Blog Post #2

The most prominent question I took away from classes this week was this one:

Does the patriarchal system have anything to do with the roles women take in war and combat?

I know this isn’t an original question, but I’ve been thinking about it all week and it was swarming my head during the readings, because it became so clear and so frustrating at the same time.

My shorts answer is yes, it does have everything to do with not only the roles taken, but the fact that roles are taken.

So, during today’s documentary, we discussed whether the FARC women join the guerilla movement due to personal or structural reasons. I originally believed it was structural, but after some thought, I realized that, even if it was structural (society based on class, gender norms, etc.), that it all comes back to personal issues.

These issues, as we’ve spoken about this week, can have something to do with the personalization of societal issues like class or gender norms. But also, it could be an issue of avenging a loved one such as a child or partner, employing the “Mother narrative” introduced by Dr. Sjoberg.

Mia Bloom writes in her essay on women suicide bombers that Tamil women typically become participants in this form of combat for personal reasons, much like the Black Widows of Chechnya.

Looking at the narratives laid out by Sjoberg, Bloom’s essay fits well with two of them: Mother and Monster.

The two groups of women mentioned above fall into the Mother narrative, but:

Bloom writes that their [the female suicide bombers’] participation is a direct contradiction to the theory that “women are more likely to choose peaceful mechanisms for conflict resolution than men are.” (Bloom, 95) This explicitly falls in line with the Monster narrative, being that women somehow break from their womanhood and the characteristics of it.

On the notion of joining guerilla warfare organizations for societal reasons taken personally, Bloom notes that these women believe they can change the gender norms in their society through this involvement. After consideration and more reading on this topic, I unfortunately cannot believe that to be the case, as much as we might all wish it to be.

Here’s why:

As I mentioned before, as hard as these women push to be seen as equal to their male counterparts, even in the situation of FARC, there is not a solid chance that enough people in the nation itself will agree with this concept, especially if it’s written in their consitution and common law to not see it that way. No matter the reason, whether it’s personal, structural or personal-structural, these women are still painted in a poor light and it hardly makes a dent in the societal issue in which they are trying to modernize. We saw today that even ex-FARC soldiers receive backlash and discrimination just for having fought for the organization.

The second reason is laid out in Bloom’s essay:

“The problem lies in the fact that these women, rather than confronting archaic patriarchal notions of women and exploding these myths from within, are actually operating under them.” (Bloom, 102)

Bloom notes that these female suicide bombers are more valuable to their organizations dead than they are alive. And when they are alive, they are made to feel valued because they are tasked with literally the deadliest job, but their roles and the meaning behind the roles don’t change.

For example, a female suicide bomber concealing her IED under her dress, situated as a pregnant belly, tugs at the strings of gendering and the role of motherhood. There’s no way an expecting mother can blow a shopping mall or a crowded market to pieces. Not only is she a woman, but now she’s a pregnant woman with more emotions and probably a higher preference for compromise and tolerance for her baby.

These women who hope to change the system still participate in what society expects of them, like dressing like a Western Hemisphere woman to blend in with that side of the world as to go undetected.

Because of this, the patriarchal system is to blame for this somewhat, right? If the system forces women of these societies among Sri Lanka, Iraq and their neighbors, then they only have themselves to take matters into their own hands. But once that happens, they’re labeled as mothers who didn’t know what else to do, or as broken monsters who lost their mind, or a similar term, and it turns into a cycle of where women just cannot win.