Gender Law + Women in 21st Century Art History

My Bed by Tracey Emin. Image via Wikipedia

I recently started working for the Alameda County Public Defender's Office, and it rules. The people are down-to-earth, the work is intellectually stimulating, and it's a diverse work environment--all of these qualities bear much value to me in other areas of life, including Art History. The last thing I want is to ignore underrepresented social groups or to encourage exclusivity to anyone that wants to voice their issues. Where do Art History and Law "meet"?

While I admire artists--many of them women who have enhanced Art History through the advancements presented in the 21st century understanding of art's contribution to society--I often wonder how easy it is to slip into a coded language that does not allow the public to "see" themselves. It's a problem that emerges in legal matters as well; legal practice is conditional upon the need to defend individuals/groups who do not have the resources or historical support that others do. In this way, it is always a two-sided process. Similarly, Art History provides viewers with an opportunity to adopt (or reject) a "case" for a subject.

I thought about this, and immediately considered the linguistic intersection that I became familiar with a few years back; it was a definition that brought the cultural enforcement of gender to my attention, in a way that I had not ever considered--gender law profoundly changed how I perceived life and art in general. In addition, the legal community has not overlooked the necessity for specific attention to inequalites that are created as a result of gender difference and stereotyping.

How do artists contend with this issue? Dina Felluga put it best when she related the social construct of gender to an established construction, which renders it unnatural:

Gender, according to Butler, is by no means tied to material bodily facts but is solely and completely a social construction, a fiction, one that, therefore, is open to change and contestation...Gender is, thus, a construction that regularly conceals its genesis" ("Performative" 273). That genesis is not corporeal but performative (see next module), so that the body becomes its gender only "through a series of acts which are renewed, revised, and consolidated through time" ("Performative" 274). By illustrating the artificial, conventional, and historical nature of gender construction, Butler attempts to critique the assumptions of normative heterosexuality: those punitive rules (social, familial, and legal) that force us to conform to hegemonic, heterosexual standards for identity.

Awhile back, I wrote about Tracey Emin's work, and her role as an artist whom challenges gendered understandings of everyday actions. I recently came across another article (via Art in America) that directly addressed how she examined gender through its art historical tropes. The article briefly noted a genre, Minimalism, which tends to be observed as "empty" in comparison to more readily obvious content that reads as masculine or feminine iconography. Ossian Ward noted that:

co-opted an industrial, masculine material generally associated with Minimal and Conceptual practitioners in America. Those neons hardly convey anything as specific as the bleeding-heart narrative of an oversexed, half-British, half-Turkish-Cypriot female artist from a small seaside town in southern England.

I don't know what to think about that last sentence. If you ever read Anna Chave's illuminating discussion, titled "Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power," about the hypermasculine subtexts of Minimalist art, it's clear that there's a gendered reading happening in that analysis. Gender (art) law strikes again!

What do you think about this analysis? Emin herself is not averse to discussing her art in terms of sex but that is quite different from discussing her work in terms of gender. Would you say that she represents herself well as a female artist? Should she be considering gendered language? As you can see, she's a favorite of mine, and I think that she incites reactions that expose the complexity of Art History's fairly repressed depiction of women, gender, and sex. Please leave your thoughts below!

MIDDLE EAST: Rape is Never Part of the Contract

If you visited the Middle East, you'd no doubt notice that migrant domestic workers--who represent a vulnerable group, whose rights are often ignored, in contravention to international conventions and standards--are incredibly prevalent.

Mainly from Asia and Africa, they comprise nearly 1.5 million of the workforce in Saudi Arabia, 660,000 in Kuwait and more than 200,000 in Lebanon. With hopes of escaping poverty or conflict in their home countries, many travel under false pretense and find themselves hungry, subjected to poor working conditions, unpaid salaries, abuse and conditions akin to slavery.

In response to widespread abuse and mounting reports of withheld salaries, several labour sending countries issued bans restricting female migrants from seeking employment abroad due to the alarming rise in the number of suicides. However, this has only made them more susceptible to traffickers and employment agencies working the black market.

According to the International Labour Union, there are more than 22 million migrant workers--a third of whom are women--currently in the Middle East. Currently the ILO is advocating the drafting of specific labour legislation for domestic workers that extends legal protection in a systematic and comprehensive manner.

Originally from Madagascar, Dima 19, escaped from her employer after being sexually abused several times. She tells her story to Her Blueprint:

"I come from a poor family in Madagascar and before leaving I was told that I would find good employment in Lebanon, and that my situation and that of my family would improve. I wasn’t happy to leave my country and my family but I needed to change our situation so I agreed to take the employment.

The male employer picked me up from the airport and when we arrived to the home he told me to take a bath. He insisted that I leave the door slightly open but I felt uncomfortable about it and pleaded that I close the door but he kept insisting that it was for my own safety just in case something were to happen. So finally I agreed and while I was in the bath he entered and raped me.

While it was happening he kept saying how he had never been with a Black woman and wanted to have a taste. For me, it was humiliating, and I felt empty inside. Afterwards, I was told to get dressed and take care of my household duties, as if nothing had happened. I felt trapped and had no one to help me. When I was able to speak with my family I had to tell them that everything was okay because it would kill them to know that I was suffering.

Some time passed and nothing happened but then one day the Madame said that she was going out and that I should stay but I insisted on not being left in the house with him. Always I tried to make sure I was never left alone with him but she gave me no choice and it happened again. Except this time, he spread my legs apart and tied my hands and legs to the bed and repeatedly raped me. Then he invited two male friends over and they also took turns raping me.

Afterward, I was destroyed and could only think about how I could get away because I couldn’t bear living like this anymore. Luckily I had met another Madagascan woman in the street and she told me the number of the community leader and that if I had any problems, she would help me. So almost a month later, while the family was getting into the car I started running as fast as I could so that they didn’t catch me. Eventually I managed to get far enough that I stopped and went to a pay phone and called the number and the woman told me to take a taxi to the consulate and that they would pay for it once I arrived.

I was told at the consulate that they could help me find new employment but all I wanted to do was leave because maybe I would have the same problems with a new employer and I didn’t want to take the chance. I just wanted to be with my family. I would prefer to live in poverty than to continue suffering in this way."

Cases like Dima are all too common in a labour sector where abuses remain invisible because these women suffer in places that are hidden to the public's eye such as in private homes.

Passport confiscation and the Kafala or sponsorship system, which binds migrant domestic workers to a specific employer excludes them from protection and left in the hands of individuals who have complete control over their lives.

Recently, the ILO set up a website with the aim of promoting decent work for domestic workers and supporting initiatives worldwide by sharing information related to working and living conditions of domestic workers, policy issues and challenges in domestic work, country experiences and knowledge, and practical tools on how decent work may be advanced in domestic work.

Egyptian Women Have Long Struggled to Break Societal Taboos

“In a society like Egypt, where both men and women have lived under military dictatorship for decades and have been denied their human dignity, how can we expect men to understand the importance respecting the human rights of women?” asks Doaa Abdelaal, a council member with Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML).

Egyptian women--like women in Tunisia, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain--have taken a lead role in the protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Mainstream western media has overlooked how women have been at the forefront of breaking society taboos. The reality is that Egyptian women have been, for the past twenty years, working towards nationwide democratic change.