Feminisme: Antara mitos dan fakta

Ramai yang berpendapat bahawa golongan wanita dan lelaki feminis yang berpegang kepada prinsip “kesamaan” begitu khusyuk dengan isu-isu hak asasi manusia dan anasir-anasir berwajah kebaratan yang lain, seperti sekularisme dan liberalisme. Tidak kurang juga para bijak-pandai yang mendakwa gerakan feminisme sebagai satu-satunya punca keruntuhan akhlak dan rumahtangga. Ada pula yang khuatir feminisme menggalakkan persaingan antara wanita dan lelaki, di mana wanita sebenarnya mahu menguasi lelaki. Dari manakah dakwaan ini timbul? Apakah dakwaan ini bertunjang bukti yang kukuh, ataupun rekaan liar semata-mata?

Ya dan tidak jawabnya. Gerakan feminisme yang dikenali ramai muncul secara besar-besaran pada awal abad ke-20 di United Kingdom dan Amerika Syarikat – di sinilah titik permulaan stereotip atau mitos golongan feminis. Wanita yang menggelar diri feminis (atau suffragette pada waktu itu) tergolong dari kelompok atasan – “elit” – berkulit putih, berpendidikan tinggi, dan tidak berminat pula dalam hal-hal diskriminasi dan prejudis yang dialami oleh wanita lain – yang miskin, tidak berpendidikan tinggi, dan tidak berkulit putih. Beberapa “gelombang” perlu naik dan susut supaya suara wanita yang sudah lama terpinggir (yang miskin, tidak berpelajaran tinggi, dan tidak berkulit putih) didengar dan diambil serius. Tanpa wujudnya kesedaran akan perkauman dan perbezaan latar belakang sosio-ekonomi, gerakan feminisme bagaikan kereta lembu berroda satu (contoh eco-friendly): terbatas gerakan dan serba kekurangan.

Di akar umbi gerakan ini adalah kepercayaan bahawa wanita dan lelaki dicipta dengan kebolehan akal yang sama, dan tubuh badan dan warna kulit bukan penentu hidup – kepercayaan inilah yang menjadi bahan tentangan hebat ramai. Mana tidaknya? Para feminis banyak mempersoalkan budaya yang bersifat patriarki/kiriarki yang wujud hasil daripada corak kuasa dalam politik dan ekonomi, sebuah budaya yang mengagungkan kedudukan sekumpulan kecil yang berpengaruh dalam sesebuah masyarakat. Di Malaysia, kumpulan kecil ini terdiri daripada ahli politik lelaki, golongan lelaki yang kaya raya dan sesetengah para ulama. Warga tua, golongan kurang upaya, orang Asli, golongan Mak Nyah, dan saudara kita yang bukan beragama Islam secara lazimnya di kelaskan dalam kelompok “yang teraniaya” dan “dipinggir”. Pernahkah para bijak-pandai yang mengutuk gerakan feminisme bertanya sama ada sistem perkelasan ini adil?

Ingin dibangkitkan di sini bukannya untuk mempromosikan feminisme semata-mata. Ruang yang dibenarkan untuk mereka yang berlainan pendapat semakin sempit di kampung Malaysia. Tidak kiralah dia seorang feminis Islam ataupun seorang mufti, pendapat mereka yang memperjuangkan keadilan atas nama bagaimanapun tetap digugat. Bagi mereka yang rasa dirinya sahaja yang berhak bersuara mengenai keadilan, mereka harus bertanya kepada diri: apakah penganiayaan itu perhah dirasa dengan tubuh badan sendiri dan dilihat dengan mata kepala sendiri, dan apakah keadilan itu boleh dirasai oleh semua?

Looking at religion through white-tinted glasses

Source: Wikipedia

Looking back, I knew that I never wanted to be a student in religious studies, but oddly enough, here I am digging into it and taking apart the psyche of believers (and non-). If the case is still true in today’s terms, being a scholar in religious matters in Malaysia would really mean studying Islam, wearing the pre-requisite tudung labuh, and doomed with career prospects as expansive as the opinions of the cow-head protesters on non-Muslim places of worship. Because as a woman, that would invariably mean teaching pendidikan Islam (Islamic education) at primary and secondary school level, and not at the helm of any of the many Islamic learning and research institutions around the country.

But mind you, it’s not the theological aspect of religious studies that appeals to me, but rather the strictly secular and emotionally uninvolved analysis of world religions; its historical, sociological, psychological, and philosophical dimensions of faith, from a so-called “objective” point of view, and most importantly how religious teachings have impinged on gender relations in the postcolonial context (and just as importantly, outside of that context). Being at the School of Oriental and African Studies in theory should be a good place to study religions given its wary stance towards Eurocentric academic culture and well, hippie outlook to the cultures of Africa and Asia.

But imagine my groans of disappointment when I realised that I had to immerse neck deep into the world of 20^th century French intellectualism personified by Lacan, Derrida, and Foucault, to understand the mystical and practical mechanisms of religion. My disappointment can be summed up in, ironically, Foucauldian terms, in which the study of religions as a discourse (specific to SOAS) is governed by principles, statements, and analytic approaches dominated almost entirely by the theses of dead White European male philosophers (with Claude Levi-Strauss who’s just joined in). And as a result of these governing structures, how we produce academic analyses or “truths” about world religions are done pretty much by the guiding hands of these men. And according to Foucault, how these structures arise are determined by who wins the competition of discourses. Emerging victor in the power struggle of discourses are the notoriously difficult post-existentialist French thinkers. Hurray!

It would be fair to assume that the most useful analytic tools are also the latest ones, those that have yet to be proven obsolete and irrelevant. The same way scientific analysis today relies on the latest research and the latest lab techniques and equipment. But is this really true for the study of religion? The search for the origins of spiritual worship became the main agenda of anthropologists in the 19^th century, dominating the discourse on religion at the time. Emerging from the discourse were terms like “primitive cultures” and “totemism”. And yes, this led many anthropologists to “backward” communities in Africa and Latin America that were thought to be at the bottom rung of the evolutionary ladder. The anthropology of religion later took a different course when more and more researchers found that there was no basis in their racist assumptions, and developed other critical outlooks. Then feminist approaches to religion arrived, which I will talk about soon.

So, what can we say about the implications of Western thinking on the study of world religions? If put in other words, what can institutions in economically-developing nations learn from this discourse which obtains its authority from mainly White male academics? Anything useful, or nothing at all? How useful are the thoughts of philosophers, hailed as experts at explaining the mysteries of faith, particularly when some are not afraid to be personally (rather than empirically) biased against one religion from another? I’m talking about Levi-Strauss here, and his ill-informed Orientalist comments about Islam which he had conveniently constructed as Buddhism’s opposite:

Symbolic of Moslem culture … [is the accumulation of] the most subtle refinements – palaces made of precious stones, fountains of rose-water, dishes of food coated with gold leaf and tobacco mixed with pounded pearls – and uses them as a veneer to conceal rustic customs and the bigotry permeating Islamic moral and religious thought… This great religion [Islam] is based not so much on revealed truth as on an inability to establish links with the outside world…Moslem intolerance takes an unconscious form among those who are guilty of it; although they do not always seek to make others share their truth by brutal coercion, they are nevertheless (and this is more serious) incapable of tolerating the existence of others as others (Levi-Strauss, 1992).

Returning to the structure of the study of religion in Malaysia, where the primacy of Islam permeates all levels of public education, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, can a secular study of faith be possible and not maligned as something with an evil agenda? Like inter-faith dialogue, all religions in question are viewed as equals as are the participants in the dialogue. For the case of the study of religions as an academic discourse, this means an open arena for teachers, students, and teaching material, regardless of the participant’s religious backgrounds. Those involved in the study of religions can develop an appreciation of other cultures and systems of worship, and from a structuralist’s point of view, discover deeply connected links and similarities that we all in this global village share. Perhaps these are just some things many Muslims in Malaysia can learn to appreciate.

From the crypt: A most “nebulous” concept that national unity

This was my very blog post, written on The Star Online’s citizen’s blog nearly three years ago.  It’s a response to Johor’s Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) Abdul Ghani Othman’s comments on the “abuse” of the term ‘Bangsa Malaysia’ and pointing out how UMNO politicians continue to reproduce colonial strategies to maintain racialised power. NB: The post you are about to read is (embarrassingly) polemical and has been edited to death by The Star editorial team.

Johor MB Abdul Ghani Othman tested the waters of public tolerance by announcing the evils of unifying the nation under the umbrella policy “Bangsa Malaysia” (Malaysian Race). The Johor Umno chief scoffed at the concept:

“After 49 years of independence, we should be more mature and not try to produce nebulous concepts whose origins are not clear … The concept,  if subjected to abuse, can threaten national stability.”

After nearly 50 years racial bigotry still occupies the country’s seats of power.

We have adopted our former colonists’ legacy of “Divide and Conquer” and further perpetuate a separatist culture that benefits one of group of people over others by reinforcing the social constructs “Malay” and “The Others”. For 49 years these social constructs iterated in the Constitution maintained the power dynamics that favoured the Malay race.  Amending the Constitution would invite “disorder”, stated the Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak.

Hishamuddin Rais, a keen and articulate observer of Malaysian politics, illustrates beautifully Umno’s obsession with the preservation of racial divides in his blog, Dari Jelebu.

Lest we forget, a unifying social construct made up of all existing ethinicities once freed Malaysian from colonisation.  So the Malays’ suspicions of  “The Others” is not unfounded – unified social constructs within “The Others” have the potential to replay history.

Historically, as pointed out by Hishamuddin Rais, the creation of such social constructs by the British were deeply rooted in economic greed. Today the Malay agenda is largely about figuring out ways to gain a larger share of the nation’s wealth beneath the surface of Malay pride.

It’s anyone’s guess that such a concept will threaten the Malays’ position as “The Princes of the Soil”. By implementing Bangsa Malaysia, all ethnicities will share the right to equal opportunities and create a national identity which sees that everyone stands equal before the Constitution. The Bangsa Malaysia concept is “unfair” because it will out the Malays as the economically and educationally disadvantaged race.

In fact, it is Umno’s greatest fear that Malaysia will evolve into becoming Singapore where the Malays are pushed into the margins of society.  In essence Malaysia is the Malays’ final refuge and by protecting this refuge the identity of the Malays as the pivotal race is crucial.

The empowerment of this identity is evident in the superior position given to the Malay language and Islam.  Take away all the symbols of Malay supremacy and they are left with nothing.

While abroad, I am ambivalent about professing myself as Malay. More often I am indeed proud of my culture and language but at the same time I find it hard to relate to other Malays who share my pride.

I hate to make distinctions based on race, and I hope that Malaysians will eventually mature and adopt a race-less outlook as well.

It is disheartening that those at the pinnacles of power are the ones fighting over the redefinitions of race while people like myself would rather see Malaysians as Malaysians.

Whose revolution? Critiquing Seyran Ates and her Islamic sexual revolution

The calls of lawyer, activist, and writer Seyran Ates for a sexual revolution in the heterogeneous Muslim world may surprise many, particularly when the movement is commonly associated with free love, hippies, and public nudity. In a recent interview with German magazine Spiegel, Ates begins with discussing what she means by this and her experiences that inspired her new book, Islam Needs a Sexual Revolution.

Things went downhill immediately, when Ates said that she based the term “sexual revolution” on

…Wilhelm Reich and his book about the sexual revolution. I believe that the Islamic world must grapple with the consequences of rigid sexual morals, not unlike the way, as he describes, the Soviet Union dealt with its own circumstances.

Naming Wilhelm Reich as an inspiration for her cause is to me quite problematic. A disciple of Freud, and a serial wife-cheater, Reich is known for his view that sexual repression is the cause of authoritative family and societal structures, and his study was borne out of his criticism against the fascist movement during his time in Germany, otherwise known as the Nazi party. I don’t know about you, but seeing similarities between conservatism in Muslim communities and Hitler’s regime strikes me as a little essentialist and far-fetched on Ates’ part–and that’s putting it kindly.

As much as I welcome a more permissive attitude towards sexuality in Muslim communities, I doubt that a revolution can occur out of thin air. In the West, the impetus for the sexual revolution came as a reaction from multiple directions: scientific (the birth control pill), political (the social paranoia of the Cold War), social (the rise of the women’s liberation movement), and economic (more on this below). This is where I have problems with what Ates means by a sexual revolution. It is an ethnocentric construct that the Western world had a monopoly over. And if we use the Western sexual revolution as a model, then simply place an Islamic label on it, we play by rules that were hardly faith-based to begin with.

Further, it’s about re-asserting economic privileges that few (in 1960s America/Europe) had. Translate that to the Muslim world (in the East and West) today, even fewer people will reap the joys of the revolution. Why? Having a fulfilling sex life takes time and money–raising children, hire nannies, afford contraceptives or divorces–some things many in the middle class can enjoy. It should not be just about access to sexual activity that Ates purports as a revolution, but about making economic sense out of sex. The main reason why young people are less interested in marriage is because it’s expensive.

Then Ates mentions prophets as role models:

SPIEGEL: Muhammad had a dozen wives. Is he a role model?

Ates: When an Arab man needs a justification for having several wives, he says: It was the same with Muhammad.

SPIEGEL: Christian men don’t have that excuse.

Ates: No, but it’s a shame that Christians worship such an asexual man. Muslims are in a better position, in that respect, but this need of the man to have several women, legitimized by Muhammad, has led to a hidden and extreme sexualizing of Islam.

Saying that Jesus is less of a role model than Muhammad because he was seen as asexual is quite offensive. Being a single prophet does not necessarily qualify as being asexual. But most importantly, sexual freedoms include being both sexual and asexual (celibate). Sex is often overrated, while asexuality (or lacking sexual desire) is viewed as being less human–utter nonsense, in my opinion.

Ates asserts that the Muslim world to a large extent is monolithic, that Muslims the world over can relate to each other in all matters sexual. And, yes, liberalism is not our best known trait. Some live under extremely repressive regimes and others endure conservative laws and attitudes to a less extreme degree.

But within many Muslim communities, class disparity can mean a difference in sexual mores as different as night and day. This goes back to the works of Reich, who saw that people from a working class background were the most sexually repressed and were most likely to obey authoritative regimes. By overlapping Ates and Reich’s arguments, one must assume that all Muslims are economically oppressed for a sexual revolution to happen which in my opinion is an unfair assumption.

I don’t believe that a revolution can take place overnight, or through massive protests that Ates envisions. A sexual revolution in a religious context cannot happen without first planting some seeds of change. These seeds can come in the form of faith-based dialogue and rights-based legislation. Also, better economic conditions mean that people can make better marital choices. It seems clear that Seyran Ates takes her cause very personally, but in the interview she does not acknowledge enough the social and moral impact of sexual permissiveness that she is promoting, which is really the main concern of everyone involved in a “sexual revolution”. This remains a big question mark for me, and I will watch carefully in the future for a sexual revolution spearheaded by Ates.

Muslimah Media Watch thanks Mohani Niza for the tip.

Let these songs speak for me for now

[inspired by T-boy's Malay music madness]

I’ll be needing some time to adjust to my new life in London and SOAS at the moment. Some changes can be really overwhelming especially when one has to move into a completely empty house that is also falling to pieces. I hate the city despite being born and raised in one. Being in of the biggest and most expensive cities in the world doesn’t help either, so I’ll be taking a few days off from blogging (but will still respond to comments) to breathe deeply, and exhale.

You can tell that I’m quite the sentimental type

Questioning the veil, questioning the questioner

First published at Muslimah Media Watch. An edited version is published on altmuslimah.com

Source: BBC News website

Today we witness postcolonial Orientalism coming to grips with its obsession with the hijab. While the white French elite seem fixed on debating its symbols, the British media are asking why women choose to wear it. Once, the obsession was an obvious desire to unveil Muslim women (think postcards of semi-naked North African women during the colonial period of the turn of the 20th century).

Such pictorial colonial fantasies are now a thing of the past. Now, French men have now moved from openly desiring topless Moorish young women to getting angry at the concealed women who once incited the fantasies of their colonial forefathers. While the anger and frustrations are expressed by some in the forms of bans and Islamophobic language, others seek the object of their frustrations and ask them, “Why must you cover?”

In an item called Questioning the Veil on BBC 4’s Woman Hour yesterday, two guests, Shelina Zahra Janmohamed and Marnia Lazreg were asked that very question. The reasons why many women take up the hijab should be obvious, shouldn’t it? It’s a personal choice. But both agree that free will has little to do with it. And I absolutely agree with them that women’s sartorial choices must be respected but at the same time those choices are influenced by overarching political and social narratives.

But let’s meta-analyze why the two guests are on the program, almost pitted against each other, and talking about a subject that’s been discussed ad infinitum with more and less the same conclusions: most women make the choice to wear the headscarf, some women are coerced into wearing it. Most reasons are rooted in the spiritual, some are simply an act of resistance against the superficial definitions of femininity. Case should be closed, but…no.

By constantly focusing on the hijab, the real issues that are most important to us women are glossed over–issues regarding economic and social struggles that in reality are the factors of oppression, not the hijab. In Britain, Muslim women from South Asian backgrounds are the most disadvantaged in society, and the same can be said for women of Moroccan ancestry in France. It is all too easy to pounce on the weakest members of society (the women, the minorities, the Muslims) in an effort to reinforce the superiority of White European culture. To avoid appearing bigoted and xenophobic, this superiority is couched on enlightened values associated with the freedom of the individual. As Michelle Goldberg in her piece at the American Prospect puts it:

The debate about headscarves, veils and burqas is a synecdoche for larger, more fraught questions of cultural identity in the age of mass Muslim immigration. Islam is changing European life in a way that makes many Europeans unhappy, but it’s hard for Europeans to talk about without seeming racist or xenophobic. The one place where Europeans do feel confident about defending the superiority of their own culture is in sexual matters. Feminism and sexual liberation become tools of nationalism.

Asking Muslim women why we choose to wear the hijab shifts the attention away from the asker’s insecurity of their own ideas of freedom and sexuality (if you’re comfortable with how everybody expresses their freedom and sexuality, how Muslim women dress should be the least of your worries). In Orientalist discourse, the stereotypes of Muslim women produced from assumptions about the hijab reveals a lot more about Western attitudes about sexuality and social mores than it does about the “mysterious” Muslim women. And so, through the prism of an Orientalist, Muslim women are pretty much everything a so-called liberated Western woman is not. If the definition of a Muslim woman were to be defined using a yardstick alien to her culture, it will not only explain very little about the person in question, but she will always be something inferior, lacking in enlightened qualities. And so despite evidence that many women are happy to cover up, questions about the hijab continue to have forgone conclusions.

I’m fed up by the fact that positive views women make about the headscarf fall systematically on many deaf ears. It’s time that the tables are turned on the curious people who more often than not have misconceptions and pre-conceived views about Muslim women and what we wear, in which we study their motives and question their curiosity about our lives. Enough about us, we should be asking, “Why do you want to know?”

More on men and feminism

Men and feminism: the next frontier on feminism’s agenda. Underrated, under researched, but quite possibly one of the most important issues surrounding our engagement with the source of female oppression. Gareth at Ad Fontes has some thought-provoking views on this:

Patriarchy forces men and women to play gender games that damage both of us. The damage is not necessarily equal, but men do suffer too. Faludi shows us that it is a misstep for feminism to be solely concerned with how patriarchy distorts women without realising the effect it has on men too. Is it any wonder why the self-destructive protest movement Fathers 4 Justice — a group of fathers who campaign against the courts that rule that their contact with their children should be restricted and supervised — choose to demonstrate their suitability for fatherhood by dressing up as superheroes and climbing buildings? This demonstrates too how patriarchy infantilises men, teaching us just to be bigger boys with bigger toys.

Read the rest here.

Big Love: Appropriating feminism in advocating polygamy

Originally posted at Muslimah Media Watch

Members of the Ikhwan Polygamy Club in Malaysia. Source: Utusan Melayu

Stories about polygamy tend to surge and ebb in the media, but they never fail to intrigue people. Recently in South Africa, a Zulu man married four women–all at once–making the most popular story on the BBC news website (you can watch the clip here). In the video, a male wedding guest gives a thumbs-up to the marriage(s), claiming that the “world” suffers from monogamous marriage breakdowns as a result of adultery. Later, the narrator serves up a classic: with all those wives, what man will have time to cheat? So, yes, it seems to be all about sex and keeping the man carnally satiated as to not go astray. But what do the wives have to say?

From one Muslim wife’s perspective, there is Hatijah Aam, founder of the Ikhwan Polygamy Club in Malaysia. Running what sounds like a matchmaking service, Hatijah herself introduced her husband to a future co-wife, a mother of seven. The club has been successful at marrying men and women from neighboring Thailand and Indonesia, and even as far as Australia. The virtues of polygamy, according to her, echo the stuff in religious texts I’ve become so accustomed to: it helps single mothers, “old maids”, and former sex workers (a new addition!) out of what is ostensibly abject misery.

Looking at the social context in Malaysia, it’s understandable how polygynous relationships can thrive: women are chronically at an economic disadvantage, a female-initiated divorce is a difficult, laborious process, and if it is successful, women shoulder the stigma and burden of being fair game to any Malay-Muslim man. Pinning on former sex workers, single mothers, and divorcees the label “unwanted goods” says a lot about the precarious status women have in society; women are not only defined by their marital (and sexual) status, but also seem to lack agency to better themselves.

For a while I’ve been interested in what women in polygamous marriages have to say about their relationship with their husband, co-wives, and with their faith, particularly when feminist buzz words like “choice”, “rights”, and “consent” are used. Take for instance this argument: in a monogamous marriage, a woman has the right to choose her spouse, and so in principle a woman should also have the same kind of rights to allow her husband to marry another. It will be interesting when the role of rights and agency are raised in response to legislation against polygamy in numerous countries across the globe. There’s also an argument that “feminist” polygyny allows women “to have it all”: work hard and have a great arrangement with co-wives who will look after their kids (providing of course that the co-wives aren’t so career-minded).

Like polyamory and open marriages, polygamy is not common for obvious reasons, jealousy being the main one. And while for the few women whose rights are respected and protected (in some countries), how do their choices impact on all other women in general? Will a concept of polygamy that is truly women-centric subvert a system in which some women see sharing a husband the only way out of economic or social hardship? Will every wife have a happy sex life? Tightening conditions on such marriages may appear as posing restrictions on a woman who wants to express her rights, but at the same restricts men from marrying women for exploitative reasons often disguised as noble ones. In Indonesia, laws are made increasingly lax to accommodate men who wish to tie the knot multiple times, even if they lack the financial means (or the guts) to tell their first wives.

Polygyny, alongside housewifery and pornography, is just one of the few issues women have been grappling with distinguishing between whether it’s feminist or not. And so a belief in ending oppression in all its many guises should be the compass of every feminist if one finds themselves lost. To end, I leave you with Hatijah Aam saying that polygamy should be something beautiful, rather than something disgusting. I say, fair enough–keeping in mind that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Reconstructing the deconstructed: some thoughts on transnational feminist activism

The genetic material that connects us people with pre-historic creatures are the hox genes; genes that determine the basic shape of the body – signalling where the front and back, top and bottom of the body of more complex organisms (this includes worms I’m afraid) would be, essentially. Now, the discovery of the hox genes kind of proved what Darwin had wanted to say all along: that we are all related and our evolutionary ancestry can be traced way back in what he had elegantly allegorised as the tree of life. If related in modern genetic terms, the hox genes would be right at the roots of this tree from which further genetic extension (or branches) would go on to create diverse creatures on this earth.

I’d like to see feminist theory as the hox genes of global feminist activism. As unchanging and “un-evolveable” as the hox genes, the basic tenet of feminism (end to oppression based on gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, and class) would form the shape, direction, and ultimately the destiny of feminist politics. Mutations in feminist theory would mean that its perspective on ending oppression will be distorted, and in some cases, as good as dead. From an immutable and intact set of basic theories and goals come the social movements that take on a variety of modes based on historical, geographical, cultural, and religious circumstances, producing what we recognise today as localised and grassroots feminisms around the world.

The idea of a superstructure transnational feminism does not make a lot of sense to me. In fact, I find discussing global sisterhood boring and a little pointless. I attended the Feminist Theory and Activism in Global Perspective conference at SOAS today wondering what it really wanted to achieve, and left the conference still wondering. On the one – more positive – hand, there exists the idea that transnational feminism breeds solidarity. No doubt showing support as an emblem of solidarity is great, but effective activism needs a real understanding of the multiple contexts that influence it. Solidarity alone is not enough.

To be fair, it’s great seeing an international panel of feminist speakers talking about their work and how they can be raised as transnational feminist issues. Issues such as violence against women, working with women in zones of conflict, and postcolonial literature all have transnational appeal, but I find it unusual for feminist academics and activists to seek connections with others who don’t necessarily share the same contextual circumstances that are so crucial in addressing localised hegemonic patriarchy. Is a conference on transnational feminism something like the UN of feminist activism? We all know that the UN is far from perfect.

It seemed a little ironic to me that today’s conference did not include a talk on bridging Muslim and Western feminism, as that appears to be like the hottest topic of all time and basically the ultimate narrative of reconciling two very different feminisms. And so I went home today feeling a little cheated by a pretty bombastic line-up of talks that only rang hollow to me. We know that grassroots feminism is efficient and effective. Tinkering with it by including external intervention that has yet to be proven effective and most certainly complex to manage can distance the site of activism from those who know it best. In other words, why bother?

Jamie Oliver, food, and Eurocentrism

Jamie Oliver: Because this is how Americans tend to look

If you follow Jamie Oliver’s cooking programmes, alternatively known as The Naked Chef, you’ll notice that his cool and effortless boyish attitude to cooking strikes a chord with the young, mostly male, upwardly-mobile, and aspiring members of the British middle class; it’s about an obsession with fresh, locally-sourced or grow-your-own ingredients, and recipes firmly grounded in French/Italian cooking traditions. He’s deeply committed to getting Britain cooking at home again, and so none of those ready meals and takeaways plaguing busy families. But he has done so by entering the homes of lower income families in some of the roughest neighbourhoods in the country, who, by Jamie’s middle class standards, have Britain’s most deplorable eating habits. He is persuasive to some, patronising to others.

Ever so commercial-savvy, Jamie is also the face of the local supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, and his mantra is clear: cooking can be easy, quick and should be inexpensive. You can also adopt the Jamie Oliver lifestyle by buying his stylish dining and kitchen products whilst reading his eponymous magazine. But it doesn’t end there, he’s all about kids eating nutritious meals in school and teaching them to start cooking from a young age too, because it’s never too early to be have bourgeois aspirations. So far so caring and generous, but very commercial.

His newest television project, called Jamie’s American Road Trip, aims to spread his love of funky fusion cooking in the United States, which comes with a US-inspired cookbook too (launched on the day of his first episode no less). Eschewing the usual tropes of American food and travel itinerary, Jamie rubs shoulders with ex-gang members in Los Angeles, immigrant communities and the homeless in New York City, and other marginalised and disenfranchised groups. Told through the medium of local food and recipes, Jamie brings to the table some pretty interesting stories of life in America today despite his naive geniality and earnestness which I found awkward at times, but it is his ignorance and Eurocentric views about food that I found just difficult to swallow.

In an episode filmed in New York City, Jamie meets Egyptian-born chef Ali, who runs a restaurant popular with the large Egyptian community in Astoria. The chef was kind enough to prepare on camera his specialty, a tomato-based meaty broth which Jamie made references to minestrone. What sounded like someone making sense of familiar flavours ended up becoming a comment that suggested that “ethnic” cuisines simply orbited around Western European cooking. To make sense of non-European flavours and textures, “unusual” food must be viewed through European lenses. And so dim sum is like Chinese tapas, chapatis look like Indian pancakes, kuih-muih can only be translated as Malaysian cakes. “You are degrading my cooking and culinary culture”, says Chef Ali to the Naked Chef. Clearly flabbergasted and apologetic, Jamie goes on to make another racist mistake in New Orleans.

On last night’s programme, Jamie recounts the devastation caused by hurricane Gustav, marvels at the resilience of the human spirit and the taste of gumbo. There he meets Leah Chase and she shows him how to make a quick and proper gumbo. While adding into the cooking pot some okra, Chase talks about the history behind the gumbo and how people brought into the South for slave labour hid okra seeds in their ears. She also asks Jamie whether Britons eat okra to which he replied yes, because the South Asian communities eat a lot of them and they’re easily available in “ethnic” areas in many cities around the country.

Again, Jamie annoys a guest on the programme by lumping together diverse ethnic communities and culinary traditions into a pot labeled non-White European and Other, and therefore more-or-less the same. He apologises for his general buffoonery and says that he didn’t mean to sound racist; he’s just unaware that his comments were hurtful.

And there’s another example that encapsulates Jamie’s Eurocentric worldview: inspired by the vibrant immigrant community in New York City, he sets out to select guests who represent it for his very own underground restaurant/dinner party, but they all turn out to be mostly White. They are also young, middle-class, and bourgeois just like him. To summarise my thoughts on his show, I find it successful at presenting the diverse and complex relationships Americans have with food, from anti-restaurant movements to free food programmes for the poor. But unfortunately, his show is limited to just that: it only presents but fails to be sensitive and insightful about what it is showing. It appears that Jamie Oliver’s world isn’t really as colourful and diverse in the truest sense as his approach to cooking, which is a pity for someone whom many believe has his heart in the right place.