[Peace-discuss] What Abu Ghraib Taught Me, by Barbara Ehrenreich

[Al Kagan]

Lisa,

Thanks for this.  Surprisingly, I think Barbara 
Ehrenreich is/was naive and she also missed an 
important point. We have Condi Rice and Colin 
Powell as good examples of members of oppressed 
groups who have sold out. There will always be 
people who will sell out for money and power. The 
situation regarding women is obviously no 
different.

Rather than supported women going into the 
military, we must oppose the military. White men 
still run the military, the "Defense" Dept, 
Halliburton, etc.  The white men who really 
control power are just exploiting certain women 
for their own ends.  Another good question to ask 
is how many women would sell out if they had 
other good options.  Ehrenreich should not blame 
all women for the few who sell out.


At 8:10 AM -0500 5/22/04, Lisa Chason wrote:
>  >
>>
>>  What Abu Ghraib Taught Me
>>
>>  By Barbara Ehrenreich, AlterNet
>>  May 20, 2004
>>
>>  Even those people we might have thought were
>>  impervious to shame, like the secretary of Defense,
>>  admit that the photos of abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib
>>  prison turned their stomachs.
>>
>>  The photos did something else to me, as a feminist:
>>  They broke my heart. I had no illusions about the U.S.
>>  mission in Iraq - whatever exactly it is - but it
>>  turns out that I did have some illusions about women.
>>
>>  Of the seven U.S. soldiers now charged with sickening
>>  forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three are women: Spc.
>>  Megan Ambuhl, Pfc. Lynndie England and Spc. Sabrina
>>  Harman.
>>
>>  It was Harman we saw smiling an impish little smile
>>  and giving the thumbs-up sign from behind a pile of
>>  hooded, naked Iraqi men - as if to say, "Hi Mom, here
>>  I am in Abu Ghraib!" It was England we saw with a
>>  naked Iraqi man on a leash. If you were doing PR for
>>  Al Qaeda, you couldn't have staged a better picture to
>>  galvanize misogynist Islamic fundamentalists around
>>  the world.
>>
>>  Here, in these photos from Abu Ghraib, you have
>>  everything that the Islamic fundamentalists believe
>>  characterizes Western culture, all nicely arranged in
>>  one hideous image - imperial arrogance, sexual
>>  depravity ... and gender equality.
>>
>>  Maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked. We know that
>>  good people can do terrible things under the right
>>  circumstances. This is what psychologist Stanley
>>  Milgram found in his famous experiments in the 1960s.
>>  In all likelihood, Ambuhl, England and Harman are not
>>  congenitally evil people. They are working-class women
>>  who wanted an education and knew that the military
>>  could be a stepping-stone in that direction. Once they
>>  had joined, they wanted to fit in.
>>
>>  And I also shouldn't be surprised because I never
>>  believed that women were innately gentler and less
>>  aggressive than men. Like most feminists, I have
>>  supported full opportunity for women within the
>>  military - 1) because I knew women could fight, and 2)
>>  because the military is one of the few options around
>>  for low-income young people.
>>
>>  Although I opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf War, I was
>>  proud of our servicewomen and delighted that their
>>  presence irked their Saudi hosts. Secretly, I hoped
>>  that the presence of women would over time change the
>>  military, making it more respectful of other people
>>  and cultures, more capable of genuine peacekeeping.
>>  That's what I thought, but I don't think that anymore.
>>
>>
>>  A certain kind of feminism, or perhaps I should say a
>>  certain kind of feminist naiveté, died in Abu Ghraib.
>>  It was a feminism that saw men as the perpetual
>>  perpetrators, women as the perpetual victims and male
>>  sexual violence against women as the root of all
>>  injustice. Rape has repeatedly been an instrument of
>  > war and, to some feminists, it was beginning to look
>>  as if war was an extension of rape. There seemed to be
>>  at least some evidence that male sexual sadism was
>>  connected to our species' tragic propensity for
>  > violence. That was before we had seen female sexual
>>  sadism in action.
>>
>>  But it's not just the theory of this naive feminism
>>  that was wrong. So was its strategy and vision for
>>  change. That strategy and vision rested on the
>>  assumption, implicit or stated outright, that women
>>  were morally superior to men. We had a lot of debates
>>  over whether it was biology or conditioning that gave
>>  women the moral edge - or simply the experience of
>>  being a woman in a sexist culture. But the assumption
>>  of superiority, or at least a lesser inclination
>>  toward cruelty and violence, was more or less beyond
>>  debate. After all, women do most of the caring work in
>>  our culture, and in polls are consistently less
>>  inclined toward war than men.
>>
>>  I'm not the only one wrestling with that assumption
>>  today. Mary Jo Melone, a columnist for the St.
>>  Petersburg (Fla.) Times, wrote on May 7: "I can't get
>>  that picture of England [pointing at a hooded Iraqi
>>  man's genitals] out of my head because this is not how
>>  women are expected to behave. Feminism taught me 30
>>  years ago that not only had women gotten a raw deal
>>  from men, we were morally superior to them."
>>
>>  If that assumption had been accurate, then all we
>>  would have had to do to make the world a better place
>>  - kinder, less violent, more just - would have been to
>>  assimilate into what had been, for so many centuries,
>>  the world of men. We would fight so that women could
>>  become the generals, CEOs, senators, professors and
>>  opinion-makers - and that was really the only fight we
>>  had to undertake. Because once they gained power and
>>  authority, once they had achieved a critical mass
>>  within the institutions of society, women would
>>  naturally work for change. That's what we thought,
>>  even if we thought it unconsciously - and it's just
>>  not true. Women can do the unthinkable.
>>
>>  You can't even argue, in the case of Abu Ghraib, that
>>  the problem was that there just weren't enough women
>>  in the military hierarchy to stop the abuses. The
>>  prison was directed by a woman, Gen. Janis Karpinski.
>>  The top U.S. intelligence officer in Iraq, who also
>>  was responsible for reviewing the status of detainees
>>  before their release, was Major Gen. Barbara Fast. And
>>  the U.S. official ultimately responsible for managing
>>  the occupation of Iraq since October was Condoleezza
>>  Rice. Like Donald H. Rumsfeld, she ignored repeated
>>  reports of abuse and torture until the undeniable
>>  photographic evidence emerged.
>>
>>  What we have learned from Abu Ghraib, once and for
>>  all, is that a uterus is not a substitute for a
>>  conscience. This doesn't mean gender equality isn't
>>  worth fighting for for its own sake. It is. If we
>>  believe in democracy, then we believe in a woman's
>>  right to do and achieve whatever men can do and
>>  achieve, even the bad things. It's just that gender
>>  equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and
>>  peaceful world.
>>
>>  In fact, we have to realize, in all humility, that the
>>  kind of feminism based on an assumption of female
>>  moral superiority is not only naive; it also is a lazy
>>  and self-indulgent form of feminism. Self-indulgent
>>  because it assumes that a victory for a woman - a
>>  promotion, a college degree, the right to serve
>>  alongside men in the military - is by its very nature
>>  a victory for all of humanity. And lazy because it
>>  assumes that we have only one struggle - the struggle
>>  for gender equality - when in fact we have many more.
>>
>>  The struggles for peace and social justice and against
>>  imperialist and racist arrogance, cannot, I am truly
>>  sorry to say, be folded into the struggle for gender
>>  equality.
>>
>>  What we need is a tough new kind of feminism with no
>>  illusions. Women do not change institutions simply by
>>  assimilating into them, only by consciously deciding
>>  to fight for change. We need a feminism that teaches a
>  > woman to say no - not just to the date rapist or
>>  overly insistent boyfriend but, when necessary, to the
>>  military or corporate hierarchy within which she finds
>>  herself.
>>
>>  In short, we need a kind of feminism that aims not
>  > just to assimilate into the institutions that men have
>>  created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and
>>  subvert them.
>>
>>  To cite an old, and far from naive, feminist saying:
>>  "If you think equality is the goal, your standards are
>>  too low." It is not enough to be equal to men, when
>>  the men are acting like beasts. It is not enough to
>>  assimilate. We need to create a world worth
>>  assimilating into.
>>
>>  Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of
>>  "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America."
>>  This article was first published in the Sunday Opinion
>>  section of the Los Angeles Times.
>>
>>  http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18740
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
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