"Performative patriarchy" (and four other stories)

Five reads about the backlash against feminism and gender (in)equality to end your week.

I have spent much of the past week reading nostalgic pieces about the end of the Buzzfeed and Vice era (e.g. this and this). I say nostalgic not just because of the way that journalism as an industry has changed, and not just because of how far back my memories of watching the ebbs and flows of web traffic go. In my first journalism job, I watched as that newspaper’s website went from being print’s less important brother to being the centre of everything, with sheer volume of clicks the one ring to rule them all. I say nostalgic, too, because of the general sense that we are living through a time of enormous change much bigger than the end of the New York new media giants. For some reason, this flurry of analysis on the how’s and why’s of their collapse is making me nostalgic for whatever it is that we are currently leaving behind.

And now, to the reads….

1) UAE’s “performative patriarchy”

The United Arab Emirates has tried to position itself as a “role model for gender balance”. In this dark long read, Heidi Blake dispels this notion. Against the background of how Dubai became an economic powerhouse, she tells the story of the brutal treatment of female members of Dubai’s ruling family, and what the UAE’s commitment to gender balance really means. She writes:

Within Dubai’s ruling family, women inhabit a wrenching dual role: they are exalted as emblems of female advancement while privately obligated to “carry the honor” for the dynasty. Sheikh Mohammed has married at least six women, who have borne him dozens of children. According to Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, female disobedience in the Emir’s circle provokes a “politically dangerous” question among subjects: How can you really tell us what to do when you can’t control your own family? The logic of absolute power requires that such rebellions be crushed swiftly and publicly. “That’s performative patriarchy,” Ibish said. “You want to watch me control my family? Here you go.”

And here is a bit more on the external signifiers of gender equality:

As his stature grew, Sheikh Mohammed sought to counter the perception of the UAE as a repressive autocracy. His government passed a law guaranteeing women equal pay for equal work and elevated nine female leaders to cabinet positions. In a message to mark Emirati Women’s Day last year, he called women “the soul and spirit of the country.”

Many experts dismiss these changes as insufficient. “There are women in very prominent positions now, but in reality a lot of that is window dressing,” Neil Quilliam, a fellow in Middle East affairs at the Chatham House think tank, told me. “Women are expected to behave within very tight boundaries, and if they go outside them they are dishonoring the family.” Emirati women continue to live under male guardianship, unable to work or marry without permission. Men can marry multiple women and unilaterally divorce their wives, but women require a court order to dissolve a marriage. Men who murder women can still be pardoned by the victim’s relatives, which allows honor killings to go unpunished, since in such cases victim and perpetrator are often related.

2) “Anti-gender” ideology goes global

On The Hill, Pamela Shifman, president of the Democracy Alliance, outlines why the recent attempts in the US to legislate against trans healthcare, policy like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” ban, and the restriction of access to abortion damage democracy, and how similar developments in places like Hungary and Poland show that this is a global issue. She links to a report from 2020 that identifies around $1bn of funding from US organisations to groups around the world that promote an “anti-gender ideology”, which is anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ. Here is Judith Butler from a few years ago on what that term means.

3) South Korea’s “comfort women”

In yet another harrowing read for you this week, in the New York Times Choe San-Hung reports on how South Korea facilitated a sex trade, mostly aimed at US soldiers, during and after the Korean War:

There were “special comfort women units” for South Korean soldiers, and “comfort stations” for American-led UN troops during the Korean War. In the postwar years, many of these women worked in gijichon, or “camp towns,” built around American military bases.

Last September, 100 such women won a landmark victory when the South Korean Supreme Court ordered compensation for the sexual trauma they endured. It found the government guilty of “justifying and encouraging” prostitution in camp towns to help South Korea maintain its military alliance with the United States and earn American dollars.

4) El Salvador’s abortion ban

As noted before in this newsletter, El Salvador’s incredibly strict abortion ban, passed 25 years ago, is currently in the spotlight. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is hearing the case of a woman, now deceased, who was denied an abortion despite being very unwell and her fetus having no chance of surviving outside the womb. Foreign Policy has a detailed piece by Anna-Catherine Brigida asking how much of a difference the court’s ruling on whether the ban violates the right to health and life would make on the ground. She writes:

The court’s verdict could have a far-reaching impact across the Latin American nations that have accepted the jurisdiction of the court by ratifying the American Convention on Human Rights, and set an important precedent for a region that’s one of the most restrictive in the world for abortion. In particular, it could spell the end of total abortion bans in five countries that recognize the court’s jurisdiction: Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, and El Salvador.

….

But translating a favorable ruling into political change could still prove difficult. The court’s ruling is technically legally binding, but a lack of enforcement mechanism means countries don’t always follow through on implementing their directives. The ban continues to be popular, particularly as anti-abortion evangelical churches with strong connections to the United States have gained influence here, and advocates in El Salvador warn the United States could be heading down its path.

5) Real, live misogyny

A small, local story from the great city of Manchester caught my eye this week. A woman was travelling on a bus when a man she didn’t know started verbally abusing her. The man reportedly said “I hate women”, called her a “bitch”, and said the following: “I haven't met a smart woman yet, I haven't met a genuinely empathetic woman yet, they're all just psycho freaks wanting to manipulate others for their own appeal. They're just socially utterly corrupted muppets, mate. That's what females are.” The woman, shaken, got off the bus early, luckily spared any physical harm.

This report is a reminder of why calls for classifying misogyny as a hate crime make sense. Whatever was going on with the perpetrator, his verbal abuse was defined by hatred of women, and the victim felt victimised as a woman. Read this about a successful pilot by the police force in Nottingham on treating misogyny as a hate crime, and the impact this can have.

BONUS: The novelist Rachel Cusk has written an essay about French Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux: “If it remains difficult for women to make art about their own lives, it is because femininity still has no stable place in culture.”

Thank you so much for reading, and let me know in the comments if you have spotted anything else this week.