the collection

news in the news

subscribe

rss feeds news releases

faculty only

submit news members web site

sites of interest

streaming audio/video

Fighting for Autonomy

  It’s a well known fact that violence against women is a worldwide problem. Reports from the United Nations, World Health Organization, and Amnesty International indicate that, on average, 1 in 3 women experience some form of violence during their lifetimes. Women usually have a heightened awareness of how often others’ intimidating or threatening postures, words, or actions can turn into physical or sexual assaults against their bodies. Those women who do experience personal violence can experience a sense of physical powerlessness, low self-esteem, self-blame, or shame.

  As CBU philosophy professor Sylvia Burrow points out, women often take actions to avoid physical or sexual harms—such as not walking alone at night, carrying pepper spray, avoiding certain areas of town or people, and so on. These sorts of restrictions on choice of activities show that women do not enjoy the same freedoms of movement as men. Freedom of choice is an expression of liberty or independence, an idea philosophers capture in the term autonomy.

  If freedom is restricted then autonomy, as the capacity to choose for oneself, is lessened. It is deeply troubling that women do not enjoy the same autonomy as men because of fear of personal violence. What can be done about this problem? We could always argue that better laws or better enforcing of them is needed. But right now, women face a very real threat of personal violence and so often live modified or restricted lives. How can women regain autonomy while living within a culture of violence?

  Sylvia Burrow has an answer. In her article “Bodily Limits to Autonomy: Emotion, Attitude, and Self-Defence” published in the edited collection Embodiment and Agency (Penn State UP, 2009), Burrow argues that threats of violence against women have a hold on women because feminine socialization encourages “the fair sex” to be overtly passive, “nice,” polite, and accommodating. This socialization encourages a passivity that lessens the likelihood of active prevention towards, or resistance against, personal violence. Femininity is intimately connected to expectations that women smooth relations, foster emotional connections, and make themselves pleasing to others (both visually and otherwise). So, feminine socialization trains women to view themselves as objects of appreciation rather than instruments used to effect action in the world. Such social norms become encoded in mannerisms, conduct and carriage. Women often take up less space than men, tuck their feet and hands together in the company of others, and restrict their movements—sometimes unnecessarily—to avoid situations, thereby making certain places and activities “off limits.”

  Although viewed as the social norm, Burrow argues that these restrictive behaviours actually affect a woman’s autonomy because being a woman means negotiating, on a daily basis, people, places and activities. Women constantly compromise through adjusting plans, ideals, projects, and commitments because of worries about personal harm. These compromises combine with socially-imposed limits to autonomy to disempower women and discourage an active presence in public space. What are women supposed to do?  Research repeatedly shows that women cannot avoid the socialization—those negative messages of compliance and passivity—that influence the choices women make and women’s willingness to freely act on them.

  Sylvia Burrow wants women to rethink these double standards, then to try another tack. She advocates self-defence training as not simply a route to recovery in the wake of personal violence but instead, and primarily, as the development of skills aimed at preventing violence against the self. Self-defence training most obviously teaches tactics to avoid or counter violence through escapes, throws, punches, kicks, locks, takedowns, etc. But what people don’t often realize is that self-defence training also cultivates important psychological competencies. Women training in self defense learn to trust their newly developed skills that not only help them avoid harm but also build confidence in the body as a site of active resistance. In doing so, their self-respect and self-esteem increase. For women, who are encouraged to view their bodies passively as a site of beauty and adornment, learning to see the body as a site of active resistance is a powerful source of autonomy.

  Those women who feel that they can freely make choices and act on them without fear of harm, insists Burrow, enjoy a sense of autonomy that can overcome (or at least mitigate) the powerful effects of feminine socialization. Most importantly, for women living in environments characterized by outright aggression or grandiose displays of superiority, possessing both the physical and psychological ability to prevent harms to the self is a significant source of self- confidence and self-trust.

  Since both self-confidence and self-trust are essential components of autonomy, Sylvia Burrow’s view shows that self-defence training provides a theoretically and practically significant opportunity for women to claim the autonomy that’s rightfully theirs.