Over the past decade, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has been leading a brutal crusade in the Middle East, spreading fundamentalist ideals through brutal force and bloodshed. News updates of their tirades are inescapable and present across all news channels. However, the mainstream media coverage available to the general public focuses mainly on the military aspect of the terrorist group and how the West is combatting it. The violent crimes imposed by ISIS are ever present in the media, however they are often generalized or focused on deaths of Westerners. Little coverage is given to the Yazidi minority within Iraq that has been suffering horrific injustices at the hands of ISIS. An article in The Guardian has reported on approximately 3,000 women and girls who were recently abducted and given as sex slaves to ISIS militants, while male members of their community were murdered. While the media continues to focus on the military actions of this terrorist group, we need to take a note from feminist international relations theorist Cynthia Enloe and ask, where are the women? It is impossible to fully understand this crisis without taking in to account this question. In the case of Yazidi women, we see gender roles being subverted as these women in northern Iraq rise up and bear arms against those who threaten their sisters and mothers, as well as their way of life.
Debates around international relations today often focus too heavily on states and not nearly enough on how states’ actions affect the lives of ordinary people. Furthermore, we see gender stereotyping in these debates and almost all facets of media coverage. The women fighting in northern Iraq challenge these stereotypes. Analytical feminists focus on these gender biases and stereotypes and how they have been reproduced over time. Traditionally, soldiers and the military in general represent ultimate masculinity, while women represent peace, play the victim role, and embody the idea of the ‘damsel in distress’. The female Yazidi fighters challenge these prescribed norms, because they are essentially fulfilling male roles. In The Guardian article, Alfred Yaghobzadeh highlights another reason why these female fighters are so progressive. He notes that, “For Isis it’s a haram. If you’re killed by a woman, you don’t go to paradise.” In addition to challenging social norms that have been created for women in Islamic and Yazidi culture, these women are also a threat to ISIS solely based on their biological gender. This subversion often leads to critical examination of women, and an attempt to explain why they have challenged said norms. In circumstances such as these, women’s autonomy is often questioned, especially in cases of violence.
In their book, Mothers, Monsters, Whores, Laura Sjoberg and Caron E. Gentry debate the various stereotypes around violent women, and what those stereotypes are based on. Their basic argument is that violent women are rarely seen as acting for political reasons, or even capable of reason all together. Therefore, their violent actions have been influenced by personal reasons, and fit into one or more of their three categories. The ‘mother’ narrative stereotypes violent women as not having been able to fulfill their “biological destinies” of being a child bearing wife and mother. The ‘monster’ narrative describes violent women as being “pathologically damaged” and the ‘whore’ shows them being sexual depraved or overly sexualized. From a western perspective, the Yazidi women fighters do not fit any of these roles because they are clearly fighting for political and ideological reasons. However, to ISIS and possibly other Islamic states, these women could fit into any of these categories. They could be seen as fulfilling the ‘mother’ narrative by fighting for their sons and husbands that were killed by ISIS. They could also fit the ‘monster’ role due to their violence against ISIS and their fundamentalist Islamic values.
Analyzing various gender roles allows us to fully understand any given situation, because we are able to look at it from different points of view. The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East are not one dimensional, nor are they solely militaristic. We cannot fully understand any issue without examining its effects on individual people, and then deconstructing the gender roles that have been formed around them. In the case of the Yazidi women, they have surpassed boundaries set around women on numerous fronts. They have taken their destinies into their own hands and are acting with complete autonomy. In the Guardian article, Yaghobzadeh makes a good point by saying, “women are always the victim: in the West, in the East, in the Middle East.” But here, “each one has a reason to fight and survive. They know they’re deciding their own life”.
Mothers, Monsters, Whores link
politicaltheorytoday 