Policing Gender, Race, and Social Class: The Economics, Politics, and Social Dynamics of Marginalized Identities - Term Paper Example

Policing Gender, Race, And Social Class: The Economics, Politics, And Social Dynamics Of Marginalized Identities Some of the most emotionally-riveting images of national and global gender rights movements involve the public physical harassment of gender rights activists, both from feminist and gay organizations. An example is the brutal police treatment of feminist activists, such as Mona Prince, an Egyptian writer and university professor, and Asmaa Mahfouz, a young woman leader of national labor movement, who both participated in the January 2011 protests in Egypt (Amar, 300). State Security officers practiced what Paul Amar described as “sexualized brutality” against these women (301). Amar complained, however, that when the police attacked a foreign female correspondent, the Western media forgot to analyze and report on how complex gender issues and politics are in Egypt (301). Several other readings from other scholars explore the economic, political, and social dimensions of marginalized groups. The paper focuses on the policing of gender, race, and social class as a mechanism for protecting the economics, politics, and social dynamics that oppress disempowered identities. The act of policing has become a political mechanism for controlling and repressing non-traditional gender identities and sexual practices. Amar described policing behaviors in Rio de Janeiro and Cairo. He noted how Rio’s Militarized Police (PM) did not protect ASTRAL, an organization of travesti prostitutes (transvestites), against the attacks of neo-Nazi gangs who conducted homophobic violence against the latter in the 1980s (Amar, 65). Furthermore, the PM harassed and extorted money from the travestis, even when prostitution is legal in Brazil (Amar, 65). When the travestis asked for recognition and control over their business as legal sexual workers and empowerment in choosing their gender in public documents, the state simply registered them as “marginals” during the roundups (Amar, 65). The state then relabeled sexual work in the areas of travestis as “perversions of globalization,” where the police cleared the area of the travestis’ presence (Amar, 66). The happenings in Rio de Janeiro show how the state use the police to inflict fear upon those they categorize as second-class citizens. The interpretation of the paper is that the travestis are pushed to the margins, ideologically, legally, and physically, where the police play a critical role in implementing the state’s gender-oppressive policies. The travestis are further marginalized because they question the status quo and threaten the authoritarian power of the state. The same policing function is evident in Nayan Shah’s article. An example is when the police, acting through the law, treated sodomy as “crime against nature,” so they captured and detained males who seemed to be having sex (Shah, 705). The paper believes that rape between (any) genders is wrong, but the criminalization of homosexual practices demonstrates that the state supports heterosexuality as the only acceptable form of sexuality. To be gay is to be abnormal, but more than that, to do something about it sexually is to do something illegal. These articles depict how policing sex and gender promote the subjugation of homosexual groups. Apart from gay gender identities, the “policing” activities of feminist and feminine identity are presented in other articles. Amar depicted police brutality against female Egyptian demonstrators. Police brutality, in this case, reached sexual dimensions because of sexual harassment acts, such as grabbing women’s breasts and trying to rip off their clothes (Amar, 300). The paper interprets that these actions aim to put these women in their proper place, the place of subjugated status that their sexualization is supposed to remind them of. To sexually harass these women publicly and privately suggests the punishment of men for women who go out their traditional feminine roles. Outside patriarchal gender codes, these women are no longer women but inferior human beings with no civil rights and freedoms. In essence, policing promotes traditional femininity and rejects alternatives to it. Policing, however, does not only refer to state policing, but also to cultural policing. Joseph Massad argues that “Gay International” is reorienting Arab desire by Westernizing it, where the former seems to be imposing Western gay norms, values, and behaviors on Arab Muslims who show homoerotic behaviors (363). For him, Gay International is the one producing homosexuals and repressing other gender identities that do not fit its homosexuality epistemology (Massad, 363). The paper notes that Gay International, through defining homosexuality in limited terms, is the one ironically policing homosexual culture. Like Massad, the paper criticizes the new form of essentialism that comes from Gay International, when they treat gay issues all over the world as the same and aim to define homosexuality (its values, practices, and beliefs) in a homogenizing way. Nadine Naber considered another form of policing, the cultural policing of femininity in Arab societies. She understood the complications of a binary cultural logic, where there is a thinking of “us” versus “them.” For traditional Arab mothers, as she stressed, America stands for oversexuality that is immoral and corrupt. The paper understands binary cultural perspective (Naber 89), as categorizing “other” cultures and sexualities as immoral, so that the “us” is raised to a purer, more superior level. The dichotomy intends to create a policing ethics: go beyond what is considered Arab feminine and one becomes a hated, American whore (the dichotomy that Naber mentioned in her article). The policing effect, hence, is not state-driven per se, but culturally-driven, a culture that aims to preserve itself against the onslaught of oppositional liberal Western, especially American, values. Lisa Rofel presents another form of policing, the policing of desire. She interviewed daughters of Chinese women, who do not police their desire, while their parents sacrifice everything to control their desire because they grew up in a socialist society where the expression and attainment of individual desire is not allowed. Rofel stresses that these daughters saw themselves as “selfish…literally centering on a self that is allowed to desire” (119). These interviews imply how socialism removes individual desires to promote social equality. Hence, policing has its cultural forms and effects. While politics and social dynamics have its policing impact on marginalized groups, several articles intersect the policing of the “other” through economic actions. For Amar, it is present in how the state removes the source of livelihood of transvestite prostitutes by criminalizing their sexual work. For Shah, policing the sexual activities of the poor underlines their lower social status because of their social class. For Ara Wilson, policing refers to the marginalization of the invisible. She described that floating markets, which Thai women dominate, are part of Thai identity and culture, and yet when Thailand discusses the Thai economy, it does not include these Thai women (Wilson, 3). Women are “erased” in economic discourse, specifically, official and scholarly discourse, because of their gender and social class (Wilson, 3). Policing is not about physically harassing these women, by making them irrelevant to the society. By making these women irrelevant, their roles and contributions are undermined, and so they cannot gain more political power in improving their socio-economic conditions. These articles demonstrate that the state attains the policing of its economic activities, so that it can render marginalized genders continuously powerless. Policing is a dominant mechanism present in these articles because of their inclusion of policing acts that seek to marginalize particular genders, races, and social classes. Policing is comprised of the police itself and the cultural and economic policing of disempowered groups. Thus, these articles underline that policing can be done in diverse ways, including defining ideologies and rendering people invisible in public discourses. Reference List Amar, Paul. “Policing the Perversions of Globalization in Rio de Janeiro and Cairo.” In The Security Archipelago: Human-Security States, Sexuality Politics, and the End of Neoliberalism, 65-98. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. ____. “Turning the Gendered Politics Out of the Security State Inside Out?” International Journal of Feminist Politics 13, no.3 (2011): 299-328. Massad, Joseph. “Re-orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World.” Public Culture 14, no.2 (2002): 361-385. Naber, Nadine. “Arab American Femininities: Beyond Arab Virgin/American(ized) Whore.” Feminist Studies 32, no.1 (2006): 87-111. Rofel, Lisa. “From Sacrifice to Desire: Cosmopolitanism with Chinese Characteristics.” In Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture, 111-134. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Shah, Nayan. “Between ‘Oriental Depravity’ and ‘Natural Degenerates’: Spatial Borderlands and the Making of Ordinary Americans.” American Quarterly 57, no. 3(2005): 703-725. Wilson, Ara. “Intimate Economies.” In The Intimate Economies of Bangkok: Tomboys, Tycoons, and Avon Ladies in the Global City. Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 2004. Read More