Eclipses are rare and mercifully transitory phenomena. They come about when planets enter into a specific alignment that plunges us into darkness. Had there been a political equivalent of such phenomena I would venture to say that women\u2019s rights- which have ostensibly never enjoyed greater international visibility- are heading for dangerously turbulent times. No single or dramatic incident presages this possibility. It is, rather, the persistent drip-drip effect of a myriad of apparently unrelated influences that feed into a \u201cfeminism-phobia\u201d that, sadly, has become quite\u00a0a la mode<\/em>.<\/p>\n You may well wonder what led me to this gloomy prognosis at a point in time\u00a0 when a leading UK newspaper declared 2014 as \u201cthe best year ever for women<\/a>\u201d, celebrating it as \u201c a year of feminist insurrection against male violence: a year of mounting refusal to be silent, refusal to let our lives and torments be erased or dismissed\u201d There\u00a0 is little room for such complacency. On the\u00a0 contrary, there is a strong case to be made\u00a0 that a trio of influences is impoverishing the debates relating to women\u2019s rights and constricting the discursive spaces for a feminist agenda.<\/p>\n Before embarking on a discussion of these influences, I would like to draw attention to an apparent paradox.\u00a0 Between 2011-2014, we opened a\u00a0platform<\/a>\u00a0on openDemocracy 50.50 to monitor and analyse the gender effects of the ‘Arab spring’ and of protest movements in the Middle East more generally.<\/p>\n One of the most hopeful features of youth-led protests, which tookunprecedented forms<\/a>\u00a0for the region, was their anti-authoritarian and anti-patriarchal thrust and their recognition of the primarily political nature of gender based violence.\u00a0 Not only were women taking part in street protests and being vocal in the public domain, but they were joined by many men of their generation in an unprecedented display of cross-gender solidarity. These movements were not clamouring for an Islamic state, nor did the parties of political Islam play a key leadership role despite their initial prominence in successor regimes. Notwithstanding the\u00a0 devastating developments that followed, there were unmistakable signs of\u00a0heightened aspirations and a demand for inclusive citizenship, gender justice and equality<\/a>\u00a0in the protests themselves.<\/p>\n Yet despite evidence of grass-roots mobilization in pursuit of a broad range of rights, including women\u2019s rights to freedom from violence and to public participation, at the level of academic, political and popular discourse, feminism was being increasingly discredited and dismissed as either irrelevant or pass\u1e17 or, even worse, as the handmaiden of imperialism and of overbearing security states. How can we explain this disjuncture? How did the struggle for women\u2019s rights- which started out as one of the emancipatory movements of the past two centuries alongside the fight against slavery and racism- end up being kicked about and maligned not only by right wing misogynists or clerical establishments demanding a monopoly on the regulation of gender and sexuality, but by authors and commentators who consider themselves left-wing or liberal? Could\u00a0<\/strong>we conceive of being told that the fight against racism had \u201cgone too far\u201d or \u201cgone wrong\u201d (except in extreme white supremacist quarters)? Yet it is quite commonplace, even banal, to hear this charge in relation to feminism. How did we get here?<\/p>\n The ugly sisters of feminism: the global nexus and its perverse appropriations There have been at least three defining encounters between women\u2019s movements, which are historically diverse and context specific, and powerful global influences.<\/p>\n The first is the encounter with the global \u201cinstitutionalization\u201d of standards and mechanisms for gender equality through the workings of the United Nations (UN) system and major international donors. Leaving aside the broader debates on the\u00a0shortfalls<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0merits<\/a>\u00a0of international human rights law, it is important to acknowledge the diverse ways in which\u00a0 women\u2019s rights platforms became depoliticized\u00a0 through co-optation by donor- assisted governments (most glaringly so in the case of repressive, non-democratic regimes). In the case of the Arab uprisings, the previously opportunistic nature of engagements with gender equality platforms contributed to their\u00a0rapid derailment and demise<\/a>\u00a0and to attempts to claw back existing rights.<\/p>\n Jumping on the gender equality bandwagon was a \u201csoft option\u201d used by numerous authoritarian regimes to indicate their commitment to ademocratization process they had no intention of honouring<\/a>. The same logic applies to other attempts to co-opt liberal norms in the realms of gender and sexuality, such as\u00a0pinkwashing Israel<\/a>\u00a0to boost its democratic credentials, thus deflecting attention from the human rights abuses perpetrated against Palestinians.<\/p>\n Do these appropriations of liberal\/egalitarian norms turn women\u2019s rights activists using international frameworks as a point of reference into uncritical dupes? What is there to be gained from a nihilistic approach to rights enshrined in international law? And what are\u00a0the risks involved<\/a>? These are questions that cannot be dismissed lightly.<\/p>\n The second ill-fated encounter took place after the global turn to neo-liberalism since the Regan-Thatcher era. Whereas initially many women\u2019s movements were explicitly committed to social justice and redistributive goals, their incorporation into donor-funded machineries in the neo-liberal age produced both an \u2018ngo\u2019isation of political movements , with women\u2019s ngos often acting as contractors for governments and donors, and the de-radicalization of their objectives, now transformed into technocratic fixes for the \u201cempowerment\u201d of women within the parameters of a market economy. In the West, this gave rise to a triumphalist boardroom or\u00a0corporatist feminism<\/a>\u00a0extolling the virtues of the capitalist market for women who \u201cmake it\u201d. In the South, meanwhile, the spaces left vacant by evaporating state provision and the dearth of social welfare were occupied by actors and social movements with conservative agendas and roots in faith-based organizations (whether these be Catholic, Evangelical or Muslim). Populist and religious movements claiming to speak on behalf of the poor, the marginalized and the powerless in different regional contexts increased their appeal regardless of the often authoritarian or dogmatic overtones of their political messages. The drifting apart of gender justice and social justice goals was to have grave consequences: it marked out women\u2019s rights as the alleged preoccupation of a privileged elite, especially in societies where\u00a0top-down modernization agendas<\/a>\u00a0were implemented by authoritarian regimes. Losing sight of the fact that feminism cannot be divorced from a broader social justice agenda was to exact serious costs.<\/p>\n The final and most devastating encounter was yet to come. It took shape in the geopolitical\u00a0\u00a0 context of the War on Terror following the\u00a0 9\/11 events in the United States and Operation Enduring Freedom that led to the overthrow of the Taliban. The invocation of oppressed Muslim women as part of the rationale for military intervention provoked predictable outrage in the face of the\u00a0naked instrumentalism<\/a>\u00a0behind the feminist conversion of the Bush administration. This spawned a veritable cottage industry of critiques of feminism as imperialism (about which I shall say more below) and of the place of women\u2019s rights as tools in this arsenal of oppression.<\/p>\n One of the inadvertent consequences of these critiques, is to deligitimize the struggles of women in Afghanistan who attempt to expand their rights by whatever slender means at their disposal (including references to international conventions such as CEDAW and participating in donor-funded projects). Could they do so now without incurring the risk of being accused as abetters of imperialism? Does the fact that Western powers used the plight of Afghan women as propaganda material to drum up public support for the NATO intervention turn women into \u201cnative collaborators\u201d when they opt to fight for their rights in the framework of international law? Or would they have been altogether better advised to keep silent or even find virtue in what the Taliban has to offer them\u00a0 –\u00a0 something that some Western commentators did in fact suggest at a point when negotiations for a\u00a0political settlement<\/a>\u00a0with the Taliban were on the table.<\/p>\n Such powers of dissuasion and intimidation can be overwhelming in polarized and conflict-ridden societies. This intimidation is already being perpetrated, by force of arms, by formations such as the Taliban; a Greek chorus of critics denouncing feminism as imperialism can only add to their woes and boost the propaganda arsenal of those opposing them. But why is it that women are being made to face such perverse choices? Beyond feminism-as-imperialism Critiques of feminism as imperialism are neither new nor the product of the War on Terror. Indeed, as early as 1984 Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar\u00a0 used the term \u201cimperial feminism<\/a>\u201d in the British context to argue that the pretensions of white-middle class women\u2019s movements to represent\u00a0 global \u201csisterhood\u201d were based on a denial of racism (and difference) and of the more general oppression of Third World women by relations of imperial domination. Said\u2019sOrientalism<\/em>, published in 1978, became the foundational text for feminist post-colonial scholarship which\u00a0 has a long and distinguished pedigree. This legacy is now being built upon by Anti-Imperialist-Transnational-Feminist Studies (AITFS<\/a>), albeit in an intellectually messier way since anti-imperialism is sometimes made to serve as the \u201csilver bullet\u201d to address all oppressions.<\/p>\n No one is contesting the fact that the colonial feminism perpetrated by European powers rested on the Orientalist trope of a backward and misogynistic Muslim world whose women needed liberation through the agency of an enlightened West. Indeed, this came to constitute the \u201coriginal sin\u201d of women\u2019s movements. The entanglements of feminism with the politics of colonialism meant that women activists and early reformers were left with impossible choices. Those who sought an expansion of their rights under nominally secular post-colonial regimes were under enormous\u00a0pressure to conform<\/a>\u00a0to anti-colonial nationalist priorities that singled women out as the repositories of cultural authenticity, even before resurgent Islamist tendencies got into the act of upping the stakes even further. Feminists engaging with Islam and attempting to\u00a0unsettle patriarchal interpretations<\/a>\u00a0of the Sharia were undoubtedly seeking a way out of this sterile bind.<\/p>\n But, alas, far from alleviating this enduring predicament the current conjuncture has led to a further hardening of positions. \u00a0During the long history of anti-colonial movements, from the Haitian revolution of the 1790s to the independence movements of the 1960s and \u201970s in Asia and Africa, the struggles against colonialism did not rely on a wholesale repudiation of the revolutionary ideals of the West. In the polarized context of contemporary geopolitics, however, anything assumed to emanate\u00a0from the imperial West may be considered as tainted goods by theoretical purists who denounce the products of the Enlightenment, most particularly secular humanism, as the fount of all evil.\u00a0 I followed this line of argumentation with a mild degree of intellectual curiosity at first, followed by mounting\u00a0ennui<\/em>\u00a0(given the repetitive and almost formulaic nature of restatements of this position) until I got my wake-up call: never mind secular rights activists, even Muslim feminists endeavouring to find an indigenous voice for change and reform were now in the crosshairs of critics. To the extent that they fail to repudiate the principles of egalitarianism enshrined in international law- another tool of empire- could they not be similarly tainted with liberalism and, by association, imperialism?<\/p>\n This logic may, of course, equally apply to\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0attempts at reform within Islam since Western powers are not only interested in, but actively, and quite ineptly, promoting the search for a so-called \u201cmoderate\u201d Islam as a means of containingjihadi\u00a0<\/em>tendencies seen as a terrorist threat. To add yet another rhetorical question to my list, I would like to ask, again, : should the poisoned atmosphere of geopolitics permanently muzzle secular, ( or, indeed religious) dissenters in the Muslim world?\u00a0 Those voices, by the way, have always existed and been systematically persecuted.\u00a0 Let us not add to their burden.<\/p>\n Playing a weak hand We have now reached a disabling\u00a0cul-de-sac<\/em>\u00a0that must be overcome if we wish to open up rather than constrict and constrain the spaces within which diverse feminist voices and positions can find legitimate articulation. The exchanges on imperialism and feminism featured on openDemocracy between\u00a0Deepa Kumar<\/a>,\u00a0Meredith Tax<\/a>,\u00a0Saadia Toor<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Afiya Zia<\/a>, point to the urgency of transcending the parameters of\u00a0 these discussions. The protagonists – all women, all on the left, all pacifists and none inimical\u00a0 to women\u2019s struggles for their rights – were not, in my view,\u00a0 arguing about imperialism\u00a0per se\u00a0<\/em>but ultimately\u00a0 about the types of alliances feminists\u00a0 might entertain, condone or refrain from in pursuing their objectives. Even the all pervasive tensions around the secularist\/Islamist dichotomy appear to me as surface phenomena\u00a0 concealing the deeper messiness of politics in countries like\u00a0 Pakistan. Here, a US- funded military has nurtured\u00a0jihadi\u00a0<\/em>tendencies for its own geopolitical and domestic ends, tendencies which have destabilized the entire polity and become the target of the US War on Terror.<\/p>\n Where does one even begin to draw the lines of entanglements with imperialism in such a context? With women\u2019s NGOs benefiting from WoT funding largesse under Musharraf\u2019s military regime? With feminists- and other groups- giving qualified support to the military for finally turning against\u00a0jihadi<\/em>groups with US assistance in the hope this may jolt the noxious nexus of Pakistani politics onto a new track? Let us face the fact that women\u2019s rights activists are frequently thrust into impossible situations not of their own making and must muddle through, making pragmatic choices and alliances in order to play what is an extraordinarily weak hand. Because this is exactly what we are talking about; not the fiction of a powerful movement with the might of empire behind it, but the reality of\u00a0 weak and politically marginal constituencies whose meagre legal and political gains are at the mercy of political forces over which they have very little control. And whose rights, tenuous and fragile, have long been and continue to be the punching ball of male-dominated politics.<\/p>\n It may serve us well to go back to basics and remember the words of British suffragist Rebecca West when she said\u00a0\u201cFeminism is the radical notion that women are people.\u201d\u00a0 Let us not delude ourselves that this objective has been achieved. We do not need anything as dramatic as the IS slave markets of Mosul to remind ourselves of that fact. We only need to inject some common sense and realism into our evaluation of where women\u2019s rights really stand when we take a broader perspective. Let us not overlook the fact that there are powerful transnational alliances cutting across continents and world religions aiming, above all, to establish the principle that matters relating to sexuality, to the control of female bodies, and to reproductive choice do not belong to the sphere of civic deliberation, public choice, or human rights but to a domain of non-negotiable morality defined by doctrinal imperatives. Such is the momentum of these platforms that the UN\u00a0failed to pass a resolution for a Fifth World Conference on Women<\/a>\u00a0from fear of the consequences of re-opening international agreements on women\u2019s rights. Furthermore, this\u00a0kulturkampf<\/em>\u00a0over the politics of gender does not readily map onto\u00a0 North \/ South or\u00a0 Christendom\/Islam divisions.\u00a0 While some mobilize for gay rights in the US, others are busy\u00a0bombing abortion clinics<\/a>.\u00a0 And it is not only in Uganda that\u00a0gays fear for their lives<\/a>. No region, country or religion holds a monopoly on fanaticism or plain bigotry. Nor do these positions necessarily pit men against women since there are cross-gender alliances on both sides of these arguments; this, in short, is about politics. Ultra-conservative forces, diverse as they are, are better established, better organized and better funded and many are not adverse to the use of violence. It is time to join the dots of this challenging conjuncture and creatively seek political alliances that can help to make the most of the weak hand most women\u2019s rights movements and sexual liberties platforms have been dealt around the world.\u00a0\u00a0 To return to my astronomical metaphor, unless some planets rotating blindly in their set orbits are knocked off their course through our deliberate efforts and our skills at coalition building we shall unwittingly be expediting and legitimizing an eclipse of women\u2019s rights. The principal ray of hope in this difficult landscape is that the sociological realities of many societies are running ahead of the ideologies of social control and authoritarian governance that power holders wield.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dy1m18dp41gup.cloudfront.net\/cdn\/farfuture\/x0oeLEXRd9YgLpIn5p-uqST82g7oiTToos5Dd7hYEI8\/mtime:1421421412\/files\/imagecache\/article_xlarge\/wysiwyg_imageupload\/535193\/DancingInGeziPark-UrielSinai-GettyImages-620px_0.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Dancing in Gezi Park. Credit: Uriel Sinai<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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