Feminist Interventions in Critical Peace and Conflict Studies by Laura McLeod & Maria O'Reilly

Author:Laura McLeod & Maria O'Reilly [McLeod, Laura & O'Reilly, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000395198
Goodreads: 56356683
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

She indicates a distinction between ‘traditional’ and liberal values, where the latter allows for respect and the former is marked by voicelessness. Again, as so often, gender here does not manifest as a relation of power that exists in a vacuum, but rather functions as ‘part of the processes that also constitute class and race as well as other lines of demarcation and domination’.39 In Eva’s words, Afghan women in Afghanistan are truly female, and the implication is that they are truly subordinated, so that subordination and true femininity are somehow linked, while having freedom, authority and access in Afghanistan mean a performative negation of subordination/femininity. Eva did not particularly want to generalize, and she was self-reflexively awkward about using terms such as ‘their females’ to describe Afghan women, and yet found this language her only mechanism to explain her experiences. Arguably, however, the ‘third gender’ as a framework of meaning is made possible in this context because of the circulation of the troubling idea that ‘brown men’ are somehow backward, traditional and oppressive, and ‘brown women’ are silenced and powerless.40

However, to suggest that the ‘third gender’ is purely based on a racialised assumption of Afghan patriarchal conditions would be to fail to capture the complex site of friction and hybridity that the term entails. The ‘third gender’ is also a contradictory space that demonstrates simultaneously a pulling away from the restraints placed upon the (liberal) female body and equally a reaffirmation of its subordination. To illustrate the first dimension, respondents would point to the fluidity and potential afforded by the ‘third gender’ categorisation. Luise stated that: ‘because I feel like every human being should be able to do what they want to do, and by falling in-between being a man and being an Afghan woman you can actually’. She suggested increased possibilities in her work as a result: ‘ultimately, when it comes to the work, I actually think as that third gender you actually have access… you are a lot better equipped to talk to both parts of society’ (Luise, German UN worker).

The ‘third gender’ could function as a space of agency, where the restrictions of feminisation could be detached from the female body and discarded, a de-gendering performance which opens up possibilities for access and enjoyment without any loss or distancing from the sexed female body itself. There is a sense of sexual liberation associated with it, as well as an increased power, voice and authority. One respondent described how, despite never learning to drive in the UK or Germany, she had used a motorbike to see the city of Kabul when she was based there, allowing her to be independent and adventurous. She went on to say:

when I think about the time in Afghanistan, a female in Afghanistan, working for the military, living in a military installation in a country which is patriarchal to the core, and I still felt the most free in my life (Eva, German ISAF civilian personnel, emphasis added).

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