BEYOND CULTURE: HUMAN RIGHTS UNIVERSALISMS VERSUSRELIGIOUS DOGMATISM IN THE QUEST FOR GENDER JUSTICE

Cyra Akila Choudhury*

The topic of “culture” and its influence andinteraction with law, politics and gender has beena preoccupation of a number of scholars for severaldecades if not centuries. Particularly for thosecountries that have experienced waves ofimmigration from various parts of the globe,questions of assimilation, culture and identityhave been a perennial source of concern andinquiry. In the United States, where the dominantculture has been a product of European immigration,notions of race and national origin have shaped thequestion of citizenship and belonging often playinga critical role in distributing rights or denyingthem. Indeed, certain kinds of racial and culturaldifference were deemed so immutable and soinassimilable that they led not only to the denialof citizenship but also to the stripping ofcitizenship from those who had been granted it.Furthermore, religious difference also played arole in the ongoing attempts by the federalgovernment in regulating minority religions. Forinstance, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s,the federal government repeatedly passed* M.A. (Columbia), J.D, LL.M (Georgetown), AssociateProfessor of Law, Florida International University College ofLaw. Many thanks to Penelope Andrews, Dean of The Albany LawSchool for giving me the opportunity to present these ideasat the conference on Human Rights, Gender and the Law held onMarch 11-12, 2013. A note on footnotes, the essay onlyprovides some cursory notes as a guide to where the specificquotations or ideas can be found.

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legislation aimed at the prevention of polygamy byMormons. In Supreme Court cases challenging theselaws and arguing that they violated the FirstAmendment, the Court made plain that polygamy isnot a culturally or religiously acceptable practicein a civilized nation in which democraticprinciples governed.

Polygamy has always been odious amongthe northern and western nations ofEurope, and, until the establishment ofthe Mormon Church, was almostexclusively a feature of the life ofAsiatic and of African people. At commonlaw, the second marriage was always void(2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliesthistory of England, polygamy has beentreated as an offence against society….Professor, Lieber says, polygamy leadsto the patriarchal principle, and which,when applied to large communities,fetters the people in stationarydespotism, while that principle cannotlong exist in connection with monogamy.1

In one broad sweep, the Court in Reynoldsexceptionalizes the practice of Mormon polygamyfrom the dominant culture, politics and religion ofthe United States. Tying it to patriarchal,despotic, Asians and Africans, the Court assertsthat its practice in the United States threatensthe very foundations of the social contract.Further more, as Sarah Berringer Gordon argues,

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much of the public outcry and subsequentjustifications for legal regulation of Mormonpolygamy was based on the need to protect women andgirls from the depredations of Mormon men.

In the United States, concepts of equalprotection and religious freedom have progressed.One would be hard-pressed to find a Suprepe Courtopinion baldly stating cultural and religiousbigotry of this sort today. In fact, a recent casedealing with de facto polygamy in Utah cites EdwardSaid’s Orientalism at length.

From a period in which assimilation was simplyexpected and accommodation of difference was notconsidered needful let alone legally required, wemoved to the 1980s and 1990s in whichmulticulturalism and tolerance were the bywords ofsociety. Dominant culture and religion enshrined inpublic practices were challenged through casesbrought against school prayer, public displays ofreligion, and demands for accommodation of minorityreligions. But the questions about how muchtolerance and difference ought to be allowedremained in the wings. The problem of limits wasnever resolved. And it plagues us still.

For feminists of any persuasion, the questionof difference has been particularly vexing and ithas been a feature of the movement from its veryinception with the critique of black womenconsistently raising problems of white universalismand hegemony.

Culture appears so often in conversationsabout women’s status and the law that it has becomea “go-to” explanation for any manner of event orbelief. And culture has encompassed both religionand ethnicity at times to provide a sort of

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umbrella term. But just as most generalizationshave limited explanatory power, when used in thisway, culture is a similarly thin concept that failsto shed light on how certain choices about the lawand society’s priorities are made. As such,whenever culture comes up as a rationale for legaldecisions, it requires careful unpacking andscrutiny. Moreover, it requires skepticism. In thefollowing paragraphs, I want to elaborate on threepoints about the use of culture. First, culture(and its religious analog) is often used as ajustification for avoiding gender law reform.However, what is often hidden behind such usage isa highly particular and discreet set of politicalchoice about how to arrange the rights andobligations within society. These choices are notdetermined a priori by a cultural script. Second,both those who tend to use it to justify doingnothing or doing very limited reforms as well asthose who seek sweeping reforms view culturesimilarly. This mirroring of relativists anduniversalists is an old construction that has rootsin the colonial period and this history isimportant in understand the present dilemmas offeminism. Finally, that mirroring dynamic alsoreflects a seemingly intractable oppositionaltension between multiculturalist/relativists whoseek to preserve culture and the universalists whoseek to overcome it. This tension is very presentin legal feminist thought and activism makingtransnational coalitions and support morecomplicated. While it is impossible to fullyexplore that tension as it manifests in theliterature or its damaging effects on feministactivism and agenda-setting, I do want to examine

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two contexts in which it can be clearly observed:the veil context in France and the recent activismby Femen to “free” Muslim women from Islam. Bygrounding the theoretical observations in these twopractical phenomena, I hope to show that unless theimpasse is overcome, the full potential ofemancipatory feminist thought and activism willnever be realized.

I. CULTURE AS AN ALIBI: POLITICS, LAW ANDCHOICES

Feminists have long had to contend witharguments against law and rights reform based onculture.2 The literature in almost every feministfield is replete with examples of culture used topush back on claims of equality and rights. Fromarguments based on tradition which demands respectfor no other reason than past practice to thosebased on religion demanding adherence to divinecommandments, those who wish to retain the statusquo that subordinates women and sexual minoritiesgive the impression that change is eitherundesirable, dangerous, or impossible.

For instance, domestic claims to culturalprotection are often made when women demand changesto family law, inheritance and other discriminatoryregulations. From U.S. history, in the 1873 caseBradwell v. Illinois, the stereotypes of womanhood wereused to deny a female applicant admittance to thebar. In that case, the Supreme Court opined that:

2 See generally, Susan Moller Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (1999)

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[T]he civil law, as well as natureherself, has always recognized a widedifference in the respective spheres anddestinies of man and woman. Man is, orshould be, woman's protector anddefender. The natural and proper timidityand delicacy which belongs to the femalesex evidently unfits it for many of theoccupations of civil life. TheConstitution of the family organization,which is founded in the divine ordinanceas well as in the nature of things,indicates the domestic sphere as thatwhich properly belongs to the domain andfunctions of womanhood. The harmony, notto say identity, of interest and viewswhich belong, or should belong, to thefamily institution is repugnant to theidea of a woman adopting a distinct andindependent career from that of herhusband.3

The impulse to use cultural reasoning is deep-rooted across many cultures, including our own. Andindeed, there is even a strain of feminism thatargues for greater respect for female culture—Cultural Feminism.

More recently that impulse has been seen inattempts at changing the Muslim personal law in anumber of Muslim-majority countries. Such effortshave met with resistance based on religiousarguments.4 The rationale given is that one cannot3 Bradwell v. State of Illinois, 83 U.S. 130 (1873).4 See e.g., VRINDA NARAIN, RECLAIMING THE NATION: MUSLIM WOMEN AND THE LAW IN INDIA (2008).

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change the divinely mandated roles of men andwomen. For instance, attempts at reforming the lawsgoverning women’s right to divorce, inheritance, orattempts at regulating polygamy are resisted bysome states because the rights and obligations havebeen set in stone by God and human laws have noplace changing these relationships. An example ofthis is in the reservations to the Convention onthe Elimination of All Forms of DiscriminationAgainst Women (“CEDAW”) made by a number ofcountries. The following comes from Egypt: Inrespect of article 16:

Reservation to the text of article 16concerning the equality of men and womenin all matters relating to marriage andfamily relations during the marriage andupon its dissolution, without prejudiceto the Islamic Sharia's provisions wherebywomen are accorded rights equivalent tothose of their spouses so as to ensure ajust balance between them. This is out ofrespect for the sacrosanct nature of thefirm religious beliefs which governmarital relations in Egypt and which maynot be called in question and in view of thefact that one of the most important basesof these relations is an equivalency ofrights and duties so as to ensurecomplementary which guarantees trueequality between the spouses. Theprovisions of the Sharia lay down that thehusband shall pay bridal money to thewife and maintain her fully and shallalso make a payment to her upon divorce,

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whereas the wife retains full rights overher property and is not obliged to spendanything on her keep. The Sharia thereforerestricts the wife's rights to divorce bymaking it contingent on a judge's ruling,whereas no such restriction is laid downin the case of the husband.5

These are political choices given an alibi byculture and religion. Muslim countries vary inpractice and different rules governing marriage anddivorce exists and oftentimes justified byreference to religion. The pluralism in religiouslaws cannot be explained by culture.

As Lama Abu-Odeh demonstrates in her work onEgyptian family law, Egyptian male elites madecalculated political choices with regard tomodernizing family law. In both legislating newlaws and adjudicating them, which rules “ought” tobe passed or applied were not self-evident withouta political or ideological agenda. That agendadrove the elites to split the difference withreligious factions and feminists and modernize someparts of the Egyptian code. The choice to modernizesome aspects of the law, to qualify traditionalrules with modern requirements was not a culturalchoice but a political one that reveals theexigencies of a new state and the relativebargaining power of the political players (secularmale elites, feminists, religious groups) in it.6

Naturally, broader social and cultural norms have5 All countries’ reservations to CEDAW, including Egypt, canbe found at the United Nations website,http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/reservations-country.htm (last visited, June 13, 2013).

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effects on the ideological commitments of theplayers but to say that culture is what motivatesthem is to underestimate the political.

This brings me to my next point about the verynature of religion and culture as it is understoodby both universalists and culturalrelativists/apologists: both consider culture to beimmutable. That is to say that a particularpractice or belief can be claimed positively as“cultural” and also claim that it has remainedunchanged over time. This view prevents argumentsthat get at the political decision-making behindeither abandoning or preserving “cultural”practices and moves the argument onto a much lesscontestable terrain.

II. RELATIVISTS AND UNIVERSALISTS AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF CULTURE

While the construction of culture as anunchanging set of social arrangements is usual fromrelativists, a mirror image argument is made byrights universalists.7 For instance, claims thatculture or religion prohibits legal reform ofgender iniquitous laws are contested precisely as6 Lama Abu-Odeh, Modernizing Muslim Family Law: The Case of Egypt 37VAND. J. TRANSNAT'L L. 1043-1146 (2004).7 For instance, the late Susan Moller Okin is an example of a rights universalist in that she failed to situate her particular commitments to a liberally configured set of rights within any kind of culture, Susan Moller Okin, Feminism, Women’s Human Rights, and Cultural Differences in Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World 26 (2000); A more nuanced byuniversalist approach is taken by Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2001).

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though those assertions were true. An argument thatreligion prevents equal access to divorce is metwith calls for the abandonment of any engagementwith religion and a demand for a move into theculturally neutral space of universal humanrights.8

Two points need to be made here. First, theconcentration of efforts by universal rightsactivists to progress out of culture or religion orto privatize it is a well-established strategy withantecedents in the colonial civilizing mission.9

The view espoused is that but for the culturalbaggage, people in these traditional societieswould realize the benefits of universal human rightand women’s rights. Progress is made in spite ofthe burdens imposed by religion and culture.Moreover, for women, culture is something to bepreserved by them but not created by them. So womenbecome victims of their culture but rarely everviewed as agents of and within the culture. 10 Yetwomen in the Global South—the part of the worldwhere culture is supposedly problematic—do notnecessarily experience the matrix of norms auniformly problematic. As Saba Mahmood has shown inher work on the Egyptian piety movement, women areagents of a new form of Islamic piety that includesreading sacred texts for themselves andinterpreting religion. They are not simply livingout the requirements of men.11 Religion is animportant part of these women’s identity and not8 Id.9 Cyra Akila Choudhury, Empowerment or Estrangement: LiberalFeminisms Visions of the “Progress” of Muslim Women, 39 U. BALT. L. FORUM153 (2009).10 Madhavi Sunder, Piercing the Veil, 112 YALE L.J. 1399 (2003).

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something that can be separated out. Furthermore,progress itself is conceived of within an Islamicframework such that ideas of progress that includethe shedding of religious adherence is unappealingif not incomprehensible. Even if we are skepticalof “Islamic feminism”, Muslim women are taking theinitiative in theorizing and building a form offeminism that demands rights for women whileremaining solidly within the religious framework ofIslam.12 These women are availing themselves of theinsight that has eluded both apologists/relativistsand universalists: culture and religion are open tointerpretation, contestation, and reformulation.Just as theorists from Mary Wollstonecraft toGloria Steinem built on liberal philosophy,expanding it and pushing society to accept genderinclusive interpretations of rights, Muslim womenare doing the same with Islam.

The second point that needs to be made is thatby shifting culture onto the terrain of the GlobalSouth, universalists mask the cultural content intheir own articulation of women’s rights andpresent their own struggles as political.13 Theliberal notions of human rights and women’s rights11 SABA MAHMOOD, THE POLITICS OF PIETY: ISLAMIC REVIVAL AND THEFEMINIST SUBJECT (2011).12 For examples of Islamic feminism, see MAI YAMANI, FEMINISM AND ISLAM: LEGAL AND LITERARY PERSPECTIVES (1996); MIRIAM COOKE, WOMEN CLAIM ISLAM: CREATING ISLAMIC FEMINISM THROUGH LITERATURE (2000); ELIZABETH WARNOCK FERNEA, IN SEARCH OF ISLAMIC FEMINISM (2010); MARGOT BADRAN, FEMINISM IN ISLAM: SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS CONVERGENCES (2009); SHERINE HAFEZ, AN ISLAM OF HER OWN: RECONSIDERING RELIGION AND SECULARISM IN WOMEN’S ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS (2011).13 Makau Mutua, Savages, Victims, and Saviors: the Metaphor of HumanRights, 42 HARVARD INT’L L.J. 201-245 (2001)

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did not emerge fully formed in a vacuum. Ratherthey developed within the cultural and historicalcontext of a Europe wracked by religiousintolerance and warfare and saw their legalculmination in the declarations and conventionsthat were enacted after the genocidal violence ofthe Second World War. Curiously, the genocidalviolence of colonialism was insufficient to createa global consensus in spite of the numerous claimsby subject peoples to universal humanity and itsattendant rights. The independence leaders ofcolonies from India to Africa and the Middle Eastused Liberal notions of citizenship, justice andthe rule of law to demand freedom and recognitionof human rights. Only Mahatma Gandhi stands out asarticulating an indigenous basis for rights basednot on Liberalism but Hinduism and Indianphilosophy.

The point here is that universal rights may betheoretically “universal” but the way they are putinto practice does involve cultural and perhapseven religious substructures. For instance, women’srights most often attach to individual women andseek to enhance their autonomy from other humans.What is considered important is the ability to makeindividual decisions and to control one’s ownphysical being and social and work prospectswithout the undue influence of others. Moreover,liberal ideas of equal rights tend to reflectAristotelian notions of equality that requiredeterminations of sameness and difference.

To be clear, I am not arguing that autonomyand equality are of lesser value than community andcomplementarity. Indeed, I am not. Women’s lack ofagency and the argument that because they are

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deeply embedded in family structures asjustifications to prevent reform is veryproblematic. But so are concepts that ignore thereality of embeddedness, community and substantiveequality that takes seriously the differing rolesand desires of women. And equally problematic arerights agendas that require women to behave asthough these realities are unimportant or thatrequire the realities to change radically beforewomen reap any benefits afforded by rights.14 Thepoint here is that universal rights have alreadyhave a cultural and political valence and this isoften obscured by universalists who only talk aboutculture in oppositional terms and with anassumption that rights will only work in a secularframework.15 Moreover, they do not account for thecritique that “rights” will not yield the kind ofemancipation that women desire rather theiracquisition may mask certain distributions of powerand resources that elevate some women over others.That cultural valence, the underlying assumptions,and the distributional impact of rights matter whenit comes down to practical implementation in aparticular context.

14 Furthermore, there are other vernaculars that might be used to express a desire for greater gender justice other than human rights. We have lost a great deal of that capacitythrough the hegemony of human rights talk. For instance, we might couch our desire for justice and equality through the language of redistribution and material feminism, see e.g., ROSEMARY HENNESSY AND CHRYS INGRAHAM, MATERIAL FEMINISM: A READER INCLASS, DIFFERENCE AND WOMEN’S LIVES (1997).15 The religious valence of secularism is similarly obscuredby most secularists. See, e.g., TALAL ASAD FORMATIONS OF THE SECULAR(2003).

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Furthermore, universalists do not pay adequateattention to the contests over cultural meaning andpractice that have gone on and continue to go onwithin various societies that allowed for lawreforms to take place. For example, reproductiverights battles that have been an ongoing source ofstruggle for feminists in the United States couldbe construed as part of a culture war. However,U.S. feminists tend to see the fight as more of apolitical one rather than a cultural one whereas asimilar fight in Afghanistan is construed as areligious struggle rather than a politicalstruggle.

In sum, arguments from universalists againstculture mimic those of cultural relativists thatassume that culture as a social construct is fixedand immutable. Moreover, universalists focus on theculture of “Others” while obscuring their owncultural commitments. Instead, a pro-universalhuman rights position is normalized as the neutralsecular position devoid of any cultural orreligious baggage. From this space, critiques ofculture and religion that seem eerily familiar topost-colonial scholars are launched against womenin the Global South.

III. Liberal Feminism and It’s Cultural Other:A Problematic Stalemate

As I write, a number of public battles aboutfeminism are raging in the mainstream. SherylSandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Leadhas generated heated debate about the ways in whichwomen assume they cannot succeed in the workplaceand, therefore, pull back from giving their careers

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their full effort.16 Femen has been splashed acrossa number of websites and newspapers in their bare-breasted glory—ostensibly to bring attention to theplight of Muslim women.17 And more recently, Ms.Magazine’s article on, recording artist, BeyoncéKnowles, questioning her feminist credentials hasreinvigorated the critiques of mainstream feminismfrom some women of color.18 Conservative forces theworld over have stepped up their efforts toforeclose opportunities for racial minorities,women, and sexual minorities, it seems aninopportune time to suffer multiple identitycrises. However, these cleavages—which have beenongoing—give us yet another opportunity toreconsider how we build movements and what thegoals of those movements are, whom they include,and whom they leave out in specific local contexts.

a. France, Femen, and Oppressive Freedom

By now, the veil debate is old news. However, itcontinues to be a source of interest for women bothin majority Muslim states and those in the Europeand America with growing Muslim populations. Many aconversation with friends and colleagues reveal thedeep-seated commitment to autonomy and personal16 SHERYL SANDBERG, LEAN IN: WOMEN, WORK, AND THE WILL TO LEAD(2013).17 For two examples, Diana Magnay, Topless feminist protestors show what they are made of, CNN available at http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/01/21/femen.topless.protest/index.html (last visited, June 13, 2013); Bin Adewunmi, Sexualized Femen protest ‘naïve and foolish at best’ CNN available at http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/22/opinion/opinion-bim-adewumni-femen (last visited, June 13, 2013).18 Beyonce’s Fierce Feminism, MS. MAGAZINE June, 2013.

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rights that most liberal feminists have but theirlimited applicability. The conversation, which islikely familiar to many, typically goes like this:

Liberal Feminist: Women should have theright to wear whatever theywant.

Muslim woman: Yes, and that oughtto include the veil.

LF: Well, yes but the veil isan oppressive article, itconnotes patriarchaloppression not freedom.Women should be free tonot wear anything at allif they so desire.Covering up one’s body ishardly a celebration offreedom.

MW: So, the choice to wear aveil is theinternalization ofoppression while thechoice to be naked isliberation?

LF: European women can wearwhatever they like. ButMuslim women cannot andthat’s the problem.

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MW: So, European or AmericanMuslim women who veilpresent no problem.

LF: Except that they are notexercising a free choice butare driven to veil by apatriarchal religion. If theyweren’t, they would be wearingbikinis at the beach.

Over and again, the meaning of the veil is“settled” by Liberal feminists. Even in the contextof Europe and the United States where the statelaws guarantee the right to certain personalfreedoms, the choice to wear a veil is seen not asa choice but as a compulsion of religion. I am notdenying that for some women the choice isconstrained by patriarchal norms or even externalpressure. But it is far from self-evident that forall women, the choice to veil is driven bycompulsion. Moreover, the equation of wearingnothing or next to nothing, of inviting the male(or female) gaze with “freedom” is bizarre. Perhapsit is felt as freedom for some women, but it may alsobe driven by deeply sexist norms that commodifywomen’s bodies and a society that demands access tofemale bodies. Furthermore, even a cursoryexamination of the porn, diet, and fashion industrythrows up contradictions about “freedom” andchoice. It seems as though Liberal feministsespousing these views are willing to indulgethemselves in the fantasy of choice, refusing tounpack the many layers that make up subjectivity

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and inform choice, rather than confront thestructural impediments to real freedom.

In other words, I want to suggest that thereis a contradiction here that places Muslim women atthe mercy of their religious norms but fails to seesimilar cultural constraints driven by capitalistinterests on non-Muslim women. After all, is itreally a free choice to undergo brutal forms ofplastic surgery to meet a societal standard ofbeauty? How much money is spent on fashion, beauty,and diet products and does this consumptionindicated a satisfaction with women’s beings?19

Why is it necessary to Photoshop pictures forpublic consumption? I do not have simple answers.There are none. And there are certainly none toquestions arising from Muslim women’s choices toveil or not either. Ultimately, the decisions—ifthey can even consciously be called such—are boundup in a complex web of formal laws, societal norms,and personal motivations. Moreover, contextmatters. It is one thing to be speaking about womenin states that enforce particular dress codes (likeFrance and Saudi Arabia where choice is constrainedby state power) and another to be speaking aboutwomen in the United States who might be housewives,college students, scientists or porn stars! Withoutcontext, the discussion is flattened intostereotypes and essentialist tropes that serve onlyto alienate rather than liberate.

The final point that I want to make here is alink to the colonial past and Femen. Femen claimsto evade the difficulties of the colonial historyamong Liberal European women and women in the19 See WENDY BROWN, REGULATING AVERSION: TOLERANCE IN THE AGE OF IDENTITY AND EMPIRE 48-77 (2008).

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Global South because they were also “colonized”.20

Yet a shared experiences cannot be abstracted fromits particulars and used unproblematically to formthe basis of knowledge about another group inanother context, as I have been arguing. Take forexample, the United States which was also once aBritish colony; we do not assume that this sharedhistory somehow privileges U.S. feministsepistemically and prevents them from forging arelationship with the global south that smacks ofthe same tutelage relationship of Britishcolonialism. Femen is not that different. Like somefeminist groups in France and the United States,they have shown that they presume to know what iswrong in women’s lives in the global south. Theyhave understood women’s oppression from SaudiArabia to Senegal and it boils down to religion.And they have also figured out how to free everyonefrom this oppression. Their totalizing judgmentsare not restricted to simply the disease but alsothe cure. In other words, Femen and their ilk notonly want women to be free, they also want to beable to dictate to women—regardless of where theyare and what webs of relationships inform theirlives—how that freedom is to be experienced. For agood dose of this imperial stance, one only needsto visit their website on which can be found thefollowing:

20 See Agata Pyzik, White does not always mean privileged: why Femen’sUkrainian Context matters, The New Statesman available athttp://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2013/04/white-doesnt-always-mean-privilege-femens-ukrainian-context (last visited,June 13, 2013).

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Dear FEMEN friends!As you are alreadyaware, the repressive Tunisian Courttossed in jail our peaceful activistsPauline, Margarit and Josephine. Thethree heroes, who dared to protesttopless in the Islamist dictatorship, gota prison sentence of 4 months. Theyhelped their companion Amina which were(sic) arrested early, and now they needour protection and support! We arecollecting donations for next immediateand urgent actions: legal proceedings tothe appeal and release the girls; visitof their parents to meet brave daughtersin jail; a permanent presence of theofficial FEMEN's observer in Tunis; bringclothes and food for the four prisoners;drive public campaign against officialTunisian authorities to pressure anddiscredit Islamists, who has ignored generallyaccepted norms of democracy and freedom! Thesefour girls are early birds of upcomingfemale Arab revolution, women struggling forthe East liberty and civilized standards ofpersonal freedom and human rights. 21

We may be able to write off Femen as aspectacle rather than a valid political movementbut their activism underscores the tension betweenuniversal rights, liberal ideas of civilization andprogress that are embedded in them, and a“regressive” culture. And it also points to thetension specifically between liberal “feminism” in21 See, Femen at http://www.femen.org (last visited June 13,2013).

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its governmentalist form (we will tell you how tobe free) and real women’s messy, lived experience,and alternative desires (we will articulate what itmeans to be free). I have written elsewhere aboutthe willingness of some feminist organizations topartner with the state to “save” brown women. Andit is important to note here the ongoing critiquesof critical race feminists, material feminists, andpostcolonial feminists that have continued to pointup the inconsistency of an essentialized,totalizing, feminism with liberation.

b. Breaking the Stalemate: Taking Difference Seriously

The ongoing stalemate between a universalist,liberal feminism and an immutable culturalpatriarchy has led to a great deal of energy lostthat might have been better served in promotinggender justice. For instance, if Femen had chosen adifferent approach than bearing breasts with anti-Islamic slogans on their bodies, it might havegenerated less conversation about what Muslim womenwear on their heads; it might not have provoked acounter response with Muslim women telling Fementhat they were not in need of instruction on theiremancipatory goals; and it certainly would havegenerated far fewer front-page media stories. IfFemen had taken the time to actually talk towomen’s groups working at the grassroots, theymight have understood what battles were reallyrelevant to the lives of Arab women in Tunisia, acountry they have taken a particular interest inpresumably because of their colleague Amina Tylerand three others who were jailed for protestingtopless. If they had taken difference seriously and

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had not continued—as they still do—with theassumption that “we” all want the same thing andthat the same forces operate in each context makingthe solutions simple, the stalemate might bebroken. And rather than requesting donations ofmoney to bail out their colleagues for a toplessprotest that most certainly increases Femen’snotoriety and benefits its activists, thoseresources might have gone towards a cause thatimproved the lives of Tunisian women.

Liberal feminism coupled with universalistrights cannot disavow its cultural content. It mustcompete in the marketplace of ideas alongside otherarticulations of women’s flourishing. If it wantsto be relevant to the lives of women beyond theWesternized elite, it will have to take differenceseriously and translate its ideas into those thatappeal broadly. In other words, rather than fallingback on culture as the excuse for its failures, itwill have to compete on the terrain of politics.Indeed, during a time in which women and men havetaken to the streets in the Muslim world in recordnumbers, this is what it is about and what it hasbeen about all along.

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