The SWAG departments held a discussion panel on
global feminism on Thursday, October 29th at the SunTrust Auditorium at Rollins
College. The was organized by Shaffaq Noor, a Junior at Rollins and member of
the Computer Science department. Noor organized the event as a way to build
support for the project that her and her sister are undertaking: opening an all
women's Internet cafe in Northern Pakistan. The panel also included Rollins professor's
Dr. Margaret McLaren, and Dr. Rachel Newcomb. But the first speaker, Dr.
Kathryn Norsworthy, a graduate level counseling instructor and Licensed
psychologist, set the table for the "global" in this global feminism
panel.
For the past 30 years Dr. Norsworthy has been
travelling to southeast Asia. As time went on, the trips turned from learning
and study to activism and support. Over the last 18 years Dr. Norsworthy has
been involved in a range of peace and justice, women's leadership, social
justice education, HIV/AIDS, and other projects with the refugee communities of
Burmese, Thai, Cambodian, and Tibetan Asian regional groups and international.
Her activism work allowed her to form a friendship with Ouyporn Khuankaew.
Ouyporn is a Thai feminist activist and public intellectual who lives just
outside of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Dr. Norsworthy describes her
relationship with Ouyporn forming by chance. "Our paths crossed by
accident - some might say synchronistically." During this time (the
pre-email period) the two exchanged various letters and faxes and decided to
work together.
It would make sense that a true feminist like Dr.
Norsworthy would be doing work in Thailand. Thailand is a Tier 3 country, the
lowest rank, in the Trafficking in Persons Report of 2014 along with North
Korea, Syria, and the Central African Republic. Dr. Norsworthy states that the
sex industry in Thailand is one of the biggest threats to the feminist movement. Most of these women come from rural villages
in the northern province and have very little education and skills. Because
they are so impoverish, they turn to the sex industry to support themselves. This
is also happens with refugees from Myanmar, or Burma as Norsworthy calls it (to
show solidarity with the democracy movement that began in '67). Dr. Norsworthy and Ouyporn combat this threat
by educating and empowering women.
The two took on their first project together after
meeting in a traveler's hotel on
Christmas Day in 1997, in the backpack
district of Bangkok. "We noted later that fell into the template for the 'global
order' - me, the white, U.S. PhD. level feminist counseling psychologist, as the
primary facilitator and teacher, and Ouyporn, the Thai woman of color, MA
educated feminist activist and educator, as the translator." The project
was a three day workshop for a non-government organization on the topic of
violence against women. As the first day went on, both of their roles slowly
began to shift. They slowly became co-facilitators rather than working in a
hierarchical structure.
Dr. Norsworthy stated that this
was her long term goal for feminism in Thailand and southeast Asia, to support
and facilitate a positive outcome for feminism and to help assimilate feminist
ideas into the culture, rather than change the culture radically. Ouyporn Has been a great help to Norsworthy in
achieving this goal; As a Thai woman of color and insider, she deals with the
mixed experiences of cultural, ethnic, and national identities. Because of
this, she holds a much greater degree of social influence and status than many
of the activists that Norsworthy worked with.
Ouyporn and Norsworthy found
themselves working on a number of projects with the refugee women's community
of Burma. Thailand is populated with over a million Burmese refugees. Most of
these refugees live without legal status after fleeing the political violence
and oppression of their homeland. In one such project, the two were invited by
women from a Burmese ethnic minority group to help them start a women's
organization. They spent a lot of time planning how to facilitate the process
and present feminist principles. The idea was to use these principles and
practices for the group as guides for engagement.
They sat on the floor in a
circle and invited the participants to brainstorm feminist values and
principles they believed would be important in laying a framework for their
organization. Norsworthy and Ouyporn compiled a list of contrasting patriarchal
values side by side with western feminist values. They offered the list to the
group for their consideration. A local partner was serving as translator and
"cultural bridge" so that all different native speakers of the
several languages being spoken could communicate effectively. As the
participants viewed the list, they drew closer together and became more
animated. They were confused as to what was happening. Their local partner, Daw
Thali, informed them: "The list you gave the group... There are many words
on it that are not part of our local language or even Burmese. There is not
direct translation and in some cases, nothing in our language that is even
close, so they are trying to get the meaning through discussion." The
locals went on to try and invent some terminology based on their own cultural
values and experiences, claiming that they weren't sure if they even wanted a
"democratic" organization(defined on the feminist framework). They
claimed that in a democracy, people's voices go unheard, Small groups who are
not the mainstream are never represented, and that they wanted something better
than democracy. It was in this moment
that they realized that they were almost the instruments of another form of
"colonization" which is the opposite of what Norsworthy was trying to
accomplish.
Dr. Norsworthy encourages all
young feminists to go out and learn, observe, and help support a more positive environment
for feminists around the world, to study and research before trying to promote
what you might think is a positive or a progressive idea. In the end, you may
end up hurting when trying to help.
