What is a woman? As an older woman teaching younger women, I want to know, both for myself and for these young people struggling to figure out who they are and what path they will take in life. Is a woman a "round" character, an individual, like a man? Is she a flat character, a role, like the mom in "Leave It to Beaver"? Or is she, most terrifying of all, a symbol of the order in society, who, if she steps outside her place, must be destroyed for the order of society to be maintained?
I am an English as a Second Language teacher. I teach college-age and older students who are in the United States to study at one of our universities, but who must improve their language skills before they can enroll.
Every so often, I ask one of my classes to define "man" and "woman" in terms of "what do you think when you think of [x] or [y]?" This is one of the great luxuries of teaching, that no one is looking over my shoulder when I embark on one of these strictly unnecessary (in the eyes of pedagogical experts) forays into the world of ideas.
Generally, there's a moment of silence while students go back in their minds to basic assumptions. Then the words pour out. For men, "hard-working," "independent," "responsible," "playboy," (this comes from the women) "risk-taking," come up. Most of the words for men are about the man himself, the individual man. The words for women are dramatically different. "Mother," "wife," "sister," "friend," "loyal," "gold-digger," (this comes from the men). There is generally a lot of laughter as stereotype after stereotype rolls out.
I draw the students' attention to the differences between the lists. How are they different, I ask? The students look at the lists, at first not understanding the question. I talk about the lists. I swagger a bit when I say the "male" words. I caress an imaginary husband or child when I say the "female" words. Then I point out how each word for a female is a word that expresses a relationship--to a male or to someone else--not an individual with that individual's own qualities. "Brave." A male word, a male quality of a person who can fight his own fight. "Loyal," a female quality of a person who is in relationship with someone she is dependent on.
The glaring difference in these lists is that men are largely perceived as individuals, and women are even more largely perceived in terms of the roles they play in society. This dichotomy exists throughout the world, and I think it derives naturally from the social imperatives of reproduction. After a girl becomes pregnant, in a society that does not give her the means to prevent pregnancy, it's all over. From that time, the needs of her children subsume her personality until she is old. So I would argue that men exist primarily in one dimension, the individual, and women primarily in at least two: the individual and then the role. But there is a third dimension in certain societies, and it is one that is particularly dangerous to women. It is the perception of woman as symbol, as a symbol of the honor of the entire family.
In the strictest cultures of the religions "of the book," i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which have common roots in the Middle East, females over the trajectories of their lifetimes exist simultaneously in all three dimensions. As little girls, they are everybody's darling, and they are totally individuals. A little girl even in the most repressed Islamic society is dressed in pink and sequins to her heart's content. She can play with the boys--if they will let her. Her individual personality is celebrated. But the pink and sequins, and the freedom she enjoys at this time, inexorably lead her to a far more insidious future.
When she begins to menstruate, everything changes. She becomes a woman, and her fecundity, and therefore her sexuality, and therefore she herself, immediately becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, or bartered. If she is married without gaining an education, her world quickly shrinks to a microscopic focus, and she herself can almost be said to have disappeared. As soon as she is married, the role she plays immeasurably outweighs what is left of her individual personality.
In happy marriages, and of course these do occur, the husband is able to see his wife as an individual, and he deals with her as an individual, and she does the same. They make their accommodations to each other as individuals, and if there are good will, trust, respect, and honesty on both sides, the marriages succeed.
However, in all societies, there are men who buy the idea that a woman is the outer shell, the role, not the individual inside. When the individual inside struggles to take control of her own life, she must be pressed back inside her role. This seems to me the origin of much domestic violence--the man's attempt to press the woman back into her role, which he sees as complete submission to him. It is a tragic fact that scriptures in both Christianity and Islam, in particular, actively promote this perception of the female as a thing that must be controlled, and when not controlled is an active danger that must be eradicated.
In many societies, there is a conscious attempt to ream out the individual within the shell, to leave only the role dancing like a marionette on a string. And in some societies, nothing but the symbol is left.
As we begin to hear more stories from other countries of how life is there, we have heard stories of stonings, of girls buried up to their necks in the desert sands and then stoned to death by merciless men for the terrible crime of having, say, gotten into a car with unrelated boys. That boys and men also are subject to this punishment does not excuse it, for it does not demonstrate the egalitarian nature of the rule so much as it does the immorality of the rule itself.
One of the revolutionary arguments of the American experiment is that all people are entitled to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Physical life may be enjoyed by all--individuals, people who live within their roles, and people trapped within their status as symbols. Liberty, perhaps, can only be enjoyed by individuals and people who live within their roles. But happiness? Happiness is something that can only be enjoyed by a person who is capable of understanding his or her own individual existence.
As I explore this concept with my students, I remember the sad eyes of an 18-year-old girl from Abu Dhabi, who looked at me with big brown eyes from under her carefully tied, colorful hijab and said, softly, guiltily, "Sometimes I wish I was a boy."
I know how she feels. What she's saying is that she wishes she could just be herself--not a role, not a symbol. Just a person.
Sometimes it's surprising to me that this battle still has to be fought. But every instance of battering in the U.S. or stoning in the Middle East reminds me that we are only a step or two along the path, after all.