Stop the fight for women's equality.

AuthorMcGowan, Miranda
PositionA. Citizenship's Meaning Is Contested and Contextual through IV. Conclusion, with footnotes, p. 175-195
  1. CITIZENSHIP'S MEANING IS CONTESTED AND CONTEXTUAL

  1. Citizenship is gendered

    Kathryn Abrams's chapter on three modern women's antiwar movements (p. 131) reveals a stumbling block in the way of the drive for equal status as citizens: gender stereotypes pervade the concept of citizenship. Her essay cautions that the concept of citizenship alone cannot do much work for feminism.

    Abrams notes that all anti-war protesters face an uphill battle for credibility. War protesters always risk appearing cowardly or disloyal (112) because patriotic feelings run at their highest when war imperils a nation (pp. 132-33). At such a time, a person's "obligations to the government, rather than ... rights against it," take center stage (pp. 132-33). (113) Anti-war protesters can establish credibility by claiming that some special characteristic about their group gives them authority to protest. One winning strategy is for protesters to assert that they have made some "individual sacrifice" to support "the war effort" (p. 133). Former soldiers have the greatest credibility as protesters, as they are turning against the cause that made them heroes (pp. 133-34).

    Women anti-war protesters usually cannot assert authority as former solidiers because American law formally excludes them from combat (p. 134). (114) Instead, women protesters traditionally have drawn on their relationships to men who have been injured or killed during the war. Women who have lost a son or husband to war, for example, can use their sacrifices as evidence that they had "resolute[ly] and patriotic[ally] surrender[ed] ... their family members to military service" (p. 133). Women's protests, in other words, often rely on derivative authority dependent on the protesters' relationships with men. The reliance on these roles often calls to mind stereotypes about wives and mothers, and these stereotypes often color women's credibility as protesters. Sometimes these stereotypes strengthen women's protests, and sometimes they weaken them.

    Abrams describes three women's antiwar movements that have played on their womanhood to claim unique authority to "expose the error of war" (p. 134). Those three are Cindy Sheehan's month-long vigil outside of George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, in protest of the Iraq war, Code Pink's protest of both the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and the weekly protests by Israeli Women in Black of the continuing Palestinian conflict.

    Cindy Sheehan's vigil illustrates all of Abrams's main points. In 2004, Sheehan's son, Casey, was killed in the Iraq war. President Bush met with her later that year at the White House. This meeting infuriated her. According to Sheehan, President Bush "wouldn't look at ... pictures" of Casey, (115) and "[h]e didn't even know Casey's name."' (116) After her meeting with Bush, Sheehan felt deeply insulted as a mother and on behalf of her son. She used President Bush's slights to her and her son to legitimate her protest later that summer. When President Bush vacationed at his home in Crawford, Texas, in August of 2004, Sheehan camped outside its gates. She refused to leave until he met with her again. She demanded that he explain to her, "Why did [you] kill my son?" (117) "[The President] said my son died in a noble cause, and I want to ask him what that noble cause is." (118) Was it so noble that "he [had] encouraged his daughters to enlist" to fight for it? (119) She also wanted to "ask[] him to quit using Casey's sacrifice to justify continued killing" in Iraq. (120) He should instead "use Casey's sacrifice to promote peace." (121)

    Sheehan's motherhood gave her real credibility. It gave her the prerogative to demand President Bush's (and the nation's) attention: her young son--her flesh and blood--had died in Iraq. She had "skin in the game," (p. 137) which the President did not. She had special knowledge about the real costs of the Iraq war that the President and his advisors lacked because they had not risked their children's lives.

    Sheehan also used her motherhood to establish her credibility as a protester by camping out in a ditch in the Texas heat of August. The physical discomfort she endured recalled other sacrifices of physical comfort and physical appearance that mothers routinely make (pp. 144-45). (These uncomfortable conditions also reminded onlookers of the physical discomfort suffered by soldiers (p. 144).) Finally, her camping outside of President Bush's ranch effectively staked a claim to that land (p. 144). By refusing to leave, she defended her right to hold it. Historically women have neither staked nor defended claims to land. Her "occupation" also symbolized the American troops' occupation of Iraq. Her occupation of that land grabbed the media's (and America's) attention (p. 144).

    But Ms. Sheehan's motherhood and womanhood planted some significant landmines in her path, as well (pp. 143-44). Her plain speaking manner and frequent cursing made her look coarse, angry, and intimidating (pp. 143-44). Sheehan's husband filed for divorce during her protest, making her look like a neglectful wife (p. 147). Worse yet, Sheehan had also left her other children behind at home, making her look like a bad mother (p. 147). She was criticized for neglecting these womanly duties for a political cause (p. 147).

    Sheehan's use of her motherhood and the criticisms she received because of her roles as wife and mother call to mind the separate spheres ideology of the nineteenth century. That ideology placed tremendous roadblocks in the way of women's gaining the right to vote. Women have always been citizens of the United States, but women could only exercise their citizenship derivatively as daughters, wives, or mothers for the first 130 years of America's history. The law forbade them to vote because their husbands and fathers had the prerogative to represent their interests. When the Fifteenth Amendment granted black men the right to vote, Congress relied on this male prerogative to deny women the vote. Before they could receive the right to vote, women would have to overthrow "laws and customs that restricted women's roles in marriage and the market," according to Reva Siegel. (122)

    Opponents of women's suffrage feared that giving women the vote would "attack[] the integrity of the family" as wives overthrew their husbands' authority to represent them in the public sphere. (123) Women might even oppose their husband's political views (perish the thought!). Women who asserted a role in politics, opponents argued, "denie[d] and repudiate[d] the obligations of motherhood."(124) Allowing women to vote "would... utterly destroy[].... the family" (125)

    These claims sound comically cataclysmic and far-fetched today. But the criticisms that Cindy Sheehan received echo this rhetoric. When her protest conformed to traditional gender roles these stereotypes helped her cause, as her motherhood gave her credibility and authority to protest the war. But when her devotion to her cause led her to neglect her traditional roles as a woman and mother, she was criticized for her neglect, and her protest suffered. Sex roles, in short, still affect women's roles as citizens.

    The persistence of these gender stereotypes implies that the fight for equal citizenship status for women cannot make a simple end run around the pitfalls of the women's equality movement. Unless citizenship is neutered, women's "citizenship status" will reflect stereotypes (or put less negatively, generalizations) about women. Whether these stereotypes reduce or increase women's status is hard to say, but that these stereotypes will affect it is not hard to figure. A fight for equal citizenship status will therefore produce different results than a fight for sex equality, which in the United States has focused on erasing sex stereotyping.

    If sex stereotypes are the only barrier to the usefulness of women's equal citizenship status, then citizenship status is no worse than equality, which is also dogged by sex stereotypes. Certainly, sex stereotyping in the United States has lessened dramatically since the turn of the twentieth century. The arguments against women's right to vote provoke laughter. In thirty years, our current views of womanhood and motherhood may seem silly, too.

    There is, however, an additional problem with the concept of citizenship that does not affect the concept of equality. Sheehan's story and the arguments about women's suffrage show that the concept of citizenship is closely related to the concept of family. As I will now explain, this close relationship makes draining gender typing from citizenship difficult. I will argue that citizenship will continue to reflect sex stereotypes so long as sex stereotyping still pervades our concept of family. It does not mean that citizenship can never be sex neutral, but it does suggest that the rhetoric of citizenship cannot undo mischief caused by sex stereotyping.

  2. Citizens are part of a national family, so as family roles are gendered citizenship is, too

    What does citizenship have to do with families'? George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, has studied how our minds process language and understand our experiences and the world around us. He argues that our early experiences as children map certain metaphorical frames into our brain circuitry. (126) Those metaphorical frames profoundly influence how we later perceive and describe people and things around us. Two of the earliest pleasures we encounter as babies, for example, are our parents' warm bodies and warm milk. Lakoff says it is no accident that we later speak of emotional states in terms of temperature. (127) "She is a warm person" means "she is affectionate." "He warmed to her" means "his affection for her grew." (128)

    The concepts of government and governance grow out of our family relationships, too, as these relationships are our first experiences with both. Parents govern their children...

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