ActivismTools

Cultural disobedience

Civil disobedience is the deliberate violation of unjust laws. In a similar spirit, cultural disobedience bravely subverts dominant cultural norms. We may think of culture as softer and more malleable than institutions and laws, but in many places cultural taboos are so strong that they become entrenched as law, while in other places, cultural taboos function as de facto law

Saudi woman in burka sitting in her car, about to drive it

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In the land of Ankole, like other parts of western Uganda, women are prohibited from a number of activities that most of the world considers normal to the human experience, including whistling, tree climbing, and riding bicycles. On International Women’s Day 2018, a group of young ladies organized taboo-breaking competitions, including a bicycle race. The events were considered so rebellious against the patriarchal norms of the region that the women received widespread media attention. Encouraged, a number of the lady cyclists went on to form the Rukararwe Women Riders’ Club, which used the taboo-breaking empowerment of women’s cycling caravans and other activities to curb domestic violence, elect local female leaders, and convince many male neighbors that rather than being a threat to the community, women’s empowerment made it better.

Why might you use cultural disobedience?

  1. To make an invisible oppression visible.
  2. To publicly shatter a taboo, or to inspire its total elimination.
  3. To normalize something that should be normal in the first place.
  4. To prefigure life without an oppressive cultural norm; and show that “another way of living/being is possible.”
  5. To be in solidarity with those who cannot safely disobey culture.
  6. To draw attention to a larger social injustice in spectacular fashion.

But acts of cultural disobedience don’t have to be spectacular. In fact, many of us are engaged in small, everyday (and sometimes quite subtle) acts of cultural disobedience all the time, whenever we deviate from the expected norm. The frequent targets are dominant gender and sexuality paradigms, but cultural disobedience can take on stifling cultural taboos around almost anything: age, class, ability, race, religion, language, or the dominant ideology.

Source and more information:

https://www.beautifultrouble.org/toolbox/#/tool/cultural-disobedience