Gabriel Brown
05/08/2012
Feminist Activism
Dr. Samanta
Feminist
Activism Final Paper
The book Defending Our Dreams tackles many issues revolving feminist on a
global level with respect to this upcoming generation. This book talks about the International
Criminal Court in chapter 11 as well as Internet and Communication Technologies
in chapter 12. Each author roughly
describes the current situation, its pros and cons, what has been achieved on
that topic and what is still being hoped to achieve on that topic.
In Chapter 11, the International
Criminal Court is written about as a possible means to be used to advance
women’s rights. After witnessing
violence against women in the war between Pakistan and Bangladesh where about
400,000 women were raped during a nine month timeframe, many people realized
that nations could not continue to avoid addressing the abuse of women’s rights
that seems to systematically occur during times of conflict. The Beijing Platform for Action was a
response to ensure that justice would be served whenever women’s rights were
violated. The guidelines called for all
national and international institutions to take action against violence against
women. The Platform for Action was
merely a set of guidelines with no way of being enforced. The objectives of the Platform for Action
were realized by the adoption and ratification of the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute could be enforced by the
International Criminal Court and the UN.
The Rome Statute recognized gender based persecution, rape, sexual
slavery, trafficking, enforced prostitution, enforced sterilization, forced
pregnancy and other forms of sexual violence as war crimes. It provided a stark definition of what was
acceptable and what was not acceptable.
Effectively this dismantled any notions of family traditions or honor
cultures that were used as legal reasoning by some to explain the abuse of
women’s rights. Another positive of the
statute was that it forced every state that ratified it to implement domestic
laws to combat anything that conflicts with the statute. Another power granted to the International
Criminal Court by the statute is that it can hear a case if it believes a state
is unable or unwilling to prosecute the crimes and it does not have to wait for
all options to be exhausted at the national level; the ICC can simply take the
case at any time in the process if they believe that the case cannot or will
not be handled at the national level.
The court, under this statute will not require corroboration and will
not find permissible as evidence the personal sexual conduct of an
individual. There are negatives to the
Rome Statute. The biggest one being that
though it is a tool being used to advance women’s rights, it was only ratified
because women’s rights were put into the statute as part of a broader
package. The other things in the package
made it hard for many states to deny the statute and avoided most of the major
obstructions. This still shows that
there are powerful forces that will work to halt the advance of women’s
rights. Additionally, the ICC, under
this statute, will not accept cases that occurred before its inception. This leaves many women without the
possibility of finding justice through this court. The United States also weakened the statute
by refusing to ratify it and then unsigning the Rome Treaty. This not only weakens the credibility of the
ICC and statute since the world superpower refuses to abide by its laws, but
since the US is on the UN Security Council, the US can also prevent the
security council from using the ICC as the powerful tool it could. There are no sanctions for any states, such
as the US, that refuse to ratify the statute.
Many women aren’t even aware of the existence of the International
Criminal Court. The biggest issue with
the Rome Statute, and the area where feminists hope to make progress in the
future, is that it focuses on individualized guilt and punishment in a very
reactionary manner. In most cases,
people can be dissuaded from breaking a rule because they will rationally think
it through and realize that if they break this law then they will be
punished. However, rational thinking is
not usually applied in the situations where these crimes occur. In times of conflict, a reactionary
sanctioning body will not stop women’s rights from being violated. In order to ensure that the International
Criminal Court isn’t only responding after women’s rights have been violated,
they should be given the power to transform the underlying structural causes
that lead to gender-based violence. If
we can subvert the conflicts in which women’s rights are violated, then there
will be significantly less incidents of women’s rights being violated.
The author argues that while the
International Criminal Court is not satisfactory, it is the first step on the
road towards ridding the world of structural inequalities and discrimination
against women. She argues that those two
things will only happen once we combine “punitive and reparative justice with
transformative and restorative legal, educational, economic, political and
social remedies.” (Afrin,2005)
In Chapter 12, Internet and
Communications Technologies (ICT) is written about it. One of the main topics that must be addressed
is that though the internet is a great tool to campaign for activism and
organizing people, we must remember that the very people for whom we complain
don’t have access to this medium of communication. In this day, people can use websites,
blogging, social media sites, emails, chat rooms, and texting to
communicate. Many of these new and old
technologies come with hidden downsides.
At first glance emailing seems like a great tool. However, if you want to consistently reach a
large audience with your message, you must either have a lot of time to devote
to the project or the money to buy the programs that allow you to quickly and
easily send mass emails and bypass the limit on the amount of emails that can
be sent out through the free email systems.
Cellphones have developed to become quite a force for good for
feminists. Pay as you go is a payment
method that allows people without the means to consistently have a cell phone
plan to pay just for the instances when they actually use the phone. A negative of this is that many poorer
people, especially women, still lack access to phones even in the case of an
emergency. However, a positive of the
phone is that many doctors traveling in remote, poorer areas can now use their
cellphone to connect themselves to their databases in order to provide the best
possible care for their patients.
Another underlying cause behind women having a disadvantage in this
medium of communication is that cyber technology is heavily based on literacy. In many parts of the world, women remain at a
severe disadvantage when it comes to literacy rates. The inability to read makes it impossible to
participate in this form of communication.
Another negative of using ICTs is that the infrastructure set up for
this communication varies across the globe.
What may take you less than a minute to do online in one part of the
world may take upwards to an hour in other parts of the world. That disconnect is hard to overcome as both
parties will find it difficult to understand the situation that the other is
in. The disconnect between
infrastructures, or the disconnect for any reason cannot be so great that
impedes: the opening of your message/webpage, the audience from reading
everything presented in its entirety, the audience from interpreting what you
said in the way that it was intended to be interpreted. If the disconnect impedes any of those three
criteria then ICT is not the way communicate that message. New technology must be used wisely and we
must ensure that we do not become dependent upon it. When the situations arrive where we cannot
use the new technology we must still be able to go back to the old ways of
getting business done even if they are underused or not seen as a valuable
method communication. We must never allow
ourselves to lose the ability to pick up the phone and call someone or to have
a face to face meeting with someone.
The author argues that there is a
solid amount of ICTs present. However,
the challenge lies in learning how to use each effectively to push the feminist
agenda. We must also fight to provide
infrastructure that makes the ICTs equally available to all. The author also argues that moving into the
future, women must take control of this all important realm. Instead of relying technology created by men
and wondering how it can be transformed into an agent for women’s rights, women
should simply create the technologies whose powers can be utilized for the
advocacy and feminist activism agenda.
The viewpoints brought forth in
these two chapters illustrate a great about the information and issues
discussed. Women’s rights must be a
priority to the United States. As long
as the United States continues to be frightened of losing any tiny bit of its
sovereignty, and refuses to participate in the ICC, the ICC will be a stunted
version of what it could truly be. There
should be international pressure placed on the United States, if they are not
part of the ICC because they fear that the ICC would possibly step in an usurp
the authority of their national courts, then that is in actuality all the more
reason to ratify the Rome Statute. The
ICC only steps in when the national level fails or is poised to fail. The United States must see ratifying the Rome
Statute as an opportunity to prove to the world that they are the beacon of
human rights that they claim to be. With
the United States as an ally of the program, it would pave the way for the ICC
to be given the transformative power it needs.
This power will usurp some sovereignty from national governments and it
will never be adopted globally until the United States and other world powers
stop caving in to conservative pressure and show the world that they are not
hypocrites; the US must show the world that it does not consider itself or its
citizens above international law, especially if the US wishes to continue
acting as the legal and moral world police.
The underlying cause between ICTs
and the reason they aren’t effective lies directly with the literacy
rates. We must first work to bridge the
gap between male and female literacy rates.
Once we have bridged that gap and men and women are on an equal footing
then we will see the world of ICTs become more equally dominated by men as well
as women. However, the increase of
literacy rates will help the ICT cause twofold.
It won’t just increase the presence of women in the ICT creating realm,
but it will also broaden the audience of women that ICTs can reach. The more women are literate, the more women
can have information disseminated to them.
The problem of the ICT hangs on
literacy rates and the problem of the ICC hangs on the US doing what is easiest
with no repercussions. Both of these
problems, as with most of the problems opposing the feminist agenda, can be
fixed by raising awareness and education.
We must educate more young women on the use of ICTs. We must raise awareness of the little known
ICC within the United States and abroad.
If people knew that the US was standing in the way of such progress,
then surely there would be backlash. The
United States, if faced with international pressure from abroad and internal
pressure from its citizens to acquiesce to the ICC, would certainly bow to the
pressure. At the end of the day, we must
each take it upon ourselves to educate ourselves on the issues of the world and
that we provide the means of an education to as many as we can, especially
those most commonly without these means, such as poor women. It should not be so that activists are a
minority of the population or that activists are viewed as extremists. Activists are merely impassioned to educate
others on a topic. Be it feminist
activism, or activism of any kind, we must remember that the world is an
imperfect place and so long as it remains an imperfect place we must all be
activists, working hard to improve our world.
Works
Cited
Afrin, Zakia, and Amy Schwartz. "11 A
Human Rights Instrument That Works for Women: The ICC as a Tool for Gender
Justice." Ed. Kristy Evans. Defending
Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation. Ed. Shamillah
Wilson and Anasuya Sengupta. London: Zed, 2005. 150-66. Print.
Evans, Kristy. "12 Cyber Girls:
Hello...Are You Out There?" Defending
Our Dreams: Global Feminist Voices for a New Generation. Ed. Shamillah
Wilson, Anasuya Sengupta, and Kristy Evans. London: Zed, 2005. 167-78. Print.
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