Cynthia Enloe’s chapter, Whom Do You Take Seriously?, brings up a lot of important issues relevant to women’s issues. She draws the parallel of women not being able to speak out about abuse to women remaining absent from the public sphere. The main issue she focuses on is how women are being silenced. Enloe starts off discussing her chapter about her experiences as a teacher. She questions how she, as a teacher, has silenced her own students. Enloe begins to analyze the reasons of what motivates female students to not participate in class discussions. Some may just not be stimulated by the conversation, some may fear public criticism and some may even feel that there is no point in conveying their thoughts because they feel that many teachers only pay attention to male students in regards to politics or world affairs. Enloe brings up Hannah Arendt, who placed such importance on public speech, who became convinced “It was only by speaking to each other as citizens that we could create and sustain an authentic political life” (71). Enloe uses Arendt’s belief to discuss the Asian and Pacific democratization movements. These democratic reforms have given voice to a larger group publicly and politically. She starts to narrow in on specific modes of silencing that relate to violence against Asian-Pacific women. There is an idea supported my men and women that women are “naturally” best in the private sphere. This idea is what women’s rights advocates are fighting to get rid of. Enloe focuses on trivialization as being a primary cause of silencing women. She lists three ways of how regimes, opposition parties, judges, popular movements, and the press go about making female violence seem trivial:
1. Gendered violence is inevitable- not worth expenditures of political capital
2. So rare-wasteful to try and prevent
3. Other things are more important- global competition, structural adjustment or nuclear testing
4. Undermining the credibility of the messenger
Enloe moves on to research “respectability” and how it was “the most potent tools for keeping women silenced” (75). This idea of respectability has kept violence against women from being taken seriously as a political issue. In most countries, women would lose respectability by publicly speaking out. These women were the first to publicly express themselves and some even had to write articles under a man’s name to be taken seriously. Enloe brings up how many Asian-Pacific women working in factories were subjected to sexual assault and did not speak out due to the fear of being seen as an unrespectable woman. Enloe says, “Most women who report sexual abuse find that it is they, not their alleged abusers, who are likely to suffer damage to their precarious social reputations” (79). Most women fear that by speaking to strangers and being the subjects of a humiliating experience are seen as less “pure” by the listeners of these women. Organizations such as the Hong Kong based Committee for Asian Women is trying to make women understand and feel comfortable that it is okay to organize in a fashion where women can speak out in public about their political concerns and speak out I public about their sexual abuse on the job. We discussed this in class a couple weeks ago when reading Enloe, furthermore she brings up the concept of factory owners recruiting these young women to work for them. The factory owners persuade the parents that these are indeed respectable jobs for young women. Enloe says how most pro-democracy movements have run into trouble with the problem of violence against women. To prove this point she says, “the pressure to expand citizen participation has increased when men and women have interpreted a given incidence of violence against women as evidence of the current regime’s inability or unwillingness to protect the most vulnerable members of the putative nation” (80). This concept as led still-masculinized movement leaders to become humiliated, which has actually stripped women of their own political voice in regards to the violence. Moreover, women are frowned upon speaking out against men who are part of their nation and therefore subjected to “keep quiet for the sake of the “nation””(81). Enloe further develops this argument by saying sovereignty has partially contributed to this silencing.
Steinem’s article, Supremacy Crimes, is extremely informative and raises awareness about our idea of masculinity in society. Steinem points out that the majority of hate crimes, “senseless” killings etc., are carried out by white, non-poor males of heterosexual orientation. This leads Steinem to question the cause of such behavior in a systemic sense. She says, “it's not their life experiences that are the problem, it's the impossible expectation of dominance to which they've become addicted”. Men are subjected to this idea of power and domination from early on in life. However, most men do not thrive on the idea of dominance and do not carry out such awful acts to prove their dominance. Although, there are some men who do choose this outlet. Steinem says, “the very existence of gentle men proves that socialization can override it”. This fact is extremely important in shaping society. There are plenty of men who feel no need to be dominant and use power to prove they are the powerful gender. Steinem brings up interesting points when she refers to specific cases such as the idea of race playing in as a factor for crime. However, the white male is the one who is typically committing these massacres. Also, not once does Steinem give an example of a female who has committed a crime at this level. This is because women have never been socialized to thrive on dominance and feel the urge to demonstrate their dominance. Steinem closes her article on a strong note saying, “We will never reduce the number of violent Americans, from bullies to killers, without challenging the assumptions on which masculinity is based: that males are superior to females, that they must find a place in a male hierarchy, and that the ability to dominate someone is so important that even a mere insult can justify lethal revenge”. This statement adequately sums up the action society needs to take to prevent these horrific tragedies from taking place.
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