As if the coronavirus induced quarantine wasn’t bad enough, rural India and social media is giving it a push in another direction. The word ‘quarantine’ is now being twisted into कोरोना डाईन. Due to its phonetic similarity, people in India have largely started referring to the infection as ‘dayan’ (witch). In rural India, the word ‘dayan’ is colloquially used to refer to a problem, and now so is the Covid-19 infection being called so.

Popular news channels have used the term on their prime time shows have used the term in their headlines.

There have been a barrage of posts on social media with the term too.

(This post was posted on Facebook on March 29, 2020)

This is hugely problematic because the term ‘dayan’ or ‘chudail’ (witch) is an inherently sexist term. Women are targets of hostility and branded as witches. They are demonized, ostracized, lynched and even killed due to the superstition and illiteracy and accused of practicing ‘black magic’ and harming men and children. Usually they are either childless but wealthy single women or widows, or have dared to go against established social norms in some way. The ‘witch hunt’ therefore, is patriarchy’s way of punishing a woman for exercising her agency.

While witch hunting is generally viewed to be a thing of the past, it is very much in practice today, especially in rural India. Every other day, women in villages are either beaten up brutally or killed for being a ‘witch’ and allegedly indulging in sorcery.

Not only this, even in urban India, women are being called witches by men, especially for having a dissenting voice.

मुझे पता था ये डायन भी शामिल है कोरोना फैलाओ साजिश में । ये इतना खामोश थी कि मुझे शक था कि ये तभी कुछ बोलेगी जब इसके इशारे पर हालात बिगाड़ दिए जाएंगे । https://t.co/Fdi8ueWTQi

— #Jaibind Singh 2.0 ?? (@JBSingh75) April 2, 2020

कोरोना से मरो हजारों लोग तुझे कफन देने के लिए तैयार बैठें हैं डाईन

— Shatrughan Jaiswal (@shatrughanJaisw) April 1, 2020

https://twitter.com/JBSingh75/status/1245738576056184832

https://twitter.com/shatrughanJaisw/status/1245400479036669952

Attaching the term ‘witch’ to a disease, is only going to make it a sexist term. According to the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) for naming diseases, the names should be gender neutral and not involve cultural, population or occupational references.

If this term comes into popular use, it may also lead to the demonisation and killing of women who may be afflicted with the disease, especially in the rural parts of India. This is going to be crime against women who if ostracized, will have nowhere to go and fend for themselves. The scales with regards of justice for women are already not tipped in their favour. In this age, while feminism is taking shape and people are asked to work with a scientific temper, reigniting terms like ‘dayan’ and ‘chudail’ which signify taboo practices, is an example of utter regression.

To say the least, attaching the term ‘witch’ to a disease is going to give it a sexist boost. Already women in India, mostly from the North East are being called ‘corona’, accused of being Chinese because of their ethnicity and features, and being held responsible for spreading the virus. If this racism is combined with sexism, women in India may not be able to escape this vilification.

Related:

Covid-19: Assam FT members donate to relief efforts, but stipulate funds not be used for ‘jehadis’

Racists target Indians from North-East amidst Covid pandemic

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Codex Manesse, circa 1305-1315. Meister Johannes Hadlaub, UB Heidelberg

In chapter 12, he acknowledges that in his early life as a hermit he had been rebuked by various women for paying them too much attention: in one case policing her clothing, in others for making sexualised comments about their bodies, and trying to touch them. In one case he “perhaps already had done so”. It all sounds remarkably like admissions of guilt – but very equivocal admissions at that: perhaps he’s already touched one or another of them.

American scholar Megan Cook of Colby College in Maine posted the passage to Twitter recently, suggesting that sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour towards women socially and in the workplace are long established – but that if a 14th-century hermit could apologise, so can contemporary perpetrators.
 

View image on Twitter

Dr. Megan Cook@meganlcook

 

 

I am struck by this passage in Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris every time I read it

 

333

7:21 PM – Nov 14, 2018

 

 

Is this then an early 14th century #MeToo moment, with strongminded Yorkshire women calling out the over-entitled young hermit?

Our first question is whether we can even trust that the events Rolle describes actually happened. About the same time as Rolle was writing, a London manuscript, the Smithfield Decretals, was extensively illustrated with lively scenes from life and fable. There is a series devoted to the story of the Bad Hermit who, living alone, is tempted by the devil – he goes to the tavern, gets drunk, has sex with the miller’s wife, is confronted by the miller whom he beats to death, goes mad, flees to the wilderness and is eventually healed by confession and recovered by a monk.

The parallels with Rolle’s account are striking. Rolle probably had not seen the Smithfield manuscript, but he was drawing on a well-known topos or what we might call narrative arc. Rolle was looking back some 15 or 20 years to his early conversion to the hermit’s life, and part of the purpose of his text was to show his journey from youthful sinner to now accomplished mystic.

Without sin and penance there could be no redemption. Nevertheless, the specifics of Rolle’s misbehaviour, clumsy conflations of moral and spiritual guidance and sexual interest, are so much of a piece with his later career that they are likely to be very personal. But they also raise questions about youthful clerical masculinity more generally.
 

Original sin

Rolle had been a student at Oxford before he abandoned academia for the hermit’s life. Students were mostly planning on a career as monk or secular priest but they were generally too young (in their teens) to have taken vows of celibacy. So a life that involved sexual contact with women, or perhaps more commonly an ambivalent attitude that both permitted but also disapproved of such contact, was a common part of their experience.

Rolle recognised that he had done wrong and that he needed to re-orientate his life from worldly pleasures to the love of God. The women acted as useful reminders to him – but he clearly felt his wrong was less towards them than towards God. It is notable that, on the second page of chapter 12, Rolle describes a fourth woman, who “despised” him saying that he had “a beautiful face and a lovely voice” but “had done nothing”. The woman’s words are a call to masculine action in embarking upon the penitential and purgative path towards God.
 

Improper intentions

Rolle was a man who owed a lot to the women in his life. At the beginning of his new religious life his sister gave him two of her gowns so that he could fashion a hermit’s robe and mantle, in contrast to the presumably shorter and more fashionable student gear he had been wearing (the outfit he produced is remarkably like that worn by the Bad Hermit).

#HimToo? Richard Rolle, 14th-century mystic and modern guy. British Library

Anchoress (a female religious recluse), Margaret Kirkby, to whom he acted as a spiritual director in his later years, promoted his cult as a saint at the nunnery of Hampole near Doncaster and numbers of his texts are addressed to women.

Rolle appreciated the value of friendship between men and women, and thought it rewarding, provided it was not distracted by “improper” intentions, but though “God does not want women to be despised by men” he also thought that women needed direction from men (particularly men like him).

Those unnamed 14th-century Yorkshire women knew what they were talking about, but Rolle was only half listening – and his response was about him, not them. It is to be hoped that their 21st-century granddaughters find the men of our own day able to do a better job. Jury’s out so far.
 

Pat Cullum, Principal Lecturer, Department of English, Linguistics and History, University of Huddersfield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Growing up, it was not uncommon to find teachers calling on female students because the length of their skirt was “inappropriate” and could “distract” or “excite” their male peers, while boys wearing shorts which were the exact same length walked by without a second glance.
It took me years to realize that comments like these are not only unfair, but are also perpetuating rape culture through the sexualization and objectification of young girls — who, from as young as five or six, are being taught that if they show even a glimpse of their knees or shoulders, they are “asking” for male objectification and harassment.

Unfair dress-coding is only one example of the many acts of casual sexism that female students experience at school on an everyday basis.

For instance, female students are often told to ignore derogatory comments from their male peers by on-looking teachers, who wave off their complaints with a laugh, before telling them that “boys will be boys” or that “he’s only doing it because he likes you.”

There have been countless times when PE teachers have called on a “strong boy” to demonstrate to the class, or when a math teacher asked if a “smart young man” would be able to help solve the problem — discounting the dozens of girls in the class who were just as, if not more, capable.

While boys are praised for taking on leadership roles, winning awards, and receiving excellent grades, girls who are ambitious and hard-working are often told to stop “showing off” and to shy away from compliments, rather than accept due credit for their achievements. 

Even in relatively progressive schools, this contradiction exists, and the reality is that in most schools, girls don’t automatically receive the credit they deserve from teachers and other students — but instead, have to work twice as hard as their male counterparts in order to prove that they deserve recognition for their accomplishments.

It is crucial for schools to recognize that teaching young girls their achievements aren’t as valued as the male peers’ when they are younger not only limits them academically, but also has detrimental long-term effects, impacting their drive, ambition, and perception of themselves in the future.

This culture of sexism that exists within our schools is perpetuated when students begin to internalize the comments made by their superiors and, whether consciously or subconsciously, begin to perpetuate this cycle of sexism themselves. 

By high school, a large number of my female classmates were too afraid to challenge a classmate’s opinion, take on leadership roles, or even participate in class, out of fear that they would be labelled as “bossy” or a “know-it-all” by their peers. 

Further, many female students who had participated in STEM activities in middle school drop out of these activities by high school, because they’ve been taught that there’s no point in participating in something that boys are just naturally “better” at. 

It is the responsibility of schools to acknowledge that these latent prejudices exist, and that they are — whether consciously or not — being perpetuated by their students and faculty on an everyday basis.

Sexism and discrimination within schools has been an issue for decades, and is one that is not disappearing any time soon, and one that needs to be brought to light in order to end the cycle of systemic gender bias and discrimination that exists today. 

Diya Kraybill is a freelance contributor.

First published on Dhaka Tribune
 

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Facebook logos on a computer screen. Photo: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

Bosnian science journalist and blogger Jelena Kalinić often anticipates disagreements when she comments on social media posts. But she did not expect Bosnian writer Goran Samardžić to flip a Facebook discussion about pregnancy in late February into a sexist intrusion into her private life.

“I can ‘milk’ some of ‘it’ into a coffee cup and freeze it for you if you want to get pregnant,“ Samardžić privately wrote to Kalinić following a public chat on her Facebook wall. The two were only acquaintances. Kalinić was shocked by his message and shared a screenshot of it on Twitter with the comment “this is the bottom of the bottom.”

On social media, people started reacting and sharing the screenshot. Some commentators criticised her decision to share the private message from Samardžić. She explained that she intended to publicly expose the insult, because she wanted people to know about it.

Traditional patriarchal rules, gender stereotypes, and a disregard for gender equality demands are pervasive in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and other countries of the former Yugoslavia. Online, women are primary targets of bias and harassment. But now, a growing number of women across the region are also using the internet to combat sexism.

‘Online, women are primary targets of bias and harassment. But now, a growing number of women across the region are also using the internet to combat sexism.’

Bosnian journalist and activist Masha Durkalić was among the first social media users to respond to the so-called “coffee cup” case. In a lengthy Facebook post, she condemned a tacit approval of online sexist harassment. She wrote: “The support system to sexists that exists in our society is frightening.”

What motivated Durkalić to engage in this debate online? She told me: “It came from my personal frustration with silence and with [the] constant disregard of so many obvious problems in Bosnian society.”

Durkalić’s post hit a public nerve. Dozens of Bosnian Facebook users shared her post, while several human rights websites such as Diskriminacija.ba, which focuses on issues of discrimination, and Mreža za izgradnju mira, the online portal of a peace-building network, republished it as an article.

Meanwhile, at least two writers cancelled book deals with Samardžić’s publishing company Buybook. Lejla Kalamujić and Dragan Bursać announced on their Facebook profiles that they “work against sexists, not for them.”

On 6 March, Samardžić wrote on Facebook: “I apologise to Jelena Kalinic and the general public for sexism. Aware of what kind of damage I have done, I withdraw from all positions in the Buybook Publishing House.”

“Apart from being the author of the unacceptable content of the message and comments, I am a husband and father of two daughters, and I hope that the beginning of the “MeToo” movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which I was an unlucky generator of, will contribute to the depatriarchialisation of our society and open discussion of the problems which most women face,” he added.

Durkalić sees education as vital to paving the way to respect for women. For this reason, she and her friends Amila Hrustić and Hatidža Gušić created zeneBiH (Women of BiH) – an online campaign which took place in March for Women’s History Month, to teach internet users about notable Bosnian women, such as scientists, writers and filmmakers.

They now want to produce a book about more than 50 Bosnian women, including their biographies and illustrations by Bosnian women artists and designers. They plan to launch a crowdfunding campaign for this project later this year.

In Croatia, Nataša Vajagić, a coordinator at Centar za građanske inicijative (Centre for Civic Initiatives), also takes an educational approach to tackling sexism.

Last year, she and a few other volunteers of the website Libela created a Facebook page, Seksizam naš svagdašnji (Our Daily Sexism), which is now a project of the centre.

Seksizam naš svagdašnji identifies and denounces Croatian online media sources with explanations of why they are sexist.

It grew out of last year’s research by Libela, which found that only 18% of news headlines published by the most popular online news portals in Croatia talked about women, while 4.5% of the headlines included explicitly sexist remarks.

‘Only 18% of news headlines published by the most popular online news portals in Croatia talked about women, while 4.5% of the headlines included explicitly sexist remarks.’

This research showed that media coverage about women is prevalent only in showbiz and lifestyle sections and that women’s physical appearances and stereotypical gender roles as mothers, housewives, models or actresses are over-emphasised.

In some cases, online media outlets even used hate speech, attacking women on the basis of their gender, in articles that minimised reports of violence against women.

Last year, when a Croatian model pressed charges against three men who shared online explicit videos of her having sex with them, some portals focused on her behaviour, describing her as having been drunk, rather than the alleged crime of recording and distributing these videos without her consent.  

“It became clear to us that people often do not notice sexism because it is so deeply rooted they don’t even recognise it,” Vajagić told me. “They are accustomed to it and do not perceive it as something that contributes to inequality [between] women and men.”

Some social media users have criticised the project on Facebook for “seeing sexism in everything.” Vajagić counters that the precise purpose of the page is to make people aware that sexism is indeed omnipresent.  

“It became clear to us that people often do not notice sexism because it is so deeply rooted they don’t even recognise it.”

A column published on the Libela website, entitled Stup srama (Pillar of Shame), spotlights sexist statements by Croatian politicians. One of the most striking cases is of a member of parliament, Ivan Pernar, who told the media last year that “the cause of the domestic violence is a woman who chooses to live with a man who bullies her.”

Such prejudice, which is widespread in the Balkans, is what drove Bosnian politics graduate Hana Ćurak to also employ social media in her battle against sexism. Her feminist Facebook page Sve su to vještice (All of them are Witches) criticises sexism through satirical memes and has more than 40,000 followers.

Ćurak mocks sexist narratives in the Balkans. For instance, one of her memes says “Don’t make your mom worry,” which displays the patronising tone often used to discredit women’s behaviour or perspectives in the region.

She also imagines short, satirical conversations between famous women such as Simone de Beauvoir and Virginia Woolf, mocking sexist patterns of communication through the specific choice of words and use of slang.

Other women-led social media accounts, for instance Krajnje Neuračunljive and @dodjoskaa, also make fun of gender stereotypes. ”No, it’s not PMS [premenstrual stress], it’s you who annoys me,” is one of the former’s popular memes.

Ćurak is happy to see growing awareness of women’s perspectives. It is also positive, she adds, “that there are new voices that use the internet to articulate” these.

In Serbia, feminist organisation Autonomni ženski centar (Autonomous Women’s Centre) also took to the internet to launch an awareness-raising campaign last year about violence in young people’s relationships.

“We understood that we have to be present in the online sphere if we want to reach youth,” said project coordinator Sanja Pavlović.

“We understood that we have to be present in the online sphere if we want to reach youth.”

That is why the group’s Mogu da neću – Ljubav nije nasilje campaign (which translates roughly as “I can refuse – love is not Violence”) uses an online application called Aj’ Odchataj (Chat Off) where young Serbians can share their experiences of violent behaviour in their relationships.
More than 240 young people – mostly women – have anonymously contributed their own examples of abusive discussions to the project’s online gallery.

“The application is a precious source of authentic conversations among young people in which the most common forms of violence – control, manipulation, isolation, and jealousy are clearly outlined,” Pavlović told me.

The application transforms real-life dialogues into smartphone chats, with each conversation ending with the campaign slogan “I can refuse.” According to Pavlović, this project can help women recognise patterns of violent behaviour and how to confront them.

Such confrontation is precisely what this new generation of women in the Balkans is doing. “I can refuse” might as well be the shared slogan of them all.

Lidija Pisker is a freelance reporter and research professional focusing on human rights and anti-discrimination policies.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net
 

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Translated by Yogesh S

Sexual and gender based discrimination is unique to the human species. There are number of ways in which this discrimination is practiced across the world, irrespective of culture and time. Even before a female child is born, she is subjected to discrimination and injustice; and this continues till her death. To understand the reasons for such discrimination, we need to begin by looking at the nuances of sexl/gender based politics.  Social and religious institutions are, essentially, purveyors of sex/gender based discriminatory practices and inequality; these institutions are fundamentally discriminatory, where women are treated as second class citizens; the history of women is a history of repression.

This history of repression, and its continuation today, has made it necessary to for us to look at sex/gender, while discussing any issue. No analysis or discussion can be free of sex/gender. When we discuss the nature of the institution of family, social issues, and political developments, it is very important for us to also consider the sex/gender politics, and how it plays out in families, in our society, and in politics. Sex/gender based inequality can be seen taking diverse forms today, which is indicative of the change in sexual politics.  

The hierarchical caste system in India has assigned a second class status to women; this is true for women of all castes. A woman enjoys no rights guaranteed by the law of the land. As per 2018, only 2.23% of the representatives in power are women; 60 crore women in the country are represented by 59 women in the parliament, a mere 9%. The policy of reserving 33% seats for women has been followed for decades now, but it has proved ineffective. On the one hand, women’s roles in many fields are neglected, and, on the other hand, women are forced to give in to restrictive moral values and belief systems in the name “tradition”. In such a scenario, the sexual politics in the medical field also reflects this.

In the medical field, we have the responsibility of attending to everyone and anyone who needs medical attention; it is a field which gives a ray of hope to all those who want to live a long life. One would assume that medical professionals, at least, would be able to see the dark side of the human society; would be able to identify the discrimination; would not engage in it. But, it is unfortunate that the medical field is far from being a space free of gender discrimination.

Medical practitioners have reduced women to mere consumers. Women trust the doctors to help them during pregnancy, childbirth, menstruation, along with any other health issues that they might have. This, in turn, makes doctors “trustworthy,” a “source of strength,” for many women, especially in times of distress caused by physiological conditions that require medical attention. This is an overly romanticised, almost idolised, image of doctors and the medical field. After all, medical professionals and doctors are a part of the same society which practices sexual/gender discrimination, and one can see the influence that this has even on this “noble” profession.

Starting from a woman’s birth, right up to her death, the medical field exploits the vulnerability of women’s position and adds to the sexl/gender based discrimination that they face in the society. This reality of the medical field only becomes visible when one talks about female infanticide. This article dwells upon other discriminatory practices, apart from infanticide, which doctors, and the medical field in general, perpetuate and engage in.   

Womanhood: Culturally constructed and technologically modified
Indeed, today, every part of a woman’s body has become a site of medical interventions. Including surrogacy, the uterus has been reduced to an object of research, study, and trade. There is a difference in the way that sexual/gender politics plays out in the case of a female doctor and a female patient.  
Sexism, that finds legitimacy in the cosmetic industry, is a result of growing capitalism. A woman’s body is seen as an object of pleasure, to be put to aesthetic purposes. Cosmetic dentistry and cosmetic surgery are the most popular. Teeth brightening, making it gleam like crystals; changing the skin colour and hair colour, which come with the added burden of having to take colour protection measures; “enhancing” the shape of the nipple —all these, and other such procedures, are not medically necessary, they’re not done in order to cure someone of an ailment or medical condition. Doctors appear in the advertisement for these procedures and cosmetic products, such as advertisements for a product that prevents of hair loss, split ends, wrinkled skin, or advertisements for hair tip cleansing. India’s cosmetic industry is valued at $ 950 million. By 2020, Indians will be the largest consumers of cosmetic products in the world. Baldness, split-ends in the hair, facial wrinkle, these aren’t life-threatening conditions. Yet, millions of rupees are invested in the drug industry to manufacture drugs that treat these conditions.

Plastic surgery is a good example to discuss here. The hospitals that perform these procedures are more like “garages,” meant to repair and fix the shortcomings in one’s beauty. There are surgeries to increase the size of breasts, change their shape, to rectify noses, to shape eyelids. Plastic surgery, which was once used for disfigured or maimed people, is, today, being used for most cosmetic purposes. Believe it or not, ​​most of the plastic surgery procedures in the 21st century are done to increase breast size, followed by hymen repair surgeries. A woman is still expected to maintain her virginity in order to be considered chaste. It is regrettable that her body is reduced to a mere object, meant only for the sexual gratification of a man.

As everyone knows, the hymen in the vagina breaks during the first sexual intercourse. Girls who are involved in strenuous physical activity, which can sometimes rupture the hymen, are scared of being labelled as promiscuous and shamed. In some cases, a girl is made to go through a virginity test, where her bleeding on the first night after marriage, after having sexual intercourse with her newly wedded husband, is seen as a marker of virginity.  Instead of challenging these customs, and trying to change them, the availability of hymen repair procedures is only popularising such beliefs. Girls in metropolitan cities wait eagerly for hymenoplasty. It is shameful and ridiculous that a woman would do this to herself.

Women, through social conditioning, are made to believe that it is only their sexual organs that are of any value. The medical field, and the advances in technology, instead of breaking this parochial belief, pander to it. Instead of cultivating scientific temperament in people, unscientific beliefs, archaic morality, and superstitions are being catered to.

Genital mutilation is another practice that needs to be looked into. Women’s genital mutilation surgery is a common practice in many Muslim countries around the world. Their genitals are cut off during circumcision and sewed into a hole. It is a practise based on the belief that the virginity of a woman has to be protected till her marriage. On the first night, the bridegroom, using a small knife, breaks the stiches. For many of these women, sex can be a painful activity for up to three months, while some cannot have intercourse at all. When these women deliver babies, the surgery is repeated again, preventing them from having sexual intercourse. It is almost as if female sexual genitals are only meant for the sexual gratification of men and for producing children, but not for the sexual pleasure of the woman herself.

Even today, 6000 females are subjected to genital mutilation. Doctors facilitate in secret, as it is illegal. And let us not forget the British surgeon who cut off the clitoris of girls he considered dirty, or those who were euphoric, or amber, claiming that they were wicked and that their wickedness stemmed from their clitoris.

This just shows us that all the medical education and training that these doctors get has failed to rid them of their sexist world view.

H S Anupama is a doctor by profession. She finished her medical degree at Bellary Medical College. She has been running Jalaja General And Maternity Clinic at a small village in coastal Karnataka since 24 years. She works in collaboration with many women’s, dalit and democratic organisations. She runs a publishing house called “Kavi Prakashana” and is an ex-member of Kuvempu Bhasha Bharathi Pradhikara.

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum

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In 2015, two years before the #MeToo campaign got Americans talking about sexual harassment, Brazilian feminists launched #MeuPrimeiroAssedio, or #MyFirstHarrassment. In its first five days, the hashtag racked up 82,000 tweets detailing the chronic sexual harassment of women in this South American nation. It soon spread across Latin America in Spanish translation as #MiPrimerAcoso.

The viral success of #MeuPrimeiroAssedio spurred a spate of social media activism in Brazil, where despite decades of feminist efforts gender inequality remains deeply entrenched.

With #MeuAmigoSecreto – #MyAnonymousFriend – women documented misogyny on the streets and at work. Tagging #MeuQueridoProfessor – #MyDearTeacher – university students outed sexism in the classroom.

And when the weekly news magazine Veja described the wife of Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, as “beautiful, modest and a housewife” in April 2016, feminists transformed that stereotype into a meme showcasing empowered women.

Temer came to power following the impeachment of Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff. Many saw Rousseff’s ouster as misogynistic. Feminists were determined that Brazilian sexism would no longer go unchecked.
 

Black women’s bodies

As race and gender researchers, we’ve been watching Brazil’s feminist resurgence closely to see whether it reflects the needs of Afro-Brazilian women, who make up 25 percent of the population.

Though the country has long considered itself colorblind, black and indigenous Brazilians are poorer than white Brazilians. Women of color in Brazil also experience sexual violence at much higher rates than white women.

For example, domestic workers, who are predominantly Afro-Brazilian, have been systematically harassed by their male employers. This centuries-old power play dates back to slavery.

Since both of us have recently published books – “The Biopolitics of Beauty” and “Health Equity in Brazil” – examining the impact of Brazilian medical practices on black women, we are particularly interested to see if Brazilian feminists will tackle two issues that particularly affect black women: health care and plastic surgery.

These may seem unrelated to each other and to black women’s rights, but in Brazil they are deeply intertwined. All Brazilian citizens get free medical care under the Sistema Único de Saúde, the national health care system.

Despite universal access to health services, black women do not always receive the best care. Though Brazil’s colorblind approach to health has resulted in scant documentation of differential health outcomes by race, one study found that black women are two and a half times more likely to die from an unsafe abortion than white women.

The startling discrepancy probably reflects a lack of high-quality prenatal and obstetric care for black women, which is a problem in U.S. hospitals as well. Discriminatory treatment by medical professionals, which includes a lack of attention to the specific health needs of black Brazilians, also factors in.
Black activists have also pointed out for decades that Afro-Brazilian women have higher rates of sterilization and abortion, which in Brazil is mostly illegal – and thus very risky.

Overall maternal health is also markedly worse among black women. In Brazil’s impoverished northeast, which has the country’s highest concentration of African descendants, black women are 10 to 20 times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

Black women in Brazil have significantly higher maternal mortality rates than white women. Nacho Doce/Reuters
 

The ‘negroid nose’

Medical doctors may neglect black Brazilian women, but plastic surgeons pursue them. Since the 1960s, Brazilian cosmetic surgery has been included in Brazil’s national health care system.

In Brazil, white beauty standards remain the cultural ideal. That means many Brazilian plastic surgeons operate on the basis that more European features – facial features in particular – are better.

Specifically, our research has found, they tend to target black women’s noses, which they deem a “problem feature” in lectures, publications and websites.

In conversation, some doctors even expressed their belief that the “negroid nose” is a “mistake” caused by racial mixing. Fortunately, they would add, it’s nothing a nose job can’t fix.

This occurs within a broader culture, familiar to women worldwide, of bombarding all Brazilian women with opportunities to “improve” their imperfect bodies. Brazilians are among the top consumers of plastic surgery in the world. It is estimated that more than a million cosmetic procedures are carried out every year.

Some Brazilian plastic surgeons refer to their jobs as helping women achieve “the right to beauty.” When, in 2016, a famous plastic surgeon who promoted this idea died, his obituary read like that of a national hero.

And since most plastic surgery is covered under Brazil’s public health system, our research uncovered, surgeons have found it lucrative to develop procedures targeting the entire topography of the female body.

Treatments that aren’t paid by insurance come with long-term payment plans. For the poorest patients, doctors have made plastic surgery accessible by exchanging their professional services for permission to use these operations as a teaching exercise for young medical residents.

Taking online to the ground

Historically, feminist critiques of this industry were largely subdued. But plastic surgery is now in the spotlight of Brazil’s “Women’s Spring.”

In October 2017, one of Brazil’s biggest newspapers, Folha de São Paulo, ran an article extolling the “ideal vulva” and describing the surgical interventions necessary to attain it. Women lambasted the piece on social media, calling it “absurd,” “unacceptable” and “sad.”

The assumption that some vaginas are more desirable than others, feminist commentators pointed out, imposes the male gaze on the female body. Additionally, they argued, the article’s emphasis on “pink” vaginas and its suggested use of skin-whiteners was patently racist.

Black feminist bloggers likely started this particular line of critique. As early as 2014, they were denouncing Brazilian cosmetic surgery as “racism cloaked as science.” Plastic surgeons, wrote Gabi Porfírio in a June 2014 post on Blogueiras Negras, have become “experts at using demeaning terminology for the noses of black people.”

But in a country where only 63 percent of households have internet access, black feminists also have also used more traditional forms of protest to engage women of color.

A year before the the hashtag #MeuPrimeiroAssedio would go viral, black feminists began working across Brazil to organize women who don’t generally participate in activism. Their efforts culminated in the Black Women’s March Against Racism and Violence and in Favor of Living Well in Brasilia, the capital.

There, 50,000 Afro-Brazilian women of all ages and backgrounds came together to denounce violence against black women – not just sexual violence but also deadly abortions, mass incarceration and medical neglect. It was the first ever national march of black Brazilian women.

The first-ever national march of black Brazilian women had ‘living well’ as a central demand. Brazilian Ministry of Culture

In a country that has long ignored inequality, the protest put race squarely on the feminist agenda. By contrasting the diverse forms of violence black women face with the idea of “living well,” the Black Women’s March voiced an alternative vision of racial and gender justice for Brazil.

In doing so, they join #MeToo, #MeuPrimeiroAssedio and a whole chorus of female voices around the globe. Online and on the ground, Brazilian feminists demand equity from the surgeon’s table to the office.
 

Alvaro Jarrin, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, College of the Holy Cross and Kia Lilly Caldwell, Associate Professor, African, African American, and Diaspora Studies, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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