Corruption and Femicide in Ciudad Juarez

Since 1993, approximately 400 women, if not more by now, have been victims of violent mutilations and deaths (Lowe 1). Femicide is defined by the National Organization of Women as “the mass murder of women simply because they are women” (O’Neill 1). Mexican women working in the Maquiladoras factories in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico have been primary victims of these horrific events due to the daily work schedule that they are subjected to. Families of the victims try to speak out and get justice for their daughters’ murders, but still, nothing has been done about it. Activists have been struggling for years to have their voices heard, and the authorities respond with catching the wrong men responsible and imprisoning and torturing innocent people. The nonchalant attitude towards the deaths of these women and lack of motivation to apprehend the real rapists and murderers makes the women seem like they have no value on this earth and are just as good as garbage being tossed into the desert. There have been many human rights campaigns and feminist organizations that have protested in Mexico, fighting against the “political disregard and lack of accountability, at all levels of government” (Wright 152). Corruption of the Mexican government on all levels seems to be a source of a growing problem that has taken the lives of hundreds of women since 1993.

            The first victim officially recorded was Alam Chavira Farel, although since “local disappearances exceed known homicides each year” (Newton 2) it’s hard to know for sure. In 1993, police acknowledged 16 murders following Farel’s of women in Ciudad Juarez (Newton 2). All of the cases recorded, including the ones after, involved strangulations, stabbings, mutilations, and rape. The police had several suspects but none of them were arrested (Newton 2).  Women working in the Maquiladoras factories are supposed to be ‘safe’ because they go from work to the bus stop. This is where a significant number of women have been abducted and murdered. In several of the cases it has been noted that the murderers are often the bus drivers themselves (Newton 7). In 1999, a 14-year-old girl escaped from being choked and assaulted by a maquiladoras bus driver named Jesus Guardado Marquez, but his nicknames were “El Dracula” and “El Tolteca” (Newton 7). These men were jailed but the murders continued. A female attorney was murdered which spurred a lot of publicity which is when President Vicente Fox finally stepped in to make a public announcement ordering a “new investigation by ‘federal crime specialists’” (Newton 9). This still doesn’t focus on the femicide as a whole – it just looks at isolated situations.

            The mothers of these women who have been murdered have become activists without even choosing to do so. Norma Andrada is the mother of the victim Lilia Alejandra Garcia Andrada expresses her angst in the documentary, On the Edge, “They tell me I’m an activist. I don’t feel like an activist, I’m simply a mother, struggling for rights that my daughter had.”  Another mother, Ramona Morales, mother of the victim Silvia Morales, interviewed in On the Edge, recounts how her daughter disappeared on July 7^th, 1995, she went from school to work and then one day her daughter didn’t return home. Her husband and sons looked for her, but they couldn’t find her. She maintains that the main idea of why this continues is impunity. It gives men the right to do what they want to women in Juarez and they have no consequences. This documentary also mentions the fact that if you have money, you can get your perpetrators but it’s often the murderers who have the money to get out of being accused. These girls are being treated as if they have no value to society because of the ways that the authorities react to their deaths. A single mother was asked to come into the desert and identify her daughter’s body, as she reports through the documentary On the Edge, and it took all of her money to take a cab to get out there and then when she identified her daughter’s body, the police wouldn’t even give her a ride back to her home or back to town. So this mother who just had to identify her child’s body had to walk approximately 10 miles back to town because the authorities wouldn’t take her. This not only devalues the woman, who was slain, but the family and their grieving as well. The National Organization for Women states that “small advances in the struggle for justice are due to the perseverance of victims' families who cannot be silenced despite the efforts of state and federal authorities to keep them quiet” (O’Neill 1). It’s also adds to the horror, being in the United States, that these women are being murdered who are working for factories that export 90% of their goods to the United States (Newton 7).

            Many of the routines for interrogation in Ciudad Juarez involve torture. The bus drivers of the maquiladoras that have been apprehended and charged with legitimate charges of murder and assault, but many of the men interrogated are the ones closest to the women who are murdered. According to statements in On the Edge, because these men are tortured relentlessly, they end up confessing to murders that they did not commit and the real murderers and serial killers are still out there. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are protesters and human rights movements like the Ni Una Mas (Not one more) campaign who is fighting for the justice for that these women deserve. In the United States, Ni Una Mas is a campaign through Drexel University that is an art exhibit trying to raise awareness of gender violence and specifically raise awareness of the murders of the hundreds of women in Ciudad Juarez. The students did an “Artmarch” wearing pink shirts to represent their solidarity with the victims (Timpane 1). Bringing awareness to this is one of the most important things that can be done nationally and internationally, because it brings significance to the lives lost, showing the Mexican government that these women have value and they should have justice. The art in the Drexel University art show was from women and men all over the world from Switzerland, to Norway, to England, and the United States (Timpane 1). This is one of the many things that is being done internationally to try to raise awareness to the horrific femicide, but what is done locally is possibly of even greater importance.

            In Mexico, “a caravan aimed at upholding women’s rights and stopping violence against women in Ciudad Juarez and Mexico is headed to the U.S. border” (Frontera Nortesur 1). They protested on November 10, 2009 and continued until they got to the U.S. border. The group that headed this was The Women in Black who are an international organization fighting against violence towards women and femicide. They worked with the group The Exodus for the Life of Women, who has a 10-point program which involves finding missing women and getting justice for murders (Frontera Nortesur 1). Their protests brought on a reactionary statement from the government claiming that they have “spent tens of millions of dollars from 1993 to 2009 in response to the women’s homicides,” yet, “according to the federal agency, the money went for special prosecutors, new institutions and related expenses” (Frontera Nortesur 1). This money was not going to support the authorities who were in charge of finding these serial killers/murderers, but it made the government look good and look like they were at least trying to solve these murders. They weren’t.

            It has been reported from human rights organizations that the body count had lowered in 2004, but in 2009 the women’s homicides have broken all of the records. It is presumed to be because of the ongoing narco-war between rival cartels that more women were being murdered in 2009. It is believed that gender violence and gang activities are going to be merging, causing an increase in the femicide (Frontera Nortesur 1). In late 2009, two young women who were in their late teens were “reportedly tortured and possibly sexually assaulted before being dragged outside of a house in Senderos de San Isidro neighborhood where a party had been underway and then set on fire” (Frontera Nortesur 1). The people who are thought to be responsible for these horrific murders were gang members. In the ‘90s, it was thought by some authorities and media that the slayings were due to one person, “the Juarez Ripper” (Newton 3), who was a serial killer targeting the young women of the maquiladoras, but it has become clear over the years that more and more men are responsible for taking the lives of over 400 women. Now it isn’t just the serial killers or bus drivers, but the gangs that roam Ciudad Juarez, who also have placed no value on the lives of each woman brutally assaulted and killed. The corrupt officers and officials also alleviate the gang members of any responsibility of the murders if they can be bought off or bribed with drug money.

Vicente Fox’s thoughts on NPR regarding the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez were absent. The interviewer asked him about the horrific situation and he tiptoed around the subject and then never actually answered her question. It’s incredibly unfortunate that it has become this way with the Mexican government, but it’s a trickledown effect of disinterest in finding these murderers in Ciudad Juarez, as well as Chihuahua, Mexico.

Looking at the effects that these murders have on the women’s families, as well as what is being done about it through protest as well as through authority brings significance to the femicide, not just for Ciudad Juarez, but for all over the world where violence against women is a problem.  If the change will happen, it needs to begin with the leaders of the nation of Mexico, to put a stop to these horrible murders and bring justice to the women who have been slain for the past 17 years.

                                                                                                  

Works Cited

            Frontera Nortesur. "Women in Black March on Ciudad Juarez." New America Media. 
            N.p., 21 Nov. 2009. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://news.newamericamedia.org/ 
            news/view_article.html?article_id=15b82db343fc06addc3bc6f24367293f>.

Lowe, Kathy. “Femicide in Latin America: A Tale of Two Cities.” International Viewpoint Sept. 2006: 1. Web. 17 May 2010. <http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/?spip.php?article1134>.

Newton, Michael. "Ciudad Juarez:The Serial Killer's Playground." trutv.com. 
             Turner: A Time Warner Company, 2003. Web. 18 May 2010. 
            <http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/ciudad_juarez/ 
             index.html>.

O'Neill, Terry. "Femicides of Juarez Fact Sheet." National Organization for Women. National Organization for Women, 2009. Web. 1 June 2010.  <http://www.now.org/issues/global/juarez/femicide.html>.

Timpane, John. “Art exhibit protests women’s mass murders in Mexico.” Philadelphia Inquirer  13 May 2010, PHLI ed.: D01. Web. 16 May 2010. <http://global.factiva.com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/?ga/?default.aspx>.

"Vicente Fox on U.S. Immigration." Interviews. NPR: National Public Radio. NPR, 
     n.p., 28 May 2008. npr. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://www.npr.org/templates/ 
     story/story.php?storyId=90883427>.

Wright, Melissa W. Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism. New 
     York: Routledge: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. Print.

Wright, Melissa W. “From Protests to Politics: Sex Work, Women’s Worth, and Ciudad Juárez Modernity.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94.2 (2004): 369-386. JSTOR. Web. 18 May 2010. <http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/?stable/?3693993?seq=1>.

On the Edge. Youtube. N.p., 2005. Web. 1 June 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/ 
     watch?v=RNIZvrGDPak&feature=channel>.

Equal Partnership for Equal Love

            Imagine sitting in the rows of family and friends, surrounded by white flowers, ribbons, tassels, and then the music begins. The words “here comes the bride” echo in your mind, even though it is an orchestral procession. This song is common knowledge to most people, even though no one could ever tell you the first time that they had ever heard the melody. This whole surreal ritual of marriage in America is incredibly romanticized by the media, by our peers, our family, but the source of it all is hard to recognize. I never really thought about marriage until all of my friends started getting married and talking about marriage. The benefits from marriage are outrageous compared to that of a single individual. The State, bound by the constitution of the United States of America, promotes the act of marriage (a ceremony performed by a religious institution) by giving benefits to married couples. America sticks by their constitution, except when it comes to separation of Church and State. Marriage reflects the patriarchy of America in that it is controlled by a man and the woman is supposed be submissive. Mary Lyndon Shanley promotes the idea that the act of marriage should be completely reformed and discusses contractual marriage as a start, but not an answer. The complete reform of marriage could wipe out patriarchy but the way that America sticks with tradition, as do many other countries, it is hard to see the future for what it can hold in the eyes of equality. I contend that the rhetoric surrounding marriage, as well as the ritual itself needs to be changed, and can be changed with new vocabulary to promote the equality. The universal understanding of what marriage is differs greatly in all cultures and societies. “Equality must be a central attribute of any marital regime based on considerations of justice” (Shanley 18). One thing is certain and that is that the majority of acts and ideas surrounding marriage are laced with a patriarchal understanding of female submission and male dominance.

            Separation of Church and State is a way to keep America a democracy, yet the country rewards married couples.  Among the benefits includes the right of “Visiting your spouse in a hospital intensive care unit or during restricted visiting hours in other parts of a medical facility… obtaining insurance benefits through a spouse's employer… receiving Social Security, Medicare, and disability benefits for spouses… [and] Living in neighborhoods zoned for ‘families only’…” (NOLO Law for All 1). The neighborhood designation is extremely condescending because it implies that you can’t be a single parent with three children and be considered a “family;” or an unwed homosexual couple raising their child and be considered a “family.” In 1996 the creators of the Welfare Reform Act inserted “a provision requiring mothers who receive welfare to identify the biological fathers of their children. The state could then go after the father for child support” (23). This had seemingly good intentions, but “the sponsors hoped that if the woman identified the father the state might induce them to marry” (24), and I completely agree with Shanley in that “marriage is not an effective antipoverty program, nor is it appropriate to use it as such” (24). This idea is wrought with this patriarchal slime, oozing the idea that women can’t be successful single parents and they need a man in their lives in order to sustain themselves emotionally and financially. Inducing a woman to marry the father of their child in order to save them financially is ignoring so many factors, including the possibilities that the father is abusive to the mother and the child, or the father doesn’t have the money to support the mother and child. This idea of “addressing women’s poverty by attaching them to men who can support them reinforces inequality and vulnerability within marriages” (24). Sponsors who had hoped for the women to marry the fathers of their children were walking the fine line of separation of church and state. A bill generated by the United States Senate or Congress should not even have an inkling of religious lining to it and this one seems like it was teetering in that direction. There are several states that recognize domestic partnerships of over a certain number of years which give the same benefits as a married couple, but this is also a way for the state to view a couple as “married” even though the couple may not be or may never plan to be. The idea of the church not involved in the unification of love is extremely appealing to me because I don’t see it as joining together “under God,” I see it as a presentation to your loved ones that this is the person that you are going to be with for the rest of your life because you have love, happiness, trust, respect and equality. Removing the state from marriage and having a strictly contractual agreement of terms is interesting because it holds to completely separate the Church and the State.

            “Contractualism suggests that each marriage is a particular agreement between individuals not a relationship in which the public has a legitimate interest” (16). Advocate of contract marriage, Martha Fineman, argues that “abolishing marriage as a legal category is a step necessary for gender equality” (19) and I would have to agree with her. Chad Brand is a southern Baptist and explains that the nation needs strong men and “the price women pay for marriage and morals is submission to the husband as leader within the family” (19). That disgusting quote alone proves the parallel that exists between this patriarchal nation and the institution of marriage. Marriage by contract helps to replace the gender stereotyping of traditional marriage and recognizes the “individuality and equal agency of the partners” (19). I agree with this as a beginning to abolish inequality within marriage, but I also agree with Shanley in that contract “is not adequate to defeat the legacy of patriarchy” (20). There needs to be more. The State needs to step in and promote spousal equality. Shanley argues that “marriage law and public policy must work to ensure that neither partner is precluded from participating in social and political life or rendered unable to provide care to family members” (20). This is how equality is going to come ahead and our nation is going to take a step away from traditionalism and patriarchy.

            I want to explore a way to still have the institution of marriage, but change to vocabulary to promote gender equality and remove heteronormativity as well. The rhetoric surrounding marriage is extremely sexist and focuses a lot on the woman serving the man and being faithful to the man, but not the other way around. When the religious leader conducting the marriage ritual says, ‘I now pronounce you man and wife, you may kiss the bride,’ it bothers me and it is the specific words used that I have a problem with. ‘Man and wife.’ This phrase shows me that the man is a man before he is a husband, yet the woman is a wife before she is an individual. This phrase is also completely heteronormative, assuming the identities of the people getting married are hetero identities. The union of two people under love is something to be celebrated but the entire vocabulary in doing so from the weddings that I’ve attended has just been unsettling. I was the ‘maid of honor’ for my best high school friend’s wedding last June and listening to their preacher recite the ceremonial script was bizarre to me because he focused almost all of his intentions on my friend being faithful to her husband and serving him as his wife but failed to mention anything regarding him and his “duties” as a husband. The kind of wedding that would promote equality to both parties would be equal vows, promising that they will love each other forever, take care of each other and respect each other. Shanley quotes Chad Brand explaining the Southern Baptist Convention’s position on marriage equality, “while the Bible teaches full equality, it does not affirm egalitarianism or interchangeability in all things… male-female equality and male headship may seem paradoxical, but they are both taught in Scripture, much like a thread of two strands” (19). These literal translations from the Bible are hurting the women’s movement for equality. The Bible is used for religious marriages and it may seem “traditional” to some, but since when is tradition more important than autonomy, individuality or equality? It should not be that way. There needs to be a way to promote gender equality within a marriage and it needs to start with the ceremony itself. Religious people need to see that they can still have a religious ceremony without the direct sexist quotes from the Bible, that in this day and age would never even be uttered out loud unless out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh or Newt Gingrich.

            Parents and teachers are always telling children, ‘you never know what the future has in store for you!’ and it’s always with a positive inflection. I hope the future has gender equality in store for all of us. Not just the ideas of equality, but the actions taken in order to promote and fulfill equality. The actual separation of Church and State, the exploration of contractual marriage and reformation of marriage law and the reform of the marriage ceremony would all promote the ideal movement towards the removal of the patriarchal understanding of female submission and male dominance surrounding the institution of marriage.

Works Cited

Shanley, Mary Lyndon. Just Marriage. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 
     Print.

"Marriage Rights and Benefits." NOLO: Law for All. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. 
     <http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-30190.html>.

Inquiry into the History and Legislation of Reproductive Rights

Throughout history in the United States of America, women have had to overcome many obstacles in order to gain the human rights that should not have to be fought for but should be a birth right. Some of the most important of these rights are focused around sexual health and reproduction. The feminist legislation of reproductive rights has been a huge ally in making sure that women all over the United States have the choice to receive safe and legal abortions. In 2011 there have been several bills voted on in states such as Ohio and Mississippi that have created a “war on women” a term coined by a writer for the New York Times. These bills would make it practically impossible for a woman to have a safe and legal abortion if she needed to which would cause a horrible rise in crime and deaths of women in “back ally” abortions. In Ohio, the “Heartbeat Bill” would make it so that women can’t have an abortion when the fetus has a heartbeat; which is 6 weeks in most cases. That is a time that women rarely realize that they are pregnant. This bill does not take into account the safety of the woman or any sort of exceptions to the 6 week rule such as rape, incest or the woman’s ability to even birth a child and whether or not that could put her life at risk. In Mississippi, the “Personhood Amendment” (which was thankfully voted down by the Mississippi voters), would have declared that “life” begins at fertilization; therefore completely overturning Roe v. Wade. How is it that after women have come so far in the ways of reproductive rights that in 2011 these huge downfalls in the journey of reproductive health rights have occurred? Exploring the history of the feminist legislation is going to help explain this question. Looking at the history and current affairs of the controversy of pro-choice vs. pro-life, how religion and the religious right play a role in the pro-life bullet points and an intersectional view of how women of color were and are affected by the reproductive health debates in the United States.

            The history behind the pro-life/pro-choice movements has been dramatic and ongoing. Abortion was illegal in the United States and re-legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, a decision to protect the health of the woman making it possible to attain a safe and legal abortion. History has shown that “if abortion is outlawed, women don’t seek services less frequently; they just survive them less often” (58 Christina Page). In the 1920s, the abortion rate is about the same as today where one in five ended in illegal abortion (58 Page). Being pregnant when you want to be is a really wonderful thing but “being pregnant when you have been raped or coerced into sex or are unready or unable to care for a child is one of the worst and most dangerous experiences a woman can have” (97 Anne Firth Murray). The media creates a mind-set that the only people who seek abortion are pro-choice women, but that really is not the case. “40 percent of women who have abortions in the United States are Evangelical Christian or Catholic… the majority of women in the United States (61 percent) having abortions are already moms” (58-59 Page). This is important to the exploration of the pro-life vs. pro-choice relationship because the hypocrisy of the Catholic woman who most likely calls herself pro-life and has an abortion is overwhelming. Not being able to put yourself in the woman’s shoes who needs the abortion because of the plethora of reasons she could have is something that would seem like as soon as you do you see clearly, but clearly this is not the case. In 1993 a law went into effect that makes it so that a pregnant Mississippi teenager is required written consent of both parents to have an abortion (60 Page).  With the pro-life movement there really isn’t any distinction between the earliest abortion and the latest but with pro-choicers, “pregnancy takes place along a kind of ladder” (62 Page). The Mifeprex pill allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy without surgical intervention as early as four weeks and it was not until 2000 when it was successfully allowed in the United States. Due to the pro-life movement keeping it out of the country for years, doctors weren’t able to research the other possible uses of this medication such as treatment of “breast cancer, Cushing’s syndrome, endometriosis, glaucoma, meningiomas, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, uterine fibroids, brain tumors, and even bipolar depression” (63 Page).  Pro-life groups such as “Concerned Women for America” are against this form of abortion because they claim that it is “unsafe.” Safety concerns have become a way for the pro-lifers to push their agenda on the people of America. “Of more than 350,000 American women who have used this drug since 2000, less than 1 percent have had a complication. The likelihood of death resulting from a medication abortion is .00085 percent… compare this risk to dying during childbirth, which is 1 in 2,500” (64 Page). Access to safe and legal abortion is extremely important because “more than a quarter of pregnancies worldwide, about 50 million annually, end in abortion” (97 Firth). With such a high number, it shows that this is a common procedure that needs to be done safely to protect the reproductive health of the woman. An incorrectly performed procedure could lead to sterility or death. Only 5 women in the United States have died from the Mifeprex medication and the FDA investigated this only to conclude that “a causal relationship between the drug and these deaths could not be established” (64 Page).

The religious agenda comes out when “the pro-life movement argues, ‘Just say no to sex until marriage.’ (This ignores the fact that many abortions, just like un-wanted pregnancies, happen to married women too – nearly 1 in 5 women having an abortion in the United States is married)” (65 Page). The Christian bible, for example, doesn’t actually ever condemn abortion the closest interpretation of how it would is in Exodus 21:22, “which speaks of accidental abortion. This imposes a financial penalty on a man who caused a woman to miscarry ‘in the course of a brawl’ (NEB). The issue here is the father’s right to progeny” (35 Daniel C. Maguire). In the early Catholic teaching on contraception and abortion were “thought to be associated with sorcery and witchcraft” (34 Maguire). In the year 1230 abortion and contraception were both treated as forms of homicide (34 Maguire).  There is a view held by Saint Thomas Aquinas that an early abortion is not considered killing a person because an early fetus would not have the “status of person, nor would killing it fit the category of murder” (37 Maguire). One of the many reasons as well that the Catholic faith spoke out against abortion early on is because it was, until the 20^th century, extremely dangerous for a woman to have one. “A pro-choice position coexists alongside a no choice position in Catholic history” (38 Maguire) and it does not claim that forbidding all contraception and abortion is infallible. Pro-life activists currently like to uphold a “sanctity of life” argument as the late comedian George Carlin would proclaim. This “sanctity of life” argument is used to instill a feeling of guilt within Americans that if someone is pro-choice then they do not care about how important life is. The Christian right tries to use religion and politics, two things that really should not be mixing due to separation of church and state, to push their agenda on the American people. They use scare tactics like graphic, bloody abortion pictures to picket places like Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice, pro-woman organizations. It is an extremely invasive often emotionally traumatizing experience regardless of the reasoning but it is the woman’s right to her own body and that should not be something that should try to be controlled by the government or a religious institution. The scare-tactics are a terrorist approach to controlling a woman’s body. Some right-wing politicians actually make up statistics to make these groups sound like evil baby-killers. Senator Jon Kyl, republican of Arizona, gave a speech including that 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions. The truth is that Planned Parenthood only does about 3 percent of abortion-related procedures. This was during the debate to de-fund Planned Parenthood, one of the many anti-woman, anti-poor and racist debates that have been brought up in 2011. Planned Parenthood is extremely affordable which makes it a really great place for underprivileged people to go to for health care services. The anti-choice/pro-life movement has been extremely against groups like Planned Parenthood because they perform abortions and provide affordable contraception. Openly talking about the correct way to use birth control is often seen by pro-lifers as encouraging sex for unmarried, often younger people. Yet, if people know how to use contraception correctly then accidental pregnancies would be fewer which would in turn probably result in fewer abortions due to accidental pregnancy. It seems a little contradictory to their argument.

How women of color are and were affected by the reproductive rights health debates is an important factor to consider regarding how far women have come and the current politics surrounding the debate. Kathie Sarachild of Redstockings claims that “some Black Nationalists charge that the white power structure not only favors abortion law repeal, but is actually pushing it as a means of eliminating the black population, as well as all poor people” (55 Jennifer Nelson). This may seem extreme, but is it really? After looking at the entire history of the United States with race relations this is not completely out of the realm of possibilities. The Third World Women’s Workshop made a statement that included, “We will also fight the racist laws which have been proposed in some states, which stipulate that welfare mothers must be sterilized after they have had a certain number of children” (55 Nelson). Pro-choice is not just about being able to choose to have an abortion; it is also about the right to choose to have a child; it is reproductive freedom. Someone revoking your right to have a child seems just as horrible as revoking your right to a safe and legal abortion because it is removing the control you have over your own body as a woman.  The Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) acknowledge that “through forced sterilization or the denial of adequate welfare benefits – are directly related to policies that compel women to have children, on the view that this is their primary human function” (56 Nelson). Somehow throughout the 1960s and early 1970s the argument on black women controlling their own reproduction got lost in the Black Nationalist movement with men’s voices taking over. Black women do not get credit very often for the work they have done with reproductive rights, even the white feminists have not acknowledged them. “In listening to black women, one discovers that they offered a more complicated view of reproductive control than did either Black Nationalists or white women’s liberationists” (56 Nelson). The black women who were working on this movement disagreed with the claim that the use of abortion by black women “spelled genocide for the race” (56 Nelson). The black women fought for a wider range in the pro-choice agenda, wanting to include things that have been experienced by women of color such as forced, involuntary sterilization. The feminist white women during the 1960s and 70s did not include a reproductive rights agenda “that synthesized anti-poverty politics, welfare rights, and access to reproductive and basic health care if they wanted to include women of color in their movement” (57 Nelson). During the beginning of the feminist movement it is not often noted that for a rebellion against the patriarchical society, it was extremely narrow-minded and extremely focused on the needs of white, middle-class women and had nothing to do with women of color or women affected by poverty. It was almost an inadvertent form of racism from these white feminists. Perhaps it was intentional, either way it is not acknowledging an entire group of women who also strive for equality and reproductive freedom. Due to an intersectional movement in the past couple of decades this “accidental” racism is fading but it is also another thing that cannot be ignored during this “war on women” where all women, all people, need to fight for the human rights that allow women the freedom to their own bodies and minds.

The history of feminist legislation of reproduction and sexual health spans far with two extreme sides debating against one another. From everything that has happened and will happen the American pro-choice people in this country need to pay attention and not let the rights of women be slowly stripped away. This means women and men of all socio-economic statuses, race, gender and sexual orientation need to get out and voice their opinions to fight against what has been happening to women in 2011. This really has become a “war on women” and we have come so far there is just no way should women of this country have to suffer such a huge backlash in reproductive rights and health care.

Works Cited

Baer, Judith A. Historical and Multicultural Encyclopedia of Women's Reproductive Rights in the United States. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002. Print.

Macguire, Daniel C. Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. Print.

Murray, Anne Firth. From Outrage to Courage. Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2008. Print.

Nelson, Jennifer. Women of Color and the Reproductive Rights Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Print.

Page, Christina. How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex. New York: Basic Books, 2006. Print.

Rose, Melody. Safe, Legal, and Unavailable? Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2007. Print.

The Importance of the Intersectionality Methodology

A woman’s identity is not limited to her skin color, sexuality or religion. While identity politics in the United States try to push people into specific categories and trap them into groups, the theory of intersectionality recognizes each individual for what makes up their own unique identity. Intersectionality moves to include all parts of what makes a woman an individual and recognizes that there are culturally constructed categories such as skin color, sexuality, religion or political ideals that can act together to form oppression. Intersectionality removes the individual from the group to see a different form of oppression from the group but can also be celebrated to be different from the group. For example a black feminist woman may not be just a black feminist woman; she may also be bi-sexual and Marxist which makes her unique identity separate from just a black feminist woman. Intersectionality is an important methodology because it helps feminists recognize the different struggles within feminist movements and not just the white, middle-class struggle. The history of the women’s movement is interesting when considering the need in the beginning of the movement for intersectional ways of thinking. The intersectionality methodology is seen throughout the Combahee River Collective: A Black Feminist Statement and can be seen by bell hooks bringing intersectionality to light in her critique of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. The intersectionality methodology is also expressed in Gloria Anzaldúa’s La conciencia de la mestiza  including her experience in different categories of cultures.

            The Combahee River Collective separated themselves from the white feminist movement in 1974 to declare that black women are an important group and their voices needed to be heard. “We are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking” (63). Interlocking. That is the intersectionality methodology in and of itself. The “systems of oppression are interlocking” and that needs to be recognized so that something can be done about it.  And if something cannot be done just yet, it needs to at least be recognized and talked about to begin to pave the path of uprooting oppressions. The Combahee River Collective’s A Black Feminist Statement recognized that they needed “to develop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white women, and antisexist, unlike those of black and white men” (64). Was the women’s movement purposefully racist? Does it matter? While being caught up in antisexist women’s rights, white women did not have an intersectional way of thinking and mainly, or most likely, because of the time period. They should have and should have included all colors and classes of women, but they were focused on the white, upper-middle class majority of the time. The Combahee River Collective, in doing and thinking the opposite way of the white woman majority included in A Black Feminist Statement, “we also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of the black women by white men as a weapon of political repression” (65). The importance of the intersectional way of thinking is also recognized when they state that “no one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of black women’s lives” (66). That “multilayered texture” is intersectionality and the different layers of oppression. The racism within the white women’s rights movement was something that was also addressed and something very important to recognize as being a huge gap in intersectional thinking among white women. It would have been incredible progress if the emergence of intersectionality had become a natural way of thinking but they were made “painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and black history and culture” (69).

            This ambivalence white women had to the black feminist movement as well as any other women besides upper-middle class white women is made quite clear throughout Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. bell hooks brings to light the many groups that Friedan ignores throughout her book and by ignoring the many groups of women, displays a lack of an intersectional way of thinking. An intersectional way of thinking would have one recognize that there are other women who have their own different kinds of struggles because of the different cultural or societal categories that make up who they are. The women that Friedan focuses on are “a select group of college-educated, middle and upper class, married white women – housewives bored with leisure, with the home, with children, with buying products, who wanted more out of life” (hooks 1). Friedan completely “ignored the existence of all non-white women and poor white women” and in doing so catered to the ignorance of the privileged white women. She made it seem like the women she was talking about included all American women and therefore lost any sort of issues involving the several layers of oppression other women have to combat on a daily basis. There is a link between race and class that has been suppressed by “past feminist refusal to draw attention to and attack the racial hierarchies” (3). There is a “central tenet of modern feminist thought” that completely ignores intersectionality and it is “the assertion that ‘all women are oppressed.’ This assertion implies that women share a common lot and factors like class, race, religion, sexual preference, etc. do not create a diversity of experience that determines the extent to which sexism will be an oppressive force in the lives of individual women” (5).

            A specific individual account of intersectional identity is described by Gloria Anzaldúa in La conciencia de la mestiza, where she discusses straddling different cultures and lacking a culture while creating a new one. Anzaldúa states, “as a lesbian I have no race, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there is a queer of me in all races” (236). This is her expressing how lack of intersectional thought breaks her down into one group, as a lesbian she is seen as only a lesbian and that is it. She uses being a feminist as part of her intersectional being and says “I am cultureless because, as a feminist, I challenge the collective cultural/religious male-derived beliefs of Indo-Hispanics and Anglos; yet I am cultured because I am participating in the creation of yet another culture, a new story to explain the world and our participation in it” (237). Her dilemma that she discusses is being in the many different cultures and which ones to identify with. If there was not a “tolerance for ambiguity” regarding the contradictions of being a La mestiza then the intersectional way of thinking would be one of acceptance removing the different layers of oppression as opposed to tolerating it.

            The history of the women’s movement as well individual accounts with the Combahee River Collective, the bell hooks critique of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, and Gloria Anzaldúa’s description of her own intersectional identity help to explain the importance of the intersectionality methodology. These examples reinforce the importance of the theory of intersectionality because they express the interlocking oppressions that all women experience within their own unique identities.