No More than a Womb: A Woman’s Role Amongst Mongolian Nazis, Nationalism and Sinophobia

I suppose this is an entry that is long overdo. Despite the fact that I am now on the beach in Vietnam, have traversed several countries by train in the last few weeks, and am geographically veryveryvery far away from the windswept, bone-chilling sandstorms of the Mongolian spring, I am still writing about this country.

Before I get started, I wanted to explicitely state my intentions in writing this article: to point to the dangers, from a feminist woman’s perspective, of feeding the fires of extreme nationalism and/or ethnic blood superiority rhetoric. I by no means want to say that all Mongolians think this way; I am simply saying that these tendencies exist in contemporary Mongolian culture and why I perceive them to be limiting and dangerous. There are all types of people in Mongolia, just like everywhere else!

The reason I have been brooding over this particular issue recently – the issue of racism towards the Chinese, Mongolian nationalism and patriarchy- is an incident I experienced recently while in Beijing:

A few days after leaving Mongolia by train (and internally coping with the feeling of loss that came with it), I was trying to get back to my hostel after going to a bar late at night on the other end of town (and Beijing is a big town!). Unbeknownst to me, the trains stop around 11, so I ended up with a friend on the side of a freeway trying to flag down a cab. We weren’t alone; several others had also been ousted by the train schedule and were trying to get home.

I guess living in Asia has made me pretty good at recognizing face structures, cause I can now pretty much pick a Mongolian out of a crowd. And down the line a few meters from me was a man speaking English and not Chinese like the rest. I knew immediately that he was Mongolian and walked up to him to ask where he was going and if he wanted to share a cab.

“Ta Mongol hun uu?” I asked and the look on his face was priceless. Guess it wasn’t everyday that a white woman walked up to him and spoke Mongolian. We exchanged basic pleasantries and introductions, but that was all ruined by the following:

While my Mongolian counterpart hadn’t been looking, a cab had pulled up next to us. But, instead of waiting, a Chinese man who had been standing nearby got in the cab. In my mind, there is nothing wrong with this, since we had been talking and distracted. But once the Mongolian man noticed, he lost it:

“Get out you stupid fag***!” he yelled in English. “You stupid Chinese f***,” I am the blood of Genghis Khan, not like you you stupid, weak Chinese!”

He was flipping out. The Chinese dude in the car and the man standing next to me were screaming at each other. The Mongolian man kept yelling about him having the blood of the great, strong Genghis Khan, in contrast to his weak, ‘infertile’ Chinese counterpart. The man in the cab flicked the Mongolian off and sped away.

During this exchange a different cab pulled up. My friend and I quickly jumped in and left the racist Mongolian man behind still no better off than he had been 10 minutes beforehand…

But the entire thing left a very sour taste in my mouth. What a statement this Mongolian man is making about Mongolian culture while being in a foreign country! What an exchange laced with blood-based, fertility-laden allegories of national superiority.. yuck! If you hate China so much, why are you even IN China?

I had to write about it.

***

Sinophobia, or racism and/or hatred of Chinese culture and ethnicity, resonates very strongly with many Mongolians.  While traveling through the countryside during research (initially) on nutrition, herders would repeatedly tell me that they don’t trust fruit, because all fruit is from China and thus poisoned.  When I first came to Mongolia six years ago, gangs of orphans used to roam the streets of UB and accost travelers for money.  These gangs are conspicuously absent now with many people claiming that these kids have been taken by the Chinese and shipped off into the Chinese organ trade.  And, obviously due to the Chinese government’s usurpation tendencies, Mongolians fear that the Chinese propaganda machine will eventually turn its gaze to the wide and (mostly empty) Mongolian steppe.

This deep-seated dislike towards the Chinese did not solely arise on its own.  Rhetoric propagated by the Soviet Union in attempts to keep the Mongol nation from getting stronger played a large role in defining what contemporary Mongolians conceive as as “Mongolian.”  As I read in this article recently:

“In the first years of the existence of the [Mongolian] nation (note: which was founded in 1921), Mongols expressed a strong desire to create a Greater Mongolia that would include ethnically Mongolian regions of both China and Russia (Inner Mongolia and Buryatia respectively). The Russians were wary of the emergence of such a large political entity and they appealed to various tactics to create distance between the Mongols of the Republic of Mongolia and other Mongolian groups. As a result of these policies Mongolianness has come to take on a very narrow interpretation… Throughout the Socialist period, the notion of Chinese threat was routinely mobilised by the Russians for political reasons.”

So, although fears of economic dependence on China maybe legitimate and have a historical basis (I mean what country is NOT dependent on China?), many of these rumors are dramatized to serve a different purpose.  I asked the Mongolian National Nutrition Center about the fruit fears, which did chemical tests on Mongolian fruit and found out that the rumor regarding the poor quality of Chinese fruit entering Mongolia is simply not true.  It’s just an excuse to not eat fruit, but it proves a valuable point behind a lot of the stories and rumors circulating about the Chinese in Mongolian popular culture.  Hatred of the Chinese has proven to be a very good rallying cry to unite Mongolians in this unstable, increasingly globalizing world. Furthermore, it upholds ‘traditional’ patriarchal Mongolian culture at a time when women are questioning the traditional gender divide, and has led to the growing sympathy behind and rise of Mongolian ultra-nationalist groups like Dayar Mongol (whose flag prominently features a giant swastika), Blue Mongol and White Swastika.

Thus, it was super interesting to get into multiple conversations with the Chinese I encountered on my travels regarding Mongolia.  The Chinese citizens I talked to knew virtually nothing about their northern neighbor, except for one line in the official history book that stated that Mongolia used to be part of China. Considering how much time Mongolians spend talking about China it is odd to hear how little the Chinese think about them.

Woman = Womb, Man = Mongolianness

Mongolian nationalism plays upon already hyper-masculine Mongolian cultural tendencies and is especially appealing to young Mongolian men.

Setting politics aside for anthropology, if you look at any patrilineal society – a society in which a woman joins the man’s household upon marriage and inheritance is conveyed through the male’s family – a woman’s prime function becomes the continuation of the male bloodline.  Reproduction of male heirs is elevated and becomes a woman’s raison d’être in order to continue the male lineage. Thus, the preference in many societies for male children.

A Western vestigial of this patrilineal inheritance is the acquisition of the husband’s name upon marriage (which obviously still exists). In Mongolia, children get their father’s first name, which is then put before their own name… but the meaning is the same. According to ultra-nationalist rhetoric, you are your father’s child. You are of his blood. Your mother was just the carrier.

I also carried the weight of this distinction when I tried to define myself as half-American, half-German to Mongolians using the Mongolian word эрлийз (“erliiz”).  ’Erliiz’ refers to mixed-heritage children and could be translated as half-blood, which doesn’t sound so nice in whatever language you translate it into (i.e. Mongolian women calling me ‘Mischling’ while speaking to me in German).  The question that initially shocked me and subsequently irritated me was when I would be asked, after proclaiming my ‘erliiz’-ness, where my father came from.  I came to realize that my mother’s lineage was of secondary importance, and that my heritage was mostly defined through my father, something that irritated me and made me feel like my right to define my own identity (and those of any hypothetical children of mine) was being removed.

But this makes sense from a patrilineal and patriarchal societal standpoint.  Because lineage is passed down through the father’s line and children belong to that line the really only important ethnic marker of a child’s heritage is the father’s sperm.  And women become empty wombs without ethnic/national/identity markers.

A personal anecdote from my own life: The woman = womb, man = ethnicity standpoint is not new.  The reason my siblings, who are 20 years older than I am, do not have German citizenship is because of an antiquated German citizenship law that only allowed German heritage to be passed down through the father’s line.  Because my siblings only had a German mother – a non-ethnic ‘womb’ – they weren’t granted citizenship.  Just an example from Western culture of the same tendency, which points to being rooting in patrilineal/patriarchal nationalist societies that turn women into male heir, bloodline reproducers and remove their rights to their children (*cough*Nazis*cough*).  This law was revised in 1974.

The Extinction Myth

Mongolian Neo-Nazi Scenesters doing the Hitler Salute at a Metal Concert: One friend of mine who used to be in the scene told me that they just think it looks cool... at least that's why he used to do the Hitler greeting at concerts.

Nothing seems to unite contesting groups more than the idea of a joint enemy.  And China looms in the Mongolian cultural consciousness like a feral specter in the distance ready to pounce at the next available opportunity.  And this fear that China (and other foreigners) will one day take over and wipe the map clean of Mongolia has created a nationalist backlash.

I, myself, ended up at some pretty dodgy nationalist concerts while in Mongolia and I often felt unsafe.  However, my status as a white woman seemed to be less of a threat (although not completely safe, I am not an ethnic (sperm) driven threat to nationalist groups).  Thus, when the Mongolian man in Beijing was screaming at the taxi-caper culprit, he kept alluding to the superiority of his sperm, bloodline and thus strength, in comparison to the supposed weakness and infertility of the Chinese man.

I had the opportunity to see quite a few Dayar Mongol protests on Sukhbaatar Square at the end of last year.  The following statement from the organizations head, D. Gansuren, illustrates the extinction myth that feeds nationalist groups; the fear of loosing the bloodline and the need to defend the motherland against the evil invading foreigners:

“We should never forget that Mongolia was a powerful and great world empire. However, high ranking officials are corrupted and giving the land to the foreigners now. It should be mentioned that Mongolians are being beaten and yielded by foreigners who hire the Mongolians at lower wages. Let them do slave work in their own country. The ancestors of Mongolia did not sacrifice their lives to their enemy in order give the land to foreigners. That’s why I wish Mongolians would learn and have good examples from genius kings (referring to the Mongolian khans).  Also they should follow the slogans of the kings, regarded as superior for the Mongolian heritage. We wanted to reawaken nationalistic views to the public through protest. The swastika symbolizes peace, firm, forever and long life.” (an entry regarding the Mongolian meaning of the swastika is another post…)

My Body Belongs to… Genghis Khan?

A gender juxtaposition thus results from the sentiments of blood, ethnic and sperm-based superiority: If you are a in-group woman dating a foreign man, you are creating foreign children and thus a traitor. But an in-group man can date a foreign woman and have children without any repercussions.  The children that result from such a union have the sperm of the father and are thus of the in-group.

A French woman having her head shaved after sleeping with a German.

A Mongolian woman gets her head shaved by Dayar Mongol after sleeping with a Chinese man.

Resultingly, Dayar Mongol publically announced that any woman found sleeping with a Chinese man would have her head shaved (mimicking what the French did to young women who had slept with German soldiers during WWII and what Germans did with young women who had slept with non-Aryans).  Many of my foreign friends had to be super vigilant while walking around with a Mongolian-looking woman (didn’t matter if she was actually Mongolian), and most Caucasian men dating Mongolian women can’t go out in UB with their significant other for fears of getting beaten up.  However, I had no problem dating Mongolian men; in fact, it was widely encouraged by everyone I met and I was even asked if I wanted to have ‘Mongol babies’ (I do not.).

A great quote by Undarya Tumursukh encapsulates the dangers of extreme nationalism regarding a woman’s agency:

“Nationalisms turn the control of women, their bodies, and their sexuality into a matter of national importance by defining patriarchy as the core of national identity” (you can find her article here).

Mongolian Sinophobia uses reactionist fear to uphold a patriarchal tradition that limits a woman’s role to a reproductive function, and, due to the need for ethnic preservation, regulates who she can sleep with and defines whose children she bares.  No wonder all the pictures of Dayar Mongol are solely of young men!

I remember the first time while living with a nomadic herder family in Bayankhongor that the father of the family came up to his kids and grabbed his 2-year old son’s penis in a loving way.  He shook it, laughed and looked at me and went “mongol.. MONGOL!” as if to tell me that this boy’s member was the key to the continuation of the Mongolian nation.   I have seen this repeated in different families several times since.   This scene has taken on a completely new meaning for me.

Where Are All The Women?: Gender Politics at the Grand Khural Fire Adoration Ceremony

This past week I have been itching to write about a ritualistic fire-lighting event that happened recently in the Grand Khural (meeting) hall of the Mongolian parliament building; an event being treated lightly by many women closest to it, nevertheless incredibly symbolically detrimental to women’s progression in Mongolia.

The Symbolism of Fire

If you’ve ever really thought about it, you’d be astounded by how many traditional cultures, only remotely connected to each other, are jointly obsessed with the element of fire.  Mongolia is no exception: in traditional Mongolian culture, fire represented the soul of the family, which is not surprising since the hearth is the center point of any yurt/ger.  Not to mention, life on the steppe would be quite destitute without its warming properties.

The result is numerous customs regarding stove etiquette that continue to be quite prevalent in Mongolian yurts, especially in the countryside (and have gotten me in trouble a few times!). Just as an example, your feet and shoes as the lowest and dirtiest part of the body are never allowed to touch the stove.  Never put any trash or an object considered filthy into the fire, which symbolically ‘dirties’ the soul of the family.  Don’t lean on, nor walk through the poles surrounding the fire, as it is a sacred area… etc.

The wife is the steward of the family’s fire and hearth and is accordingly the first to wake up every morning; the morning fire lighting is still frequently accompanied by an offering or ritual in either the form of grease, meat, tea or juniper burning. One traditional marriage custom is the symbolic lighting of the family’s first ‘hearth’ by the wife.  Furthermore, the ‘fire-prayer,’ or sacrificial offering, was historically a female-exclusive northern Mongolian Shaman ritual (enacted on the 29^th of the last month of the year – a SUPER interesting fact in the following story).  The point is that women have historically not been strangers to the element of fire, and in fact have been traditionally a keeper of this element that was symbolically and practically tied to their everyday experience as women.

The Parliament Fire-Lighting Ceremony

It is now 2012 (whowuddathought), which marks the 100-year anniversary of when Mongolia liberated itself from the Qing dynasty and thus became a (semi) independent state.  In accordance with this momentous happening, several parliament members, led by N. Batbayar, owner of the company “Fortuna,” organized a symbolic fire-burning ceremony inside the central meeting chamber in Mongolia’s parliament building.

This ceremony – which took place on the 29^th of the last month of the year like the aforementioned female-only fire-burning ritual – had apparently been ordained by a Shaman parliament member, who claimed it decreed to him by heaven.  The parliament members utilized taxpayer money to establish a ger (yurt) inside the parliament chamber and prepare a fire pit inside.  This fire was then symbolically lit in line with tradition, and the ceremony was attended by prominent parliament members and politicians (including the president and prime minister).  The lightening of the fire in the central parliament building was to be an act that symbolically represented the ‘soul’ of the government and its people, not unlike in a nomadic family or at a wedding ceremony.

‘Fortuna’ Batbayar opened the ceremony with the following statement:

“The state starts from the multitude. If the multitude has a fire, then the state, in turn, will eternally thrive.”

Symbolism abounds.  Just one problem.  Where were all the women?  Are Mongolian women not part of the multitude?

Considering what I wrote at the beginning, lighting the fire in the hearth is an action traditionally associated with women’s duties.  Yet according to ‘Fortuna’ Batbayar’s request: “Битгий галд ойрт. Гэрт орж болохгүй. Эмэгтэйчүүд хэрэггүй.” (“Don’t get close to the fire. Don’t enter the yurt. Women are not needed”).  The entire ceremony in the heart of Mongolia’s government apparatus enacted as a representation of the ‘soul’ of the people took place without either a single female parliament member or female journalist.

Justification?

According to his (Batbayar’s) statement, they used dirt that had been gathered from the Burhan (‘God’) sacred mountain – a mountain for the worship of the flags of Genghis Khan’s angry soldiers – and thus he made the decision [for women] to not participate.

Two of the main participants: "Fortuna" Batbayar on the left and the singer Jawhlan on the right.

Yes, that’s right.  Each mountain in Mongolian traditional culture has a different spirit and affords different levels of respect accordingly.  And ‘sacred’ mountains with stupas are off-limits for women because of the belief (that I read was imported into Mongolia from Tibetan Buddhism) that the menstrual cycle made women бузар: dirty, filthy, ignominious.  The claim that dirt and wood for the fire was gathered from the ‘God’ mountain and that the banning of women was thus in order to keep the ceremony ‘undefiled’ was the justification for why women could not participate in this centennial governmental celebration.

The Patriarchal Backlash

The ceremony seems incredibly ironic to me especially because of the actual state of women’s participation in Mongolian society. As many of the Mongolian article writers I have read on this subject are not reticent to point out; women dominate this country.  Mongolian women are everywhere, which makes their exclusion from government affairs that much more poignant.

Because of their high rates of education and obviously salient presence in society, modern Mongolian women and their reinvention of Mongolian traditional gender roles seem to be undergoing a backlash.  As women gain more footing and prove capable of maintaining both the traditionally ‘female’ roles of child-rearing and domestic work, as well as the traditionally ‘male’ roles of bread-earning and public participation, very masculine Mongolian men seem to be clambering and overly asserting the last bastions of masculinity.

Negating the feminine: Male adorers lines up to bow in front of the fire of the Mongolian people.

And the Mongolian parliament is one such bastion. Since the opening of Mongolia reinvented what it meant to be a woman, the number of Mongolian women in parliament has dropped to three, especially after the 2007 revocation of the article stipulating a 30-percent women’s quota in government (this has now been reinstated at 20 percent for the upcoming election).

Thus, the ritual seemed so ironically symbolic to me.  This ceremony, which took place on the exact day of a traditionally exclusively female fire sacrament, involved the bowing of only ‘pure’ men, in a yurt, in the parliament building, in traditional costumes, in front of the symbolic fiery ‘soul’ of Mongolia, fueled by the dirt of the God mountain of the angry soldiers of Genghis Khan… concepts of tradition and nature (unclean menstrual blood, sacred mountain dirt) were being (mis)used to show that women had never and will never belong at all.

Male Mongolian parliament members crouch in satisfaction in the yurt inside the Grand Khural chamber hall.

This event illustrated Mongolian patriarchy well in that it took a symbolically and traditionally feminine act, the lighting of the hearth, and a female-only ritual, masculinized them and thus whole-heartedly negated and rejected the female element within them. AND made it look ‘traditional.’

The Mongolian male parliament members sent an important message on that day: the complete symbolic barring of women or Mongolian femininity from governmental participation.

Side note: The upside of this event is that Mongolian women now have a very clear and well-defined example of the discrimination against them in government.  Accordingly, several women’s right’s NGOs, including Monfemnet and Young Women for Change, are now in deliberation or in the process of enacting discrimination suits against the Mongolian government.  You go girls!

******

Before I forget, I had the crazy experience this weekend of getting my first real exposure to the Mongolian Nazi skinhead community while at a metal concert.  If such things interest you, the photos from the concert can be found here.

The opinions in this blog reflect solely the personal opinions of the blogger and in no way represent the Fulbright Association, the Mongolian National University, the Free University Berlin, nor the Mongolian United States Embassy.

Westernization of the Mongolian Media

Шинэ жилийн мэнд хүргье (happy new year) to all!

I am back from Korea, re-energized and ready to make the descent into my last two months here in Mongolia (at least for this stint). I told myself I wasn’t going to do any research while on ‘vacation,’ but (I guess you can’t take the research out of the researcher) the lightness with which many Korean women evinced their plastic surgery stories baffled me.  Western, free-market ideals seem to drastically affect the role of women and the perception of female beauty in every culture they impact, yet unique to the cultural and historical context. In the case of South Korea, it has lead to the highest rates of plastic surgery per capita in the world (esp. for eyelid surgery).

For a great article on the portrayal of gender role stereotypes with Western and Korean models in Korean media, click here.

Is this where Mongolia is heading? I recently collected about 500 surveys from Mongolian students in the countryside (so mostly herder kids) and in the city, which depicted a set of five different ethnic eyes (Latin, Scandinavian, African, Asian with eyelid, Asian without eyelid).  When prompted to answer which eye was the most beautiful, a whopping 80 percent of both the city and countryside students chose either the Latin or Scandinavian eye (with the results seemingly split between them). Only 5 percent chose the most classic of Asian eyes (without the double eyelid) and that in combination with the statement one of my interviewees gave recently – namely that “Asian eyes are ugly” – has led me to ask what skewed women’s perceptions so severely against themselves? You tend to psychologically favor what you see the most, so why the overwhelming preference for what is ethnically unobtainable?

A "Goodali" (fashion magazine) cover of a model choking herself - not innocuous in a country with high rates of domestic abuse.

As the above article on Korean media mentions, Caucasian women represent around .01 percent of the Korean population, yet are depicted in around 40 percent of Korean advertisements. I would hazard to guess that the numbers are about the same here. And the power of the global advertising market to not only push specific (Caucasian) beauty ideals, but furthermore to almost exactly imitate the same gendered norms in advertising across the globe astounds me.

This is what I mean: These are Mongolian T.V. advertisements we (YWC – Young Women for Change and I) recently used in our beauty image workshop; just in case you thought that the battle regarding the hyper-sexualized and violent depictions of women in advertising was solely a Western phenomenon…

Here is a very gender norm stereotypical French “1 Million” perfume ad:

and its Mongolian ‘Bolor Vodka’ counterpart:

Just replace Western actors with Mongolian ones: A global advertising agency’s dream.

The Gender Politics of Alcohol

In my previous post, I talked about how drinking and smoking in Mongolian society traditionally have very strong masculine connotations. Well, to support that notion, it seems that the industry in Mongolia that has the most sexualized, gender stereotypical advertisements is the alcohol industry.  Anyone who has ever watched superbowl commercials can not help but notice the similarity these ads have to Western beer commercials…

Woman = beer bottle in this advertisement with four top Mongolian models (including Odgerel):

This advertisement for a dutch beer, “Bavaria,” is super new (just a few months old) and super infuriating *cough*:

Mongolian standard (for women)?  w/ Urantsetseg

Seriously, West, what are you exporting?

Young Women for Change!

HELLO LOVELIES!!

And a lovely, snowy spring to you too! The snow on the yurts outside my window...

The weather forecast for today, this lovely fifth of May, is a balmy -1 degrees Celsius and the skies are opening up to deliver some springtime snow showers!  Tomorrow, it will be cold again, but next week the temperature will steadily rise up to 18 degrees (whhhat?).  One couldn’t tell from the snow-peaked mountains behind my house.  The weather here is incredibly temperamental and makes at least a 4 degree jump each day, so forget going outside without checking the weather forecast.  Makes you really appreciate a good day…

Anyway, I have been sick from the exhaustion (but fun exhaustion!) that seized me last week and unable to leave the house, so the snow hasn’t affected me terribly.  Not leaving the house really bites when you have lots of cool stuff to do, but I guess staying in and watching multiple 3-hour long movies about American suffragists (now I am an expert on Ida B. Wells, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, wow are those some inspiring women) isn’t the worst thing ever.

I promised a few weeks ago to write about one of the women’s groups I have been working with here and I finally have the time to do such (although I am writing this by candlelight due to lack of electricity, thank god for computers with 8 hours of battery life).  Last week, I had the good fortune to be the official photographer at a showing of the Vagina Monologues (a theater piece by Eve Ensler on female sexuality), put on by a group of women that call themselves “Young Women for Change” or directly translated from Mongolian, ”Young Women’s Club.” 

Since arriving, I have been talking to all manners of women, and have time and again asked about the concept of feminism.  I am routinely shocked, yet my curiosity is piqued, by the fact that the majority of women have no clue what feminism is.  Even women who participate in NGOs or have had Western exposure have only first heard this term recently, and I have only encountered a few women who would openly call themselves ‘feminist.’ 

Although, as an Anthropologist and a gender one at that, I am immensely aware of the ethnocentric potentials of feminism.  Feminism IS a Western concept, with both its second and third wave being started in the same country, the United States.  However, third wave feminism is by definition a globalization-centered concept that admits that women are not the same everywhere –there is no ‘THE woman”- and that different women experience different levels of discrimination, aka a white middle class American woman does not face the same trails a woman in Sudan does.

Thus, the unfamiliarity with the term ‘feminism’ amongst Mongolian women is not something that should really surprise me.  Yet, for a country where the majority of women are better educated than men AND are partially discriminated against due to this rise in education, I feel women hunger for a term that gives credence to their experiences.

Thus, it pleasantly surprised, but did not shock me, when I heard the story behind “Young Women for Change.”  In this dearth of a female Mongolian solidarity movement, a few women decided that they needed to start a club to empower young Mongolian women. 

So, a few months ago, my friend Zola and others decided to post a Facebook web page with a call for young women who wanted to get together, discuss women’s issues, read, and generally empower each other.  As the news spread around, young women found their way to this Facebook page, and the online club membership boomed.  Now within 6 months of idea-conception, over 150 young Mongolian women from all sorts of professional backgrounds are members of Young Women for Change. 

Since the formation of this web page a few months ago, about 30 to 40 women have regularly been meeting in one of the local NGOs each week, forming discussion nights, organizing protests, and planning projects.  And recently they decided, in line with the international V-day movement -a movement to earn money for NGOs working with female victims of domestic abuse and violence- to translate, become actors, and produce the Vagina Monologues in two languages.  So, these girls with a variety of professional backgrounds, from NGO work to law students to dentists, sat down with next to no theater experience, and started translating, organizing, and planning the first showing in Mongolia. 

Talk about DIY (do.it.yourself.) for you, and for those who don’t know what diy is, it is the ability to enact plans, projects, and movements in a self-relient, non-commercial way solely through personal drive and engagement (phew!)!  In other words, the girls had an idea, and without doubting their ability, they did it themselves!

They not only put together an amazing show in two languages, it was a hit in the Mongolian press and they amassed a lot of money for the local Center Against Domestic Violence. It was a smashing success.

So, a few weeks ago, the LGBT Centre (a Mongolian NGO) asked the girls if they could put on the show again, this time including the optional transgender monologue in the original Vagina Monologues script.  And the girls agreed, but the theater they had originally performed in, rejected the idea out of fear of becoming ‘the gay theater’ in Mongolia.  So, the girls scrambled for another venue, and within two weeks they organized, planned, and practiced an additionally showing of the Vagina Monologues; this time with the transgender scene.  It was the first showing of any transgender play or scene in Mongolia… ever.  

So, what is my role in all this?  Nothing really, except that I got to document all of it!!!  So, for a few days I got to let my inner photography goddess run wild and ran back and forth for hours taking pictures of the women (and men!).  And it was SO MUCH FUN!

So, posted are some pictures of the event.  And next week, I get to hold a presentation for the women on the Western feminist movement, since many women in the club would call themselves feminist, yet have not really been exposed to the history of feminism.  I am so glad I get to spread this information!!!

And next on the agenda for the girls: reading and translating introductory feminist texts into Mongolian.  The only feminist text available in Mongolian at the moment is Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex.”  It is dense and anyone who has read parts of it can attest to its difficulty; not the easiest “Introduction to the Women’s Movement” text.  Plus, it was probably translated from the first English translation, which was done by a Zoologist (really???).  Maybe that’s why no one has heard of feminism in Mongolia… 

Until next time! <3

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cosmopolitan mongolia.

so the dilemma i have found myself in all started when i went to the showing of the vagina monologues my first weekend here.  the show i saw had been the last in their series of three showings, so the organizers took the time for pictures and to thank all their sponsers after the show.  along numerous innoculous sponsers and calls to support the local center on violence against women, the girls mentioned cosmopolitan mongolia… 

cosmopolitan mongolia??? so the multi-million dollar women’s magazine teaching women 25 ‘miracle’ ways to loose their nonexistant bodyfat, to focus on pleasing men’s sexual desires (instead of their own), and to stare at over-sexualized female body images that are 23 percent thinner than the (american national) average has decided to help fund the vagina monologues in mongolia. uh huh.

furthermore, the vagina monologues were collecting money for the v-day effort, a global campaign trying to fund centers for violence against women in a move to eradicate violence… you know because oversexualized female bodies and violent sexualized advertising in media do not play a role at all in the culturally acceptance of violence towards women (note: this is largely pertinent to the west, but is spreading worldwide with globalization).

anyway, this reminded me of a facebook post from my friend jessica a few months back, where she posted stephen colbert’s hilarious rant on cosmopolitan mongolia:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:cms:video:colbertnation.com:367376

 

so, initially I was shocked to hear that cosmopolitan helped finance the vagina monologues, and was curious to know if the mongolian version of the magazine fits my perceptions shaped by its european and american sister publications.  and after meeting and talking to some of the members of the women’s club who had put on the vagina monologues (who are, simply stated, kick-ass women), as well as club members who work for cosmopolitan mongolia, i wondered if this magazine’s role here was different than in the west. 

and then ‘fate’ came knocking.

the head of irmuun multimedia, the largest publishing and multimedia company in mongolia, called the national university foreigner’s office to say that they needed an english speaking production assistant to help with, amongst other things, cosmopolitan mongolia.  and yjin thought of me… so the next time i went in, she asked me if i would be interested in working for cosmopolitan mongolia………

well, my first instinct was of course no, but my curious half got the better of me, and i decided i wanted to do some ‘investigative journalism.’  so yesterday i went with yjin to irmuun’s office to figure out what cosmopolitan ment to mongolia.  and i left with a stack of magazines and a job offer.

they want me to be an english production assistant, working together with the heads of all their magazines and photo and movie production industries (yes, that is right, movies.) as well as do research and possibly write articles for their english political magazine.

although, i was ecstatic at first, and thought I would be able to handle everything (job and research and women’s magazine and article writing), the side of me that says I am going to turn down this offer is starting to win out.  after returning from my research in the gobi this summer, i am supposed to help the Equal Step center create a magazine for young women in support of positive body ideals.  i thought i could possibly get some expertise while working at irmuun, but after looking indepthly through mongolica (their english language political magazine) and cosmo mongolia, i am no longer so enthusiastic.

‘mongolica’ is full of international relations development advice, as well as reports on mining, which of course, i do not support.  and cosmopolitan is, as we all probably expected, a clone of the european and american publications, except in mongolian, with a few (like 2) pictures of mongolian women.  i wonder how that makes mongolian women feel, when they open a women’s magazine full of thin white women… but (luckily or unluckily, depending on who’s looking) at the steep price of 7,000 tugriks ($5 or €4 in a country where the average salary is $250 or €200 a month), most mongolian women haven’t had this pleasure yet.

so, thanks for the magazines, now i know how to get a flatter stomach, if i so choose (and in case that sentence doesn’t sound sarcastic enough: i won’t).

the state of gender (in)equality in Mongolia.

I have up to now been unfortunately neglecting the main topic of this blog; chronicling the women’s struggle, beauty ideals, and experience of being a female in Mongolia.  I think that has to do with me being overwhelmed by stimuli and impressions after arriving, and me needing to absorb and sort out these thoughts in my head.  But I have oh SOOOO many thoughts and will try to give some initial impressions on the status of women in Mongolia:

A quick combing through the forums and travel websites of the internet will reveal a plethora of websites that make claim to the respect afforded women and the general equality between men and women in Mongolia.  Travel websites and forums claim that Mongolian men have a lot of respect for women, which comes from the socialist past and the herder upbringing (appealing to the supposed power of women during the times of Genghis Khan), since a woman was an integral, celebrated part of the family. Others claim that women are very strong here, because they are on-average more highly educated than men. 

And a cursory exposure to this country (trans-sib tourists, maybs) could seem to validate this.  In the vein of quick judgements, women are not ‘covered’ here, they have legal equality in all aspects, have little polygamy, nor is there genital mutiliation.  And EVERYWHERE EVERYWHERE EVERYWHERE in government, offices, stores, banks, science, universities… are women. 

This country is basically run by women.  In the university affair’s office, there are only women, in the state foreigner’s office, there are 20 women and 3 men (according to my own personal calculation ), in all the NGO’s I have been to, there have been maybe one out of 10 workers that are men.  WHERE are all the men?  Does that mean that women are in control of this country?

S.Oyun, member of Parliament since 1998 and 2012 Presidential Candidate, went with SIT to meet here last time I was here.

Unfortunately, no.  Out of 76 members of the State Great Khural (the Mongolian parliament) only four members are women.  This ratio stands greatly at odds with the day to day governance of this country.  And this fact reflects a pervasive idea that is still deeply ingrained in Mongolian culture: that is, that men ultimately make the decisions.

The fact that women are everywhere in the bureaucratic and civil runnings of this country is less a result of gender egalitarian thinking, and more a result of historical circumstance.  For those who don’t know, Mongolia was a soviet satellite that was greatly, greatly funded by the Soviet Union.  The Soviet Union wanted to make an example of Mongolia, and flooded it with money.  But when the Soviet Union collapsed, these money sources disappeared virtually overnight and the infrastructure of the country collapsed.  Life got REALLY hard and changed very rapidly.  And pastoralist, nomadic families started sending their daughters into town to go to school and get educated, giving them a possiblity for another life.  But the sons had to stay home, in order to help with the labor.  So, essentially, it was the preference for a son to remain at home for work, which led to the rise of a class of educated Mongolian women.

However, despite the ranks of amazing, highly-educated Mongolian women… patriarchy remains.  Yes, women are not veiled, nor forced into marriage, nor denied basic rights, but violence towards women is rising.  With the rapid economic changes in Mongolia, pastorialism is no longer as sustainable as it once was.  People are now dependent on market forces and global changing weather patterns, which has caused many nomads to give up their lifestyles and move into the cities.  However, not being educated, these nomads have few job opportunities, and turn to the bottle (aka vodka). 

The result is what I have called a patriarchal “sandwich effect.”  At the top of Mongolian society, are the well-educated men, who rise to prominance more easily than women, because of the deeply ingrained belief that men have the decision-making capacity.  Underneath is a class of highly-educated women running all aspects of the country.  And under them are a lot of very poor -and often drunk- men.  And due to the cultural ideals of what it means to be a man  -aka, the bread-winner, providing for the family, and being a strong, nomadic man- these men feel very threatened in their masculinity.  So, they lash out.  They beat women.  They attack them on the streets and after dark.  Rape is a growing and big problem.  And these are all ways for these men, who feel threatened through their failing of reaching the cultural ideal of masculinity, to utilize violence in order to show women their place.  And many Mongolian women live with fear.

So, Mongolian women are not equal, despite what the travel broschures are trying to sell you.  Both above and below women are marks of patriarchial cultural hierarchy; at the top are men who have been propelled by their gender and below is an angry backlash against female personal power.  To be a woman in Mongolia means to live in a country where traditional gender divides are failing, men are reacting to their loss of power, but also to be at the cusp of change. 

Although there is a backlash, the fact remains that women run this country.  They are starting to get together, and are starting to discuss words like “feminism,” and starting to write and talk about their experiences.  And as a feminist, it is inspiring to be here at this time where women are starting to realize the power they have.   

More on one women’s organization that is doing exactly that next time I get a breather . <3 

(Anthropological sidenote: One of the best ethnographies on Mongolia covers the rise in maternal mortality and stresses on women after the fall of the Soviet era: “Free Markets and Dead Mothers” by Craig Janes 2004)

The opinions in this blog reflect solely the personal opinions of the blogger and in no way represent the Fulbright Association, the Mongolian National University, the Free University Berlin, nor the Mongolian United States Embassy.