Statue of Liberty

Statue of liberty 

Asking whether women can ever truly be free is like asking whether spectators can choose to leave a game they are forced to watch. For that is precisely what women have been throughout history: spectators. Passive bodies that were forced to watch the battle of masculinities. Foolishly hoping that the victory of one side is their victory as well. In fact, they were never even part of the game. The question of freedom has never concerned them.

What freedom is and what it means to women is a different beast altogether. The common mistake is to lump all women together as a single interest group. That is not nearly the case. As Chandra Mohanty points out, the creation of the third world women as a monolith is a myth. By extension, the creation of all women as a monolith is also a myth. By looking at Kenyatta's defense of clitoridectomy, we can imagine how deeply entrenched women really are in their societies. Women aren't just individuals, they are also objects of culture. Similar to how a particular significance is placed to any traditional artifact, women are also endowed with value as an integral "object" of their culture. This has profound impacts. 

Firstly, women are separated by the societies they 'belong' to, leading to a diversity of interests. This in turn leads to different definitions for freedom as well. What the white women perceived as freedom is entirely different from what women in Algeria or the subcontinent perceive as freedom. These divisions create barriers to cooperation within women that makes it harder to answer what freedom is and who it is for. Secondly, it made it impossible to collaborate with each other. The lack of universal female identity led to a lack of universal feminist struggle. As Chandra Mohanty points out, the western feminists dominate the third world feminism by creating certain 'priority agendas' that put their interest above others. Female emancipation is so deeply entrenched in the politics of power that it is impossible to separate it.

In every interest, female interests are overshadowed by male interests that are perceived as more important. Women have historically been used as tools to further male agendas. As Fanon describes the use of women to transport bombs or Kenyatta uses FGM to protect his communal identity. It is important to note that women have traditionally been given communal identities rather than individual ones. This is paramount when it comes to decolonization. As observed by Kenyatta and Fanon, women were among the first bodies to be colonized. Subsequently, they were the first bodies that are attempted to be decolonized. However, both efforts were carried out by men. Culture was attacked or defended by men. That brings me back to my initial point, where are the women? Who is being liberated? Women became merely a symbol for men's freedom, their own freedom hasn't even been defined yet.

Chandra Mohanty argues that the question of womanhood is grounded in the cultural context. Oppression is an experience that varies by culture, race, class and sexuality. There is no universal experience of being a women. However, that is exactly is the problem. If there is no one way to be a woman, then there is no one way to fight for women. The question then becomes: are we merely fighting a man’s war? Can tradition be seen as just thinly veiled patriarchy and western feminism as thinly veiled imperialism? That is the paradox of femininity. If our identity is centered around a masculine interpretation of what is 'right’, our struggle becomes just that. 

The woman is doomed to oscillate between masculine ideals, forever looking towards the next man to tell her what she wants.  What is true freedom is a fantasy that I cannot yet conceive. A dream of spring for a withering flower.