I went to some lectures this weekend, what about you?

Faith and Feminism

WDF organised a Study Circle this Saturday on Faith and Feminism. It was led by Afyia Zia who specially flew in from Karachi to lead the Circle. I was also lucky enough to hear her speak at the Breaking Bad panel at the Jinnah Institute Ideas Conclave and, I was very impressed to her speak so clearly (and kick ass). 

Afiya spoke about the dearth of Pakistani scholarship on women's movements and class. She even explained that her supervisor would not allow her to say class movements because she couldn't rely on any other work to prove that movements were working class movements. She had to refer to the movements as women's movements. It is a bit shocking that in a country with such severe inequality, there is so little academic work on class. She also said that there is very little scholarship being produced by feminists. 

This statement struck me. For some time I've been thinking about how to think about a feminist movement here in Pakistan. How intellectual does it have to be, I've been asking myself, after attending so many Study Circles and lectures, organised by WDFP and AWP. 

In some respects my question has been answered: without a solid intellectual foundation and framework, a solid feminist movement might not address all the issues, structures, and cases that affect women. Without a foundation, a feminist movement may not be able formulate broad questions and arguments.

So, are you ready to toil your mind and get a Phd? Who's first? 

Afiya went on to explain the context in which she produced Faith and Feminism. This was the 9-11 era and, there was a lot of work on madrassa reforms, Islam, and jihad. Women only had an identity as Muslim women. What was missing in this time's scholarship? Scholars were writing in a post secularism / post secular state context. 'Women had agency and were not docile' was being argued. There was no talk about resisting the state or class. Afiya noted that there were movements and shifts that did not fall into the 'Muslim women have agency and are not resisting the state' :

1. Lady Healthcare Workers protesting for minimum wage and regularising their contracts
2. Women Councillors coming up
3. Okara Peasant Movement

Saba Mehmood was one scholar she mentioned whose work focused on Muslim women's agency. (I believe I have read an article about her last year, almost all the "intellectual" articles I read on my Facebook Newsfeed come up from Chapati Mystery. I urge you to subscribe to it, too.)

Afiya said the backlash to her book interestingly came mainly from Punjab and, from LUMS particularly. She said there was criticism on her use of 'binaries.'

In the Answer and Question session, the interesting points she made were :

1) Social media has helped activism, identify harassers or rapists or murderers, aided the MeToo movement, but can never replace activism. We have to understand the role of Big Tech and Social Media in propagating right wing agendas. Standing in the street with placards, protesting against abuse and injustice, and meeting fellow women cannot replace online pontification. She said that you can be protesting and meeting /engaging with fellow women and then, post about it but all your activism can't exist online, in a vacuum, only in virtual reality. She also said that many young feminists come to her and, say they have critiqued her work on Twitter which she finds amusing.

(To which I ask, can all feminist activists come out on the street? Can all of them leave their homes? And, can we really dismiss online activism with how fast technology is evolving and, merging with media, information, data, communication, and day to day movement? Perhaps there needs to be an exploration of the relationship between activism and social media. The medium itself is neither good nor bad and, now that it is an inherent part of our day to day lives, we will need to use it as a technology for good. Apparently TV was going to destroy society and human relations when it first came into our lives but we now miss the good old days when it was the only idiot box around.)

2) There is no feminist work on class theory. Feminists have to reclaim the class question.

3) In response to a man's question on how to be an ally and speak without silencing women, she said it is about one's political journey and, only he himself can address that.

(It is amusing that men are so concerned and confused. They just don't know what to do with themselves.)

AWP One-Day Political School 

There were 3 sessions in this fantastic event organised by AWP: i) The Political Party In the Digital Era ii) Feminism and Socialist Politics iii) Political Economy and Austerity.

I managed to attend Feminist and Socialist Politics by Ali Amirali and half of Political Economy and Austerity by  Aasim Sajjad Akhtar.

I really enjoyed Alia's lecture because it drove home some ideas that I have not clearly understood before. I also love hearing her speak in Urdu. I'm in awe of her and all the other leaders of AWP and WDF for their courage and, boldness.  There are many, many words which I don't understand (a friend and I who both have not studied in Pakistan were sitting close to each other and, kept trying to ask neighbours what certain words meant. For example jadeed is modern. It's a curse to not know your own country's official language. I feel like a colonial monkey, sometimes. Seriously.)

I had coffee with a friend I made at WDF before Saturday's Study Circle who said she really enjoys the intellectual stimulation and, also introduces her to concepts and ideas, helps her to identify those concepts and ideas and language which she 'feels' or 'thinks' about.

I really enjoyed learning socialism's link with feminism when thinking about the parallels of exploitation in the workplace and the home. Power dynamics, labour, hierarchy and even production can be analysed at home. If there is a factory boss, there is a male head of the household. If mode of production is being controlled and owned and profited by someone, a woman's labour, body and, even children are owned by the head of the house. A woman is literally used as a baby making machine. If capitalism dehumanises people and, takes away their self worth so does patriarchy in how it relegates a woman to the domestic space, doesn't even acknowledge her emotional, biological and physical labour. If factory workers are exploited, so our women. I haven't thought about the domestic politics in this way so it was really nice to think about it like this - a nice conceptual parallel between the factory and the house.

I also liked the unpackaging of "khandan" into "khan" and "dan." And, how family originates from a Latin word referencing a landowner. Marriage was only allowed for those men who could own land and, women and children were part of their property.

I was intrigued to hear Alia remark that she found feminism after the fact i.e. after becoming a political worker.

In the Answer / Question session, I asked a follow up question on the 'masculine anxiety' within leftist groups and, why the previous WDF circle did not male attendees to talk and, if this were radical feminism and if men should start having their own study circles. Alia had explained that even male members of leftist parties felt a certain discomfort or even pain at losing their male dominance or privilege and, it was better to express this rather than be quiet. She said that we have to be empathetic to the shattering of this identity.  She further explained that the Me Too movement was good but had a retributive tone to it which she did not agree with. I was a bit confused with these explanations because MeToo is not a retributive movement but one that gives a voice to all those who have faced sexual harassment and abuse. Yes, it may end up shaming and even lead to criminal prosecution but (if men have any shame or the law works in favour of the one raising her voice) but what is retributive about seeking justice?

I asked "If feminism is not retributive and we have to be empathetic to men, even those in leftist circles, and, with how most women privately complain they can't find a woke man, what is your advice to women in how to think about their movement?" What I should have added to that was "Do you think the work of the feminist movement is to transform the male mind that is so seeped into male male privilege?"

But if I had to say my question all over again, I would have phrased it like this:

"But if feminism isn't retributive and, we are here to be empathetic to the shattering of the male privilege [although wouldn't it make a great Tarantino film on the lines of Django and Inglorious Basterds where he explores revenge fantasies - pause for laughs], then what exactly is feminism about? How important is is to give weight to the idea of the male privilege being shattered and, the pain/grief that might come out of that? Is that a distraction? Why can't we focus our lectures/analysis more on why there is still so much sexism in the Left? Why can't we focus on the failure of the Left to bring feminism to the centre of its ethos? And, lastly, if we keep banging on about how much patriarchy has not only taken away men's humanity and vulnerability, we might end up excusing men and forgiving them too easily. Let's not forget what happened in South Africa - black people forgave white people because apparently white people too had suffered from apartheid's ideological brainwashing and, what they end up with? Nothing. They got political power but economic power stayed with white people. I am merely using this as a convenient broad analogy and, please excuse me because apartheid and, the current situation in South Africa is complex and deserves more discussion. So, yes, we need to learn about how feminism can aid our efforts to build socialist politics but not without bringing light to the Left's failure in the first place."