Abstract
I, an Indian Christian, have been made to feel inferior in Britain on account of my Indian identity and my sex. Something of the past British imperialism still expresses itself in its sexism and racism towards me. This combination I name imperial patriarchy. I find that white feminist theologians often present an analysis that still stems from an imperial/colonial mind-set. I critique Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism with the help of post-colonial feminists. Daly suffered the same convenient amnesia as the Victorian missionaries who criticized Chinese foot binding while forgetting that a Victorian woman’s torso was bound by a corset or tight lacing. I call upon Western feminists to become aware of the imprint of imperial patriarchy on their own thinking and then to join with their non-Western sisters in combating both sexism and racist imperialism.
Keywords
My Encounter with Imperial Patriarchy in Britain
In 1975, on the first day that I set foot in Britain with my white English husband, something in me became a feminist, not because I saw liberated women all around me, but because I, an Indian Bengali woman, was profoundly humiliated at Heathrow Airport by the patriarchal structure of the country. Luckily I was not subjected to the virginity test, 1 but what happened to me was still traumatizing. My innocent suffering made me immensely angry. In the words of Arundhati Roy: ‘Anger is the lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn’t show up in baggage checks.’ 2 Those days I knew something of Indian patriarchy, but what I encountered for the first time in my life at Heathrow and later continuously in Britain was something more lethal. This I now name ‘imperial patriarchal oppression’. In Indian patriarchy what I experienced was sexism; in Britain what hit me hard was a combination of two things, sexism and racism. From then on I have been finding it difficult to separate these two. Our corporate experience is the starting point of our feminist theology. Looking around at the airport I saw the others experiencing the same trauma were all women of colour. Simply on account of their whiteness, white women were treated differently. Moreover, it was white women who were subjecting us to this trauma.
This imperial patriarchy comes from the time of Western imperialism and colonialism, the handmaid of which was racism. Tunisian writer Albert Memmi writes:
Racism appears … not as an incidental detail, but as a consubstantial part of colonialism. It is the highest expression of the colonial system and one of the most significant features of the colonialist. Not only does it establish a fundamental discrimination between colonizer and the colonized, a sine qua non of colonial life, but it also lays the foundation for the immutability of this life.
3
The following six years of imperial patriarchy in Britain made me so desperate that together with my family (my husband and two sons) I left Britain to live in Bangladesh where there was an opportunity for us to live and work. People usually connect feminism with the West, but what I found in Britain was not feminism but oppression. The past of British imperialism was very much present in the way I was treated on account of my Indian-ness and my sex. After six years I left Britain with a great desire to search for something. I did not know what that was until I found feminism in Bangladesh.
Finding Feminism in Bangladesh
The arrival in Bangladesh was concurrent with the lifting of the heavy cloud of racism and sexism from on top of me. Once again I breathed the air of freedom. There I did not have to look for feminism; Christian feminist groups invited me to join them. I was fortunate to be in Bangladesh during the second half of the United Nations Decade for Women (1976-1985) and the first half of the World Council of Churches’ ‘Ecumenical Decade: Churches in Solidarity with Women’ (1989-1998). The other halves of these two decades I was in Britain, but interestingly they did not seem to have as much of an impact on British women as they did on Bangladeshi women.
In 1988 just before the beginning of the World Council of Churches’ decade I was asked to found and direct an ecumenical centre, Netritto Proshikkhon Kendro, for doing theology from a Bangladeshi woman’s perspective. I began to read Western Feminist Theology, which of course is as contextual as any other theology and therefore much of what I read was not relevant for me or for Bangladeshi women.
4
Soon I realized that Western Feminism was deficient in providing us with resources that could fight imperial patriarchy. The Bible was the common ground and what we found most meaningful was the reclamation of the Bible for women’s liberation and justice. In this Muslim majority country alongside our work we dialogued with Muslim and other women. What I came across in plenty was the politics of resistance. Almost a daily scene was of groups of women protesting on the streets of Dhaka against one thing or another. We Christian women sometimes joined the rallies. Again I borrow some words of Roy:
What we need to search for and find, what we need to hone and perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. In the present circumstances, I would say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. It’s India’s best export.
5
When I lived in Bangladesh I thought it was Bangladesh’s best export too.
I did not have to depend solely on Western feminist theology for long. Soon I came across the journal In God’s Image, produced by the Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology. We began to network with Asian women from different countries. They came to Bangladesh and we were invited to go to different parts of Asia to do theology together.
When we sat down with our Bible to reread it, we learned that the Christianity we had received was actually an imperial and colonial production designed to keep our women subjugated. In Bangladesh we did not read the Bible in the language of the colonialists, but in our own language, Bengali. This had an extra advantage. While Western women were working at inclusive language, we were glad to realize how gender inclusive our language was. We compared the English and the Bengali Bible to note that God did not first create a man as the English Bible said and as the missionaries taught us, but a human being and that firstly the name Adam was given to both the male and the female. Genesis 5.2 said clearly in Bengali: ‘Male and female created them and blessed them and named them Adam.’
The imperial/colonial Christian patriarchy taught us to look down on our neighbours, people of different faith groups and their religions. But we, women in Bangladesh, learned to dialogue with our neighbours to be united in our struggle against our own patriarchy and the imperial one. Reclaiming our scriptures was tremendously powerful as in each religion women’s oppression and subjugation have been justified in the name of religion. We learned to differentiate between what is in scripture and how it has been interpreted by men for thousands of years.
Men in Bangladesh showed as much interest in rereading the Bible as we did. The impact of such readings is difficult to quantify, but we did see some tangible results. Women certainly felt empowered and went on to challenge and change several practices in family, church and society. The first Bangladeshi women were ordained in 1996. A connection was found between the wedding liturgy and domestic violence. We pointed out to the church leaders that practices such as the woman’s promise of obedience to her husband and the giving away of the woman to the man by the bride’s father can be harmful for the woman. It was to Bangladeshi women’s credit that after many discussions all churches agreed to modernize the wedding services.
In 1992, I left Bangladesh with a sense of achievement. We women were able to make some tangible changes, but more importantly we were involved in the conscientization process. 6 We practised hermeneutical insubordination, 7 challenged old attitudes and developed new ones. Above all we gained a higher self-esteem. After 11 years in Bangladesh facing towards Britain seemed to me like leaving the Galilee of the poor and facing the Jerusalem of the powerful. Jerusalem, the imperial/colonial patriarchal power structure, is what crucified Jesus. I was fearful thinking whether I might be ‘crucified’ for my hermeneutical insubordination.
In Bangladesh I strongly identified with the biblical character Hagar (Genesis chapters 16 and 21). 8 Like Hagar I ran away from the house of Abram and Sarai, my oppressors, to the ‘wilderness’ and met the angel of God by a spring of water. Hagar went back to Abram and Sarai not in her previous condition as an oppressed woman, but as one who had met God and yet lived and named God El-roi, God who sees. She came back laden with blessings of progeny equivalent to what Abram received, blessings un-paralleled in other biblical women’s lives. She was asked by God to name her son Ishmael, God who hears. Hagar returned with her head high and so did I. Like Hagar I also learned to believe in a God who sees the pain of oppressed people and hears their cry. This understanding gave me new courage. I don’t know whether Hagar looked for sisterhood from Sarai/Sarah, but I did from women in Britain.
Searching for Sisterhood in the Empire
It had been such a wonderful experience for me to have sisterhood with Asian women in Bangladesh and beyond. In my hope of finding similar sisterhood from Sarah/Sarai I searched for women’s groups in Britain and became a part of them. In these groups almost always I was the only black/Asian woman and wondered about the absence of the women of colour. Soon I realized why: there was racism at play, that I alone recognized, as white women had no idea that they were exhibiting it. My previous experience in Britain taught me about imperial patriarchy. Now I realized that white women unconsciously collude with imperial patriarchy making it difficult for me, Hagar, to form solid sisterhood with Sarah/Sarai. Hagar might have thought that her pregnancy had corrected the power imbalance between her previous mistress and herself, as she was now a co-wife bearing the first child of Abram, but most probably Sarah/Sarai had no idea how to give up her previous status in order to treat Hagar as an equal. As a result she re-established the mistress/slave relationship and chased Hagar out of the household. I realized that as long as there was a power imbalance, even if it were only in one’s imagination, sisterhood would not be possible. Gender analysis without thorough race analysis keeps white feminists in a state of unknowing regarding their racism. Kwok Pui-Lan is apt to say: ‘To participate in weaving the common tapestry, European and Euro-American women must first decolonize their minds and save themselves from the state of unknowing.’ 9 I remained close to white women’s groups and women’s activities, but the past British imperialism was always an unseen guest making me feel, to some extent, isolated from my peers.
After returning to Britain I wanted to gain an academic qualification by writing up the feminist theology that I was involved with in Bangladesh. Although deep relationship was not possible between Sarah/Sarai and Hagar, I found ‘Pharaoh’s daughter’. Moses the liberator of the Hebrews was able to become a son of the daughter of Pharaoh (see Exodus 1.5-10). I also managed to become a sister to some white feminists who encouraged and supported me in gaining my PhD.
I saw some of my white peers finding lecturerships in Feminist Theology after completing a PhD. I also hoped to teach this theology, but soon realized that Feminist Theology meant white Feminist Theology 10 and no one could picture an Asian woman teaching this subject. I could only be an add-on. I did get invitations from academic institutions to teach one or two sessions on black/Asian feminist issues. But to the white feminists, often Indian women’s issues meant ‘suttee’, Muslim ‘veiling’, Chinese ‘foot binding’ and African ‘female circumcision’. I felt really tired of white women giving the impression that they knew and understood black and Asian women’s situation and that it was much worse than their own. I often wondered how they knew all about us when they had not been to our countries which are vast with cultures diverse and complex. Even if they had been in our countries, it was almost never long enough to learn our languages and to live closely with our people. All they had ever read were books written in English, mostly by white people.
This is the period when I sent a list of subjects I could teach to academic institutions. I was then invited to apply for a post in teaching black and Asian Theology at the Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham. Feminist Theology was not the way in, but Black and Asian Theology was, and I was happy to get this position. I had already learned quite a lot of Black and Asian Theology in my struggle against imperial patriarchy. So I was not in totally uncharted territory. In fact, Black Theology only sharpened my Asian Feminist Theology. The Theology that I teach has expanded to become Theologies of Liberation. Alice Walker writes: ‘A womanist is committed to the survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health.’ 11 I have noticed that in Womanist, and Black and Asian Theology the desire for ‘the survival and wholeness of entire people’ is very strong. It suits me to expand my theology more and more to include liberation and justice issues for all people, men and women, who are oppressed for various reasons.
I continue to find more in common with post-colonial Feminist and Womanist theologies, rather than with white Feminist Theology. Collective consciousness is the beginning of the liberation process. I share this consciousness not with white women but with all people of colour, men and women, as white imperialism is still very much alive. When we are bombed we die not with white women, but with our men of colour. I mentioned above the Tunisian writer, Albert Memmi, who has detected something immutable about the relationship that was established between the colonizer and the colonized in the colonial era. We people of colour see some signs of this immutability in the recent bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq. Asian Feminist Virginia Fabella says: ‘It is important that we also be aware of the expanding Western hegemony, its imperial designs and its recent “war on terror” and how these relate to present-day Asia.’ 12
Imperial Patriarchy and the Use of Feminist Language
I want to argue that, throughout history, Western imperialism has been using feminist language to dominate people of colour. In this language both racism and sexism are bound up together. For women of colour it is comparatively easy to perceive this interconnection as we are at the receiving ends of both. The West comes to our lands as the saviour of women of colour, but its aim is not to make women’s situation better but to establish Western hegemony. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak writing in her Indian context terms this phenomenon ‘White men saving brown women from brown men.’ 13 She writes: ‘Imperialism’s image as the establisher of the good society is marked by the espousal of the woman as object of protection from her own kind.’ 14 ‘Liddle and Joshi show how gender formed one of the pillars on which imperialism was built.’ 15
It is painful to observe how even today ‘saving brown women functions as a colonial ideology helping to camouflage the violence and brutality of colonialism by sugarcoating it as a form of social mission.’
16
George Bush and Tony Blair attacked first Afghanistan and then Iraq. They both saw it as a social mission to civilize these Muslim people who were stuck in their religion and culture and were not progressing like the West. The racist rhetoric of Bush and Blair about the civilized West made me forget that we were in the twenty-first century. One of the signs of the backwardness of the Muslims was, of course, the Muslim treatment of their women. Katharine Viner wrote on 21 September 2002,
“Respect for women … can triumph in the Middle East and beyond!” trilled the leader of the free world to the UN last week. “The repression of women [is] everywhere and always wrong!” he told The New York Times, warming to his theme that the west should attack for the sake of its women.
17
In their moral mission Bush and Blair became feminists.
To Western eyes veiling has always been the symbol of the repression of Muslim women. Now since the beginning of the war on terror yet again the discussion on veiling has surfaced. In Western media and scholarship veiling becomes the marker of Muslim women’s oppression and the backwardness of Islam. Such a portrayal at best promotes hostility towards Muslim people and at worst provides justification for the ‘civilised’ West to attack Muslim countries. Saving brown women from brown men is an old story, but time and again it is re-enacted for the advancement of Western domination. If David Cameron’s words were not extremely dangerous I could laugh as during the process of writing my article Cameron provides me with a concrete example of white patriarchy’s feminism. According to The Guardian newspaper David Cameron says that ‘the state must confront, and not consort with, the non-violent Muslim groups that are ambiguous about British values such as equality between sexes, democracy and integration’. 18 It is curious that Cameron makes this speech on the same day the English Defence League (EDL), known for its anti-Muslim stand, holds its biggest demonstration in Luton. In the same newspaper Suzanne Moore writes, ‘The EDL is apparently very concerned about the treatment of Muslim women. And so was our government once. Isn’t it one of the reasons we went into Afghanistan?’ 19
Western Feminism and the Use of Imperial Language
In this climate Leila Ahmed’s words summarize what needs to happen in Western feminism:
In the context of the contemporary structure of global power, then, we need a feminism that is vigilantly self-critical and aware of its historical and political situated-ness if we are to avoid becoming unwitting collaborators in racist ideologies whose costs to humanity have been no less brutal than those of sexism.
20
This self-critical awareness is still lacking. I find that white feminist theologians often present an analysis that still stems from an imperial/colonial mind-set. It must be extremely difficult for white feminists to be critical of the imperialism/colonialism that has bestowed on them the immeasurable privileges that they enjoy in today’s world. bell hooks asks, ‘For how does one overthrow, change, or even challenge a system that you have been taught to admire, to love, to believe in?’ 21 We women of colour notice the strong love relationship between imperialism and white feminism: while the empire uses feminist language, white feminists use imperial language.
Chakravorty Spivak first used the term ‘saving brown women’ in the Asian context; here I use a more inclusive term, ‘brown/black women’. Imperial patriarchy goes around saving brown/black women from brown/black men: Indian women from ‘suttee’, Muslim from ‘veiling’, Chinese from ‘foot binding’ and African women from ‘female circumcision’. When white feminists discuss these issues without being critical of their colonial mind-set they walk on dangerous ground. One prime example is Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, 22 which has sparked off much post-colonial Feminist and Womanist criticism. ‘Her text raises significant issues for subsequent feminist debates and highlights the ambiguities of the intersection between white feminist religious discourse and postcolonial criticism.’ 23 Although first published in 1978, Daly’s book continues to be popular in Feminist Theology. At Queen’s Foundation in Birmingham it is on ‘seven day loan’ showing that it is in high demand. Since it has generated quite a lot of criticism I will read Daly’s book alongside the critiques provided by Audre Lorde, Kwok Pui-Lan and, Joanna Liddle and Shirin Rai 24 and will lay out some of the ways Daly has used imperial language in her feminist writing. I wonder whether this was the only language she knew?
Western Epistemology is Still the Only One
Both Lorde and Kwok ask why Daly’s goddesses are taken from the Eurocentric Greco-Roman cultures when in many cultures goddess worship is not a thing of the past. Daly argues that the murder of the Goddess and the replacement of the goddess culture by the patriarchal God of Christianity contribute to the global sado-rituals and the subordination of women. She does not check whether her theory fits in with other cultures. Kwok recognizes that: ‘the post-Christian myth, when universalized, can be as dangerous as Christian imperialism in terms of its totalizing effect’. 25
Daly’s heavy dependence on Western writers is another point that the post-colonial critics make. Kwok Pui-Lan is surprised that in writing about Chinese foot-binding she cites no Chinese authors, female or male. Lorde wondered whether Daly read black women’s writing. Liddle and Rai questioned, ‘Why are Indian women not allowed to speak for themselves in Daly’s book?’
26
Joke Schrijvers’ words regarding the Western neo-positivist approach are appropriate here: ‘This “other”, according to this approach, can be ignored, studied, manipulated, marginalized and exploited, depending on the requirements of the researcher.’
27
Black and Asian women find themselves becoming the ‘other’ in Daly’s writing, not allowed to speak for themselves. Liddle and Rai notice something even worse: Daly has not only silenced women of colour, but in her chapter about Indian suttee she has largely depended on Katherine Mayo. Liddle and Rai write,
To set the political context, the book [Mayo’s Mother India] was published in the same year [1927] that the British government appointed the Simon Commission to investigate Indian demands for self-government, and 3 years before Gandhi launched the civil disobedience campaigns as a response to Britain’s refusal to grant dominion status.
28
Post-colonial feminists do not shy away from the fact that, as in any other patriarchal society, in India too, there remains much about women’s situation that is unjust and needs challenging. It is appreciated that Daly exposes wrongs done to Indian women, but her dependence on Mayo’s writing is suspect. Mayo’s book helped the British Raj, not Indian women’s emancipation. The New Statesman saw it as ‘one of the most powerful defences of the British Raj that has ever been written’. The book review in that newspaper continued: ‘Miss Mayo makes the claim for swaraj [self-rule] seem nonsense, and the will to grant it almost a crime’. 29 Daly’s uncritical acceptance of Mayo’s book, which is saturated with racism and imperialism, is curious.
Saving Black/Brown Women
Several women writing on post-colonialism and feminism note that, ‘the notion of saving brown women becomes deep-seated in white women’s consciousness and resurfaces in feminist religious discourse.’ 30 This phenomenon which appears in imperial patriarchy seems to be silently present in Daly’s book too.
The West portrays black/brown women as docile creatures who need to be saved from their uncivilized men. One thing I have noticed in Britain is that whenever I speak forcefully against racism and sexism or portray Bangladeshi and Indian women as powerful, white feminists are as surprised as other white people. The stereotypical view of Asian women as docile and submissive is extremely strong in this country and reinforced in Daly’s writing. One of the reasons behind this is her dependence on Mayo’s book in which there is no reference to Indian women’s movements and their campaigns against atrocities done to women. Yet Mayo’s book was written in 1927 when the All India Women’s Conference was established, ten years after the Women’s Indian Association had been founded and first demanded their right to vote. Through these movements Indian women did not only campaign against the British Raj, but also against all kinds of oppression that Indian women were subjected to.
31
As Daly projects the European witches’ strength and power and Indian women’s passive victim status, Liddle and Rai question:
What is it that threatens Western Feminist authors when they represent European women as strong and powerful despite the terrible tortures to which they are subjected under patriarchy, but represent the Indian women, similarly subordinated, as weak and helpless?
32
Not only Liddle and Rai, but Lorde and Kwok also raise the question about Daly not portraying the strength of black/Asian women and their movements. Daly gives the impression that Chinese, Indian and African women are unable to name their oppression, recall their suffering and speak against their oppression until they are ‘summoned by Daly to do so’. 33
At first sight Daly’s book might seem innocuous as not only the oppression of women of colour but also witch-burning in Europe and the oppressive side of American gynaecology feature in her book. Still black/brown patriarchy comes across as more oppressive. I provide one example here from Liddle and Rai. After a class on women in India the following conversation took place between a tutor and a white woman student. This exemplifies the first response Daly’s book might evoke in a Western mind and why it might be problematic:
Indian women have a much worse time of it than us, don’t they?
Yes, they’ve got all of the problems caused by imperialism to cope with too.
No, I didn’t mean that, I mean suttee and things like that, we’ve never had to deal with anything as awful as that.
What about witch-burnings?
Yes, but the witch-hunts were a much longer time ago than suttee weren’t they? 34
In Britain I regularly come across such perceptions of patriarchy in black and Asian cultures. The impression people give is that everything Western is superior, even its patriarchy. Yet it is Western patriarchy that represses not only its own women but the men and women of other cultures over which the West has established its hegemony. Daly lacks critical awareness of the colonial context of Western feminism and therefore of her Western reader:
The cognitive construction of the Western mind immediately calls forth the image of the barbarian native. This image is as much racist as sexist, for it conjures up the oppressive, irrational oriental male, in contrast to the democratic, objective Western male, and the backward, passive oriental female in opposition to the liberated, active western woman. The image derives from a long history of orientalist representations of Eastern peoples from colonial times to the present.
35
In the absence of self-critical awareness in feminist discourse racism sneaks into the minds of white people. At the Queen’s Foundation, during gender analysis, sometimes black and Asian female students have found themselves isolated from their white counterparts and drawn more towards the black and Asian male students. The issue, instead of remaining focused on justice for women in all cultures, becomes one of cultural superiority of the West and the inferiority of black/brown men who are seen as more oppressive. When people of colour object, we are misunderstood. Daly writes:
Critics from western countries are constantly being intimidated by accusations of “racism”, … This kind of accusation and intimidation constitutes an astounding and damaging reversal, for it is clearly in the interests of Black women that feminists of all races should speak out.
36
Post-colonial Feminist and Womanist critics find racism in Daly’s book and they speak out as it does not serve the interests of black/Asian women. Their aim is not to condone sexism in their cultures, but to keep gender analysis free from the notion that Western men are more civilized.
Unawareness About the Western Role in Strengthening Patriarchy in Non-Western Cultures
Using feminist language the West attacks our cultures, implying that the only way out for us is to become more westernized. Leila Ahmed observes that it would be absurd to suggest that ‘because male domination and injustice to women have existed throughout the West’s recorded history, the only recourse for Western women is to abandon Western culture and find themselves some other culture’.
37
Yet routinely, the West implies that our women’s liberation lies in adopting Western culture and thus appears as a threat to non-Western cultures and religions. Referring to this threat Asghar Ali Engineer observes that this is more explicit in relation to the Islamic countries where in response to the Western aggrandisement the Islamic opposition
labels the ruling elite as collaborators with imperialism and generates pressures for establishing an Islamic state. The ruling elites, in response to these pressures project themselves as more conservative than their opponents and introduce “Islamic measures”. … The status of woman also becomes an integral part of such political processes. Her status becomes as much a symbol of political struggle as anything else.
38
In the name of protecting the culture and religion, patriarchy in Muslim countries becomes more powerful and Muslim women are seen as traitors to their culture and religion if they campaign against their patriarchy. Therefore women choose to observe their customs more rigorously to show their loyalty to their culture. Thus, if the West and the Western feminism continue to assert their cultural superiority, non-Western women get more bound by their own patriarchy.
I find the following saying of Arundhati Roy really profound: ‘To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple’. 39 The post-colonial feminists find Daly simplifying non-Western women’s situation as she does not take historical and political contexts into account. Let me take for example suttee and Indian women. If the westerners know one thing about Indian women, that would be suttee, yet ‘it did not gain ground anywhere in India other than in Rajasthan and Bengal’. 40 In Rajasthan it was called jauhar, which was, to some extent, different. When men died in battles defending their countries from foreign invaders, or sacrificed their lives when defeat was inevitable, women also participated in the same heroism and martyrdom. Women would rather sacrifice themselves on pyres than suffer humiliation at the hands of foreign male rulers. Besides Rajasthan the only place where suttee became prevalent was Bengal and that during British rule.
Lata Mani reminds us that the intense debate on the issue took place from 1780 to 1833, a period when the British gradually expanded their control from their foothold in Bengal to much of the Indian subcontinent.
41
In that period the number of suttees steadily increased. I have done hardly any research on the connection between suttee and British rule, but I was interested to find from parliamentary papers that by a regulation in 1772, Hindus and Muslims were allowed to retain their religious and social practices. Pandits and maulavis were given more power to read and interpret their religions and advise the British Indian courts. Hinduism and Islam, which expressed themselves in diverse ways in different parts of the country, were given an opportunity by the British to become more homogenized, institutionalized and legalized. As only male religious leaders were consulted, new hierarchies would have been set up bestowing on men unprecedented power over their women. There are parliamentary papers that discuss the fact that during British Administration suttee became more prevalent. 42 Britain was not the saviour of the brown women; their presence made women’s situation worse. As Daly lacks any specialized knowledge of the custom of suttee, she ends up providing us with a stereotypical view of this custom, of Indian women and their situation.
Double Standards
Daly also has double standards, one for evaluating American midwives and another one for the Indian ones. In the chapter on American gynaecology Daly shows how male obstetricians took control of midwifery by stigmatizing American midwives as filthy and unhygienic. According to her, undermining women and their knowledge is an androcentric way to usurp female professions. Yet regarding Indian midwives Daly writes:
The reader should consult Mayo’s Mother India for a lengthy description of the “unspeakable” dhais, “midwives” from the “untouchable” caste to whose filthy, brutal, grotesque, and frequently murderous ministrations the woman in childbirth is subjected.
43
Here Daly uncritically accepts the version of truth provided by Mayo who was notoriously racist and imperialist. Daly does not question whether British male medical professionals defamed Indian indigenous medicine as well as women professionals in order to prove themselves and their medicine superior. When we read Daly through a post-colonial feminist lens we certainly see racism and imperialism, but when we add a post-colonial Dalit feminist lens her casteism becomes visible in Daly’s vilification of Dalit midwives. In the above quotation she even uses the term ‘untouchable’ which one can expect from Mayo, but not from Daly. This objectionable term was declared illegal in the constitution of India in 1949 and of Pakistan in 1953. 44
Amnesia about Western Patriarchal Oppression
I could go on critiquing what Daly has written, but it will also be interesting to note what Daly has omitted. When I was reading her chapters on Chinese foot-binding, Indian Suttee, African genital mutilation and American gynaecology, I was wondering why she did not write about the oppressiveness of the Victorian corset or tight lacing. This subject would have been more relevant than witch burning. Firstly, witch burning has been taken from a comparatively more remote period. Secondly, since it was Victorian imperialism that used feminist language to civilize the natives and Christianize them on a large scale, an example from that period would be more appropriate. Thirdly, it would have exposed the hypocrisy of the Victorian patriarchy which was criticizing Chinese foot-binding at a time when the Victorian woman’s torso was bound. Fourthly, the oppression of Victorian women also exemplifies how sexism, racism and classism functioned in unison. Fifthly, instead of creating a barbaric/civilized dichotomy it would have built up women’s solidarity across countries as female circumcision was taking place in Victorian America and Britain. Sixthly, it would have shown the connection between torso binding, prolapsed uterus, hysterectomy and the rise of gynaecology in the West.
Daly has made some vague references to Victorian dress and clitoridectomy in the West, but there is no sustained discussion on these subjects. I wonder why she chose to leave out this Victorian episode of women’s oppression, but instead took witch-burning from a remote period? Daly even quoted Van Gulik who, writing about Chinese foot binding, chastized a nineteenth century scholar saying, ‘[He] conveniently forgot that at about the same time his wife and female relatives at home were bringing upon themselves cardiac, pulmonary and serious afflictions by the excessive use of tight-lacing of their waists.’ 45 Daly slapped the wrist of Van Gulik for blaming women for their own oppression, but conveniently forgot the agony of women in Daly’s mother’s and grandmother’s generation. If she had written a chapter on tight lacing, the dynamic of the whole book would have changed, revealing that Western patriarchy is just as oppressive as the patriarchal cultures she has discussed. This would have saved the book from creating Western/non-Western superior/inferior dichotomy.
I was intrigued to see Daly’s amnesia was exactly the same as that of the Victorian Protestant missionaries who, in the guise of saving brown women, were colonizing and Christianizing the natives. Here is one example from among many: John Kerr of Canton Hospital said referring to foot binding, ‘ “The custom is established and fostered by pride and lust, both of which are condemned by our holy religion. [This practice] is a sin against God and sin against man” that Christians should condemn.’
46
While reflecting on this apparent hypocrisy, Jesus’ saying came to mind,
Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye (Matthew 7. 3-5, NRSV).
If we think of patriarchy in each culture as a speck which westerners are trying to take out of the eyes of their neighbours they cannot be successful, since they have a log, imperial patriarchy, in their own eye. I think this log hindered the Victorian scholars, missionaries and then Daly from seeing the Victorian patriarchal oppression that was staring them in the face.
Since Daly omitted it, I looked elsewhere for feminist writing on the Victorian corset. In my brief search I was pleased to find the extensive, comprehensible and scholarly writing of Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. 47
Although corsetry went on for 400 years, it became particularly popular on both sides of the Atlantic between 1850 and 1900. In one form or another it remained an integral part of female attire until the introduction of pantyhose in 1960.
48
In the words of Summers,
Corsetry was carefully cut and often reinforced with at least twenty or more stiffened “bones” or steels. Each bone or steel was tempered or curved in to a particular shape to form a gore that fitted snugly over a particular place on the torso.
49
The aim was to mould the female body from a young age, particularly from the age of eleven, to give it a wasp-like look. 50 The natural body was considered uncivilized and the earlier it was controlled, the better. Even during the night adolescent girls had to wear the corset. Sometimes the bone or the steel broke, damaging internal organs. ‘In a pre-antibiotic medical era, a punctured lung was a possible forerunner for pneumonia and death.’ 51 Even if the internal organs were not pierced they could not develop naturally. Therefore general ill-health, paleness, nervousness, fainting, sick headaches, pelvic disorder, difficult pregnancy and child-birth, miscarriages and many other ailments were common. Corsets or tight lacing prohibited women from participating in anything strenuous. A case in point is the tragedy of the Atlantic steamer in which all men survived and all women perished. Women could not raise their arms and climb to safety. 52 Although tight lacing was hampering women’s health and even causing their deaths it remained fashionable. ‘Seventy five per cent of women in civilized countries [wore] corsets, and the rest usually [wore] corsets, only under other names.’ 53
The corset was imposed on Western women and foot-binding on Chinese women for similar reasons. There were erotic aspects, respectability and marriageability. They were both culture specific sado-rituals. Women’s bodies were sculpted for male sexual gratification. They both started from the middle classes to prove their superiority, but then women from other classes desiring upward mobility followed suit. 54 Mothers imposed this custom on the younger generation thinking that they could not ruin the future of their daughters as acceptable brides. Sexism and classism worked in both these cultural practices. Racism and imperialism added another dimension to the Victorian dress.
Closely fitting clothes were essential in establishing, and more importantly, maintaining a “civilized” demeanour when conquering the empire. … Tightly laced corsetry served this purpose admirably. It disciplined and contained the “Western” body and acted as a symbol of civilization and order, as opposed to the chaos and disorder of the “primitive” naked or semi-naked bodies of the “unconverted”.
55
As white people went about civilizing the savage, the people of colour, they also made whiteness the symbol of divinity, purity, and innocence.
56
Victorian women not only wore corsets which made them look pale, they also ate arsenic in small quantities, drank vinegar and used poisonous whitening substances to achieve a ‘romantic’ pallor. They even used blue vein colouring preparations to paint their veins to prove that they had blue blood.
57
We still talk about the royal family having blue blood which has racist connotations. The origin of this term ‘blue blood’ is interesting:
A literal translation of the Spanish “sangre azul”, attributed to some of the oldest and proudest families of Castile, who claimed never to have intermarried with Moors, Jews, or other races. The expression probably originated in the blueness of the veins of people of fair complexion as compared with those of dark skin.
58
As far as I know the Victorian age is the same period when white became the popular colour for the bridal gown. Many websites tell us that Queen Victoria introduced this. 59 It is surprising since in most cultures white is the symbol of death and mourning. 60 Yet in the Victorian era women’s near death look signified virginity and purity. I am glad that women of colour were not made to wear the corset, but sadly we Christian women of colour have inherited the white wedding dress. In my Indian culture white is a widow’s garment, yet uncritically we have adopted this Western custom without detecting the racism and sexism inherent in it.
The Victorian woman’s life was so sanitized that life itself was drained out. Summers writes, ‘Women and death became almost synonymous in cultural representations of illness and mortality that flooded Victorian society.’ 61 I wonder whether there is a connection between this extreme sanitization and the white wedding gown?
While the Victorians were criticizing the barbaric practices in the non-Western cultures ‘Clitoridectomy, first performed in England in 1858 by the surgeon Isaac Baker Brown, was employed to cure sexual disorders including masturbation, hysteria and other neurasthenic disorders thought to be related to sexual dysfunction’. 62 Amputation of the clitoris became increasingly popular in the Victorian period. 63 Women were often in excruciating pain because of tight lacing and other things they were doing to attain a romantic deathly pallor. When they complained it was seen as attention seeking overdramatic behaviour, hysteria, related to the female sex. The cure was hysterectomy. The connection between the terms hysteria and hysterectomy, both of which originated in the nineteenth century, is well known. They come from the Greek term hustera meaning womb. 64
According to Summers, in the Victorian period the physicians who previously had observed the intimate parts of the female body only during autopsy, now had unprecedented access to living bodies as women came with many complaints due to corsetry. This provided great opportunity for the development of gynaecology and obstetrics. Female suffering could have been reduced or almost eradicated if women had been allowed to discard corsets. But the gynaecologists and obstetricians maintained a double standard regarding corsetry; sometimes they denounced it and sometimes recommended it as ‘wholesale condemnation of the corset was not in their best interests … Both groups [the gynaecologists and the obstetricians] sought to establish themselves and their specializations as reputable during these decades’. 65 When women presented themselves with uterine and abdominal damage because of the use of a corset, pessaries were inserted into the vagina to support the uterus. These often caused infections, sending them back to the gynaecologists. Summers quotes some of the words of one Miss Beecher, ‘So dreadful was the pain from the uterine displacement … that many women would have exchanged it gladly for the “horrible torments of savage Indians or cruel inquisitors” and would have considered it a “merciful exchange”.’ 66
At the beginning of the twentieth century dress reformers and some feminists campaigned against corsetry and eventually it was eradicated. Interestingly, even Elizabeth Cady Stanton insisted, ‘“the shortest way to a man’s favour” was “through his passions” and therefore women, whose socio-economic well-being was dependent on attracting a suitable male, should “arrange their clothes to produce maximum stimulation of the animal nature of the opposite sex”’. 67 Since Stanton supported it and now white feminists seem to suffer amnesia about corsetry, the legacy of unnatural sculpting of the female body continues in the West and spreads elsewhere. Many women are not happy in their natural body. Women have silicon implants in their breasts and buttocks, liposuctions, tummy tucks and various other kinds of plastic surgery in order to conform to the androcentric image of sexually attractive women. Some women die, as in the recent case of silicon injection into the buttock. This desire for one’s body to be sculpted is evidence of the depth of indoctrination. In the words of bell hooks, ‘One measure of the success of … indoctrination is that we perpetuate both consciously and unconsciously the very evils that oppress us.’ 68 Feminist Theology has a big part to play in exposing the horrendous past of corsetry to help women realize how strong indoctrination can be and to resist its contemporary forms.
Conclusion
As an Asian feminist theologian in Britain, I look to my white sisters for more of an awareness of the part that imperial patriarchy has been playing in the lives of women of colour. We need to be more vocal when imperial patriarchy uses feminist language in order to perpetuate Western hegemony in the world. white feminists need to be extra vigilant so that they do not inadvertently use imperial patriarchal language. I would also like my white sisters to keep gender analysis free from the notion that Western men are more civilized than men of colour. We will have to fight patriarchy in each culture remembering that Western aggrandisement makes many women’s situations worse. Unconscious racism, destructive to our solidarity, should not be allowed to sneak into Western feminism. We also need constantly to expand our knowledge so that we are not solely dependent on Western epistemology. I hope not to see the many mistakes of Mary Daly repeated in the future work of white feminists. I see women of colour as the Hagars of today. I believe that the unity between Hagar and Sarah/Sarai is dependent upon our united efforts against the overarching imperial patriarchy. When we are united in this struggle, we shall be better able to support one another in our work towards ending sexism in all its manifestations in each and every culture.
Footnotes
1
It was at the time the practice of British immigration officials to have women seeking to enter Britain subjected to a gynaecological examination supposedly to determine whether they were bona fide fiancées or married women. The Home Secretary ended this practice on 2 February 1979. See, Travis A (2011) Virginity tests for immigrants ‘reflected dark age prejudices’ of 1970s Britain. The Guardian, 8 May. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/08/virginity-tests-immigrants-prejudices-britain. See also, Qureshi H (2011) Bride and prejudice. The Guardian, 13 May. Available at:
. Qureshi writes about her mother, who was subjected to a virginity test at the Heathrow Airport 35 years ago, when she entered the UK as a new bride.
2
Roy A (2002) The Algebra of Infinite Justice. London: Flamingo, 196.
Reading my article some readers might perceive the passion and anger of my writing. Oppression breeds anger and as a black/non-white person in the UK, I am at the receiving end of many injustices. Robert Beckford, a British black theologian, has analysed black rage, which he names low-level rage. He says, ‘Many Black people experience this kind of rage every day by virtue of living in what bell hooks calls “a white supremacist, capitalist society”’. According to Beckford, ‘Externalised rage can take on a variety of forms including the collective rage that is witnessed in social protest and uprisings.’ See, Beckford R (2001) God of the Rhatid, Redeeming Rage. London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 8-9. I consider my writing a form of protest rising from low-level rage.
3
Albert Memmi, cited in hooks b (1982) Aren’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. London: Pluto Press, 122.
4
‘Filipina feminist educator Virginia Fabella notes that the word “contextualization” was actually introduced to the theological world in 1972 by Taiwanese theologian, Shoki Coe, to signify the dynamic way of taking into account both traditional culture and contemporary realities …’ See, Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology (2005) Introduction to Feminist Theologies: Modules on Asian Feminist Theologies, Book 1. Kuala Lumpur: Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology, 28.
5
Roy A (2002) The Algebra of Infinite Justice. London: Flamingo, 191.
6
See, Freire P (1996) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin Books. Freire P (2000) Cultural Action for Freedom. Harvard: Harvard Educational Review.
7
Weems RJ (1993) Womanist reflections on biblical hermeneutics. In: Cone JH, Wilmore GS (eds) Black Theology, a Documentary History Vol 2. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 222.
8
See, Barton M (1999) Scripture as Empowerment for Liberation and Justice: The Experience of Christian and Muslim Women in Bangladesh. Bristol: University of Bristol.
9
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 79.
10
In 1998 when I began teaching at Queen’s, Robert Beckford made me realize that feminism in Britain meant white feminism. Referring to Loades A (ed.) (1990) Feminist Theology: A Reader. London: SPCK, Beckford wrote, ‘For example, an anthology of feminist theology, published in 1990, made no mention of Black women in Britain, or anywhere else in the world!’ See, Beckford R (1998) Jesus is Dread. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 160. It is possible only for white women to write a book about white feminist theology and name it Feminist Theology.
11
Alice Walker, cited in Weems RJ (1993) Womanist reflections on biblical hermeneutics. In: Cone JH, Wilmore GS (eds) Black Theology, a Documentary History Vol 2. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 218.
12
Fabella V (2006) Asian feminist perspective: an overview. In: Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology. Telling Her Story: Introduction to an Asian Feminist Re-reading of History: Modules on Asian Feminist Theologies, Book 2. Kuala Lumpur: Asian Women’s Resource Centre for Culture and Theology, 28.
13
Chakravorty Spivak G (1988) Can the subaltern speak? In: Nelson C, Grossberg L (eds) Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 296-97, cited in Kwok P-L, Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (2002) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 64.
14
Chakravorty Spivak G (1988) Can the subaltern speak?, 299, cited in Grewal I, Kaplan C (2001) Warrior marks: global womanism’s neo-colonial discourse in a multicultural context. In: Phillips L (ed) (2006) The Womanist Reader. New York, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 379.
15
Liddle J, Joshi R (1986) Daughters of Independence: Gender, Caste and Class in India. London: Zed Books, 30-32, cited in Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 498.
16
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 63.
17
Viner K (2002) Feminism as imperialism. The Guardian, 21 September, p. 26.
18
Wintour P (2011) Cameron tells muslim Britain: stop tolerating extremists: PM says those who don’t hold ‘British’ values will be shunned by government. The Guardian, 5 February, p. 1.
19
Moore S (2011) If the Left is to rise again, it must lift the official silence on race and culture. The Guardian, 5 February, p. 35.
20
Ahmed L (1992) Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 247.
21
hooks b (1982) Aren’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. London: Pluto Press, 121.
22
Daly M (1979) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. London: The Women’s Press Ltd.
23
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 69.
24
Lorde A (1984) An open letter to Mary Daly. In: Lorde A, Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press/Freedom, 66-71. Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 79. See also Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4).
25
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 75.
26
Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 509.
27
Schrijvers J (1993) The Violence of ‘Development’: A Choice for Intellectuals. Maharaj N (ed.) Pugh L (trans.) Utrecht and New Delhi: International Books and Kali for Women, 35.
28
Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 500-501.
29
‘India as it is’, in New Statesman and Nation, 16 July 1927, cited in: Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 502.
30
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 63.
31
Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 501, 504.
32
Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 508.
33
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 73.
34
Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 514-15.
35
Liddle J, Rai S (1998) Feminism, imperialism and orientalism: the challenge of the ‘Indian Woman’. In: Women’s History Review 7(4): 514.
36
Daly M (1979) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 154.
37
Ahmed L (1992) Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 244.
38
Engineer A (1989) Women under the authority of Islam. In: Chatterji J (ed.) The Authority of the Religions and the Status of Women. New Delhi: Banhi Series, A Joint Women’s Programme Publication, 27-28.
39
Roy A (2002) The Algebra of Infinite Justice. London: Flamingo, xxiii.
40
Barton M (1999) Scripture as Empowerment for Liberation and Justice: The Experience of Christian and Muslim Women in Bangladesh. Bristol: University of Bristol, 37.
41
Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 65.
42
Dalmia-Luderitz V (1992) ‘Sati’ as a religious rite: parliamentary papers on widow immolation, 1821-30. JSTOR Economic and Political Weekly 27(4).
43
Daly M (1979) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 439.
44
Pearsall J (ed.) (1998) The New Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2032.
45
Van Gulik RH (1961) Sexual Life in Ancient China. Leiden: The Netherlands: EJ Brill, 222, cited in Daly M (1979) Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 149.
46
Kerr JG (1869) Small feet. Chinese Recorder 2, 169-70, cited in Kwok P-L (2002) Unbinding our feet: saving brown women and feminist religious discourse. In: Donaldson LE, Kwok P-L (eds) Postcolonialism, Feminism & Religious Discourse. New York, London: Routledge, 70.
47
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg.
48
See, Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 59, 63, 207, 144.
49
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 105.
50
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 89.
51
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 99.
52
Phelps E (1874) What to Wear? London: Sampson, Low et al., 14-18, cited in Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 130.
53
de van Warner I, MD (1895) Clothing. In: Harland M (ed.) Talks Upon Practical Subjects. New York: Warner Brothers, 110-31, cited in Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 97.
54
Some readers might presume that corsetry was a middle class phenomenon, but Summers makes it clear that it spread to all classes. See note 53 for the percentage of women who wore corsets.
55
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 19.
56
See for example, Jacques Nicolas Paillot de Montabert, cited in Goldenberg DM (2003) The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2.
57
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 126-27.
59
See for example, ArticleSnatch.com (2011) The origin of the wedding dress. Available at: ![]()
61
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 124.
62
Hare EH (1962) Masturbatory insanity: the history of an idea. In: Journal of Mental Science 108 (452): 2-25, cited in Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 231.
63
Hare EH (1962) Masturbatory insanity: the history of an idea. In: Journal of Mental Science 108 (452): 2-25, cited in Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 84.
64
Pearsall J (ed.) (1998) The New Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 903.
65
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 118.
66
Beecher Miss (1876) Miss Beecher’s Housekeeper and Health Keeper: Containing Five Hundred Recipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking: Also Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876, 249, cited in: Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victoian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 112.
67
Summers L (2001) Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset. Oxford, New York: Berg, 95.
68
hooks b (1982) Aren’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. London: Pluto Press, 120.
