Process of carving out new public space
ANTA02 – In Search of Respect; Chapter 6 REDRAWING THE GENDER LINE Domestic violence: Process of carving out new public space for women = contradictory outcomes and pain. • Made worst by fundamental status quos that enforce male domination not being altered. • Males don’t accept new rights/roles women are obtaining &are trying to reassert their lost ‘grandfathers autocratic control’ over households/public space. Crisis of patriarchy = experienced from econ failure to provide as head of house since such structural transformations assault sense of masculine dignity. • Stabilising community institutions don’t exist in the inner city thus men struggle in a hostile vacuum trying to regain historical patriotic power. • Crisis manifests as polarization of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Ex. Candy, who’s capable of commanding respect on the street. • Embodies contradictory processes thru which gender & power rel’ps are being redefined in street culture. • “from child-abused daughter to child-abused wife” via romantic elopement. o In jibaro culture = legitimate cultural institution allowing girl’s resistance to paternal domination so long as she resubmits herself to control of her lover and establishes a conjugal household with him when she gets pregnant. Battered women syndrome via intergenerational transmission of violence and substance abuse (psychology) is applicable but lacking context. - Because it ignores: systematic dislocation in family structure caused by massive rural-urban migration. - Ex. Domestic brutality against Candy while pregnant emerges almost as expression of structural maladjustment. Or perhaps husband’s sadism=attempt to retain jibaro ideal of large family. Earlier generations might’ve understood violence (within limits) as legitimate role of a father coordinating his household laborers on small farm. Female liberation versus traditional sexual jealousy: Candy shot her husband for cheating on her with her sister. - Desperate attempt to hold onto traditional family values of a past. - Also display of violence establish credibility/respect in the streets. - ie. When gender confrontations and assertions of individual rights express themselves in the romantic idioms of sexual jealousy. - His affair violated kinship solidarity so she exhausted her battered-woman dependence on him by shooting him. Asserting individual needs whilst binding to principle of male-domination (compare: like how romantic love allows subordinated women to both assert individual needs and be bound to male-dom’d nuclear families). - Jibaro explanation: ataque de nervios (P.Rican culture bound syndrome, commonly found in women abused since childhood by men, similar to panic attack).
Ataques = Legitimized forum for women to vent angst against dominant man when his abuse oversteps accepted boundaries. Jealousy = common provocation for these culturally scripted violent outbursts by women. - T/F Candy followed traditional abuse survivor’s scenario by shooting husband - almost reaffirming patriarchal etiquette. Candy subsequent depression at husband imprisoned &subsequent lack of econ provision solved by falling in love w/primo and selling drugs for Ray (their boss). - Combination of traditional female strategy for making assertive lifestyle change (falling in love) with reality of underground economy (by hustling). Inverting patriarchy: - Having a kept lover (primo) made him a vehicle for Candy to confront gender taboos of P.Rican street culture. - Being kept = primo’s inner-city male fantasy of being cacheteando (freeloading) off a woman. - Candy confronting gender taboos including: bragging publically about her sexual exploits and financial profits, demanding sex from her lover, threatening violence etc. - Primo rebelled against this inversion of patriarchy to recoup his personal sense of male respect via his only means: physical violence and then leaving her. - Cont’d inversion b/c Candy didn’t revert to ataque de nervois because of new macho street-dealer identity – instead pursued male scenario for revenge against disrespectful ex-lover by making exclamations regarding their sex life and threatening his new girlfriend. Contradicting contexts for women’s struggles: Immigration, rapid capitalist development and manufacturing-to-service restructuring have not invented sexism and cannot explain the existence of domestic violence in a reductionist manner. - Problems in government and streets faced by women are compounded by the hostile migration experience and the polarized violence of underground econ. - The difficulty with forging a new public space for women is that the arena for action/fulfillment and econ advancement is limited to ElBarrio street world. - Just struggling for autonomy and rights as a woman still defined by patriarchal parameters (ie Candy: money by hustling, having kept lover, bragging, threatening, etc). What kind of liberation or autonomy is being carved out by women in ElBarrio streets? - Qst set in larger feminist debate about who defines the meaning of women’s rights? What do women’s rights mean in context of class/racial oppression? - New public autonomy that P.Rican women have gained recently = largely defined by liberal, mid-class standards of individual freedom. - As opposed to standards of group solidarity, collective empowerment or countering patriarchal Domination. Ex: Primos mother: asserted herself as independent woman in NYC via ways impossible in P.rico
- Ways such as: leaving home for NYC at 17y.o., chose her own husband, separated from abusive/alcoholic husband, raised 4 kids in an autonomous household, picked her own lovers, worked full time most of her life, had complete control over her income. NYC: structural oppression as resident of elbarrio, econ exploited as off-books seamstress, socially margnz’d in segregated inner-city, outside of hood subject to racial hostility, struggle w/foreign language. PR: was econ exploited as well but wasn’t subject to cultural-ideological assault on ethnic identity. - Dissatisfied with autonomy gained by uprooting to NYC. Dissatisfaction related to individual isolation of urban experience in U.S., and in being forced to define rights and accomplishments in individualistic terms. Women/family/community solidarity of hometown cherished/missed - example of the limits to mid-class Anglo def’n of empowerment that hinges on individual autonomy and upward mobility.
Ataques = Legitimized forum for women to vent angst against dominant man when his abuse oversteps accepted boundaries. Jealousy = common provocation for these culturally scripted violent outbursts by women. - T/F Candy followed traditional abuse survivor’s scenario by shooting husband - almost reaffirming patriarchal etiquette. Candy subsequent depression at husband imprisoned &subsequent lack of econ provision solved by falling in love w/primo and selling drugs for Ray (their boss). - Combination of traditional female strategy for making assertive lifestyle change (falling in love) with reality of underground economy (by hustling). Inverting patriarchy: - Having a kept lover (primo) made him a vehicle for Candy to confront gender taboos of P.Rican street culture. - Being kept = primo’s inner-city male fantasy of being cacheteando (freeloading) off a woman. - Candy confronting gender taboos including: bragging publically about her sexual exploits and financial profits, demanding sex from her lover, threatening violence etc. - Primo rebelled against this inversion of patriarchy to recoup his personal sense of male respect via his only means: physical violence and then leaving her. - Cont’d inversion b/c Candy didn’t revert to ataque de nervois because of new macho street-dealer identity – instead pursued male scenario for revenge against disrespectful ex-lover by making exclamations regarding their sex life and threatening his new girlfriend. Contradicting contexts for women’s struggles: Immigration, rapid capitalist development and manufacturing-to-service restructuring have not invented sexism and cannot explain the existence of domestic violence in a reductionist manner. - Problems in government and streets faced by women are compounded by the hostile migration experience and the polarized violence of underground econ. - The difficulty with forging a new public space for women is that the arena for action/fulfillment and econ advancement is limited to ElBarrio street world. - Just struggling for autonomy and rights as a woman still defined by patriarchal parameters (ie Candy: money by hustling, having kept lover, bragging, threatening, etc). What kind of liberation or autonomy is being carved out by women in ElBarrio streets? - Qst set in larger feminist debate about who defines the meaning of women’s rights? What do women’s rights mean in context of class/racial oppression? - New public autonomy that P.Rican women have gained recently = largely defined by liberal, mid-class standards of individual freedom. - As opposed to standards of group solidarity, collective empowerment or countering patriarchal Domination. Ex: Primos mother: asserted herself as independent woman in NYC via ways impossible in P.rico
- Ways such as: leaving home for NYC at 17y.o., chose her own husband, separated from abusive/alcoholic husband, raised 4 kids in an autonomous household, picked her own lovers, worked full time most of her life, had complete control over her income. NYC: structural oppression as resident of elbarrio, econ exploited as off-books seamstress, socially margnz’d in segregated inner-city, outside of hood subject to racial hostility, struggle w/foreign language. PR: was econ exploited as well but wasn’t subject to cultural-ideological assault on ethnic identity. - Dissatisfied with autonomy gained by uprooting to NYC. Dissatisfaction related to individual isolation of urban experience in U.S., and in being forced to define rights and accomplishments in individualistic terms. Women/family/community solidarity of hometown cherished/missed - example of the limits to mid-class Anglo def’n of empowerment that hinges on individual autonomy and upward mobility.
