Why the War is Sexist

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/chew01042006.html


(And Why We Can't Ignore Gender Any More)



"Our sons made the ultimate sacrifice, and we want answers."

-- Cindy Sheehan, Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas

"If you want to see the true face of war, go to the amateur porn Web site NowThatsFuckedUp.com. For almost a year, American soldiers stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan have been taking photographs of dead bodies, many of them horribly mutilated or blown to pieces, and sending them to Web site administrator Chris Wilson. In return for permission to post these images, Wilson gives the soldiers free access to his site. American soldiers have been using the pictures of disfigured Iraqi corpses as currency to buy pornography. . . . One of the pictures on Wilson's site depicts a woman whose right leg has been torn off by a land mine, and a medical worker is holding the mangled stump up to the camera. The woman's vagina is visible under the hem of her skirt. The caption for this picture reads: 'Nice puss -- bad foot.'"

-- Chris Thompson, "War Pornography" (East Bay Express, 21 September 2005)

"'There are plenty of women in Fallujah who have testified they were raped by American soldiers,' said Abdulla . 'They are nearby the secondary school for girls inside Fallujah. When people came back to Fallujah the first time they found so many girls who were totally naked and they had been killed.'" -- Dahr Jamail, "The Failed Siege of Fallujah" (Asia Times, 3 June 2005)
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-snip-

To galvanize organizing against militarism and imperialism to its full potential, we must question its gender-blind approach. What would it mean to put not just Cindy's son at the center of outrage, but women like Sheehan herself, as military mothers, wives, and partners? How have these women themselves, not just the troops, been militarized, manipulated, and exploited? What would it mean for the anti-war movement to interpret women like Sheehan as activists and agents fighting against exploitation which directly affects them in their own right -- not just as stand-ins for others' struggles, defined by a male-dominated left?

Below is a numbered list of suggestions for how to apply a gender analysis to the war, by no means meant to be exhaustive. Like lists enumerating "Why the War Is Racist" which have circulated in the U.S., the reasons below get at why the war must be understood as sexist.

(I'm listing just the titles of the numbered 'reasons' and 'sections')

1. Soldiers are not the only -- or main -- casualties of war.
2. The economic harms of war for women are exacerbated by patriarchy -- both within the U.S. and in Iraq.
3. Militarization intensifies the sexual commodification of women.

Militarization helps perpetuate sexual violence, domestic violence, and violence against women -- both in the U.S. and Iraq.

Militarization and war decrease women's control over their reproduction.

Militarization and conflict situations result in a restriction of public space for women -- impacting their political expression.

Occupation will not bring women's liberation.

(the article ends with the following: We must recognize the connections between the war in Iraq and patriarchy at home -- and resist. and there are details for a gathering of women to fight against the military)

in a nutshell war is a horror for women and children

[TahitiNut]

1. There's very little question that war is the most INSANE activity ...

... that humans engage in or experience. "War is Hell" doesn't even begin to describe it. (Been there; done that.) It is absolutely no surprise that the absolute WORST of our traits come out in a war. When the war zone itself is culturally sexist, it's also no surprise that the context itself stimulates the worst of sexism and other perversions.

The real surprise is that there are so many that are able to preserve some semblance of sanity or are able to recover it ... or even heal themselves emotionally and mentally enough to nurture their own humanitarian values ... after such an experience.

The total and complete bankruptcy of values that even propelled us into this war can only amplify and exacerbate the problems. From that perspective, it's far worse than Viet Nam, where we were at least partially allied politically with the people with whom we lived. I cannot begin to conceive of the utter insanity of trying to bridge one's own personal moral and ethical values with the overall mission of continuing an oppressive occupation of a nation, the invasion of which was based on a complete fraud. The suspension of credulity and denial of reality will be, for many of these troops, far more of a stretch than they can sustain in months and years to come. Many more will 'snap' than was the after-VietNam experience, I'm afraid.

[dusmcj]

2. be aware that the culture you're fighting

takes as its enemy anyone who does not subscribe to its core principle of fear of weakness. If you do not show that you are concerned about whether you are strong, whether you are able to fend off attack, if you do not "act right" and project the appropriate image of being turgid with life's juices and ready to take on any attacker, then you are suspect, subversive, and fair game. As they put it, we all need to play by the same rules, and since the defectives know that their mode, of everyone agreeing not to notice that we're all scared to death, and putting on a brave front instead, is deficient compared to being honest and relating to reality (with a small 'r'), they need to eliminate the challenge to their culture, since, being defective, they prioritize having the world agree to their model of it higher than actually functioning in the world. (We note that we disclose an underlying principle, the desire for a "level playing field" in the face of the unfortunate absolute that we are never equal in terms of resources and capabilities, and that the less advantaged among us (in terms of core resources, not opportunity) sometimes respond to that truth in pathological ways, but we'll leave that thread for another time.)

This phenomenon is gender-neutral. As a comfortably heterosexual male who thinks people should worry about what quality of human being they are before worrying about whether they're filling their gender roles, I can assure you that I, even given my genetics, thoroughly offend and provoke the stupid animals who would reduce us to tribal subsistence survival. The same behavior that earns women beatings or murder by their "brothers" among Turks in Germany, or gang rape by their "society" in Pakistan - asserting their free will and right to do as they please, without concern for manifesting the trappings of material power and thus demonstrating that they care about group opinion - is deeply offensive when exhibited by males, and earns epithets of homosexuality from conservative men, suspicion of homosexuality from unenlightened women, to the point of farce, along with general suspicion of subversive tendencies. Believe me when I say I can make the monkeys (actually I doubt they're that high on the evolutionary scale, culturally speaking) dance, and it gives me GREAT joy (since, believing in a civil society as the antithesis to their kind, I hold with the notion that murder and assault are inappropriate). I find sadness however in the awareness that the gender power status quo stunts and wastes the potential not only of the half of the population which is biologically female, but of the male half as well.

Your observations about warmaking being a core manifestation of the culture under discussion are correct. Maintain awareness however that that culture is about power and advantage, particularly within social groupings, not biology, and that physical differences are just a convenience for the inadequate among us to deny their deficits. (You may comment that society should be more humane and provide a more healthy environment for those who have further to go; I agree, the two results go hand in hand.)

[donsu]

3. believe me, we women know who the enemy is

and what their power can do to us