International Human Rights - A Comparison of National Progress

Many Western Feminists choose to do international work for women's equality globally.  They call it International Feminism or Global Feminism.  Great!  This is amazing work that needs to be done! 

Umm...but what about the work here in the U.S.?  Yes, this work needs to be done, but we can't forget that work needs to be done EVERYWHERE, including the U.S.  Though it should help nations recovering from trauma such such as Haiti and the Congo and Darfur, the U.S. cannot and should not be the UN standard for Human Rights (especially when we acknowledge that often times, these situations of trauma present opportunities for the U.S. to colonize, to capitalize on resources, and perhaps even start a war). 

So we hear stories about human trafficking in Thailand and Turkey and female circumcision in Sudan.  Heartbreaking, to say the least!  I think there is something about our country that thrives on traumatic and cannibalist tales; we always want the extreme.  It's not enough to have someone killed in the movie - it has to be a slasher movie.  It's not enough that a woman was raped - she has to be raped with the end of a rifle to the point where her genitalia has to be surgically reconstructed.  We need these stories of rape in the Congo and trafficking in Turkey and female circumcision in Sudan and wearing the veil in the Middle East in order to distract from the inequalities and violence in our nation.  It's certainly a matter of severity - how can we compare molestation to rape as a weapon of war in the Congo - but further, why would we compare them?  sexual violence is sexual violence - and it is obvious that the problems of some countries are greater and more dramatic than they are in our own. 

But perhaps we compare these stories to our own stories because the comparison makes it easier to deal with our own baggage.  It makes our problems as a nation and as smaller communities and our own individual experiences seem petty.  Tom Petty, to be exact.  It makes them seem like they are nothing we can't overcome when compared to the devestations faced elsewhere and to other people.  It makes them seem like they can go away on their own...or that they are already gone altogether.

But this is problematic for us and our nation and our nation's People.  Because it means that we are easy to overlook what is going on in our own backyard.  It means that we are easy to dismiss the severity of our own situations.  It means that we are easy to focus all of our energies and attentions to the intense situations elsewhere, leaving little effort on the ones that need us here. 

Naturally, it is easy for people in the U.S. to think that our own discriminations and violence are nothing in comparison to those faced in other nations.  It is also easy for people in the U.S. to feel guilty for feeling that we shouldn't lose sight of the issues we ourselves face in our own nation; we feel guilty because our issues seem Tom Petty when we compare them in severity to the plights of other nations. 

So stop comparing!  Violence is violence.  Discrimination is discrimination.  A basic human rights violation is a basic human rights violation. 

When we compare our issues as a nation to the issues of other nations, all we do is continue to privilege amerikkka and savage other nations.  All we do is perpetuate the belief that a "simple act of rape" is not discrimination, or violence, or a basic human rights violation.  All we do is help other nations grow and thrive and change in our image while simultaneously forgetting that what we have constructed as our image is just that, a construction, because we haven't done more than paint it for ourselves. 

Change can never happen when we compare.  Change can never happen when we divert all attentions to one problem without balancing them with others.  Change can never happen when we privilege our own nation's ideologies of others.  Change can never happen when we use the traumas of other nations as a benchmark for our own success and progression.  Change can never happen when we feel guilty for feeling that we still have work to do in our own backyard.  Change can never happen when we fail to recognize that the shit that goes down in our own backyard is, in fact, shit - discrimination, violence, basic human rights violations - and that it needs to be bettered too.