Wrestling with Imperial Patriarchy

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:

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.