Transcending Feminine Oppression

In her article Cyborgs on the World Stage, Rebecca S. Richards sets up a complex, multifaceted argument for the necessity of using all available means to advance their cause. She uses the example of the nickname “iron lady” used to describe Margaret Thatcher during her term as Prime Minister. The term became ubiquitous with a capable female leader who was able to transcend human weakness. In order to appropriately grapple with this assertion and the implications it carried, I found it necessary to investigate Haraway’s cyborg ontology myself. My reading of this piece allowed me to form a new perspective on femininity in the politics sphere- one that accounted for “cracked glass celling” that Hillary Clinton could never quite break through. Haraway provided me with a uniquely useful set of vocabulary that helped me understand Richards’s complex feminist narrative. The term posthuman, though not expressly named, is coined in Haraway’s piece and is useful in understanding the space that female heads of state attempt to occupy. This location manifests into the “iron lady” nickname, which denotes a mixing of femininity with masculine militarism and capability. Haraway also gives us the term cyborg, defining it as a “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction” (Haraway). This term is akin to the posthuman label in that it signifies a border space between two fixed identities.

Keya Maitra struggles with issues of generalizing identity and deferring individuality in favor of the “hegemony of discursive methods” in her article The Question of Identity and Agency in Feminism without Borders (Maitra 362). She also suggests an attractive connection between feminism and Buddhist mindfulness. “My goal here is to develop the notion of feminist agency as fully as possible by using feminism without borders as its most direct location” (Maitra 362). The primary focus here is the construction of identity and agency as they relate to feminism, yet Maitra expresses them through a new reading of Buddhism. Buddhism hinges on viewing oneself in a non-essentialized way that allows the spirit to be liberated from social constraints and singularity of view. Maitra relates the Buddhist sense of mindfulness toward the desired state of being to the plight of feminism- positing a connection between mindful thought and transformative experience. 

 Maitra’s work can be connected to the way Richards attempts to reconfigure the performative nature of gender tropes and the ‘iron lady’ title as it relates to politics and feminism. Richards wants us to understand that this naming tope does not flatten women into a homogenized unit, rather it can be used to “conceal from the public the entrance of women into positions as of heads of state; it functions invisibly through metaphorical flattery, for what could be more gracious and welcoming to a woman leader than to giver her a nickname that ostensibly credits her for, simultaneously, her femininity and for her steely resolve” (Richards 4). By this logic Richards seems to be urging women to embrace the misconceptions of naming and use whatever means available to enter into roles of power. Similarly Maitra advocates for an active approach to dispelling false consciousness and combatting the restraints of a masculine world.

Both women are more concerned with demonstrating that oppression is an inevitability of life and an unfortunate circumstance of femininity. Rather than professing the inhumanity of this condition it is more worthwhile to embrace any means of overcoming it. Maitra invites women to embrace, “the cultivation of a mode of engagement that is non-judging, fully present, open, free of habitual reactivities, and above all compassionate” (Maitra 365). In order to bring about new attitudes in the world it is first necessary to alter our own attitudes, there needs to be a conscious break in the “conditioned patterns of responses before new ranges of response become available and viable” (Strong qtd in Maitra). Both authors advocate for embracing the hybrid nature of the self in order to achieve self-awareness and autonomy.