'Body Politic': Culture Wars Unveiled

The French niqab ban has aroused a high level of controversy in Europe as well as among women everywhere. Some cheer it on as a defense of feminism and the gains of the feminist revolution, others view it as an attack on Muslims in Europe. Personally, I don't believe a government should have the right to legislate what a man or woman can or can't wear whether it's in Paris or Riyadh yet we often take for granted norms concerning clothing (i.e. you can't go out naked, it's socially unacceptable and even illegal in most countries). I would like to think the niqab ban is more of a security issue than anything having to do with sexual mores as it's far better reasoning to ban a face-veil than arguments for 'female emancipation.'

What's interesting about the debate is the ire it's rousing among different groups of feminists who frame female emancipation in entirely different terms. Personally, I believe in a woman's free will and her right and responsibility to exercise it. Yet, ironically, 'free will' may not exist at all given that we are social creatures often taking for granted the fact that one of our chief motivations is to 'fit in' with whatever group our identities are pegged. But shouldn't adult women be allowed the right to define their identities and values? It's easy for many academics to quickly tack women to a certain set of socio-cultural circumstances based on what religion, ethnicity, or family political leanings they were born into and try to neatly divide them between the 'oppressed' and the 'liberated.' I believe these generalizations, and dare I say stereotypes, underestimate the ability of humans to reshape or cast off identities at will.

The counter-argument is that 'free will' is exceedingly limited or even perhaps an illusion. When a girl grows up and is subjected to community standards and peer pressure to 'cover up', harassed by men and threatened with 'hell fire' by right-wing preachers if they don't do so, where is 'free will'? Yet women are not powerless and voiceless. A woman can take risks to fight against anything they don't like or agree with. When a woman reaches adulthood she is neither an incapable puppet of her family or community nor is she a victim unless she chooses to be one. She is not bound by circumstance or culturally-determined. One can turn this argument around and equally say that in a hyper-sexualized liberal Western culture women face peer pressure to be thin and sexy and compete with each other in these terms. Does that make them 'victims' objectified by men?

A really interesting story came out today on the first Turkish woman to pose for Playboy in Germany. The Turkish actress and model, Sila Sahin, was raised Muslim. The author of the Die Welt article notes: "Because the legitimate debate over if or when the display of naked female bodies starts to hurt female dignity or, on the contrary, promotes it, presumes the ability of the woman to decide for herself whether she wants her naked body to be depicted or not."

In regards to her decision to pose for Playboy, she stated:

"For me, these pictures are an act of liberation from the cultural constraints of my childhood," says Sahin. "I have tried to please everybody for too long. With these images I want to show young Turkish women that it is OK to live the way they are; that it is not cheap to show skin; that you should pursue your goals instead of bowing down to others."

Some feminist groups are aghast at this statement and see Sahin's actions as an act of bowing down to please men. I see Sahin's actions as an exercise of her ability to reshape her identity. Can we identify Sahin as a Turk, a Muslim, an actress and a nude model? Or do we view her as hypocritical for having identities that are apparently inconsistent with one another? Why does a nude female body provoke such controversy? Equally, on the other end of the spectrum, why should covering up a female body arouse such controversy?

Conservative Muslims would declare Sahin no longer a Muslim by virtue of not following regulations on modesty - she's a blasphemer. She has drawn criticism not only from her own family but also from the conservative Turkish Muslim community. Yet, there are Catholics who use condoms and engage in sex before marriage, yet still identify themselves as Catholics. There are also Christians who are pro-choice and pro-gay, and still identify themselves as Christian. Identity is not a neat little box where all our beliefs need be consistent with each other. People pick and chose every day what they believe in and what defines who they are and many don't care to be pinned down by social or cultural conventions based on their birth, family origins, or religion. In regards to women, society always seeks to define her in terms of the mores framing her sexuality, whether implicitly or explicitly. 

Many arguments and laws on abortion, dress, or regulating sexual behaviour assume women are incapable of making their own adult decisions or of wielding responsibility over their own free will. Yet, our judgments concerning a woman's choices over her sexual determination are not solely culturally-defined, but the result of hard-wired by evolutionary biases. Those biases inform our cultures, social mores, and even religious regulations. They are the cause of a collective madonna/whore complex across cultures. 

Different groups have entirely opposing views as to what 'oppresses' or 'liberates' women, values seemingly at odds with one another but I would argue there is a striking similarity in the histories of double standards globally. These arguments have historically been defined by men and more recently women who believe they know what's 'right' for other women. The danger lies that if the other side is right then the social mores of one's own side is worthy of stigmatization - a flawed logic. 

When discussing 'women's liberation' fingers often point at conservative countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran. Yet consider that in the United States, in Texas, up until 1974 there was a law in the books that allowed a husband the right to kill his wife if he caught her in flagrante delicto with a lover. But this law did not function the other way around. A woman did not have the right to murder her husband or his paramour if he was caught cheating on her. Sexual double standards transcend cultures. Cultures around the world are  similar in their sexual double standards, distinctions existing only in gradations.

We shouldn't rely on experts to make blanket-statements defining any one group, especially in regards to women. It's easy to forget that individuals can cast off their former identities and recreate new ones and chose to live by entirely different values that may have been anathema to the communities to which they were born. It may not be a simple matter to drop one's family values for new ones but it's not an impossible task. Women are free agents of their own destinies and not necessarily bound by culture, religion, or politics.

CNN's Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery

CNN is hosting a special investigative blog dedicated to ending modern-day slavery. The Freedom Project contains video clips, articles, and resources to better inform the public concerning the facts of human trafficking, child, and sex slavery.

Even better, CNN has a section titled How You Can Help emphasizing the role technology plays to raise awareness and also raise money to help the organizations taking on this cause.

The Internet in Society: Empowering and Censoring Citizen?

First saw it on Mahmood's Den, another brilliant gem by RSA Animate:

Story Highlights: Anti-Corruption Warriors & More Blogger Arrests

Really loving some of the investigative pieces The New Yorker has come out with this month:

A Murder Foretold: The story of the murder of lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg who fought against Guatemalan corruption and violence. Rosenberg was murdered while hotly pursuing justice for the violent murder case of Lebanese businessman, Khalil Musa. Upon his death he left a video recording with a former spy chief accusing the Guatemalan President and his wife for the murders of Musa and himself. The video was posted on YouTube and tweeted resulting in public protests and launching a major investigation by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) Absolutely riveting.

Net Impact: The story of Alexey Navalny, lawyer and blogger, who is fighting Russia's government corruption head on through his blog RosPil which utilizes the Russian public examine documents and to call out dodgy business deals and government tenders.

Recent news clippings of interest:

UAE blogger who called for reform taken from his apartment - CNN reported that Ahmed Mansoor was abducted from his apartment by 10 men who also confiscated his lap top and his passport.

Egypt blogger arrests set "dangerous precedent" - Reuters reported that Maikel Nabil was arrested for "insulting the military" and faces three years in prison.

'Jasmine' Blogger Arrested - The Standard reported the arrest of writer and blogger Ran Yunfei for challenging the Communist Party.

Crowd Intelligence: The Case for Supporting a Free Web Globally

In a previous post regarding civil liberties, I mentioned that philosophically one could argue that total freedom of information could reasonably be dangerous to society especially in democracies where lines can be blurred between what constitutes a criminal action versus what is simply freedom of expression (the ambiguous term 'terrorist' being one such issue). Although, I suggested we should look at what actions constitute the intent to actually harm or impede on the rights of others versus actions that promote public accountability of one's government policies.

Currently, in Bahrain where protests are ongoing, the government has violently cracked down on opposition supporters and the media. The Bahrain Human Rights Council claims that 370 people have been arrested since the imposition of the emergency law on March 15. These include bloggers, human rights activists, and journalists. On March 28, the military public prosecutor imposed a media gag, banning "any publishing, through print, audio, video and online media, based on the requirements of discretion and commitment to the principle of confidential investigation." Here we have a government which instead of empowering and serving its people seeks to serve its own selfish interests by suppressing them. This is an unwise policy that is likely to backlash in the long-run. Moral realism and political karma will eventually prevail. No government can succeed or have stability for the long-term without seeking to serve the population on which its legitimacy depends, whether it's a monarchy, an oligarchy, or a democracy.

Consider this, right now the Internet is not a free medium globally. Censorship imposition and information regulation varies in different countries and government monitoring is quite common. I am not against monitoring the web if it is to prevent crime with proper privacy laws in place to protect innocent individuals. However, if monitoring is utilized to root out, blackmail, arrest, or even kill political opposition leaders such technology should not be sold by democratic countries to non-democratic ones. 

A free web benefits everyone politically, socially, and culturally because it empowers individuals. If people globally were to have open access to information, without political censorship, exchange ideas, have public forums of free debate then collectively the Internet becomes a powerful catalyst to transform societies simply by granting individuals the responsibility to verify fact from fiction and to organize collective decision-making in keeping their own governments accountable. Of course this depends on a population that has access to the Internet and who are literate, something that should be encouraged and promoted. Above all, greater civil liberties on the Internet also means inspiring greater creativity in individuals through collective exchange. This has massive impact not merely among artistic and literary groups, but also among corporate, business, and civil society groups who can connect through the Internet. Problems that have gone unresolved through isolated decision-making can benefit by access to crowd intelligence.

In 2004, James Surowiecki published a fascinating book The Wisdom of Crowds. Surowiecki argues that  the aggregation of information in groups results in decisions that are often better made than any single individual in the group. He argues that four elements are necessary for a 'wise crowd': 1. diversity of opinion, 2. independence of opinion (i.e. one's opinion is not influenced by others), 3. decentralization (i.e. people can draw from their unique local knowledge), and 4. aggregation (i.e. mechanisms are in place to turn private judgments into a collective decision). 

In corporate cultures, even among NGOs and in government departments, decision-making can be easily isolated, 'cliquefied', and threatened by the possibility of group-think. Surowiecki addresses the cases where crowd intelligence has failed: where opinions in a group are homogenous rather than diverse, where hierarchies are too strict, where groups are protective of their 'turf' or specialization and don't allow outsiders to contribute, where decisions are imitated, and where emotionalism or herd instinct can take hold. 

Now consider the massive resource potential of collective intelligence the Internet provides if it were a free medium globally. People across the world could easily provide for at least three of Surowieki's conditions for a 'wise crowd.' Already, mediums such as Wikipedia and Twitter allow people to cross reference information, cite sources, share news and opinion, and debate dubious points. Twitter and Facebook have been cited as factors helping aid the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. Although their influence has been questioned in regards to the current Arab revolutions taking place, one can't underestimate them as powerful tools or organization or to rally public opinion among a younger generation of net users.

Governments do themselves a disservice through the imposition of censorship and fail to tap a significant resource when they limit forums of information exchange. What if these online crowds were properly utilized to resolve major political, social, and economic problems globally instead of relying solely on 'experts'? The possibilities the Internet provides for this is endless. A politically uncensored Internet globally could well transcend language barriers and provide for collective creativity and problem-solving as well as for social, cultural, and political transformation.