Author: Former Student

UWC Deliberation guide: How has colonialism impacted us?

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Instructions for facilitators

This guide is designed for a 1.5-hour session, for small groups (6-8 participants) of UWC students. The United World Colleges is a group of 18 schools that offer the IBDP to international students of diverse backgrounds. These boarding schools gather students from 150 different countries (some students come are undocumented or hold refugee status), offering financial assistance for 80% of students to ensure accessibility. Students usually are 16-19 years old, and are proficient in English. Therefore, facilitators should expect students to bring different understandings of colonialism, especially considering that participants have gone through different educational systems. 

The session aims to be the beginning of a longer conversation. More specifically, this session is designed to introduce a difficult topic for students to take to their residences and academic spaces, so as to raise awareness of the impacts that Colonialism has in the way we see our world and how we interact with each other. No materials have been assigned previous to the session. 

The session is structured as follows:

  • Introduction and agreement – 15min
  • Initial discussion – 20m
  • Themed discussions – 40m
  • Reflection – 15m
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Feminist Mixtape: Girls just want to have fun (1979)

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Next year will be 40 years since She’s So Unusual, album by Cyndi Lauper was released. Although it feels like ages for some, the pop artist marked a generation with her music, but especially with one particular song of the album: Girls Just Want to Have Fun. This iconic song not only was a hit of the 80’s for its catchy tune, but also because of the lyrics. What Feminist ideas can we find in Cyndi Lauper’s iconic Girls Just Want to Have Fun?

First of all, the song leverages the idea of sorority. As shown in her videoclip, the idea is for women to get together to support each other and create spaces that they can enjoy. With all the limitations of the repetitive “girls just want to have fun” line, the lyrics are a reflection of the radical Feminist view of Luisa Capetillo (1910s) that women also have the right to leisure, and that only with solidarity, this can be achieved.

Secondly, the song addresses the Feminist view of Friedan in The Feminine Mystique (1963) that criticises the generalised idea that there is one “right” way for women to live when it says: 

My mother says “When are you going to live your life right?” 

And right away, the song aligns with criticism against Friedan’s ideas for portraying a Feminist view that applies only for white, middle class, educated women (bell hooks, 1984). Addressing the intersectionality of class, the artist replies:

Oh momma dear, we’re not the fortunate ones

This last line is a reflection of the generalised priority and agenda of the 80’s: money. In fact, the whole song addresses the idea of the working class and class struggle during the 80’s. Twice, the song mentions:

When the workin’ day is done,

Oh girls, they wanna have fun

This, again, relates to the idea of women as human beings, entitled to leisure, over the idea of women only as productive agents.

On top of that, Girls Just Want to Have Fun also criticises controlling relations as a form of violence against women when it says:

Some boys take a beautiful girl

And hide her away from the rest o’ the world

This points out at a red flag for any relation, which is the attempts to isolate a person from their social circle and family. This often leads to violent relations that disproportionately affect women. (IOMA, 2020) The song continues by saying:

I wanna be the one to walk in the sun

This clever line addresses again the idea that there is a right way for women to live as addressed by The Feminist Mystique. The idea that women should stay at home in charge of the domestic chores and reducing their social interactions to “family friends” of the same socio-economic status. In sum, staying away from the rest of the world, unable to walk under the sun. 

This hit clearly addresses the ideas of radical first-wave feminism and the debate of second-wave feminism on the importance of addressing intersectionality, in this case of the working class. Needless to say that the song is not a comprehensive summary of Feminism. In fact, it has clear limitations such as the reinforcement of the gender binary and the idea of the traditional family. Yet, this song was a hit and now remains in pop culture for many for good reasons. Girls Just Want to Have Fun is precisely a song for women, that brought to popular culture the idea of just having fun. While this idea is not novel for radical feminists like Capetillo, it does, as The Guardian points out, capture the cultural shift of the 80s. It shifts the focus from all-about-money, middle and lower-class women to the right of women to having fun, to leisure and to “come home, in the monin’ light.” 

Book Review: The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

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Is being queer so tragic? Clearly, there is a common narrative that idealises straight over queer relationships: “No one would choose to be queer” or “being straight is so much easier.” While there is much privilege in being straight in a heteronormative society, this “tragedy of queerness” has gone unexamined. In fact, this narrative conflicts with simple, observable situations in our society: Why do women not benefit from straight relationships as much as men do? Why are queer people proud of their queerness if it is such a tragic thing? Jane Ward takes on the challenge of examining this narrative —the tragedy of queerness— and proposes that, even more worrisome is The Tragedy of Heterosexuality.

In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Ward argues that “under the weight of heteronormativity […] people have come to understand heterosexuality as the most instinctive and fulfilling form of sexual relating.” While she recognises the difficulties of queer relations, she questions whether straight relations bring such ease and fulfillment. For Ward, heterosexuality is the tragedy because of the patriarchal and misogynistic nature of heterosexual relations that, paradoxically, teaches men to desire and hate women while also romanticises violence. For queer people, this means that actually, heterosexual relations are nothing to wish for. But for straight people, this clearly fleshes out the problem of misogyny, to put it mildly. Thus, Ward advocates for a reconstruction of heterosexuality: “a future in which straight men like women so much that they actually like women.” This is a straight relationship that does not perpetuate misogyny.

This deep analysis of heterosexual relations is presented in a digestible and extremely engaging way. The book is written masterfully: it combines the different aspects of an academic analysis, with stories, quotes and interviews that make it easier for the reader to make the argument personal, and includes the insights of the author as a queer and Feminist scholar. She is also the author of Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men (2015) and Respectability Queer: Diversity Culture in LGTB Activist Organizations (2008). She received her PhD in Sociology by the University of California Santa Barbara in 2003. Currently, Dr. Jane Ward is a professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California Riverside, where she teaches courses on feminist, queer and heterosexuality studies. Her experience is clearly reflected in her book, The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (2020). 

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Media Analysis: Pre-Columbian Vessels

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Wearing Peru’s national soccer team’s shirt, Moche district’s mayor Arturo Fernández smiles for the camera. Behind him, a red statue of a man raises his left arm in a fist. The red man sits in a cubic-like structure of the same colour, decorated with cream-coloured, geometric shapes. The statue has long hair and a white, large smile that looks more like just showing teeth than showing happiness. He wears a cylinder-shaped hat and big, circular earrings. Most surprisingly, apart from this, he is naked and his left arm holds his erect, disproportionally big penis, which rises diagonally to the same height as his nose. 

The statue was put in place in Early January 2022, in the district of Moche, Northern Peru.  Peruvian media and social media users got really engaged in a debate around this statue, which got coverage by newspapers, TV, streamers and, of course, social media users who did not wait to circulate memes about the statue. As a large-scale representation of Precolumbian vessels from civilizations that lived in the area between the II and VIII centuries, the statue would not have attracted as much coverage if not for one feature: The statue represents an erotic vessel characterised by an oversized, erect penis so big that, as the media put it, you can see it from kilometers away. In less than two months, since its inauguration in January, the statue has been vandalized, burnt down, and restored. For me, and probably for many other Peruvians too, this was sadly an expected reaction in a country as conservative and puritanical as Peru. 

While the debate has raised important observations about Peruvian society, it quickly became a two-sided, moralized argument. One side calls the other pervert and immoral, and advocates for the removal of the statue. The other side responds by calling them prudish, and archaic, and fuels the debate even more with happy pictures next to the statue to “challenge the conservatives.” But maybe the heat of the debate can interest us all in understanding more about these vessels and raise questions about Peruvian society too. 

What are the erotic vessels?

Most civilisations that inhabit what is now Peru between the II and VIII centuries developed pottery techniques that allowed them to produce pottery for daily use and for other purposes, such as religious and spiritual rituals. Notably, the Moche civilisation stands out for the realism and variety of techniques that were innovative in their times.

The erotic vessels were pottery pieces especially dedicated for religious purposes. As a farming community, the Moches centered their worldview around farming activities. Their calendar, visual representations, tales and oral traditions, rituals and religion were deeply connected to agriculture. Sex was also an activity connected to the fertility of the land and the production cycles. The erotic vessels are precisely a representation of this worldview. The vessels represent how different sexual acts were used to call for rain and good soil. 

Our bodies

The techniques used to model the vessels were as advanced as the Moches’ knowledge of the human body. The detail and genius to represent the human expression and body, including the genitalia, are a reflection of a different view of the flesh. The human body was seen, explored and represented without the shame that in our society we express between ourselves and our bodies. 

French philosopher Michael Foucault denounces the medicalization of the human experience. We give doctors almost full power to access our bodies, to tell us what is wrong with it. However, outside the medical practice, we punish the exploration of our own bodies. Outside a course of anatomy or biology, our bodies are kept distant from us, as the unexplored and not-to-be-explored territory. As a society, we effectively impose rules on how the body is to be explored, understood and taken care of. 

If we, as the Moches did, had a worldview that connects sex with the agricultural calendar, the dead and the gods, then we would have a very different set of rules to explore our own body in modern times. Surely our current view would be a less puritanical, prudish, guilty view of our physicality; however,  this does not mean we should advocate for Peruvians to return to a Moche worldview. Just as Foucault does not take a side with either the modern over the older worldview, I am not trying to advocate for the Moche’s over the modern worldview either. Instead, I am suggesting our relation to our own body is heavily regulated by our worldview, and people should view themselves in this context. 

Why does this matter? 

Going back to the debate around our phallic Moche friend, I try not to take a side with any of the two rivals. I am surely not suggesting to go full Moche worldview-lifestyle. This would be imposing another set of rules, with their own set of problems and complexities. It would also be practically impossible considering that our colonial history meant a witch hunt against indigenous worldviews and traditions. Instead, I am suggesting we stop for a moment and question whether the repressor can be ourselves. So far you may have thought that it is the others, the powerful, the majority, who impose a morality on us. But don’t you police yourself all the time? Don’t we follow rules for how our bodies ought to be explored, understood and treated just because we have been taught that? Why do you feel guilty when you break the rules? Where do the rules come from? 

So far, each side has become the perfect villain for the other. There cannot be conservatives without liberals and the way around. But if we are teaching our children rules, and if we are vigilant if our neighbours are feeling guilt for even thinking of breaking the rules, it sounds to me like we are the enemies who actually made it inside our homes like Foucault suggests. Insofar these rules are going around totally unquestioned, insofar as we police whether everyone meets the rules, we will be walking around with no certainty that we ourselves are not the repressive enemy. 

References

Museo Larco

Michael Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1979.

Janus Woloszyn and Katarzyna Piwowar, “Sodomite, Siamese Twins, and Scholars: Same-Sex Relationships in Moche Art,”  American Anthropologist 117, no. 2 (June, 2015). 

Óscar Paz, “Atracción, polémica y hasta disparos por la estatua de un Huaco Erótico en Trujillo” (El Comercio, 2022).

Non-product day reflection

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When I went to sleep the night before I told myself “Tomorrow is no-product day,” but it was not until the professor mentioned it the next morning that I realised I was supposed to be doing the challenge. I went through my morning in my mind: “woke up, brushed my teeth, had breakfast, went to class.” Not a single product, I don’t even comb my hair. 

“I’m doing great” I thought, but as the morning progressed I had to repeat the exercise over and over. I would remember that I was supposed to be doing the challenge, panic about it, go back through my day until my last check-point. And still nothing, not a single product. It was not until that night when I decided to use body wash for my hair as well, which is supposed to work just fine but not leave my hair as soft as my shampoo. 

In retrospect, the challenge was not hard at all. It was the thoughts that came after that bothered me. Am I investing enough in myself? Do I need to buy something for my skin or a comb for my hair? All this brought memories back when I decided to stop using deodorant in high school but for the summers. But also made me ask about the other face of the coin, what if I actually liked make-up, hair products, perfumes, etc.? And there is the conflicting thought: Do I not use enhancement products out of pragmatism? (That is not using them because I’m just being me) Or are those preferences not the result of growing up in a society that punishes in men all enhancements, even self-care?