slavery or choice?



collettivo peppinabausch
7 november 2002
Pisa, Italy: 43n43 10e23

When we saw the ESF program, we noted that all gender oriented seminars dealt with extreme-cases of the condition of women: women-migrants, women-prostitutes, women-in Islamic Integralism society. None considered 'normal women's' conditions in modern western society. It was like in our society women did not have any problem anymore...We were astonished, we immediately thought that even among 'enlightened people' the stereotyped view about burqua had become the excuse to strengthen the myth of western superiority. We had to do something strong, try to draw the western gender stereotype to the integralistic one, we wanted to stress the paradox.

We wanted to communicate that also in modern Western society we are not free from oppression: it is true that we do not have to dress in a burqua, but we have other roles to respect, we have to be good mothers, nice models....
Two of us, wearing only underwear and bra, went out covered by a transparent plastic burqua and black veils over the eyes. Many of us were running posters in which feminine icons were represented like manager-woman/ mother-woman/ houseworker-woman/ model-women. We wanted to stress that in western society women continue to be slave of rules, as well as in the integralist Islamic society