L’homme agissant and Self-understanding: Pamela Sue Anderson on Capability and Vulnerability

This article addresses Pamela Sue Anderson’s philosophy of capability and vulnerability as an important contribution to the advancement of today’s feminist ethics. Following Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics of l’homme capable, Anderson extends the phenomenological perspective of the capable human subject to embrace the distinctly feminine capability. She advocates for women’s recognizing and re-inventing of themselves as capable subjects, and claims that the perturbing initial loss of confidence in their reflective capacities can be redeemed via the transformations in women’s emotional and religious lives, as well as through their creative impulse. Locating in hermeneutics’ openness to ambiguity, incompleteness and insecurity a potential to unveil the non-transparent aspects of the assumed male-female equality, Anderson focuses on the interlocking aspect of human capability and vulnerability. She calls for transforming an ignorance of vulnerability into an ethical avowal of it. In reconfiguring patriarchal culture myths, Anderson sees the possibility of re-shaping our approach to vulnerability and capability, especially the human capacity for love.

Reinterpretasi Ayat Gender dalam Memahami Relasi Laki-Laki dan Perempuan (Sebuah Kajian Kontekstual dalam Penafsiran)

Dewasa ini isu gender hangat diperbincangkan. Hal itu dilatarbelakangi oleh realitas masyarakat yang sebagian masih memegang prinsip budaya patriaki. Laki-laki mendapatkan hak-hak istimewa, sedangkan kaum perempuan cenderung dinomorduakan. Islam pada dasarnya menjunjung tinggi kesetaraan. Agama Islam diyakini sebagai agama yang ideal. Diturunkan untuk mengangkat derajat dan membebaskan perempuan dari tradisi jahiliyyah yang memarginalisasi kedudukannya. Ayat al-Qur’an telah mengungkapkan kesetaraan laki-laki dan perempuan serta menggariskan persamaan kedudukan diantara keduanya. Adapun yang membedakan adalah tingkat ketaqwaan. Namun, dalam realitas empiris keagamaan timbul problem pemahaman dan penafsiran teks-teks agama yang bias gender. Hal tersebut kemudian memunculkan masalah berkaitan dengan relasi laki-laki dan perempuan, seperti ketidakadilan, subordinasi, diskriminasi, dan marginalisasi. Untuk itu penulis menganggap perlu adanya peninjauan ulang interpretasi ayat dan model penafsiran yang cenderung meminggirkan peranan kaum perempuan. Dalam penelitian ini penulis memaparkan bagaimana relasi laki-laki dan perempuan dalam perspektif al-Qur’an melalui reinterpretasi terhadap penafsiran QS an-Nisa` ayat 34 secara kontekstual. Penulis memfokuskan kajian gender dan menghubungkannya dengan konsep kesetaraan laki-laki dan perempuan dengan metode deskriptif-analitis.[Nowadays, gender’s issue turns to be the most discussed topic. It is motivated by the community that some still hold the principle of patriarchy culture. Men get some privileges, while women tend to be the second position. Islam to the extent of upholding equality. Islam is believed to be the ideal religion. It is decreed to elevate women’s position and freedom from the jahiliyyah tradition that marginalizes women in society. The verses of the Qur’an have declared about the equality of men and women. The difference between them is their level of devotion. However, in the empirical reality of religion arises the misunderstanding and misinterpreting religious texts that are gender biased. It triggers the raising of issues related to male and female relationships, such as injustice, subordination, discrimination, and marginalization. Therefore, the author believes that it is necessary to reinterpret the verses and the interpretation model which tend to marginalize the role of women. In this article, the author explains how the interpretation of Q.S an-Nisa`verse 34 contextually reinterpret the relation of men and women. The author focuses on gender studies and relates them to the concept of male and female equality with descriptive-analytical methods.]

Gatas y Vatas

This chapter centers on the activities of Gatas y Vatas, an annual experimental music festival in New Mexico that features solo performances by local practitioners. Initiated by young female Hispanic musicians as an attempt to counteract the white male dominance of local music scenes, Gatas y Vatas has become a catalyst of female empowerment where participants experience liberation while defying gender norms in an all-inclusive environment. Alonso-Minutti examines how the practices fostered in the festival are tied to a locally perceived freedom granted by Albuquerque’s complex cultural makeup. To the “Gatas,” the city is a place where “everything is possible.” She argues that this sentiment of endless potential drives performers to experiment with sound, noise, technology, and the environment and to engage in activities that foster a feminist ideal rooted in a Hispanic connection. The result is a community-oriented experimental atmosphere that has reached levels of inclusion and female equality rarely seen in experimental music scenes.

God’s World Is Not an Animal Farm – Or Is It? The Catachrestic Translation of Gender Equality in African Pentecostalism

Building on scholarly debates on Pentecostalism, gender and modernity in Africa, this article engages a postcolonial perspective to explore and discuss the ambivalent, even paradoxical nature of African Pentecostal gender discourse. It analyses the conceptualization of gender equality, in particular the attempt to reconcile the notions of ‘male–female equality’ and ‘male headship’, in a sermon series delivered by a prominent Zambian Pentecostal pastor, and argues that the appropriation and interruption of Western notions of gender equality in these sermons can be interpreted, in the words of Homi Bhabha, as a catachrestic postcolonial translation of modernity. Hence, the article critically discusses the Western ethnocentrism in some scholarly debates on gender and Pentecostalism in Africa, and points to some of the fundamental questions that Pentecostalism and its ambivalent gender discourse pose to gender-critical scholarship in the study of religion.

Is There a Right to Polygamy? Marriage, Equality and Subsidizing Families in Liberal Public Justification

This paper argues that the four most plausible arguments compatible with public reason for an outright legal ban on all forms of polygamy are unvictorious. I consider the types of arguments political liberals would have to insist on, and precisely how strongly, in order for a general prohibition against polygamy to be justified, while also considering what general attitude towards "marriage" and legal recognition of the right to marry are most consistent with political liberalism. I argue that a liberal state should get out of the "marriage business" by leveling down to a universal status of "civil union" neutral as to the gender and affective purpose of domestic partnerships. I then refute what I regard as the four most plausible rational objections to offering this civil union status to multi-member domestic partnerships. The most common objection to polygamy is on grounds of gender equality, more specifically, female equality. But advancing this argument forcefully often involves neglecting the tendency of political liberalism (by whatever name it goes in contemporary, complex, multicultural societies) to tolerate a certain amount of inequality in private, within the bounds of robust and meaningful freedoms of choice and exit. Properly understood, polygamy involves no inherent statement about the essential inferiority of women, and certainly not more than many other existing practices and institutions (including many expressions of the main monotheistic religions) which political liberals regard as tolerable, even reasonable. Arguments from the welfare of children, fairness in the spousal market, and the abuse of family subsidies are also considered and found insufficient for excluding polygamy.

Female Equality and Suicide in the Indian States

Indian suicide rates rose by 76% in the 10 years between 1984 and 1994. In this study of the 16 principal states of India, male and female suicide rates in 1994 were associated with measures of equal education for men and women. Male suicide rates were associated with equal life expectancy for men and women. Equal income for women and men was not associated with suicide rates. Unlike earlier studies, no inverse association was found between equal attainment in education and suicide sex ratios. The Indian findings thus do not conform to patterns found in more developed economies. Given increasing human development in India, it seems probable that suicide rates in that country may increase two to three times over coming decades.

Feminism in Turkey

Feminism in Turkey has reached a new exciting dimension in the last decade with the emergence of autonomous and multifarious female voices. Duygu Asena, an editor and novelist, has much to do with paving the way for the emergence of these voices. With her controversial writings and independent lifestyle, she is an icon of Turkish feminism, the Gloria Steinem of Turkish culture. As a proponent of staunch individualism, she has not allied herself with any group or movement. But through her editorials in Kadinca (Womanly) and two controversial novels, Kadinin Adi Yok (Woman Has No Name) and its sequel Aslinda Aşk da Yok (In Reality, Love Does Not Exist Either) that insist on female equality and autonomy, she has greatly shaped public opinion that has made possible the mobilization of other feminists.