“ ‘the West has tended to view Islam as a barbaric source of women's inequality’ (Hirschmann, 1998, 345) which not only picks out certain groups of women as more deprived of autonomy than other groups under patriarchy, but also neglects the complexity and possibility of agency within various structures of constraint.”
This resonated with me because I’ve experienced a similar version of this as an Orthodox christian. My faith requires frequent and extended periods of fasting and other commitments that may seem too much or even ridiculous to people who did not grow up with it. After coming to the U.S., I’ve noticed how people reacted to my dietary restrictions with some kind of sadness like I was describing some sort of oppression and I was once told “they didn’t blame me” for being a “victim” of my own religion. I believe this is what the passage is describing where an outsider assumes that a commitment rooted in religion or tradition must mean a lack of freedom rather than thinking the person holding that commitment might have examined reasons for choosing it. It reduced my choice to oppression as opposed to recognizing it as an agency that simply happened within a different space than the one they were used to.
“Gauguin's artistic journey depended on the support he received from his family, as tends to be the case for many career-oriented men who might depend on the domestic work of mostly women to be able to focus on their careers”
This part of the essay reminded me of the standard I’ve noticed in my community around migration. When a man leaves to work abroad to support his family, he is celebrated as a hero: someone who sacrificed himself for his family - and that respect is, of course, deserved. But when a single mother, often already abandoned by her partner, makes the same choice, she is judged as a mother who couldn’t take care of her own kids. No one pauses to ask why she was put in that position in the first place or what she gave up to make that decision. Both of them need someone else to step in and take care of the family they’re leaving behind. However, while that part is just assumed and accepted for the man, her need for help is regarded as “burdening her family” and “abandoning her children.” This is the same invisible support Gauguin relied on, but it’s judged differently depending on who needed that help.
"anti-oppressive measures opposing certain kinds of gendered preferences may in fact perpetuate oppression by implying that oppressed people are 'poor judges of their own interests.'" (Khader, 2020, p. 6)
This makes me refer back to my fasting example, but from a different angle. It’s not just that the person assumed my religious commitment meant I was oppressed. Their sympathy by itself was the problem. Saying “I don’t blame you for being a victim” assumes that I’m not capable of judging what’s actually good for me; that I need someone else to see the “truth” of my own situation. Khader’s point is that trying to “rescue” someone from a choice you’ve decided is oppressive can end up being its own form of disrespect since it treats the person as someone who can’t be trusted to know their own interests.
The common theme across all the three passages and my experiences is that someone else decided whether a choice counted as "free." There was no asking for the reasoning behind it and the verdict was dependent on who was making that decision instead of what the actual process of arriving at that decision looked like.