#nivedita menon
Seeing Like a Feminist is a stunning introduction to Global Southern feminism for the intersectional feminist. The ‘Western’ feminist voice overwhelmingly dominates feminist discussions, and we have grown lazy and unwilling to do the work even as we pat ourselves on the back for occasionally reading outside of our comfort zones.
This book blew my mind. In a single moment it flipped my entire perspective on its head, and I opened a closed door in my mind that I hadn’t realised existed. I was standing at my bookcase flipping through the book, interested, and then Nivedita Menon perfectly and beautifully explained Butler’s theory of gender performance to me in a way that sang in my bones. I stopped. I picked up my highlighter. I sat down on the floor. And four hours later, I finished the book.
The wham moment for me was this. I had always been taught Butler as this basic formula: gender is constructed through a set of acts that are said to be in compliance with dominant societal norms. Gender is performed. Butler is incredibly difficult to read, although incredibly rewarding, but unless you are undertaking a degree in sociology you don’t break past the first layer.
But then Menon writes this: “…it is gender that produces the category of biological sex. And gender produces sex through a series of performances.” Menon goes on to explain that, just as gender is on a spectrum, sex is on a spectrum. Sexed bodies are created by societally prescribed genders: over time, we alter our bodies to fit this performance. The biology of bodies is so complex that they cannot be divided into two ‘legitimate’ types, but exist in a multitude of beautiful and true ways. We attempt to adhere to a binary that has never existed: we express a binary of sex through a binary of gender by creating a multi-layered and prescribed performance in our actions and with our bodies. Furthermore, the pervasive templates of binary genders originated in European cultures and, through colonialism, have overwritten pre-existing, nuanced, unique and diverse conceptions of gender and sex.
Menon explores the history and conceptions of sex and gender in Global Southern cultures, and examines the damage that Western scholarship has created by misrepresenting these cultures through its assumption that gender identities and social hierarchies follow a universal pattern – the Western pattern. Societies, cultures, religions, genders, sexualities – all misrepresented through a cracked lens. Her interrogation of the dominance of Western voices does not stop at the gender binary but continues through to queerness, kinship, representation, activism and sexual violence.
Her challenge to the ingrained assumptions and worn paths of Western feminism is relentless and sharply critical: one by one she dismantles the reigning discourse and challenges us to reconstruct our feminism/s as more critical, more aware, and more cognisant of other pathways and traditions, especially those irrevocably damaged by Western colonialism – our feminism/s should be a challenging journey forward without completion.
