How odd to see women in the role of the brutalizers - Susan Jacoby

[question everything]

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4775415.html


"Men who rape in war are ordinary Joes, made unordinary by entry into the most exclusive male-only club in the world," wrote Susan Brownmiller in "Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape," her pioneering 1974 book. "Victory in arms brings group power undreamed-of in civilian life. Power for men and men alone." That was then. But as the world has now learned from photographs of leering American female soldiers participating in the sexual humiliation of nude Iraqi prisoners, women are not exempt from the sadistic and corrupting lure of power enjoyed by military conquerors.

(snip)

As a feminist who has always supported equality for women in the military, I am so disturbed by the role of women in these atrocities that I have difficulty explaining the intensity of my reaction. It seems undeniable that a photograph of a woman pulling a prisoner by a leash, or grinning atop a pyramid of men being forced to simulate sex acts, arouses even greater repulsion than similar images of male soldiers. The question is why.

(snip)

Throughout recorded history -- from the Trojan War to the rapes and murders of tens or hundreds of thousands in Bosnia and Rwanda -- the bodies of women have been counted among the spoils of victory. Women have usually been victims rather than perpetrators in part because most women in combat zones have generally, until recently, been civilians.

(snip)

I have never believed the pseudo-scientific research suggesting that women are somehow more empathic and more compassionate than men. But I used to think that women -- because on some level, every woman knows that she can become a rape victim if she finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person -- would be more likely to protest the sexual objectification and humiliation of anyone, male or female.

(snip)


The truth is that some women, placed in circumstances that can bring out the worst in human nature, are every bit as evil as some men. Cultural conservatives, who have long opposed women in combat on grounds that they are too delicate to be subjected to the sight of war -- and might be raped if taken prisoner -- are likely to use the behavior of such women as a further argument against equality for all military women.

But if it is wrong to expose women to the brutalization of war -- and to the corruption that can ensue when victors are allowed to exercise unchecked power over the vanquished -- it is wrong to subject men to the same influences. That is arguably the only worthwhile lesson to be derived from the shock of seeing all-American girls do to men what men have always done to women.

Susan Jacoby, the author of "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism" and director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York, wrote this article for the Los Angeles Times.

[chookie]

1. Sorry, I don't buy it

Cruelty and barbarism committed by females did not begin with Lynndie England, or George Ws war. Ms Jacoby might do well to read outside of Feminist Studies, and have a peek at history. She wouldn't have to go very far to find incidents of widespread atrocities by women -- in the Nazi death camps, for instance. She could even start out by try to Google "Elsa Koch."

To say that females are inherently incapable of barbarity and cruelty, and that they could teach naughty nasty men to be better beings, is laughably in historic error.

So much bullshit has been penned in recent months on the matter of gender in this war -- time a lot of people take a good brain colonic.

[question everything]

2. She did mention them

but to comply with the rules of posting copyrighted material I had to cut that paragraph. Here it is:

Of course there have always been exceptions. Female SS guards such as Hermine Braunsteiner (of Majdanek and Ravensbruck) and Ilse Koch, known as the "bitch of Buchenwald," were even more sadistic than their male counterparts, according to the accounts of many concentration camp survivors. That may or may not have been true, but what does seem clear is that every generation is more shocked by sadistic women than by sadistic men in authority.

[Skittles]

3. look at the percentages of men committing violence versus women

there is a big giant difference, in wartime or not in wartime.