I would like to try to put together a few coherent thoughts on gender, which is going to be a struggle because I have a lot of thoughts and no idea how to organize them. Disclaimer: this blog post probably won’t be academically correct; it’s not something I really know much about, other than that I have a gender.
Thought #1: I have never before been so aware of being a woman as I am here.
Consider: how many times a day do you think about your gender? I mean really think about it, analyze the things you are doing and think about what you’re saying about it to people around you? How often does it occur to you “I am a man” or “I am a woman” or “I’m not sure what I am” whatever, something concrete?
I don’t know what it was before, but since coming here I think about it all of the time. I am a woman. I have to think about it any time I am hit on in the street or in a taxi, or any time I accidentally misuse gendered adjectives in conversation, anytime I am too nervous to walk at night from Arabic to the mall and make Simon and Tyler coming with me, anytime I get stared at because I was too hot in my sweater and am in only a T-shirt, anytime Ziad plays with my hair or compliments me on my makeup or makes a comment like “I think girls look prettier with their hair down” while I am putting my hair in a ponytail.
Comments like these that aren’t particularly negative, but they incite in me a kind of automatic defense mechanism of, I’m going to wear my hair any way I want to and I don’t care at all whether you think it’s prettier up or down. I know that all these things— messages and comments and stares on the street—are everywhere at home, too, but the tension is so much more intense here, for me, anyway. We’ll see if this hyperawareness sticks once I’m back in the States. I also would like to add that the unwanted attention I get in Jordan is probably exponentially more than it would be if I weren’t so white.
Thought #2: Women’s rights.
In the United States, the movement began in 1848 at Seneca Falls. We got the vote in the 20’s and had Margaret Sanger and the Pill and Betty Friedan and now women go to work and outnumber men in universities and all this great stuff.
Wikipedia says: “Women's rights are entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in many societies. In some places these rights are institutionalized or supported by law, local custom, and behavior, whereas in others they may be ignored or suppressed. They differ from broader notions of human rights through claims of an inherent historical and traditional bias against the exercise of rights by women and girls in favor of men and boys.”
When I think of women’s rights, I think about: moving towards gender equality. I think this will do for now. I should probably take Intro to Women’s Studies or something.
I admit to this: when I thought about the Middle East before I visited it, I had images of women covered from head to toe, a sort of hyper-subordination of women to men, all the worst things you hear about from anti-Islamists and the conservative media, etc., etc., etc.. Catalina, a girl at Earlham who went on this program before I did, made me nervous too: when she gave us advice on what kind of clothes to bring she freaked me out a little bit. (Clarissa and Alex, who were with me when I was trying to pack, can attest to this.) At the same time, I knew that I had no idea what to expect. After all, it is hard to describe the position of women in a society than it is to experience it.
Jordan, I feel comfortable saying, seems to be more moderate than, say, Saudi, when it comes to women’s rights.
Jordan has no state imposed dress code.
Women go to school and then to university and hold jobs and go out and smoke argilah with their friends in coffee shops.
When we met with Dr. Kamel, the Director of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies, he pointed out that Islam allowed women to keep their own names, own property, have their own money from, as he put it, day one. You think Islam treats women badly, he said? You should have seen how the Christians treated their women at that time. In Islam there was never a question of whether women were human beings or not.
We met with a Jordanian senator who pointed out that, because of government quotas, there is a high percentage of women in the Jordanian Parliament than there are in the United States House of Representatives.
We have heard it said: “How can you say women don’t have rights here? Arab men are ruled by women: first by their mothers, then by their wives!”
But here’s the thing, I think:
There’s no state imposed dress code, but legal action against honor killings is minimal, with an article of the Legal Code allowing for exceptions to be made in instances where murders are committed “in a moment of rage”. There is an average of 25 honor killings a year in Jordan.
Saying, “here are the special allowances our religion makes for women” doesn’t impress me—the problem isn’t that women and men aren’t equal (well, that is a problem, but it’s not this problem); the problem is that they are treated as separate groups. Should separate but equal be the name of the game? Okay, call me a geek, but I’m reminded of West Wing’s Ainsley Haye’s famous response to the Equal Rights Amendment: “It’s humiliating...a new amendment we vote on declaring that I am equal under the law to a man? I am mortified to discover there is reason to believe that I wasn’t before. I am a citizen of this country, not a special subset in need of your protection.”
It’s good that there are women in Parliament, but it would be more impressive if Parliament held more power. If we had a monarch who could dissolve Congress any time he wanted to, I probably wouldn’t care as much who sat in the House, either.
And finally: cute line, but it would be cuter if you weren’t defining women by their roles as related to men. I’m not looking to get married right now, but when I do I would be insulted if I thought my job was to control my husband. That just seems like it’d take an awful lot of time.
The worst part about all of this is: at home it’s not exactly the same, but it’s not great there either. Thirteen cents might not be a lot of money, but when it’s the amount less that women make to every dollar of a man, those pennies look a lot shinier.
Thought # 3: A little more about honor killings, because it’s freaking me out.
I edited an article in my first weeks at the Jordan Times about an honor killing case. In the story, a woman was stabbed thirty-three times, beat in the head with a rock, and strangled by her brother, who became angry because she was looking out the window in the direction of a man. The brother didn’t get off easy using the “moment of rage” defense (although he tried) because the court didn’t think that looking out the window when a man happened to be passing by could really qualify as incitement to violence—but he did get a minimal sentence because the woman’s family dropped charges against their son.
It’s hard to think about journalistic structure and comma use when you’re reading a news article like that. 25 cases like this a year is far too many. 1 would be too many. Pointless murders are painful enough to think about but pointless murders that the perpetrator feels are justified, about which the court can say, oh, yes, you were understandably angry, your sentence will be lessened?
I invite responses to everything I’ve said here.
Also, I direct you to http://leilafeejordan.blogspot.com/2011/02/peace-in-me.html for a better explanation of the Jordanian-Palestinian refugee situation.
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