Conditional Citizens: On Belonging in America

Continuing to question citizenship and equality, Lalami focuses this essay on the ways in which women are discounted or rejected as valid and equal citizens. Blasey Ford’s testimony serves as a foundation for this discussion, including the rape she experienced and the way her testimony was rejected. Blasey Ford’s story, as well as Anita Hill’s before her, falls into a pattern of oppression and suppression in which men historically dominated and demeaned women, often calling into question their honesty and competence. Blasey Ford’s testimony was rejected because many believed she was lying to harm Kavanaugh’s chances at making it to the Supreme Court, while others simply thought she was mistaken in identifying him as the man who raped her. Each view calls either her honesty or her competence into question. Lalami acknowledges these doubts as universal, applying to most men and women. Lalami’s own father says that a female pilot who insists that she would prefer a career as a pilot to marriage is “wrong about that” (147), implying that a woman does not know her own desires. The issue becomes one of respect: Lalami’s father did not respect the pilot enough to acknowledge her own feelings, and Kavanaugh, Thomas, and the committees that approved them for the Supreme Court did not respect Blasey Ford’s or Hill’s ability to deliver reliable testimony.

The repeated question of why women do not report these incidents arises frequently in this essay, which serves as a response. Lalami recounts incidents in which she was harassed or assaulted, but she also notes that confronting one of her assaulters led to losing her job. Both Blasey Ford and Hill are rejected on assumptions of dishonesty and incompetence, so most women assume that they, too, will be ignored on these grounds. Classical and sacred texts including the Qur’an and The Odyssey show that narratives—which mirror reality—also include a longstanding trend of dismissing women on even minor issues, which raises doubt that women will be taken seriously in matters of greater importance. The burden of proof and reliability is always placed on women; thus, Lalami notes that women must be more aware of their bodies than men. In questioning an outfit for the day or the phrasing of a response to a man in a coffee shop, Lalami points out the necessity of thinking like the men around her. This burden is one that requires women to try to predict how they will be perceived by the men around them to avoid harassment or assault. Men, on the other hand, do not have to live with that anxiety; like white people in public spaces, when compared to people of color, they do not need to feel conspicuous and targeted.

In comparing the US to Morocco, Lalami draws on the differences between monarchy and democracy, noting that the expectations of each form of government differ, although their reality is largely the same. In Morocco, women are “not even subjects; they were second-class subjects” (151), and Lalami remembers daily encounters with harassment and sexism. In Morocco, women were not equal to men under the law until 2004. The US amended the Constitution, the guiding document of American democracy, to include that all men and women of all races are equal under the law, but reality does not reflect this legal distinction. Lalami’s experiences in America are not significantly different from those in Morocco because women are still treated as less than men in both countries. Lalami even notes that Americans, with the privilege of ignorance, believe that the “real war on women” (158) is in the Middle East, Africa, or Asia, the same region that Lalami left to come to America. She notes that the expectation seems to be that she should be “grateful” to live in America, where she is considered equal. These assumptions, though, are founded only in the documentation of the government, not in the actual experiences and lives of women in the US.