to an increase in violence against educated middle-class women also, the most extreme form of which is dowry murder when young brides are found dead in suspicious circumstances. Eager to marry off their daughters, families make promises for dowries that exceed their means and that they are subsequently unable to pay. 73 In 1982 there were 332 cases of "accidental burning" of women in New Delhi; many more cases of "dowry deaths" go unreported. 74
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactCapitalism

Unequal gender roles are inextricably linked to the state and capitalism. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
68 Gender
Concern for the natural environment is an issue that has made a relatively new appearance on the agenda of international politics; yet the rate at which new threats to ecological security are appearing suggests that it is an issue that will demand increasing attention from scholars of international relations in the future. As efforts to manage problems of environmental degradation fail to keep pace with newly discovered threats, ecologists point to more fundamental problems of humans' exploitative attitude toward nature. Ecofeminists have taken an important additional step by making explicit the interrelationship between the historical foundations of modern science's exploitative attitude toward nature, the birth of the modern state and the capitalist world economy, and the separation of gender roles that resulted in the delegitimation of the feminine in public life. Beginning in seventeenth-century Europe, the dichotomization of gender roles has served as an important part of the foundation upon which modern theories of international politics and economics, as well as modern attitudes toward nature, have been constructed. Linking these changing worldviews to the international behavior of modern states and the expansion of the global economy offers us important new ways to think about the interrelationship of political, economic, and ecological insecurities. It also allows us to explain the international behavior of states, not as realists have portrayed it in terms of timeless practices that can be expected to repeat themselves indefinitely into the future, but as behavior constructed out of the value system of the modern West. This historical construction allows us to envisage possibilities for transcending the present system in ways that could offer more secure futures.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactNuke War
69 Gender
The militarized national identity, which is tied to IR, ignores women and celebrates the destruction of our enemies, fostering nuclear war that culminates in extinction. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
In the modern West, women's activities have typically been associated with a devalued world of reproduction and maintenance, while men's have been tied to what have been considered the more elevated tasks of creating history and meaning. Yet all these activities are equally important for human well-being. History and the construction of meaning help us to achieve the kind of security that comes from an understanding of who we are as individuals and as citizens, while reproduction and maintenance are necessary for our survival. In the discourse of international politics, however, our national identities as citizens have been tied to the heroic deeds of warrior-patriots and our various states' successful participation in international wars. This militarized version of national identity has also depended on a devaluation of the identities of those outside the boundaries of the state. Additionally, it has all but eliminated the experiences of women from our collective national memories. A less militarized version of national identity, which would serve us better in the contemporary world where advances in technology are making wars as dangerous for winners as for losers, must be constructed out of the equally valued experiences of both women and men. To foster a more peaceful world, this identity must also rest on a better understanding and appreciation of the histories of other cultures and societies. The multidimensional nature of contemporary insecurities also highlights the importance of placing greater public value on reproduction and maintenance. In a world where nuclear war could destroy the earth and most of its inhabitants, we can no longer afford to celebrate the potential death of hundreds of thousands of our enemies; the preservation of life, not its destruction, must be valued. The elimination of structural violence demands a restructuring of the global economy so that individuals' basic material needs take priority over the desire for profit. An endangered natural environment points to the need to think in terms of the reproduction rather than the exploitation of nature. This ethic of caring for the planet and its inhabitants has been devalued by linking it to the private realm associated with the activities of women; yet caring and responsibility are necessary aspects of all dimensions of life, public and private. They will be valued in the public realm only when men participate equally in the private realm in tasks associated with maintenance and responsibility for child rearing. If we are to move toward a more secure future, what we value in the public realm, including the realm of international politics, should not be so rigidly separated from the values we espouse in the home.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ImpactColonialism
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Gendered rhetoric in reference to the Third World legitimizes colonialism. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Since its birth in early modern Europe, the Western state system has constructed its encounters with uncivilized or dangerous others in ways that have justified expansion, conquest, and a state of military preparedness. Such rhetoric is being deployed today with respect to dangers in the South. While I would not deny the very real problem of conflict in the South, such conflicts take on particular identities that render them intractable and often incomprehensible. Newly articulated North/South boundaries between mature and immature anarchies reinforce these distinctions. Anarchy, or the state of nature, is not only a metaphor for the way in which people or states can be expected to behave in the absence of government; it also depicts an untamed natural environment in need of civilization whose wide and chaotic spaces are often described as female. Such language was frequently used during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to legitimate colonial rule over peoples who were deemed incapable of governing themselves.63
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactLaundry List (Extinction)
71 Gender
The ultimate impact is extinctionthe dysfunctionality of patriarchy guarantees continued violence, war, and environmental destruction, making any impact inevitable. Only moving away from this system can create opportunities for survival. Karen Warren and Duane Cady, Professors of Philosophy at Macalester College and Hamline University. Feminism and Peace: Seeking Connections. Hypatia. Vol. 9, Iss. 2; pg. 4 Spring 1994 Proquest
The notion of patriarchy as a socially dysfunctional system enables feminist philosophers to show why conceptual connections are so important and how conceptual connections are linked to the variety of other sorts of woman-nature-peace connections. In addition, the claim that patriarchy is a dysfunctional social system locates what ecofeminists see as various "dysfunctionalities" of patriarchy-the empirical invisibility of what women do, sexist-warist-naturist language, violence toward women, other cultures, and nature-in a historical, socioeconomic, cultural, and political context.(10) To say that patriarchy is a dysfunctional system is to say that the fundamental beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions (conceptual framework) of patriarchy give rise to impaired thinking, behaviors, and institutions which are unhealthy for humans, especially women, and the planet. The following diagram represents the features of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social
system: Patriarchy, as an Up-Down system of power-over relationships of domination of women by men, is conceptually grounded in a faulty patriarchal belief and value system, (a), according to which (some) men are rational and women are not rational, or at least not rational in the more highly valued way (some) men are rational; reason and mind are more important than emotion and body; that humans are justified in using female nature simply to satisfy human consumptive needs. The discussion above of patriarchal conceptual frameworks describes the characteristics of this faulty belief system. Patriarchal conceptual frameworks sanction, maintain, and perpetuate impaired thinking, (b): For example, that men can control women's inner lives, that it is men's role to determine women's choices, that human superiority over nature justifies human exploitation of nature, that women are closer to nature than men because they are less rational, more emotional, and respond in more instinctual ways than (dominant) men. The discussions above at (4) and (5), are examples of the linguistic and psychological forms such impaired thinking can take. Operationalized, the evidence of
patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the unmanageability, (d), which results. For example, in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to "rape the earth," that it is "man's God-given right" to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for "progress." And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the current "unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-genderidentified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women, which many feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors--the symptoms of dysfunctionality--that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this "unmanageability" can be seen for what it is--as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy.(11) The theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989, 2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that "a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth" (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactDiscrimination
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Breaking down patriarchy is necessary to break down war and most other forms of discrimination. Karen Warren and Duane Cady, Professors of Philosophy at Macalester College and Hamline University. Feminism and Peace: Seeking Connections. Hypatia. Vol. 9, Iss. 2; pg. 4 Spring 1994 Proquest
Of special interest to feminist philosophers are "conceptual frameworks." A conceptual framework is a set of basic beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions that shape and reflect how we view ourselves and others. It is a socially constructed lens through which one views the world. When it explains, justifies, and maintains relationships of domination and subordination, a conceptual framework is oppressive. An oppressive conceptual framework is patriarchal when it explains, justifies, and maintains the subordination of women by men (Warren 1987, 1989, 1990, 1994). Perhaps the most obvious connection between feminism and peace is that both are structured around the concept and logic of domination (see (5) below). Although there are a great many varieties of feminism, all feminists agree that the domination/subordination of women exists, is morally wrong, and must be eliminated. Most feminists agree that the social construction of gender is affected by such multiple factors as race/ethnicity, class, affectional preferences, age, religion, and geographic location. So, in fact, any feminist movement to end the oppression of women will also be a movement, for example, to end the multiple oppressions of racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism, imperialism, and so on (see Warren 1990). War, the "decision by arms," the "final arbiter of disputes," "an act of force which theoretically has no limits'" (Clausewitz 1976) amounts to domination pushed to the extreme: Imposition of will by one group onto another by means of threat, injury, and death. Genuine peace ("positive peace"), on the other hand, involves interaction between and among individuals and groups where such behavior is orderly from within, cooperative, and based on agreement. Genuine peace is not a mere absence of war ("negative peace"), where order is imposed from outside by domination (Cady 1989, 1991). It is the process and reality where life-affirming, self-determined, environmentally sustainable ends are sought and accomplished through coalitionary, interactive, cooperative means. Feminism and peace share an important conceptual connection: Both are critical of, and committed to the elimination of, coercive power-over privilege systems of domination as a basis of interaction between individuals and groups. A feminist critique and development of any peace politics, therefore, ultimately is a critique of systems of unjustified domination. What constitutes such systems of unjustified domination? Warren has explicitly argued elsewhere (Warren 1987, 1988, 1990, 1994, N.d.) that at the conceptual level they consist of at least five oppressive ways of interpreting the world and acting in it. These are five characteristics of an oppressive conceptual framework and the behaviors linked with their implementation: (1) value-hierarchical thinking, that is, Up-Down thinking which attributes higher value (status, prestige) to what is "Up" than to what is "Down"; (2) value dualisms, that is, disjunctive pairs in which the disjuncts are seen as oppositional (rather than as complementary) and as exclusive (rather than as inclusive); value dualisms include reason/emotion, mind/body, culture/nature, human/nature, and man/woman dichotomies; (3) conceptions of power as power-over (in contrast to power-with, power-within, power toward, and power-against power);(3) (4) conceptions of privilege which favor the interests of the "Ups"; and (5) a logic of domination, that is, a structure of argumentation which presumes that superiority justifies subordination. In a patriarchal conceptual framework, higher status is attributed to what is male-gender-identified than to what is female-gender-identified, Many feminists claim that, at least in Western culture, emotion, body, and nature have been historically female-gender-identified and considered inferior to reason, mind, and culture, which have been male-gender-identified. Conceptually, a feminist perspective suggests that patriarchal conceptual frameworks and the behavior they give rise to, are what sanction, maintain, and perpetuate "isms of domination"--sexism, racism, classism, warism,(4) naturism(5) and the coercive power-over institutions and practices necessary to maintain these "isms." If this is correct, then no account of peace is adequate which does not reveal patriarchal conceptual frameworks; they underlie and sustain war and conflict resolution strategies. (Examples of why we think this is correct are laced throughout the remainder of the paper.)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactNuke War

Subordination of women to men makes global nuclear war inevitable. Betty Reardon, Director, Peace Education Program, Columbia. Women and Peace. Pg. 30-31 1993
73 Gender
A clearly visible element in the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the macho posturing and the patriarchal ideal of domination, not parity, which motivates defense ministers and government leaders to strut their stuff as we watch with increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are still acting out old patterns that are radically inappropriate for the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to distance ones character from that of women, to survive the toughest violent initiation, to shed the sacred blood of the hero, to collaborate with death in order to hold it at bay all of these patriarchal pressures on men have traditionally reached resolution in ritual fashion on the battlefield. But there is no longer any battlefield. Does anyone seriously believe that if a nuclear power were losing a crucial large-scale conventional war it would refrain from using its nuclear war missiles because of some diplomatic agreement? The military theater of a nuclear exchange today would extend instantly or eventually to all living things, all the air, all the soil, all the water. If we believe that war is a necessary evil, that patriarchal assumptions are simply human nature, then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The ultimate result of unchecked terminal patriarchy will be nuclear holocaust.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactWar (1/2)
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Masculinity and the subordination of the female is the root of all war. Thom Workman, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of New Brunswick, YCISS Occasional Paper Number 3, January 1996, Pandora's Sons:The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War,
http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf The practices of war emerge within gendered understandings that inflect all spheres of social life. As we created "man" and "woman" we simultaneously created war. Contemporary warfare, in complementary terms, emerges within the inner-most sanctums of gendered life. Gender constructs are constitutive of war; they drive it and imbue it with meaning and sense. War should not be understood as simply derivative of the masculine ethos, although it numerous facets accord with the narratives and lore of masculinity. The faculty of war is our understanding of man and women, of manliness and womanliness, and particularly of the subordination of the feminine to the masculine. It is the twinning of the masculine and the feminine that nourishes the war ethic. This can be illustrated by examining the infusion of the language of war with heterosexual imagery typically of patriarchy, that is, with ideas of the prowessladen male sexual subject conquering the servile female sexual object. Both sex and war are constituted through understandings of male domination and female subordination. The language is bound to be mutually reinforcing and easily interchangeable. War is a metaphor for sex and sex is a metaphor for war. A recent study of nicknames for the penis revealed that men were much more inclined to metaphorize the penis with reference to mythic or legendary characters (such as the Hulk, Cyclops, Genghis Khan, The Lone Ranger, and Mac the Knife), to authority figures and symbols (such as Carnal King, hammer of the gods, your Majesty, Rod of Lordship, and the persuader), to aggressive tools (such as screwdriver, drill, jackhammer, chisel, hedgetrimmer, and fuzzbuster), to ravening beasts (such as beast of burden, King Kong, The Dragon, python, cobra, and anaconda), and to weaponry (such as love pistol, passion rifle, pink torpedo, meat spear, stealth bomber, destroyer, and purple helmeted love warrior).11 The intuitive collocation of sexuality with domination, conquering, destruction, and especially instruments of war is confirmed by this study. Both sex and war, however, are manifestations of the gendered notions of power-over, submission, inequality, injury, contamination, and destruction. Both practices are integral expressions of patriarchal culture and proximate to its reproduction. It is hardly surprising that the language of sexuality and war is seamless. War is masculinist in the sense that it is bound up with the flight from woman to man; it is a repudiation of feminine characteristics and traits in favour of those understood as masculine. War is inscribed with the celebration of manliness and the concomitant loathing of womanliness. We can speak of war in terms of its migration "to the masculine" and its flight "from the feminine". With respect to the former, war is associated explicitly with the achievement and recovery of masculinity. Embedded within the fabric of masculinity are the rituals of violence and destruction. Violence and aggression are not incidental to masculinity; they are integral to its meaning. War arises as the quintessential practice of masculine confirmation; in and through war manliness is achieved. The tapestry of virility embodies the war ethic. The masculinity of the war-maker is not doubted. War becomes the exclusive sanctuary of masculinized males (and occasionally of masculinized females).
War is indicative of the flight from the feminine Thom Workman, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of New Brunswick, YCISS Occasional Paper Number 3, January 1996, Pandora's Sons: The Nominal Paradox of Patriarchy and War,
http://www.yorku.ca/yciss/publications/OP31-Workman.pdf On the other side of the war ledger is the flight from the feminine. War is premised upon the understanding that the feminine is the enemy of the warring essence. It is imperative to emphasize that war is not neglectful with respect to woman, or that it is merely non-inclusive, hesitant, or reluctant. Rather, war is axiomatically bound up with the fear of the feminine. The ideology of war involves the presupposition that womanliness is antithetical to war, that it will undermine the warring ethic. Warfare presupposes that woman is the enemy of man's crowning practice. It identifies the feminine as the castrating enemy of the manly/war scheme. Any suggestion of gravitation towards the feminine is equated with the decay of masculine resolve.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactWar (2/2)
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Patriarchal societies will inevitably lead to many scenarios of war Tickner, J. Ann, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security CIAO, 1992
Realists believe that, since there is no international government capable of enforcing impartial rules for states' behavior, states must take matters of security into their own hands even if it yields dangerous results. Kenneth Waltz uses eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's metaphor of a stag hunt to describe the likely security-seeking behavior of states given this condition of anarchy. Five hungry men agree to trap and share a stag, but when a hare runs by one man grabs it, thereby letting the stag escape: by defecting from the common goal, this hunter sacrifices the long-term cooperative interests of the group, his own included, for his immediate short-term interest. 4 For realists, this story illustrates the problematic nature of national security: in an international system of anarchy, rationality would dictate that mutual cooperation would work in the interest of all. But since men are self-seeking, politically ambitious, and not always rational, we must assume that some states and some men will not be cooperative and will start wars. Given the lack of an international government with powers of enforcement, states must therefore depend on themselves for their own security needs even if this is not in the best interests of the system as a whole. For realists this is the classic security dilemma. 5 In an imperfect world states can never be sure of one another's intentions, so they arm themselves to achieve security; since this is an act that threatens someone else's security, it sets in motion a vicious cycle which results in the spiraling procurement of armaments and the possibility that war could break out at any time. Faced with the ever present threat of violence and the lack of a sanctioning authority to control it, how do realists suggest that states should act to promote peace and stability in such an environment?
War and militarism are direct results of patriarchy Erin Molloy, University of New Brunswick. Sexual Politics and the Art of War: Patriarchy and the Military. The University of New Brunswick, April 1999, quartet.cs.unb.ca:8080/dspace/handle/1882/598?mode=full
Some deny that a powerful relationship exists between patriarchy and war, especially those whose theories are rooted in biology. These theorists attempt to reduce and explain militarism and war as biological factors. These claims deny the critical role of patriarchy in favor of seeing war as the manifestation of a preexisting human nature. Genetic determinists in particular claim that exaggerated male aggression is a critical aspect of human nature. They "embrace the rhetoric that human aggression is universal and inevitable." Theories rooted in genetics and biology claim that war is an "adaptive feature innate to human existence." That is, all humans possess a "genetic propensity for war. " 'Violence and warfare become inevitable outcomes of this human characteristic. Such theories imply that "fate, or at least the range of potential fates, are set before birth and are beyond our control." The gender critique of war stands in direct opposition to theories which reduce war to a biological imperative. It denies that the explanation for war will be found in the genes, or that it will be found in testosterone levels. It contends that men are not cerebrally programmed or biologically hardwired for war. This critique asserts, rather, that there is a relationship between a socially constructed patriarchal consciousness and war. War is a gendered experience, shaped by patriarchy and, in turn, functioning to reproduce it. It thereby amounts to a celebration of manliness and of men, and by extension promotes masculine domination.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactHuman Rights

Patriarchy is the root cause of human rights abuses. Guenther Haas, Patriarchy as an evil that God Tolerated: Analysis and Implications for the Authority of Scripture, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Societ,y Vol 38, Issue 3, September 1995,
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http://www.etsjets.org/jets/journal/38/38-03/38-3-pp321-336_JETS.pdf Intrinsic to patriarchy is androcentrism, male-centeredness, which sees men as the bearers of authority, power and value to the relative or complete exclusion of women and which sees women as always defined in relation to men but not vice versa. Anne Carr notes that the male is viewed as the norm who possesses all dignity, virtue and power, in contrast to the female who is inferior, defective, and less than fully human. This is justified by the ideology that depicts the male-female relationship as a dualism of superior-inferior. Gretchen Hull contends that patriarchy fosters discrimination and abuses of human rights. Rosemary Ruether argues that patriarchy as the whole structure of father-ruled society reinforces not merely the subordination of females to males but also the oppression of all weak and marginalized groups to the rich and powerful. Thus patriarchy is understood as the major sin that lies at the root of all systems of oppression.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactNationalism
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A patriarchal society leads to a severe increase in nationalism Tessler and Warriner 97 (Mark, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International
Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ina, Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, World Politics, Vol 49, No 2, January, Project Muse) Under other conditions, feminist aims may have no link to nationalist agendas or may even be explicitly denounced as contrary to the collective good. For example, efforts to forge a coherent communal identity may involve an emphasis on conservative traditional values. In this situation, nationalism is not associated with reform but may rather seek the reaffirmation of a patriarchal status quo. 16 Indeed, nationalism's antipathy toward feminist goals may be particularly intense; since women are often considered to be the guardians of culture and tradition--wardens of the community's sacred heritage and authenticity, as it were-reforms relating to women may be judged injurious to nationalist efforts to protect or unify the community. 17 This is also the case in countries where nationalism and national identity are strongly influenced by religious fundamentalism. In addition, as in a number of former communist states, women may sometimes even be called upon to serve the nation by bearing offspring in order to reverse a declining birth rate. 18 In this instance, as in some others, nationalist rhetoric urges women to make their "special and unique contribution" but then restricts this contribution to the domestic sphere.
Nationalism is the root cause of genocide-it pushes for ethnopolical purity Conversi 2006 (Daniele Senior Lecturer, European Policy Research Centre, University of London, Genocide,
Ethnic Cleansing, 1/20, http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/conversi/Genocide-Ch27.pdf) Since they developed often simultaneously, a crucial question arises: how intense is the relationship between nationalism and genocide? Nationalism is the doctrine that 'the rulers should belong to the same ethnic (that is, national) group as the ruled' (Gellner 1983: 1). The doctrine assumes that a ruler belonging to an alien nationality or ethnic group is illegitimate (Connor 2004). However, the inverse formula is a sure recipe for ethnic cleansing forced assimilation, mass deportation and genocide: to claim that the inhabitants of a specific constituency must share the same ethnic lineage of its leaders is to give carte blanche to mass expulsion and the drastic re-drawing of boundaries to suit the group's pedigree. Nationalism also holds that 'nation and political power should be congruent' (Gellner 1983: 1). This longing for congruence, or ethnopolitical purity, is the historical hallmark of most nationalist attempts to erase ethnic distinctiveness by homogenizing entire populations.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactEnvironment
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Ecology is incomplete without feminism Tickner 92, J. Ann, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security ,
CIAO, If, as these anthropologists and social constructionist ecofeminists believe, Western civilization has reinforced the subjugation of women through its assertion that they are closer to nature than men, then the nature/culture dualism must be challenged rather than ignored. If, as these authors claim, the woman/nature connection is historically contingent, then there are possibilities for transcending this hierarchical dualism in ways that offer the promise of liberation for both women and nature. Since the liberation of nature is also the goal of ecology, ecofeminist Ynestra King suggests that feminism and ecology can usefully form an alliance. According to King, ecology is not necessarily feminist, but its beliefs are quite compatible with those of these social constructionist ecofeminists since both make their chief goal the radical undermining of hierarchical dualisms. King argues that, since ecofeminists believe that misogyny is at the root of the dualism between nature and culture that ecologists deplore, ecology is incomplete without feminism.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Patriarchy ImpactArab/Israeli Conflict
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Gender Equality solves for the Arab Israeli Conflict Tessler and Warriner 97 (Mark, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International
Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Ina, Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, World Politics, Vol 49, No 2, January, Project Muse) Three summary observations may be offered in this connection, put forward without elaboration as a stimulus to reflection and further research. First, the absence of sex-linked differences in attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict suggests that neither advocates nor opponents of territorial compromise are likely to find one sex more receptive to their message than the other. Particularly in Israel and Palestine, where this issue is of central concern, the partisan and ideological struggles surrounding questions of war and peace are thus unlikely to find women more frequently than men in any particular political camp. 50 Second, the strong association between attitudes toward war and peace and attitudes toward gender equality suggests that the former are part of a more comprehensive worldview. If this is correct, the promotion of progressive values in other areas is likely to increase support in the Middle East for peace through diplomacy and compromise. Third, the emergence of a progressive and globalist worldview is tied to secularism, or more accurately to the privatization of religion, and also to education under conditions of greater political development and social diversity. This in turn suggests that gains in the Middle East with respect to development, political tolerance, and citizen equality, to the extent they are realized, will also increase support for Arab-Israeli peace.
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**Alternatives**
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*Gendered Perspective
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt SolvencyGendered Perspective (1/7)

Incorporating feminism into the framework of IR is key. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey. Cambridge University Press. 2001 pg. 13
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Others among us assist IR to see that feminist theorizing and methods can bring missing vistas to the field's usual outlook. Tickner is a specialist in IR who recognizes its shortcomings and wants to infuse the field with feminist sensitivity. From a perch within, she presents feminist critiques of IR knowledge and practice and also seeks to strengthen IR so it can advance progressive agendas. The approach she takes is bolstered by Lara Stancich's (1998) argument that feminist IR is marginalized exactly because it is too keen to ground itself in feminist epistemologies and agendas and is therefore insufficiently attuned to IR, theoretically and practically. At times there can be a fine line between feminist questions in IR and IR questions in feminism and other fields, and some of us have been known to go back and forth between the two. Yet there are research implications raised by work that brings feminism to IR relative to research that makes IR a subset of feminism. Posing a feminist question in IR maintains the authority and legitimacy of the father field, even as it seeks to help it wise up. Turning IR, in part at least, into a set of questions within feminism has the effect of provincializing much of IR vis--vis frameworks that foreground subaltern and world analyses (borrowed from Chakrabarty, 1992). Both approaches deal with issues we can associate with IR, such as war, peace, trade, cooperation, and international development. The departure points are there, though: those who work with feminist questions brought to IR allow that the field has contributed work that needs feminist enhancings and alterations; those who look at IR questions in feminism find the constitution of IR such that it cannot handle important feminist issues, such as rape as a war-fighting strategy.

Looking at IR through a gendered lens is key to see those ignored by the IR system. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey. Cambridge University Press. 2001
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A small slice also appears below. It shows Zimbabwean women working in two silk cooperatives and unwittingly working the edges of international political economy through contacts with European patrons and other international agencies. Mainstream IR does not see them. Its usual orientations to cooperation (minimalist neorealism, less minimalist neoliberal institutionalism, and multilateralism) cannot identify such women working new meanings of cooperation into our field. We might say that IR's low politics literature still manages to evade people by focusing on states, international organizations, economic decisionmakers of high status, and shared norms/ideas/values that reflect those entities. To see Zimbabwean women seems to require looking through feminist lenses, and here I discuss standpoint and postmodern feminist sighting approaches a juxtaposition that recurs throughout my journey. Along with providing ways to see cooperating women in international relations, Reginas bolsters IR's capacity to incorporate lessons from feminist fieldwork into regime-analytic international political economy. Contrasted to Handmaids' Tales, then, this piece is somewhat more in the mode of bringing a feminist eye to IR than of bringing IR to feminism.
It is necessary to work outside our preconceived notion of international relations to incorporate a gendered perspective. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey. Cambridge University Press. 2001
Gender weaves in and out of the stories of cooperation in Zimbabwe and in IR. Gender is often associated only with women, who are entreated to join those who are the ungendered humans in an enterprise of theory building that cannot include them. The invitation to drop gender as a way of knowing hides the already wielded power to exclude through gender-privileged cooperations, a power that affects the field's theory about cooperation. The multilateralists alone seem to understand that rules, norms, and habits of cooperation [are not] exclusively something external to agents (states), something that agents 'bump into' or 'run up against' as they interact with one another. Instead, they recognize that these practices are often constitutive of the identities and power of agents in the first place (Caporaso, 1993:78). Yet gender is an identity for both men and women in international relations that even the multilateralists powerfully occlude. They do not-see postmodern feminist resonances in their call to rethink the problem of cooperation which is usually portrayed as a game of strategic interaction in favor of a model of decision featuring debate, communication, persuasion, argument, and discursive legitimation. Multilateralists overlook gender generally, even as they do-see that the international system is not just a collection of independent states in interaction (p. 78). If we are to promote the idea that the international system is a forum as well as a chessboard, it is imperative to admit gender into the discussion. This means that not only should the Reginas of Zimbabwe speak alongside states, regimes, and multilateral agencies that are themselves the local agents of international political economy. It is also appropriate to query masculine gender as an identity that carries power and assumptions about cooperation. We must look outside mainstream IR for the inside, and that outside includes those whose lots in life are unchronicled and subversive: We have many plans It took the Ministry of Cooperatives so long to process our papers for registration that some of us were discouraged Maybe now
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By including gender in our analysis of IR, we are able to reveal the masculine framework that permeate IR. Overcoming the gender inequalities revealed in IR will allow a reconceptualization of security in a way that overcomes the domination and exploitation of women inherent in the status quo. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
If, as I have argued, the world is insecure because of these multiple insecurities, then international relations, the discipline that analyzes international insecurity and prescribes measures for its alleviation, must be reformulated. The reconceptualization of security in multidimensional and multilevel terms is beginning to occur on the fringes of the discipline; a more comprehensive notion of security is being used by peace researchers, critics of conventional international relations theory, environmentalists, and even some policymakers. But while all these contemporary revisionists have helped to move the definition of security beyond its exclusively national security focus toward additional concerns for the security of the individual and the natural environment, they have rarely included gender as a category of analysis; nor have they acknowledged similar, earlier reformulations of security constructed by women. Including previously hidden gender inequalities in the analysis of global insecurity allows us to see how so many of the insecurities affecting us all, women and men alike, are gendered in their historical origins, their conventional definitions, and their contemporary manifestations. Using gender as a category of analysis reveals the masculinist assumptions of both traditional and revisionist theories of international politics and economics. It also allows us to see the extent to which unequal gender relationships are a form of domination that contributes to many of the dimensions of the contemporary insecurities analyzed by various new thinkers. Feminists deny the separability of gendered insecurities from those describable in military, economic, and ecological terms; such problems cannot be fully resolved without also overcoming the domination and exploitation of women that takes place in each of these domains. Such a conception of security is based on the assumption that social justice, including gender justice, is necessary for an enduring peace. While acknowledging that unequal social relations are not the only sources of insecurity, feminists believe that contemporary insecurities are doubly engendered. Beyond the view that all social institutions, including those of world politics, are made by human beings and are therefore changeable, they recognize that comprehensive security requires the removal of gender-linked insecurities. Revealing these gender inequalities allows us to see how their elimination would open up new possibilities for the alleviation of the various domains of global insecurity that I have described. Overcoming gender inequalities is necessary, not only for the security of women but also for the realization of a type of security that does not rely on characteristics associated with the hegemonic masculinity that has produced a kind of security that can be a threat to men's security also. Men are themselves insecure partly because of the exclusionary, gendered way their own security has been defined.
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Incorporating the feminist perspective into our view of international relations allows us to overcome the hegemonic masculine and provide an unseen perspective of reality. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
The gendered perspectives on security I have presented point to the conclusion that the discipline of international relations, as it is presently constructed, is defined in terms of everything that is not female. While classical realism has constructed its analysis out of the behavior and experiences of men, neorealism's commitment to a positivist methodology that attempts to impose standards of scientific inquiry used in the natural sciences, has resulted in an extreme depersonalization of the field that only serves to hide its masculinist underpinnings. My analyses of "political" and "economic" man, and the state as an international political and economic actor, all suggest that, beneath its claim to objectivity, realism has constructed an approach that builds on assumptions and explanations based on behaviors associated with masculinity. While many forms of masculinity and femininity exist that vary across class, race, culture, and history, international relations theories, and the world they analyze, privilege values associated with a socially constructed hegemonic masculinity. This hegemonic masculinity consists of a set of characteristics that, while they are drawn from certain behaviors of Western males, do not necessarily fit the behavior of all men, Western men included. Political and economic man, abstractions crucial to the assumptions upon which both realist international relations and liberal political economy have been built, have been constructed out of masculine characteristics-- such as autonomy, power, independence, and an instrumental notion of rationality-- highly valued in the world of international politics. Realist and economic nationalist explanations of the political and economic behavior of states, as well as prescriptions for their success in the international system, are presented in similar terms. State of nature myths, at the heart of realist assumptions about the international system, which emphasize the dangers of and need to control wild and dangerous spaces, parallel Enlightenment science's attitude toward nature. This view of nature has been an important aspect of the ideological underpinnings of an expansionary Eurocentric state system and a capitalist world economy, as well as of Western projects of political and economic development. The individual, the state, and the international system, the levels of analysis favored by realists for explaining international conflict, are not merely discrete levels of analysis around which artificial boundaries can be drawn; they are mutually reinforcing constructs, each based on behaviors associated with hegemonic masculinity. While various approaches to international relations critical of realist thinking have questioned the adequacy of these assumptions and explanations of contemporary realities, they have not done so on the basis of gender. Marxist analyses of the world economy are also constructed out of the historical experiences of men in the public world of production. Revealing the masculinist underpinnings of both these types of discourse suggests that realism, as well as the approaches of many of its critics, has constructed worldviews based on the behavior of only half of humanity. Bringing to light this association between an idealized manhood and international relations reveals the possibility of constructing alternative perspectives divorced from historical associations with masculinity. However, if the worlds of international statecraft and strategic and foreign policy-making are worlds whose key protagonists are mostly men, one could claim that the discipline that describes them is a representation of reality at least with respect to its gender biases. The privileging of concepts such as power and autonomy and the emphasis on war and conflict do conform to patterns of behavior of many states in the international system. However, the feminist perspectives on national security, international political economy, and ecology that I have presented, which are based on different assumptions, demonstrate that there are equally plausible alternative ways of conceptualizing security and prescribing for its realization. They also draw our attention to examining the world from perspectives not of elite decision-makers but of those who are outside positions of power yet can present an equally plausible representation of reality.
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Using gender as a category of analysis allows us to uncover how gender hierarchies contribute to conflict and injustice for both men and women. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
The second goal is to demonstrate what feminist approaches to IR are contributing and can contribute to our understanding of global politics. While not suggesting that they can tell us everything we need to know about world politics, feminists are challenging us to see the inequality and domination aspects of common sense gender differences. For example, uncovering previously hidden gender hierarchies in policy priorities or workplace participation can show how they contribute to conflict and injustice in ways that have detrimental effects on the security of both men and women. Much of feminist analysis draws upon and intersects with that of scholars who would not consider themselves part of the discipline of IR; this suggests that feminists are charting their own voyages of discovery rather than staying within the confines of the discipline. Debates as to how connected feminism should be to the discipline are central to feminist discussions. Acknowledging these concerns, chapter 1 attempts to situate feminist scholarship within an increasingly fragmented discipline of IR. Subsequent chapters do the same in a variety of issue areas. A sharp division between realism and liberalism, and their neorealist and neoliberal versions, and critical and postpositivist approaches is now evident in IR.14 While there is no necessary connection between postpositivism and feminism, many IR feminists would identify themselves as postpositivists. Additionally, many would be uncomfortable describing themselves as either liberals or realists. For these reasons, they are closer to other critical approaches than to conventional theory; they are distinctive, however, in that their work is also grounded in contemporary feminist theoretical debates and by the fact that all of them use gender as a central category of analysis.
IR theory is stereotypically masculinethe introduction of a feminist perspective would allow for an inclusive perspective that exposes the limited IR view of reality. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
This story demonstrates that the introduction of women can change the way humans are assumed to behave in the state of nature. Just as Sacajawea's presence changed the Native American's expectations about the behavior of intruders into their territory, the introduction of women into our state-of-nature myths could change the way we think about the behavior of states in the international system. The use of the Hobbesian analogy in international relations theory is based on a partial view of human nature that is stereotypically masculine; a more inclusive perspective would see human nature as both conflictual and cooperative, containing elements of social reproduction and interdependence as well as domination and separation. Generalizing from this more comprehensive view of human nature, a feminist perspective would assume that the potential for international community also exists and that an atomistic, conflictual view of the inter-national system is only a partial representation of reality. Liberal individualism, the instrumental rationality of the marketplace, and the defector's self-help approach in Rousseau's stag hunt are all, in analagous ways, based on a partial masculine model of human behavior. 92 These characterizations of human behavior, with their atomistic view of human society, do not assume the need for interdependence and cooperation. 93 Yet states frequently exhibit aspects of cooperative behavior when they engage in diplomatic negotiations. As Cynthia Enloe states, diplomacy runs smoothly when there is trust and confidence between officials representing governments with conflicting interests. She suggests that many agreements are negotiated informally in the residences of ambassadors where the presence of diplomatic wives creates an atmosphere in which trust can best be cultivated. 94 As Enloe concludes, women, often in positions that are unremunerated or undervalued, remain vital to creating and maintaining trust between men in a hostile world.
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Viewing IR through a gendered lens transforms the hierarchies that cause conflicts and crisis within world politics Peterson and Runyan, professor of political science at the University of Arizona and professor of womens studies at Wright State University, 1999 (V. Spike and Anne, Global Gender Issues, 2 edition, p. 236-237)
Looking at world politics through a gender-sensitive lens affords a different view of reality. What we see is in many ways harsher than the realist image of warring states, because we also see the underside of neo-liberal celebrations of the triumph of capitalism and the spread of globalization. Indeed, whereas conventional IR lenses show us an iceberg as it emerges from the sea, feminist lenses take us below the surface to see the deep inequalities that shape international hierarchies and erupt into international conflict on the surface. They also allow us to see the hidden hierarchies on which global elites on the tip of the iceberg depend to accumulate wealth and power. If we were interested only in the surface problems that women face as a result of international hierarchies and conflict, we would recommend that women be given more resources-more land, food, clean water, health care, education, jobs, child care, reproductive rights, money, and formal political power. However, transferring resources to meet womens practical gender interests represents only a small part of what needs to be done. We must also deal with what forms the iceberg largely below the surface. As argued in this text, the production of gender dichotomies and inequalities significantly contributes to the chilly climate that freezes international hierarchies in place. These hierarchies generate the conflicts and crises of world politics. The global gender dichotomy of masculine-feminine fuels the production of other dichotomies that shape world politics: from war-peace and us-them to modern-traditional, production-reproduction, and culture-nature. The value of the feminine sides of these dichotomies is consistently denigrated, whereas the value of the masculine side is overinflated. Clearly, gender divisions of power, violence, labor, and resources present an oppressive image. Although a gender-sensitive lens reveals the pervasiveness of gender hierarchy, it also offers hope. Through this lens, those with the most conventional power in world politics appear surprisingly dependent because their power-over relies on sustaining the dichotomies that reproduce gender and other inequalities. According to this view, those in power are remarkably insecure and their power remarkably unstable. If we expose how world politics depends on artificial notions of masculinity and femininity, we can see that this seemingly overwhelming world system may be more fragile and open to radical change than we have been led to imagine.26 A great deal must change before world politics is ungendered. Toward that end we have identified a number of policy options, but these are only a beginning. Ungendering world politics requires a serious rethinking of what it means to be human and how we might organize ourselves in more cooperative, mutually respectful ways. We would have to reject gendered dichotomies: male versus female, us versus them, culture versus nature. Ungendering world politics also requires a reconceptualization of politics and a shift from power-over to power-to. We would have to recognize power in its multiple forms and be willing to imagine other worlds. Overall, these changes are less a matter of top-down policy than of individually and collectively remaking human society by reconstructing our identities, beliefs, expectations, and institutions. This is the most difficult and complex of human projects, but history shows that we are capable of such revolutionary transformations (see Figure 6.5).
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Shifting lenses to reevaluate reality through a gendered lens allows us to understand the intersecting structures of inequality and transform oppressive hierarchies Peterson and Runyan, professor of political science at the University of Arizona and professor of womens studies at Wright State University, 1999 (V. Spike and Anne, Global Gender Issues, 2 edition, p. 14-15)
Gender issues surface now because new questions have been raised that cannot be addressed within traditional frameworks. The amassing of global data reveals the extent and pattern of gender inequality: Women everywhere have less access to political power and economic resources and less control over processes that reproduce this systemic inequality. Moreover, our knowledge of the world of men and the politics they create is biased and incomplete in the absence of knowledge about how mens activities, including their politics, are related to, even dependent upon, what women are doing--and why. Additionally, recognizing the power of gender as a lens forces us to reevaluate traditional explanations, to ask how they are biased and hence render inadequate accounts. As in other disciplines, the study of world politics is enriched by acknowledging and systematically examining how gender shapes categories and frameworks that we take for granted. This is necessary for answering the new questions raised and for generating fresh insights--about the world as we currently know it and how it might be otherwise. Finally, gender-sensitive studies improve our understanding of global crises, their interactions, and the possibilities of moving beyond them. These include crises of political legitimacy and security as states are increasingly unable to protect their citizens against economic, epidemic, nuclear, or ecological threats crises of maldevelopment as the dynamics of our global economic system enrich a few and impoverish most; and crises of environmental degradation as the exploitation of natural resources continues in unsustainable fashion. These global crises cannot be understood or addressed without acknowledging the structural inequalities of the current world system, inequalities that extend well beyond gender issues: They are embodied in interacting hierarchies of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, physical ability, age, and religious identification. In this text, we focus on how the structural inequalities of gender work in the world: how the hierarchical dichotomy of masculinity-femininity is institutionalized, legitimated, and reproduced, and how these processes differentially affect mens and womens lives. We also begin to see how gender hierarchy interacts with other structural inequalities. The dichotomy of masculinity and femininity is not separate from racism, classism, ageism, nationalism, and so on. Rather, gender both structures and is structured by these hierarchies to render complex social identities, locations, responsibilities, and social practices. Gender shapes, and is shaped by, all of us. We daily reproduce its dynamics--and suffer its costs--in multiple ways. By learning how gender works, we learn a great deal about intersecting structures of inequality and how they are intentionally and unintentionally reproduced. We can then use this knowledge in our struggles to transform global gender inequality by also transforming other oppressive hierarchies at work in the world.
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*Other Alts
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltFeminist/Gendered Approach
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Approaching international relations through a feminist approach moves womyn from the margin to being subjects of knowledge and removes the androcentric lens that cause the feminine to be devalued Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 168-169
Both liberal feminist and Marxist feminist perspectives highlight particular aspects of sexual inequality and in their own distinctive ways suggest a basis for solidarity among women. However, while liberal feminist research is driven by social values, has a political agenda and may indeed have transformative potential, liberals remain committed to the ideal of objective, impartial analysis. Marxist feminism is both reflexive and historical. However, much Marxist feminist scholarship is primarily concerned with the structures and social practices that support and perpetuate gender relations and rarely extends to a discussion of epistemological issues. In chapter 1 it was suggested that contemporary debates in feminist theory have raised central issues of the subject and the epistemological claims of feminism. Feminism is not only concerned with analysing the structures ~and processes which underpinning gender inequality. The stress on the importance of the political subject goes beyond the aim of bringing in women, or making visible gender inequalities. It involves moving women from the margin to the centre as the subjects of knowledge. Feminist standpoint is very much a postpositivist approach to theorizing, in that it starts out from the position that the reality that positivist theories claim to address is made real by the power of particular groups to impose definitions. In adopting a feminist standpoint the first aim is to reverse the usual understanding of events, and reveal hidden assumptions in dominant theories or common-sense views of the world. Feminists argue that representations of the human are those devised by men and are about the male world as seen by men. It is a world in which women are defined through an androcentric lens, as mother, nurturer, caretaker and helpmate. Standpoint thinkers have, for example, noted the failure of social scientists to address issues of sexuality, procreation, childrearing and socialization practices as definitively human problematics and argued that this failure reflects the male as norm standpoint The lack of mens awareness of this particular bias reflects their privileged position. The implication of this kind of critique is that women occupy radically different life worlds and, as such, feminist critiques, particularly those which draw upon psychoanalytic and radical feminist thought, raise questions which are both ontological and epistemological. But what is it precisely about womens experiences which can serve as a vantage point from which to construct knowledge of the world? How can the ontological and epistemological claims of feminist standpoint be substantiated?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt SolvencyFeminist/Genderd Approach
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Feminist theory explores the assumptions of discourse that legitimize patriarchy. Carol Cohn a research fellow at the center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age, research associate in
the department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, visiting scholar at the MIT, "Emasculating America's Linguistic Deterrent," Rocking the Ship of State. Harris and King 1989. My second objective goes beyond describing and understanding this discourse. Stated in the strongest possible terms, I wish to render this discourse "impotent and obsolete" (to borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan). I wish to expose its limits and distortions, its underlying assumptions and values, and the vast gaps between what it claims to do and what it actually does, so as to break its stranglehold on our scholarship, our policy decisions, our national political processes, and our imaginations. I wish to examine and unravel the methods, procedures; and claims that constitute this kind of thinking and thus expose the ways in which a discourse that claims to be rational, objective, realistic, and universal is, in fact, anything but. My third objective is to foster the development of more truly realistic, effective, and humane ways of thinking about international security and cooperation. I see the deconstruction and delegitimation of technostrategic discourse as a necessary, a not sufficient, condition for this project. A crucial step is the juxtaposition of ways of thinking from other disciplines, other political traditions, and other cultures, as well as ways of thinking that arise arise from the experience of nondominant groups within this culture. My goal is not to put forth a fully developed and unified policy alternative but rather to open some new space and make some new connections. Contemporary feminist theory is an invaluable tool in this project, especially that strain of feminist theory that takes as its object of scrutiny discourses produced by men. This kind of feminist work aims to explore the discourses' underlying assumptions, methods, procedures, and techniques of theory, development, their use of criteria and methods of inclusion and exclusion; and the ways in which these discourses work and how they exert their dominance. This work is a method, a strategy, whose goal is to destabilize, delegitimize, and dismantle patriarchal discourses--to render their systems, methods, and resumptions unable to retain their dominance and power and thus to open spaces for other voices to be heard. Destabilizing and interrupting patriarchal discourse are seen as the prerequisites for establishing in new paradigms and different theoretical tools and for creating systems of knowledge based on different values and interests.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltCritique Masculine IR
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Critiquing fundamental masculine IR practices through feminist theory will change the gender hierarchies and address the problems with power, sovereignty, and environmental degradation. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
Since, as I have suggested, the world of international politics is a masculine domain, how could feminist perspectives contribute anything new to its academic discourses? Many male scholars have already noted that, given our current technologies of destruction and the high degree of economic inequality and environmental degradation that now exists, we are desperately in need of changes in the way world politics is conducted; many of them are attempting to prescribe such changes. For the most part, however, these critics have ignored the extent to which the values and assumptions that drive our contemporary international system are intrinsically related to concepts of masculinity; privileging these values constrains the options available to states and their policymakers. All knowledge is partial and is a function of the knower's lived experience in the world. Since knowledge about the behavior of states in the international system depends on assumptions that come out of men's experiences, it ignores a large body of human experience that has the potential for increasing the range of options and opening up new ways of thinking about interstate practices. Theoretical perspectives that depend on a broader range of human experience are important for women and men alike, as we seek new ways of thinking about our contemporary dilemmas. Conventional international relations theory has concentrated on the activities of the great powers at the center of the system. Feminist theories, which speak out of the various experiences of women-- who are usually on the margins of society and interstate politics-- can offer us some new insights on the behavior of states and the needs of individuals, particularly those on the peripheries of the international system. Feminist perspectives, constructed out of the experiences of women, can add a new dimension to our understanding of the world economy; since women are frequently the first casualties in times of economic hardship, we might also gain some new insight into the relationship between militarism and structural violence. However, feminist theories must go beyond injecting women's experiences into different disciplines and attempt to challenge the core concepts of the disciplines themselves. Concepts central to international relations theory and practice, such as power, sovereignty, and security, have been framed in terms that we associate with masculinity. Drawing on feminist theories to examine and critique the meaning of these and other concepts fundamental to international politics could help us to reformulate these concepts in ways that might allow us to see new possibilities for solving our current insecurities. Suggesting that the personal is political, feminist scholars have brought to our attention distinctions between public and private in the domestic polity: examining these artificial boundary distinctions in the domestic polity could shed new light on international boundaries, such as those between anarchy and order, which are so fundamental to the conceptual framework of realist discourse. Most contemporary feminist perspectives take the gender inequalities that I have described above as a basic assumption. Feminists in various disciplines claim that feminist theories, by revealing and challenging these gender hierarchies, have the potential to transform disciplinary paradigms. By introducing gender into the discipline of international relations, I hope to challenge the way in which the field has traditionally been constructed and to examine the extent to which the practices of international politics are related to these gender inequalities. The construction of hierarchical binary oppositions has been central to theorizing about international relations. 29 Distinctions between domestic and foreign, inside and outside, order and anarchy, and center and periphery have served as important assumptions in theory construction and as organizing principles for the way we view the world. Just as realists center their explanations on the hierarchical relations between states and Marxists on unequal class relations, feminists can bring to light gender hierarchies embedded in the theories and practices of world politics and allow us to see the extent to which all these systems of domination are interrelated. As Sarah Brown argues, a feminist theory of international relations is an act of political commitment to understanding the world from the perspective of the socially subjugated. "There is the need to identify the as yet unspecified relation between the construction of power and the construction of gender in international relations." 30 Acknowledging, as most feminist theories do, that these hierarchies are socially constructed, also allows us to envisage conditions necessary for their transcendence.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt SolvencyCritique Masculine IR
93 Gender
By challenging masculine international relations, w are able to identify the possibilities for change. Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin and Shelley Wright; Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne
Law School; Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School; and Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School; The American Journal International Law, October, 1991, p.ln In this article we question the immunity of international law to feminist analysis -- why has gender not been an issue in this discipline? -- and indicate the possibilities of feminist scholarship in international law. In the first section, we examine the problems of developing an international feminist perspective. We then outline the male organizational and normative structure of the international legal system. We go on to apply feminist analyses developed in the context of domestic law to various international legal principles. Our approach requires looking behind the abstract entities of states to the actual impact of rules on women within states. We argue that both the structures of international lawmaking and the content of the [*615] rules of international law privilege men; if women's interests are acknowledged at all, they are marginalized. International law is a thoroughly gendered system. By challenging the nature and operation of international law and its context, feminist legal theory can contribute to the progressive development of international law. A feminist account of international law suggests that we inhabit a world in which men of all nations have used the statist system to establish economic and nationalist priorities to serve made elites, while basic human, social and economic needs are not met. International institutions currently echo these same priorities. By taking women seriously and describing the silences and fundamentally skewed nature of international law, feminist theory can identify possibilities for change.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltGender Focus
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Viewing power as a set of interconnectedness by divorcing ourselves from the security rhetoric and focusing on gender challenges dominant international relations in favor of a more cooperative vision Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 170-171
A number of contemporary feminist scholars in International Relations, notably Ann Tickner, have drawn upon object-relations theory and feminist standpoint to provide a set of concepts with which to construct a very different kind of International Relations.27 Standpoint theorists frequently argue that a girls gradual oedipal period takes place in such a way that empathy is built into their primary definition of self. A more complex relational world is then reinforced by the process of socialization. Taking the profound socio-sexual processes involved in the construction of boundaries between self and other as a starting point leads to a critique of rigid notions of autonomy and separation in the construction of identities and boundaries, emphasizing instead the processes of interdependence and connections. From this perspective, our sense of place and identity is understood not in terms of rigid separation between inside and outside, domestic and foreign, but in terms of interconnections. Boundaries are not viewed as enclosures, because identity is not viewed as being constructed by the counterpoising of inside and outside. Rather, linkages to the outside are seen as constituting our very same sense of place and identity. This alternative conception moves away from ideas of autonomy, vulnerability and penetrability which make outsiders unwelcome.28 Such an approach can give rise to a conception of international relations as a series of complex relationships and interdependencies. Since power is an essentially contested concept and because alternative theorizations of power can be expected to rest on alternative epistemological and ontological bases, it is possible to argue that the different life experiences of men and women give rise to different conceptions of power. Thus Hartsock argues that helping another to grow and develop, avoiding excessive control and gradually relinquishing control are all important features of womens work.29 Women are positioned in particular kinds of power relationships, but nevertheless have a different understanding of power. Hartsock suggests that the different accounts of power produced by women and men can be taken to be indications of systematic and significant differences in life activity. Womens experiences thus provide a related but more adequate epistemological terrain for understanding power. The theorization of power is, therefore, a second area in which feminist-standpoint theory has proved useful to feminist scholars in International Relations. A number of feminist thinkers have identified a separate tradition of theorizing power which is found in the work of womens writing. While few women have theorized power, those that have bear a striking similarity. Many make distinctions between power over and power with, or coercive and co-active power and view power as a capacity, energy and competence, rather than as dominance.30 This view of power also challenges the view of international relations as primarily characterized by force and domination in favour of a more interdependent and cooperative vision.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt SolvencyGender Focus
95 Gender
Militarism and sexism are maintained by a cultural emphasis on masculinity a fundamental rethinking security and social constructions with a focus on gender is key to solving for xenophobia Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 116-117
Furthermore, feminist analysis suggests that what is needed is a fundamental rethink of our whole approach to understanding security. In this process, we need to understand the link between militarism and other forms of domination, including sexism. Radical feminists argue that both militarism and sexism are maintained by a world-view, which suggests that men are by nature aggressive and that the social order must be maintained by force. Sexism and militarism need each other. There is a central link between the ideal soldier and the ideal wife and mother; both take orders unquestioningly from men who have power and status and both 52 are expected to sacrifice themselves for those more important: Furthermore, just as sexism is a belief system rooted in a world-view which assigns varying levels of worth to different human beings, militarism is based upon xenophobia and the denial of the full humanity of other peoples. Militarism establishes itself in the lives of citizens as a refusal to recognize the humanity of others, just as the soldier refuses to recognize the humanity of alien peoples.53 Radical feminists have also argued that there is a link between sexism and other forms of male violence. For this reason, as was noted in chapter 4, feminists have been reluctant to accept the dominant view of war as a discrete phenomenon arranged by diplomats with neat beginnings and endings. One needs to understand how aggression and violence are related to a cultural emphasis on masculinity and how this relates to other major divisions like race and class. This is a first necessary stage in understanding what kind of social structures can be built which work towards resolving conflicts without violence. The anti-militarist activist has to enlist the struggles against wife abuse because challenging legitimized oppression in personal relations is the most theoretically efficient way to end militarism.54 The feminist analysis of the causes and consequences of militarization begins with an understanding that it is not simply synonymous with war; nor is it solely the antithesis of peace. Enloe argues that it is only when militarism and war are viewed as processes rather than events that the connections between war, militarism and other processes examined by feminists such as oppression, colonization, the division of labour, reproduction and liberation can be understood.55 Similarly, it is only when these connections are fully understood that the process of rethinking security in ways that recognize the common humanity and worth of all human beings can begin, and only then will the many ways in which human beings experience violence, oppression and threats to their security be fully understood. Such experiences are, of course, structured not only by gender but also by other social relations such as race and class. As Enloe argues, the very breadth and depth makes it difficult to develop an unambiguously feminist analysis of militarism however, even if it were not possible to argue conclusively that the social construction of gender is the main determinant of militarism, feminist analysis demonstrates that ideas about gender and gender inequality are integral to the way in which militarism works. When an analysis of militarism is combined with the insights derived from the rather less ambitious impact-on approach, it suggests that women as a group might have the most to gain by challenging the forces, processes and ideological beliefs that contribute towards militarism, sexism and xenophobia, and by working to change the discourse of security. To change the discourse is to resist the notion of politics as domination, to problematize violence, to encourage scepticism towards the forms and claims of sovereign states. To challenge the discourse of national security is to recognise the powerful sway of received narratives. That is, argues Elshtain, to recognize that the concepts through which we think about security, war, peace and politics get repeated endlessly, shaping debates, constraining the consideration of alternatives, often reassuring us that things cannot really be different.59 As such the received narratives of the orthodoxy, put our critical faculties to sleep, blinding us to the possibilities that lie within our reach.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltRevealing Gender
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Revealing the way gender identities are produced allows for a revolutionary change of identity Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Publisher: Columbia University Press, New York. p5] Second, if both the discipline and practices of international relations are heavily implicated in the construction of hegemonic masculinities, and if both the content of international politics and the fixing of masculine identities are simultaneously achieved when men engage in activities in the international arena, then strategies aimed at dismantling the field's inherent masculinism, if at all successful, are likely to prove personally challenging to large numbers of men. Removing masculinism would involve a drastic reformulation of models of masculinity and alternative understandings of what it means to be a man and where men belong. For many men, it would involve no less than a revolutionary change of identity. In this case, revealing the mechanisms by which such identities are constantly being produced and reproduced might help reveal opportunities for change that can be exploited by feminists and their sympathizers.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltReject Static Gender
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A transition away from hypermasculine international relations is possible by rejecting static visions of gender. Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p205-6]
The close association between men and power, in all its endless variations, may be discouraging for those who dream of a more egalitarian world, but the complex, interactive, and fluid nature of masculinity (ies) offers some hope to a number of the authors of this book. The contradictions and cracks in Craig Murphy's hypermasculine military childhood pushed him into a very different conception of manliness and manhood. They led him away from militarism toward the mediator's role and now to a belief in the need to understand (and change) the gendered character of international affairs. Ralph Pettman explored the possibility of a world where assertive "male" notions of competition are replaced by more positive collaboration. To achieve this, he argued, those groups (largely male) who are addicted to competition need to draw on the more collaborative ethos of many women (and some men). Rejecting the notion that men are inherently competitive and women are inherently collaborative, he believes new synthetic gendered visions are possible and, indeed, desirable. Christine Sylvester posited a similar possibility. The international arena, she argued, is already more complexly gendered than one might think, and we know too little about the actual influence of the many women inhabiting the "corridors of power." Meanwhile, she calls on feminists to dream of a world not where identity places are reinstated as "femininity" or "masculinity" but where those who are biologically female do not have to take on a "male" persona in order to participate in the game of international power. More to the point, perhaps we can dream of a world where international relations are constructed from more collaborative, inclusive practices than the masculinized metaphors of battle and power.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltGendered Approach
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Applying a gendered approach prompts a rethinking of security rhetoric to include individual circumstances and security Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 104-105
Feminist approaches also offer radical new ways or thinking about the problems involved in achieving security. As was suggested in the introduction to this book, the orientation of feminist critical theories towards emancipatory politics and the post-modern feminist celebration of different expressions of identity and solidarity has encouraged a radical rethinking of dominant conceptions of identities and boundaries in which traditional approaches to security have been framed. Furthermore, feminist analysis of the military and the state raises questions about the validity of continuing to view the state as the mainstay of security an approach which assumes that security for the individual is adequately understood purely in terms of his or her membership of a given national community. Adopting a feminist perspective not only challenges the view of the military as a defender of a pregiven national interest, it also demonstrates that the degree to which people feel or actually are threatened varies according to their economic, political, social or personal circumstances. Thus, poverty, inequality, militarism, maldevelopment and the denial of human rights or at least basic needs are relevant to understanding how secure or insecure people feel or actually are, in terms of their race, ethnic identity, political status, class and, of course, gender.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltRecognizing Gender Differences
99 Gender
It is not enough to recognize the absence of women in IR, recognizing gender differences and their impact on IR is necessary to move towards a non-gendered perspective. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
To begin to construct this more secure world requires fundamental changes in the discipline that describes and analyzes world politics. The focus of this book has been on how the discipline of international relations would be changed by the introduction of gender as a category of analysis. To begin to think about how gender might be introduced into the discipline and to recapitulate and extend the arguments made in this book, I shall conclude by drawing on the work of feminist scholar Peggy McIntosh, who outlines five phases of curriculum change necessary for introducing gender into 0scholarly disciplines. While she uses history as an example, her analysis could equally well apply to the discipline of international relations. 9 The first phase is what McIntosh describes as a womanless world; this type of analysis describes only the activities of those holding high positions of power, usually in dominant states. It is a mode of analysis that has the effect of reinfo4rcing the existing system. My analysis of traditional approaches to the discipline suggests that this is where most of our conventional teaching about international relations has been situated. Phase two, which also has the effect of reinforcing the existing system, notes the absence of women and adds a famous few to the curriculum. While these additions 4provide role models for women, they do nothing to change the discipline in ways that acknowledge that anything can be learned from women's experiences; rather, they suggest that women can be recognized by the discipline only if they become like men in the public world. 10 In phase three, the absence of women is seen as a problem as we begin to 4understand the politics implicit in a curriculum constructed without the inclusion of women's experiences; in this phase, women are typically seen as victims. Moving to phase four involves seeing women as valid human beings whose various life experiences have shaped the world in which we live, even though their contributions involve tasks that are often unacknowledged. The final phase of McIntosh's curriculum development brings us to the point where the subject matter of the discipline genuinely includes the experiences of all individuals regardless of race, culture, class, and gender. Were it to be realized, such a "re-vision" would have a profound impact on the discipline of international relations, which is noteworthy for its exclusionary perspective both with respect to women as well as to non-Western cultures. As this analysis has suggested, a discipline that includes us all would require a radical redrawing of the boundaries of its subject matter. The absence of women from the study of international relations has been so complete that the masculine orientation of the discipline goes unnoticed by most scholars and students. Yet constructing explanations for their absence is only a first step in realizing a nongendered perspective on international relations. For such a perspective to be achieved, it is necessary to go beyond an investigation of the reasons for women's absence from the subject matter of the discipline by demonstrating the many ways in which women's life experiences have an impact on and are affected by the world of international politics, even if they have been largely invisible. Only through analysis that recognizes gender differences but does not take them as fixed or inevitable can we move toward the creation of a nongendered discipline that includes us all.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AltReconceptualize Democracy
100 Gender
The only way to incorporate women into democracy is to reconceptualize democracy as a bottom-up institution that builds from the local level, where women are better represented. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
In order to understand the role of genderthe effects of democratic transitions on women and their activities in these transitionswe need a redefinition of democracy that starts at the bottom. Generally women are better represented in local politics; often they are working outside regular political channels. Georgina Waylen has claimed that any analysis of democratization that fails to incorporate a gendered perspectiveignoring the actions of certain groupswill be flawed.45 Therefore, the liberal democratic state must be reexamined for its gender biases, as well as its class and racial biases; definitions of representation and citizenship in the spaces in which political life occur need to be rethought. Arguing that patriarchal structures are deeply embedded in most types of political regimes, democratic and otherwise, certain internationalist feminists have looked beyond the state to build institutions and networks that are more likely than the state to diminish gender and other social hierarchies. Given the barriers to formal political office that exist for women in most states, including democracies, women activists frequently bypass the state by working either at the grassroots level or by joining forces transnationally to work for womens rights at the global level.
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*Alt Solves Impacts
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves Violence
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Feminist IR theory is able to reveal and overcome the problems with and negative impacts of masculinized IR that legitimizes state violence. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
In spite of the substantial growth and recognition of feminist scholarship in the last ten years, it still remains quite marginal to the discipline, particularly in the United States, where neorealism and neoliberalism, approaches that share rationalistic methodologies and assumptions about the state and the international system, predominate.8 Apart from occasional citations, there has been little engagement with feminist writings, particularly by conventional IR scholars.9 There is genuine puzzlement as to the usefulness of feminist approaches for understanding international relations and global politics. Questions frequently asked of feminist scholars are indications of this puzzlement: What does gender have to do with international politics and the workings of the global economy? How can feminism help us solve real world problems such as Bosnia? Where is your research program?10 While the new feminist literatures in IR are concerned with understanding war and peace and the dynamics of the global economy, issues at the center of the IR agenda, their methodological and substantive approaches to these questions are sufficiently different for scholars of IR to wonder whether they are part of the same discipline. It is this lack of connection that motivates many of the issues raised in this book. While I have attempted to site feminist perspectives within the discipline, it will become clear from the topics addressed that IR feminists frequently make different assumptions about the world, ask different questions, and use different methodologies to answer them. Having reflected on reasons for these disconnections, as well as the misunderstandings over the potential usefulness of feminist approaches raised by some of the questions above, I believe that they lie in the fact that feminist IR scholars see different realities and draw on different epistemologies from conventional IR theorists. For example, whereas IR has traditionally analyzed security issues either from a structural perspective or at the level of the state and its decision makers, feminists focus on how world politics can contribute to the insecurity of individuals, particularly marginalized and disempowered populations. They examine whether the valorization of characteristics associated with a dominant form of masculinity influences the foreign policies of states. They also examine whether the privileging of these same attributes by the realist school in IR may contribute to the reproduction of conflict-prone, power-maximizing behaviors.11 Whereas IR theorists focus on the causes and termination of wars, feminists are as concerned with what happens during wars as well as with their causes and endings. Rather than seeing military capability as an assurance against outside threats to the state, militaries are seen as frequently antithetical to individual security, particularly to the security of women and other vulnerable groups. Moreover, feminists are concerned that continual stress on the need for defense helps to legitimate a kind of militarized social order that overvalorizes the use of state violence for domestic and international purposes.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves Security
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By adopting gender as the central analysis of security, the negative impact of the gender hierarchy is visible and we are able to understand the violence inherent in security. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Most feminist scholarship on security also employs a different ontology and epistemology from conventional security studies. Reluctant to be associated with either side of the realist/idealist debate, for reasons outlined in chapter 1, and generally skeptical of rationalist, scientific claims to universality and objectivity, most feminist scholarship on security is compatible with the critical side of the third debate. Questioning the role of states as adequate security providers, many feminists have adopted a multidimensional, multilevel approach, similar to some of the efforts to broaden the definition of security described above. Feminists commitment to the emancipatory goal of ending womens subordination is consistent with a broad definition of security that takes the individual, situated in broader social structures, as its starting point. Feminists seek to understand how the security of individuals and groups is compromised by violence, both physical and structural, at all levels. Feminists generally share the view of other critical scholars that culture and identity and interpretive bottom up modes of analysis are crucial for understanding security issues and that emancipatory visions of security must get beyond statist frameworks. They differ, however, in that they adopt gender as a central category of analysis for understanding how unequal social structures, particularly gender hierarchies, negatively impact the security of individuals and groups.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves Poverty
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Fem IR solves poverty by beginning analysis at a local level within the social structure this is unique; conventional IR cannot solve. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Conventional IPE has typically focused on issues such as the economic behavior of the most powerful states, hegemony, and the potential for building international institutions in an anarchic system populated by self-interested actors; within a shared state-centric framework, neorealists and neoliberals debate the possibilities and limitations of cooperation using the notion of absolute versus relative gains.12 Feminists more often focus on economic inequality, marginalized populations, the growing feminization of poverty and economic justice, particularly in the context of North/South relations. Whereas IR has generally taken a top-down approach focused on the great powers, feminist IR often begins its analysis at the local level, with individuals embedded in social structures. While IR has been concerned with explaining the behavior and interaction of states and markets in an anarchic international environment, feminist IR, with its intellectual roots in feminist theory more generally, is seeking to understand the various ways in which unequal gender structures constrain womens, as well as some mens, life chances and to prescribe ways in which these hierarchical social relations might be eliminated. These different realities and normative agendas lead to different methodological approaches. While IR has relied heavily on rationalistic theories based on the natural sciences and economics, feminist IR is grounded in humanistic accounts of social relations, particularly gender relations. Noting that much of our knowledge about the world has been based on knowledge about men, feminists have been skeptical of methodologies that claim the neutrality of their facts and the universality of their conclusions. This skepticism about empiricist methodologies extends to the possibility of developing causal laws to explain the behavior of states. While feminists do see structural regularities, such as gender and patriarchy, they define them as socially constructed and variable across time, place, and culture; understanding is preferred over explanation.13 These differences over epistemologies may well be harder to reconcile than the differences in perceived realities discussed above.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves Sustainable Development
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Postmodernist fem IR is key to effective sustainable development that emphasizes community control and rethinks the connection between humans and nature. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
One such model is a feminist version of sustainable development. Recent debates in the South on women, the environment, and sustainable development (WED) have generated critiques of Western models as contributing to increases in economic and gender inequality as well as degradation of the environment that reduce peoples control over their lives and use of resources. Feminist models of sustainable development advocate a bottom-up form of development that emphasizes community control over resources, different lifestyles, and a rethinking of the relationship between humans and nature. They also make the link between the oppression of women and the degradation of nature. While Western models of sustainable development have prioritized the need to curb population growth, feminists in the Southwhile they advocate human-centered, user-controlled reproductive health careemphasize that environmental degradation is as much the result of high levels of consumption in the North as it is of population growth in the South.93 Alternate models of development, such as those proposed by WED, depend on the transformation of science and knowledge. Rather than relying on scientific knowledge of Western experts, the knowledge of local people, often subjugated, is believed to be vital for sustainable development. Braidotti et al. argue that postmodernism, with its stress on difference and locality, can make an important contribution to generating these new types of knowledge. Since it respects difference and thinks beyond dualism and hierarchy, postmodernism can contribute to dismantling the power relations implicit in the production of knowledge; it offers important new ways to critique scientific rationality and technological development. 94
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves Militarism
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Feminist perspectives on IR would allow a reconceptualization of IR, in which the state would be less militaristic. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
Since women are disproportionately located on the peripheries of the international system and at the bottom of the economic scale, feminist perspectives on security prioritize issues associated with the achievement of justice, issues that are frequently ignored in conventional theories of international politics, which have been preoccupied with questions relating to order. While one of the most important goals of feminism is to overcome women's marginalization from institutions of power, women's prominent role in social movements and in new forms of economic production provides examples of new ways of thinking about democratic decentralization, a restructuring of society that offers important alternative models for the achievement of a more comprehensive form of security. Because women have been peripheral to the institutions of the state and transnational capital, feminist perspectives on international relations must take a critical stance with respect to these institutions, questioning whether they are able to cope with global security problems such as militarism, poverty, and the natural environment. Building a model of political economy that starts at the bottom and takes into account individuals and the local satisfaction of their basic needs envisages a state that is more selfreliant with respect to the international system and more able to live within its own resource limits; such a state would be less militaristic and could therefore give priority to social issues rather than military considerations. 2 Such a model would depend on an extended definition of security that goes beyond a nationalist, militarist focus and begins to speak to the economic and ecological security needs of individuals and states alike.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves Otherization
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Rejections of hierarchal constructions of gender are necessary for solving for other conceptions of otherization such as colonialism and racism Peterson, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, 2000 (V. Spike, SAIS REVIEW,
Rereading Public and Private: The Dichotomy that is Not One. Vol. 20, Iss. 2; pg. 11 NMG Similarly, a categorical separation of insiders and outsiders is at work when we identify us and them for the purpose of applying moral criteria. What matters here is that normative commitments are extended to those we identify with and accept as inside the group but do not necessarily apply to those who are different enough to be considered outside of the group, its norms, and its traditions. This is especially clear when coercive activities that would be reprehensible if perpetrated against group members are undertaken against others and justified by reference to their being outside of the normative community. Nationalism is important here because the nation...marks the limits of belonging, the border of the moral community, beyond which organized violence becomes thinkable. 32 But in fact all adversarial constructions of us- them are implicated, whether they are demonized as a group outside of the nation (with implications for interstate violence) or as a subgroup resisting assimilation to the dominant groups hegemony (with implications for violence) within the state. And here I note a key feminist insight regarding structural hierarchies and their legitimation. Consider that however else subordinated groups differ, [End Page 23] what they share is objectification as feminized others. 33 For example, colonialism and racism are legitimized by casting natives and minorities in feminized terms: as insufficiently rational, lacking in discipline and self-control, and/or too close to nature (primitive, childlike, sexual, savage). The crucial political insight involves recognizing how the naturalized privileging of masculine over feminine (belief in the foundational dichotomy of male-female) is invoked to naturalize arid hence depoliticize social hierarchies mo generally. On this view, feminist critiques are not only crucial for addressing male- female inequalities but are essential for analyzing and transforming all structures of oppression that are linked by denigration of the feminine. Hence, critical theory/practice that ignores gender fails to adequately analyze power relations and, in effect, reproduces the objectification of woman, native, other.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt = More Accurate Reality
108 Gender
Fem perceptions of reality are more accurate because they do not need to interpret it to reinforce the status quo. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Although all of these postliberal/postempiricist approaches have introduced the idea of womens ways of knowing, feminist standpoint as an epistemology was most highly developed in socialist feminism. Based on its Marxist roots, socialist feminists define standpoint as a position in society from which certain features of reality come into prominence and from which others are obscured.26 Standpoint feminism presupposes that all knowledge reflects the interests and values of specific social groups; its construction is affected by social, political, ideological, and historical settings. Womens subordinate status means that women, unlike men (or unlike some men), do not have an interest in mystifying reality in order to reinforce the status quo; therefore, they are likely to develop a clearer, less biased understanding of the world. Nancy Hartsock, one of the founders of standpoint feminism, has argued that material life structures set limits on an understanding of social relations so that reality will be perceived differently as material situations differ. Since womens lives differ systematically and structurally from mens, women can develop a particular vantage point on male supremacy. However, this understanding can be achieved only through struggle, since the oppressed are not always aware of their own oppression; when achieved, it carries a potential for liberation. Hartsock argued that womens liberation lies in a search for the common threads that connect diverse experiences of women as well as the structural determinants of these experiences.27
109 Gender
**Answers To Aff Answers**
110 Gender
*Perm
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Perm (1/2)
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Attempts to incorporate the alternative into traditional frameworks fail - Analyzing gender issues requires a divorce from the traditional frameworks that define our realities V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 14-15
Gender issues surface now because new questions have been raised that cannot be addressed within traditional frameworks. The amassing of global data reveals the extent and pattern of gender inequality: Women everywhere have less access to political power and economic resources and less control over processes that reproduce this systemic inequality. Moreover, our knowledge of the world of men and the politics they create is biased and incomplete in the absence of knowledge about how men's activities, including their politics, are related to, even dependent upon, what women are doing--and why. Additionally, recognizing the power of gender as a lens forces us to reevaluate traditional explanations, to ask how they are biased and hence render inadequate accounts. As in other disciplines, the study of world politics is enriched by acknowledging and systematically examining how gender shapes categories and frameworks that we take for granted. This is necessary for answering the new questions raised and for generating fresh insights--about the world as we currently "know" it and how it might be otherwise. Finally, gender-sensitive studies improve our understanding of global crises, their interactions, and the possibilities of moving beyond them.
Perm doesnt solve realism cant be reformed. Its ideological dominance completely dismisses feminist questions. Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p58-9]
The second reason is obvious to feminist writers but still needs saying: Feminist work simply does not relate to the professional agenda of IR. The dominance of realism has demarcated what counts as appropriate questions. IR is so tightly determined, from the tyranny of first-year texts to the conformity of the leading journals, that innovation is difficult and threatening. Students and academics alike are not only told what IR is all about but are also provided with detailed reasons for dismissing those approaches that pretend otherwise. IR theory has thereby performed a central ideological function with very real sanctions for those who try to dismantle it. After all, in the United States and increasingly in the United Kingdom, it matters very greatly where you publish, and this inevitably gives enormous power to editors and referees.
A completely new direction in IR is necessary to incorporate a gendered perspective. Christine Sylvester, Professor of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University. Feminist International Relations: An Unfinished Journey. Cambridge University Press. 2001 pg. 12-13
It is safe to say that all feminists involved with IR are appalled at the field for systematically excluding the theoretical and practical concerns that feminist theory raises to visibility. Some of us, though, do not seek to improve the flawed product line called IR so much as to take off in new directions altogether, because a marriage of feminist ways of thinking and doing research with IR's positivism appears doomed. We believe that a new international relations tradition is needed to accommodate and theorize people, places, authorities, and activities that IR does not sight or cite. IR would then become a site where feminist questions could be (also) asked about gender, sexuality, bodies, travel, difference, identity, voice, subjectivity, and patriarchy (see e.g., Harding, 1998; Weedon, 1999) in spaces of the world where social relations breach boundaries and spill out internationally. To find those places and work analytically within them, we do IR as transversal and liminal vis--vis philosophy, anthropology, literary and art theory, women's studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, history, psychoanalytic theory, and the like. Of course we have our differences: Enloe is a standpoint feminist and I incline toward postmodern feminism; Elshtain gracefully combines the two in Women and War. We have each been redoing international relations by doing something that carries IR echoes but is not embedded in IR frameworks. And, although our views on ontology, epistemology, scholarly style, and citational authority differ, these differences are small compared with those that set our thinking apart from most of IR.
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Cant simply add women to traditional IR only a transformation of understanding solves V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 8-9
Because of the interdependent nature of this relationship, we learn about both men and women when we study gender. When we look at activities associated with masculinity (e.g., team sports, politics, the military), it appears simply that men are present and women are absent. Moreover, it appears that we can explain what is happening simply by attending to the men engaging in these activities. Gender analysis offers a more comprehensive explanation; it enables us to "see" how women are in fact important to the picture (enabling men's activities, providing "reasons" for men to fight), even though women and the roles they are expected to play are obscured when we focus only on men (see Fig- ure 1.2). Through a gender-sensitive lens, we see how constructions of masculinity (agency, control, aggression) are not independent of, but rely upon, contrasting constructions of femininity (dependence, vulnerability, passivity). In a sense, the dominant presence of men depends on the denial and absence of women. Because of this interdependence, a gender analysis of women's lives and experiences does not simply "add something" about women but transforms what we know about men and the activities they undertake. Hence, we study gender to enhance our understanding of the conventional foci of IR: men, masculinity, and masculine activities (power politics, war, economic control).
Women can not simply be added to international relations

Peterson and True 98 (V. Spike, associate professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Political Science and Jacqui doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto, Canada, The 'Man' Question in International Relations, ed. Jane Parpart, Marysia Zalewski, p. 15 16) But these studies also revealed that women could not simply be added to categories that are literally defined by their man-ness. 6 For example, the public sphere, economic power, and citizenship are not gender neutral. They presuppose categorically masculine traits (rationality, productivity, autonomy, agency) that are defined by their exclusion of feminine traits (irrationality, reproductivity, dependence, passivity). Insofar as adding women introduces the feminine, it contradicts the conventional meaning of these terms. Gender is thus not only a variable that can sometimes be "added" but also an analytic category with profound consequences for how we categorize, think about, and "know" the world. Hence contemporary feminisms are not simply about adding women to conventional accounts in order to improve their accuracy by exposing and rectifying traditional male biases. Although this corrective project is valuable and necessary, feminist scholarship now extends well beyond this "add women and stir" approach. Wendy Brown captures the contemporary feminist perspective when she states, "Everything in the human world is a gendered construction." 7 By recognizing gender as an analytical category "within which humans think about and organize their social activity," 8 feminists challenge structures of thought as well as structured practices. They argue that gender is not simply a dimension of individual subjectivity but a structural feature of social life.
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*Realism
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Realism
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Appeal to scientific objectivity limits our thinking to being in terms of dichotomies, limiting out alternatives and privilege the male elite V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 63-64
English and other languages structure our thinking in dichotomies that emphasize difference, suggest timeless polarities, and thus obscure the interdependence, mutability, and complexity of the social world. The ideology of scientific objectivity structures subject-object and fact-value in dichotomies and thus directs our attention away from the actual and relevant sociopolitical relations of context. Finally, the privileged status of claims to "objectivity"--like claims to "reality"--marginalizes potential critiques. The systematic effect of thinking in nonrelational categories is to exaggerate difference, separation, and inevitability. Rather than intimate a longer story and a larger picture, nonrelational categories render events and beliefs as "givens"; by being presented as ahistorical and decontextual, they are made to seem inevitable. If we are looking through the lens of "naturally given," we cannot even ask a variety of questions and cannot take seriously other challenges. Normative questions appear irrelevant or pointless, and alternative visions appear necessarily utopian. If we think only in dichotomies--of objective-subjective and realistidealist--then our attempts to criticize objectivity and realism are rendered immediately suspect, as irrational, illogical, idealistic, unreal. And it looks as though any critique of objectivity or realism must entail its opposite: a complete denial rather than a partial critique. 36 Gender is at work here because dichotomies, masculinism, and androcentrism are present. In academe as elsewhere, we rely on what men have thought, written, and concluded to establish the "givens" of our discourses. That which pertains to the lives and experience of elite males is taken as the norm and privileged. Thus, autonomy and freedom, independence from and power over others, separation from and control over nature, military and technological mastery, exploring and taming frontier-these are given privileged status and held to be good for everybody. However, not only do such values fail to benefit everybody, but they no longer (if ever) unproblematically benefit elite men. And they have never afforded accurate understandings of the world. These orientations are not all bad, but their pursuit at the expense of other values has always been costly. Without exposing and examining the trade-offs, we continue to live irresponsibly and limit ourselves intellectually.
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Claims to objective Truth and reality ignores the fact that all concepts are gendered and obscures the reality of social hierarchies Peterson and Runyan, professor of political science at the University of Arizona and professor of womens studies at Wright State University, 1999 (V. Spike and Anne, Global Gender Issues, 2iid edition, p. 39-41
The dichotomies of sovereignty-anarchy, politics-economics, realism-idealism, and center-periphery similarly structure how we think about and therefore act in the world. They emphasize polarized and hierarchical difference rather than how states, transnational processes, and people are embedded in complex and ever changing relationships that are not adequately characterized or analyzed in eitheror terms. In sum, the structure of dichotomies promotes patterns of thought and action that are static (unable to acknowledge or address change), stunted (unable to envision alternatives), and dangerously oversimplified (unable to accommodate the complexities of social reality). Whereas the structure of dichotomies makes gender stereotypes harder to see, critique, and alter, the status of dichotomies in Western thought poses additional problems. Although all cultures employ categories of comparison, Western thought is singular in the extent to which binarism (thinking in either-or oppositions) is privileged. This is due in large part to the prominence of science in Western culture. Science takes two dichotomies as givens: the categorical separation of fact from value, and of knower (subject) from that which is known (object). Deeply embedded in Western thought, these dualisms are accorded particular status because of their association with science and with claims to objective knowledge and Truth. But they are not gender-neutral categories. On the contrary, the knowing subject, rationality, and objectivity are gendered in meaning and practice. I6 Take a moment to consider how the dichotomies in Table 2.1 are linked both to gender stereotypes and the stereotype of scientific knowledge claims. To repeat: Dichotomies are so pervasive and privileged in Western culture that they lend authority to the particular dichotomy of gender. And the dichotomy of gender is so taken as given that it lends authority to the natural separation of other categories into dualistic form. To the extent that other dichotomies have gendered connotations (culture-nature, reason-emotion, autonomy-dependency, realism-idealism), they buttress the stereotypes of masculine and feminine when they are reproduced. Such reciprocal interaction will be elaborated throughout this text, inasmuch as gender dichotomies (the power of gender) create social effects (the position of women) and these effects in turn reproduce gendered thought and practice. Finally, these dichotomies are not only hierarchical (privileging the first term over the second) but also androcentric: The first term is associated with masculinity or assumes a male-as-norm point of view. 17 This androcentrism has three interacting effects. First, because the primary term is androcentric and privileged, it effectively elevates the values of the primary term over those of the other term. Thus, reason, order, culture, and action are associated with maleness and are privileged over emotion, uncertainty, nature, and passivity. Second, and closely related, characteristics and activities associated with femaleness are deemed not only less important but also unworthy or undesirable because they appear to threaten the values represented by the primary term. Thus, attitudes and activities associated with women (emotion, dependence, reproduction, caretaking) are given less attention and are often disparaged. 18 Androcentrism has a third effect: It assumes that men are the most important actors and the substance of their lives the most important topic to know about. As long as the realities of women, non-elite men, and chidren are treated as secondary to the main story -as the background that is never important enough to warrant being spotlighted-we in fact are unaware of what the background actually is and what relationship it actually has to the main story. What we are unaware of we cannot understand or analyze. Nor can we understand to what extent and in what ways the main story depends on background that is hidden -forced into darkness or silence by focusing illumination and attention elsewhere. Rendering invisible the experience or realities of others -of those not privileged-tends to present that which we do know about as real and authoritative, as if it were natural and knowing about it were all we needed to understand the story. In sum, an interaction of gender stereotypes, dichotomies, hierarchies, and masculinism/ androcentrism powerfully filters our understanding of social reality. Because we rarely question the dualism of male-female, we fail to see how the male- dominated hierarchy of masculine-feminine is socially constructed rather than natural. Recognizing the power of these filtering devices is an important first step toward analyzing their effects accurately and improving our knowledge of the world we both produce and are produced by.
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International Relations is a gendered concept Realisms centers itself on the male sovereign actor which excludes womyn and silences the feminine from international relations Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 46
Gender has been denied salience as an issue in International Relations because the discipline has been seen as constituted by a system of states which relate to one another in a context of anarchy? Realists assume that the proper way to understand the international system is via concepts of power and security, concepts that are ungendered and universal.38 With respect to gender, International Relations theory grounded in realist assumptions has either been seen as neutral or assumptions about the position and status of women have not been made explicit. However, International Relations is a gendered discourse.3 The invisibility or marginalization of gender issues in the study of International Relations is a consequence of methodological individualism which begins with a high level of abstraction, taking the state to be the key actor. The realist conception of the state as actor has been built upon the supposedly unproblematic figure of sovereign man. Sovereign man is an abstraction which is underpinned by a conception of the warrior, Prince or modern-day practitioner of Realpolitik. These same concepts and categories employed by realism make necessary the exclusion of women. Indeed the whole theoretical approach to International relations rests on the foundation of political concepts which it would be difficult to hold together coherently were it not for the trick of eliminating women from the prevailing definitions of man as the political actor.
Realism reifies states as actors in a way that marginalizes the actions and identity of individuals Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998, p. 43-44
The historical development of International Relations has seen the dominance of the realist paradigm. What have been the consequences of this? First, a vast amount of writing in International Relations is statecentric. That is, it assumes that states exist as concrete entities, have agency and are the main actors in international relations. Therefore, interstate relations should be the central focus of study. It has been argued that the notion that the state is the central actor gives rise to methodological individualism in the study of International Relations. That is, it is assumed that there are certain facts about the world that may be ascertained. Furthermore, these facts about the world can be explained in terms of facts about individuals, or more properly personalized states as actors. This reduces complex international phenomena to relations between reified sovereign states.8 The notion of reification, which is derived from critical theory, involves a process whereby social phenomena take on the appearance of things.19 According to critical theorists like Lukacs, in capitalist societies where production is commodified and orientated towards exchange rather than use, peoples productive activity appears strange and alien to them.2 That is, the product of ones labour appears to be a thing, an entity. Furthermore, reification permeates all spheres of life, as social relations of all kinds are reduced to thing-like relations.22 To reify the state, in this sense, is to suggest that it has a concrete existence. The state is viewed as a thing in itself, an entity which acts. A further objection to the state-as-actor approach is that it is reductionist and disguises the degree to which international processes can have an impact on specific social groups. It has been argued that statecentric approaches to the study of International Relations marginalize or render invisible unequal social relations and many contemporary problems which have an international dimension.23
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Objective means of interpreting reality are derived from the objectification of womyn and the feminine and rely on the need to dominate others Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 57-58
The male experience is reflected in epistemologies which embody a particular conception of the world conceived of and, according to Hartsock,91 in fact, inhabited by a number of fundamental others with whom one must construct relationships in order to survive. This leads to a conceptualization of the world in which the self, or in this case the state, is seen to operate in an environment where its integrity is threatened by a series of hostile others. Hirschmann argues that a significant part of this bias is the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology.92 Hirschmann suggests that positivist epistemologies revolve around the concept of objectivity. Objectivity as a means of classifying the world derives from the objectification of the woman/mother, a central task in masculinist development that is undertaken as a means to escape the mother and solidify masculine identity. The notion of objectivity is based upon a need to control and dominate others and this is clearly associated with males. To be male requires not only self reliance and self control, but control over other people and resources. These characteristics are so completely associated with males that it would be difficult to think about gender except in terms of this dichotomy. Furthermore, it is assumed that these definitions reflect a universal trend, departures from which are instances of abnormality?
Attempts at constructing an objective sense of reality ignores the fact that all claims to truth and conceptions for ordering reality are gendered approaches to understanding world politics that include the integration of global gender issues allows for a more comprehensive understanding V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p.12 - 13
In short, how we understand and value masculine and feminine characteristics profoundly shapes how we care about, perceive, understand, analyze, and critique the world in which we live. Gender thus influences not only who we are, how we live, and what we have, but also "how" we think, order reality, and claim to know what is true, and, hence, how we understand and explain the social world. As subsequent chapters illustrate, gender shapes our identification of global actors, characterization of state and nonstate actions, framing of global problems, and consideration of possible alternatives. These interacting phenomena--the position of women in world politics and the power of gender as a lens on the world--indicate that gender is important for contemporary understanding of world politics. It is no longer acceptable--and was never accurate--to treat gender as irrelevant to our knowledge of world politics. For these reasons, we offer in this text a gendersensitive lens on global processes. Through this lens, not only the "what" of world politics but also "how" we view--and therefore understand--world politics is different. We see the extent and structure of gender inequality, the role of gender in structuring the experience of women and men worldwide, the significance of gender in shaping how we think about world politics, and the process by which gendered thought shapes world politics itself. A text on global gender issues affords more adequate and comprehensive understanding of world politics than do approaches that ignore the effect of world politics on gender relations and the effect of gender on world politics.
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Realisms explanations of international relations are based upon a masculine conception of the world and the violence that is rooted in systems of domination to continue Tickner, Professor of International Relations at University of South California, 1992 (J. Ann, Gender in
International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, page 29- 30) For realists, security is tied to the military security of the state. Given their pessimistic assumptions about the likely behavior of states in an anarchic international environment, most realists are skeptical about the possibility of states ever achieving perfect security. In an imperfect world, where many states have national security interests that go beyond self-preservation and where there is no international government to curb their ambitions, realists tell us that war could break out at any time because nothing can prevent it. Consequently they advise, states must rely on their own power capabilities to achieve security. The best contribution the discipline of international relations can make to national security is to investigate the causes of war and thereby help to design realistic policies that can prolong intervals of peace. Realists counsel that morality is usually ineffective in a dangerous world: a realistic understanding of amoral and instrumental behavior, characteristic of international politics, is necessary if states are not to fall prey to others ambitions. In looking for explanations for the causes of war, realists, as well as scholars in other approaches to international relations, have distinguished among three levels of analysis: the individual, the state, and the international system. While realists claim that their theories are objective and of universal validity, the assumptions they use when analyzing states and explaining their behavior in the international system are heavily dependent on characteristics that we, in the West, have come to associate with masculinity. The way in which realists describe the individual, the state, and the international system are profoundly gendered each is constructed in terms of the idealized or hegemonic masculinity described in chapter 1. In the name of universality, realists have constructed a worldview based on the experiences of certain men: it is therefore a world view that offers us only a partial view of reality. Having examined the connection between realism and masculinity, I shall examine some feminist perspectives on national security. Using feminist theories, which draw on the experiences of women, I shall ask how it would affect the way in which we think about national security if we were to develop an alternative set of assumptions about the individual, the state, and the international system not based exclusively on the behavior of men. Realist assumptions about states as unitary actors render unproblematic the boundaries between anarchy and order and legitimate and illegitimate violence. If we were to include the experiences of women, how would it affect the way in which we understand the meaning of violence? While women have been less directly involved in international violence as soldiers, their lives have been affected by domestic violence in households, another unprotected space, and by the consequences of war and the policy priorities of militarized societies. Certain feminists have suggested that, because of what they see as a connection between sexism and militarism, violence at all levels of society is interrelated, a claim that calls into question the realist assumption of the anarchy/order distinction. Most important, these feminists claim that all types of violence are embedded in the gender hierarchies of dominance and subordination that I described in chapter 1. Hence they would argue that until these and other hierarchies associated with class and race are dismantled and until women have control over their own security a truly comprehensive system of security cannot be devised.

Realism makes gender invisible Susan Judith Ship, lecturer in Political Science, University of Ottawa, Beyond Positivism, 1994 p.140
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The historical experience of women in Western states until recently has been one of virtual exclusion from the public domain. The "invisibilization" of women is further reinforced through realism's commitment to the state as public but insulated and disconnected from civil society and domestic politics. The state/domestic society dichotomy replicates the public/private split characteristic of post-seventeenth-century Western social, political, and economic evolution. In this dichotomy, politics, economics, and culture were viewed as the public world of men-that is, white, upper-class men-whereas women were relegated to the private but apolitical world of the family and personal relations. The dichotomizing of public and domestic spheres characteristic of realist theorizing ultimately means that realism is silent as to the complex series of functions that the state performs in organizing and upholding interconnected hierarchies of race, class, and gender privilege. It is also silent as to how inequalities of social power inform and shape political power at the level of the state and at the level of the international system. Thus, the realist concept of the state renders invisible the unequal gender relations resulting from the virtually exclusive male monopoly over state power.
Realist views of the state are inseparable from gender inequality Susan Judith Ship, lecturer in Political Science, University of Ottawa, Beyond Positivism, 1994 p.139-140
Furthermore, the realist concept of the state as a unitary, rational actor and as ontologically privileged takes the state itself as given, rather than socially constructed. The failure to problematize the structural origins of the state and symbolic discourses that surround it ultimately means that realists also take as given the unequal power relations between men and those between men and women, which are constitutive of its formation. It has been pointed out that in Western social formations, "the transition from kin-based to citizenship-based political societies institutionalized gender hierarchy as well as racial and class hierarchies" (Peterson, 1989b:12).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Realism Patriarchy
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Realims supports patriarchy and conflict. It excludes womyn and supports aggressive competition for power before all else. Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p83-4]
In order to make a distinction between these competing hegemonic masculinities, we refer to the form taken with realism as hypermasculinity and to that found with liberal IR as rational masculinity. Realism's hypermasculinity is adopted from conservative thought via the conservative approach to foreign policy of the nineteenth century. As Rebecca Grant mentioned, it is this man-as-warrior idea (along with the conception of a split between what is moral behavior inside a state and what is moral outside) that underpins the realist conception of a separate "anarchic" realm of competing states--and that ultimately excludes women from this realm ( Grant 1991, 18). Realism in IR consciously adopted Hobbes's conception of human nature (e.g., Morgenthau 1946) without accepting the original conservative qualifier that this view presupposed a patriarchal government based on the family. Four points emerge to distinguish this masculine approach from liberal IR. First, reason is seen as fundamentally instrumental and has no transcendental quality. Reason, for the realist, does not lead us to a particular goal of human society. This is important because it reduces reason to a mere tool for achieving preset ends, and these ends are found in a basically pugnacious human nature. Whereas individuals are capable of altruism and self-sacrifice, Morgenthau and Niebuhr claimed, human groups manifest only the pugnacious element ( Morgenthau 1985, 39; 1952, 985-986; Niebuhr 1932, xi-xii, 25-27). Even those, such as Waltz, within the realist paradigm who have doubted Morgenthau's pessimism do finally see a common and power-hungry human nature at work in the relations between groups ( Waltz 1979, ch. 5). As recognized by Ann Tickner in her examination of Morgenthau's work, realism claims that human nature makes international relations an issue of competing aggressive ambitions--a combination of two of the characteristics mentioned earlier that form part of the various hegemonic interpretation of Western masculinity ( Tickner 1991). These ambitions are achieved by employing a common rationality that is nonetheless a slave of human pugnacious desires. Although objective, common rationality divorced from the social contexts that it is applied to is also a masculine trait, this rationality is significantly different from the one employed by liberal internationalists. For liberals consider this realist approach to be faulty science and, implicitly, failed (i.e., nonhegemonic) masculinity. Second, and following from realism's conception of an aggressive human nature, realism assumes that people's ambitions lead them to attempt to maximize their power relative to others. In fact, realists often argue, the struggle for power underlies all human political interaction ( Morgenthau 1985, 31-32; 1946, 195; Carr [ 1939] 1964, 67-75; Waltz 1979, 126-128). For some, such as Waltz, this leads to a mechanistic model of international affairs, but to earlier realists, Niebuhr and Morgenthau, for example, this develops into a sense of tragedy. The human condition is one of slavery to the masters, but every man aspires to be a master. Those who believe that intelligence can manage to end war therefore ignore the tragic character of human nature, which leads us on--as with Macbeth, Oedipus, Creon, and Rigolletto-toward actions our intelligence would rather avoid ( Morgenthau 1946, 169; Niebuhr 1935; Carlton 1990, 195-196). This sense of the (often, but not always) tragic warrior-hero is a particular feature of hypermasculinity. The largely independent hero is dragged into tragedy by social forces or character flaws, and against his rational intelligence (see Hanke 1992; cf. Gerzon 1984). This is not to say there cannot be female tragic heroes, but Western conceptions of gender have usually embedded these women's tragedies within a social or family context (e.g., Antigone, Hecuba, Portia, La Traviata, or Ophelia). Rational masculinity, by contrast, does not have a sense of tragedy. Finally, realism gives morality a dependent role. This is not to say that realists do not care about morality, for people like Reinhold Niebuhr obviously do, but the struggle for power is placed before moral considerations. Indeed, Morgenthau even claims that morality is a product of the settling of power struggles within a society ( Morgenthau 1946, 115-118). 7 Thus realism tends to see moral claims as a superimposed and external force, one that often has trouble being heard above the clamor of the struggle for power (see Levi 1969). In effect, realists have taken Augustine's conception of the relation between heaven and earth and reversed it. Whereas Augustine said that morality came from heaven and was incompatible with the secular world and that the dictates of heaven were more important, realists claim that the dictates of the nonmoral "city of man" take priority.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Realism = Masculine

Realism values only those things that are perceived as being masculine. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
121 Gender
For realists, security is tied to the military security of the state. Given their pessimistic assumptions about the likely behavior of states in an "anarchic" international environment, most realists are skeptical about the possibility of states ever achieving perfect security. In an imperfect world, where many states have national security interests that go beyond self-preservation and where there is no international government to curb their ambitions, realists tell us that war could break out at any time because nothing can prevent it. Consequently, they advise, states must rely on their own power capabilities to achieve security. The best contribution the discipline of international relations can make to national security is to investigate the causes of war and thereby help to design "realistic" policies that can prolong intervals of peace. Realists counsel that morality is usually ineffective in a dangerous world: a "realistic" understanding of amoral and instrumental behavior, characteristic of international politics, is necessary if states are not to fall prey to others' ambitions. In looking for explanations for the causes of war, realists, as well as scholars in other approaches to international relations, have distinguished among three levels of analysis: the individual, the state, and the international system. While realists claim that their theories are "objective" and of universal validity, the assumptions they use when analyzing states and explaining their behavior in the international system are heavily dependent on characteristics that we, in the West, have come to associate with masculinity. The way in which realists describe the individual, the state, and the international system are profoundly gendered; each is constructed in terms of the idealized or hegemonic masculinity described in chapter 1. In the name of universality, realists have constructed a world view based on the experiences of certain men: it is therefore a world view that offers us only a partial view of reality.
The notions of masculinity in realism are uniquely bad they promote militarism and conflict Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p86]
The question still remains, Why has realist hypermasculinity remained dominant in spite of post-World War II global economic growth and technological development (factors that seem to support liberal internationalist hypotheses about progress)? Perhaps this has something to do with the changed international conditions in the late 1940s. Cynthia Enloe's dissection of the gendered mechanics of the Cold War suggests that a particular form of masculinity assisted the militarization of the societies involved in the EastWest conflict ( 1993, ch. 3). The form of hypermasculinity found in realism, with its emphasis on the natural aggressiveness and ambition of men, fitted the militarized peace associated with the Western response to a perceived Soviet threat. Under these conditions, when hostility between East and West appeared so real, it was hard to claim that realist hypermasculinity was obsolete. And as John Keegan points out in his history of warfare, economic growth and technological development are as often the handmaidens of power politics as they are the agents of rational men ( Keegan 1993). In the post-Cold War era, however, rational masculinity appears to be on the rise, at least in the West, and ready to challenge once again the dominance of hypermasculinity (see Chapters 6 and 8).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Realism Nuke War
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The realist perspective necessitates the threats of nuclear annihilation or environmental degradationonly by breaking down the gender hierarchy and incorporating the feminist perspective can we prevent realism from destroying the world. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
While the traditional national security approach is based on the assumption that security demands autonomy and separation, in the highly interdependent world facing the multidimensional threats that I have described, autonomy may no longer be possible or desirable. Feminist approaches offer us new tools with which to question this exclusionary way of thinking. Drawing on experiences more typical of women, feminist theories start with the assumption that striving for attachment and community is as much a part of human nature as is the desire for independence. Conventional international relations thinking, which has prioritized "high politics," or issues relating to international conflict, draws our attention away from other activities in the international system, activities that are closer to behaviors traditionally associated with the feminine. Although it has been devalued in the way in which we usually think about international relations, building community is also an aspect of the political and economic behavior of states in the international system. Assuming the need for interdependence as one part of human behavior allows us to see community building not as an aberration but as another dimension of international behavior. Regional integration schemes, such as the European Community, suggest that we may be moving toward modes of international organization that demand different models of analysis, models not based on an exclusionary definition of national sovereignty. Realist models of international relations have been built on assumptions of rigid boundary distinctions between outside and inside, anarchy and order, and foreign and domestic. The outside is portrayed in terms of dangerous spaces where violence is unsanctioned. This threat of violence must be guarded against and controlled if security on the inside is to be achieved. Feminist perspectives point to the inadequacy of these boundary distinctions for understanding the roots of conflict and suggest other possible ways of thinking about national security. By emphasizing the interrelationship of violence at all levels of society-- as well as its relation to family violence, which also takes place in spaces that are usually beyond the sanction of the law-- these feminist perspectives can help us to rethink such boundary distinctions. Threats of nuclear annihilation and environmental degradation and the interdependence of states in their economic relations all suggest that statist approaches to national security are becoming dysfunctional. We can no longer afford to think in terms of the hierarchical boundary distinctions fostered by the exclusionary we/they attitude of the modern state system. Technologies of modern warfare have broken down boundaries between protectors and protected. Interventionist practices of great powers in the conflicts of weaker states, as well as ethnic strife caused by the lack of coincidence between state boundaries and the various nationalities living within these internationally sanctioned borders, blur distinctions between domestic and international violence. If this feminist analysis has suggested that true security can be achieved only with the elimination of rigid hierarchical gender distinctions, the same conclusion could apply to the hierarchical distinctions through which we have been socialized into thinking about the international system.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Realism War
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Realism causes an obsession with power that makes war inevitable. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security. 1992, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tickner/
Realists believe that, since there is no international government capable of enforcing impartial rules for states' behavior, states must take matters of security into their own hands even if it yields dangerous results. Kenneth Waltz uses eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's metaphor of a stag hunt to describe the likely security-seeking behavior of states given this condition of anarchy. Five hungry men agree to trap and share a stag, but when a hare runs by one man grabs it, thereby letting the stag escape: by defecting from the common goal, this hunter sacrifices the long-term cooperative interests of the group, his own included, for his immediate short-term interest. 4 For realists, this story illustrates the problematic nature of national security: in an international system of anarchy, rationality would dictate that mutual cooperation would work in the interest of all. But since men are self-seeking, politically ambitious, and not always rational, we must assume that some states and some men will not be cooperative and will start wars. Given the lack of an international government with powers of enforcement, states must therefore depend on themselves for their own security needs even if this is not in the best interests of the system as a whole. For realists this is the classic security dilemma. 5 In an imperfect world states can never be sure of one another's intentions, so they arm themselves to achieve security; since this is an act that threatens someone else's security, it sets in motion a vicious cycle which results in the spiraling procurement of armaments and the possibility that war could break out at any time. Faced with the ever present threat of violence and the lack of a sanctioning authority to control it, how do realists suggest that states should act to promote peace and stability in such an environment? Given their belief that perfect security is unattainable in an imperfect world, realists believe that states can best optimize their security through preparation for war. For Hans Morgenthau, the security of the state is attained and preserved through the maximization of power, particularly military power. Elements of national power include secure geographical boundaries, large territorial size, the capacity for selfsufficiency in natural and industrial resources, and a strong technological base, all of which contribute to a strong military capability. 6 Kenneth Waltz suggests that states can enhance their security by following the principle of self-help: in an anarchical international system, states must help themselves, for they can count on no one else to do so. For Waltz, security depends on avoiding dependence and building the capabilities necessary to defend against other states' aggressive acts: the greatest rewards for a state come, not from an increase in well-being, which might be achieved through heightened interdependence, but from the maintenance of autonomy. 7 In a dangerous world, Waltz predicts that states with the most power will be the most successful, because power permits a wide range of action.
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**Other Stuff
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: But We Incorporate Gender!
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Trying to incorporate gender into development is counterproductiveobjectives become distorted. Elisabeth Prugl and Mary K. Meyer, assistant professor of IR at Florida International University, associate prof. of political science at Eckerd College, Gender Politics in Global Governance, 1999 p.12-3
While it thus appears that centralization and hierarchical bureaucratic structures can facilitate the integration of a gender perspective, there is considerable debate over the desirability of integrating gender policies and programs into bureaucracies. Some have argued that bureaucracies by definition cannot empower local communities because they style themselves, not the communities, as the locus of power and knowledge (Ferguson 1990). Bureaucratic language makes women into objects of planning interventions and negates them as subjects who have a stake in their own emancipation. It disempowers because it frames women as having problems and needs, but never choices and agency (Hale 1989). Furthermore, feminists working inside development bureaucracies often discover that projects with emancipatory objectives become distorted when forced into standard blueprints that never challenge dominant development paradigms (Goetz 1991).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Claims About Biological Sex
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Gender is not confined to the biological anatomy but instead attributed to socially learned characteristics of masculine and feminine V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 5
Unlike sex (understood as the biological distinction between males and females), gender refers to socially learned behavior and expectations that distinguish between masculinity and femininity. Whereas biological sex identity is determined by reference to genetic and anatomical characteristics, socially learned gender is an acquired identity gained through performing prescribed gender roles. Moreover, because societies place different values on masculine and feminine behaviors, gender is also the basis for relations of inequality between men and women. Finally, gender is a particularly powerful lens through which all of us see and organize reality. (Gender as a lens is explored more thoroughly in Chapter 2.)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: We Include Womyn
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Our criticism is not limited to the lack of inclusion of womyn in the plan it is with the persistent placement of masculine as more important, relevant, and dominant over the feminine within the affirmative methodology Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 55-56
Genevieve Lloyd has argued that modern science profoundly influenced the political thought of Hobbes.82 Early attempts by a modern state theorist to impose categories on the world involved a process whereby the powers of reason were to control and dominate nature which was identified with the female. Science heralded a new relationship between the knower and the known. Knowledge was associated with the control or subordination of nature. It is highly significant that nature was identified metaphorically with the female. The issue of gender bias is not then simply the absence of women, but the persistent association of the masculine with the objective, scientific, asexual and the way in which the construction of scientific knowledge is a process which involves the domination of nature; nature being ubiquitously female. Peterson argues that having divided the world into knower, mind, subject and knowable nature/object, scientific ideology further specifies the relation between knower and known as one of distance and separation.84 The so-called objectivity of science, then, presupposes a scientific mind and modes of knowing rigidly set apart from what is to be known nature and the masculine by association comes to connote autonomy, separation and distance.
Integrating women into IR isnt the issuetheir voices will continue to go unheard unless a gendered perspective is incorporated through uncovering hidden power relations. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
In her assessment of the potential for finding a space in IR for feminist theory in the realist and liberal approaches of the interparadigm debate, Sandra Whitworth has suggested that, to incorporate gender, theories must satisfy three criteria: (1) they must allow for the possibility of talking about the social construction of meaning; (2) they must discuss historical variability; and (3) they must permit theorizing about power in ways that uncover hidden power relations. Whitworth claims that, in terms of these three criteria, there is little in realism that seems conducive to theorizing about gender.76 The liberal paradigm that has sought to enlarge concerns beyond the state-centric, national-security focus of realism might seem more promising; however, according to Whitworth, it is ahistorical and denies the material bases of conflict, inequality, and power. Introducing women and gender to the liberal paradigm would also encounter the same problems noted by critics of liberal feminism. Attempts to bring women into IR feed into the mistaken assumption that they are not there in the first place. As Cynthia Enloe tells us, women (as well as marginalized people more generally) are highly involved in world politics, but existing power structures, institutionalized in the split between the public and private spheres and what counts as important, keep them from being heard.77
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Essentialism
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Our claims do not universalize womanhood but instead are used to effectively find an engaged position in order to create a common conception of the subject woman as a means for retaining gender as a point of departure Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 171-172
Standpoint feminists have attempted to address such criticisms by arguing that ones world-view is fundamentally shaped by social position and experience. Thus to make a standpoint claim is not to universalize womanhood, but to draw out the implications of the public/private dichotomy and the implication of gender difference in the social world on identity formation. Standpoint thinkers insist that feminist theory must be able to show how women are positioned in relation to dominant power structures and how this forges a sense of identity and a politics of resistance and to suggest ways in which both theory and practice can be directed in liberatory directions. If material life is structured differently for different groups, not only will the vision available to each represent an inversion of others in systems of domination,but a standpoint will also suggest ways of moving beyond these relations. To overcome female subordination involves real struggle which involves far-reaching social transformations. A feminist standpoint is not the world-view of all women, but an engaged position, an achievement, a claim to know which is struggled for Standpoint theorists thus recognize the historical and political nature of all knowledge as power and understand that theory is inexorably linked to practice. The theory/practice relationship here is explicitly linked to an emancipatory politics. However, it is a view of emancipation that does not depend upon the scientific discovery and application of universal laws but on social practice associated with critical reflection on dominant knowledge/power relations. The political subject of feminism has been integral to debates about feminism and identity politics. Indeed, feminism has understood the subject in terms of identity; the political subject is that which remains identical to itself in the face of contradiction. Debates within contemporary feminist theory have centred on the possibility of combining identity politics with a conception of the subject as non-essentialized and emergent from historical experience, retaining gender as a point of departure. Some of the positions taken in this debate parallel debates which have taken place between standpoint feminist thinkers and their critics. For example, some feminists insist that ones identity is taken as a point of departure, as a motivation for action and as delineation of ones politics.38 Here the concept woman is not understood as a set of particular characteristics, ox attributes, but a particular position. Women then use their positional perspective as a place from which values are interpreted and constructed. Such an approach does not construct women as the passive victims of patriarchy but as self-determining agents who are capable of challenging and resisting structures of d6mination and in so doing of constructing new identities for themselves.
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There are common gender relations on which to base the K Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin and Shelley Wright; Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne
Law School; Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School; and Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School; The American Journal International Law, October, 1991, p.ln Despite differences in history and culture, feminists from all worlds share a central concern: their domination by men. Birgit Brock-Utne writes: "Though patriarchy is hierarchical and men of different classes, races or ethnic groups have different places in the patriarchy, they are united in their shared relationship of dominance over their women. And, despite their unequal resources, they are dependent on each other to maintain that domination." n55 Issues raised by Third World feminists, however, require a reorientation of feminism to deal with the problems of the most oppressed women, rather than those of the most privileged. Nevertheless, the constant theme in both western and Third World feminism is the challenge to structures that permit male domination, although the form of the challenge and the male structures may differ from society to society. An international feminist perspective on international law will have as its goal the rethinking and revision of those structures and principles which exclude most women's voices.
Generalizations necessary Stacy Young, Prof.of Gov. and Womens Studies, Cornell University, Changing the Wor(l)d, 1997, p.20
The other shared weakness of these studies is methodological as well. It concerns the imperative to generalize, often considered both a defining characteristic and a strength of social science, but one which can lead to analyses that obfuscate, in this case, the dissimilarities among women that emerge from womens different situations within a social structure which is composed of many forms of dominative power. This methodological imperative is not in itself problematicwhen one discusses politics, one always wants and needs to move beyond discussing a particular life or a single incident. The problem inheres in the failure to couple the goal of generalizing with attention to specifics, differences. The result is
that such generalizations usually work to erase many of the complexities of domination and resistance that determine the texture of womens livesparticularly women who find themselves on the wrong sides of more than one axis of domination and who pursue a variety of strategies of resistance beyond traditional forms of engagement with governments, political parties, unions, and the like.
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An IR feminist perspective is able to rethink the structures and principles exclude all women. Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin and Shelley Wright; Senior Lecturer, University of Melbourne
Law School; Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School; and Lecturer, University of Sydney Law School; The American Journal International Law, October, 1991, p.ln Despite differences in history and culture, feminists from all worlds share a central concern: their domination by men. Birgit Brock-Utne writes: "Though patriarchy is hierarchical and men of different classes, races or ethnic groups have different places in the patriarchy, they are united in their shared relationship of dominance over their women. And, despite their unequal resources, they are dependent on each other to maintain that domination." n55 Issues raised by Third World feminists, however, require a reorientation of feminism to deal with the problems of the most oppressed women, rather than those of the most privileged. Nevertheless, the constant theme in both western and Third World feminism is the challenge to structures that permit male domination, although the form of the challenge and the male structures may differ from society to society. An international feminist perspective on international law will have as its goal the rethinking and revision of those structures and principles which exclude most women's voices.
Dominative power is a social structure that permeates the lives of all women. Stacy Young, Prof.of Gov. and Womens Studies, Cornell University, Changing the Wor(l)d, 1997, p.20
The other shared weakness of these studies is methodological as well. It concerns the imperative to generalize, often considered both a defining characteristic and a strength of social science, but one which can lead to analyses that obfuscate, in this case, the dissimilarities among women that emerge from womens different situations within a social structure which is composed of many forms of dominative power. This methodological imperative is not in itself problematicwhen one discusses politics, one always wants and needs to move beyond discussing a particular life or a single incident. The problem inheres in the failure to couple the goal of generalizing with attention to specifics, differences. The result is that such generalizations usually work to erase many of the complexities of domination and resistance that determine the texture of womens livesparticularly women who find themselves on the wrong sides of more than one axis of domination and who pursue a variety of strategies of resistance beyond traditional forms of engagement with governments, political parties, unions, and the like.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Gender Neutrality
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IR has always been genderedclaims of gender neutrality only sustain power relations. Sandra Whitworth, Lecturer in Political Science @ York University, Millennium V18N2, 1989 p 265
The silence of international relations scholars about women is significant, and has been taken to mean in the past either that international relations is gender neutral or that women are not part of the subject matter of international relations at all. It is argued here, by contrast, that the theory and practice of international relations have always been gendered, and that international economic and political institutions contain, affect, and are affected by understandings of gender. To suggest that they are not, by implying some sort of gender neutrality, only serves to sustain the power relations embedded in this sort of silencing within international relations. The absence of women in international relations is hegemonic, in a Gramscian sense, insofar as that absence is considered natural. This project, then, is not one which deplores the apparent absence of women in international relations but is one which asks, as Sarah Brown does, why a theory and history which sustains this appearance is accepted.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Womyn in Power
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The fact that there are token womyn in positions of power do not serve to disprove or disrupt the politics of gender, but rather may further institute the idea that only those that are masculine are powerful V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 96-97
First, as long as female political actors are perceived either as traditional women or "invisible women" (because they are acting like men), gender expectations are not really disrupted. Paradoxically, even when women wield the highest state power, by continuing to behave in genderstereotypical ways they reinforce rather than challenge the politics of gender. Even though gender is at work here (shaping pathways to and the exercise of power), it remains "invisible" to observers of world politics. In other words, by appearing as traditional women or honorary men, female politicians do not challenge the categorical distinction between femininity and masculinity and do not politicize this gender dichotomy. Their presence in fact works to reproduce traditional gender stereotypes. Second, and related to the first point, there is no simple, one-to-one relationship between the presence of women in power and the extent of feminist politics. If traditional gender relations remain in place, more women in power need not translate into a politics that is "better" for women in a feminist sense. This is easiest to see when we consider the case of adding women who behave like men: We do not expect feminist action from traditional "men." But the same is true in the case of women who project a traditional image. The promotion of femininity is not the same as promoting feminism. As we argue throughout this text, men can be as--and sometimes (given the power of their positioning as males) even more--effective in promoting feminism than women. Whether and to what extent women in office will promote feminist goals is a very complex issue that has generated extensive research. 75 (We discuss the relationship between practical and strategic gender interests in Chapter 5.) One generalization seems to hold: As long as women constitute only a token presence (due to their small numbers and to the cultural isolation of women as "outsiders"), it is unlikely that feminist goals can be effectively promoted. This is true whether or not the women (or men) advocate feminist objectives as part of their campaign commitments. There are simply too many situational and structural obstacles for feminist concerns and projects to gain salience and be taken seriously when promoted by token or marginalized voices.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Intersectionality
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Power is a gendered concept - Making gender the primary focus is key to realizing the underpinnings of power in inequality V. Spike Peterson, Professor of Political Science at University of Arizona and Anne Sisson Runyan, Director, Center for Womens Studies at University of Cincinnati, Global Gender Issues, 1999 p. 7
We focus on gender in this text not because other axes of difference and bases of inequality (race/ethnicity, class, religion, age, etc.) are less important than--or even extricable from--gender. Rather, gender is our primary lens because the worldwide institutionalization of gender differences is a major underpinning of structural inequalities of significance to world politics. Through a complex interaction of identification processes, symbol systems, and social institutions (which we explore in subsequent chapters), gender differences are produced--typically in the form of a dichotomy that not only opposes masculinity to femininity but also translates these oppositional differences into gender hierarchy, the privileging of traits and activities defined as masculine over those defined as feminine. Thus, although it is important to recognize the cultural variation in how gender differences are formed and expressed, it is also important to stress the political nature of gender as a system of difference construction and hierarchical dichotomy production that is constitutive of almost all contemporary societies. Gender is about power, and power is gendered. We begin to make this power visible by examining the relationship between masculinity and femininity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Pacifism
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Although our advocacy is not pacifism our focus on peace free from hypermasculinity reaffirms womyns place in decision-making and breaks free from the war-peace dichotomy Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 120
However, as Dinnerstein has argued, equality and equal rights have never been the sole focus of feminism. Feminist discourse has also emphasized human connectedness, dialogue and cooperation over dominance and violent confrontation. In this view, feminism means mobilizing the wisdom and skills with which female history has equipped women and focusing them to change the world. Dinnerstein argues that equal-rights goals matter because they are to do with psychic growth.7 Furthermore, women are in fact constantly forced in practice to rediscover the necessity of speaking for peace because they are not represented in places where decisions about war are taken.72 Therefore, if women do not speak for peace they will be excluded from speaking on all aspects of life and death questions that face the species. Sometimes this leads to the conscious and subversive use of women s traditional place as mother and Other but at the same time demonstrates that women are refusing to stay in their place on the margins. In this way, by taking a more powerful place in the political arena, feminist peace activists are changing the terms in which public discourse is conducted.74 Feminist thinking about peace is not necessarily locked into the warpeace dichotomy. Because feminists, generally, start from the conditions of womens lives, and because they see many forms of violence, unhappiness and distress, they define peace as womens achievement of control over their lives. Similarly, non-violence is not just about the absence of war, but a total approach to living, a strategy for change.7When wars end it is women who relinquish their freedom. It is women who are expected to repair the damage done to their militarized sons, husbands and lovers. Peace, therefore, is also seen as a process which must reproduce itself.76 At Greenham Common women learnt how to protest effectively and assertively by confronting the police and military, but at the same time their action was deliberately non-violent. Women also tried to work in supportive ways, sharing tasks, skills and knowledge.77
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Africa Key
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Africa is a key place for a change in gender perspectives and creating a greater understanding of the interactions between gender and the state Jane L. Parpart is a professor of history, women's studies, and international studies, and coordinator of International Development Studies at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada and Kathleen A. Staudt is associate
professor of Political Science and Assistant Dean at the University of Texas at El Paso, Women and the State in Africa 1989 p. 7 Much ink has been spilled theorizing about the origins of the modem state as it evolved in Europe and spread elsewhere. Focused on ancient, pristine societies, such theorizing has tried to piece together what remains a genuine puzzle, namely what forces gave rise to the states. While some feminist theorists focus on ancient Sumer, Inca, and Aztec societies, Rayna Rapp calls for analytic attention to state formation in the bloody laboratory of colonial penetration.29 From the early colonial period, we can gamer insights about how the prevailing capitalist world system affected dependent economies through state institutions. We believe that Africa is a prime location in which to examine state formation, for its European-derived form has been in place only a century. This time frame permits an examination of living and available memory and documents over a period of continuing, creative flux. More important, Africa is a key location in which to explore the provocative question: Did gender conflict help to shape the character of the state? Many historical and ethnographic accounts of African societies have emphasized the existence of separate and distinctive gender interests regarding property, resources, and responsibilities.30 In an era of commercial production and exchange, these separate interests are manifested in husbands and wives who control their own incomes. In other words, household income pooling cannot be assumed.3 Separate interests have also been enshrined in sex-specific institutions which defend or advance the interests of men and women. West Africa in particular is rich with such institutions, though their existence has been documented across the continent.32 Female institutions, however, have withered with the neglect of a maleoriented state, colonial and thereafter, but are occasionally evoked in crisis (such as the Womens War in Aba) or replaced with new institutions.33
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 IR Key To Fem
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International politics influences gender relations in all spheres Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p202-3]
International politics and the study of international relations intersect with the personal in important ways as well. The metaphors of high politics reverberate with images of hypermasculine men ready to "do battle with their enemies." As Ralph Pettman reminded us, the masculinized images of politics and sports set standards of behavior for "manliness" (and "womanliness ")--with profound implications for gender relations at home and at work. 15 International politics presents a world where men "naturally" hold power and women are "naturally" subordinate. These metaphors and assumptions reinforce the association between manliness/maleness/masculinity and power at all levels of society and thus contribute to the ongoing struggle to maintain gender hierarchies. Indeed, as Steve Smith and Craig Murphy pointed out, challenging this assumption within the highly masculinized field of IR can attract the ire of more conservative colleagues and no doubt explains the reluctance of many sympathetic IR specialists to openly side with feminist critiques.
The internal arena is the key location for the formation of ideals of masculinity Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p204]
The international arena is also a place where competing hegemonic interpretations of male power and manliness struggle for predominance. As we have seen, the military confrontations in the Gulf and Panama were struggles over contending versions of masculinity as well as battles over land. As Luke Ashworth and Larry Swatuk pointed out, competition between realist and neorealist theories of international relations has often been couched in masculinist terms, each side arguing that they represent "real" masculine values and practices. Thus international politics, war, and peacemaking are particularly revealing sites for understanding the construction of and competition among different hegemonic masculinities.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Gender Dichotomy Spills Over
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Overcoming the gender dichotomy spills over, allowing the questioning of other conceptual oppositions. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Walker and other postmodernists have also questioned realisms reading of Hobbess state of nature, asking why, when Hobbes himself refused to make such distinctions, the phrase has become associated with distinctions between community on the inside and anarchy on the outside. IR feminists have questioned realisms reliance on state-of-nature myths on the grounds that it introduces gender bias that extends into IR theory.103 Importantly, postmodernism engages in the deconstruction of conceptual oppositions. It questions binary hierarchical oppositions in which one of two terms is privileged over the other. This kind of deconstruction has been used to question prevailing interpretations of international relations. For example, Richard Ashley questions the conventional reading of the anarchy problematic, which depends on an opposition between sovereignty and anarchy, where sovereignty is seen as stable and a legitimizer of state practices and anarchy is viewed as dangerous and problematic.104 IR feminists also problematize the defining dichotomies of the field that are reinforced through an association with the masculine/feminine gender dichotomy.105 They question how they serve to naturalize other forms of superordination in world politics. For example, boundaries between self and other, realism and idealism, order and anarchy, all of which evoke gendered connotations, serve as legitimators of national-security practices.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Discourse Key
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Relations of power are established in the binary oppositions that permeate language. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Claiming that discourse analysis is an emerging research program in IR, Jennifer Milliken outlines its three theoretical commitments: First, discourses are systems of signification in which discourse is structured in terms of binary oppositions that establish relations of power. As examples, she supplies terms such as modern/traditional, and West/Third World that are not neutral but establish the first term as superior to the second.50 Second, discourses define subjects authorized to speak and to act; they also define knowledgeable practices by these subjects, which makes certain practices legitimate and others not. Discourses also produce publics or audiences for these actors; in this way, social space comes to be organized and controlled. This works to restrict experts to certain groups and to endorse a certain meaning of the way things should be done, excluding others.51 Third, discourse analysis directs us toward studying dominating or hegemonic discourses and the way they are connected to the implementation and legitimation of certain practices. But more fundamentally, discourse produces what we have come to understand in the world as common sense. Discourse analysis can also help us understand how such language works and when the predominant forms of knowledge embodied in such discourses are unstable; this allows the study of subjugated knowledge or alternative discourses that have been silenced in the process.52 Focusing on subjugated knowledges may involve an examination of how they work to create conditions for resistance to a dominating discourse.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Race/Class/Location Key to Gendered Perspective
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A gendered perspective is impossible without looking at the race, class, and location of women. J. Ann Tickner, Professor of International Relations at USC. Gendering World Politics: Issues and Approaches in the Post-Cold War Era. Columbia University Press: 2001 http://www.ciaonet.org/book/tia01/
Third World women have begun to question the term feminist because of its association with Western cultural imperialism. Stressing the importance of producing their own knowledge and recovering their own identities, these women, speaking out of the historical experiences of colonial oppression, offer further evidence of a multiplicity of oppressions. Chandra Mohanty, while she acknowledges the impossibility of representing all their diverse histories, suggests the need to explore, analytically, the links among the struggles of Third World women against racism, sexism, colonialism, and capitalism. She and other postcolonial feminists use the term Third World to include North American women of color; their writings have insisted on the need to analyze the interrelationships between feminist, antiracist, and nationalist struggles. Postcolonial feminists interpret Western imperialism as the historical imposition of an imperial order, based on white, masculine values, on subjugated and feminized colonial peoples.34 Avtar Brah claims that, in todays world, feminist questions about womens locations in the global economic system cannot be answered without reference to class, ethnicity, and geographical location.35
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**Aff Answers**
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Tickner IndictEssentialism
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Tickners view of IR is essentialist and ignores neorealism Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Publisher: Columbia University Press, New York. p 3] Tickner's analysis suggests that masculinist perspectives in IR do not apply a uniform understanding of masculinity, but rather make use of a number of different models of man (Tickner 1992, 67). She also warned against the essentializing tendency of separating women from men as undifferentiated categories. However, as I shall argue in chapter 2, the suggestion that there may be a number of masculinities operating in IR theory is rather overshadowed by the main thrust and structure of her book, which tends to oppose a monolithic masculinism against an equally monolithic feminism. This is a pity because the structure thus serves to essentialize both masculinity and feminism. Clearly not all feminisms are compatible, and neither are all models of masculinity. For example, men cannot be both in a state of nature (the Hobbesian, realist view), and yet have control and domination over it (the neorealist view) at the same time. Thus the historical eclipse of realism by neorealism in the postwar period represents a reversal of the relationship between man and nature as conceptualized in international-relations (IR) theory.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 No Link
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No link there is no one form of manhood in IR that we reinforce Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p203-4]
The assertion that international politics and relations is a "man's affair" of course presupposes a single, biologically based, and largely AngloAmerican vision of masculinity. 16 Whereas most of the chapters in the book are situated within this cultural context, no single agreed standard of masculinity comes to the fore. Indeed, one is struck by the variety and richness of definitions of manhood and masculinity that emerge. Steve Niva described a series of shifts in the dominant/hegemonic conceptions of masculinity in the United States. The defeat in Vietnam undermined the longheld myth of the American frontiersmanwarrior only to fuel a remasculinization of America in the Ramboized rhetoric of Reagan and Bush. Panama and the Gulf War thus played a central role in the reassertion and redefinition of American masculinity. To Cynthia Weber, the hypermasculine posturing during the Panama invasion signaled not strength but male hysteria over the loss of American hegemonic power. Perhaps these cracks in U.S. hegemony explain the shift to a new definition of (superior) manhood described by Niva. This new "tough but tender" version of hegemonic masculinity ridicules the "insensitive" hypermasculinity of Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega, celebrating instead the "new" American man who is morally responsive, sensitive to the needs of women and children, and yet able to kick butt when needed. The possibility that there is one, biologically based, predictable set of characteristics that define a "real man" dissolves in this complexity. Male associations with power, especially over women, youth, and subordinate males, are widespread (both historically and in the present), but definitions of masculinity(ies) obviously vary over time and place. 17 The historical context, the economic, political, and cultural/social factors at play at any given time, clearly have profound implications for the way manhood and masculinities are understood and maintained. As Spike Peterson and Jacqui True reminded us, new times require new ways of thinking about gender relations and manhood/masculinity(ies). I would argue that "old times" require (re)analysis as well, for definitions of manhood and masculinity(ies) have surely varied in the past. Indeed, colonialism and imperialism profoundly shaped the emergence of a hegemonic version of Euramerican manhood, which benefited from being compared with colonial images of soft and effeminate or warriorlike but technically "backward" colonial males.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 No Alt Solvency (1/2)
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No alt solvency - masculinised IR is the effect of gender in society Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p12-3] To mention just a few of these connections: international relations is a world of traditionally masculine pursuitsin which women have been, and by and large continue to be, invisible (Enloe 1990; Halliday 1991; Peterson and Runyan 1993, 1988). The focus on war, diplomacy, states, statesmen, and high-level economic negotiations has overwhelmingly represented the lives and identities of men. This is because of the institutionalization of gender differences in society at large and the consequent paucity of women in high office. Between 1970 and 1990, for example, women worldwide represented under 5 percent of heads of state, cabinet ministers, senior national policymakers, and senior persons in intergovernmental organizations (Peterson and Runyan 1993, 6). States have historically been oppressive to women, who have often been denied full citizenship. Rights and duties of citizenship have depended on the bearing of arms, a duty by and large confined to men (Stiehm 1982). Men form not only the decision makers, but also the law enforcers, backed by the threat of violence (Enloe 1987). In fact, masculine violence has become thoroughly embedded, institutionalized, and legitimized in the modern state (Connell 1990). Meanwhile, the rhetoric of nationalism has been found to be heavily gendered (Parker et al 1992), with national identity often being articulated through control over women (Kandiyoti 1992). Although many women have been active in national-liberation movements, nonetheless, nationalism has been found to have a special affinity for male society [which] legitimizes the dominance of men over women (Steans 1998, 69).
Alt doesnt solve fracturing ideas of masculinity only results in more conflict Marysia Zalewski, Reader in the Centre for Womens Studies, and Jane Parpart, professor of Gender Studies at University of Dalhousie, 98 [The 'Man' Question in International Relations, Westview Press, Boulder, p76]
Central though this binary conception of gender is to much of Western thought, it presents an illusory dichotomous opposition between genders that obscures important distinctions within masculinity and femininity. Interestingly enough, once the idea of fractures within Western conceptions of masculinity and femininity is accepted, the division between what is masculine and what is feminine tends to be less clear. Fractures within masculinity have played a crucial part in defining the relationships between the two orthodox paradigms in IR: namely realism and liberal internationalism. The division of orthodox IR into two different masculine camps has led to a competition between two aspiring hegemonic masculinities over which is more masculine (real and objective) and which should be regarded as inferior and feminine (subjective and normative).
Alternative epistemologies incoherent Murray 97 (Alastair, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, p. 192)
Given these problems, the attempt to establish an alternative, feminist epistemology falls apart. The aim to provide a 'new' theory of human nature just looks unnecessary when it is noted that the conventional view of the human character derived from realism is in fact simultaneously moral and immoral, 'both conflictual and cooperative', as Tickner demands. Similarly, the concern to redefine power amounts to little more than a sophisticated word game. 'Mutual enablement' ultimately sounds like some dreadful slogan dreamt up by a management consultant. The fact that realist theorists define power in terms of the ability to coerce does not mean that they neglect the ability to persuade as a tool in international politics, only that they define power in more rigorous terms than feminists, calling each by a different name to avoid confusion. Nor does it mean that, by doing this, they neglect the ability of international actors to co-operate, or that they exclude from consideration the co-operative basis upon which power relies or the co-operative objectives to which it tends. If Tickner had read beyond the first chapter of Politics among Nations, she might have come across phrases such as the balance of power, in which curious things called 'alliances' and 'grand coalitions' co-operatively generate power towards co-operative ends. Conflict is not perpetual in the realist vision of international relations, and coalition building is ultimately just as essential to the realist account of international politics as it is to feminist accounts.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 No Alt Solvency (2/2)

Tickners alternative position is a fiction Murray 97 (Alastair, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, p. 192)
144 Gender
Whilst Tickner's feminism presents an interesting revisioning of international relations, it ultimately suffers from the problem that, in order to sustain any of its claims, most of all the notion that a distinctively feminist epistemology is actually necessary, it must establish the existence of a gender bias in international relations theory which simply does not exist, and the existence of an 'alternative' feminist position on international affairs which is simply a fiction. Consequently, in order to salvage her very raison d'etre, Tickner is forced to engage in some imaginative rewriting of international relations theory. First, in order to lay the basis for the claim that an alternative perspective is actually necessary, conventional theory is stripped of its positive elements, and an easily discredited caricature, centred on realism, erected in its place. Second, in order to conjure up a reason for this alternative perspective to be a feminist one, the positive elements which have been removed from conventional theory are then claimed as the exclusive preserve of such perspectives. Yet, however imaginative this 'revisioning' of international relations theory, its inevitable result is a critique which is so riddled with contradictions that it proves unsustainable, and an alternative epistemology which, based upon this flawed critique, collapses in the face of the revelation of its inadequacy.
Attempting to create a feminist perspective of IR is will failits unnecessary because of realism. Alastair J.H. Murray, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, 1997, p.
192 Given these problems, the attempt to establish an alternative, feminist epistemology falls apart. The aim to provide a 'new' theory of human nature just looks unnecessary when it is noted that the conventional view of the human character derived from realism is in fact simultaneously moral and immoral, 'both conflictual and cooperative', as Tickner demands. Similarly, the concern to redefine power amounts to little more than a sophisticated word game. 'Mutual enablement' ultimately sounds like some dreadful slogan dreamt up by a management consultant. The fact that realist theorists define power in terms of the ability to coerce does not mean that they neglect the ability to persuade as a tool in international politics, only that they define power in more rigorous terms than feminists, calling each by a different name to avoid confusion. Nor does it mean that, by doing this, they neglect the ability of international actors to co-operate, or that they exclude from consideration the co-operative basis upon which power relies or the co-operative objectives to which it tends. If Tickner had read beyond the first chapter of Politics among Nations, she might have come across phrases such as the balance of power, in which curious things called 'alliances' and 'grand coalitions' co-operatively generate power towards co-operative ends. Conflict is not perpetual in the realist vision of international relations, and coalition building is ultimately just as essential to the realist account of international politics as it is to feminist accounts.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Perm Solvency (1/3)
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Our incorporation of womyn into the plan takes womyns lives seriously which has transformative potential for modification of androcentric biases Jill Steans, Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory , Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, 1998 p. 160-162
While liberal feminists point to the silences and biases in existing International Relations, they remain committed to the possibility of objective analysis based upon sound empirical research. From a liberal feminist perspective, the shortcomings of existing International Relations can be remedied by bringing in more women. Feminist empiricism is closely associated with the liberal feminist strategy of bringing women in. The absence or under-representation of women in positions of power and influence is itself a major obstacle to pushing womens interests and concerns onto the agenda of international politics. Feminist empiricism thus seeks to raise levels of awareness of women in international relations and argues for more research on women in International Relations. Liberal feminists focus on women in international relations and are primarily concerned with the empirical dimensions of womens inequality, the economic and social status of women around the world, the suppression of womens human rights and the denial of justice to women. However, liberal feminists are also concerned about the underrepresentation of women in the academy, because this in itself is likely to mean inadequate levels of empirical research on women. Feminist empiricism also concentrates on the way in which false beliefs and prejudices distort the findings of research and seek an enlarged perspective, arguing that bringing more women in as researchers will result in a less biased, partial and distorted view of the world. Feminist empiricism has been dismissed as an add women and stir approach, because it assumes that the issue of male bias can simply be addressed by including more women both as researchers and by more womancentred research. Feminist empiricism rests firmly with the mainstream theories of knowledge characterized by the separation of facts and values and of subject and object. As such, it does not fundamentally challenge the basic epistemological foundations of positivism. However, as Sandra Harding has argued, it would be a mistake to dismiss the value of feminist empiricism outright, because taking womens lives seriously has great transformative potential. It is an argument for more resources, more research, putting womens concerns onto foreign policy agendas, attacking the usual tendency to view women and their lives as insignificant or irrelevant. Furthermore, Sandra Harding suggests that feminist empiricism. has the potential radically to undercut the assumptions of traditional empiricism by attacking the androcentric biases which operate when research projects are identified and formulated and by demonstrating how dominant research methods and norms contribute to androcentric results. In this way, feminist empiricism undermines the male subject as human case and opens up a space for a deeper analysis of the ways in which a cultures best beliefs, what it calls knowledge, are socially situated. It also reveals how womens situation in a gender-stratified society can be used as a resource in feminist research and how research directed by social values and political agendas can nevertheless produce ernpiri5iII~ and theoretical preferable results.
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Perm solves - Deconstructing IR from within IR key to solve hegemonic masculinization. Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p227 The power of such struggles over masculine identities, as I argue, depends to some extent on their taking part in a space that has been naturalized as a masculine space. If the environment is no longer so clearly a masculine one, then some of the imagery loses its genderspecific connotations, while the rest loses the power of naturalization. Cracks in the edifice of masculinism are appearing, not only with the arrival of feminist scholarship and a number of postpositivist fellow travelers who take gender seriously, but also in that gender issues are beginning to be addressed, however crudely, by more mainstream IR contributors.
Perm solves no division between reformist and transformist. Even marginal inclusion can solve. Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p228 Perhaps feminist contributions to IR cannot, and should not, be divided so easily into reformist and transformist varieties. Changes in the representation of women and feminism in The Economist in the latter half of the 1990s, and a recognition by academics such as Fukuyama that women matter to international relations, may mark the beginnings of an epistemological shift. Thesealbeit as yet minorinfluences occurred after the introduction of feminist imagery at the margins of the newspaper and the recognition of feminist issues at the margins of IR discourse. Habitual exposure to feminist ideas, however critically or derisorily received, may of itself result in eventual changes to the accepted parameters of discourse.
Perm solves highlighting inconsistencies in hegemonic masculinity and incorporating seemingly masculinised groups is key to feminist solutions Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p229-30 Finally, I would like to make one or two brief comments about the implications for feminist praxis of the arguments put forward in this book. First, beware: hegemonic masculinity comes in many guises and is extremely resilient and inventive. It has weathered many apparent crises, undergone many transformations, and survived many upheavals. However, this is a time of tremendous change that has unsettled naturalized gender constructions. History tells us that such times are propitious for feminist interventions. Contemporary struggles between groups of men over different and contradictory wouldbe hegemonic masculinities, some of which incorporate formerly feminine traits, could be exploited by feminist activists. Pointing out the contradictions within so-called masculinity highlights the multiple indeterminacies of an apparently stable gender order. Keeping such contradictions visible could help in very practical struggles. For example, women in the workplace who wish to contest the employment implications of the recoding in the business world of informality as masculine and of hierarchy as feminine need to be able to demonstrate the hypocrisy and inconsistencies of this trend. They could also strategically reclaim informality as a feminine trait in the propaganda war over gender difference. Second, if hegemonic forms of masculinity are neither monolithic nor consciously imposed from above by a small coterie of elite individuals, but are rather produced and reproduced in the micropolitics of everyday life in local situations, then there should be multiple openings for feminist intervention at the local level. Lots of local, small-scale feminist interventions, armed with knowledge of the gendered micropolitics of particular situations, may have a cumulative effect as powerful as larger-scale campaigns. They would certainly be a useful adjunct to such campaigns. Being aware that a number of different models of masculinity are in play could also help feminists decide when to engage in and when to pull out of strategic shortterm alliances with groups of men who oppose particular forms of hegemonic masculinity. Although men who embody subordinate masculinities are more likely to be fellow travelers, politically speaking, even some hegemonic groups' political power could prove useful to certain feminist causes.
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Perm solves even marginal appearance of feminism in IR can weaken the institution Hooper, teacher of Gender politics and IR, lecturer at University of West England, 01[Charlotte, Manly States:
Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics Columbia University Press, New York. p230-1 Third, while the main thrust of this book has been to show how resilient and sophisticated hegemonic masculinity is, a counterthread, running through the discussions, has emphasized the potentially disruptive encroachment of gender issues into the previously naturalized masculine institutions of both The Economist and IR. Institutions that are defined as masculine, or are exclusively male, are important arenas for the production, reconstruction, and naturalization of masculinities. Masculinity appears to have no stable ingredients and therefore its power depends entirely on certain qualities constantly being associated with men. Masculine spaces are precisely the places where such associations are cemented and naturalized. Therefore, even the marginal appearance of women (particularly if they refuse to play the part of honorary men), together with feminist ideas, and/or other self-conscious references to gender issues, may sufficiently alter the overall ambience of such spaces that their masculine associations become weakened. Under such circumstances, the power of such institutions to underpin institutionalized gender differences (whether intentional or otherwise) would be diminished, even if the majority of their practices remain masculinist. The setting within which such practices take place is as important as the practices themselves, in that it is the setting that naturalizes the practices as masculine. Feminists and feminist sympathizers, therefore, should perhaps continue to try to enter masculinist environments and then keep gender somewhere on the agenda, even if only through humor. In spite of apparently limited gains, and regardless of marginalization or even derision, such actions may yet prove effective in the long run.
Perm solves multiple positions of disenfranchisement must be addressed. Diaz 03 (Angeli, Dept.of Communication, De La Salle University, the Philippines, Women and Language, spring,
Vol 26 Iss 1; pg. 10, questia) To remedy the pitfalls inherent in Western feminist theories, Hegde (1998) calls for contextualizing feminist-communication theory against global power-laden conditions arising from colonialism. In her articulation of a transnational feminist-communication perspective, Hegde (1998) asks: "How can we talk about identities in a changing world or do cross-cultural research without addressing the power of a worldview that has seeped into the lives of people globally due to the geopolitical conditions of colonialism?" (p. 276). In response to her own question, Hegde (1998) recommends a recontextualization of feminist theorizing in communication by foregrounding the intersections of local and global. The term "transnational," Hegde (1998) suggests, is indicative of the relationships of cultures to one another. The term blurs the borders between center and margin and between West and non-West. It destabilizes binary oppositions that colonialism engendered and shows how "the West and the non-West are not discrete entities, but rather, as Sangari (1991) notes, have shaped and been shaped by one another in specific and specifiable ways" (Hegde, 1998, p. 285). More specifically, feminist theorizing from a transnational perspective demands that the Eurocentric universalistic lens through which Third World women are viewed be replaced by one that accounts for the cultural and political conditions that mold the specific, nonstereotyped, lived experiences of Third World women. As Hegde (1998) expresses it, "The point is not to collapse the enormous diversity of minority and Third World women, but rather to find ways in which to articulate their multiple positions of disenfranchisement" (p. 288).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Perm SolvencyState
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State sovereignty can be used as a means for disruption of the hierarchies of privilege Mona Harrington, Program Director of the MIT Workplace Center, What Exactly Is Wrong with the Liberal State as an Agent of Change? Gendered States ed. V. Spike Peterson, 1992 p. 68
As a feminist, I would hold on to state sovereignty as the most progressive move possible in a world of intertwined transnational functionsthe one most likely to allow women, racial minorities, and the poor to disrupt the reigning hierarchies of privilege. In fact, I find myself in a kind of reverse Schumpeter position. I see the state, as Schumpeter did, championed by economically atavistic groups clinging to national identity for survival while the logic and power of new economic systems sweep across national borders as if they were not there. But while Schumpeter applauded the erasure of old dividing lines and the fading of their irrationally generated hostilities, I want to keep the lines somehow in place.
Working through the state can be an effective means of disrupting masculine dominance Mona Harrington, Program Director of the MIT Workplace Center, What Exactly Is Wrong with the Liberal State as an Agent of Change? Gendered States ed. V. Spike Peterson, 1992 p.66
In the face of such pressures, I believe that feminist critics of the present state system should beware. The very fact that the state creates, condenses, and focuses political power may make it the best friend, not the enemy, of feministsbecause the availability of real political power is essential to real democratic control. Not sufficient, I know, but essential. My basic premise is that political power can significantly disrupt patriarchal and class (which is to say, economic) power. It holds the potential, at least, for disrupting the patriarchal/ economic oppression of those in the lower reaches of class, sex, and race hierarchies. It is indisputable that, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has been the political power of states that has confronted the massive economic power privately constructed out of industrial processes and has imposed obligations on employers for the welfare of workers as well as providing additional social supports for the population at large. And the political tempering of economic power has been the most responsive to broad public needs in liberal democracies, where governments must respond roughly to the interests of voters.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 K Links to Itself
149 Gender
Making individual security and autonomy the highest priority turns autonomy into an element of masculine superiority Mona Harrington, Program Director of the MIT Workplace Center, What Exactly Is Wrong with the Liberal State as an Agent of Change? Gendered States ed. V. Spike Peterson, 1992 p. 69
In other words, liberalism, by making individual autonomy its highest value, by relying on contract as its primary process, and by not recognizing unchosen, group-based systemic inequalities among members of a society, sets in motion, perpetuates, and legitimizes a social Darwinist order within states and among states. And it is possible that the impetus (or an important part of it) behind this order is a childrearing dynamic that cultivates personal autonomy as a dominating element of masculinity, lending a crucial emotional push to a politics of separation. Thus, for its feminist critics, the liberal state is virtually fixed in a posture of competition and incipient violence. With autonomy at its heart, its behavior must be marked by boundedness, suspicion, hostility, and efforts to control whatever forces might threaten the sovereign self.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 No Gender Bias In IR
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Gender biases in international relations dont exist and the alternative feminist perspective is fictional as well. Alastair J.H. Murray, Politics Department, University of Wales Swansea, Reconstructing Realism, 1997, p.
192 Whilst Tickner's feminism presents an interesting revisioning of international relations, it ultimately suffers from the problem that, in order to sustain any of its claims, most of all the notion that a distinctively feminist epistemology is actually necessary, it must establish the existence of a gender bias in international relations theory which simply does not exist, and the existence of an 'alternative' feminist position on international affairs which is simply a fiction. Consequently, in order to salvage her very raison d'etre, Tickner is forced to engage in some imaginative rewriting of international relations theory. First, in order to lay the basis for the claim that an alternative perspective is actually necessary, conventional theory is stripped of its positive elements, and an easily discredited caricature, centred on realism, erected in its place. Second, in order to conjure up a reason for this alternative perspective to be a feminist one, the positive elements which have been removed from conventional theory are then claimed as the exclusive preserve of such perspectives. Yet, however imaginative this 'revisioning' of international relations theory, its inevitable result is a critique which is so riddled with contradictions that it proves unsustainable, and an alternative epistemology which, based upon this flawed critique, collapses in the face of the revelation of its inadequacy.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 AT: Speaking for Others
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Rather than an attempt to speak for Others, the Aff is an attempt at critical engagement Jaggar 98 (Alison, Prof Philosophy and Womens Studies, CU Boulder, Globalizing Feminist Ethics, Hypatia
vol. 13, no. 2 , Spring, http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html) For contemporary Western feminists to open our basic commitments to critical scrutiny requires considering or reconsidering perspectives we have hitherto excluded. This may mean that we reconsider the views of those Western antifeminists who assert that a woman's place is in the home and that date rape and harassment are figments of paranoid feminist imaginations. It may also mean that we take account of Nonwestern perspectives, especially those ignored or demonized by Western media. Most immediately and urgently, however, it requires that Western feminists learn to hear and consider respectfully the views of Nonwestern women from the so-called Third World, including women whose voices are muted, even within their own nations.5 Most especially, we should pursue critical engagement with those members of Nonwestern communities who share some of our own commitments but who may have disagreements or different perspectives on particular issues. Critical dialogue between members of communities that have significant differences but still share some basic concerns is likely to be more immediately useful in promoting reassessments of our own commitments and refinements of our own views than ''dialogue'' with those whose commitments and worldviews are far removed from our own. Dialogue with those who share many of our values and commitments is also practically indispensable for making social change within democratic contexts.
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The neg dichotomy between cultural insiders and outsiders ignore risks and benefits of both positions engagement via global feminist discourse solves best Jaggar 98 (Alison, Prof Philosophy and Womens Studies, CU Boulder, Globalizing Feminist Ethics, Hypatia
vol. 13, no. 2 , Spring, http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html) In an interesting discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of insiders and outsiders who engage in social criticism, David Crocker argues that insiders are not exclusively privileged in morally evaluating their own cultures. Insiders enjoy the advantages of understanding the cultural meaning of their own society's practices, of being able to express their evaluations in language accessible to their community, and of possessing undisputed standing for engaging in social criticism; but they also suffer characteristic disadvantages, such as possible ignorance of alternative ways of seeing and doing things and susceptibility to social pressures that may inhibit their freedom to express their criticisms. Outsiders suffer the disadvantages of unfamiliarity with cultural meanings, the perception that they are not entitled to intervene discursively in the affairs of another culture, and the possibility of ethnocentric arrogance or its inverse, romanticization of the culture in question. But they also enjoy the advantages of external perspectives, which may reveal things hidden from insiders, familiarity with novel moral ideas, and relative social freedom to say what needs to be said (Crocker 1991). Despite the difficulties and dangers of cross-cultural moral discourse, it is not impossible for outsiders to participate in evaluating the internal practices of another culture. Advocates of women's strategic gender interests in both the West and the Third World therefore should not regard questions and criticisms of our own cultural practices by our foreign counterparts as inevitably presumptuous or unwarranted but should view them rather as moral resources. For feminism to become global does not mean that Western feminists should think of themselves as missionaries carrying civilization to primitive and barbarous lands, but neither does it mean that people concerned about the subordination of women in their own culture may dismiss the plight of women in others. At least on the level of morality, global feminism means that feminists in each culture must re-examine our own commitments in light of the perspectives produced by feminists in others, so that we may recognize some of the limits and biases of our own beliefs and assumptions. Of course, the moral evaluations of any cultural practice must always be ''immersed'' rather than ''detached,'' taking account of ''the practices, the perceptions, even the emotions, of the culture'' (Nussbaum and Sen 1989, 308). Elsewhere, I suggest that a feminist conception of discourse, with its emphasis on listening, personal friendship, and responsiveness to emotion, and its concern to address power inequalities, is especially well suited to facilitate such an immersed evaluation.
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Every choice to speak or not speak has a political connotation and choosing not to speak disengages us from political responsibility. Alcoff 92 (Linda, Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, The problem of speaking for others, Cultural
Critique Winter, pp. 5-32, http://www.alcoff.com/content/speaothers.html) While the "Charge of Reductionism" response has been popular among academic theorists, what I call the "Retreat" response has been popular among some sections of the U.S. feminist movement. This response is simply to retreat from all practices of speaking for; it asserts that one can only know one's own narrow individual experience and one's "own truth" and thus that one can never make claims beyond this. This response is motivated in part by the desire to recognize difference and different priorities, without organizing these differences into hierarchies. Now, sometimes I think this is the proper response to the problem of speaking for others, depending on who is making it. We certainly want to encourage a more receptive listening on the part of the discursively privileged and to discourage presumptuous and oppressive practices of speaking for. And the desire to retreat sometimes results from the desire to engage in political work but without practicing what might be called discursive imperialism. But a retreat from speaking for will not result in an increase in receptive listening in all cases; it may result merely in a retreat into a narcissistic yuppie lifestyle in which a privileged person takes no responsibility for her society whatsoever. She may even feel justified in exploiting her privileged capacity for personal happiness at the expense of others on the grounds that she has no alternative. The major problem with such a retreat is that it significantly undercuts the possibility of political effectivity. There are numerous examples of the practice of speaking for others which have been politically efficacious in advancing the needs of those spoken for, from Rigoberta Menchu to Edward Said and Steven Biko. Menchu's efforts to speak for the 33 Indian communities facing genocide in Guatemala have helped to raise money for the revolution and bring pressure against the Guatemalan and U.S. governments who have committed the massacres in collusion. The point is not that for some speakers the danger of speaking for others does not arise, but that in some cases certain political effects can be garnered in no other way.
154 Gender
*****Western Feminism K*****
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 K of Western Fem 1NC (1/5)
155 Gender
Western feminism standardizes women as all the same and all facing the same oppression, which fights the wrong causes in Africa- this idea must be challenged and corrected Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade, Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College, New York,
and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30, Autumn, JSTOR] By women as a category of analysis, I am referring to the crucial presupposition that all of us of the same gender, across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constituted as a homogeneous group identifiable prior to the process of analysis. The homogeneity of women as a group is produced not on the basis of biological essentials, but rather on the basis of secondary sociological and anthropological universals. Thus, for instance, in any given piece of feminist analysis, women are characterized as a singular group on the basis of a shared oppression. What binds women together is a sociological notion of the `sameness' of their oppression. It is at this point that an elision takes place between 'women' as a discursively constructed group and 'women' as material subjects of their own history.' Thus, the discursively consensual homogeneity of 'women' as a group is mistaken for the historically specific material reality of groups of women. This results in an assumption of women as an always-already constituted group, one which has been labelled 'powerless', 'exploited', 'sexually harassed', etc., by feminist scientific, economic, legal and sociological discourses. (Notice that this is quite similar to sexist discourse labelling women as weak, emotional, having math anxiety, etc.) The focus is not on uncovering the material and ideological specificities that constitute a group of women as 'powerless' in a particular context. It is rather on finding a variety of cases of 'powerless' groups of women to prove the general point that women as a group are powerless.' In this section I focus on five specific ways in which 'women' as a category of analysis is used in western feminist discourse on women in the third world to construct third-world women' as a homogeneous `powerless' group often located as implicit victims of particular cultural and socio-economic systems. I have chosen to deal with a variety of writers from Fran Hosken, who writes primarily about female genital mutilation, to writers from the Women in International Development school who write about the effect of development policies on third-world women for both western and third-world audiences. I do not intend to equate all the texts that I analyse, nor ignore their respective strengths and weaknesses. The authors I deal with write with varying degrees of care and complexity; however, the effect of the representation of third-world women in these texts is a coherent one. In these texts women are variously defined as victims of male violence (Fran Hosken); victims of the colonial process (M. Cutrufelli); victims of the Arab familial system (Juliette Minces); victims of the economic development process (B. Lindsay and the liberal WID school); and finally, victims of the economic basis of the Islamic code (P. Jeffery). This mode of defining women primarily in terms of their object status (the way in which they are affected or not affected by certain institutions and systems) is what characterizes this particular form of the use of 'women' as a category of analysis. In the context of western women writing about and studying women in the third world, such objectification (however benevolently motivated) needs to be both named and challenged. As Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar argue quite eloquently, 'Feminist theories which examine our cultural practices as "feudal residues" or label us "traditional", also portray us as politically immature women who need to be versed and schooled in the ethos of western feminism. They need to be continually challenged' (1984: 7).
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Western feminism assumes gender as universal and timeless which actually imports gender hierarchies into cultures where it does not function as an ordering principal. The body reasoning and biological determinism allows Western dominance. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
INDISPUTABLY, gender has been a fundamental organizing principle in Western societies.1 Intrinsic to the conceptualization of gender is a dichotomy in which male and female, man and woman, are constantly and binarily ranked, both in relationship to and against each other. It has been well documented that the categories of male and female in Western social practice are not free of hierarchical associations and binary oppositions in which the male implies privilege and the female subordination. It is a duality based on a perception of human sexual dimorphism inherent in the definition of gender. Yoruba society, like many other societies worldwide, has been analyzed with Western concepts of gender on the assumption that gender is a timeless and universal category. But as Serge Tcherk~zoff admonishes, An analysis that starts from a male/female pairing simply produces further dichotomies.2 It is not surprising, then, that researchers always find gender when they look for it. Against this background, I will show that despite voluminous scholarship to the contrary, gender was not an organizing principle in Yoruba society prior to colonization by the West. The social categories men and women were nonexistent, and hence no gender system was in place. Rather, the primary principle of social organization was seniority, defined by relative age. The social categories women and men are social constructs deriving from the Western assumption that physical bodies are social bodies,4 an assumption that in the previous chapter I named body-reasoning and a bio-logic interpretation of the social world. The original impulse to apply this assumption transculturally is rooted in the simplistic notion that gender is a natural and universal way of organizing society and that male privilege is its ultimate manifestation. But gender is socially constructed: it is historical and culturebound. Consequently, the assumption that a gender system existed in Oyo society prior to Western colonization is yet another case of Western dominance in the documentation and interpretation of the world, one that is facilitated by the Wests global material dominance.
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Western feminisms reliance on the body creates a gaze of differentiation that justifies extermination such as the Holocaust. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The notion of society that emerges from this conception is that society is constituted by bodies and as bodies male bodies, female bodies, Jewish bodies, Aryan bodies, black bodies, white bodies, rich bodies, poor bodies. I am using the word body in two ways: first, as a metonymy for biology and, second, to draw attention to the sheer physicality that seems to attend being in Western culture. I refer to the corporeal body as well as to metaphors of the body. The body is given a logic of its own. It is believed that just by looking at it one can tell a persons beliefs and social position or lack thereof. As Naomi Scheman puts it in her discussion of the body politic in premodern Europe: The ways people knew their places in the world had to do with their bodies and the histories of those bodies, and when they violated the prescriptions for those places, their bodies were punished, often spectacularly. Ones place in the body politic was as natural as the places of the organs in ones body, and political disorder [was] as unnatural as the shifting and displacement of those organs.4 Similarly, Elizabeth Grosz remarks on what she calls the depth of the body in modern Western societies:Our [Western] body forms are considered expressions of an interior, not inscriptions on a flat surface. By constructing a soul or psyche for itself, the civilized body forms libidinal flows, sensations, experiences, and intensities into needs, wants.... The body becomes a text, a system of signs to be deciphered, read, and read into. Social law is incarnated, corporealized[;] correlatively, bodies are textualized, read by others as expressive of a subjects psychic interior. A storehouse of inscriptions and messages between [the bodys] external and internal boundaries.., generates or constructs the bodys movements into behavior, which then [has] interpersonally and socially identifiable meanings and functions within a social system.5 Consequently, since the body is the bedrock on which the social order is founded, the body is always in view and on view. As such, it invites a gaze, a gaze of difference, a gaze of differentiation the most historically constant being the gendered gaze. There is a sense in which phrases such as the social body or the body politic are not just metaphors but can be read literally. It is not surprising, then, that when the body politic needed to be purified in Nazi Germany, certain kinds of bodies had to be eliminated.6
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Reject the discourse of the aff by recognizing the gender situation from an African womans views and including their perspective in the discourse Gordon 1996 [April, professor in the Department of Sociology at Winthrop University. Transforming Capitalism
and Patriarchy Gender and Development in Africa, pgs. 80-82] The criticisms of Western feminism caution us of the need to understand African women's problems and issues from their own perspective rather than superimposing ethnocentric biases drawn from the experiences of First World women and their cultures. We also need to recognize the diverse ways African women perceive and deal with women's issues and incorporate these into development programs and other reforms designed to help African women, rather than imposing Western strategies and solutions that are insensitive to deeply held cultural beliefs and practices. Too often, as Stamp ( 1991a:844-845) observes, African women have been treated as passive targets of oppressive practices and discrimination. This coincides with sexist ideologies that view women as inferior, passive, apolitical, privatized beings. In reality, women do react to and struggle against oppression, albeit from within the constraints imposed upon them. It is important to realize that women's present status in African patriarchy is a product of precapitalist gender relations that were modified and distorted as African societies were incorporated into the world economy. Both gender ideology and gender relations that have subordinated women and relegated them to specific roles in the sexual division of labor reflect patriarchal power and the dynamics of underdeveloped capitalism, and they have been maintained through state policy and law. Women's resistance to oppression must be seen within this context. That is, as Stamp ( 1989: 83 ) observes, women are resisting the appropriation of their labor and its products by the international commodity market through the agency of their husbands. Women thus confront a dual system of exploitation: the sex-gender system and underdeveloped capitalism. How women perceive their interests and their ability to meet their needs varies by class, ethnicity, race, and religion. Therefore, in discussing women's interests, we need to be aware that, while women may share some gender interests in common because of their status as women, we must avoid false notions of homogeneity among womenor men for that matter ( Molyneux 1985:232). At the same time, I agree with Goetz ( 1991: 146 ), who argues that feminism needs to remain critical (even at the risk of being accused of ethnocentrism) "by refusing to grant undue authority to cultural traditions that sustain sexist oppression.... Feminist ideology has always argued that the fact that women may accept oppression does not make oppression acceptable if women have little choice of roles in a male universe." 1 So, while respecting African women's perceptions of their needs and interests and examining how women cope with patriarchal and other sources of oppression linked to underdeveloped capitalism, we cannot abandon a critical scrutiny of the social factors shaping those perceptions and responses or of their consequences for gender relations and women's lives. Women's constructions of women's interests develop out of their social positioning, including such attributes as caste, class, age, and race. One way to conceptualize how women attempt to meet their needs is to differentiate between "practical gender needs" and "strategic gender needs" (see Moser 1991). Practical gender needs are for resources to meet women's immediate and pressing needs for their families and are directly related to their struggle to survive ( Elson 1992: 36 ; Kettel 1995:251). Molyneux ( 1985: 90 ) adds that practical gender needs are based on the conditions experienced by women within the sexual division of labor and specific social organization of their societies. The goal is not usually gender equality, nor do women challenge the prevailing forms of subordination they face, even though their practical needs arise from them. Strategic gender needs are oriented to lessening women's subordination to men, promoting gender equality, and changing the patriarchal organization of society. These may include the abolition of the sexual division of labor, alleviation of women's burden of child care and housework, the elimination of institutional sexism (e.g., discriminatory property rights and access to resources), political equality, reproductive freedom, and measures to end male violence against women ( Molyneux 1985:232-233; Elson 1992: 36 ). Strategic gender needs, in contrast to practical gender needs, require a feminist consciousness in order to struggle for them. They also require women's organizations and political activism. State intervention alone cannot achieve women's strategic gender needs ( Molyneux 1985: 89 - 90 ). There are numerous studies that provide us with good indications of what African women perceive their needs to be. In general, African women do not identify with the private versus public dichotomy so characteristic of some Western feminist thinking. Most African women see (Cont.)
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(Cont.) themselves as active in both production and reproduction, which are interwoven in their lives. In reality, because of the labor intensity of African agriculture, women's activities in the reproduction of labor are as vital to production as are their roles in actual cultivation ( Davison 1988b: 7 - 8 ). Obbo ( 1986: 193 ) claims that most African women share at least two specific goals: (1) to establish their own economic and social position, eroded by colonialism; and (2) to protect themselves against material and status vulnerability from divorce, widowhood, or singlehood. This, of course, leads to different strategies among women on how best to meet their needs in the context of the often diverse circumstances of their lives.
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**Links
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link African Identity
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Their emphasis on difference ignores the preconceived notions concerning African identity that cause the recognition of difference Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp 93-111, ebsco] The consequence is an ongoing practice of blaming culture for problems in non-western contexts and communities (Narayan, 1997: 51).8 The tendency of western feminism to theorize difference in universalizing ways is also problematic. As Flew et al. (1999) point out, western feminists fail to explicitly acknowledge that the way they frame the debate about difference, even in reference to crossnational experiences, is the product of specific western experiences of identity formation. Difference, and how feminists and women activists negotiate this, varies both geographically and temporally. Whereas western feminists might emphasize difference, womens movements in African contexts, for example, have often suppressed difference to build coalitions within their fractured societies (Flew et al., 1999: 672). As Flew argues, examining how such dialogues about difference have evolved in specific contexts should encourage western feminists to reflect more critically on what historical, social, political and economic conditions have shaped their understandings of difference .9
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Capitalism/Development
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Attempts to group Africa into the global economic market through development exploit African nations and victimize womyn Jane L. Parpart, professor of history, women's studies, and international studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada and Kathleen A. Staudt, associate professor of Political Science and Assistant Dean at the University of Texas at El Paso, Women and the State in Africa 1989, p. 2-3
Dependency theory focuses on the external constraints to development and crisis. For centuries, Africa has been integrated into a monolithic, world economic system of capitalist accumulation on highly disfavorable terms.5 From the world trade in slavery through the colonial and contemporary eras, Mricas labor and resources have financed growth outside the continent. The current international economic recession reverberates shocks on dependent peripheral economies. Whether a source for their woes, or a solution, the long arms of the International Monetary Fund are present in many states as indicated in this volumes chapters by Karen T. Hansen (Zambia), Catharine Newbury and Brooke G. Schoepf (Zaire), and Susan Jacobs (Zimbabwe). For dependency theorists, the Third World state is little more than a comprador elite through which international capital works. Abstract world-systems approaches treat this relationship mechanistically, leaving no independent role for African elites. Some versions of dependency theory argue that upon disengagement from international capitalism, Third World states can begin to work for their people or in solidarity with other similarly situated states through such strategies of self-reliance as those posed in the Lagos Plan of Action.7 Questions have been raised about this model. Some Mricanist critics of the state reject the bogeyman role for international capital and point a finger at Third World elites themselves. They question the effectiveness of state elites in fostering capitalist accumulation internationally or their commitment to self-reliant development strategies.8 Some Marxist critics of dependency theory view capitalist accumulation as historically progressive, and call for more attention to internal class conflict and to the role of the national bourgeoisie.9 Often criticized as overdeterminist, the dependency theory gives analytic short shrift to the human dynamics at the base of international structure, ignoring the possibility that some Third World elites may be able to manipulate the state to benefit themselves and their nations vis-a-vis international capital. Feminist theorists have expanded and enriched dependency approaches with attention to reproduction and people-dimensions that gives life to pure analysis.10 Yet, feminist dependency theorists grant little credit to states for forging or mediating international economic relationships. Women appear to be last in a long trail of victims of international capital. Paradoxically, though, theorists view the state as the locus for practice, whether in capitalist societies or those in transition to socialism.2
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Development/Empowerment

Accultural claims to empowering womyn through development and enhanced gender relations assume the inevitability of assimilation and disempower African womyn by comparing them to womyn of the West Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
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Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 The acculturation model found mostly in studies of social change in Africa is not much different. It assumes the inevitability of assimilation to Western norms, values and lifestyles as a result of contact with the West. Seldom is the reverse shown to illustrate the impact of Africa on the West through music, religion, intellectual traditions and so forth. Acculturation studies have for the most part been concerned with what Magubane refers to as symbols of Europeanization and Westernization. Such symbols are measured by European attire, occupations, education and income and have resulted in the inferiroization of African culture, values and esthetics. Because colonialism was ignored, these studies also ignored the lack of free choice and decision-making and the role of coercion in the process of acculturation. In effect, colonialism not only blocked indigenous processes of decision-making, it also destroyed indigenous processes of knowledge generation. The result is a form of scientific colonialism sustained by scientific racism. Historical studies were no less Eurocentric and racist. Africa was presented as having no history, no civilization and no culture. Studies of the classical period have consistently denied the contributions of Africans to Egyptian civilization and to the civilizations of ancient Greece. 1 Most of the themes of social science research fashioned by colonial conquest, imperialistic designs or neoliberal motivations have also influenced gender studies and the feminist discourse. With the exception of Boserup, whose analysis was a critique of the gender bias in economic development (Boserup, 1970) modernization theory tends to see African women at a lower stage of development (read evolution) compared to women of the West; structuralism-functionalism imposes a functional explanation in the study of gender relations that is essentialist in nature. Acculturation studies have been replaced by women in development or gender in development studies which seek to integrate African women in development by making them more like Western women.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Dichotomies
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Western feminisms focus on dichotomies does not fit within African realities and leads to a distortion of social categories and institutions Oyeronke Oyewumi is assistant professor in the department of black studies at the university of california, santa
barbara, Conceptualizing Gender: the Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challege of African Epistemologies Jenda, 2002 http://jendajournal.com/vol2.1/oyewumi.html The difficulty of applying feminist concepts to express and analyze African realities is the central challenge of African gender studies. The fact that western gender categories are presented as inherent in nature (of bodies) and operate on a dichotomous, binarily opposed male/female, man/woman duality in which the male is assumed to be superior and therefore the defining category, is particularly alien to many African cultures. When African realities are interpreted based on these Western claims, what we find are distortions, obfuscations in language and often a total lack of comprehension due to the incommensurability of social categories and institutions. In fact, the two basic categories of woman and gender demand rethinking, given the Yoruba case presented above, and as I argued in my book The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Writings from other African societies suggest similar problems. A few examples follow.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Dichotomies
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Placing the male/female dichotomy as the source of African womyns oppression ignores their realities and the interrelationship of multiple forms of oppression Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] Black feminist and postcolonial critiques have also offered more profound examinations of the racism and ethnocentrism at the heart of (white) western feminisms. As bell hooks (1984: 89) argues: All too frequently in the womens movement it was assumed one could be free of sexist thinking by simply adopting the appropriate feminist rhetoric; it was further assumed that identifying oneself as oppressed freed one from being an oppressor. To a grave extent such thinking prevented white feminists from understanding and overcoming their own sexist- racist attitudes toward black women. They could pay lip service to the idea of sisterhood and solidarity between women but at the same time dismiss black women. The relationship between (white) western and other feminisms has often been adversarial, partly because of the failure of white women to recognize that they stand in a power relationship with black women that is a legacy of imperialism, and partly because the concepts central to feminist theory in the west become problematic when applied to black women (hooks, 1984; Mohanty, 1988). One example is the explanation given for inequalities in gender relations. Many black and Third World activists object to western feminism that depicts men as the primary source of oppression. This is because for black women there is no single source of oppression; gender oppression is inextricably bound up with race and class. There is perhaps a tendency in some of this criticism to homogenize western feminism socialist feminists also identify capital as a source of oppression (Delphy, 1984), and lesbian feminists have criticized marginalization on the basis of sexuality (Bell and Klein, 1996). However, this criticism has also forced recognition that assumptions at the heart of white western feminism do not reflect the experience of black women (Carby, 1983; Nain, 1991). Furthermore, in many cultures black women often feel solidarity with black men and do not advocate separatism; they struggle with black men against racism, and against black men over sexism. These debates have generated theories that attempt to explain the interrelationship of multiple forms of oppression, such as race, class, imperialism and gender, without arguing that all oppression derives ultimately from mens oppression of women.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Dichotomies
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Western feminism, through its discourse, otherizes women from the third world, and they are always the object while the Western women are the subject. Krista Scott-Dixon, 2000 [University of York, Ph.D. is in Women's Studies; Ph.D.in dissertation;
http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/mohanty.html; Analysis of: Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses"] From a survey of recent (to 1991) Western feminist theory on "third world women", Mohanty concludes that this is not yet the case, and that "assumptions of privilege and ethnocentric universality... and inadequate selfconsciousness about the effect of Western scholarship on the 'third world' in the context of a world system dominated by the West... characterize a sizable extent of Western feminist work on women in the third world."(p.53) By casting, unwittingly or otherwise, the West as the unacknowledged Subject/norm and the "third world" as an artificially homogenized Object/other, Western feminists deny women in the third world discursive subjectivity and status as active agents in the world (cf. de Beauvoir and existential agency). Mohanty notes that this kind of discursive categorization has its roots in liberal humanism, a model often critiqued by feminists. Given the context of the relative domination of Western scholarship in the concrete sense, i.e. "production, publication, distribution, and consumption of information and ideas" (p.55) an analytic problem becomes a political problem.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Discourse on Africa
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Western feminisms discursive claims about Africa ignore their social realities and the role that Western constructs have over African lives Parpart 95 (Jane L., Departments of History, International Development Studies and Women's Studies,
Dalhousie University, is africa a postmodern invention? Vol. 23, No. 1, African Studies, Winter Spring, pp. 1618., jstor] Ife Amadiume's trenchant criticism of Western feminist scholarship on Nigerian women, Tiyambe Zeleza's attack on the monopoly of Northern feminists over scholarship on African women, vitriolic debates in South Africa over who can or cannot speak for Africa and Africans,15 and the controversy over Afrocentricity in North America remind us that the construction of Africa by the North/West continues to preoccupy and concern many Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora. Moreover, this critique is a much needed warning to those who see no need to question the foundational myths of Western society and their impact on African peoples, both today and in the past. The postmodernist focus on discourse, diversity and subjugated knowledges has inspired greater attention to African voices and to the construction of meaning in African societies. Of course, this is not new. The collection and evaluation of oral evidence has long been central to the study of the African past. Indeed, Vaughan argues that historians of Africa have discovered the "construction of custom.. .quite independently of any influence from postmodernist theory."16 This seems rather unlikely, as new approaches to understanding rarely evolve entirely outside the larger debates of their time. Moreover, while acknowledging that many of these issues intersect with the concerns of colonial discourse theorists, Vaughan dismisses their involvement on the grounds that literary theorists are solely concerned with the written text. Yet scholars drawing on postmodernist (and postcolonial discourse) perspectives have made considerable use of oral as well as written data in Africa.'' These scholars have in fact sought to draw on postmodern notions of the contingent subject, of authorship and of agency within a contested field of discursively constructed meanings. They have not repudiated established wisdom about oral evidence, but have introduced more scrupulous attention to language/discourse and a greater sensitivity to the role of Western constructs in African lives.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Essentialism of African Womyn
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Western feminist statements about African women group then into experiencing one type of oppression Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade ,Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College, New York,
and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30., Autumn,, JSTOR] Similarly, examine statements like: 'My analysis will start by stating that all African women are politically and economically dependent' (Cutrufelli, 1983: especially 13). Or: 'Nevertheless, either overtly or covertly, prostitution is still the main if not the only source of work for African women' (Cutrufelli, 1983: 33). All African women are dependent. Prostitution is the only work option for African women as a group. Both statements are illustrative of generalizations sprinkled liberally through a recent Zed Press publication, Women of Africa: Roots of Oppression, by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli, who is described on the cover as an 'Italian Writer, Sociologist, Marxist and Feminist'. In the 1980s is it possible to imagine writing a book entitled 'Women of Europe: Roots of Oppression'? I am not objecting to the use of universal groupings for descriptive purposes. Women from the continent of Africa can be descriptively characterized as 'Women of Africa'. It is when 'women of Africa' becomes a homogeneous sociological grouping characterized by common dependencies or powerlessness (or even strengths) that problems arise we say too little and too much at the same time. This is because descriptive gender differences are transformed into the division between men and women. Women are constituted as a group via dependency relationships vis-a-vis men, who are implicitly held responsible for these relationships. When 'women of Africa' (versus 'men of Africa' as a group?) are seen as a group precisely because they are generally dependent and oppressed, the analysis of specific historical differences becomes impossible, because reality is always apparently structured by divisions between two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive groups, the victims and the oppressors. Here the sociological is substituted for the biological in order, however, to create the same a unity of women. Thus, it is not the descriptive potential of gender difference but the privileged positioning and explanatory potential of gender difference as the origin of oppression that I question. In using 'women of Africa' (as an already constituted group of oppressed peoples) as a category of analysis, Cutrufelli denies any historical specificity to the location of women as subordinate, powerful, marginal, central, or otherwise, vis-a-vis particular social and power networks. Women are taken as a unified 'powerless' group prior to the historical and political analysis in question. Thus, it is then merely a matter of specifying the context after the fact. 'Women' are now placed in the context of the family, or in the workplace, or within religious networks, almost as if these systems existed outside the relations of women with other women, and women with men.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Essentialism of African Womyn
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Their attempt to define [African] womyn essentializes and creates totalizing categories Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] This assumption of sameness incurred the resentment of many Third World women at the UN conferences on women in Mexico City (1975) and Copenhagen (1980) and opened deep divisions. Heated debates at these conferences highlighted the profound differences amongst women across the global divides of North/South and east/west, as well as within regions along class and political lines. The theoretical fall-out from these debates is an emphasis on difference as opposed to universalism. The criticisms of black feminists and non-western women living in the west (for example, Mani, 1992), together with input from western feminists themselves (for example, Wilkinson and Kitzinger, 1996), has enabled western feminism to move on from notions of global sisterhood, to acknowledge differences, deconstruct othering processes and celebrate diversity and multiplicity (Flew et al., 1999). However, Narayan (1997, 1998) sounds a cautionary note. In trying to account for difference between women, seemingly universal essentialist generalizations about all women are replaced by culture-specific essentialist generalizations that depend on totalizing categories such as western culture, non-western cultures, western women, Third World women, and so forth. Feminist writings about women in the South, therefore, risk falling into the trap of cultural essentialism. The resulting portraits of Western women, Third World Women, African women, Indian women, Muslim women, post-communist women, or the like, as well as the picture of the cultures that are attributed to these various groups of women, often remain fundamentally essentialist. They depict as homogeneous groups of heterogeneous people whose values, interests, ways of life and moral and political commitments are internally plural and divergent (Narayan, 1998: 8788).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Feminist
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Usage of the word Feminist excludes African womyn who do not accept Western feminism Mikell 1995 [Gwendolyn Mikell is Professor of Anthropology at Georgetown University and the Director of the
African Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. African Feminism: Toward a New Politics of Representation Feminist Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2. (Summer, 1995), Proquest] This recognition of an emerging African feminism has been met with unanticipated enthusiasm by some of my Japanese, female, African studies colleagues who pursue autonomy within their own unique cultural environment, with ambivalence by some colleagues who work in Africa, and with amused tolerance on the part of many Western feminists who saw it as a moot point which I had (fortunately) resolved in the affirmative. There were relatively few African women who used the term "feminism" prior to the 1990s, and those who do so now are explicit in acknowledging the breadth that appears within it. For me, the recognition of a new African feminism represents a gargantuan change, because previously I was unwilling, for several reasons, to apply the feminist label to the African women's movement. First, there was the recurring issue of hegemony. To a large extent I responded to the anger many African women have felt toward what they perceived as attempts by Western academics and activists to co-opt them into a movement defined by extreme individualism, by militant opposition to patriarchy, and, ultimately, by a hostility to males. This has been reflected most cogently in the reaction of African women writers, such as Buchi Emecheta, to the persistent questions from Western audiences about why they refused to call themselves feminists. Certainly, the writings of sociologist/novelist Buchi Emecheta (such as The Bride Price) portray both traditional and modern African women searching for fulfillment while attempting to overcome oppression by familial and patriarchal elements within their own cultures. In Emecheta's book Head above Water, we see that her own life also reflects such struggles. However, when asked about the feminist label in 1994, Emecheta's heated response was: "I have never called myself a feminist. Now if you choose to call me a feminist, that is your business; but I don't subscribe to the feminist idea that all men are brutal and repressive and we must reject them. Some of these men are my brothers and fathers and sons. Am I to reject them too?" 2
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - FGM
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Female genital mutilation is not perceived as wrong in Africa and is a perfect example of the West trying to impose its unfit ideologies upon Africa Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; RoSa,
Nr. 34; Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] These differences have in past and present caused much friction between Western and African actors. African and western womens movements often have a wide gap to bridge. For instance on the subject of genital mutilation. Until very recently the African womens movement was quite averse towards the Western feminist attack on genital mutilation. Now there is a growing conviction that genital mutilation is indeed in breach of human rights and needs to be curbed. Western and African actors on the political level usually disagree about the implementation of a policy to improve the situation of women. Western and African NGOs tend to find it difficult to cooperate with one another for the same reasons. Generally speaking Western activists take womens autonomy as their starting point, whereas African feminist start out from culturally linked forms of participation. The main differences can be traced back to differing outlooks on privatepublic- debate.
Western feminist focus on issues like female genital mutilation causes them to view themselves as missionaries to the Nonwestern barbaric victimized womyn Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Nonwestern women naturally resent what they regard as a sensationalized Western focus on non-Western marital and sexual practices.9 Western discussions are typically predicated on the assumption that female genital surgery is morally unjustified, thus framing the issue as one of balancing the threats to the health and welfare of Third World women against the evils of maternalism or cultural imperialism. A related problem is that so much focus on these practices encourages Western feminists to regard themselves as missionaries spreading the civilizing word of feminism, while simultaneously positioning Nonwestern women as backward, barbarous, and victimized. Finally, Western discussions of female genital surgery and similar Nonwestern practices often misleadingly homogenize Nonwestern communities and ignore the existence of indigenous forms of dissent.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Gender
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Using the term Gender creates a Western focus that obscures the reality of inequality in Africa Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 The term gender; is a highly contested concept when applied to Africa. Gender has become the main focus of Western feminist discourse during the second wave of feminism. Like other systems of thought it has been exported to the South as a concept, an analytical tool and as a policy initiative. The domination of Western concepts and terminologies has thus become apparent in the term gender. It is well established in development circles of the United Nations which in turn influences the agenda and budget of national governments and even academic research. In 1981, I pointed out in the introduction to the book The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, that within a racist polical/economic hegemony, White women can become primary oppressors. It is now widely accepted that women are a non-essentialist category and represent diverse groups with different social locations. Gender can therefore mean different things to different people since it carries the ideologies of the socio-cultural context in which it is constructed. Without doubt, the term gender carries a Western bias. It tends to be myopic, inventive, and can obscure other differences. Because it is Western, it reveals white Western middle class biases and obscures other differences based on race, class, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and so forth. In this regard, it fails to recognize the role of women themselves in other structures of oppression. Gender is analogous to difference but contains within it notions of inequality and is often viewed as a metaphor representing relations of power. However, analysis of power is often restricted to male/female power relations only, ignoring power relations based on race, class, ethnicity, age, nationality and so forth. Thus the various ways in which gender has been used, namely, as a basis organizing principle of society; as a heuristic tool, as a crucial site for the application of dichotomous models and as an indicator of progress in the development process have to be questioned. Furthermore, the term gender tends to represent a proclivity towards dichotomous models that do not often fully represent the African reality, although exceptions can be found. For example, a study of cultural boundaries and social interactions in Africa has argued that trans-social and transactional cultural flows are inherently gendered and that gender is a crucial site of intersection between inside and outside. (Grosz-Ngate and Kobole, eds. 1999,p.8).
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Gender relations in Africa do not respond to Western feminism due to its equation with non-acceptance of African traditions and attempt to invert power relationship of gender Susan Arndt, former Research Fellow at St. Antony's College in Oxford, Humboldt-University at Berlin and the
Center for Literary Research (Berlin), she taught at the University of Frankfurt/Main. African Gender Trouble and African Womanism: An Interview with Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Wanjira Muthoni Signs, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Spring, 2000), pp. 709-726 In the course of my work on this topic I have learned that many Africans shy away from being referred to as feminists. They say "I am not a feminist" but then go on to say they are convinced that the situation of women has to be improved drastically, that gender relations in African societies need radical transformations, and that they are themselves committed to making these changes happen. The negative attitude of many Africans toward the term and the concept of feminism is an indication that antifeminist positions are widespread in Africa. These antifeminist reactions stem mainly from a sterotypical notion of (white Western) feminism that may have some grains of truth but does not do justice to its heterogeneity. Feminism is often equated with radical feminism and with hatred of men, penis envy, nonacceptance of African traditions, a fundamental rejection of marriage and motherhood, a favoring of lesbian love, and an endeavor to invert the power relationship of the genders. What is really worrisome and momentous for feminism, however, is that even African women and men whose Weltanschauung.corresponds to basic ideas of feminism have problems with the notions and approaches of white Western feminism. One central critique is that feminism does not see beyond Western societies and hence ignores or marginalizes the specific problems of African women. Some radical and Marxist feminists are an exception to the rule, although they often go to the opposite extreme by presuming to be able to speak in the name of all women, without, however, having really informed themselves about the situation and the problems of women in other parts of the world. As a consequence, they base their assessment of the situation and the emancipatory ideas of African women and women's movements on their own views and experiences. While this accusation strikes the Achillesy heel of white Western feminism, if not necessarily all white feminists, another reason for the antifeminist stance of Africans committed to gender issues is much more controversial: They claim that they cannot identify with white Western feminism, much less act under its auspices, because it concentrates solely on the question of gender, while they view gender relationships always in the context of other political, economic, cultural, and social forms and reflect on her project -the concept of African womanism and the gendersensitization program, respectively- and to discuss the two projects with each other. But the open and friendly atmosphere of the interview made me soon change to another style. Partly, I left my position as a mediator and joined the discussion myself, thus using the opportunity to Qscuss with them the relationship between African feminism/womanism and white Western feminism, a topic central to my own scholarly work on African perspectives on feminism and African feminist literatures.
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Using gender as a universal construct ignores that it is a socio-cultural construct and fails to account for oppression Oyeronke Oyewumi is assistant professor in the department of black studies at the university of california, santa
barbara, Conceptualizing Gender: the Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challege of African Epistemologies Jenda, 2002 http://jendajournal.com/vol2.1/oyewumi.html Feminist researchers use gender as the explanatory model to account for womens subordination and oppression worldwide. In one fell swoop, they assume both the category woman and her subordination as universals. But gender is first and foremost a socio-cultural construct. Thus as the starting point of research, we cannot take as given what indeed we need to investigate. If gender looms so large in the lives of white women to the exclusion of other factors, we have to ask, why gender? Why not some other category like race for example which is seen as fundamental by African Americans. Because gender is socially constructed, the social category woman is not universal, and other forms of oppression and equality are present in society, additional questions must be asked: Why gender? To what extent does a gender analysis reveal or occlude other forms of oppression? Which womens situation does feminist scholarship theorize well? And of which particular groups of women? To what extent does it facilitate womens wishes, and their desire to understand themselves more clearly?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Humyn Rights

Striving towards humyn rights ignores the cultural traditions of rights in Africa and cannot occur without understanding of the context of the lives of African womyn Diana J. Fox, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Susan B. Anthony Women's Center
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Womens Human Rights in Africa: Beyond the Debate Over the Universality or Relativity of Human Rights African Studies Quarterly, vol. 2 issue 3, 2003 http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i3a2.htm Perspectives proffered by Canadian Africanist Rhoda Howard and political scientist Jack Donnelly represent some of the well-known challenges to the position of ethical relativism. Donnelly recognizes that there are other trajectories for human rights within the liberal tradition, outside of the conception of the individual as "atomistic and alienated from society and the state." Howard's position, according to Matua, however, represents an ethnocentric critique of relativism. Matua says of Howard that: [S]he refuses to acknowledge that pre-colonial African societies knew human rights as a concept ... Howard is so fixated with the Western notion of rights attaching only to the atomized individual that she summarily dismisses arguments by African scholars, some of whom could be classified as cultural relativists, that individual rights were held in a social, collective context (19). Howard does point out that while women and men have more formal rights in post-colonial Africa, the western model has essentially deprived women of the political influence they had in many indigenous societies. Her example of the 1929 "Women's War" in Nigeria is a case in point, in which tens of thousands of Igbo women attacked chiefs appointed by the British, as a protest against the abrogation of their traditional power. Moreover, Howard also insists that there can be no adequate analysis of the human rights of African women, or improvements made for their effective implementation without understanding the sociohistorical context of women's lives. Legislation that does not recognize the influence of culture and tradition on male and female perceptions of each other will be ineffective (20). While Donnelly and Howard are two examples of engagement with human rights in the African context, the more widespread challenge to relativism which has swept the discipline has just begun to move more seriously into the realm of human rights, emanating especially from feminist circles. The context for this challenge, as I have stated throughout, is within the increasingly prominent place of women's rights issues on the general agenda of the human rights movement. Since feminism aims to connect the academic world with social change, feminist anthropologists work not only to describe and analyze the lives of women and gender relations, but to generate strategies to improve them. The feminist agenda is antithetical to relativism--but not subsequently, cultural context--since it depends on judgments in order to develop strategies for change.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Intersectionality
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Western women ignore the intersections in person, and regard them only as women. They also believe that gender is the source of oppression, and do not realize that society creates gender Krista Scott-Dixon, 2000 [University of York, Ph.D. is in Women's Studies; Ph.D.in dissertation;
http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/mohanty.html; Analysis of: Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses"] Mohanty identifies three primary analytic presuppositions which she finds problematic in Western feminist scholarship. First, she explores the discursive location of the category "women" in relation to the analysis, arguing that Western scholarship tends to constitute "women" as an ahistorical group undifferentiated by other factors such as class, ethnicity, geographical location, etc. "Women" are defined also primarily by their "object status" in the way they are affected or not affected by a variety of systems and institutions. For example, it is common in Western scholarship to identify women in the third world as victims, universal dependents, passive objects in the process of political change, and so forth. Discursively, gender is taken to have meaning outside of other relationships. Women's identities are understood as constituted prior to their placement in a variety of social institutions, such as the family, rather than meaningful identities being produced through these institutional relations (and meaningful producers of these relations). Gender is thus taken to be the origin of oppression, rather than oppression producing particular forms of gender. In fact, suggests Mohanty, "it is the common context of political struggle against race, class, gender, and imperialist hierarchies that may constitute third world women as a strategic group at this historical juncture."(p.58)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Omission of African Women
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Assumptions cannot be made about the society in Africa, and then attempt to change it; it is necessary to understand the basis of all the oppression against women in order to cause change Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College,
New York, and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati.. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30. (Autumn, 1988), JSTOR] Elizabeth Cowie, in another context (1978: 49-63), points out the implications of this sort of analysis when she emphasizes the specifically political nature of kinship structures which must be analysed as ideological practices which designate men and women as father, husband, wife, mother, sister, etc. Thus, Cowie suggests, women as women are not simply located within the family. Rather, it is in the family, as an effect of kinship structures, that women as women are constructed, defined within and by the group. Thus, for instance, when Juliette Minces (1980: especially 23) cites the patriarchal family as the basis for 'an almost identical vision of women' that Arab and Muslim societies have, she falls into this very trap. Not only is it problematical to speak of a vision of women shared by Arab and Muslim societies, without addressing the particular historical and ideological power structures that construct such images, but to speak of the patriarchal family or the tribal kinship structure as the origin of the socio-economic status of women is again to assume that women are sexual-political subjects prior to their entry into the family. So while on the one hand women attain value or status within the family, the assumption of a singular patriarchal kinship system (common to all Arab and Muslim societies, i,e. over twenty different countries) is what apparently structures women as an oppressed group in these societies! This singular, coherent kinship system presumably influences another separate and given entity, 'women'. Thus all women, regardless of class and cultural differences, are seen as being similarly affected by this system. Not only are all Arab and Muslim women seen to constitute a homogeneous oppressed group, but there is no discussion of the specific practices within the family which constitute women as mothers, wives, sisters, etc. Arabs and Muslims, it appears, don't change at all. Their patriarchal family is carried over from the times of the Prophet Muhammad. They exist, as it were, outside history.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Patriarchy
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Viewing patriarchy as a fixed promotes the falsified equation of sexual difference with male domination and limits our ability to understand African-gendered experiences Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, is an independent scholar, focus on gender and youth expressive cultures in the African
world, cultural studies and feminist theory and politics. Beyond Determinism: The Phenomenology of African Female Existence Feminist Africa: Issue 2, 2003, http://www.feministafrica.org/fa%202/02-2003/bibi.html Despite the contributions to understanding oppressive power relations made by theorists who focus emphatically on patriarchal dominance, there are problems with some of their underlying assumptions. By equating sexual difference with male domination, some of these writers collapse two distinct categories into one. According to Iris Young, we need to make a distinction between sexual differentiation, as "a phenomenon of individual psychology and experience, as well as of cultural categorisation", and male domination, as "structural relations of genders and institutional forms that determine those structures" (1997: 26). Male domination may require sexual difference; however, sexual difference does not in itself lead to male domination. By collapsing this distinction, there is a danger of ontologising male power, and assuming that human relationships are inevitably moulded by tyrannical power relations. Moreover, equating sexual difference with male dominance can also obscure the ways in which both men and women help to reproduce and maintain oppressive gendered institutions. As Young astutely notes, "most institutions relevant to the theory of male domination are productions of interactions between men and women" (1997: 32). As a case in point, we only have to think of the pernicious institution of female genital mutilation, which is both defended and practised by many women. An emphasis on crushing patriarchal dominance can also lead us to ignore women's power and active roles within particular systems of social organisation. For example, Llewellyn Hendrix and Zakir Hossain (1988) suggest that writers such as Ogundipe-Leslie can make their claims about women's inevitable economic and political disempowerment within their husbands' lineages only by drawing examples from patrilineal societies. In matrilineal or bilineal societies, women have more complex subject positions, as their productive and reproductive capacity is geared towards their natal clans, despite the fact that they are married to outsiders. Careful investigation could uncover the scope that women in these societies have for negotiating individual economic and political freedoms in relation to different families or lineages. Nevertheless, theorists such as Afonja (1990) claim that matrilineal systems provide little more than organising principles for connecting men across generations and space; any apparent power or authority women may have within matrilineal systems is merely symbolic and tangential to the formal power of men. If we assume that women are automatically victims and men victimisers, we fall into the trap of confirming the very systems we set out to critique. We fail to acknowledge how social agents can challenge their ascribed positions and identities in complex ways, and indirectly, we help to reify or totalise oppressive institutions and relationships. Rather than viewing patriarchy as a fixed and monolithic system, it would be more helpful to show how patriarchy is constantly contested and reconstituted. As Christine Battersby (1998) suggests, patriarchy should be viewed as a dissipative system, with no central organising principle or dominant logic. Viewing patriarchy in this way allows us to appreciate how institutional power structures restrict and limit women's capacity for action and agency without wholly constraining or determining this capacity. By conceptualising patriarchy as a changing and unstable system of power, we can move towards an account of African gendered experience that does not assume fixed positions in inevitable hierarchies, but stresses transformation and productive forms of contestation.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Population Control
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Enforcing contraceptives onto African women is imperialist, and shows how what western feminists want is not a right fit within the indigenous setting Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; The
relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective, http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf Black womens sexuality has been objectified, commodified and pathologised, with black women stereotyped as having wild and unbridled sexual urges. Alternatively, black women were presented either as unsexed or whorish they are either Nanny or Jezebel (Stanton, 1992). Evelyn Hammond has argued that black womens sexuality is constructed in opposition to that of white women (1993). However, it is perhaps more accurate to say that in the struggle for sexual liberation, many white women demanded reproductive technologies in order to say yes to sex, while many black women wanted autonomy and freedom from an intrusive and racist state in order to be able to say no. Audre Lorde led the way in theorising sexuality as a source of power, exposing homophobia and heterosexism within black communities, especially towards black lesbians (1984). Patricia Hill Collins notes that for Lorde, sexuality is a component of the larger construct of the erotic as a source of power in women. Lordes notion is one of power as energy, as something people possess which must be annexed in order for larger systems of oppression to function (1990: 166). How much of Audre Lordes path-breaking work in theorizing the range of womens sexuality has informed work on womens sexuality in the Caribbean?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Reproduction
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Experiences of Western womyn and African womyn are severely different attempting to conflate the two removes a significant empowering force from African womyn Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought) The challenge thus is to find out what motherhood in Africa is about. This will reveal the differences between motherhood in Africa and in the West where motherhood has no high status, being naturalized and trivialized, as demonstrated so eloquently by Simone de Beauvoir. Ifi Amadiume points to African womens power being based on the logic of motherhood, i.e. the notion that motherhood is empowering and not disempowering, as it tends to be in the West: In my research I have found that the traditional power of African women had an economic and ideological basis, and derived from the sacred and almost divine importance accorded to motherhood. This has led me to argue that the issue of the structural status of motherhood is the main difference between the historical experiences of African women and those of European women. (Amadiume 1997: 146) But she also realizes that the very thought of womens power being based on the logic of motherhood has proved offensive to many Western feminists. It is easy to see why this is so since in the European system, wifehood and motherhood represented a means of enslavement of women. In the African system of matriarchy it was womens means of empowerment (1997: 114). Amadiume plays with the idea of re-introducing the concept of matriarchy as a counterweight to the Western patriarchy, which tends to be taken for granted. I shall come back to this discussion below. Also, for Oyewm, the position of the mother is crucial: In all African family arrangements, the most important ties within the family flow from the mother, whatever the norms of marriage residence. These ties link the mother to the child and connect the children of the same mother in bonds that are conceived as natural and unbreakable. [...] The idea that mothers are powerful is very much a defining characteristic of the institution and its place in society (Oyewm 2000: 1097).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Reproduction/Family
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Western feminisms basis on the nuclear family structures the world as such with no room for any outsiders, including of different races and class, the wife is secluded to the home and her role of sexuality, differing her from the African mother whos progeny serves to be her role as mother Oyeronke Oyewumi is assistant professor in the department of black studies at the university of california, santa
barbara, Conceptualizing Gender: the Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challege of African Epistemologies Jenda, 2002 http://jendajournal.com/vol2.1/oyewumi.html Furthermore, some of the most important questions and debates that have animated gender research in the last three decades make more sense once the degree to which they are entrenched in the nuclear family (which is both an institutional and spatial configuration) is appreciated. What is the nuclear family? The nuclear family is a gendered family par excellence. As a single-family household, it is centered on a subordinated wife, a patriarchal husband, and children. The structure of the family conceived as having a conjugal unit at the center lends itself to the promotion of gender as a natural and inevitable category because within this family there are no crosscutting categories devoid of it. In a gendered, male-headed two-parent household, the male head is conceived as the breadwinner and the female is associated with home and nurture. Feminist sociologist Nancy Chodorow gives us an account of how the gender division of labor, in the nuclear family in which women mother, sets up different developmental and psychological trajectories for sons and daughters and ultimately produce gender beings and gendered societies. According to Chodorow: The family division of labor in which women mother gives socially and historically specific meaning to gender itself. The engendering of men and women with particular personalities, needs, defenses, and capacities creates conditions for and contributes to the reproduction of this same division of labor. Thus the fact that women mother inadvertently and inevitably reproduces itself. (Chodorow 1978:12) Gender distinctions are foundational to the establishment and functioning of this family type. Thus, gender is the fundamental organizing principle of the family, and gender distinctions are the primary source of hierarchy and oppression within the nuclear family. By the same token, gender sameness is the primary source of identification and solidarity in this family type. Thus the daughters self- identify as females with their mother and sisters. Haraway in turn writes: Marriage encapsulated and reproduced antagonistic relation of the two coherent social groups, men and women. (Haraway1991:138) The nuclear family however is a specifically Euro/American form; it is not universal. More specifically, the nuclear family remains an alien form in Africa despite its promotion by both the colonial and neocolonial state, international (un)derdevelopment agencies, feminist organizations, contemporary non-governmental organizations (NGOs) among others. The spatial configuration of the nuclear family household as an isolated space is critical to understanding feminist conceptual categories. It is not surprising that the notion of womanhood that emerges from Euro-American feminism, which is rooted in the nuclear family, is the concept of wife since as Miriam Johnson puts it [In Western societies] the marriage relationship tends to be the core adult solidary relationship and as such makes the very definition of woman become that of wife. (19:40) <Oyewumi contd>

<Oyewumi contd>
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Because the category wife is rooted in the family. In much of white feminist theory, society is represented as a nuclear family, composed of a couple and their children. There is no place for other adults. For women, in this configuration, the wife identity is totally defining; other relationships are at best secondary. It seems as though the extent of the feminist universe is the nuclear family. Methodologically, the unit of analysis is the nuclear family household, which theoretically then reduces woman to wife. Because race and class are not normally variable in the family, it makes sense that white feminism, which is trapped in the family, does not see race or class. Thus the fundamental category of difference, which appears as a universal from the confines of the nuclear family, is gender. The woman at the heart of feminist theory, the wife, never gets out of the household. Like a snail she carries the house around with her. The problem is not that feminist conceptualization starts with the family, but that it never transcends the narrow confines of the nuclear family. Consequently, wherever woman is present becomes the private sphere of womens subordination. Her very presence defines it as such. Theorizing from the confined space of the nuclear family, it is not surprising that issues of sexuality automatically come to the fore in any discussion of gender. Even a category such as mother is not intelligible in white feminist thought except if the mother is defined first as the wife of the patriarch. There seem to be no understanding of the role of a mother independent of her sexual ties to a father. Mothers are first and foremost wives. This is the only explanation for the popularity of that oxymoron: single mother. From an African perspective and as a matter of fact, mothers by definition cannot be single. In most cultures, motherhood is defined as a relationship to progeny, not as a sexual relationship to a man. Within the feminist literature, motherhood, which in many other societies constitutes the dominant identity of women, is subsumed under wifehood. Because woman is a synonym for wife, procreation and lactation in the gender literature (traditional and feminist) are usually presented as part of the sexual division of labor. Marital coupling is thus constituted as the base of societal division of labor.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Social Categories
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Western feminisms reliance on static social categories makes it unable to capture the realities of African social classification analysis and interpretations of Africa must start there Oyeronke Oyewumi is assistant professor in the department of black studies at the university of california, santa
barbara, Conceptualizing Gender: the Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challege of African Epistemologies Jenda, 2002 http://jendajournal.com/vol2.1/oyewumi.html These African examples present several challenges to the unwarranted universalisms of feminist gender discourses. From the cases presented, it becomes obvious that these African social categories are fluid. They do not rest on body type, and positioning is highly situational. Furthermore, the idiom of marriage that is used for social classification is often not primarily about gender, as feminist interpretations of family ideology and organization would suggest. Elsewhere I have argued that the marriage/family idiom in many African cultures is a way of describing patron/client relationships that have little to do with the nature of human bodies. Analysis and interpretations of Africa must start with Africa. Meanings and interpretation should derive from social organization and social relations paying close attention to specific cultural and local contexts.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Third World
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The construction of the Third World Woman as the image of victimization disables feminist movements by making Western womyn the only feminist subjects Arlene Elowe MacLeod, 1999 [Reviewed Work(s): Women and Social Protest by Guida West; Rhoda Lois
Blumberg; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts by James C. Scott; Femininity in Dissent by Alison Young; Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism by Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Ann Russo; Lourdes Torres; Signs, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 688-693] The volume begins with a comprehensive introductory essay and then moves on to three excellent essays on "power, representation, and feminist critique." Mohanty's essay explores the production of "Third World woman" as discourse in Western feminism and asks what the prevailing image of victimization does to Third World women's agency within feminism. She suggests that acknowledging difference only in terms of oppression may be a step forward from universalizing Western white middle-class women's experiences yet continues the ethnocentrism of postcolonialism by making Western feminists the only feminist subjects. Rey Chow's essay resonates with this theme as she posits a progression in Western perceptions of the "other" from what she calls the "King Kong mentality" to the "Gorilla in the Mist" mentality; the first identifies the other as beast to be civilized, yet the second, even as it embarks on a "kinder, gentler" project of appreciation, also uses the other as a repository of a wild and native beauty, a "culture garden" that by definition cannot be a subject for itself. Such structuring of difference also precludes the possibility of ethical questioning; moral and political stances dissolve into aesthetics. Barbara Smith's essay on black lesbians and their portrayal in recent fiction also foregrounds the issue of images as she seeks to understand the relationship of black lesbian writing to the larger black feminist project. Homophobia, she argues, accounts for a repression of black lesbian writing and for pessimistic portrayals of black lesbian lives in fiction that manages to reach publication. While understanding the constraints and racism under which all black feminists try to construct their own vision, she argues that excluding black lesbians ultimately undermines all black feminism.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link Third World
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Defining women as Third World uses a colonial discourse that very clearly defines Firstand Second- World connections causing developmental issues to arise in Africa Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College,
New York, and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30. (Autumn, 1988), JSTOR] When the category of 'sexually oppressed women' is located within particular systems in the third world which are defined on a scale which is normed through Eurocentric assumptions, not only are thirdworld women defined in a particular way prior to their entry into social relations, but since no connections are made between first- and third-world power shifts, it reinforces the assumption that people in the third world just have not evolved to the extent that the west has. This mode of feminist analysis, by homogenizing and systematizing the experiences of different groups of women, erases all marginal and resistant modes of experiences." It is significant that none of the texts I reviewed in the Zed Press series focuses on lesbian politics or the politics of ethnic and religious marginal organizations in thirdworld women's groups. Resistance can thus only be defined as cumulatively reactive, not as something inherent in the operation of power. If power, as Michel Foucault has argued recently, can really be understood only in the context of resistance,' this misconceptualization of power is both analytically as well as strategically problematical. It limits theoretical analysis as well as reinforcing western cultural imperialism. For in the context of a first/third-world balance of power, feminist analyses which perpetrate and sustain the hegemony of the idea of the superiority of the west produce a corresponding set of universal images of the third-world woman', images like the veiled woman, the powerful mother, the chaste virgin, the obedient wife, etc. These images exist in universal ahistorical splendour, setting in motion a colonialist discourse which exercises a very specific power in defining, coding and maintaining existing first/third-world connections.
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Western feminisms representation of the suffering of African womyn ignores the history, politics, and realities of African womyn Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College,
New York, and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati. Her work focuses on transnational feminist theory, cultural studies, and anti-racist education. Feminist Review, No. 30. (Autumn, 1988), JSTOR] Finally, some writers confuse the use of gender as a superordinate category of organizing analysis with the universalistic proof and instantiation of this category. In other words, empirical studies of gender differences are confused with the analytical organization of cross-cultural work. Beverley Brown's review (1983) of the book Nature, Culture and Gender (1980) best illustrates this point. Brown suggests that nature: culture and female : male are superordinate categories which organize and locate lesser categories (like wild/domestic and biology/technology) within their logic. These categories are universal in the sense that they organize the universe of a system of representations. This relation is totally independent of the universal substantiation of any particular category. Her critique hinges on the fact that rather than clarify the generalizability of nature: culture: :female: male as superordinate organizational categories, Nature, Culture and Gender, the book, construes the universality of this equation to lie at the level of empirical truth, which can be investigated through field-work. Thus, the usefulness of the nature:culture::female:male paradigm as a universal mode of the organization of representation within any particular sociohistorical system is lost. Here, methodological universalism is assumed on the basis of the reduction of the nature: culture: :female:male analytic categories to a demand for empirical proof of its existence in different cultures. Discourses of representation are confused with material realities, and the distinction between 'Woman' and 'women' is lost. Feminist work on women in the third world which blurs this distinction (a distinction which interestingly enough is often present in certain western feminists' self-representation) eventually ends up constructing monolithic images of 'Third World Women' by ignoring the complex and mobile relationships between their historical materiality on the level of specific oppressions and political choices on the one hand and their general discursive representations on the other.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Western Feminism
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Western feminism ignores the concerns of African womyn Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf I used Deborah Kings analysis of the simultaneity of multiple oppressions to build a postmodern feminist theory for Caribbean social science research, noting that theoretically and politically her contribution recognises that much of feminist theory represents white, Eurocentric feminist theorising and is therefore inadequate in not addressing the epistemological and practical concerns of other women, especially black women (Barriteau, 1992: 2223).
Western feminist discourse is focused on the nuclear family this effects its values in such a way that it excludes and fails to incorporate other family forms Oyeronke Oyewumi Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: African Notes on Feminist Epistemologies Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium. (Summer, 2000), pp. 1093-1098.
Undoubtedly, family discourse is everywhere. But the question that is often left unasked and that is implicit in Nzegwu's critique of Appiah is, which family, whose family, are we talking about? Clearly, it is the EuroAmerican nuclear family that is privileged, at the expense of other family forms. In this article my objective is twofold: to focus on feminism -specifically white feminism -as a particular discursive site from which to investigate the scope and depth of family rhetoric and to articulate African family arrangements in order to show the limit of universals. I suggest that feminist discourse is rooted in the nuclear family and that this social organization constitutes the very grounds of feminist theory and a vehicle for the articulation of values such as the necessity of coupling and the primacy of conjugality in family life. This is in spite of the widespread belief among feminists that one important goal is to subvert this male dominant institution of the family and the belief among feminism's detractors that feminism is antifamily despite the fact that feminism has gone global, it is through the Euro-American nuclear family that many feminists think. Thus, I argue that the controlling concept of feminist scholarship- Lvoman -is actually a familial one because it functions as a synonym for wife. The woman at the heart of feminism is a wife. Once this subject's antecedents are known and her "residence" is exposed, the limitations of concepts such as gender and other terms in feminist scholarship become more intelligible.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link - Western Feminism
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Western feminist theory is focused on the adult-solidary relationship of marriage which excludes race and class Oyeronke Oyewumi Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: African Notes on Feminist Epistemologies Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium. (Summer, 2000), pp. 1093-1098.
It seems to me that the problem with Beauvoir's account, a problem that continues to plague feminist theory is fully explained by recognizing that the woman in feminist theory is a wife- the subordinated half of a couple in a nuclear family -who is housed in a single-family home. Beauvoir and others theorize as if the world is a white middle-class nuclear family. It is not surprising that the woman who emerges from Euro-American feminism is defined as a wife. According to Miriam Johnson, "in the West the marriage relationship tends to be the core adult solidary relationship and as such makes the very definition of woman become that of wife" (1988,40). Because race and class are not usually variable within a family; white feminism that is trapped in the nuclear family does not acknowledge race or class difference. Methodologically, the unit of analysis is the nuclear family; which construes women as (white middle-class) wives because this is the only way they appear within the institution. The extent of the feminist universe that takes her as its subject, then, is the home.
The nuclear family origin of Western feminism creates an inattention to race and reproduces distortions of gender configuration Oyeronke Oyewumi Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: African Notes on Feminist Epistemologies Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium. (Summer, 2000), pp. 1093-1098.
The concept of "white solipsism" (Spelman 1988, 116)
-the tendency to "think, imagine, and speak as if whiteness describes the world" -has been offered as one explanation for the inattention to race in much feminist
many points from which to appreciate the world.
research. However, the problem is also a perceptual one structured by the inability to see even the home as a bounded and limited place, one among The tendency of white feminists such as Beauvoir and Nancy Chodorow (1978), who universalize from their own experience, is not so much tunnel vision as it is truncated vision -a result of the fact that the world is not available for perusal from within one's home, CNN notwithstanding. The woman at the
heart of feminist theory, the wife, never gets out of the conceptual household. Unconsciously, like a snail, she carries the house, along with the notion of one privileged white couple and their children, with her. The problem is not that feminism starts with the family but, rather, that it never leaves it and never leaves home. From the logic of the nuclear family follows a binary opposition that maps as private the world of the wife in contrast to the very public world of the man (not
"husband," for the man is not defined by the family). Her presence defines the private; his absence is key to its definition as private. This observation explains another vexing problem in feminist scholarship, namely, the problem of male absence as typified by the convention in scholarship of using the term gender as a synonym for women. The
absence of men from the spatial structure of the nuclear family is reproduced when men's presence is not registered in feminist discourse.
The woman in feminism is specifically a wife, for if she were a generic woman, she would have to be constructed in relation to some other thing every time
she is mentioned.
As wife, however, her position and location are always already configured and understood; thus the would-be other gender can be dispensed with. The spatial arrangement of the nuclear family as private space in which nuclear-family origin of much feminist scholarship yields a flawed account even of gender, the category it claims as its ground zero. Rather than construing the white nuclear family as a culturally specific form whose racial and class characteristics are essential to understanding the gender configuration it houses, much feminist scholarship continues to reproduce its distortions across space and time.
only the wife is in her element does not allow for gender as a duality. No wonder women and gender are virtually synonymous terms in many studies that purport to be about gender relations (which should in fact include both men and women). The
189 Gender
**Case Turns
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn - Biodeterminism
190 Gender
Western feminisms reliance on biodeterminism hides the fact that biology is constructed and cannot solve in African cultures where history has been different. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The biologization inherent in the Western articulation of social difference is, however, by no means universal. The debate in feminism about what roles and which identities are natural and what aspects are constructed only has meaning in a culture where social categories are conceived as having no independent logic of their own. This debate, of course, developed out of certain problems; therefore, it is logical that in societies where such problems do not exist, there should be no such debate. But then, due to imperialism, this debate has been universalized to other cultures, and its immediate effect is to inject Western problems where such issues originally did not exist. Even then, this debate does not take us very far in societies where social roles and identities are not conceived to be rooted in biology. By the same token, in cultures where the visual sense is not privileged, and the body is not read as a blueprint of society, invocations of biology are less likely to occur because such explanations do not carry much weight in the social realm. That many categories of difference are socially constructed in the West may well suggest the mutability of categories, but it is also an invitation to endless constructions of biology in that there is no limit to what can be explained by the body-appeal. Thus biology is hardly mutable; it is much more a combination of the Hydra and the Phoenix of Greek mythology. Biology is forever mutating, not mutable. Ultimately, the most important point is not that gender is socially constructed but the extent to which biology itself is socially constructed and therefore inseparable from the social.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Gender Hierarchies
191 Gender
Analysis of Gender ignores the complexities of African society and creates a biologization of social difference replicating the racial inferiorization and gender subordination of colonialism Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 African societies are complex and recognize exceptions to general normative rules. They and use other concepts that convey a cyclical ordering of social life in addition to oppositional and hierarchical ones or on ones based on biological classification. For an example, changes in the lifecycle can alter womens status so that postmenopausal women can assume political functions and serve as elders and advisers on the same basis as men. Similarly, female ancestors can share equal status with male ancestors. Moreover, third gendersagendered and trans-gendered entities and alternative genders have been discovered in many parts of the non-Western world. In Africa, institutions such as woman marriage and the ambiguity of the gender of some deities have challenged the dichotomous model of the West. Major challenges of the term gender have come from African women, the most celebrated of whom are Amadiume and Oyewummi. Amadiumes book, Male Daughters, Female Husbands was ground breaking in deconstructing the word gender in the Igbo context. In her analysis of sex-gender distinctions, she exposes what she described as the racism and ethnocentrism of earlier studies of Igbo society by Western scholars. She convincingly demonstrates how misleading biological categories can be in studying sex and gender since either sex can assume socially viable roles as male or female. Oyewumi in The Invention of Women, further challenges the heavy reliance of Western scholarship on what is seen world view rather than what is perceived through other senses world sense. She argues that although gender is deemed to be socially constructed, biology itself is socially constructed and therefore inseparable from the social. Hence the separation between sex and gender is superficial since sex itself has elements of construction. She insists that this biologization inherent in the Western articulation of social difference is by no means universal. Through imperialism it has been imposed on other cultures resulting in the imposition of the term gender which, being socially constructed, may not have existed at all in some societies. She argues that Gender has become important in Yoruba studies not as an artifact of Yoruba life but because Yoruba life, past and present, has been translated into English to fit the Western pattern of body-reasoning. This pattern is one in which gender is omnipresent, the male the norm, and the female the exception; it is a pattern in which power is believed to inhere in maleness in and of itself. It is a pattern that is not grounded in evidence. (Oyewumi, p. 30). Oyewumi agues that in the written discourse of the Yoruba gender is privileged over seniority only because of Western dominance in the conceptualization of research problems and in social theory. In Yoruba society, seniority takes precedence over gender and many Yoruba such as oba or alafin nouns are gender-free. The creation of woman as a category was one of the very first accomplishments of the colonial state since in precolonial societies, male and female had multiple identities that were not based on anatomy. For females, colonization was a two-fold process of racial inferiorization and gender subordination ( Oyewumi, p.124)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Gender Inequality

Misrepresentation re-entrenches the gender-biased norms of the societies Rothchild and Chazan 1988 [Donald, Professor of Political Science at the University of California.
192 Gender
Naomi, professor of political science at Hebrew University The Precarious Balance State and Society in Africa pg. 220, Questia] Women's underrepresentation in government has also permitted development planners to ignore women's special needs and concerns. In an atmosphere where such needs and concerns are rarely discussed and where the few female civil servants and legislators find it difficult to raise women's issues, genderbiased planning readily becomes the norm. 68 African governments have often adopted colonial gender biases that relegate women's issues to the private, rather than the public, sphere. Much of women's productive activity in agriculture and trade is not measured by economic planners because it is "for the family." Access to land, credit, agricultural training and education is offered to families on the assumption that women and men have equal access to family resources. Gender struggles within the household are not government's concern. As a result, government policies provide benefits to male heads of households and development plans continue to benefit men more than women. 69 Furthermore, governments frequently ignore women as economic actors and fail to provide them with economic incentives, such as credit, import-export licenses, and tax rebates, so often granted to "well-connected" African businessmen. Even when development plans include women's issues, inadequate representation for women's interests on key decision-making bodies at all levels makes it difficult to change resource allocation patterns. 70
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Gender Inequality
193 Gender
Western feminism is grounded within the nuclear family which ruins its ability to subvert male-dominated institutions Oyeronke Oyewumi is assistant professor in the department of black studies at the university of california, santa
barbara, Conceptualizing Gender: the Eurocentric Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challege of African Epistemologies Jenda, 2002 http://jendajournal.com/vol2.1/oyewumi.html In this paper, I want to add another dimension to the reasons why gender must not be taken at face value and specifically to articulate an African critique. First I will explore the original sources of feminist concepts that are the mainstay of gender research? I wish to suggest that feminist concepts are rooted in the nuclear family. This social institution constitutes the very basis of feminist theory and represents the vehicle for the articulation of feminist values. This is in spite of the widespread belief among feminists that their goal is to subvert this male- dominant institution and the belief amongst feminisms detractors that feminism is anti-family. Despite the fact that feminism has gone global, it is the Western nuclear family that provides the grounding for much of feminist theory. Thus the three central concepts that have been the mainstay of feminism woman, gender, and sisterhood are only intelligible with careful attention to the nuclear family from which they emerged.
Assuming that womyn are universally subordinated ignores the ways in which African society functions differently from Western society and condemns womyn to inevitability of disadvantaged biology and inequality Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 There are some fundamental assumptions in investigation of gender that do not fit the African reality, even when controlling for African diversity. One is the belief in the universal subordination of women.
Another is the separation of the public and private spheres into gendered spheres that gave men an advantage by participating in the public sphere. From this analysis followed studies seeking to explain asymmetrical relations between men and women. If one is to believe the universal subordination argument, then one has to ignore the ways in which social location based on race, ethnicity, class, color and so forth confers power and privilege. Furthermore, one has to question
the sensitivity of the research tools used to investigate subordination and also the methodological approaches used to apply it cross-culturally. The universal subordination of women argument forces us to settle for the highly contested notion that biology is destiny and to ask the following questions: Whose
biology? Whose destiny? Are all female biologies socially constructed the same way? What if they come in different colors? What if they are stunted by poverty and malnutrition? What if they are subject to trafficking like a commodity? What if they cannot carry a foetus to full term because of poor health? Similarly, if one accepts that gender is a metaphor for relations of power, how do we define power? do all men have power? Do some women have power? How are the people with the most power socially constructed? In many African societies, power is not only vested in political organizations. Women can derive power from their position in religious systems, in female secret societies such as the Sande of Sierra Leone and Liberia as well as through their roles as mothers, especially when the society is matrilineal and has matrifocal ideologies.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Gender Dichotomies
194 Gender
Western feminisms essentialist view of womyn, with themselves as the true subjects, places third world womyn on the margins and creates a paternalistic approach that mirrors the gender dichotomies they try to reject Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College,
New York, and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30. (Autumn, 1988), JSTOR] What happens when this assumption of 'women as a oppressed group' is situated in the context of western feminist writing about third-world women? It is here that I locate the colonialist move. By contrasting the representation of women in the third world with what I referred to earlier as western feminisms' selfpresentation in the same context, we see how western feminists alone become the true 'subjects' of this counter-history. Third-world women, on the other hand, never rise above the debilitating generality of their 'object' status. While radical and liberal feminist assumptions of women as a sex class might elucidate (however inadequately) the autonomy of particular women's struggles in the west, the application of the notion of women as a homogeneous category to women in the third world colonizes and appropriates the pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of women in social class and ethnic frameworks; in doing so it ultimately robs them of their historical and political agency. Similarly, many Zed Press authors, who ground themselves in the basic analytic strategies of traditional Marxism, also implicitly create a 'unity' of women by substituting `women's activity' for 'labour' as the primary theoretical determinant of women's situation. Here again, women are constituted as a coherent group not on the basis of 'natural' qualities or needs, but on the basis of the sociological 'unity' of their role in domestic production and wage labour.' In other words, western feminist discourse, by assuming women as a coherent, already constituted group which is placed in kinship, legal and other structures, defines third-world women as subjects outside of social relations, instead of looking at the way women are constituted as women through these very structures. Legal, economic, religious and familial structures are treated as phenomena to be judged by western standards. It is here that ethnocentric universality comes into play. When these structures are defined as `underdeveloped' or 'developing' and women are placed within these structures, an implicit image of the 'average third-world woman' is produced. This is the transformation of the (implicitly western) 'oppressed woman' into the 'oppressed third-world woman'. While the category of 'oppressed woman' is generated through an exclusive focus on gender difference the oppressed third-world woman' category has an additional attribute the 'third-world difference'? The thirdworld difference' includes a paternalistic attitude towards women in the third world." Since discussions of the various themes I identified earlier (e.g., kinship, education, religion, etc.) are conducted in the context of the relative 'underdevelopment' of the third world (which is nothing less than unjustifiably confusing development with the separate path taken by the west in its development, as well as ignoring the unidirectionality of the first/third-world power relationship), third-world women as a group or category are automatically and necessarily defined as: religious (read 'not progressive'), family oriented (read `traditional'), legal minors (read they-are-still-not-conscious-of-their-rights'), illiterate (read `ignorant'), domestic (read 'backward') and sometimes revolutionary (read their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war; they-mustfight!'). This is how the third-world difference' is produced.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn - Imperialism
195 Gender
Western feminisms ignorance of the intersections of oppression in their universal claims of oppression causes their attempts towards equalizing gender relations into cultural imperialism Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] Until the 1980s, there was a tendency to assume a commonality in the forms of womens oppression and activism worldwide (see, for example, Morgan, 1984). Western feminists assumed that their political project was universal, and that women globally faced the same universal forms of oppression. However, divisions among women based on nationality, race, class, religion, region, language and sexual orientation have proved more divisive within and across nations than western theorists acknowledged or anticipated. At an abstract level, assumptions by western feminists about what their political project entails have been called into question by a range of criticisms under the broad rubric of postcolonialism. Encounters with different feminisms and different gender relations have raised issues about what exactly it means to be feminist and have ensured that a western-centric political vision is no longer acceptable. Since the 1980s, black feminists, in particular, have explored the ways in which feminism is historically located in the dominant discourses of the west, a product of western cultural politics and therefore reflecting western understandings of sexual politics and gender relations. Indeed, in many cultures (particularly in the South) feminism is associated with cultural imperialism. In their influential essay, Amos and Parmar (1984) trace the historical relationship between western feminism and imperial ideologies, institutions and practices. They argue that like gender, the category of feminism emerged from the historical context of modern European colonialism and anticolonial struggles; histories of feminism must therefore engage with its imperialist origins.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Loss of Rights
196 Gender
When African states started forming, women lost their power and voices in society. Statebuilding is a western ideal and thus it is the western influence that entrenches rights violation against women. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] As the African states arranged themselves, with that organisation came a gender prejudiced social pact, gradually gnawing at the power of female leaders. We learn from oral traditions that many female leaders guided their states through periods of crises, but when they started bearing children, they were often overshadowed by their sons or husbands. Womens political inheritance rights became more and more restricted, and the system of double gender organisation shrank away. The final blow in terms of womens political rights came through the introduction of mythical and ritual taboos based on physical traits, e.g. menstruation. Especially in areas exposed to Islam, womens power was diminished. However, women often continued to play an important role in the religious and ritual sphere. They thus held on to a share of power through their status as healers or priestesses.
The western approach to government and the legal system has led to women losing their traditional legal rights. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] The introduction of western legal institutions had far reaching consequences, especially, in the areas of property right and marital law. The western emphasis on individual property clashed with the traditional emphasis on communal property. Women lost several rights because in general men were being marked down as proprietors. On the other hand, the new laws created extra possibilities for women to rebel against inequality. The introduction of marital law, e.g., gave women a chance to claim certain properties in case of death or divorce. These advantages brought a quicker acceptance of the western style marriage over traditional customs. Although the western style marriage held certain rights for women, they were from now on considered as wife of and lost the (legal) protection of the traditional community or clan.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn - Otherization
197 Gender
Because they universalize their values and portray the third world as barbarous and oppressive, they otherize third world womyn Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] The ways in which western women represent their southern counterparts, and the power relationships inherent in this, have increasingly been brought under scrutiny. As the Third World is frozen in time, space and history, so this is particularly the case with Third World women (Mohanty, 1988). Carby (1983) writes: Feminist theory in Britain is almost wholly Eurocentric and, when it is not ignoring the experience of black women at home, it is trundling Third World women onto the stage only to perform as victims of barbarous, primitive practices in barbarous, primitive societies. Western feminists have been criticized for universalizing their own particular perspectives as normative, essentializing women in the South as tradition-bound victims of timeless, patriarchal cultures, and reproducing the colonial discourses of mainstream, male-stream scholarship (Carby, 1983: 71). What Mohanty (1988) calls the colonialist move arises from the bringing together of a binary model of gender, which sees women as an a priori category of oppressed, with an ethnocentric universality, which takes western locations and perspectives as the norm. The effect is to create a stereotype Third World woman that ignores the diversity of womens lives in the South across boundaries of class, ethnicity and so on, and reproduces Third World difference. This is a form of othering, a reprivileging of western values, knowledge and power (hooks, 1984; Ong, 1988; Trinh, 1989; Spivak, 1990). Mohanty argues that western feminism is too quick to portray women in the South as victims, to perceive all women as oppressed and as the subjects of power.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Kills Movements
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Western feminisms refusal to cross borders in their understanding and representation of womyn and gender equality reinforces borders and kills movements through seperation Christine Sylvester, 1995 [African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling the Tendencies and Possibilities;
Signs, Vol. 20, No. 4, Postcolonial, Emergent, and Indigenous Feminisms. (Summer, 1995), pp. 941-969; Professor of Women's Studies and Professorial Affiliate of Politics & International Relations at the Lancaster University) World traveling can also be a methodology that all of us can employ for studying "the other" as a familiar resonance, an echo of oneself. The Cuban-American anthropologist Ruth Behar, speaking about the challenges involved in translating a life history of a Mexican woman for a gringo audience, says: "I've reflected on how I've had to cross a lot of borders to get to a position where I could cross the Mexican border to bring back her story to put into a book. We cross borders, but we don't erase them; we take our borders with us" (1993, 320). Jan Pettman, a white Australian writing about Aboriginal women, raises questions about borders in the now-familiar language of representation: "Can only Aboriginal women speak for Aboriginal women, and only older urban Aboriginal women speak for themselves, and so on?" (1992, 125). She answers that "mobilising a constituency or community along boundaries drawn in and for dominance may reinforce those boundaries and so continue to trap people within them. It may also make the category an easy target for state management" (1992, 125). Since "cultures are not set, separated, or bounded by impenetrable borders. recognizing difference without recognising affinity or connections across category boundaries can undermine opportunities for alliances and for inclusive claim which may be necessary to effect significant change" (1992, 126).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Gender Binaries
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Idealized black femaleness reifies gender binaries through problematic notions of gender Krista Scott-Dixon, 2000 [University of York, Ph.D. is in Women's Studies; Ph.D.in dissertation;
http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/collins.html#ch6; Analysis of: Collins, Patricia Hill. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice"] Applying the question of gender to Afrocentrist and Black nationalist projects generates some interesting problems. Collins notes four significant issues: the importance given to control of Black women's reproduction/sexuality; the role of Black mothers as transmitters of Black culture; Black masculinity and femininity conceived as complementary; and the metaphoric relationship of Black women to the nation. All four areas illustrate how nationalist projects in general, and Black nationalism in this case, construct a particular version of idealized Black femaleness which rests on notions of essential or authentic Black woman/motherhood. Exceptional women are permitted only if they do not challenge the fundamental structure of Afrocentric assumptions. Furthermore, Collins points out that "Black women's absence and invisibility structure the very terms of the argument advanced." Thus, significant difficulties with Afrocentrism/Black nationalism exist for Black feminists. First, it reifies the very binary that it aims to challenge. Second, it operates using rigid and problematic notions of gender.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Male Dominance
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Western feminism rewrites local history to establish an history of male dominance which actually precludes African feminists and establishes the male dominance it tries to criticize. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
Another concern of this work is to historicize and account for androcentrism in the study of Yoruba history and culture. The assumption of male privilege in many of these writings and in parts of Yoruba life today is questioned because there is evidence that this has not always been the case. Additionally, I posit that although male dominance is present in scholarship and popular writing on the Yoruba, such dominance in Yoruba life both historically and today cannot be taken for granted to the same degree in all places, institutions, and situations. For example, in 1996 there were two female baale (village heads) in Ogbomoso. These women were the torchbearers of their family heritage of rulership. I was privileged to conduct a series of interviews with one of them Baale Maya (see chap. 3). What is remarkable is that such women are not given the prominence that they deserve, even in the era of international womens conferences the emphasis, erroneously, is on how tradition victimizes women.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Colonialism
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Representing Third World men as hypermasculine places them in the position of other men which reifies the rhetoric of colonialism and justifies conquering the undeveloped Jessica LeAnn Urban, teaches in the Womens Studies Program and for the Multicultural Queer Studies Minor at
Humboldt University Constructing Blame: Overpopulation, Environmental Security and International Relations August 2001 http://www.wid.msu.edu/resources/papers/pdf/WP273.pdf Acknowledging the ways that other men are represented is another extremely important area of interrogation and analysis. Western colonial and neocolonial discourse often represents Third World men and men of color in the US as hypermasculine as oppressors of women in all contexts and at all times. Hyperfeminity, on the other hand, implies that all women are passive victims of all men in all contexts and at all times: both constructions are played out in the creation of policy and in practice. Scholars such as Ahmed (1992) and Davis (1981) suggest that Western liberal feminists are often complicit in this creation of other men. For example, Ahmed exposes the fusion of the Western narrative of Islam with the colonial narrative in the late 19th century and suggests that the Victorian male establishment co-opted the language of feminism and used it against other men and other cultures in the service of colonialism (Ahmed 1992:150-151). Otherwise stated, issues regarding women, their oppression, and the cultures of other men were fused together in the rhetoric of colonialism to render morally justifiable its project of undermining or eradicating the cultures of colonized peoples (Ahmed 1992:151). Similarly, representations of indigenous communities as barbaric, and of the land as not only uncivilized, but relatively empty, morally justified schemes such as Manifest Destiny, as communities in the path of progress were simply regarded as part of the rugged, unforgiving, undeveloped terrain to be conquered.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Turn Re-Entrench Patriarchy
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Western feminisms attempts to showcase the gender inequality in Africa have led to the invisibility and normalization of patriarchal practices in the West Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 The post-modernist challenges of the 80s by feminist scholars of the South included serious critiques of methodologies which questioned the right of Western feminists to assume dominance on feminist discourses. They also questioned their essentializing proclivities without regard to race, nationality and so forth. Mohanty, following others, also questioned the production of Third World Women as a homogeneous category in Western feminist texts and as subaltern subjects. (Mohanty, 1985). A major critique along this line also centered on the essentialist proclivity of lumping all women in one basket without clarifying who is being spoken about and who is speaking for whom, or who has greater credibility in framing the issue. (Nnaemeka, 1998). Problems of framing are also problematic when filtered through the racist and sexist biases. For example, Narayan, writing on women of India challenges the tendency to use so called cultural explanations of practices like sati and dowry murders in India while ignoring murders due to domestic violence in the United States. This has led to the visibility of dowry murder in India and to the comparative invisibility of domestic violence murders in the United States. (Narayan, 1997, 95) While not condoning harmful cultural practices with patriarchal origins, genital surgical interventions in Africa have been over sensationalized. African women are presented as savages or damaged victims worthy of nothing better than scorn. At the same time, harmful plastic surgery to reconstruct healthy vaginas, breasts and other body parts in the West are ignored. Also ignored, is the fact that they are also responding to cultural dictates that define the ideology of womanhood. Western plastic surgery , as Foucault would put it, is an example of docile bodies succumbing to the coercive pressures of Western patriarchal culture. (Foucault, 1992).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Case Defense
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Western feminism cannot apply to African cultures where hierarchies have been established historically different. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
Given the inseparability of sex and gender in the West, which results from the use of biology as an ideology for mapping the social world, the terms sex and gender, as noted earlier, are essentially synonyms. To put this another way: since in Western constructions, physical bodies are always social bodies, there is really no distinction between sex and gender.45 In Yoruba society, in contrast, social relations derive their legitimacy from social facts, not from biology. The bare biological facts of pregnancy and parturition count only in regard to procreation, where they must. Biological facts do not determine who can become the monarch or who can trade in the market. In indigenous Yoruba conception, these questions were properly social questions, not biological ones; hence, the nature of ones anatomy did not define ones social position. Consequently, the Yoruba social order requires a different kind of map, not a gender map that assumes biology as the foundation for the social.
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**Internal Links
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Patriarchy
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Western feminism supports patriarchy in Africa Oyewumi 2004 (Cyeronke, staff writer, October 27, New York Beacon, Here she is: Mama Africa, Proquest)
But what does this award mean to us as Africans, as African women, an African feminist? Despite the fact that humanity was born in Africa with the collaboration of an original African mother, African women arguably are one of the most maligned groups of women in the world. We continue to labor under debilitating stereotypes, weapons of mass deception - that refuse our humanity, and ignore our accomplishments. Wangari Maathai herself draws our attention to the problem in an earlier writing: African women in general need to know that it's OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence. The worst maligned problem for both men and women in Africa today actually is unspinning the cocoon of Western stereotypes, within which people are confined by the internationalization of Western culture's patronizing and exploitative conceptions of Africans. Ironically, one of the most fertile sources for the inaccurate representation of African women is western feminism, at least in some of its guises. In their quest to globalize their creed, some itinerant feminists whenever they come across cases of African men behaving badly, immediately blame African culture. In this stance, they are in a strange bed-fellowship with some African men who insist on committing crimes against women and humanity in the name of culture.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Dehumanization
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These attempts by Western feminism to order womyns suffering by creating one collective identity forms empathetic identities that are ultimately colonialist Christine Sylvester, 1995 [African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling the Tendencies and Possibilities;
Signs, Vol. 20, No. 4, Postcolonial, Emergent, and Indigenous Feminisms. (Summer, 1995), pp. 941-969; Professor of Women's Studies and Professorial Affiliate of Politics & International Relations at the Lancaster University; World traveling introduces a certain jostling in the feminist parade ranks, as an avowed "I" becomes not merely and egoistically sympathetic to surrounding marchers ("I understand their concerns") but related empathetically in two or more parade positions or worlds of experience. Judith Butler says that "sympathy involves a substitution of oneself for another that may well be a colonization of the other's position as one's own" (1993, 118). Empathetic identities are relationally autonomous. They exist separately and yet inform and draw on each other, shape each other with irony, poignancy, jealousy, and a wisdom that defies colonial efforts to inform all of us of where to take our proper places.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Colonialism
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These attempts by Western feminism to order womyns suffering by creating one collective identity forms empathetic identities that are ultimately colonialist Christine Sylvester, 1995 [African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling the Tendencies and Possibilities;
Signs, Vol. 20, No. 4, Postcolonial, Emergent, and Indigenous Feminisms. (Summer, 1995), pp. 941-969; Professor of Women's Studies and Professorial Affiliate of Politics & International Relations at the Lancaster University; World traveling introduces a certain jostling in the feminist parade ranks, as an avowed "I" becomes not merely and egoistically sympathetic to surrounding marchers ("I understand their concerns") but related empathetically in two or more parade positions or worlds of experience. Judith Butler says that "sympathy involves a substitution of oneself for another that may well be a colonization of the other's position as one's own" (1993, 118). Empathetic identities are relationally autonomous. They exist separately and yet inform and draw on each other, shape each other with irony, poignancy, jealousy, and a wisdom that defies colonial efforts to inform all of us of where to take our proper places.
The current discourse that we use in order to describe and talk about women, race, and feminism perpetuates power inequalities in relations. Krista Scott-Dixon, 2000 [University of York, Ph.D. is in Women's Studies; Ph.D.in dissertation;
http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/mohanty.html; Analysis of: Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses"] It is tempting for Western feminists to think of "colonialism" as a mostly physical practice which involves political, economic, and social systems of overt domination. However, Mohanty draws attention to a form of colonialism which is less explicitly apparent but which is no less significant: discursive colonialism; in other words, scholarship which, in its practices, reproduces unequal relations of power. This discursive colonialism can be achieved in a variety of ways, which I describe below. Mohanty argues that Western feminist scholars must be critical of how their academic practices are implicated in and reproduce hierarchies, ethocentrism, and other forms of cultural domination (cf. Collins).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Orientalism
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The ignorance of experience by Third World women from Western feminists develops in Orientalist ways further homogenizing experience Rhirin M. Rai, lecturer in politics, IR and Gender at University of Warwick, Women and the State, 1996, p. 5-6
I argue that Western feminist state theory has largely ignored the experience of Third World women under the post-colonial state. The assumptions made are West-centred but the theorizing takes on a universalizing language. Similarly, theories of the developmental state (as opposed to theories of development in general) have developed in gender-blind and sometimes Orientalist ways (Joseph, 1993, p. 26), and therefore ignore the particular relationship that women in the Third World find themselves in vis--vis the post colonial state. Both tend to overlook the processes of state and class formations in the Third World, and therefore the relations of exploitation operating in the economic and the socio-political terrain. This further leads to assumptions about the nature of struggle and the strategies that can be included or are to be excluded from the ambit of struggle. There is now a growing literature on women and the state in the Third World, which seeks to by challenge the universalizing language of the Western feminist and developmental state discourses about women, the state, and struggle. I will argue that what we need is a continuing and more focused debate about women and the post-colonial state as Third World women come to experience not only national but international economic and political power in the era of economic restructuring and institutional (rather than necessarily political) democratization. Such a focus will also allow us to examine the growing and diverse arenas of women's political activities which include not only opposition but negotiation, not only struggle but also strategic bargaining in spaces that are intersections of the private and the public spheres.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Imperialism
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Western feminism universalizes its form of social categories over African culture this is imperialism that erases culture. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
In light of the foregoing, I will argue that the concentration of feminist scholars on the status of women an emphasis that presupposes the existence of woman as a social category always understood to be powerless, disadvantaged, and controlled and defined by men can lead to serious misconceptions when applied to Yoruba society.5 In fact, my central argument is that there were no women defined in strictly gendered terms in that society. Again, the concept woman as it is used and as it is invoked in the scholarship is derived from Western experience and history, a history rooted in philosophical discourses about the distinctions among body, mind, and soul and in ideas about biological determinism and the linkages between the body and the social.6 Yorubaland covers a vast area, and despite homogenizing factors like language and recent historical experiences, one can discern some significant institutional, cultural specificities in given locales. For example, Ondo and a number of polities in eastern Yorubaland manifest cultural specificities different from those present in Oyo-Yoruba culture. For my purposes, then, it was necessary to limit somewhat the area to be studied. My primary unit of analysis is Oyo-Yoruba culture. That said, it should be noted that those local cultural specificities were more pronounced before the sweeping changes that occurred in the civil war and colonial and post-nineteenth-century periods. Because the goal of my research was to capture the broad, sweeping institutional changes brought about by European domination, it made sense, in places, to open my perspective beyond Oyo-Yoruba culture. I should add here that language is central to my study, and my engagement is with the Yoruba language as spoken by the Oyo. Although it is clear that the findings of this study are applicable to some other African societies, I hesitate to apply them broadly, primarily because I do not want to fall into the common trap of erasing a multitude of African cultures by making facile generalizations, a process that results in unwarranted homogenization. The erasure of African cultures, a major defect of many studies on Africa, motivates my efforts not to make a simplistic general case about Africa from the Yoruba example. There are two common ways in which African cultures are discounted, even in studies that are purportedly about African societies. The first is through the uncritical imposition on African cultures of supposedly objective conceptual categories and theories that are in origin and constitution bound to Western culture. The second is what I call the mishmash theory of Africa the result of which is unbridled homogenization of African cultures even when it is clear that these cultures do not share identical institutions or histories. There is no question that Africans have many things in common and that some generalizations are possible. But care must be taken in deciding how these claims are to be made and at what level they are to be applied given the paucity of detailed, historically grounded, and culturally informed studies of many African societies.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Impose Dichotomies
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Western feminism imposes gender dichotomies onto local histories. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
Western ideas are imposed when non-Western social categories are assimilated into the gender framework that emerged from a specific sociohistorical and philosophical tradition. An example is the discovery of what has been labeled third gender37 or alternative genders38 in a number of nonWestern cultures. The fact that the African woman marriage,39 the Native American berdache,40 and the South Asian hijra 41 are presented as gender categories incorporates them into the Western biologic and gendered framework without explication of their own sociocultural histories and constructions. A number of questions are pertinent here. Are these social categories seen as gendered in the cultures in question? From whose perspective are they gendered? In fact, even the appropriateness of naming them third gender is questionable since the Western cultural system, which uses biology to map the social world, precludes the possibility of more than two genders because gender is the elaboration of the perceived sexual dimorphism of the human body into the social realm. The trajectory of feminist discourse in the last twenty-five years has been determined by the Western cultural environment of its founding and development.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Dualism
211 Gender
Western feminisms establishes dualisms that place identities from each other and order relationships to power. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
From the ancients to the moderns, gender has been a foundational category upon which social categories have been erected. Hence, gender has been ontologically conceptualized. The category of the citizen, which has been the cornerstone of much of Western political theory, was male, despite the much-acclaimed Western democratic traditions.25 Elucidating Aristotles categorization of the sexes, Elizabeth Spelman writes: A woman is a female who is free; a man is a male who is a citizen.26 Women were excluded from the category of citizens because penis possession27 was one of the qualifications for citizenship. Lorna Schiebinger notes in a study of the origins of modern science and womens exclusion from European scientific institutions that differences between the two sexes were reflections of a set of dualistic principles that penetrated the cosmos as well as the bodies of men and women. 28 Differences and hierarchy, then, are enshrined on bodies; and bodies enshrine differences and hierarchy. Hence, dualisms like nature/culture, public/private, and visible/invisible are variations on the theme of male/female bodies hierarchically ordered, differentially placed in relation to power, and spatially distanced one from the other.29
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Eurocentrism
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Western feminisms reliance on sight creates a universal world view that precludes cultural interpretations through eurocentrism. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The reason that the body has so much presence in the West is that the world is primarily perceived by sight.7 The differentiation of human bodies in terms of sex, skin color, and cranium size is a testament to the powers attributed to seeing. The gaze is an invitation to differentiate. Different approaches to comprehending reality, then, suggest epistemological differences between societies. Relative to Yourba society, which is the focus of this book, the body has an exaggerated presence in the Western conceptualization of society. The term worldview, which is used in the West to sum up the cultural logic of a society, captures the Wests privileging of the visual. It is Eurocentric to use it to describe cultures that may privilege other senses. The term world-sense is a more inclusive way of describing the conception of the world by different cultural groups. In this study, therefore, woridview will only be applied to describe the Western cultural sense, and world-sense will be used when describing the Yoriib~i or other cultures that may privilege senses other than the visual or even a combination of senses.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Body Becomes Sexual
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Western feminism creates social categories by embodying sex and gender despite the fact that alternative scenarios are possible. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
I posit that these assumptions are a result of the fact that in Western societies, physical bodies are always social bodies. As a consequence, there is really no distinction between sex and gender, despite the many attempts by feminists to distinguish the two. In the West, social categories have a long history of being embodied and therefore gendered. According to anthropologist Shelly Errington, Sex (with a capital 5) is the gender system of the West. She continues: But Sex is not the only way to sort out human bodies, not the only way to make sense of sex. One can easily imagine different cultural classifications and rationales for gender categories, different scenarios that equally take into account the evidence our bodies provide.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Body Focus
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Western feminism relies on binary body difference to justify its claims creating a body focus Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
In the span of Western history, the justifications for the making of the categories man and woman have not remained the same. On the contrary, they have been dynamic. Although the boundaries are shifting and the content of each category may change, the two categories have remained hierarchical and in binary opposition. For Stephen Gould, the justification for ranking groups by inborn worth has varied with the tide of Western history. Plato relied on dialectic, the church upon dogma. For the past two centuries, scientific claims have become the primary agent of validating Platos myth. SO The constant in this Western narrative is the centrality of the body: two bodies on display, two sexes, two categories persistently viewed one in relation to the other. That narrative is about the unwavering elaboration of the body as the site and cause of differences and hierarchies in society. In the West, so long as the issue is difference and social hierarchy, then the body is constantly positioned, posed, exposed, and reexposed as their cause. Society, then, is seen as an accurate reflection of genetic endowment those with a superior biology inevitably are those in superior social positions. No difference is elaborated without bodies that are positioned hierarchically. In his book Making Sex,3 Thomas Laqueur gives a richly textured history of the construction of sex from classical Greece to the contemporary period, noting the changes in symbols and the shifts in meanings. The point, however, is the centrality and persistence of the body in the construction of social categories. In view of this history, Freuds dictum that anatomy is destiny was not original or exceptional; he was just more explicit than many of his predecessors.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Biological Binaries
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Western Feminism construes its constructions as universal and ties gender discourse to biological binaries. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The assertion that woman as a social category did not exist in Yoruba communities should not be read as antimaterialist hermeneutics, a kind of poststructuralist deconstructing of the body into dissolution. Far from it the body was (and still is) very corporeal in Yoruba communities. But, prior to the infusion of Western notions into Yoruba culture, the body was not the basis of social roles, inclusions, or exclusions; it was not the foundation of social thought and identity. Most academic studies on the Yoruba have, however, assumed that bodyreasoning was present in the Yoruba indigenous culture. They have assumed the Western constructions as universal, which has led to the uncritical usage of these bodybased categories for interpreting Yoruba society historically and in the contemporary period. Consequently, in order to analyze how and why gender is constructed in Yoruba society (and indeed in other contemporary African societies), the role and impact of the West are of utmost importance, not only because most African societies came under European rule by the end of the nineteenth century but also because of the continued dominance of the West in the production of knowledge. In African studies, historically and currently, the creation, constitution, and production of knowledge have remained the privilege of the West. Therefore, body-reasoning and the bio-logic that derives from the biological determinism inherent in Western thought have been imposed on African societies. The presence of gender constructs cannot be separated from the ideology of biological determinism. Western conceptual schemes and theories have become so widespread that almost all scholarship, even by Africans, utilizes them unquestioningly.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Gender Binaries/Biological Focus
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Western feminism imports biological determinism and gender binaries. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
As the work and my thinking progressed, I came to realize that the fundamental category woman which is foundational in Western gender discourses simply did not exist in Yorubaland prior to its sustained contact with the West. There was no such preexisting group characterized by shared interests, desires, or social position. The cultural logic of Western social categories is based on an ideology of biological determinism: the conception that biology provides the rationale for the organization of the social world. Thus this cultural logic is actually a bio-logic. Social categories like woman are based on body-type and are elaborated in relation to and in opposition to another category: man; the presence or absence of certain organs determines social position. It is not surprising, then, that feminist sociologist Dorothy Smith notes that in Western societies a mans body gives credibility to his utterance, whereas a womans body takes it away from hers. Judith Lorber also notes the depth and ubiquity of notions of biology in the social realm when she writes that gender is so pervasive in our [Western] society we assume it is bred into our genes.2 Given this, it is obvious that if one wanted to apply this Western bio-logic to the Yoruba social world (i.e., use biology as an ideology for organizing that social world), one would have first to invent the category woman in Yoruba discourse.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Biological Determinism
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Western feminisms claims to embrace constructionism is a faade for the fact that it relies on societal biological determinism. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The way in which the conceptual categories sex and gender functioned in feminist discourse was based on the assumption that biological and social conceptions could be separated and applied universally. Thus sex was presented as the natural category and gender as the social construction of the natural. But, subsequently, it became apparent that even sex has elements of construction. In many feminist writings thereafter, sex has served as the base and gender as the superstructure.33 In spite of all efforts to separate the two, the distinction between sex and gender is a red herring. In Western conceptualization, gender cannot exist without sex since the body sits squarely at the base of both categories. Despite the preeminence of feminist social constructionism, which claims a social deterministic approach to society, biological foundationalism, if riot reductionism, is still at the center of gender discourses, just as it is it the center of all other discussions of society in the West.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Homogenizes Gender
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Western feminism homogenizes identity and cannot apply to Africa. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
In fact, the categorization of women in feminist discourses as a homogeneous, bio-anatomically determined group which is always constituted as powerless and victimized does not reflect the fact that gender relations are social relations and, therefore, historically grounded and culturally bound. If gender is socially constructed, then gender cannot behave in the same way across time and space. If gender is a social construction, then we must examine the various cultural/architectural sites where it was constructed, and we must acknowledge that variously located actors (aggregates, groups, interested parties) were part of the construction. We must further acknowledge that if gender is a social construction, then there was a specific time (in different cultural/architectural sites) when it was constructed and therefore a time before which it was not. Thus, gender, being a social construction, is also a historical and cultural phenomenon. Consequently, it is logical to assume that in some societies, gender construction need not have existed at all.
219 Gender
**Impacts
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 WF Categorization + Hierarchies
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Western feminisms categorization of women treat women as an entire unit rather than focusing on how the social order came into being this imposition creates categorical hierarchies. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The problem of categoricalism maybe another factor in accounting for the inclination to erect a gender division of labor. R. W. Connell identified one of the major features of the categorical approach in social theory as the focus on the category as a unit, rather than the processes by which the category is constituted, or the elements of its constituents.... The social order as a whole is pictured in terms of a few major categories usually two related to each other by power and conflict of interest.112 Categoricalism is clear in the analysis of the social order, where in spite of a variety of possible economic engagements and the complexity of the division of labor, anamales are reduced to farmers and anafemales to traders. Connell goes on to discuss how the gender division of labor is mapped in categorical analysis. Analyses of the sexual division of labor, for instance, have usually set up the gender categories as a simple line of demarcation in economic life, adding a complexity by mapping the twists and turns of this line in different societies. He further argues that only a few scholars concern themselves with the making of a womans occupation, . . . a question which, by making the process of constructing categories a central issue, leads away from the abstract logic of categoricalism.113 Jane Guyers observation about the categorical way in which occupations are defined is also instructive. With regard to farming, she writes: One has to put aside the essentially European designation of farming as a single occupational category in order to understand the logic of the division of tasks in these ~Yoriib~ and Beti] systems.114 Likewise, one has to remember that people had multiple occupations; for example many diviner-priests were also farmers. Many people farmed to trade. Hence, the separation of trading and farming in the literature is unwarranted. This section has highlighted the gender categoricalism of interpreters of Oy6 society. I have argued that the making of the categories men and women and the mapping of such onto occupations like farmers and traders, respectively, in a society in which okitnrin and obinrin were represented in both occupations, are without foundation and so are nothing but an imposition of an alien model that distorts reality and leads to false simplification of social roles and relationships.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Body Focus
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Western discourses reliance on the body to embody identities this logic causes a search for something beyond identity that causes domination. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The foregoing hardly represents the received view of Western history and social thought. Quite the contrary: until recently, the history of Western societies has been presented as a documentation of rational thought in which ideas are framed as the agents of history. If bodies appear at all, they are articulated as the debased side of human nature. The preferred focus has been on the mind, lofty and high above the foibles of the flesh. Early in Western discourse, a binary opposition between body and mind emerged. The much-vaunted Cartesian dualism was only an affirmation of a tradition8 in which the body was seen as a trap from which any rational person had to escape. Ironically, even as the body remained at the center of both sociopolitical categories and discourse, many thinkers denied its existence for certain categories of people, most notably themselves. Bodylessness has been a precondition of rational thought. Women, primitives, Jews, Africans, the poor, and all those who qualified for the label different in varying historical epochs have been considered to be the embodied, dominated therefore by instinct and affect, reason being beyond them. They are the Other, and the Other is a body.9
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Body Focus
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Western feminism relies on a biological model of identity oppression that treats difference as degeneration and affirms dominance over the Others Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
THE IDEA that biology is destiny or, better still, destiny is biology has been a staple of Western thought for centuries.1 Whether the issue is who is who in Aristotles polis or who is poor in the late twentieth-century United States, the notion that difference and hierarchy in society are biologically determined continues to enjoy credence even among social scientists who purport to explain human society in other than genetic terms. In the West, biological explanations appear to be especially privileged over other ways of explaining differences of gender, race, or class. Difference is expressed as degeneration. In tracing the genealogy of the idea of degeneration in European thought, J. Edward Chamberlain and Sander Gilman noted the way it was used to define certain kinds of difference, in the nineteenth century in particular. Initially, degeneration brought together two notions of difference, one scientific a deviation from an original type and the other moral, a deviation from a norm of behavior. But they were essentially the same notion, of a fall from grace, a deviation from the original type. Consequently, those in positions of power find it imperative to establish their superior biology as a way of affirming their privilege and dominance over Others. Those who are different are seen as genetically inferior, and this, in turn, is used to account for their disadvantaged social positions.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Orientalism

Orientalism Must Be Rejected Edward Said, University Professor, Columbia U, Orientalism, 1978 pg325-8
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But in conclusion, what of some alternative to Orientalism? Is this book an argument only against something, and not for something positive? Here and there in the course of this book I have spoken about "decolonializing" new departures in the so-called area studies-the work of Anwar Abdel Malek, the studies published by members of the Hull group on Middle Eastern studies, the innovative analyses and proposals of various scholars in Europe, the United States, and the Near East - but I have not attempted to do more than mention them or allude to them quickly. My project has been to describe a particular system of ideas, not by any means to displace the system with a new one. In addition, I have attempted to raise a whole set of questions that are relevant in discussing the problems of human experience: How does one represent other cultures? What is another culture? Is the notion of a distinct culture (or race, or religion, or civilization) a useful one, or does it always get involved either in self-congratulation (when one discusses one's own) or hostility and aggression (when one discusses the "other")? Do cultural, religious, and racial differences matter more than socio-economic categories, or politicohistorical ones? How do ideas acquire authority, "normality," and even the status of "natural" truth? What is the role of the intellectual? Is he there to validate the culture and state of which he is a part? What importance must he give to an independent critical consciousness, an oppositional critical consciousness? I hope that some of my answers to these questions have been implicit in the foregoing, but perhaps I can speak a little more explicitly about some of them here. As I have characterized it in this study, Orientalism calls in question not only the possibility of nonpolitical scholarship but also the advisability of too close a relationship between the scholar and the state. It is equally apparent, I think, that the circumstances making Orientalism a continuingly persuasive type of thought will persist: a rather depressing matter on the whole. Nevertheless there is some rational expectation in my own mind that Orientalism need not always be so unchallenged, intellectually, ideologically, and politically, as it has been. I would not have undertaken a book of this sort if I did not also believe that there is scholarship that is not as corrupt, or at least as blind to human reality, as the kind I have been mainly depicting. Today there are many individual scholars working in such fields as Islamic history, religion, civilization, sociology, and anthropology whose production is deeply valuable as scholarship. The trouble sets in when the guild tradition of
Orientalism takes over the scholar who is not vigilant, whose individual consciousness as a scholar is not on guard against idees
reques all too easily handed down in the profession. Thus interesting work is most likely to be produced by scholars whose allegiance is to a discipline defined intellectually and not to a "field" like Orientalism defined either canonically, imperially, or geographically. An excellent recent instance is the anthropology of Clifford Geertz, whose interest in Islam is discrete and concrete enough to be animated by the specific societies and problems he studies and not by the rituals, preconceptions, and doctrines of Orientalism. On the other hand, scholars and critics who are trained in the traditional Orientalist disciplines are perfectly capable of freeing themselves from the old ideological straitjacket. Jacques Berque's and Maxime Rodinson's training ranks with the most rigorous available, but what invigorates their investigations even of traditional problems is their methodological self-consciousness. For if Orientalism has historically been too smug, too insulated, too positivistically confident in its ways and its premises, then one way of opening oneself to what one studies in or about the Orient is reflexively to submit one's method to critical scrutiny. This is what characterizes Berque and Rodinson, each in his own way. What one finds in their work is always, first of all, a direct sensitivity to the material before them, and then a continual self-examination of their methodology and practice, a constant attempt to keep their work responsive to the material and not to a doctrinal preconception. Certainly Berque and Rodinson, as well as Abdel Malek and Roger Owen, are aware too that the study of man and society-whether Oriental or not-is best conducted in the broad field of all the human sciences; therefore these scholars are critical readers, and students of what goes on in other fields. Berque's attention to recent discoveries in structural anthropology, Rodinson's to sociology and political theory, Owen's to economic history: all these are instructive correctives brought from the contemporary human sciences to the study of so-called Oriental problems. But there is no avoiding the fact that even if we disregard the Orientalist distinctions between "them" and "us," a powerful series of political and ultimately ideological realities inform scholarship today. No one can escape dealing with, if not the East/West division, then the North/South one, the have/have-not one, the imperialist/anti-imperialist one, the white/colored one. We cannot get around them all by pretending they do not exist; on the contrary, contemporary
Orientalism teaches us a great deal about the intellectual dishonesty of dissembling on that score, the result of which is to intensify the divisions and make them both vicious and permanent. Yet an openly
polemical and right-minded "progressive" scholarship can very easily degenerate into dogmatic slumber, a prospect that is not edifying either. My own sense of the problem is fairly shown by the kinds of questions I formulated above. Modern thought and experience have taught us to be sensitive to what is involved in representation, in studying the Other, in racial thinking, in unthinking and uncritical acceptance of authority and authoritative ideas, in the sociopolitical role of intellectuals, in the great value of a skeptical critical consciousness. Perhaps if we remember that the study of human experience usually has an ethical, to say nothing of a political, consequence in either the best or worst sense, we will not be indifferent to what we do as scholars. And what better norm for the scholar than human freedom and knowledge? Perhaps too we should remember that the study of man in society is based on concrete human history and experience, not on donnish abstractions, or on obscure laws or arbitrary systems. The problem then is to make the study fit and in some way be shaped by the experience, which would be illuminated and perhaps changed by the study.
At all costs, the goal of Orientalizing
the Orient again and again is to be avoided, with consequences that cannot help but refine knowledge and reduce the scholar's conceit. Without "the Orient" there would be scholars, critics, intellectuals, human beings, for whom the racial, ethnic, and national distinctions were less important than the common enterprise of promoting human community. Positively, I do believe-and in my other work have tried to show -that enough is being done today in the human sciences to provide the contemporary scholar with insights, methods, and ideas that could dispense with racial, ideological, and imperialist stereotypes of the sort provided during its historical ascendancy by Orientalism. I consider Orientalism's failure to have been a human as much as an intellectual one; for in having to take up a position of irreducible opposition to a region of the world it considered alien to its own, Orientalism failed to identify with human experience, failed also to see it -as human experience. The worldwide hegemony of Orientalism and all it stands for can now be challenged, if we can benefit properly from the general twentieth-century rise to political and historical awareness of so many of the earth's peoples. If this book has any future use, it will be as a modest contribution to that challenge, and as a warning: that systems of thought like OrientaIism, discourses of power, ideological fictions-mind-forged manacles-are all too easily made, applied, and guarded. Above all, I hope to have shown my reader that the answer to Orientalism is not Occidentalism. No former "Oriental" will be comforted by the thought that having been an Oriental himself he is likely-too likely-to study new "Orientals"-or "Occidentals"-of his own making. If the knowledge of Orientalism has any meaning, it is in being a reminder of the seductive degradation of knowledge, of any knowledge, anywhere, at any time. Now perhaps more than before.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Colonialism
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Colonialism reinforces patriarchy and the diminishment of womyns political and economic rights Rothchild and Chazan 1988 [Donald Rothchild is a late Professor of Political Science at the University of
California. Naomi Chazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University,. The Precarious Balance State and Society in Africa pg. 211, Questia] For most African women (with the exception of some urban women) the colonial period was characterized by significant losses in both power and authority. Colonial officials accepted Western gender stereotypes which assigned women to the domestic domain, leaving economic and political matters to men. As a result, although many African men suffered under colonialism, new opportunities eventually appeared for them, while women's economic and political rights often diminished. Colonial officials ignored potential female candidates for chiefships, scholarships and other benefits. Many female institutions were destroyed, often more out of ignorance than malice. In Igboland, for example, the male obi became a salaried official, while his female counterpart received nothing. Similar reductions in female political power occurred all over Africa during the colonial period. 13 This loss of political power was frequently associated with diminished access to land and labor power. Colonial development policies focused on men, who were, in the eyes of colony officials, the farmers and producers of Africa. When land rights were reorganized, "legitimate" heads of households, namely men, usually received the land titles. Marcia Wright carefully documents how women in Mazabuka, Zambia, lost both their economic and political power during the colonial period. Similarly, in Western Kenya new property laws reduced women's rights to land. In Zimbabwe and South Africa colonial "reform' resulted in the transfer of women's land to men. Colonial authorities assisted male farmers while often dismissing female farmers as mere subsistence food producers. When colonial officials wanted to encourage African cash crop production, they offered male farmers technical training and assistance but ignored women farmers. As a result, male farmers were more able to accumulate surplus and thus increasingly dominated the rural areas. 14 Women frequently continued to work on the land, but their control over the products of their labor declined. They often produced cash crops without reaping the profits, while, of course, continuing to grow food and perform domestic duties for their families. Marjorie Mbilinyi reports that in Tanzania "rich peasant wives . . . often lived like poor women, not sharing in the wealth they created." 15 In Zambia, Shimwaayi Muntemba discovered that men "uniformly and consistently returned only a small proportion of agricultural income to their wives, in amounts varying between one-tenth and one-quarter of the total income." 16 In Southern Zambia prosperous farmers gained labor power through polygamy, but wives were often treated "less as partners than as farmhands." Wives still clung to marriage because divorce entailed abandoning all marital property. 17 Thus, while traditional structures protected most women from absolute starvation, rural life was increasingly onerous for many women during the colonial period. Pushed by patriarchal authoritarianism and rural drudgery, and pulled by rumored economic and social opportunities in the towns, many enterprising women voted with their feet and moved to the urban areas. Despite opposition from government officials and chiefs, many women managed to migrate to towns and once there to support themselves. Of course some found men to support them, but this arrangement was always uncertain, for divorce and desertion were rampant. 18 Most women recognized the need for some economic autonomy. Educational barriers limited opportunities for white-collar jobs, teaching and nursing being the exceptions. All but the most unskilled and irregular wage labor remained a male preserve. Consequently, women were shunted into the informal sector, where they sold goods and services, including their bodies. Some became wealthy, especially the market women in West Africa, but the majority worked long hours merely to survive. 19
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Western Imperialism
225 Gender
Western feminism does not allow a questioning of discourse which universalizes the west and is imperialist. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The splitting of hairs over the relationship between gender and sex, the debate on essentialism, the debates about differences among women,46 and the preoccupation with gender bending/blending47 that have characterized feminism are actually feminist versions of the enduring debate on nature versus nurture that is inherent in Western thought and in the logic of its social hierarchies. These concerns are not necessarily inherent in the discourse of society as such but are a culture-specific concern and issue. From a cross-cultural perspective, the more interesting point is the degree to which feminism, despite its radical local stance, exhibits the same ethnocentric and imperialistic characteristics of the Western discourses it sought to subvert. This has placed serious limitations on its applicability outside of the culture that produced it. As Kathy Ferguson reminds us: The questions we can ask about the world are enabled, and other questions disabled, by the frame that orders the questioning. When we are busy arguing about the questions that appear within a certain frame, the frame itself becomes invisible; we become en framed within it.48 Though feminism in origin, by definition, and by practice is a universalizing discourse, the concerns and questions that have informed it are Western (and its audience too is apparently assumed to be composed of just Westerners, given that many of the theorists tend to use the first-person plural we and our culture in their writings). As such, feminism remains enframed by the tunnel vision and the bio-logic of other Western discourses.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Whitewashes Culture / Universalize Gender
226 Gender
Western feminism whitewashes culture and denies non-western interpretations of gender. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The potential value of Western feminist social constructionism remains, therefore, largely unfulfilled, because feminism, like most other Western theoretical frameworks for interpreting the social world, cannot get away from the prism of biology that necessarily perceives social hierarchies as natural. Consequently, in cross-cultural gender studies, theorists impose Western categories on non-Western cultures and then project such categories as natural. The way in which dissimilar constructions of the social world in other cultures are used as evidence for the constructedness of gender and the insistence that these cross-cultural constructions are gender categories as they operate in the West nullify the alternatives offered by the non-Western cultures and undermine the claim that gender is a social construction.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact Essentialism/Gender Hierarchies
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Western Feminism essentializes an African Woman identity that establishes gender hierarchies. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The Yoruba case provides one such different scenario; and more than that, it shows that the human body need not be constituted as gendered or be seen as evidence for social classification at all times. In precolonial Yoruba society, body-type was not the basis of social hierarchy: males and females were not ranked according to anatomic distinction. The social order required a different kind of map, not a gender map that assumed biology as the foundation for social ranking. I use the concepts sex and gender as synonyms. With regard to Yoruba society in the precolonial period, however, I have coined the terms anatomic sex, anatomic male, and anatomic female to emphasize the nongendered attitude toward the relation between the human body and social roles, positions, and hierarchies. In some places I have shortened those terms to anasex, anamale, and anafemale. My purpose in qualifying these terms with anatomic (or ana-) is to show that the Yoruba distinctions were superficial and did not assume any social hierarchical dimensions, as they do in the West (Western social categories derive essentially from a perceived sexual dimorphism of the human body). Gender was simply not inherent in human social organization. Although precolonial Yoruba cultural logic did not use the human body as the basis for social ranking (in no situation in Yoruba society was a male, by virtue of his body-type, inherently superior to a female), Yoruba society was hierarchically organized, from slaves to rulers. The ranking of individuals depended first and foremost on seniority, which was usually defined by relative age. Another fundamental difference between Yoruba and Western social categories involves the highly situational nature of Yoruba social identity. In Yoruba society before the sustained infusion of Western categories, social positions of people shifted constantly in relation to those with whom they were interacting; consequently, social identity was relational and was not essentialized. In many European societies, in contrast, males and females have gender identities deriving from the elaboration of anatomic types; therefore, man and woman are essentialized. These essential gender identities in Western cultures attach to all social engagements no matter how far from the issues of reproduction such undertakings may be. The classic example is that for many years women could not vote solely because they were women. Another example is the genderization of professions to the extent that professional lexicons contain phrases such as woman pilot, woman president, and professor emerita, as if whatever these women do in these occupations is different from what men do in the same professions.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Patriarchy
228 Gender
Western feminism essentializes female identity this is the basis of patriarchy and Western social organization. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
Feminism has not escaped the visual logic of Western thought. The feminist focus on sexual difference, for instance, stems from this legacy. Feminist theorist Nancy Chodorow has noted the primacy and limitations of this feminist concentration on difference: For our part as feminists, even as we want to eliminate gender inequality, hierarchy, and difference, we expect to find such features in most social settings.... We have begun from the assumption that gender is always a salient feature of social life, and we do not have theoretical approaches that emphasize sex similarities over differences.59 Consequently, the assumption and deployment of patriarchy and women as universals in many feminist writings are ethnocentric and demonstrate the hegemony of the West over other cultural groupings.60 The emergence of patriarchy as a form of social organization in Western history is a function of the differentiation between male and female bodies, a difference rooted in the visual, a difference that cannot be reduced to biology and that has to be understood as being constituted within particular historical and social realities. I am not suggesting that gender categories are necessarily limited to the West, particularly in the contemporary period. Rather, I am suggesting that discussions of social categories should be defined and grounded in the local milieu, rather than based on universal findings made in the West. A number of feminist scholars have questioned the assumption of universal patriarchy. For example, the editors of a volume on Hausa women of northern Nigeria write: A preconceived assumption of gender asymmetry actually distorts many analyses, since it precludes the exploration of gender as a fundamental component of social relations, inequality, processes of production and reproduction, and ideology.61 Beyond the question of asymmetry, however, a preconceived notion of gender as a universal social category is equally problematic. If the investigator assumes gender, then gender categories will be found whether they exist or not.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Patriarchy / Distancing Other
229 Gender
Western feminists founded on sight based knowledge this is patriarchal and distances engagement from the Other. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
In an interesting paper appropriately entitled The Minds Eye, feminist theorists Evelyn Fox Keller and Christine Grontkowski make the following observation: We [Euro-Americans] speak of knowledge as illumination, knowing as seeing, truth as light. How is it, we might ask, that vision came to seem so apt a model for knowledge? And having accepted it as such, how has the metaphor colored our conceptions of knowledge?55 These theorists go on to analyze the implications of the privileging of sight over other senses for the conception of reality and knowledge in the West. They examine the linkages between the privileging of vision and patriarchy, noting that the roots of Western thought in the visual have yielded a dominant male logic.56 Explicating Jonass observation that to get the proper view, we take the proper distance,57 they note the passive nature of sight, in that the subject of the gaze is passive. They link the distance that seeing entails to the concept of objectivity and the lack of engagement between the I and the subject the Self and the Other.58 Indeed, the Other in the West is best described as another body separate and distant.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact - Hurts Self-representation
230 Gender
Western feminism is imported into African studies to preclude self-representation and the possibility of transforming studies. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
The problem of importing Western concepts and categories into African studies and societies takes a decisive turn in the work of a number of African feminist scholars. I find this development particularly unfortunate because this new generation of scholars has the potential to radically transform African studies, which has by and large mirrored the androcentrism of its European origins. Using all sorts of Western models, writers like Tola Pearce and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie have characterized Yoruba society as patriarchal. Their mastery of Marxism, feminism, and structuralism is dazzling, but their understanding of Yoruba culture is seriously lacking. Samuel Johnson, a pioneering Yoruba intellectual, wrote of late nineteenth-century Yoriib~iland that educated natives of Yoruba are well acquainted with the history of England and with that of Rome and Greece, but of the history of their own country they know nothing whatever!73 More than a century later, Johnsons lament remains relevant. More recently, philosopher and art historian Nkiru Nzegwu clearly framed the problem by asserting that when a number of African feminist scholars rushed to characterize indigenous society as implicitly patriarchal, the question of the legitimacy of patriarchy as a valid transcultural category of analysis was never raised. . The problem of evaluating Igb6 and Yoruba cultures on the bases of their cultural other (the West) is that African societies are misrepresented without first presenting their positions
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Impact Hate Crimes

Lack of consideration for race increases hate crimes and perpetuates unequal power relations. Krista Scott-Dixon, 2000 [University of York, Ph.D. is in Women's Studies; Ph.D.in dissertation;
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http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/collins.html#ch6; Analysis of: Collins, Patricia Hill. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice"] In this section Collins outlines a brief history of "racial etiquette", arguing that current rhetoric of "colour blindness" in fact sets the stage for occurrences of hate speech, and asks how examinations of the process of dealing with hate speech on campuses might illuminate the role of critical social theory in dealing with hierarchical power relations.
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**Alternatives
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Re-examine African Hierarchies
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The only successful alternative is to reject the aff and re-examine the gender hierarchies that are specific to Africa, personalizing their feminism Ghorayshi and Belanger 1996 [Parvin, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Winnipeg, Canada.
Claire, Programme Officer for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ,Women, Work, and Gender Relations in Developing Countries A Global Perspective pgs. 6-7, Questia] More specifically, we need an approach that recognizes that social relations, most notably gender and generational relations, cross the whole social fabric, thus connecting the structure, daily life, and individuals. In the following section, the discussion will focus on the notion of hierarchy, enabling us to deal with social relations in all their dimensions. We could, of course, examine several types of hierarchies. However, we
will limit the discussion to gender and generational hierarchies because they are both based on physical differences. While corresponding intimately to the global structure of society, these hierarchies influence the daily practice of all
individuals without exception. Examining these hierarchies constitutes a basic step for those who wish to understand social change as a dynamic process connecting the structure with individuals. The argument I will develop, based on the contributions of feminist scholars, is that it is equally as important to study the relationships between categories as it is to study the categories themselves.
By examining hierarchies, we can understand social relations on many different levels and dimensions rather than assuming these levels Ghorayshi and Belanger 1996 [Parvin Ghorayshi is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Winnipeg, Canada. Claire Belanger is Programme Officer for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. Women, Work, and Gender Relations in Developing Countries A Global Perspective pg. 7, Questia] The notion of hierarchy therefore constitutes an interesting contribution to the study of social relations in that it obliges us to consider dimensions other than those of the real or assumed inequality of these relations according to the level at which we are placed. We may well point out that social relations are unequal in a
given context and that certain individuals are excluded because of this inequality. However, this exclusion is far from absolute. It may prove to be true at one level while at another it may be totally absent. It is not a case of affirming that inequality is relative but rather of proposing an approach that makes it possible to refine the study of gender relations. As Tcherkzoff states: "Both inequality and
equality establish a single level of practices: those with the required qualities are equal, the others are in a situation of inequality; the hierarchy therefore establishes several levels of practices" ( 1993: 146). In other words, the notion of inequality (or of equality) makes only a very minor contribution to our understanding of the complexity of social relations. The notion of hierarchy, on the other hand, enables us to consider these social relations on several levels.
The study of hierarchies makes social change possible in Africa Ghorayshi and Belanger 1996 [Parvin Ghorayshi is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Winnipeg, Canada. Claire Belanger is Programme Officer for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. Women, Work, and Gender Relations in Developing Countries A Global Perspective pgs. 9-10, Questia]
In light of these contributions, it appears that it is not the terms of the relationship that should most interest us, but rather the relationship itself, the dynamic interaction between categories. Along the same lines, Marie Claude Hurtig and Marie-France Pichevin write: when dealing with hierarchical social categories (White/Black, French/Immigrant, men/women), the categorization
process, aside from its role in differentiating, in distinguishing similar from different, acquires a discriminatory function which is social, not just cognitive. What influences the way information is processed is the hierarchy between the categories which constitute the classification system, undoubtedly more than the specific characteristics of any given system (race, sex, etc.). ( Hurtig and Pichevin 1991: 171) While this comment lies within the domain of perceptions, it undoubtedly is intended as an invitation to adopt a hierarchical approach to social categories rather than a contradictory and dual approach. In fact, it is not only the social categories themselves that are at issue here, but also the relationships between these categories. Monique Haicault, for example, reiterates the complexity of social relations, particularly gender
relations, while maintaining that this complexity "is related to the availability of several forms of relations between their two terms" ( Haicault 1993: 7). This approach to the relationship between terms makes the study of social change
possible. Obviously it is not the genders that are changing, but rather the relationship between them. Thus, "the gender relation changes, going from one state to another or from one degree to another, through its own specific dynamic" ( Combes, Daune-Richard, and Devreux 1991: 62).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt African Womanism
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Our alternative is to reject Western feminism and instead focus on African Womanism The term African womanism is an effective way to solve the problems that African womyn have with associating themselves with feminism while solving for gender issues in the context of what is important to African womyn Susan Arndt, former Research Fellow at St. Antony's College in Oxford, Humboldt-University at Berlin and the
Center for Literary Research (Berlin), she taught at the University of Frankfurt/Main. African Gender Trouble and African Womanism: An Interview with Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Wanjira Muthoni Signs, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Spring, 2000), pp. 709-726 Ogunyemi arrived at the term womanism independently of and at about the same time as Walker (Ogunyemi 1985). While in her early publications she used the term womanism without a modifier, today she speaks specifically of Afican womanism. Although her conception has important parallels with Walker's and Hudson-Weems's versions of womanism, there are decisive differences too. The most substantial is that Ogunyemi wishes to conceptualize an ideology that clearly demarcates and emancipates African womanism from both white feminism and African-American womanism/feminism. "Since feminism and African-American womanism overlook African peculiarities," she explains, "there is a need to define African womanism" (Ogunyemi 1996, 114). Only African women may be African womanists in Ogunyemi's sense. Besides this general demarcation from African-American womanism/feminism, Ogunyemi also explicitly dissociates herself from Walker: "It is necessary to reiterate that the womanist praxis in Africa has never totally identified with all the original Walkerian precepts. An important point of departure is the African obsession to have children" (133). Another difference in content manifests itself in their incompatible attitudes toward lesbianism. While Walker emphasizes that womanists love other women, "sexually and/or nonsexually" (Walker 1983, xi), Ogunyemi argues that her African womanism rejects lesbian love because of the "African . . . silence or intolerance of lesbianism" (Ogunyemi 1996,133). The core of Ogunyemi's definition of African womanism is the conviction that the gender question can be dealt with only in the context of other issues that are relevant for African women. However, in this connection she clearly exceeds Walker's and Hudson- Weems's race-class-gender approach. She stresses that an African womanist "will recognize that, along with her consciousness of sexual issues, she must incorporate racial, cultural, national, economic, and political considerations into her philosophy" (Ogunyemi 1985,64). Moreover, an African womanist must deal with, among other things, "interethnic skirmishes and cleansing, . . . religious fundamentalism, . . . the language issue, gerontocracy and in-lawism" (Ogunyemi 1997, 4). Other African alternative concepts to feminism include the stiwanism of Molara Ogundipe-Leslie (1994), the motherism of Catherine Acholonu ([1991], 1995), and the womanism of Mary Kolawole (1997). Generally speaking, the main concern of all of these concepts is to found, among specifically Afican women, an autonomous alternative to feminism that would contextualize the criticism of gender relationships-and in a much more complex way than the African-American concepts at that.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solvency African Womanism
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Shifting from the name of feminism to approach African womyns empowerment is crucial, naming is power and refocusing towards layers of oppression that affect African womyn is essential to breaking free from domination Susan Arndt, former Research Fellow at St. Antony's College in Oxford, Humboldt-University at Berlin and the
Center for Literary Research (Berlin), she taught at the University of Frankfurt/Main. African Gender Trouble and African Womanism: An Interview with Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Wanjira Muthoni Signs, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Spring, 2000), pp. 709-726 CO: To me, as I said, naming is power. If you are experiencing something, you are the one who names your child. You name your idea, and if you depend on somebody else to do your naming for you, you do not know what is behind the person's naming. In my culture every name has a meaning. That is why when you give children English names that you cannot pronounce, they are meaningless. But if you name your child in Igbo or Yoruba, it has a meaning and that child will have to live up to its name. Take for example my name -"My Chi is in consonance with me" -which has a psychological purpose: When I am in difficulties, I try to remember this name that my parents gave me. It takes care of my needs. So when I come together with a "feminist," the problem is not the naming. We can deal with issues that have to be dealt with. But all the time I am also conscious of the fact that African men are also oppressed. If you put them in a global context, African men are also oppressed. When they come home, they also oppress the women. So there are different layers, but if I do not remember that African men are oppressed just as women are oppressed in the global context, then I am going to deal only with the gender relationship between black women and men. And I do not want to deal only with that, because there is another oppression oppressing both of us. I must always be conscious of that. There are, for instance, the war going on in Rwanda, the wars going on in Zaire, in Liberia. We are all oppressed. Somebody brought in arms and armed us to start fighting each other. We are stupid for fighting each other, but the arms came from somewhere. In the Biafran war, the arms came from somewhere, too. And we started killing each other. We must always be conscious of that outside world. Most feminists of all categories outside Africa unwittingly gain from the global arrangements.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solvency African Womanism
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African Womanism retains the effective qualities of feminism while praising womanhood and taking pride in the female being Pascal Newbourne Mwale, University of Malawi, Malawi Where is the Foundation of African Gender? The Case of Malawi Nordic Journal of African Studies 11(1): p. 114-137 2002 http://www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdffiles/vol11num1/mwale.pdf However, womanism shares a lot of ground with feminism, says Chidammodzi, central to feminism in general is the womens freedom to choose, and this involves autonomy and self-determination. This is evident in womanism as well.7 African womanism excels over mainstream feminism in that African womanism is not antagonistic (against men); in fact it seeks male support. More importantly, African womanism prizes and praises womanhood, wifehood or motherhood: the promotion and preservation of the pride of being a female human being (Chidammodzi 1994/5: 46). The implications are (1) that while African womanism recognises that African societies indeed have inequitable structures that oppress or marginalize women, the modus operandi for improving the situation of African women is not necessarily by means of a simplistic categorical reversal (women taking on the better characteristics of men) or through a war of the two sexes (see also Dzama 2001: 1). (2) Women should take pride in being women. All this sounds very well. But, Chidammodzi points out three problems in conceptualising African womanism or distinguishing it from mainstream feminism. For lack of a better expression, the first problem may be put down as Africas cultural heterogeneity. To this end, Chidammodzi argues: Since womanism has very little (if any) concern with the continent as such but with productive human beings, and given that Africans have diverse cultures, then the uniqueness of womanism to African experiences needs to be clarified (Chidammodzi 1994/5: 44).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Motherhood
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We should embrace the concept of motherhood as to liberate women form the weak role that we have created for and unto them. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought Western feminism, Oyewm says, takes its point of departure in woman as wife and as daughter (2000: 1094). Simone de Beauvoirs work is a good example of that: Woman is identified and described in relation to a man in position of authority: the husband, the father. In Africa, however, the most crucial position of a woman is her position as mother. Mother is the preferred and cherished self-identity of many African women (Oyewm 2000: 1096). The position of mother is in itself a position of authority. Motherhood, however, is largely neglected in Western feminist thought (and certainly not supported in de Beauvoirs lines of thinking). In Western feminism as in Western society, to be a mother is to live in a perpetual dilemma between your own emotional priorities and the economic and work-related priorities of the society of which you are a part.
Rethinking motherhood is major offense against the entrenched views of women. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought Thus I see Oyewms and Amadiumes contributions as important to feminist theory as such, for two interconnected reasons. First, they manage to think beyond woman-as-other as taken for granted, which is a major theoretical achievement. With woman-as-other being embedded in the very concept of womanas is the case in most feminist thinkingimagining futures with woman not as the other becomes an impossible task. Second, in their analysis they produce imagesof human relations, of motherhoodwhich open the mind for different ways of thinking about gender, thus enabling other virtual futures to be conceived, other perspectives to be developed (Grosz 2000: 1019). I find the rethinking of motherhood particularly pertinent. The ways in which Western patriarchal thought has managed to naturalize and trivialize motherhood are absolutely appalling. And even worse is it that feminist thought has done very little about it. Motherhood remains an under-researched and underconceptualized area in Western feminist scholarship. 2 In contemporary trend-setting feminist thought, as for instance in Judith Butlers works, thinking about motherhood is absent. One consequence of such blank spots in feminist thinkingand of implicit phallocentric and/or ethnocentric assumptions still going strongis that strategies for the future remain deeply flawed. In the lines of thinking underpinning global feminist documents such as the Beijing Platform for Action, and also informing current Gender-and-Development thinking, the vision of gender equality has not moved very far from Simone de Beauvoirs visions of wage work and contraception, i.e. feminine futures on male terrain, with man as the model. Inspiration and conceptual imagination which may help to push feminist thinking beyond those limits are greatly needed. This is the important contribution of African feminist thought.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Rethinking
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Rethinking feminism is the key to furthering the rights of women and reducing their stereotypes in society. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought The point of the discussion is not empirical. The point is not to show whether places do exist where this a priori othering of women does not occur. The point is to open the mind to different ways of thinking about gender, and for different ways of analyzing gender relations. Freeing ourselves from old mindsets will allow us to envision new kinds of gender relations as we look toward the future both the future of Africa and the future of ourselves as Western (men and) women.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solvency Discourse Maps Culture
239 Gender
Questioning western gender discourses allows mapping of local culture. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
This book grew out of the realization of Western dominance in African studies. That realization made it necessary to undertake a reexamination of the concepts underpinning discourse in African studies, consciously taking into account African experiences. Clearly, all concepts come with their own cultural and philosophical baggage, much of which becomes alien distortion when applied to cultures other than those from which they derive. Thus, as a first step toward mapping the cultural logic of an African society like that of the Yoruba, conceptual categories and theoretical formulations that derive from Western experiences had to be unpacked. After all these considerations, I found that it was no longer possible for me to do a study of gender (a biologically conceived category) in a Yoruba locality; I first had to write a history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. It became clear to me that, to make an analogy with Michel Foucaults explication of the history of sexuality, the history of gender that is, the history of what functions in academic discourse as a specific field of truth must first be written from the viewpoint of a history of discourses.3 Further, an analysis of some of the material reorganization that took place as a result of British colonization had to be undertaken. My explication of colonization, however, does not rest on the period of formal colonization. I assume the period of the Atlantic slave trade as an integral part of this process. In Yoruba history, there is no logical way of separating these two periods. They were logically one process unfolding over many centuries. Without attention to the global material dominance of the West, there can be no comprehensive accounting for its continued hegemony in ideas and knowledge-production. Because of that, this study is also about the sociology of knowledge.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Representing history
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Rethinking history and re-analyzing gender is the key to solving not only the problems that indigenous women go through, but also for all the impacts of Western feminism. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought In her paper Histories of a Feminist Future, Elizabeth Grosz (2000) provides some lines of thinking which run parallel to my own. Where I want to introduce new lines of thinking in order to allow for re-analysis of African (and other) gendered realities, she talks about the need for feminist re-interpretations of history, in order to be able to develop perspectives for different futures. It is all about interpretations. Reality exists, but the ways in which this reality is interpreted are decisive for the ways in which strategies for the future can be developed. According to Grosz, it is the present that writes the past rather than as positivist historiography has it the past that gives way to the present. This is not to say that the present is all that is left of the past; quite the contrary, the past contains the resources to much more than the present. Rather, it is only the interests of the present that serve to vivify or invigorate the past (Grosz 2000: 1019, emphasis added).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Indigenous Fem
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A return to the indigenous African beliefs about gender would solve the power struggle that we ourselves, as a society have created for all women to suffer in. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought One of her key points is similar to the one made by Oyewm on the rulers who may be men or women, and only when seen by Western eyes turn into kings. Similarly, in Igbo society, many social positions may be taken up by either men or women. For example, the Igbo term for husband, di, is not gendered; both a man and a woman can be husband (1997: 128): Daughters may step into positions of sons, and women may act as husbands for other wives. Thus, she says, there is in African gender systems a flexibility which allows a neuter construct for men and women to share roles and status (1997: 112). In indigenous Nnobi society [...] the ultimate indication of wealth and power, the title system, was open to men and women, as was the means of becoming rich through control over the labour of others by way of polygamy, whether man-to-woman marriage or woman-to-woman marriage. The Nnobi flexible gender system made either possible. (1987: 42) The point here is that power is not masculine per se, power may be male or femaleunlike in the West, where women who successfully manage to wield power in the public sphere have to take on an outward appearance of maleness such as deepened voices and tailored suits (1997: 113). Thus in Nnobi context woman-as-other just does not occur. The place from which one views woman-as-other doesnt exist.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Indigenous Fem
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African feminism believes that traditionally allocated roles are not necessarily oppressive and that the public and private spheres dont have to conflict. Indigenous feminism is a middle path that is the most viable and best option. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] The private-public debate3 (and the nature-culture divide as well) is very present in feminist theory as an explanation for certain gender roles. Traditionally women are more associated with the private spheres (children, home, ), whereas men are more seen in connection with public life en the ensuing social roles.4 The lesson learnt by western feminists from the African situation is that private-public does not necessarily hold a contradiction. The separation between both worlds is not universal. Moreover, the African situation shows that the acceptance of certain social roles (whether or not resulting from the biological differences between men and women) does not necessarily include the subjection of women. For African women the acceptance of a certain social role does not exclude a rejection of womens oppression. Africans do not start out from the nature-culture divide. The two are linked and hold no conflict. This link structures the roles of men and women both domestically and in politics and economy. This point of view brought to life a feminism completely different from the western version. The biggest differences are the importance that African feminists attach to the reproductive role of women and the tendency to put the community before the individual.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solvency Indigenous Feminism
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African women dont like Western feminism and will try to resist as much as possible. Indigenous feminism is better because it empowers autonomous decision making. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] On the other hand, this western pressure is greatly resisted by those in power. The participation of women is experienced as being imposed by the West and not stemming from own culture or experience. African activists are constantly performing a wire act between devoting themselves to womens rights and supporting the right of African states to make autonomous decisions. They are faced with the difficult task of finding an activism that turns the existing gender hierarchy into something that is at the same time liberating for women, and offers a valid political alternative.
Indigenous feminism is critical to changing Western feminism Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Often, differences are seen from a class perspective: the dominance of (western) middle class feminism. Nonwestern feminist have been looking for an authentic activism, without adopting the values of western middle class feminism. Differences in colour, race, and ethnicity are often the inspiration for specific forms of womens activism. The BlackWomen Movement has been very important to the evolution of feminism in the West. Race and ethnicity have also given rise (and still do) to serious conflicts that can prove devastating in womens lives and to womens rights. Lastly, womens activists may take quite varying stances towards sexuality. Women worldwide, in past and present, may take wholly different stands on abortion, genital mutilation, infanticide, womens seclusion, polygamy and homosexuality.
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Accepting indigenous feminism can solve all the problems of international feminism because indigenous feminism can create international change. Aili Mari Tripp, 2006 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com.. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin] In Africa, contributions to transnational women's rights activism have been especially important concerning violence against women, women and conflict, the girl child, financing women's entrepreneurship, resistance against female genital cutting, the role of government versus NGOs in service provision and, increasingly, in discussions about women and political decision-making. Continental and sub-regional influences serve as a critical conduit for changing international norms. In this sense, they are perhaps more important than global transnational influences as a vehicle for changing the status of women.
Indigenous feminism allows women to serve in civil office, while Western feminism actually decreases African womens political participation. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Politics is the ultimate public sphere, and nowhere in the world have women played as many and varied political roles as in Africa. The explanation lies in the fact that traditional African models of society have been determined by gender. Womens explicit roles as members of a community have played to their advantage. On the other hand, and just like in the West, a gender-biased social network has a negative impact on womens political participation.
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Indigenous feminism empowers women politically and economically because the mindset is the community is more important than the individual, and the woman is in charge of the community. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] In African models of society, the emphasis is usually more on the community than on the individual. From this perspective, there are many overlapping elements in domestic, economic and political roles. In general the biological role of women is not perceived 2.For more about Western feminism, see fact sheet 14 Feminism and feminist factions 3.For a definition of this and other terms, see fact sheet 17 enderterminology 4.see fact sheet n14 on Feminism 4 as being in conflict with taking up political or economic responsibilities. African women traditionally fulfil a greater multitude of roles than women in other continents do. Apart from the care for their children, women are also responsible for the care of the community. Care in the broadest meaning of the word. No wonder that African men and women often have complementary and often even parallel responsibilities. (Womens) roles are determined by membership of a collective group (family or tribe). As a member of certain families, men and women get certain responsibilities and privileges. Economic and political relations are therefore collective and not individual. This makes for African womens important role in, for instance, trade relations. The historical evolution of women s roles in Central Africa.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt solves Questioning Imperialist Discourse
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Alt solves questioning imperialist discourse key to solve eurocentrism. Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] Despite criticisms, postcolonial approaches point towards a significant advancement in development studies. They demonstrate how the production of western knowledge forms is inseparable from the exercise of western power (Said, 1978; Spivak, 1990; Young, 1990). They also attempt to loosen the power of western knowledge and reassert the value of alternative experiences and ways of knowing (Fanon, 1968; Thiongo, 1986; Spivak, 1987; Bhabha, 1994). They articulate clearly some difficult questions about writing the history of development, about imperialist representations and discourses surrounding the Third World and about the institutional practice of development itself. As Darby (1997: 30) argues, postcolonialism has an expansive understanding of the potentialities of agency. It shares a social optimism with other critiques, such as feminism, which has helped generate substantial changes in political practice. Therefore, despite the seeming impossibility of transforming NorthSouth relations by politics of difference and agency alone, postcolonialism is a much-needed corrective to the Eurocentrism and conservatism of much writing on development.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Reconceptualization
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In order to truly solve for the multiple types of oppression that women suffer, we must reconceptualize the system in which we perpetuate government, lawmaking, and the public and private realm. Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf In Western political thought and within Enlightenment philosophy, the public and private realms represent radically different spheres of existence for women, in which the private world is one of dependence, while the public world is one of freedom. One result is that the private sphere becomes dependent on the public sphere, which in turn is dominated by internal and external (i.e., international) capitalist relations, thus creating hierarchies of dependence. This is why liberal feminists have argued for womens inclusion in the public realm, so that they too might enter the world of freedom, the world of liberation.6 However, black feminist theory reveals that both spheres represent hierarchies of dependence for black women. In a racist society, the state trivialises, misrepresents and infantilises womens citizenship and domestic concerns (Carby, 1997: 47).
Indigenous feminism offers a non-coercive way of reconceptualizing the past, and all forms of oppression which allow women to look back on their experiences with a different paradigm, which is the most effective way of solving for feminism. Annecka Leolyn Marshall, 2006 [ The trek for a sense of belonging; lecturer at the Centre for Gender and
Development, Studies at the University of the West Indies; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf; Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006] Patricia Hill Collins standpoint argument (1990), that feminist knowledge generates collective consciousness that transforms socio-economic and political relations among African-American women, has had an important impact on my teaching and research. Black British feminist thought also interrogates the historical and cultural commonalities, as well as the diversity, among women of African descent. Grounded in the development of agendas for liberation, black British feminism examines the intersection of power relations in black womens lives. Collins states that: Afrocentric feminist thought offers two significant contributions toward furthering our understanding of the important connections among knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. First, Black feminist thought fosters a fundamental paradigmatic shift in how we think about oppression. By embracing a paradigm of race, class, and gender as interlocking systems of oppression, Black feminist thought reconceptualizes the social relations of domination and resistance. Second, Black feminist thought addresses ongoing epistemological debates in feminist theory and in the sociology of knowledge concerning ways of assessing truth. Offering subordinate groups new knowledge about their own experiences can be empowering. But revealing new ways of knowing that allow subordinate groups to define their own reality has far greater implications (1990: 222).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt - Intersectionality
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Taking into consideration the different intersections of a person is the appropriate and only alternative that will solve the harms of Krista Scott-Dixon, 2000 [University of York, Ph.D. is in Women's Studies; Ph.D.in dissertation;
http://www.stumptuous.com/comps/collins.html#ch6; Analysis of: Collins, Patricia Hill. Fighting Words: Black Women and the Search for Justice"] Collins sets the framework of standpoint theory against the concept of intersectionality, noting that "[i]ntersectionality thus highlights how African-American women and other social groups are positioned within unjust power relations, but it does so in a way that introduces added complexity to formerly race-, class-, and gender-only approaches to social phenomena."(p.205) She is careful to state that while intersectionality works better when developing individual analyses of experience, it is important not to elevate individual analyses over structural analyses. Individualism can be theoretically insidious, and can remove much of the structural bite of a more systemic analysis. Thus, Collins aims to work with both the notion of a shared standpoint and the notion of intersectionality to develop a highly nuanced and specific model for Black feminist theory. In this context, intersectionality "provides an interpretive framework for thinking through how intersections of race and class, or race and gender, or sexuality and class, for example, shape any group's experience across specific social contexts",(p.208) without necessarily forming unvaried guidelines for social structure. It is also important, as Collins notes, to develop a contextual and specific analysis of each group with a view to theorizing hierarchies of intersectionality, such that various oppressions are not deemed to be equivalent (to understand Collins' theoretical concerns, it is useful to consider Mohanty's earlier critique on the subject of theorizing "Third World women")
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt solves Incorporate Marginalized
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Alt solves - Incorporating indigenous knowledge is key to survival and emancipation Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] The tensions and dilemmas in new ways of conceiving a crosscultural feminist politics should both inform, and be informed by, postcolonialism. Criticism from black women and feminists in the South has had a considerable impact on gendered approaches within development studies. They have demonstrated why women are important, and why gender is an indispensable concept in the analysis of political-cultural movements, of transition, and of social change (Moghadam, 1994: 17). They also suggest that western researchers and observers should not denigrate alternative modes of thought on issues of human development. Scholars and activists in the South can depend upon existing legacies of indigenous systems together with the prevailing knowledges about them to formulate an authentic theory of human development (Mangena, in Amadiume, 2000: 176). This more holistic understanding of development would put human survival and non-western philosophies at the centre, producing alternative understandings based on relevant and empowering ideas generated by indigenous cultures. These ideas have philosophical merit in their search for an alternative theory of human development and for the emancipation of women. As Amadiume suggests, they represent an informed contribution to the global debate on human development and feminist methodology, and they should certainly inform the ways in which outsiders approach research in the contemporary South. Postcolonial feminisms, therefore, have the potential to contribute to the critical exploration of relationships between cultural power and global economic power. Moreover, they point towards a radical reclaiming of the political that is occurring in the field of development and in the broader arena of societal transformation.
Alt solves incorporating the voice of the marginalized disrupts the power to construct weakness Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] Postcolonial feminisms seek to disrupt the power to name, represent and theorize by challenging western arrogance and ethnocentrism, and incorporating the voices of marginalized peoples. Women in the South have been particularly concerned with contesting the power to name, including the use of terms such primitive, native, traditional and Third World women. The power of western feminism to speak for women elsewhere has not changed since colonial times. As Mohanty (1988) argues, black and Southern women are constructed as other, located outside white, middle-class norms. Diversities among women (in terms of class, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexuality and so on) are erased by monolithic and singular epithets such as Third World women. Trinh (1989) describes the exclusionary tactics of western feminism that make the concerns of Third World women special because they are not normal, because they are other, and because they are not written by white women. She writes (Trinh, 1989: 82): Have you read the grievances some of our sisters express on being among the few women chosen for a Special Third World Womens Issue or on being the only Third World woman at readings, workshops and meetings? It is as if everywhere we go, we become someones private zoo. White western academics are empowered (economically and socially) to make women in other cultures the object of their investigations, when the reverse is often neither possible nor feasible. For example, Sittirak (1998: 119) describes her experiences as a Thai woman studying in Canada: Officially, there are no regulations to prevent me from exploring Canadian or any other ethnic groups. However, like many other international students who received scholarships from development projects, it implicitly seemed that we should focus on our own issues in our homes. That is the way it is. At that moment, I did not question as to why a Thai student had to focus on Thai issues, while Canadian students had much more academic privilege and freedom to study and speak about any womens issues in any continent from around the world.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Solves - Black Feminism
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Black feminism destabilizes the static identities that confine Western feminist thought Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf By centralising womens experiences of relations of domination in race and racism, black feminist theorising radically alters the meanings and understandings of basic concepts critical to feminist analysis. Race-contesting gender- contesting-class-contesting-race turns many concepts on their heads. In the process, black feminist theory destabilises the coherence and certainty with which certain concepts and constructs are regarded in the general body of feminist thought. I glance at several of these below. Liberal, radical, and socialist feminist theories typically analyse the home as a site of oppression for women. Betty Friedan set the stage in her 1963 analysis in The Feminine Mystique: It is very urgent to understand how the very conditions of being a housewife can create a sense of emptiness, non-existence, nothingness in women (Friedan cited in Agonito, 1977: 38081). Likewise, think of radical feminisms emphasis on patriarchal relations beginning in the family and radiating outwards to civil society, the state and the economy. In the context of a hostile, racist society, black feminism theorises the home as a respite. Note this position does not romanticise the home or deny oppressive gender relations that may be present there. However, this position recognizes that for black women, the home might well be a place of physical and psychic retreat from overtly racist practices and experiences. Black feminist theory thus reveals that there are other dimensions to black womens experiences of home that are not captured by liberal, radical, and socialist feminist analysis especially for those black women who for centuries have been obliged to work outside the home, whether in fields, factories or the homes of others.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt solvency Recognize Difference
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Alt solves recognizing multiplicity and difference in identity opens a space for marginalized groups Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] The consequence of these criticisms is that the presumed authority and duty of western academics to represent the whole world is increasingly being questioned both within and without its ideological systems (Duncan and Sharp, 1993). Western feminists have increasingly begun to recognize that international feminism is constituted by a multiplicity of voices, including those of women in the South. The challenge for feminist scholarship is to transcend the colonizing boundaries of modernist discourse, which demands the recognition of difference and the multiplicity of axes and identities that shape womens lives. Greater emphasis is now placed on the positionality of the researcher in relationships of power. As Duncan and Sharp (1993) argue: It is much more than a question of being culturally sensitive or politically correct ... it requires a continual and radical undermining of the ground upon which one has chosen to stand, including, at times, the questioning of ones own political stance. Black feminists and women in the South are fighting for spaces in which to articulate their own demands and shape their own political agendas. Furthermore, marginalized women are resisting their representation by elite women from within their own cultures, many of whom are now located within the western academy. As one scholar comments: Frankly, Im very tired of having other women interpret for us, other women sympathise with us. Im interested in articulating our own directions, our own aspirations, our own past, in our own words ... (Skonaganleh: Ra, in Sittirak, 1998: 135).
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**Answers to Answers
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Disappearance of Womyn Identity
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The anxiety over the removal of the nuclear wife is unnecessary and is key to the allowance for a broader identity for women Oyeronke Oyewumi Family Bonds/Conceptual Binds: African Notes on Feminist Epistemologies Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium. (Summer, 2000), pp. 1093-1098.
The five-centuries-long process of globalization has blurred all sorts of boundaries across the globe. At the turn of the millennium, therefore, one of the most important issues facing feminism is the fragmentation of the category woman -the subject of feminism. This is usually understood as a challenge posed by postmodernist accounts of social (un)reality. But, I am quick to point out that the historic challenges to a monolithic racial and cultural understanding of feminism's subject predate postmodernism. Black American feminists are notable pioneers in this regard. The feminist anxiety over the disappearance of woman is unnecessary; she never existed as a unified subject in the first place. Moreover, if, as I have argued here, the taken-for-granted identity of the woman invoked in much feminist scholarship is that of "nuclear wife," her disappearance may not be regrettable. On the contrary; her demise may clear the way for "women" to be all they want to be.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Essentialism of African Countries

Grouping African countries to speak of the African perspective is legitimate Filomina Chioma Steady, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College An Investigative
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Framework for Gender Research in Africa In the New Millennium. In African Gender Studies: A Reader. Ed. by Oyeronke Oyewumi.Palgrave. 2005. Pp. 313-332 Crucial to the redefining of an alternative approach to research from an African perspective will be the following: Policy-orientation; critique of donor-driven research; social impact and basic research; viewpoint and value orientation, time orientation, geographical orientation; levels of analysis and an emphasis on culture. All of these factors will be conditioned by the type problem to be investigated, the kinds of data available, research instruments to be employed and the need to prioritize the research problems to be investigated. (Steady, 1977). Given the diversity of Africa, theoretical applications have to be developed through dynamic, multi-dimensional and heterogeneous methodological approaches and adjusted for contextual validity. . However, it is quite legitimate to speak of an African perspective or an African reality even if only one or two African countries are indicated. This type of typological projection can become a valid heuristic tool. When one speaks of Eurocentric models, one does not have to indicate which particular European country or people is being referred to.
Generalizations are justified in matters where they are made with consciousness of the intersections of African gendered experience Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, is an independent scholar. Her research interests focus on gender and youth expressive
cultures in the African world, cultural studies and feminist theory and politics. Beyond Determinism: The Phenomenology of African Female Existence Feminist Africa: Issue 2, 2003, http://www.feministafrica.org/fa%202/02-2003/bibi.html This is not to say that generalisations (whether about gender or Africa) cannot or should not be made. Rather, we must be cautious and always specify the divergences orchestrated by the different sociocultural frameworks, historical developments and their changing constellations. For example, contemporary African gendered experience must be located at the intersection of two overarching, interdependent and yet conflicting historical encounters. One involves the incorporation of different African societies into a world economy, which began with the Arab Muslim invasion in the seventh century, followed by European colonialism and occupation beginning in the fifteenth century, and enduring into the present in the form of contemporary neo-colonial administrations (see Ekwe-Ekwe, 1993). The other is based on an indigenous, pre-conquest African socio-cultural and metaphysical horizon, in which social identities and relations are implicated and embedded. These external impositions and internal historical processes have combined to distort, modify and transform African gender relations in a way that makes it difficult to speak in absolute terms about the meaning and experience of gendered existence, without retrospectively projecting our present ideals and anxieties onto the past.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Good Intentions
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The motivations of Western feminists and social scientists are irrelevant discussion by those outside of the culture mute their voices and suggest silenced voices Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Objections to the discursive intervention of feminist outsiders do not necessarily depend on any particular hypothesis about the outsiders' motivation. Outsiders may wish to advance their professional reputations by becoming recognized as experts on some group of marginalized women; they may enjoy posing as the rescuers of victimized women; or they may care deeply for the welfare of the women about whose lives they speak. Regardless of the speakers' motivations, the structure and context of their discursive interventions may have the consequence of positioning the subjects of their discourse as less than equal. In these circumstances, discussion of some issues by some feminists may not only mute the voices of other women but even suggest that they are incapable of speaking for themselves. Ironically, it was precisely the recognition of these kinds of oppressive dynamics that led Western women to form the feminist groups in which they developed the sorts of discursive practices that I now call Feminist Practical Dialogue.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: They Want Representation
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Many groups of womyn attempt to remove themselves from outsider feminist criticism insisting on outsider representation lead to misrepresentation and silencing of voices Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
The exclusion of outsiders or the closure of moral agendas are sometimes de facto but sometimes are matters of explicit and fierce insistence. For example, some prostitutes' groups have emphatically rejected middle-class
feminist analyses of them as victims of sexual exploitation; African American women have sometimes asserted that domestic violence and rape by African American men are topics off-limits to European Americans; some lesbian women have sought to exclude heterosexual women from discussing certain lesbian practices; and, outside the West, some North African women have objected to Western feminist criticisms of the practices of clitoridectomy and infibulation. One especially bitter controversy arose around an article co-authored by two Australian women, an anthropologist of European descent and a ''traditional'' Aboriginal woman. This article exposed astronomical rates of violence and rape, including frequent gang-rape, committed by Aboriginal men against Aboriginal women. The truth of the allegations was undisputed, but some Aboriginal women objected that it was inappropriate for this topic to be broached by a white woman, even in collaboration with an Aborigine (Bell and Nelson 1989; Larbalestier 1990; Bell 1990, 1991a, 1991b; Klein 1991; Huggins et al. 1991; Nelson 1991). Closing some debates and excluding some topics from some
people's intervention seem to run entirely counter to the ideal of free and open discussion as that has been understood in Western moral philosophy. I shall suggest, however, that a feminist conception of moral discourse may be able to justify such exclusions without denying that ideal and may even do so in its name. Groups of women who have sought to remove their lives from the critical scrutiny of outsider feminists have offered a number of rationales for their desire. Prostitutes' groups have argued that middle-class feminists are ignorant of the real conditions of
prostitute life and some North African women have argued that Western feminists do not understand the role of clitoridectomy and infibulation in African cultures. In both cases, the groups whose practices have been challenged by outsiders allege that the criticism is inadequately informed. Sometimes they also express concern that open discussion of certain issues may have deleterious consequences for their community; for instance, some lesbians worry that drawing attention to controversial lesbian practices may encourage attacks from homophobes and some African American women fear that their community may be divided by discussion of violence inflicted by African American men. Outsider feminists whose interventions are rejected often remain unconvinced by
these arguments.3 Some may respond by asserting their familiarity with the cultures or subcultures in question; others may argue that first-person experience is not authoritative, noting that victims frequently rationalize their abuse, as well as their ''choices'' to remain in abusive situations. The outsiders may also object to what they perceive as misplaced concern for ''the community'' as a whole at the expense of some women within it. They may even argue that ignoring the plight of such women is racist or ethnocentric, insofar as it suggests a moral double standard according to which high levels of abuse and exploitation are regarded as ''culturally acceptable'' for some women but not for others. In evaluating these difficult and
complex issues, it is important to notice that these examples all share some significant features. In each of the foregoing cases, those who seek to protect their lives from scrutiny belong to a group that is socially stigmatized, and/or is a cultural minority, and/or has a history of colonization, while those whom they wish to exclude belong to more powerful or hegemonic groups. Each of the groups whose practices are in question is struggling under external pressure to maintain a sense of self-respect and cultural integrity; and each has been a frequent object of study by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, even criminologists from outside that group. These social scientists have typically assumed that their studies have made them experts on the lives of those studied, whom they have often presented as exotic, as victims, or as pathological. In this context, some communities' resistance to opening their lives for critical feminist examination from the outside may be interpreted less as an attempt to limit the discursive autonomy of others than as a claim to discursive autonomy for themselves. Women from nonhegemonic groups have good reason to suppose that if
their lives were to become the subject of feminist discussion, their own perspectives might be discounted. The views of feminists with professional credentials would likely be taken as authoritative, especially if they were published in scholarly journals, where authors are positioned as experts and those
studied become ''informants'' whose opinions are merely data for expert analysis. One critic of the white Australian anthropologist Diane Bell observed that even though Bell's controversial article was officially co-authored with an Aboriginal woman, Topsy Napurrula Nelson, Nelson's words were placed in italics framed by Bell's prose, a device that distinguished Nelson's input from ''the dominant White voice controlling the shape and tone of the academic text'' (Larbalestier 1990, 147).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Perm

Being versed in a certain culture is zero-sum. One cant be both an Africanist and an Europeanist. Carole Boyce Davies, 2006 [Con-di-fi-cation: Black women, leadership and political power
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http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf; Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa, 2006; Professor of English and African-New World Studies at Florida International University] Condoleezza therefore describes herself as a Europeanist, in the sense that her research expertise focuses on Europe, discussing it within its own terms. Ironically, in todays world, lacking the kind of information or black world knowledge which African Studies develops represents a huge gap, indeed a lack of knowledge of most of the world. Being a Europeanist and being an Africanist are neither symmetrical in relation to the functioning of the academy, nor assigned the same value, academic space or size. Being a Europeanist in fact means specialising in the mainstream of the already European Studiesoriented academy in which Africana Studies is marginalised. According to Felix, when Rice was appointed national security adviser: She also had to discuss her own limitations and admitted that the candidate was not the only one with much to learn. Condis career as a Soviet scholar gave her insight into that part of the world but little background in the political histories of other regions. She did not have a strong grasp of Americas policies in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or other non-European nations, and had to undergo her own crash course in those areas (34). Ive been pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope, she said. Im really a Europeanist. (2005:3435).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Perm
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Western and indigenous feminists have opposite views on policy implementation and this is the same reason that African and Western NGOs cannot cooperate. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] These differences have in past and present caused much friction between Western and African actors. African and western womens movements often have a wide gap to bridge. For instance on the subject of genital mutilation. Until very recently the African womens movement was quite averse towards the Western feminist attack on genital mutilation. Now there is a growing conviction that genital mutilation is indeed in breach of human rights and needs to be curbed. Western and African actors on the political level usually disagree about the implementation of a policy to improve the situation of women. Western and African NGOs tend to find it difficult to cooperate with one another for the same reasons. Generally speaking Western activists take womens autonomy as their starting point, whereas African feminist start out from culturally linked forms of participation. The main differences can be traced back to differing outlooks on privatepublic- debate.
State cannot work in tandem with the alternative; they are an impediment to the process Rothchild and Chazan 1988 [Donald Rothchild is a late Professor of Political Science at the University of
California. Naomi Chazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University, The Precarious Balance State and Society in Africa pg. 220, Questia] The state is generally seen as an impediment to progress and is treated as a potential threat, rather than as a source of support. The West African market women have organized to protect themselves from the state, not to get closer to it. For example, in 1982 Accra market women withdrew their services until the state returned their control over pricing and the market. 73 Nonetheless, reacting to government differs from attempting to integrate with it. In other parts of Africa the story is the same. Poor Zambian women seem indifferent to participation in national development plans; they are preoccupied with economic survival instead. 74 In Kenya Kathy Staudt has discovered that rural women frequently organize to protect their economic interests but that these organizations usually operate outside the political system. "This autonomy may be an asset in organizational effectiveness but [is] a drawback in extracting the increasingly valuable resources distributed in the policy arena." 75 Everywhere in Africa individual effort and children remain women's most reliable social insurance and consequently their most pressing concern.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Epistemology First
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Epistemology comes first it founds the basis for cultural decisions and theories. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
THIS BOOK is about the epistemological shift occasioned by the imposition of Western gender categories on Yoruba discourse. Since there is a clear epistemological foundation to cultural knowledge, the first task of the study is to understand the epistemological basis of both Yoruba and Western cultures. This endeavor is best described as archaeological, in that it is concerned with revealing the most basic but hidden assumptions, making explicit what has been merely implicit, and unearthing the taken-forgranted assumptions underlying research concepts and theories. Only when such assumptions are exposed can they be debated and challenged.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Movements Dont Solve

Womens organizations and struggles for rights will not be able to change the governments policies. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
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Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Although women and womens organisations were highly implicated in the struggle for independence, their efforts were usually not rewarded in the shape of more rights for women. When the new states were declared, there was apparently no need for a separate womens agenda, since the ideal state was to bring freedom and improvement for men and women alike. The traditional double gender structures were largely lost because of this.
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**Answers
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Gender is Constructed
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Western gender constructionism entrenches biological determinism. Oyeronke Oyewumi, Associate Professor of Sociology, SUNY Stony Brook, The Invention of Women Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, 1997
Such a dichotomous presentation is unwarranted, however, because the ubiquity of biologically rooted explanations for difference in Western social thought and practices is a reflection of the extent to which biological explanations are found compelling.32 In other words, so long as the issue is difference (whether the issue is why women breast-feed babies or why they could not vote), old biologies will be found or new biologies will be constructed to explain womens disadvantage. The Western preoccupation with biology continues to generate constructions of new biologies even as some of the old biological assumptions are being dislodged. In fact, in the Western experience, social construction and biological determinism have been two sides of the same coin, since both ideas continue to reinforce each other. When social categories like gender are constructed, new biologies of difference can be invented. When biological interpretations are found to be compelling, social categories do derive their legitimacy and power from biology. In short, the social and the biological feed on each other.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Links to K
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They link to their criticism by generalizing African-gendered experience Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, is an independent scholar. Her research interests focus on gender and youth expressive
cultures in the African world, cultural studies and feminist theory and politics. Beyond Determinism: The Phenomenology of African Female Existence Feminist Africa: Issue 2, 2003, http://www.feministafrica.org/fa%202/02-2003/bibi.html The importance that existential phenomenologists attach to the context of the body requires that we must also acknowledge the nebulousness of the idea of "Africa". Whether to treat the continent as a geographical entity or a homogenous cultural reality continues to be a source of debate among African scholars (see, for example, Hountondji, 1976). Africa is a diverse continent, with thousands of cultural traditions and linguistic groupings that dwarf all the different European cultural traditions and languages combined. This plurality makes any generalisations about the configuration(s) of gendered existence on the continent problematic.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Western Fem Solves Public Participation
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The disasters and conflicts that have taken place in Africa greatly impact the lives of women, leading to malnutrition and shorter lives. Western feminism offers women a choice of how to lead their lives, and increase participation in the public sphere. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Over the past decades the population of Central Africa has been confronted with a succession of crises: the failure of male multiparty politics or state nationalism after the independence, coups and military dictatorships, economic instability, the pushing of western-steered development programs and pressure to install democracy, rethinking geographical borders as they were put up during colonial reign, pressure from the technologically advanced West and the development of new states in a global world (economy). Women especially have been paying the price for this. The consequences are clearly visible in the living conditions of African women today. Generally, they have a lower level of education and are primarily active in agricultural or other rural activities. A large number of women suffer from malnutrition, mortality rate of infants and children is very high. Because of these pitiful living conditions for women, the West has lately exerted more pressure to increase womens participation in more areas - this is often done by stating it as a condition for investments or development aid. The effect is twofaced. On the one hand it creates an opportunity for women to be on the decision making side when new states and institutions are being organised and structured
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Coalitions Key
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In order to access their ability to express themselves and develop a counterhegemonic perspective, womyn must form a coalition of collective identity through shared voices and representation Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Narayan's words suggest that the subaltern woman's muteness is rooted not in slavish contentment but in her inability to conceptualize the injustice to which she is subjected. Like all diagnoses, this analysis implies the appropriate remedy: what the subaltern woman needs is a conceptual framework, a language capable of articulating her injuries, needs, and aspirations. The existing discourses or texts of exploitation do not provide such a language: even when they promise explicitly to liberate the subaltern, they obscure the distinctive nature of her oppression; indeed, by purporting to speak for her, they position her as mute. In order to articulate her specific exploitation, the subaltern woman must create her own language. Language is a public construct and its absence is a public, not a private, deficit. Creating a new language is by definition a collective project, not something that can be accomplished by a single individual; if the subaltern woman seeks to enter practical discourse alone, therefore, her experience is likely to remain distorted and repressed. She can overcome her silence only by collaborating with other subaltern women in developing a public language for their shared experiences. She must become part of a group that explicitly recognizes itself as sharing a common condition of oppression--in Marxist terms, a group that constitutes itself as a class for itself as well as in itself. She must claim a collective identity distinct from her identification as the particular daughter, wife, and mother of particular others. Only by creating a collective identity with other women in similar situations, perhaps with other daughters, wives, and mothers, can the subaltern even come to see herself as subaltern and only in this way can she break through the barriers to her speech. Articulating women's distinctive interests requires a language and this, in turn, requires a community. Without either of these, the emergence of counterhegemonic moral perspectives remains impossible.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Turn: K of W.Fem Increased Exclusion
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Criticisms of Western feminism seclude African womyn into communities that further build identities through exclusion Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
The threat of expulsion is the ultimate sanction enforcing conformity in most communities. How far the threat is successful in suppressing dissent depends on how much community members fear exclusion and this fear varies according to the type of community in question, its relationship to the larger society, the needs it satisfies for its members, and the dependence members feel on that community. If the members of a religious community believe that excommunication will result in an eternity of hellfire, they have an extremely powerful incentive to conform; so do members of a professional organization for whom expulsion will result in the loss of their occupational licenses. By contrast, the prospect of expulsion from a neighborhood swimming club is likely to be unpleasant but not especially frightening, because club membership does not represent the only way members can fulfil their needs for exercise and social affiliation. When belonging to a particular community is central to a member's sense of her own identity, the threat of expulsion is likely to loom extraordinarily large. Leaving the community may represent losing connection with the religious, moral, political, or cultural values that have given meaning to her life. It may represent losing her emotional home, her sense of belonging, her colleagues, comrades, friends and lovers. Such fears are especially intense for members of racial/ethnic and oppositional communities, because no comparable alternatives are likely to be available. This is one reason why community loyalty and discipline are often especially strong among ethnic and cultural minorities and on both the right and the left of the political spectrum. Some communities may seek to forestall challenges to their beliefs or values by limiting diversity among those they admit, excluding people thought likely to hold disruptive opinions or values or even people with an unacceptable image. Ethnic or cultural minorities may refuse to admit ''half-bloods'' or people who have been ''Westernized''; lesbian communities may refuse to admit bisexuals; gay groups may exclude drag or leather queens. Conscious policies of exclusion reinforce the tendencies towards cultural homogeneity that exist in all small communities whose members rely on each other for emotional as well as intellectual support (Young 1990, 235). Policing the boundaries of the community serves to maintain the ''purity'' of its beliefs and values by insulating its members from the challenge of alternative thinking (Phelan 1989).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Women are represented now (in Africa)
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Women are more represented in African governments then they are in Eastern governments. Aili Mari Tripp, 2006 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com.. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin] Africa has some of the highest rates of female representation in the world today. Over the past four decades, the average number of women legislators in Africa has jumped from one per cent of all legislators in 1960, to more than 14 per cent in 2004. Rwanda became the country with the largest percentage of women parliamentarians in the world after women claimed almost 49 per cent of the seats in the country's 2003 parliamentary elections. Women held 46 per cent of parliamentary seats in Seychelles between 1991 and 1993. Today, women in South Africa, Mozambique, and Seychelles hold one-third of parliamentary seats; women in Swaziland hold one-third of the seats in the upper house of parliament; in Namibia, women hold 42 per cent of seats in local government; and in Uganda, they hold one-third.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Women Have Status in NGOs
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Women are the group of people that run NGOs in Africa. Aili Mari Tripp, 2006 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com.. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin] The growth of the new continental and sub-regional networks, especially after 2000, followed the rise of the new domestic women's movements. From the mid-1980S onwards, and especially after the early 1990s, women's organizations increased greatly throughout Africa, as did the arenas in which women were able to assert their varied concerns. During the 1990s, as single-party rule was replaced by multi-party systems, autonomous women's mobilization increased. A cadre of better-educated women then emerged with new leadership and organizational skills, further facilitating the growth of the NGOs. Changing donor strategies targeted NGOs and women's NGOs in particular, as states appeared increasingly corrupt and unaccountable. New funding was directed both towards domestic NGOs and towards regional networks.
Women in pressured the AU through their power in NGOs. Aili Mari Tripp, 2006 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com.. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin] Similar dynamics to those found at the sub-regional level in Africa have been at work at the panAfrican level. For example, NGOs and networks have been pressing for changes within the African Union, which in turn has implications for policy and movements to advance women's status at the national level. This signals a significant change from the days of the African Union's predecessor, the Organization for African Unity; the latter castigated feminism as a Western concept and had little interest in promoting women's leadership or women's concerns.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Political activism key to solve
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Political activism is critical to furthering indigenous feminism and warding off Eurocentric patriarchialism. Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf Collins contends that black womens subjectivities defy negative self perceptions, and that this has the potential to change power inequalities. She maintains that black feminism constitutes political activism that resists the oppression of black women by negative, Eurocentric, bourgeois and patriarchal ideologies. Collins maintains that black feminist standpoints share four main criteria.
Being politically active is the main furtherance of womens mobilization. Aili Mari Tripp, 2006 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com.. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin] Women have also been very active, especially since the 1990s, in peace building initiatives throughout Africa: from Liberia, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Mali, Senegal, Somalia and Uganda to Sudan and other countries that have been wracked by civil war or conflict. Female political representation in the peace efforts and post-conflict governance arrangements has been a central theme of women's mobilization.
Not only does political activism empower women, but it casts off Western feminism. Aili Mari Tripp, 2006 ["Transnational feminism: despite Africa's continued woes, great strides are being made in
women's participation in decision-making structures". Catholic New Times. April 9, 2006. FindArticles.com.. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MKY/is_6_30/ai_n16128126; associate dean of international studies and a professor of political science and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin] Women activists often encounter fierce resistance to their efforts to advance women politically, economically and socially. With regional influences are putting pressure on governments to advance women's rights, greater openness to change on the part of governments has been evident. The veil of transnational feminism has been lifted to reveal the local scene, eliminating the dubious, yet all too frequent charge that the advancement of women's rights must be equated with "alien" Western influences. The regional pressures for women's rights described here are emanating from Africa, and are eliciting new and important African responses.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Media Attention turns the K
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The press about obvious dissent movements kills the entire movement. Arlene Elowe MacLeod, 1999 [Reviewed Work(s): Women and Social Protest by Guida West; Rhoda Lois
Blumberg; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts by James C. Scott; Femininity in Dissent by Alison Young; Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism by Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Ann Russo; Lourdes Torres; Signs, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 688-693; The theme of hidden and public transcripts is interesting, for example, with reference to Alison Young's Femininity in Dissent, a case study of the public discourse created around women's protest at the Greenham Common missile site. This focus allows the author to explore the growth of discourse around the protesters by examining newspaper accounts over a period of years, interviewing women in the camp, and talking with reporters and editors. She argues that the discourses that grew up construct women protesters in quite damaging ways. "The media created a mythology around the peace camp which centered on the fact that the protesters were women; the mythology elaborated various aspects of this womanhood into an account of the protesters' deviance" (2).
The general media turns the womens feminism movement. Arlene Elowe MacLeod, 1999 [Reviewed Work(s): Women and Social Protest by Guida West; Rhoda Lois
Blumberg; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts by James C. Scott; Femininity in Dissent by Alison Young; Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism by Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Ann Russo; Lourdes Torres; Signs, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 688-693; In two interesting chapters on the female body in protest, the author finds that women are connected with "the red threat" (suggesting both menstruation and socialism). Over and over, women's political demands are distorted by polemical charges of espionage, treason, and antidemocratic purpose. Alternatively, often in the same breath, women's demands are trivialized as inappropriate, naive, or misguided; here the theme of maternalism and the distortion of appropriate maternal roles (as in "go home and take care of your children if you really care for them") becomes crucial. The prevalence of descriptions of squalor and dirt in the camps figures in this context both as evidence of these women's incapabilities as mothers as well as implicit evidence of a link between woman, the body, nature, and dirt. Lesbianism in the camps provides the final rhetorical nail in the coffin, proof that these women are not the virtuous, moral, and well-motivated mothers some of them "pretend" to be. The underlying message of the discourse centers on women, all women, as hysterical-political demands are trivialized to insane muttering and inappropriate gestures.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 At: Feminist Solidarity Good
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There is no solidarity within the feminist movement, and there fundamentally cannot be any solidarity, due to the different types of oppression different people face. Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf Speaking of the United States in the 1970s, Audre Lorde stated, By and large, within the womens movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretence to homogeneity of experiences covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist (1984: 116). And Zillah Eisenstein reminds us of Hazel Carbys theoretical stance: there is no lost sisterhood to be found; there are definite boundaries to the possibilities of sisterhood (Eisenstein, 1994: 208; Carby, 1987: 6, 19). Carbys statements contain echoes of the calls by Patricia Mohammed, Rawwida Baksh-Sooden and Neesha Haniff for a more differentiated reading of identities within Caribbean feminism (Mohammed, 1998; Baksh-Sooden, 1998; Haniff, 1996). I hold that the more comprehensive and inclusive insights offered by black feminism strengthen all feminist knowledge.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Political action not key
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Political action is not key, rather personal education and acceptance is critical to solve for offenses against feminism. Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf Collins maintains that black feminist standpoints share four main criteria. The first is based on the understanding that shared subordination and concrete experience is the foundation of wisdom and well-being. The second principle is based on a holistic perspective that encompasses dialogue about black womens subjectivity. Thirdly, the ethic of caring for local communities involves personal expressiveness, empathy, unification and sharing of mutual interests. The final criterion of personal accountability refers to black womens responsibility for claiming knowledge, ethics, personal empowerment and societal transformation.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Grassroots mobilization key to solve
273 Gender
Grassroots mobilization of indigenous feminism is the best way to solve for the offense against women. Violet Eudine Barriteau, 2006 [Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006; First published by
the African Gender Institute; University of Cape Town; The relevance of black feminist scholarship: a Caribbean perspective; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf Although I was cognisant of academic interpretations of black feminist thought, I believed that it was important to determine the extent to which these reflected the aims of grassroots mobilisation. Interviewing women who worked in black womens groups, I discovered their varying perceptions of the meanings of the term black. For some, being black was viewed in relation to being of African descent. Others defined blackness politically by considering similar historical struggles against racial subjugation. It became apparent in debates over the relevance of feminism that many black women regarded it as a racist ideology, even though the strategies of their organisations demonstrated feminist principles. Several women maintained that this confusion about the merits of feminism arose because it was viewed as inherently racist. This misconception frequently precluded black women from identifying with feminist ideology even while adopting feminist methods. Despite different opinions about how to categorise these groups by virtue of their racial and gender politics, it was obvious that they were providing vital socioeconomic and political services that the majority of black women would not be able to gain access to elsewhere. These investigations allowed me to connect black feminist theories and action by improving my knowledge of the different interpretations of black identities, feminist politics and the activism of womens organisations.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Western and Indigenous Fem Differ
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There are infinite differences between Western and Non-Western feminism, and Nonwestern feminism seeks to distance itself from the normalizing western feminism. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Often, differences are seen from a class perspective: the dominance of (western) middle class feminism. Non-western feminist have been looking for an authentic activism, without adopting the values of western middle class feminism. Differences in colour, race, and ethnicity are often the inspiration for specific forms of womens activism. The BlackWomen Movement has been very important to the evolution of feminism in the West. Race and ethnicity have also given rise (and still do) to serious conflicts that can prove devastating in womens lives and to womens rights. Lastly, womens activists may take quite varying stances towards sexuality. Women worldwide, in past and present, may take wholly different stands on abortion, genital mutilation, infanticide, womens seclusion, polygamy and homosexuality.
Indigenous feminism is completely different Western feminism in that it views power structures differently and therefore Western feminism cannot be forced onto African women. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Feminism in Central Africa grew from a very different dynamic than in the West. In the first place is has been shaped by the resistance of African women against western rule. Moreover, African women have a different starting point. African womens roles grew from a long tradition of female integration in collective structures. This is completely different from the West, where feminism grew from middle class individualism and the patriarchal structure in a (post)industrial society.2
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Western Fem Different from African Feminism
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African women see oppression differently than Western feminists; thinking as African women do is necessarily to improve their situation Gordon 1996 [April Gordon is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Winthrop University. Transforming
Capitalism and Patriarchy Gender and Development in Africa, pgs. 78-80] Because the dominant feminist perspectives have been shaped largely by white, middle-class, First World women, who see gender inequality and the sexual division of labor as the source of their oppression, Western feminism is seen by some as having limited relevance to Third World women and their struggles. Liberal feminism, with its stress on equal rights and opportunities for women, has been castigated for focusing on gender discrimination while ignoring Third World women's main struggles with their communities and men against racism, poverty, and economic exploitation through imperialism ( A. Russo 1991:308-309; Johnson-Odim1991:315 318). Liberal feminism's emphasis on gender as the cause of women's inequality is seen by critics as part of a political agenda that reflects the interests of women who are already advantageously placed to benefit from new rights and opportunities. As some Third World feminists see it, liberal feminism would result in a few women entering the ranks of privileged (mostly white) males. This would better the lives of some women but basically would only "change the sex of the master" ( Johnson-Odim1991: 319; see also hooks 1993). Some Third World women question the relevance to their own experience of feminism's focus on the conjugal relationship and women's dependency on men as the source of women's oppression. For many Third World women, the conjugal relationship is not the central one, and they are psychologically as well as economically often much less dependent on men than their Western, middle-class counterparts. Third World women also feel that feminism's emphasis on the sexual division of labor creates an artificial competition between men and women that underestimates their common interests in structuring the household to ensure survival ( Goetz 1991: 141 ). The upshot of all of this is that feminist theory and social action to help women improve their lives must take into account not only the diverse forms of patriarchal oppression women face but the other sources of oppression women must contend with both from within their societies and from their society's place within the world system. For this reason there is a need for a diversity of feminisms responding to different women's needs (Johnson-Odim 1991; Cagatay et al. 1986). We must also realize that feminist struggle may not be best served by pitting women's interests against men's. That men sometimes oppress women is certainly true, but in many cases this is a response by men to their own struggles within oppressive social structures; achieving gender equality is impossible without the support of men and without changing these other oppressive structures. For many African women, gender alone does not describe their oppression, nor is gender equality enough to end such oppression. As Pala Okeyo ( 1981) discusses, women need justice not only at the household level but also in the local, national, and world economic orders. Johnson Odim ( 1991:316) adds that feminism for Third World women involves not only women's equal participation in society but a movement for social justice that is "inclusive of their entire communities" and addresses "the racism, economic exploitation, and imperialism against which they continue to struggle." One reason liberal feminism in the West fails to address such oppressions as imperialism, classism, and racism is that this would require feminists to acknowledge that their own privileges are tied to the oppression of poor, nonwhite, and Third World women ( A. Russo 1991:299-307). Indeed, liberal feminism is compatible with liberal capitalism and what some view as the paternalistic, women in development (WID) economic strategy in the Third World, which will be discussed in Chapter 4. Liberal feminism's emphasis on legal reforms and equal rights is not only the most acceptable version of feminism to the First World, it has also gained the most support among Third World feminist politicians, jurists, and academics. It was liberal feminism that inspired the UN Decade for Women, which won support from male-dominated governments all over the world. The reasons for this support are obvious. Liberal feminism's reformism is more politically acceptable because it leaves unchallenged the underlying structural causes of gender inequality and its relationship to other systems of oppression such as the inequitable world economic order and internal systems of social and political inequality (see Stamp 1989; Cagatay et al. 1986; Barrow 1985; Steady 1985).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Causality
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A better economy and less poverty would solve the rights violations and terrible lives that African women face. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] The socio-economic position of African women after the independence has of course been strongly influenced by the unstable economy of the newly emerged states and the political, economic and ecological challenges that they face. The extensive government control of trade prices and wages during the unstable 70s and 80s have led to many protests from merchant women all over Africa. The protest mostly met with a repressive government attitude. After the independence, more and more African women moved to the cities. There are great differences though, between the different areas. The eastern part of Africa sees a very slow urbanisation, whereas in West Africa more and more women seek their fortune in the city. The lack of economic niches for women within said cities, pushes large numbers of women into prostitution. In some countries women have attained positions in the service-sector, but find themselves confronted with a difficult combination of work and care.
Political instability causes the subjugation of women. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] In the 70s and 80s the newly emerged African states were under enormous political and economic pressure from the west. Although the situation of African women deteriorated quickly in these years, there was hardly any fundamental criticism from within. African women and womens movements opted for nationalism over feminism. The ensuing political crises led to more and more gender inequality. During the late 80s African women understood that they were paying the highest prize for the political and economic instability. The rising poverty, malnutrition, child and infant death created a new feminist conscienceness in African women. They became more and more aware of their position as women. Everywhere in Central Africa, women feel the need to unite and develop a gender approach in dealing with certain problems.
Womens political subjugation solves itself because women realize their position and work to fix it. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] The rising poverty, malnutrition, child and infant death created a new feminist conscienceness in African women. They became more and more aware of their position as women. Everywhere in Central Africa, women feel the need to unite and develop a gender approach in dealing with certain problems. In the aftermath of the UN decade of women, many Women In Development (WID)organisations were founded in the late 80s, with both national and regional divisions. These careful attempts at womens organisations met with a lot of resistance by the national states. It was not exceptional for leaders of WID to be harassed. Another tactic was to place the wives of government leaders at the head of WIDs, thus ensuring their parallel path with government policy...As the situation of African women grew more dramatic in the 90s (e.g. the spreading of the HIV-virus), African womens organisations became convinced that a separate womens agenda is an absolute necessity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Turn Essentialism of African Womyn
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(_) Most western feminist writers assume all African women face the same exact problems and can fix those problems with a simple solution; those solutions would make more problems if African women wrent involved Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College,
New York, and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati, Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30. (Autumn, 1988), JSTOR] For instance, Perdita Huston states that the purpose of her study is to describe the effect of the development process on the 'family unit and its individual members' in Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Mexico. She states that the 'problems' and 'needs' expressed by rural and urban women in these countries all centre around education and training, work and wages, access to health and other services, political participation and legal rights. Huston relates all these 'needs' to the lack of sensitive development policies which exclude women as a group. For her, the solution is simple: improved development policies which emphasize training for women field-workers, use women trainees and women rural development officers, encourage women's cooperatives, etc. Here, again women are assumed to be a coherent group or category prior to their entry into 'the development process'. Huston assumes that all third-world women have similar problems and needs. Thus, they must have similar interests and goals. However, the interests of urban, middle-class, educated Egyptian housewives, to take only one instance, could surely not be seen as being the same as those of their uneducated, poor maids. Development policies do not affect both groups of women in the same way. Practices which characterize women's status and roles vary according to class. Women are constituted as women through the complex interaction between class, culture, religion and other ideological institutions and frameworks. They are not `women' a coherent group solely on the basis of a particular economic system or policy. Such reductive cross-cultural comparisons result in the colonization of the specifics of daily existence and the complexities of political interests which women of different social classes and cultures represent and mobilize. Thus it is revealing that for Perdita Huston women in the third-world countries she writes about have 'needs' and 'problems', but few if any have 'choices' or the freedom to act. This is an interesting representation of women in the third world, one which is significant in suggesting a latent self-presentation of western women which bears looking at. She writes, 'What surprised and moved me most as I listened to women in such very different cultural settings was the striking commonality whether they were educated or illiterate, urban or rural of their most basic values: the importance they assign to family, dignity, and service to others' (Huston, 1979: 115). Would Huston consider such values unusual for women in the west?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Turn Essentialism of African Womyn
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(_) Grouping women doesnt solve; including African women to explain cultural hierarchies and classes is the only way to solve Mohanty 1988 [Chandra Talpade Mohanty is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College,
New York, and Core Faculty at the Union Institute Graduate School, Cincinnati. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Feminist Review, No. 30. (Autumn, 1988), JSTOR] What is problematical, then, about this kind of use of 'women' as a group, as a stable category of analysis, is that it assumes an ahistorical, universal unity among women based on a generalized notion of their subordination. Instead of analytically demonstrating the production of women as socio-economic political groups within particular local contexts, this analytical move and the presuppositions it is based on limits the definition of the female subject to gender identity, completely bypassing social class and ethnic identities. What characterizes women as a group is their gender (sociologically not necessarily biologically defined) over and above everything else, indicating a monolithic notion of sexual difference. Because women are thus constituted as a coherent group, sexual difference becomes coterminus with female subordination, and power is automatically defined in binary terms: people who have it (read: men), and people who do not (read: women). Men exploit, women are exploited. Such simplistic formulations are both historically reductive; they are also ineffectual in designing strategies to combat oppressions. All they do is reinforce binary divisions between men and women. What would an analysis which did not do this look like? Maria Mies's work is one such example. It is an example which illustrates the strength of western feminist work on women in the third world and which, does not fall into the traps discussed above. Maria Mies's study of the lace-makers of Narsapur, India (1982), attempts to analyse carefully a substantial household industry in which 'housewives' produce lace doilies for consumption in the world market. Through a detailed analysis of the structure of the lace industry, production and reproduction relations, the sexual division of labour, profits and exploitation, and the overall consequences of defining women as `non-working housewives' and their work as leisure-time activity', Mies demonstrates the levels of exploitation in this industry and the impact of this production system on the work and living conditions of the women involved in it. In addition, she is able to analyse the 'ideology of the housewife', the notion of a woman sitting in the house, as providing the necessary subjective and sociocultural element for the creation and maintenance of a production system that contributes to the increasing pauperization of women, and keeps them totally atomized and disorganized as workers. Mies's analyses show the effect of a certain historically and culturally specific mode of patriarchal organization, an organization constructed on the basis of the definition of the lace-makers as 'non-working housewives' at familial, local, regional, statewide and international levels. The intricacies and the effects of particular power networks are not only emphasized; they also form the basis of Mies's analysis of how this particular group of women is situated at the centre of a hegemonic, exploitative world market.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 ALT: Re-examine Social Hierarchies
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(_) Examining social hierarchies encourages social change in gender relations- leading to change in other relations as well Ghorayshi and Belanger 1996 [Parvin Ghorayshi is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
Winnipeg, Canada. Claire Belanger is Programme Officer for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. Women, Work, and Gender Relations in Developing Countries A Global Perspective pgs. 10-11, Questia] As presented and interpreted by these authors, the notion of hierarchy encourages us to focus on connections and relationships more than on the constituent elements of these relations. The notion of hierarchy invites us to move beyond static and unsophisticated approaches that simplistically oppose men and women, adults and children, and even social classes in a model of inequality based on exclusion. The notion of hierarchy allows for the possibility of apprehending situations in which the relationship between the terms is neither entirely antagonistic nor entirely complementary. It is true that the system in which we live tends to lead us to perceive events and social relations in a binary and contradictory manner and, in reality, that may often be the case. As Mary Douglas affirms: Individualistic thinking, like the political experience of hierarchy, is structured by analogy to the production and distribution process.... Women are at a disadvantage in such a system not only because they are likely to be treated as commodities ... but because they have no other way of thinking of themselves as women than in terms of commodities, of producers or purchasers in a system of marketing and trade. ( Douglas 1992: 53) Thus, without the possibility of thinking of the system differently from what it is in reality, any perspective of social change would be impossible. Eventually, reconsidering our environment according to a hierarchical system could favor "distinguishing differentiated categories of people and the awareness of their singularity" ( Douglas 1992: 44). The notion of hierarchy encourages us to consider social changes in a dynamic, nonlinear manner. The authors reviewed in this research conceive of social change as a modification of social relations. Although their focus is on gender relations, it does not exclude the possibility of simultaneously studying other relations. Daune-Richard and Devreux point out the importance of "combining, for analytical purposes, social class relations and gender relations, to which social relations between generations should undoubtedly be added" ( Daune-Richard and Devreux 1985: 51). This is precisely the path I set out upon: taking into account a multiplicity of social relations that consider, in a non-deterministic fashion, that gender and generational relations cross the whole range of "social arenas."
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Differences Key
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(_) In international work, recognizing the differences between cultures is key to developing a society Chowdhry and Nair 2002 [Geeta Chowdhry is a Professor of Political Science and Director of Ethnic Studies
at Northern Arizona University. Sheila Nair is the chief operating officer of Roots. Power, postcolonialism and international relations: Reading race, gender and class, p.143 - 44 Questia] Differences across race, ethnicity, and nationality are crucial elements in sex and domestic work. These axes of power act as organizing principles that determine who will do what, when, and for whom in the desire economies. According to Fanon (1965), the national bourgeoisie in Third World contexts organizes sites of relaxation and pleasure to service the desires of an emerging transnational cosmopolitan class that includes both Western and Third World consumers. This desire economy is sexualized, racialized, and commodified. For example, those who offer the services are mostly foreign by culture, language, and race to the customer within the peripheries. Both the otherness and the affordability of sex and domestic work are sources of desire for clients. Moreover, the sexual labor and use of women's bodies for consumption in Third World sites cannot be viewed in isolation from the global political economy's generation of profits. Desire economies generate profits for some agents of the peripheries and much more for Western elites of the global economy. According to Kempadoo, local and national economies, [and national industries, with help from their states' legislative and regulatory bodies] sustain global corporate capital, First World identities, and masculine hegemony (1999:18). Even when female labor migration is acknowledged as crucial in the restructuring of the world economy, the discourses surrounding the migration of sex and domestic workers within peripheral sites do little more than sensationalize the phenomenon. US activists, Congressional leaders, and some scholars are speaking up, calling for a ban on sex trafficking, but most of these discourses end up arguing that the economic and political conditions of postcolonial countries push women into brothels and sex trafficking rather than explaining this phenomenon transnationally. Thus, these discourses once more constitute Third World peripheries as spectacle, a product of the First World's gratuitous othering and its consumption of the exotic, primitive, and degenerate.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Women Key to Development
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(_) Understanding womens roles is key to fully developing Africa James 1999 [Valentine Udoh James is the Director of the African Studies Program and Associate Professor of
Social Science at Kalamazoo College. The Feminization of Development Processes in Africa Current and Future Perspectives. P.3 Questia] The introduction of gender issues into the discussion of development in the emerging nations of the world is a highly contested issue but needs consideration if the developing world is to maximize the amount of talents and knowledge necessary to combat poverty and to play an important role in global affairs. Gender consideration is paramount in the discussion of development because it is necessary to understand the opportunities that are available to developing countries when women's roles are fully incorporated into the development processes of these countries. The introduction of gender considerations into development planning in developing countries requires careful examination of the institutional arrangements: government policies, educational systems, cultural and religious norms, and the economic, political, social, and judicial systems. These variables play key roles in the development processes of developing countries. It is common knowledge that patriarchal societies in the developing countries have had their development pace determined by men. The economic fate of these societies has remained largely in the hands of a few powerful elite (men).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 African Women Key
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(_) African women key to change James 1999 [Valentine Udoh James is the Director of the African Studies Program and Associate Professor of
Social Science at Kalamazoo College. The Feminization of Development Processes in Africa Current and Future Perspectives, p. 5 6, Questia] It was stated in an earlier section of this chapter that Western thought has guided the colonial and postcolonial eras of development in emerging nations of the world. Philomena Okeke ( 1996: 223) offers a cogent and compelling discussion of the implication of post-modern feminism on the study of African women. She argues that disparate interpretations and common themes can be found on the subject and suggests that "post-modern feminism has also waded into the arena of development theory and practices. Recent debates in the field have centered around the prospects for a dialogue that places the Women in Development (WID) framework at the center, not merely to be informed by but also to inform the larger body of feminist scholarship. The flow of development expertise, critics argue, has tended to ignore (at enormous costs) the indigenous female knowledge bases" (225). In generating knowledge about African women, indigenous perspectives are very limited, and, as such, the plethora of literature on African women is largely produced by Western women. The colonial legacy of Africa bears some of the blame for this phenomenon. Okeke ( 1996: 227) makes this point when she notes: "The colonial advantage has long been justified by white women's dominant presence in the study of African women." Much internationally funded collaborative research on the study of African women does not have indigenous African women scholars as the primary investigators. International development agencies are ifluencing development in developing countries at a very rapid pace. In these international agencies indigenous women's perspectives are very much needed. Existing arrangements for research on African women's progress and the institutions in foreign and domestic countries need to be reexamined for "recalibration" so as to make the institutions more inclusive of African women's perspectives.
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**Alternative Doesnt Solve
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Plan key / Alt doesnt solve
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Plan key to solve postcolonialism is the academic elite and ignores material conditions of oppression. Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] One of the major dilemmas for postcolonialism is the charge that it has become institutionalized, representing the interests of a western-based intellectual lite who speak the language of the contemporary western academy, perpetuating the exclusion of the colonized and oppressed (Ahmad, 1992; McClintock, 1992; Watts, 1995; Loomba, 1998). Moreover, critics suggest that greater theoretical sophistication has created greater obfuscation; postcolonialism is too theoretical and not sufficiently rooted in material concerns (Ahmad, 1992; Dirlik, 1994). Emphasis on discourse detracts from an assessment of material ways in which colonial power relations persist. As Dirlik (1994: 353) argues, [It] is remarkable ... that a consideration of the relationship between postcolonialism and global capitalism should be absent from the writings of postcolonial intellectuals. Debates about postcolonialism and globalization have largely proceeded in relative isolation from one another, and to their mutual cost (Hall, 1996: 257). Economic relations and their effects elude representation in much of postcolonial studies (Eagleton, 1994).
Plan key to solve - they dont address power imbalances Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] Some critics berate postcolonial theory for ignoring urgent life-or-death questions (San Juan, 1998). To have greater immediacy in critical development studies, postcolonial approaches might consider questions of inequality of power over and control of resources, human rights, global exploitation of labour, child prostitution and genocide. With some exceptions (for example, the writings on postdevelopment by such authors as Esteva (1987) and Escobar (1992, 1995b)), postcolonialism cannot easily be translated into action on the ground and its oppositional stance has not had much impact on the power imbalances between North and South. It also tends to be preoccupied with the past and has failed to say much about postcolonial futures. (Spivaks (1999) attempt to describe a responsible role for the postcolonial critic in her critique of transnational globalization is one exception.) Meanwhile, ethnocentric representations continue to disadvantage the South, and are evident in sources ranging from popular media to World Bank reports.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Doesnt Solve - Indigenous Fem

Indigenous feminism cannot solve for double gender roles. Mieke Maerten, Jul 2004 [African feminism; http://www.rosadoc.be/site/maineng/pdf/34.pdf; Nr. 34;
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Documentation Centre and Archives on Feminism, Equal Opportunities and Women's Studies] Many (though not all) African cultures have a certain tradition of double gender organisation: women were able to participate as members of a ritual or professional organisation, a peer group or a genderspecific organisation. Men dominated most spheres of society, but the double gender and community organisation created a faade of equality by letting women participate politically. Women were political actors speaking on behalf of a group and not in their own name. This made them usually unwilling to go against interests of family or group, when faced with political decisions.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Doesnt Solve African Womanism
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African Womanism operates under a confused combination of feminism and womanism, causing identity problems with its followers and failing to mobilize womyn in an integrated approach Pascal Newbourne Mwale, University of Malawi, Malawi Where is the Foundation of African Gender? The Case of Malawi Nordic Journal of African Studies 11(1): p. 114-137 2002 http://www.njas.helsinki.fi/pdffiles/vol11num1/mwale.pdf In other words, what is so African about African womanism? The second problem is the identity crisis in the African womanist since the modern African woman is not seen as an authentic African woman by her fellow Africans whereas her western counterpart, the western feminist, is considered an authentic westerner all right by her fellow westerners. She is a hybrid of both modernity and tradition; the African womanist is regarded as a philistine or as a Westernised woman tinctured with traditionalism.8 The third problem is the lack of clear demarcation between African feminism and African womanism; the latter shares two important features with the former, namely, autonomy and self-determination. In wanting to be warm to and inclusive of men while seeking her autonomy and self-determination, the African womanist wants to have and not have men at the same time. The fourth problem is two-pronged but ideological in form; (a) it is an emancipatory programme of African women and at the same time a tool of liberation of all Africans from all forms of oppression, including, but not limited to, racism, sexism, and capitalism. Now, its anti-capitalist stance gives the second prong: (b) African womanism is Marxist because it seeks equitable or egalitarian modes of economic production. Chidammodzi opines that womanism may have to review this Marxist orientation in line with African family relations of production historically and economically (Chidammodzi 1994/5: 50). To show that African womanism is mistaken in imposing a Marxist interpretation upon Africa, Chidammodzi shows it over-generalises the prevalence of partriachalism in Africa. To him, matriachalism is strong in many African societies (Ibid., op.cit.). The African womanist ought to be critical of foreign models. Below, in Section 3.1, we illustrate the strength of matriachalism in Africa by using the cases of Chewa and Tonga tribes of Malawi. In sum, on the continental plane, confusion abounds as to the conceptual frameworks of feminism and womanism. Let alone the distinction between African womanism and African gender. One wonders whether women who distance themselves from the controversial and revolutionary or antagonistic extremities, including emotional outbursts, of African feminism automatically subscribe to African womanism. At the local level, in Malawi, African womanism seems to exist in print only. Therefore, it seems that African feminism masquerades in literature as African womanism, and only a handful of westernised or elite women really know its message, and hence the problem of using it to mobilise women anywhere in Africa. And so, we are still left with the pair feminism and gender in Africa. Chidammodzis paper only sets the ball rolling, as it were, by pointing to the potential theoretical space for confusion between feminism and womanism, and his paper strongly suggests the latter as more promising for Africa. But, his otherwise enlightening paper did not, and may not have been intended to, expose and critique local (Malawians) attempts at conceptualising the same problem of conceptual analysis.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Doesnt solve Analysis of Colonial Discourse
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Analysis of colonial discourse doesnt solve Africans dislike northern hegemony over their discourse Parpart, Departments of History, International Development Studies and Women's Studies, Dalhousie University, 95 [IS AFRICA A POSTMODERN INVENTION? Jane L., A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 23, No. 1, African
Studies. (Winter - Spring), pp. 16-18., jstor] Does this approach to the world have anything to offer those who study Africa? In a very interesting critique, Megan Vaughan argues that colonial/neocolonial discourse analysis, with the exception of a few literary scholars such as Valentine Mudimbe or Anthony Appiah, has aroused little interest among Africanists in or outside the continent.13 Although young scholars in South Africa are increasingly drawn to this perspective,14 the explicit use of colonial/neocolonial discourse analysis is indeed limited in Africa. This is no doubt partly due to the desperate plight of many universities on the continent and their continued dependence on Western institutions. It is, after all, not politic to bite the hand that feeds you. More to the point, however, Northern hegemony over scholarly as well as development discourse and practice is well understood and heartily disliked by many Africans.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alt Doesnt Solve - Motherhood Alt.
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Maternalism is oppressive and reverses any liberating offense. Arlene Elowe MacLeod, 1999 [Reviewed Work(s): Women and Social Protest by Guida West; Rhoda Lois
Blumberg; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts by James C. Scott; Femininity in Dissent by Alison Young; Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism by Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Ann Russo; Lourdes Torres; Signs, Vol. 18, No. 3. (Spring, 1993), pp. 688-693) While the initial essay cites a number of key themes, including the rise of consciousness, mobilization strategies, gender differences within movements, and the consequences of protest, these themes are illustrated but not always deeply discussed within the articles themselves. One intriguing exception is the theme of maternalism as a motivation and even justification for protest. West and Blumberg point out that no equivalent idea of "paternalism" seems to be a strong motivator for men's protests, and they wonder if this forms a unique aspect of women's resistances. In an intriguing article, "Mothers on the March," Carolyn Strange considers the "powers and pitfalls of maternalistic protest" with connection to the Canadian peace movement, cautioning that maternalism can serve re-pressive as well as liberating causes. The collection also includes essays on women in non-Western societies (including an interesting article on women's dance by Judith Lynne Hanna) as well as articles on black women, lower-class struggles, and lesbian protests, creating a useful compilation of pieces on women, protest, and politics.
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**Perm Solvency
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Perm solvency
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Perm solves doing both engages in a process of mutual construction. Our speech is not unilateral, but open to transformation. Dr. Cheryl McEwan, former chair of the Historical Geography Research Group, Senior lecturer in department of geography at Durham U, 01 [Postcolonialism, feminism and development: intersections and dilemmas, Progress
in Development Studies 1,2 pp93-111, ebsco] For example, Robinson (1994) attempts to displace the privileged fixed position of the researcher, to deconstruct the dualism between self-researcher and other-researched, and instead to find a third space where mediations of meanings and interactions of interpretations become the object of investigation. Crucial to this is a recognition that the subjectivities of both researcher and researched are mutually constructed through the research process, and that meanings and interactions are also mediated, as is knowledge itself. Transforming the research process in this way involves recognizing that the researcher does not have unilateral control over the research process and the need to speak with rather than to or for the people with whom one is engaged in research. As Spivak (1990) argues, speaking with people from other places and cultures involves openness to their influence and the possibility of them speaking back. It also links to broader notions of breaking with Eurocentric concepts of development and finding other ways of knowing and being.
Cooperation between Western and African feminists is essential due to economic and social ties Susan Arndt, former Research Fellow at St. Antony's College in Oxford, Humboldt-University at Berlin and the
Center for Literary Research (Berlin), she taught at the University of Frankfurt/Main. African Gender Trouble and African Womanism: An Interview with Chikwenye Ogunyemi and Wanjira Muthoni Signs, Vol. 25, No. 3. (Spring, 2000), pp. 709-726
SA: I wonder what the relationship between your projects and Western feminism is or could be like? Is it necessary to cooperate? Is it possible to cooperate? Are there some ways in which Western feminism and African womanism could go together, or should this kind of cooperation rather be postponed? CO: Isn't this conversation a cooperation of sorts? To shift a little, yesterday I was listening to a lecture delivered by a white Western feminist.~ Concludng from this, I would argue that the difference, technologically, between the Western world and the African world is so vast that your concerns are not necessarily our concerns. For example, the scholar was talking about cyborgs; she was talking about technology. In the discussion, she raised questions in the medical sphere about transplants and about who has the power to declare a body dead and so on. We have not yet got to that stage at all. When you become involved in that type of conversation,
then the African world, which has not yet battled malaria effectively, gets left out totally. We have to remind you that we are still down there and still have our practical problems that have not been solved. And so, yes, there are many things you can do. We need cooperation, because the two worlds are still tied to each other. Economically, we are tied to each other. There is still a lot of migration and immigration, and if things are terrible in Africa, more and more people migrate to the Western world.
So it is also in your interest -particularly if you are overwhelmed by the immigration -to help in some way, because, as I said, economically we are tied to the Western world. We provide raw material and so forth. We need Western help to make not
a fair distribution of wealth but a fair economic arrangement for us to have enough to live on, so that we do not need to migrate to the West. I think this is very crucial, and feminists, I think, can play a very important part in that project.
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The West and Third World must combine to participate in evaluating internal practices of each others cultures and eliminate biases Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Despite the difficulties and dangers of cross-cultural moral discourse, it is not impossible for outsiders to participate in evaluating the internal practices of another culture. Advocates of women's strategic gender interests in both the West and the Third World therefore should not regard questions and criticisms of our own cultural practices by our foreign counterparts as inevitably presumptuous or unwarranted but should view them rather as moral resources. For feminism to become global does not mean that Western feminists should think of themselves as missionaries carrying civilization to primitive and barbarous lands, but neither does it mean that people concerned about the subordination of women in their own culture may dismiss the plight of women in others. At least on the level of morality, global feminism means that feminists in each culture must re-examine our own commitments in light of the perspectives produced by feminists in others, so that we may recognize some of the limits and biases of our own beliefs and assumptions. Of course, the moral evaluations of any cultural practice must always be ''immersed'' rather than ''detached,'' taking account of ''the practices, the perceptions, even the emotions, of the culture'' (Nussbaum and Sen 1989, 308). Elsewhere, I suggest that a feminist conception of discourse, with its emphasis on listening, personal friendship, and responsiveness to emotion, and its concern to address power inequalities, is especially well suited to facilitate such an immersed evaluation.
Recognition of disagreement is not a reason to avoid collaboration dissent is key Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Recognizing the possibility, indeed the inevitability, of disagreement within as well as among moral communities complicates our hitherto simple model of insiders and outsiders. For instance, if we were to determine that issues that appeared to concern only a single group might be assessed solely by members of that group, so that only prostitutes could evaluate prostitution and only African women could discuss clitoridectomy and infibulation, we would immediately encounter new problems of identity, authorization, and legitimation. Who is entitled to speak for a group as a whole and whence derives her authority?8 Can exprostitutes speak for prostitutes who are currently working? Can an African woman who has received a Western education fairly represent other African women? There is no reason to suppose that African women, or prostitutes, or lesbians, or African American women all think alike, and dissenters in these groups may be silenced by women who claim to speak for the whole. It is interesting to notice how the urban Aboriginal women who participated in the Bell controversy delegitimated the voice of Topsy Naparrula Nelson by labeling her ''traditional,'' even though it could well be argued that Nelson was better qualified than her Western-educated challengers to speak for other Aboriginal women precisely by virtue of her traditional identity. Some Aboriginal women who had no opportunity to participate in the published debate might have agreed with Nelson in welcoming the intervention of an outsider whose professional credentials enabled her to be heard while their own voices were ignored.
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Inclusion of outside approaches to evaluating cultural practices is most effective at determining the implications of cultural practices relative to gender Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Even though there may be reasonable grounds for excluding members of dominant groups from specific occasions of discourse, outsiders' concerns about the situation of women in specific cultures are not necessarily illegitimate. When cultural relativism is espoused by the relatively powerless and impoverished, it may be a means of expressing resistance to cultural imperialism; when it is advocated by the wealthier and more powerful, however, cultural relativism is just as likely to express imperial arrogance as an ethnocentric insistence on the absolute superiority of the norms of the wealthier culture. For instance, it is certainly presumptuous for Western feminists to assume that they are already aware of the most important problems faced by women outside the West, or that they are experts on how those problems should be solved, but it does not manifest genuine cultural respect to assume without question that Nonwestern women are content with lives that Western women would find constraining, exhausting, or degrading. Conversely, it is equally legitimate for Nonwestern women to raise questions about the moral permissibility of practices widely accepted by Western feminists, practices that might include sex work or the integration of women into the military. Global feminism requires concern for women in other communities and nations and raising questions about the moral justifiability of foreign practices is very different from peremptorily condemning those practices, let alone intervening unilaterally to change them. In an interesting discussion of the relative advantages and disadvantages of insiders and outsiders who engage in social criticism, David Crocker argues that insiders are not exclusively privileged in morally evaluating their own cultures. Insiders enjoy the advantages of understanding the cultural meaning of their own society's practices, of being able to express their evaluations in language accessible to their community, and of possessing undisputed standing for engaging in social criticism; but they also suffer characteristic disadvantages, such as possible ignorance of alternative ways of seeing and doing things and susceptibility to social pressures that may inhibit their freedom to express their criticisms. Outsiders suffer the disadvantages of unfamiliarity with cultural meanings, the perception that they are not entitled to intervene discursively in the affairs of another culture, and the possibility of ethnocentric arrogance or its inverse, romanticization of the culture in question. But they also enjoy the advantages of external perspectives, which may reveal things hidden from insiders, familiarity with novel moral ideas, and relative social freedom to say what needs to be said (Crocker 1991).
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Nonwestern and western groups share the common goal for womyns gender interests differences between these groups are not so significant that they cannot collaborate in order to solve for gender equality Alison M. Jaggar, Professor of Philosophy and Women Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder Globalizing Feminist Ethics Hypatia vol. 13 no. 2 Spring 1998 http://www.iupjournals.org/hypatia/hyp13-2.html
Whether or not they call themselves feminist, innumerable groups outside the West are currently working to promote what Maxine Molyneux calls women's ''gender interests.'' Molyneux defines gender interests as ''those that women (or men for that matter) may develop by virtue of their social positioning through gender attributes'' (Molyneux 1985, 232). She distinguishes practical from strategic gender interests. Women's practical gender interests emerge directly from their concrete life situations and include such immediately perceived necessities as food, shelter, water, income, medical care, and transportation. Molyneux notes that demands for these ''do not generally... challenge the prevailing forms of subordination even though they arise directly out of them'' (1985, 232-3). Indeed, addressing women's practical gender interests may even reinforce the sexual division of labor by reinforcing the assumption that it is women's responsibility to provide for their families. By contrast, women's strategic gender interests are defined as necessary to overcoming women's subordination. According to Molyneux, they may include all or some of the following, depending on the social context: the abolition of the sexual division of labor; the alleviation of the burden of domestic labor and childcare; the removal of institutionalized forms of discrimination such as rights to own land or property, or access to credit; the establishment of political equality; freedom of choice over childbearing; and the adoption of adequate measures against male violence and control over women. (Molyneux 1985, 233) It is groups working to promote women's strategic gender interests that are most likely to share the basic commitments held by many Western feminists.6 Because of their potentially challenging nature, local grassroots groups dedicated to addressing women's strategic gender needs in the Third World are largely unsupported either by national governments or bilateral aid agencies (Moser 1991, 109-10). They may be seen as communities of resistance comparable in many ways to Western feminist communities. Like some Western feminist groups, which may open women's health centers or run automobile or home maintenance workshops, many Nonwestern groups find that they can develop the skills and motivation necessary for addressing women's strategic gender interests by working immediately on women's practical gender interests. One example is the Forum Against Oppression of Women which, in 1979, began campaigning in Bombay to draw attention to issues such as rape and bride burning but soon shifted its focus to housing, which was an especially acute problem for women deserted or abused by their husbands in a culture where women by tradition had no access to housing in their own right. Organizing around homelessness raised awareness of the male bias in inheritance legislation, as well as in the interpretation of housing rights, and ultimately ensured that women's strategic gender needs related to housing rights were placed on the mainstream political agenda (Moser 1991, 109). Even if we grant a significant base of similar commitments between Western feminists and Nonwestern women committed to advancing women's strategic gender interests, many obstacles exist to dialogue that is genuinely egalitarian, open, and inclusive.7 Still, these are not insuperable obstacles to the possibility of global feminist discourse.
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The perm solves-we need to mix the notion of western and eastern feminism in order to actually achieve equality. B Mbire-Barungi, 1999 [Womens Studies International Forum, Vol.22,No.4,pp.435-439,1999: Elsevier
Science Ltd. USA; UGANDAN FEMINISM: POLITICAL RHETORIC OR REALITY?; Economics Department, Makerere University; http://www.wougnet.org/Documents/UgandanFeminism.rtf] The urgent need for the advancement of gender equality is indeed a global truism, but one beset by global contradictions that arise from the huge diversity of women. The polarisation between women from the North is increasingly evident on the international stage. The bond that is necessary for a coalition to evolve within international feminism cannot be created from a romanticised sisterhood that assumes the common oppression of all women. Rather, it can only occur after womens diverse historical, cultural, economic, social, and national priorities and interests have been recognised, and the various barriers to this goal have been identified in the global arena (see, e.g., Bahl, 1997, p.11; hooks,1998, pp. 43-65; Mani, 1992).
The perm solves-by using the indigenous beliefs about feminism, we are able to correct the notions of western feminism, which does not need to be rejected. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought I have introduced Oyrnk Oyewm and Ifi Amadiume as brave and determined feminist scholars who have had the courage to go against established power structures and current fashions in feminist thought. Nevertheless I find them too timid, in one particular aspect: They tend to limit the scope of their analysis to Africa, which in one way is fineconcrete, rooted studies with concepts which are sensitive to empirical particularities are always a good thing. In another way, however, this approach tends to consolidate a difference between Africa and the Westa dichotomization which I find unproductive and also unjustified. Both Amadiume and Oyewm make explicit distinctions between African and Western realities, talking about motherhood in the African context being such and such, and thus needing different concepts, as compared to analysis of Western realities, where motherhood and femininity are different. I agree that the realities are different (or especially that they were different both researchers draw their conceptual inspiration from things as they were before the impacts of colonialism, Christianity, and continued contact with the West). To me the point about empirical differences between Africa and Europe is not, however, that concepts developed for Africa are useful in Africa only, but rather that the African difference is a source of inspiration for developing concepts which make it possible to think differently about gender in Western contexts as well.
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Perm solves accepting all theories is key to change. Parpart, Departments of History, International Development Studies and Women's Studies, Dalhousie University, 95 [IS AFRICA A POSTMODERN INVENTION? Jane L., A Journal of Opinion, Vol. 23, No. 1, African
Studies. (Winter - Spring), pp. 16-18., jstor] Above all, the search to understand the complex, multileveled realities of Africa (and other parts of the world) is not served by a refusal to consider theory, whether because it is seen as foreign or difficult or even irrelevant. Shifts in theory reflect changes in thinking about the world. They cannot be tossed out simply because they conflict with longheld world views. Postmodern theorizing is not, as Aijaz Ahmad would have us think, the indulgence of spoiled Western elites.20 It reflects the fundamental restructuring of the world political economy, and the emergence of a world where new voices, backed by new wealth, are challenging Western hegemony and the universal pretensions of Western theory.*l Africa is part of these changes, and those who study about and seek to explain Africa cannot place the continent outside the questions of the postmodem era in which we all live. Postmodernism has not invented Africa, but it has much to say about those who claim to know the continent.
We need to erase the racial lines in within our feminism movements for them to actually succeed, and in order to do that, we need to embrace all types of feminism, including Western and indigenous feminism. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought Regarding this model of female emancipation, socialism and liberalism by and large agree, as do large parts of the womens movement that the notion that the female body is a handicap as persistent and pervasive as the idea of woman as the other. This idea is based of course on the assumption that the model body is male. But what if it isnt? I assert, as do others with me, that it is time for feminist thought to overcome the phallocentric as well as the ethnocentric biases in this line of thinking.
The perm solves-we can take the mistakes of the past to reconceptualise our notion of womanhood and feminism for the better. Signe Arnfred, 2002 [Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2002); degree in Cultural
Sociology from the University of Copenhagen, Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. http://www.jendajournal.com/vol2.1/arnfred.html; Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: "Woman = The Second Sex?" Issues of African feminist thought Grosz, too deals with gender relations. Inspiration for imagining different gender relations may be found in the past, she says: The past a past no longer understood as inert or given may help engender a productive future, a future beyond patriarchy. [...] Feminist history [...] enables other virtual futures to be conceived, other perspectives to be developed, than those that currently prevail (Grosz 2000: 101819, emphasis added). Such inspiration may be found in the past or in Africa, or elsewhere. It all depends on ways of seeing which again, of course, depend on relations of power. Nevertheless it is possible and necessary to develop alternative lines of thinking. Grosz again: I am interested in clearing a conceptual space such that an indeterminable future is open to women [...] A future yet to be made is the very lifeblood of political struggle, the goal of feminist challenge (Grosz 2000: 1017, emphasis added). I am also interested in clearing a conceptual space so that other futures become possible. A future yet to be made is the very lifeblood of political struggle. The point of the following critical discussion regarding woman = the second sex is to open the imagination for different and more livable feminist futures than the ones now on offer, which are embedded in the notions of modernity and development.
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Western feminism is not imperialist-it actually facilitates dialogue about feminism, and thus the best of both worlds can be reached by the perm. B Mbire-Barungi, 1999 [Womens Studies International Forum, Vol.22,No.4,pp.435-439,1999: Elsevier
Science Ltd. USA; ugandan feminism: political rhetoric or reality?; Economics Department, Makerere University; http://www.wougnet.org/Documents/UgandanFeminism.rtf] Lessons can be learnt from western feminist movements as to how women have been able to uplift their status beyond tokenism (as is the case in many African countries) in the more developed countries. The more crucial role of international feminism is to influence public policy at the global level. Western feminism in particular cannot simply be brushed aside as imperialist. It must be commended for its significant role in propping up the stage for a global sisterhood dialogue. Women can no longer be dismissed as inferior, and governments today are accountable at global levels (Taylor, 1995). The challenge that remains is how to bridge the gap between women of the south and women of the equity and empowerment.
The mix of indigenous and western feminism is the best option because it allows women to expand their horizons, giving them more grounds to fight oppression. Patricia Mohammed, 2006 [A triangular trade in gender and visuality: the making of a cross-cultural imagebase; holds the post of Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the Centre for Gender and Development Studies, University of the West Indies; http://www.feministafrica.org/Feminist_Africa_7.pdf; Feminist Africa 7: Diaspora Voices; Issue 7: December 2006] One of the immediate goals of the database project as conceived between the two researchers was to introduce Emory graduate students to the Caribbean as a possible site for dissertation research at a fairly early stage, allowing them early access to archival and unpublished material as they prepared proposals for dissertation research. It was also felt that there would be a similar broadening of scope of the vision of students at the University of the West Indies as they shaped their graduate projects. At the same time, faculty at both institutions could develop their networks of collegial contacts for teaching and training students. More importantly, gender studies from non-Western regions, like the Caribbean and Africa, help to diffuse the hegemony of traditionally Eurocentric gender teachings. To teach the construction of femininity in, say, Ghana (as opposed to Europe) to students in the Caribbean expands the possibilities for seeing cultures in new ways.
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Western and indigenous feminism are not mutually exclusive. Christine Sylvester, 1995 [African and Western Feminisms: World-Traveling the Tendencies and Possibilities;
Signs, Vol. 20, No. 4, Postcolonial, Emergent, and Indigenous Feminisms. (Summer, 1995), pp. 941-969; Professor of Women's Studies and Professorial Affiliate of Politics & International Relations at the Lancaster University; Her answer, carefully constructed to give just desserts to a variety of solid feminisms and tart reminders to move on, analyzes the various notions of personhood and thematizations of subjectivity that anchor the (Western) marchers in the feminist parade. She finds considerable variegation in the personhoods feminisms set forth and sees no sound reason why we cannot be mobile in them, world traveling those positions, in effect, as a way of sustaining contradictions and ensuring that "nothing is thrust out" as a "foreign importation which has no relevance to the African [or some other] situation" (Meena 1992, 4). Ferguson's equivalent of world traveling is the concept of "mobile subjectivities." It takes subjects (in this case, women) as "particular positionalizations" (1993, 159) that are produced by dominant discursive and institutional practices and that produce both the dominant patterns and practices of resistance to them.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 State Key
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Working with the state is key to reform Epstein 2001 (Barbara, professor of History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, September, Monthly Review,
Volume 53, Number 4, Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0901epstein.htm) The anarchist mindset of todays young activists has relatively little to do with the theoretical debates between anarchists and Marxists, most of which took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has more to do with an egalitarian and anti-authoritarian perspective. There are versions of anarchism that are deeply individualistic and incompatible with socialism. But these are not the forms of anarchism that hold sway in radical activist circles, which have more in common with the libertarian socialism advocated by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn than with the writings of Bakunin or Kropotkin. Todays anarchist activists draw upon a current of morally charged and expressive politics. There is considerable overlap between this contemporary anarchism and democratic socialism partly because both were shaped by the cultural radicalism of the sixties. Socialists and contemporary anarchists share a critique of class society and a commitment to egalitarianism. But the history of antagonism between the two worldviews has also created a stereotype of anarchism in the minds of many Marxists, making it difficult to see what the two perspectives have in common. Anarchisms absolute hostility to the state, and its tendency to adopt a stance of moral purity, limit its usefulness as a basis for a broad movement for egalitarian social change, let alone for a transition to socialism. Telling the truth to power is or should be a part of radical politics but it is not a substitute for strategy and planning.
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***Butler****
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 1NC (1/5)
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First, the links Depictions of ethnicity and national identity imagined by the 1AC stem from performative reification through discourse this exercise of power attempts to give stable identity by designating particular criteria for ethnic, racial, and gender classification where it doesnt exist Nagel 00
Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000), http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107
I view ethnicity as the broader concept subsuming racewhich generally refers to visible (often skin color) distinctions among populations (see Horowitz 1985). Ethnicity can be a signifier not only of somatic or physical (racial) differences, but also of differences in language, religion, region, or culture. Nationalism is commonly viewed as
a particular kind of ethnically based social identity or mobilization generally involving claims to statehood or political autonomy, and most often rooted in assertions of cultural distinctiveness, a unique
history, and ethnic or racial purity (Connor 1990, Hobsbawm 1990, Smith 1989, Weber 1978). Cornell & Hartmann (1998) acknowledge the interrelatedness of race and ethnicity, but distinguish them in terms of power and choice: Race is more likely to be an assigned attribute, and ethnicity is more likely to be volitional. Power differentials are not restricted to racial boundaries, however, since much ethnic differentiation and conflict involve uneven power relations and often occur in the absence of racial (color) differencee.g., recent conflicts in Rwanda, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia (see Denitch 1996, McGarry 1995, Smith 1998).3 Ethnicity is
both performedwhere individuals and groups engage in ethnic "presentations of self," and performativewhere ethnic boundaries are constituted by day-to-day affirmations, reinforcements, and enactments of ethnic differences.4 Ethnicity is thus dramaturgical, situational, changeable, and emergent. An individual's ethnicity is presented and affirmed or not in various social settings; it is a transaction in which the individual and others exchange views about the true nature and meaning of an individual's ethnicity, where negotiations are often necessary to resolve disagreements, where adjustments in ethnic self-presentation and audience reaction may occur over time, and where ethnicity is a dialectical process that arises out of interactions between individuals and audiences. Power is important in creating and regulating both racial and ethnic boundaries. The relative power of various actors in ethnic transactions can determine an individual's ethnic classification as well as the content and worth of the individual's ethnicity. This power to name ethnically can be formal, where, for instance, the state designates particular criteria for ethnic or racial classification, or informal, where audiences in social settings attribute ethnic meanings to an individual's social characteristics. Thus, my whiteness is an official fact in the US as reflected in documents like my
birth certificate, driver's license, and eventually on my death certificate. Unofficially, while I might take my English native language for granted as an uncontroversial, nonethnic fact, a trip to Quebec or a meeting with Latino community organizers can quickly transform my assumed-to-be-neutral linguistic background into an assigned ethnic identity imbued with meanings over which I have no control and limited knowledge: Anglophone or Anglo.

Next, the implications
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These descriptions of identity divide populations and lead to conflict and genocide. The question becomes how to soften these divisions so that they can become positive movements rather than sites of conflict Nagal 00
Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000), http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 In any society, we can identify boundaries dividing the population along ethnic lines. We can observe differences in language, religion, skin color or appearance, cultural practices or beliefs, or national origin. Sometimes these differences are benign and unimportant; at other times they can become the basis for segregation, conflict, and genocide. Thus, color, language, religion, or culture become potential bases for ethnic identity, community, or conflict, not inevitable or automatic bases for ethnic differentiation. As Duara (1996:168) notes, "Every cultural practice is a potential boundary marking a community. These boundaries may be either soft or hard . Groups with soft
boundaries between each other are sometimes so unselfconscious about their differences that they do not view mutual boundary breach as a threat." As international and historical examples easily demonstrate, people are not always mobilizing or conflicting along ethnic lines, only sometimes when boundaries harden. This leads to questions of when ethnic boundaries will become sites of conflict, movements, or revitalization.5
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The juridical formation of language and politics is an act of biopolitcal regulation of the subject through purely negative terms the subject becomes discursively constituted by the system in order to protect the individuals related to it from threats that exist outside of its population Butler 90
[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs 4-5] Foucault points out that juridical systems of power produce the subjects they subsequently come to represent. 1 Juridical notions of power appear to regulate political life in purely negative termsthat is, through the limitation, prohibition, regulation, control, and even protection of individuals related to that political structure through the contingent and retractable operation of choice. But the subjects regulated by such structures are, by virtue of being subjected to them, formed, defined, and reproduced in accordance with the requirements of those structures. If this analysis is right, then the juridical formation of language and politics that represents women as the subject of feminism is itself a discursive formation and effect of a given version of representational politics. And the feminist subject turns out to be discursively constituted by the very political system that is supposed to facilitate its emancipation. This becomes politically problematic if that system can be shown to produce gendered subjects along a differential axis of domination or to produce subjects who are presumed to be masculine. In such cases, an uncritical appeal to such a system for the emancipation of women will be clearly self-defeating.

The impact makes life meaningless and mass extermination inevitable Foucault 78
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Michel Foucault, professor of philosophy at the college de france, The History Of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1, 1978, pg. 136-137 Since the classical age the West has undergone a very profound transformation of these mechanisms of power. Deduction has tended to be no longer the major form of power but merely one element among others, working to incite,
reinforce, control, monitor, optimize, and organize the forces under it: a power bent on generating forces, making them grow, and ordering them, rather than one dedicated to impeding them, making them submit, or destroying them. There has been a parallel shift in
the right of death, or at least a tendency to align itself with the exigencies of a life-administering power and to define itself accordingly. This death that was based on the right of the sovereign is now manifested as simply the reverse of the right of the social body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life. Yet wars were never as bloody as they have been since the nineteenth century, and all things being equal, never before did regimes visit such holocausts on their own populations. But this formidable power of deathand this is perhaps what accounts for part of its force and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limitsnow presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations. Wars are no longer waged in the name of a sovereign who must be defended; they are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone; entire populations are mobilized for the purpose of wholesale slaughter in the name of life necessity: massacres have become vital. It is as managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race, that so many regimes have been able to wage so many wars, causing so many men to be killed. And through a turn that closes the circle, as the technology of wars has caused them to tend increasingly toward all-out destruction, the decision that initiates them and the one that terminates them are in fact increasingly informed by the naked question of survival. The atomic situation is now at the end point of this process: the power to expose a whole population to death is the underside of the power to guarantee an individuals continued existence. The principle underlying the tactics of battlethat one has to be capable of killing in order to go on livinghas become
the principle that defines the strategy of states. But the existence in question is no longer the juridical existence of sovereignty; at stake is the biological existence of a population. If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of
a recent return of the ancient right to kill; it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population.

And, the alternative
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Feminisms reliance on a stable sovereign subject and ontological dualisms forms a single site of resistance that undermines efforts at liberation due to state co-option. Accepting the performative nature of identity establishes resistance that can generate multiple sites of resistance and undermine patriarchal authority.
Rebecca Luna Stein, Prof of Anthropology @ UC Berkeley, book review political tourism in Palestine, SEHR, volume 5, issue 1: Contested Polities, 8 February 1996, http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/lstein.html How might feminist travel be written otherwise? I would like to trace the answer to this question through the work of Judith Butler, who rejects the legacy of feminism's foundationalist claims, its "fictive universality"[4] of women's oppression, its blindness to the multiple modalities of gender as discursive production. Butler refuses not only a singular category of women, but seeks to destabilize the stable, sovereign subject as politics' condition of possibility. Even as she concedes the importance of foundational fictions in contesting a history of political invisibility, Butler argues that a feminist retreat from the ontological subject would broaden the political field to include the multiple (sometimes internally heterogeneous) constituencies that such ontologies have excluded as their very condition of possibility. In December of 1989, as the Intifada entered its third year, Sherna Gluck returned to the Occupied Territories. In the third section of her text, she recounts the excitement of this period: women's committees were on the rise, and the network of grass-roots health-clinics, educational programs, and agricultural cooperatives established during the Intifada were expanding and gaining in economic viability. Observing the Occupied Territories from abroad in 1993, Gluck's tone is more somber as she reflects on the Oslo Accords, the dissolution of the Intifada, and the decline of its social infrastructure. I join Gluck, as I have suggested, in a critical assessment of this historic moment. Yet the model of feminist politics she employs is radically circumscribed. "[W]hen the Palestinians finally achieve their goal of statehood, a strong, autonomous women's movement will remain necessary. Otherwise the women's groups are likely to become handmaidens of the state, reluctant to challenge patriarchal authority"(223). Gluck's critique emerges out of the history of anti-colonial struggles in which, following independence, feminist programs have been neglected in the name of national liberation. While I share an insistence that nationalism "cannot be understood without a theory of gender power,"[5] as Anne McClintock has argued, I want to ask, what kinds of political interventions are curtailed in Gluck's model of autonomous feminist challenge? Here, as elsewhere in the text, her politics is one of absolutes, in which the state's regulatory hegemony is open only to contestation from a presumed outside. Butler's notion of the performative as political strategy multiplies the sites of possible intervention. "Performativity describes this relation of being implicated in that which one opposes, this turning of power against itself to produce alternative modalities of power, to establish a kind of political contestation that is not an opposition but a difficult labor of forging a future from resources inevitably impure."[6] By opening the epistemological space for contestation from within the regime(s) of power, Butler makes possible feminist challenges to patriarchal authority in the terms, and on the grounds, of the authority itself.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Discourse Reinforce Gender Binary

The gendered body has no ontological status it is performative act of identity that is sustained through discourse Butler 90
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[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs 173-174]
According to the understanding of identification as an enacted fantasy or incorporation, however, it is clear that coherence is desired, wished for, idealized, and that this idealization is an effect of a corporeal signification. In other words, acts, gestures, and desire
produce the effect of an internal core or substance, but produce this on the surface of the body, through the play of signifying absences that suggest, but never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally construed, are performative in the sense that the essence or identity that they otherwise purport to express are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means. That the gendered body is performative suggests that it has no ontological status apart from the various acts which constitute its reality. This also
suggests that if that reality is fabricated as an interior essence, that very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse, the public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body, the gender border control that differentiates inner from outer, and so institutes the integrity of the subject. In other words, acts and gestures, articulated and enacted
desires create the illusion of an interior and organizing gender core, an illusion discursively maintained for the purposes of the regulation of sexuality within the obligatory frame of reproductive heterosexuality. If the cause of desire, gesture, and act can be localized within the self of the actor, then the political
regulations and disciplinary practices which produce that ostensibly coherent gender are effectively displaced from view. The displacement of a political and discursive origin of gender identity onto a psychological core precludes an analysis of the political constitution of the gendered subject and its fabricated notions about the ineffable interiority of its sex or of its true identity.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Discourse Reinforce Gender Binary
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Discourse constructs gender binaries through a repetition of performative acts that can never be fully actualized Butler 90
[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs 178-179] In what senses, then, is gender an act? As in other ritual social dramas, the action of gender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing of a set of meanings already socially established; and it is the mundane and ritualized form of their legitimation. 71 Although there are individual bodies that enact these significations by becoming stylized into gendered modes, this action is a public action. There are temporal and collective dimensions to these actions, and their public character is not inconsequential; indeed, the performance is effected with the strategic aim of maintaining gender within its binary framean aim that cannot be attributed to a subject, but, rather, must be understood to found and consolidate the subject. Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. This formulation moves the conception of gender off the ground of a substantial model of identity to one that requires a conception of gender as a constituted social temporality. Significantly, if gender is instituted through acts which are internally discontinuous, then the appearance of substance is precisely that, a constructed identity, a performative accomplishment which the mundane social audience, including the actors themselves, come to believe and to perform in the mode of belief. Gender is also a norm that can never be fully internalized; the internal is a surface signification, and gender norms are finally phantasmatic, impossible to embody. If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time and not a seemingly seamless identity, then the spatial metaphor of a ground will be displaced and revealed as a stylized configuration, indeed, a gendered corporealization of time. The abiding gendered self will then be shown to be structured by repeated acts that seek to approximate the ideal of a substantial ground of identity, but which, in their occasional discontinuity, reveal the temporal and contingent groundlessness of this ground. The possibilities of gender transformation are to be found precisely in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a failure to repeat, a de-formity, or a parodic repetition that exposes the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Discourse Language of The Body

Language of the body establishes a sex/gender binary Butler 90
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[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs 178-179] The sex/gender distinction and the category of sex itself appear to presuppose a generalization of the body that preexists the acquisition of its sexed significance. This body often appears to be a passive medium that is signified by an inscription from a cultural source figured as external to that body. Any theory of the culturally constructed body, however, ought to question the body as a construct of suspect generality when it is figured as passive and prior to discourse. There are Christian and Cartesian precedents to such views which, prior to the emergence of vitalistic biologies in the nineteenth century, understand the body as so much inert matter, signifying nothing or, more specifically, signifying a profane void, the fallen state: deception, sin, the premonitional metaphorics of hell and the eternal feminine. There are many occasions in both Sartres and Beauvoirs work where the body is figured as a mute facticity, anticipating some meaning that can be attributed only by a transcendent consciousness, understood in Cartesian terms as radically immaterial. But what establishes this dualism for us? What separates off the body as indifferent to signification, and signification itself as the act of a radically disembodied consciousness or, rather, the act that radically disembodies that consciousness? To what extent is that Cartesian dualism presupposed in phenomenology
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Discourse Gender is Constructed

Gender is constructed there is no stable identity that denotes the woman Butler 90
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[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pg 6-7] Apart from the foundationalist fictions that support the notion of the subject, however, there is the political problem that feminism encounters in the assumption that the term women denotes a common identity. Rather than a stable signifier that commands the assent of those whom it purports to describe and represent, women, even in the plural, has become a troublesome term, a site of contest, a cause for anxiety. As Denise Rileys title suggests, Am I That Name? is a question produced by the very possibility of the names multiple significations. 3 If one is a woman, that is surely not all one is; the term fails to be exhaustive, not because a pregendered person transcends the specific paraphernalia of its gender, but because gender is not always constituted coherently or consistently in different historical contexts, and because gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities. As a result, it becomes impossible to separate out gender from the political and cultural intersections in which it is invariably produced and maintained.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Discourse Non-Western
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Construction of the woman as a subject of feminism is imposed upon non-western thirdworld countries reifying the gender binary Butler 90
[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pg 6-7] The political assumption that there must be a universal basis for feminism, one which must be found in an identity assumed to exist cross-culturally, often accompanies the notion that the oppression of women has some singular form discernible in the universal or hegemonic structure of patriarchy or masculine domination. The notion of a universal patriarchy has been widely criticized in recent years for its failure to account for the workings of gender oppression in the concrete cultural contexts in which it exists. Where those various contexts have been consulted within such theories, it has been to find examples or illustrations of a universal principle that is assumed from the start. That form of feminist theorizing has come under criticism for its efforts to colonize and appropriate non-Western cultures to support highly Western notions of oppression, but because they tend as well to construct a Third World or even an Orient in which gender oppression is subtly explained as symptomatic of an essential, nonWestern barbarism. The urgency of feminism to establish a universal status for patriarchy in order to strengthen the appearance of feminisms own claims to be representative has occasionally motivated the shortcut to a categorial or fictive universality of the structure of domination, held to produce womens common subjugated experience.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Gender Socially Constructed
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Gender is not an essential aspect of the binary between male and female anatomy, rather its difference is the production of social processes. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 Skin color, language, religion, or ancestry do not "automatically" serve as the basis for ethnic identities or groups, result in variations in cultural content, or generate interethnic conflict. The production of ethnic differences requires social and often political recognition, definition, and reinforcement as well as individual and collective assertion and acceptance to become socially real. Similarly, male and female bodies do not automatically result in socially meaningful "men" or "women." Rather the gender identities, meanings, cultures, and social divisions between men and women are social constructions, arising out of historical conditions, power relations, and ongoing social processes (Hartsock 1983, Ortner 1972, 1996, MacKinnon 1989, Scott 1988). These same insights about the social construction of ethnicity and gender apply to sexuality. Male and female genitalia do not automatically result in predictable types of sexual men and women, in particular forms of sexual behavior or practices, or in specific kinds of sexual desire. The early work of anthropologists, with all of its admitted flaws, unveiled as many different sexual practices and sexualities as there were cultures to inspect.6
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Homosexuality
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Gay rights struggles replicate sexual binaries and naturalize forms of sexualization which preclude a more accurate interpretation of the gender landscape. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 Feminism is not the only target for criticism by queer theorists. Ironically and interestingly, so is the gay and lesbian rights movement and the sexual "identity" politics it has engendered. Critics argue that imbedded in a conception of gay rights as minority rights is a set of assumptions about another binary. Just as feminism's focus on women reifies the male/female binary, gay and lesbian identity and rights claims reify the heterosexual/homosexual binary. The fight for gay rights, like the fight for women's rights, has the unintended consequence of acknowledging and "naturalizing" a system of heteronormativity (see Seidman 1997). The gender/sexual landscape painted by queer theory is a scenario of sexualities in social flux. Even queerness is in question. On the back cover of PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality (Queen & Schimel 1997), transsexual Kate Bornstein writes: Ever wonder if you're the only one who doesn't quite fit into one of the sanctioned queer worlds? Like, are you really a lesbian? Are you really a gay man? Maybe you fall outside the "permitted" labels, and maybe you're the only one who knows you do, and so you feel a bit guilty? Well, I've got news for you. You're not guilty, you're simply postmodern.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Gender Root of Racial, Ethnic, National ID
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Ethnic, racial, and national boundaries are sexual boundaries, which define the difference between communities as the boundary between self and other in a way that characterizes others as enemies. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 Ethnicity and sexuality are strained, but not strange, bedfellows. Ethnic boundaries are also sexual boundarieserotic intersections where people make intimate connections across ethnic, racial, or national borders. The borderlands that lie at the intersections of ethnic boundaries are "ethnosexual frontiers" that are surveilled and supervised, patrolled and policed, regulated and restricted, but that are constantly penetrated by individuals forging sexual links with ethnic "others." Of course, more than one kind of sexual boundary exists inside ethnic, racial, and national communities. It is the issue of multiple sexualities in ethnosexual contact that I think brings most clearly to light contradictory tensions in the relationship between ethnicity and sexuality. Across a wide variety of ethnic groups appropriate enactments of heterosexuality are perhaps the most regulated and enforced norms. In particular, correct heterosexual masculine and feminine behavior constitutes gender regimes that often lie at the core of ethnic cultures. Our women (often depicted as virgins, mothers, pure) v. their women (sluts, whores, soiled). Our men (virile, strong, brave) v. their men (degenerate, weak, cowardly). These heteronormative ethnosexual stereotypes are nearly universal depictions of self and other as one gazes inside and across virtually any ethnic boundary. Because of the common importance of proper gender role and sexual behavior to ethnic community honor and respectability, a great deal of attention is paid to the sexual demeanor of group members (by outsiders and insiders) in inspection and enforcement of both formal and informal rules of sexual conduct.
The regulation of the sexual domain composes the boundaries set up in racial, ethnic, and national identities. Penetration of these boundaries by gender questions can redefine these identities and ideologies. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 This paper explores the connections between ethnicity and sexuality. Racial, ethnic, and national boundaries are also sexual boundaries. The borderlands dividing racial, ethnic, and national identities and communities constitute ethnosexual frontiers, erotic intersections that are heavily patrolled, policed, and protected, yet regularly are penetrated by individuals forging sexual links with ethnic "others." Normative heterosexuality is a central component of racial, ethnic, and nationalist ideologies; both adherence to and deviation from approved sexual identities and behaviors define and reinforce racial, ethnic, and nationalist regimes. To illustrate the ethnicity/sexuality nexus and to show the utility of revealing this intimate bond for understanding ethnic relations, I review constructionist models of ethnicity and sexuality in the social sciences and humanities, and I discuss ethnosexual boundary processes in several historical and contemporary settings: the sexual policing of nationalism, sexual aspects of USAmerican Indian relations, and the sexualization of the black-white color line.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Gender Root of National Hegemony
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Regulation of gender creates an order that defines national and sexual order. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 First, we can see that national and sexual boundaries are mutually reinforcing, since implicit in the meaning of national boundaries ("who are we?") are certain prescriptions and proscriptions for sexual crossings. In this case, "our" women should not be having sex with "their" (particularly "enemy") men. Second, is the ubiquitous double standard that applies to many sexual boundaries: "our" men can have consensual sex, rape, or even sexually enslave "their" women and not have their heads shaved, nor will they be tattooed and paraded around the town.1 Indeed, in times of war, "our" women might even want to do their patriotic duty by making themselves sexually available to "our" men while the sexual police look the other wayas long as internal racial or ethnic boundaries are not violated (see Enloe 1990, Saunders 1995, Smith 1988). Another lesson to be learned from this tale of punishing women sexual collaborators is that their rule breaking was seized as an opportunity to reinforce and reestablish sexual, gender, and nationalist hegemony. By disciplining women collaborators, proper sexual demeanor and approved ethnosexual partners were publicly proclaimed. The national sexual order was reinstateda place for every man and woman and everyone in their place.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Link: Ethnic and National Identity
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The 1ACs depiction of identity as biological or historically and culturally determined create static borders in identity which do not acknowledge its constructed nature. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 If we see ethnicity as a series of crisscrossing boundaries dividing populations into multiple groups differentiated by religion, color, language, culture, and if we note that these boundaries are changeable and permeable (with some boundaries weakening and other boundaries strengthening and with people crossing over from one group into another), then we can begin to move away from primordialist, essentialist understandings of ethnicity and race as biological or genetically inherited or as historically or culturally determined (Anderson 1983, Bhabha 1994, Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983). For instance, recent scholarship on the construction of whiteness as a basis for identity and group formation in the US and in a number of other national settings reminds us that white and black are not natural categories but are historically based and culturally constructed (see Allen 1994, Ignatiev 1995, Lipsitz 1998, Roediger 1991, Saxton 1990). In the humanities the language of ethnic construction is often phrased in terms of borders, borderlands, and border studies (Anzaldua 1990, Darder & Torres 1998, Gutierrez-Jones 1995, Saldivar 1997). This scholarship is more likely to draw on literary sources to illustrate border processes and identities and to emphasize cultural aspects of and differences among ethnic individuals and communities. Scholars working in literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, ethnic studies, and area studies raise questions about the validity of "natural" essentialist racial and ethnic divisions (black/white, Anglophone/Francophone, American/non-American). They point out discontinuities, disputes, and disruptions within these bounded groups, and they explore such issues as challenges to individual or subgroup ethnic authenticity, historical changes in boundaries or meanings, diversity among ethnic group members, or disagreements over core notions of membership, group history, or cultural practices (Amit-Talai & Knowles 1996, Ginsberg 1996, Kawash 1997).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Implications: Gender Binaries Reinforce Masculine

Establishment of gender binaries reinforce the masculine and silence others Butler 90
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[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs 25-26] The various explanatory models offered here suggest the very different ways in which the category of sex is understood depending on how the field of power is articulated. Is it possible to maintain the complexity of these fields of power and think through their productive capacities together? On the one hand, Irigarays theory of sexual difference suggests that women can never be understood on the model of a subject within the conventional representational systems of Western culture precisely because they constitute the fetish of representation and, hence, the unrepresentable as such. Women can never be, according to this ontology of substances, precisely because they are the relation of difference, the excluded, by which that domain marks itself off. Women are also a difference that cannot be understood as the simple negation or Other of the always-already-masculine subject. As discussed earlier, they are neither the subject nor its Other, but a difference from the economy of binary opposition, itself a ruse for a monologic elaboration of the masculine. Central to each of these views, however, is the notion that sex appears within hegemonic language as a substance, as, metaphysically speaking, a self-identical being. This appearance is achieved through a performative twist of language and/or discourse that conceals the fact that being a sex or a gender is fundamentally impossible. For Irigaray, grammar can never be a true index of gender relations precisely because it supports the substantial model of gender as a binary relation between two positive and representable terms. 25 In Irigarays view, the substantive grammar of gender, which assumes men and women as well as their attributes of masculine and feminine, is an example of a binary that effectively masks the univocal and hegemonic discourse of the masculine, phallogocentrism, silencing the feminine as a site of subversive multiplicity. For Foucault, the substantive grammar of sex imposes an artificial binary relation between the sexes, as well as an artificial internal coherence within each term of that binary. The binary regulation of sexuality suppresses the subversive multiplicity of a sexuality that disrupts heterosexual, reproductive, and medicojuridical hegemonies.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Implications: Difference Precludes Democracy
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Recognition of identity beyond binaries and body politics in terms of performative difference is the only way to provide a democracy where conflicting interpretations can arise without striving for control over identity. Janine Hoek, MA University of Western Cape, June 2005, In pursuit of feminist democracy,
http://www.gwsafrica.org/knowledge/masculinity%20assignment%201.htm#jh1 Although it is apparent that feminism is still thought of as a movement, and thus has not altogether lost cohesion and direction, it is actively promoting recognition of difference rather than a position of neutrality. This is not to suggest a pursuit of unity, rather the recognition that what is of democratic value is producing a movement that can contain conflicting interpretations on fundamental issues without controlling them (Butler, 1993). It is convincingly argued by a number of current feminist theorists that there is a process underway to construct the groundwork needed to address concerns around citizenship and identity (Du Plessis, 2002). Just as international
politics re-visits speculative meanings of identity and belonging in the face of collapsing physical and virtual borders, so do antidiscrimination movements re-cognize that there is no such thing as theory divorced from a standpoint in time and space (Du Plessis, 2002), and that identity is not essential and unchanging. This is true of individuals just as it is true of collectives. Feminism has to constantly flex and stretch to accommodate change. One of the most valuable developments for African feminism outside of the impact of the increased intensity in the voices of black women revealing white imperialist classist theoretical constructs, is masculinity theory. Why masculinities is a worthwhile extension to feminist initiative, is because patriarchy links international politics and global feminism; patriarchy links regional government policy and local feminist action; patriarchy positions democracy and social equality within critical theory. What masculinity theory does is reveal the danger of viewing democracy as a fixed entity, an end product, a situated goal. And it rejects the existence of only one version of equality accessible by only one gender through one particular analytical tool. Social equality, which is another term for democracy, is not the responsibility only of women. Men stand to benefit from this achievement too. It is with this shared goal in mind, that men seek to explore the dynamics of gender (Kimmel and Messner, 2005). While it is vital to maintain tensions of race/sexuality/ gender/class rather than blur boundaries, it is just as important for different theories all the way through to different global powers - to find ways to cooperate without being absorbed. The crisis for feminism, particularly as it contemplates the relatively new development of masculinities, is to look beyond body politics
while still acknowledging the need for differences to be expressed. It is extremely difficult, until a new language grows, to resist using binaries to explain identity. Although these terms are handy and readily available, nuances and subtleties are lost along the way. This lack of rigorous expression can turn full circle: recreating misunderstanding, misappropriation, bias and a lack of contextual awareness. A step towards
revealing sub texts is through masculinities where the topic of men has become explicit rather than implicit (Kimmel et al, 2005), debated rather than assumed, visible rather than imperceptible. One clear example of an important social shift is in fathering (Kimmel and Messner, 2005). I would argue that democratic procedures cannot be attained or maintained unless grounded in this sort of conscious political action of self-reflection and genuine attempts at coalition. This is being increasingly pursued and often achieved within academic circles. It is one of the arguments made for not separating academia from resistance, or local struggles from the global context. Within gender studies, terms like multicultural, transnational, inter-departmental are becoming part of everyday language. In critical theory circles collaboration of different, disagreeing authors on one article is beginning to appear. Through this medium disagreements can be aired directly, revealing different ways of thinking about one topic rather than one person expressing her version of different ideas. The South African context provides a unique opportunity in which to explore cooperation. Being a newly
conceived democracy means there is plenty of room to move. The opportunity exists for Africanist identity, usually linked to negative concepts, to be re-constructed positively with the conscious intention of creating a basis for cooperation and transformation (Du Plessis, 2002). The time is ripe for identity and politics to be re-conceptualized in a way that is central to thinking about democratic citizenship. It would be self-defeating to think of identity as fixed, as a tool of segregation. It is a personal and political force open to active re-creation through words and actions. The global trend is away from whitewashed
patriarchal notions of universality towards a mutual respect founded in the achievement of justice by embracing the contradiction that any idea of a universal underlying theme or goal is born out of a particular geographical/ historical/social/psychological/bodily context.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Alternative Genealogy
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In order to expose the foundations of such categories as sex, gender, and desire we must engage in a genealogical critique to de-center the defining institutions of gender and sexuality Butler 90
[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs viii-ix] To expose the foundational categories of sex, gender, and desire as effects of a specific formation of power requires a form of critical inquiry that Foucault, reformulating Nietzsche, designates as genealogy. A genealogical critique refuses to search for the origins of gender, the inner truth of female desire, a genuine or authentic sexual identity that repression has kept from view; rather, genealogy investigates the political stakes in designating as an origin and cause those identity categories that are in fact the effects of institutions, practices, discourses with multiple and diffuse points of origin. The task of this inquiry is to center on and decenter such defining institutions: phallogocentrism and compulsory heteroxexuality.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Critique of Feminism Identity Precedes Feminism
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Critique of the notions of a stable identity constituting the construction of gender precede your feminism Butler 90
[Judith, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California Berkeley, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 1990, pgs xxix] Precisely because female no longer appears to be a stable notion, its meaning is as troubled and unfixed as woman, and because both terms gain their troubled significations only as relational terms, this inquiry takes as its focus gender and the relational analysis it suggest. Further, it is no longer clear that feminist theory ought to try to settle the questions of primary identity in order to get on with the task of politics. Instead, we ought to ask, what political possibilities are the consequence of a radical critique of the categories of identity? What new shape of politics emerges when identity as a common ground no longer constrains the discourse on feminist politics? And to what extent does the effort to locate a common identity as the foundation for a feminist politics preclude a radical inquiry into the political construction and regulation of identity itself?
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Critique of Feminism Internal Contradictions

Internal contradictions and a lack of coherent feminist identity preclude any political action or theoretical progression. Janine Hoek, MA University of Western Cape, June 2005, In pursuit of feminist democracy,
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http://www.gwsafrica.org/knowledge/masculinity%20assignment%201.htm#jh1 Probing assumed notions of identity and revisiting intention is an ongoing process for reflective critical philosophies. This practice is healthy because it encourages re-conceptualizing and re-cognition. It is a lesson from feminisms past, as much as from South Africas, that using broad brush strokes to describe individual lived experiences excludes rather than includes difference. More and more writers, theorists, and researchers are expected to position themselves contextually within a piece of work. Increasingly, the critique of sameness is been internalized bringing with it a crisis of description. And that crisis, simply stated, is the contradiction implicit in postulating life beyond identity while simultaneously demanding the acknowledgment of difference. In spite of the agreed upon benefits of respecting detailed expression of the multiplicity of an individuals social identity, there has been an increase in questioning the relevance and value of a diversified, seemingly divided feminist movement as an effective tool for theoretical debate and political action. Voices can be heard wondering whether it is possible to have an impact on social systems when neither a cohesive identity nor an easily understood common goal appears to underline the effort.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Critique of Feminism Fem Domination
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Feminism essentialize two categories of men and women and totalizes all meaning and interests. This dichotomy forces all challenges to be institutionalized through a sexual imaginary that replicates dominant forms of sociosexual arrangements. Joane Nagel, Department of Sociology, University of Kansas, ETHNICITY AND SEXUALITY, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26: 107-133 (August 2000),
htp://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107 Some of the most interesting contemporary work deconstructing and challenging assumptions about the nature and content of sexuality is by feminist and queer theorists. Perhaps most intriguing of all is queer theory's challenge to the essentialist sexual binary of male/female and its imbedded assumption of heteronormativity or "compulsory heterosexuality. In a section of her book, Gender Trouble, entitled, "'Women' as the Subject of Feminism," Butler wonders whether or not there really are "women," i.e., a gender category with a common meaning, position, interests: For the most part, feminist theory has assumed that there is some existing identity, understood through the category of women, who not only initiates feminist interests and goals within discourse, but constitutes the subject for whom political representation is pursued. Butler and others ask what dangers might lie in assuming women's existence? They conclude that women bring men into being by their "otherness," and that women's abject (marginal, invisible) status affirms men's dominance and normalcy. The view of women as "not men" leads to a focus on women's lack of rights, women's troubles, women's marginality, and thus can be seen to be an affirmation, a reinforcement, and even a constitution of hegemonic manhoodmen's dominance, men's privilege, men's centrality. It is not only the existence of women that queer theorists question. What is so normal, they ask, about heterosexuality? What is so natural, predictable, assumable about women sexually desiring men or the reverse? In fact, what is so normal about women and men serving as the two basic building blocks of sexuality, sexual identity, or sexual desire? Ingraham refers to these assumptions about normal sex and sexuality as the "heterosexual imaginary"and criticizes feminist theory for not questioning its own premises about the naturalness of the categories "men" and "women" because such a dichotomy tends to affirm "institutionalized heterosexuality [as] the standard for legitimate and prescriptive sociosexual arrangements." Feminist critiques of patriarchy, since they arise out of this false essentialist assumption, Ingraham argues, inadvertently reinforce one important invisible structure of domination phallocentric sexuality or heteronormativity
Gonzaga Debate Institute 2007 Affirmative Answers:
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Language doesnt construct the subject rather it is our prior conceptions of language Veronica Vasterling, Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and the Center of Women Studies of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1999 (HYPATIA, Volume 14.3, pgs 17-38]
The claim that language constructs the body does not mean that language originates, causes, or composes exhaustively that which it constructs. Rather, it means that there can be "no reference to a pure body which is not at the same time a further formation of that body" (Butler 1993, 10). In more general terms, instead of merely describing or referring to a body that is simply there, the constative or referential use of language is "always to some degree performative" (Butler 1993, 11). This argument can be interpreted in the following [End Page 19] way. Though referential or constative language seems to offer a direct connection to extra-linguistic reality, it depends on the prior semantic definition of the words used. The statement "this body is female" for instance, can be uttered only by a speaker who has acquired some knowledge of what these words mean. Referential or constative language is not only dependent on the prior semantic definition of the words used; precisely on the basis of that semantic definition, it also effects a certain delimitation of what is taken as extra-linguistic reality. Apart from referring to extra-linguistic reality, the statement "this body is female" at the same time delimits the body it refers to as female, with all the connotations this term carries. If the words "this body is female" appear to represent or mirror an extralinguistic reality, then it is only because, in everyday usage, we systematically forget that the possibility of referential or constative language depends on prior semantic definitions of the words used, delimiting or highlighting the reality that is referred to in certain ways. In other words, we are so accustomed to the referential use of terms such as body and female that often we are not aware of the ways in which the connotations of these terms delimit and inform our view of extra-linguistic reality. Yet the fact that referential or constative language introduces a certain semantic construction of the reality that is referred to does not imply that there is nothing but these semantic constructions. That the body is linguistically constructed does not preclude that it has, as it were, a life of its own. Rather, Butler's argument implies that language always already mediates our knowledge of the body, of reality in general: to have an idea of what a female body is, we need to know the meaning of the words body and female. This epistemological argument does not, by itself, entail the ontological conclusion of linguistic monism that reality consists of or is reducible to some sort of linguistic substance. What, if any, ontological conclusions are to be drawn from this argument is an open question.
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Language only enables interpretation of what appears it does not enable things such as the subject to appear Veronica Vasterling, Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and the Center of Women Studies of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1999 (HYPATIA, Volume 14.3, pgs 17-38]
The import of the claim that language conditions the appearance of materiality differs from the one discussed above because of the introduction of the notion of "appearance," an ambiguous notion with strong ontological and epistemological connotations. Depending on one's interpretation of "appearance," the claim either implies linguistic monism or a very strict epistemological assumption. In the phenomenological-ontological tradition, the notion "appearance" is one of the key terms. For Martin Heidegger, being is synonymous with appearing; only in so far as it appears, something can be said to exist, to be there. 3 In this sense reality is all that appears. According to Heidegger, language enables the interpretation of what appears, it does not enable that things appear. Hence, reality is epistemologically dependent but ontologically independent of language. The ontological independence of reality is reversed into dependence if, according to the above claim, language conditions the possibility of appearance. In so far as it enables that things appear, language determines the limits of reality. As language is contingent and variable over time, so are the limits of what we call, and perceive as, reality. Though much more sophisticated and defensible than the absurd conclusion that reality consists of some sort of linguistic stuff substance, this position still amounts to linguistic monism for it precludes the possibility of an ontologically independent, extra-linguistic reality. What appears or is perceived as extra-linguistic reality is still a hidden effect of language or, in terms of Butler, the dissimulated effect of discursive power.
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Butler is wrong - Language does not construct reality but rather exposes its limits Veronica Vasterling, Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and the Center of Women Studies of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1999 (HYPATIA, Volume 14.3, pgs 17-38]
May we conclude from the Kantian interpretation of Butler's claim that [End Page 21] reality, in so far as it is not reducible to language, is ontologically independent of language, in other words, that language does not determine the ontological limits of reality? And, hence, that the charge of linguistic monism is refuted? I think so. Butler, in a recent Dutch interview, dispels the ambiguity that clings to many passages on this topic in her Bodies That Matter (1993) by explicating her position as a post linguistic turn Kantian position: "the ontological claim can never fully capture its object, and this view makes me somewhat different from Foucault and aligns me temporarily with the Kantian tradition as it has been taken up by Derrida. The 'there is' gestures toward a referent it cannot capture, because the referent is not fully built up in language, is not the same as the linguistic effect. There is no access to it outside of the linguistic effect, but the linguistic effect is not the same as the referent that it fails to capture" (Butler 1997, 26). 4 In whatever way language constructs reality, no construction nor all constructions together can ever fully capture it. With a linguistic turn of Kant, Butler says that the reach of language and, hence, the reach of knowledge is limited: the signifying processes of language always leave, as it were, an ontological remainder. But if language does not determine the ontological limits of reality, it does determine the epistemological limits of access to reality. According to Butler, there is no access to reality without language. This epistemological assumption is more strict than the one that follows from the claim I discussed in the previous section for it implies that language conditions not only the intelligibility of reality but also its accessibility. I have my doubts about this assumption. To posit language in both cases as condition implicitly equates intelligibility and accessibility. Yet isn't the reach of the latter wider than the reach of the former? Can't we have access to phenomena we do not understand?
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Butler is wrong the constructed body that she speaks of is unintelligible it exceeds understanding Veronica Vasterling, Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and the Center of Women Studies of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1999 (HYPATIA, Volume 14.3, pgs 17-38]
Thus, the body that makes itself felt as a demand in and for language is, in my explanation, the--as yet-unintelligible body. The body is unintelligible insofar as it exceeds not only, in general, the limits of the linguistically constructed body but, more specifically, the limits of the sexed, gendered, and sexualized body. This specification is important, for sex, gender, and sexuality are anything but neutral categories. The construction of the sexed, gendered, and sexualized body is, at least partly, regulated by oppressive norms among them, as Butler rightly stresses, the norm of heterosexuality. If the intelligible body is a body that is sexed, gendered, and sexualized according to (oppressive) norms, then these norms will permeate not only our understanding but [End Page 24] also our lived experience of the body. What such norms prescribe often will be understood and lived as natural and hence inevitable facts of human life. But lived experience is not restricted to the intelligible body. If it were, it would be hard to explain why and how, for instance, a teenager who has grown up in a community that considers heterosexuality as a natural fact feels desires that don't fit this fact. If accessibility were restricted to the intelligible body, it would be hard indeed to explain such phenomena. Because we have access to the unintelligible body with its sometimes unintelligible desires we not only may come to feel ill at ease with the intelligible body but also may come to conceive of, for instance, heterosexuality as an oppressive norm.
325 Gender
Although Butlers theory may be information, should not keep us from attempting to solve material suffering Beste 06
[Jennifer, Theological ethics professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati, The Limits of Poststructuralism for Feminist Theology, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 22.1, 2006, Project Muse] Third, Butler's poststructuralist theory helps explain why it is so difficult to dislodge the discourses and practices that constitute a person even when one recognizes their harmful effects. In The Psychic Life of Power, Butler briefl y mentions the problem of child sexual abuse. She analyzes not merely how children are exploited in the sense that an adult unilaterally imposes sexual activity upon the child, but also how a child's passionate love and attachment to an adult, which is necessary for survival, is abused and exploited, and how this fusion of love and abuse has psychic effects (68). As she notes, "It is clearly not the case that 'I' preside over the positions that have constituted me, shuffl ing through them instrumentally, casting some aside, incorporating others, although some [End Page 13] of my activity may take that form. The 'I' who would select between them is always already constituted by them" ("CF," 42). In other words, because a trauma victim is wholly constituted by social discourses, not merely situated in and influenced by them, it is not possible for her (or anyone else) simply to recognize certain discourses and practices as harmful and then effectively dismiss them in such a way that they exert no further influence. If this were possible, recovery from traumatization would be a smooth and assured cognitive process of simply casting aside negative discourses and adopting more positive ones that would give birth to a new subject with a positive self-concept. Butler thus helps us understand why a victim can be both overwhelmed and "reconstituted" by abuse, and why recovery from chronic interpersonal harm is such an arduous and sometimes impossible process. When we move to the issue of what enables the possibility of recovery, however, we also begin to see the limitations of Butler's conceptions of self and agency. What makes possible the constructive changes that lead to recovery? Butler's answer is that competing discourses destabilize the subject and account for such change. Unfortunately, this reply only takes us so far. For instance, it leaves us with the image of an incest victim who is confronted with a bewildering array of conflicting discourses that offer alternative interpretations of the abuse and her self-concept. And yet, being at this site of destabilizing discourses does not adequately account for what makes positive changes possible in the life of any concrete person. What enables the next choice, decision, or action for persons who are at this destabilizing site of competing discourses? Why, for instance, is one incest victim able to negotiate social discourses in such a way that she overcomes self-destructive behaviors while another struggles with the same competing discourses for years, only to commit suicide? Is it all a matter of luck or contingency in the river of competing discourses? Butler's conception of the self as constituted by discourse does not allow her to grapple sufficiently with the complexity that occurs when trauma victims negotiate and struggle with the conflicting discourses that vie for their allegiance. Although Butler asserts that the constituted self is not determined, it is unclear why this is the case. The most she can say is the following: "The subject is not determined by the rules through which it is generated because signification is not a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition" (GT, 145 [Butler's emphases]). Yet she fails to explain how a "regulated process of repetition" avoids determinism, and how this narrowed construal of agency depicted as resistance is finally helpful to concrete subjects such as sexual abuse survivors and those who support them in the process of recovery. Butler's philosophical position thus leaves her unable to account for the process in which an actual trauma victim chooses one option over another at a particular time.

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