{"id":4998,"date":"2009-07-30T09:05:13","date_gmt":"2009-07-30T16:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=4998"},"modified":"2010-01-16T12:11:13","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T19:11:13","slug":"of-two-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/30\/of-two-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Two Minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

In class on Tuesday, I showed students part of a documentary film called SASA!<\/a> about the interplay of violence and HIV in women’s lives in Uganda and Tanzania.\u00c2\u00a0 Sasa means “now” in Kiswahili (the Bantu language most of us know as Swahili) and was chosen as the name of the film to emphasize the need for knowledge building about how violence, disease, and cultural power dynamics impact women.\u00c2\u00a0 The organization that worked to create the film, Raising Voices<\/a>, is a respected NGO working in non-violence, specifically regarding women and children. The film itself was made by The People’s Picture Company<\/a> in partnership with Raising Voices.<\/p>\n

The film follows the stories of women who have been personally impacted by violence and HIV.\u00c2\u00a0 Their lives illustrate the common barriers women face to health and personhood.\u00c2\u00a0 The issues are not particularly unique to this one place nor are they revolutionary in terms of what we already know about women, poverty, and heath — but they are still tremendously tragic.\u00c2\u00a0 Bride prices, cultural expectations, personal beliefs of a woman as economically dependent, social acceptance of plural marriage… when these are combined with violence and poverty, disease is not far behind.<\/p>\n

(Quicktime 30 minute film here.)\u00c2\u00a0 SASA (30 minutes)<\/a><\/p>\n

I was surprised at how much of the material discussed in the film came as a surprise to students, or at least, that they showed such great pain at the realities in the film.\u00c2\u00a0 I had been taking it for granted that these were things everyone knew about women in poverty: that their lives are characterized by great abuses and limitations that are unthinkable to women raised in the West.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, I usually am frustrated by the over-characterization of ALL women, particularly AFRICAN WOMEN, of living these oppressed lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Films like this often frustrate me because I feel it gives us wealthy Westerners reason to pity women who aren’t like us, infantilizing their lives and experiences in patronizing, imperialist ways.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m more comfortable talking about strengths, resistance, community building, and learning.\u00c2\u00a0 These sort of films and stories can paints the picture that women, even women within these terrible circumstances, are completely passive — controlled by the whims of their fathers and husbands — providing no self-directed action toward any part of their lives.\u00c2\u00a0 In depth research into these issues shows us that women who we view as the most “oppressed” by our definitions of oppression still act in resistance in ways that we might not see or appreciate.\u00c2\u00a0 Those are the sorts of conversations I like to have.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s talk about what works and build on it.<\/p>\n

But this class is an overview class.\u00c2\u00a0 Many students within it have never been outside of the United States, least of all to a non-OECD country.\u00c2\u00a0 First, then, they learn of the realities of poverty.\u00c2\u00a0 Thus, the film.\u00c2\u00a0 Thus, the discussion.<\/p>\n

It was a good class, a fine, interesting discussion.\u00c2\u00a0 But it left me a bit raw.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure how to teach an introduction to the realities of global poverty without painting the “woe is me” picture.\u00c2\u00a0 Is there a way to tell a tragic, terrible story, showing relevant barriers and challenges without painting a picture of a passive victim and active perpetrator?\u00c2\u00a0 I tried my best to break up that binary dynamic, about how the limits on one equally limits and defines the other – if you define one as black, then by definition the other one is completely white, leaving no room for gray.\u00c2\u00a0 I tried to walk that line of breaking thought out of submission versus aggressive, masculine versus feminine, victim versus perpetrator… but who knows how far that was absorbed.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s just that easy to believe that men are assholes?\u00c2\u00a0 Or, maybe it’s easier to believe that women are passive, submissive, and silent.<\/p>\n

Donors do like a good victim story, after all.<\/p>\n

Still, I like this film.\u00c2\u00a0 I think it does a good job of showing the problems and gives focus to how the community is coming together in their own terms to deal with them.\u00c2\u00a0 It does an excellent job of showing the ridiculousness of the “ABC” approach and how utterly useless it is in women’s lives.\u00c2\u00a0 (The ABC approach is the “Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms” approach to HIV prevention.\u00c2\u00a0 You might as well tell women that drinking Kool-Aid will prevent HIV.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, the chemicals in Kool-Aid are probably more effective in limiting HIV infection than ABC.\u00c2\u00a0 But I digress.)<\/p>\n

It ends in a positive light, showing the impact of peer counseling and community work.\u00c2\u00a0 And of course it does!\u00c2\u00a0 Because ultimately the film needs to show interest and build compassion.\u00c2\u00a0 Ultimately, this is an agency that relies on donations.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a wonderful organization doing work I respect and admire.\u00c2\u00a0 The sort of place I’d love to work, actually.\u00c2\u00a0 When you think about it, they tread a fine line in this film: showing just enough compelling story for donors and then showing the proactive ways a good organization can be capable of improving even the most difficult of lives.<\/p>\n

So why do we focus so much on all that terrible, victimizing stuff?\u00c2\u00a0 What is it that is so compelling?\u00c2\u00a0 Is it the same thing that makes us listen harder when the neighbors start to fight, or slow down to look at the scene of a traffic accident?\u00c2\u00a0 Do the realities of living in poverty provide good voyeur material?<\/p>\n

I can’t help but feel a little frustrated.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s that I’m jaded and tired of the essentializing of ‘women in the developing world’.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’m tired of seeing the same solutions for problems that seem never-ending.<\/p>\n

In the end, I felt that putting it here might be a way to work it out.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’m wrong and there are very surprising things to be found in this film.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’m alone in my frustrations.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe there is more we can do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In class on Tuesday, I showed students part of a documentary film called SASA! about the interplay of violence and HIV in women’s lives in Uganda and Tanzania.\u00c2\u00a0 Sasa means “now” in Kiswahili (the Bantu language most of us know as Swahili) and was chosen as the name of the film to emphasize the need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,93,97,98],"tags":[220,70],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4998"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4998"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5001,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4998\/revisions\/5001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}