metron worries gt3
- From: cafe_nate <texxy_h@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2011 01:22:33 -0700 (PDT)
Earlier this month, Ms. Magazine ran an article that looked at breast
cancer stigma in Saudi Arabia. The article provides breast cancer
statistics in Saudi Arabia (without citation or link), breast cancer
statistics in the United States, and American expat Carol Fleming’s
experience with breast cancer in Saudi Arabia. Fleming suggests that
promoting pink products for breast cancer awareness might help to curb
the stigma associated with the illness in Saudi Arabia. An nameless
image of a pink burqa-clad woman without context greets readers at the
site, despite the fact that the burqa is worn in Afghanistan.
A pink burqa, Ms. Magazine? Really?
Over at Gender Across Borders, Ashley Lauren responds to the Ms.
Magazine article with the following:
The fact is that, in a country where women wear burqas in public,
there is a lot of shame that surrounds the female body. This can
become problematic when it comes to breast cancer screening, as many
medical technicians and doctors in the country are men. For a woman
to bare her breasts in front of a man in Saudi Arabia is something
that is still seen as taboo.
Deciding who to “bare one’s breasts” to or whether your OB-GYN is a
man or woman is a highly personal decision that should be made based
on one’s individual comfort level—making assumptions about a woman’s
comfort level based on whether or not they wear a burqa is
ridiculously reductive. The way the last sentence of Lauren’s
paragraph is written is overly sensational: isn’t it taboo to bare
your breasts in front of just any man anywhere? Obviously, she means
in instances for one’s health and well-being, but why didn’t she
include that in her sentence?
Lauren promotes the idea that hijab/niqab/burqa-wearing woman—related
distinctly to a Muslim woman’s identity—is associated with shame, and
thus attributes lack of breast cancer screening and awareness as the
norm among these women, without considering larger contextual and
cultural factors that affect a woman’s understanding of preventative
health measures.
Not one but two feminist websites failed at this story. I was
disappointed to see that neither article included interviews with
Muslim or Saudi Arabian women and their personal experiences with
breast cancer. Lots of Muslim women and non-Muslim women, not only in
Saudi Arabia but around the world, would be hesitant to have male
practitioners examine them, for a variety of reasons—just like plenty
of Muslim and non-Muslim women are okay with male providers. Pointing
to shame surrounding the female body as a reason why Muslim women
wouldn’t want to be examined by a doctor ignores that this isn’t
something that’s unique to Muslim women.
We often forget that breast cancer is not the leading cause of death
for women in the United States—heart disease is. And that African-
American women in the United States have lower incidences of breast
cancer than white women, yet are more likely than white women to die
from the illness. Or that when considering the leading causes of
disease in women around the world, breast cancer is not even among the
top 10 causes of death, and only becomes so in middle and high-income
countries:
.
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