Rolling Stone announced on May 8th that Gabel, singer and guitarist for Florida punks Against Me!, plans to begin living as a woman. According to the brief story on RS’ website:

Gabel, who has dealt privately with gender dysphoria for years, will soon begin the process of transition, by taking hormones and undergoing electrolysis treatments.

Gabel will eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace, and will remain married to her wife Heather. ‘For me, the most terrifying thing about this was how she would accept the news,’ says Gabel. ‘But she’s been super-amazing and understanding.

The full feature, which was released in the new issue of RS on May 11th, goes into further detail regarding Gabel’s transition. She hasn’t taken on her new name yet, but will do so for a year before deciding whether or not she will undergo surgery; she will also remain the lead-singer of Against Me!

Anyone who has ever come out — be it as gay or lesbian, queer, bi or trans — knows how difficult it can be to tell your loved ones, let alone announce it to the world. In a society as repressed as this, even friends and family who claim to be “open-minded” can balk at the prospect. And that’s true for anyone — not just those who have sold hundreds of thousands of records like Gabel has. Major congratulations are due to Gabel and her wife Heather for taking a step that’s both brave and beautiful.

Not that Gabel has been completely hush-hush about her struggle to forge an identity over the years. “The Ocean,” from 2007’s New Wave, included not-so-thinly-veiled lyrics:  ”And if I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman / My mother once told me she would have named me Laura / I’d grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.” In March, during a performance in Corpus Christi, Texas, she performed a solo acoustic version of an as-yet-unreleased song “Transgender Dysphoria Blues.”

Against Me! have also, for what it’s worth, spoken for a variety of progressive and radical causes over the years, including the rights of queer and trans people. Still, it was never quite so obvious just how autobiographical some of these moments were.

Chalking up Gabel’s decision to mere politics (or, for that matter, art) would certainly be insulting. Coming out in any form is a personal choice way before it even gets close to the political realm. On that same tip, it’s hard to ignore the broader world in which Gabel has made this announcement.

The culture of celebrity, colliding with the realities of homophobia and transphobia, means that any well-known figure’s decision to come out instantly takes on social overtones. Comments in the blogosphere have ranged from the clueless (“How will he pass as a woman with arms like that?”) to the callous (“Wow, what an attention ploy”) to those that read as if they came straight out of the Westboro Baptist Church:

The TRUTH is that GOD H-A-T-E-S GAY, TRANNIES, and all other such sickos. Says so right in the HOLY BIBLE, all you got to do is pick it up and read it for yourself. Do not take the word of these perverts, READ IT FOR YOURSELF. It very clearly states that they will ALL go to HELL. Especially the transsexuals, who are worse than gays. Transsexuals want to take the whole gay acceptance crap issue even further and make you believe that mutilating and hacking up a body to make it look like it is the opposite sex is fine and perfect and in line with God’s plan. That is EVIL. It is SATAN who is making them do that.

This was one of the first comments that appeared on Rolling Stone’s website after they broke the story.

Even some pieces in the “neutral” music press have been clumsy, their tone treating gender dysphoria almost as some kind of disease. Nowhere is it mentioned that even the concept of gender identity being a “disorder” remains controversial in the trans community.

Suffice to say that overall the music press is, at best, learning how to “handle” such announcements as they go–and often not even bothering with that. Says HitFix’s Katie Hasty:

A man who sings in a hard rock band becoming a woman is a jolt to the system, in part, because it’s a hard rock band. Speaking purely in generalizations, it’s a genre and an entertainment space dominated by men, perceivably for men… [and] has some codes of machismo. While certain spaces generally embrace icons of androgyny or ambiguities of sexual preference (just read any sufficient history of punk), rock ‘n’ roll as originally a counter-culture has been lab-manufactured in years past into a norm, with ‘normal’ expectations. When a singer is gay, or cross-dresses, there’s still that initial shock. When a singer of a well-known band becomes a different gender altogether… it’s an exclamation.

And there’s the rub. The fact is that in the 21st century there still persists set-in-stone ideas of what men and women “should” be — how they should dress, who they should sleep with, what kind of jobs they can have, and even what kind of music they can play. For a society that calls itself enlightened, such norms border on the neolithic.

On the same day as Gabel’s announcement, voters in North Carolina passed Amendment One, essentially banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. If Gabel were to drop her career with Against Me! and search for a job elsewhere, it would be perfectly legal to fire her solely on the grounds of her gender identity in 34 states — including in her home state of Florida. If Gabel’s life were in danger, would authorities care? The recent cases of CeCe McDonald and Lorena Escalera say no.

In the midst of all this, it can’t be such a surprise when bigots feel free to openly spew their filth at anyone who doesn’t fall within their boundaries. All the assumptions about male and female musicians fit into this twisted puzzle. Music is, quite often, merely a reflection of this.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. Namely, how utterly false these expectations end up being in the real world –especially in the realm of the arts, where, at least ostensibly, honesty and willingness to break the mold are valued. Gabel may be the most high-profile musician to come out as trans, but she’s hardly the first. In the 1970s, electronic artist Walter Carlos, one of the earliest to feature the Moog synthesizer in his work, became Wendy Carlos. She later went on to contribute to the score for both The Shining and A Clockwork Orange.

Punk rock in particular has had a notable flurry of trans artists. Wayne County, a participant in the 1969 Stonewall rebellion, formed Wayne County & the Electric Chairs and provided important influence to punk’s first wave before taking the name Jayne County. Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV — two crucial links between post-punk and the formation of industrial music –has been living as pandrogynous for years.

Sure enough, the contradiction of punk has been its visceral nature — a stance that can just as often reproduce society’s worst diseases as reject them. For every sexist Stranglers song there was X-Ray Spex’s Poly Styrene shouting “oh bondage! Up yours!” For every macho dumbfuck threatening to kick your ass, there was a young kid provocatively smearing himself with makeup. In the ‘80s, while Boston’s SS Decontrol were complaining about the “new wave faggots,” Millions of Dead Cops’ Dave Dictor was declaring “I’m a big queer and that makes me more punk than all of you!”

Gabel recalls that it was her experiences meeting January Hunt — a transgender Against Me! Fan — that finally inspired her to make the transition. Support from fans on Twitter has been easy to find, as has the same from within the music world. Indie duo Tegan and Sara’s statement of support was straightforward and simple: “So incredibly brave” (Tegan sang backing vocals on New Wave’s “Borne On the FM Waves of the Heart”).

The Gaslight Anthem, a band who has similarly cultivated a friendship with Against Me! over the years, have also been not only publicly supportive, but pointedly rebutted against the anti-trans hatred:

So Tom’s gonna be Laura now… and in 2012 I still find people on the internet commenting on another persons [sic] life how they insult and condemn a person for his choices…  How about you let another human being make a decision about their lives without your snide prejudices and bigotry?

Yeah, how about that? How about we stop letting artists’ “fans” pick and choose what parts of their humanity are worthy and which ones aren’t? How about we stop acting like their work can be called into question dependent on their gender? How about we understand that the best artists don’t create just to meet others’ expectations, but to make themselves whole?

Most of all, how about we embrace that — with any luck — this is what Gabel is finally on her way to becoming? A whole person. That’s not a privilege, it’s a right. And we should all be so lucky to have it.

Where does it stop?  God intended Adam and Eve to be a couple, not Adam and Steve.

— Jethro James, Senior Pastor at Paradise Baptist Church Newark, May 10, 2012

The gay marriage debate in New Jersey has gone national, with President Obama throwing his own hat in the ring with resounding approval for same-sex unions.  Evangelicals are shuddering, and various pro-Obama supporters are shaking their heads.  One is pastor Jethro James of the Paradise Baptist Church in Newark.  ‘I don’t understand why he did it – and why now.  I was gung-ho for his re-election and now, I don’t know.  This troubles my spirit’ (Star-Ledger, May 10).

States such as North Carolina, given an overwhelming vote there to ban gay marriage, suggest that the issue for Obama, at least when it comes to the November election, is not a negligible one.  Ditto South Carolina.  Individuals such as Bakari Middleton, chairman of the Richland County Democratic Party tend to stay mum about the president’s stance.  ‘Nobody wants to comment on that’ (Rock Hill Herald, May 12).  State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter tends to have faith amongst the voters – notably ‘communities of colour’ whose perceptiveness she holds with a degree of reverence.  “We are not electing President Obama to be bishop…  We aren’t looking to him for our religious beliefs”.   Cobb-Hunter, it would seem, is a defiant optimist.

A closer look at the responses, and a few truths emerge.  Anything that will garner votes will be entertained, though the gay lobby is hardly as packed a church as the evangelical equivalents.  Approval for gay marriage amongst black churchgoers is amongst the lowest in the country.  Jonathan Bernstein in the Washington Post suggests that the move simply gave Obama a bit more leg room should the issue come up later in the campaign.  But at the end of the day, an obsession with the marriage debate can always risk lessening the value of the advocate’s message in other areas.

Then comes the issue of business, something that every political principle in the United States is ultimately subordinated to.  Karen Kontos, whose family owns a number of restaurants and catering halls in New Jersey, could see the dollar signs lighting up like neon lights.  “I think it’s wonderful if it brings in more business. We’d welcome anyone who wants us to cater their wedding.”   The lawyers will be thrilled too – a marriage rush can just as easily lead to a divorce exodus – where there are unions, dissolutions follow.

At the end of the day, Obama’s stance can only ring true in a symbolic sense.  The debate would be taking place however ‘evolved’ his views on the subject might be.  Several states have already passed rules allowing gay marriages – New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa, Massachusetts, Washington DC, to name a selection.  Thirty one, however, have banned it.  The laws of marriage, and for that matter the laws of sentencing, are sovereign bastions for US states.

The President of the United States might be able to annihilate countries at the push of a trigger or initiate a drone attack in Pakistan, but he is unable to change a state’s rules on unions and marriages or force the courts to heed his views.  That is both the miracle and the splendid perversion of the American constitution.

Do you know where your money spends the night?

Wall Street banks are trashing our economy and our environment in the name of their own profits—do you buy into their corruption and greed? It’s time to Pink Slip Big Banks and invest in a more peaceful and just future by moving your money!  How?  I used the Move your Money tool to find a listing of local banks and credit unions in my area.  I selected New Resources Bank in San Francisco, the same bank that Rainforest Action Network and CODEPINK use.  After opening my new account, I used the 7 Simple Steps To Move Your Checking Account checklist to really move my money, and finally, I proudly visited a B of A branch and presented them with a Pink Slip – they were friendly enough about losing my business (I admit I’m no millionaire so it wasn’t a big loss, though it was the principle of the thing).

This year on International Women’s Day, March 8th, I plan to join the women of the 99% at Break Up Bank of America actions.  The Women Occupy Call to Action is an inspiring statement of solidarity with the Occupy Movement and with the thousands of homeowners across the country who have been affected by home foreclosure. Women Occupy is supporting the women-led campaigns of Public Citizen and Rainforest Action Network, to hold Bank of America accountable for the predatory economic policies that are destroying our families and communities.  On March 8th activists in dozens of cities from NYC to LA are planning to occupy Bank of America branches by staging Super(s)hero Showdowns against Bandit of America, holding Really REALLY free markets to show what a feminist gift economy can look like, creating Walk in Our Shoes displays with pairs of shoes to illustrate the real people impacted by home foreclosure, job loss, and environmental destruction, and other creative tactics.  Plus Women Occupy is asking people to cancel their big bank accounts on March 8th and move their money to local banks or credit unions.  Not that another reason is needed to move your money, but why not do it on a big day of action and in solidarity with the 51% of the 99%: women?!

Since its inception in the early twentieth century, International Women’s Day has been rooted in the struggle for economic justice, growing out of local demonstrations by women workers demanding shorter hours, better pay, voting rights, and an end to discrimination.  Women have long been the prime targets of predatory bank policies and economic collapse: women are 32% more likely than men to receive sub‑prime mortgages and Latina and African-American women borrowers are most likely to receive sub‑prime loans at every income level.  Women make up 51% of the world’s population but 70% of the world’s poor. We perform 66% of the world’s work, produce 50% of the food, but earn 10% of the income and own less than 1% of the world’s property.  Our work continues to be unpaid, underpaid and undervalued, making us invisible to economic indicators and ineligible for the rewards reaped by the most “productive” members of society.  It’s time we turned the tables and started going after the big banks! And what better suspect than the biggest of the big banks – Bank of America?

Why target Bank of America? As of June 2010, Bank of America had $88 billion worth of foreclosed homes in its portfolio — more than any other mortgage servicer in the country. In order to please investors they even started kicking people out of homes faster than other banks, instead of working with them to refinance or restructure their mortgages. Despite having higher average credit scores than men, women are more likely to receive subprime mortgages that leave them vulnerable to home foreclosure.  Bank of America had a hand in the worst of the subprime lending excesses, providing financing to four of the five largest subprime lenders during the years prior to the crash. Together, these firms issued over $320 billion in subprime loans from 2005 through 2007, a disproportionate number of which went to women who would have qualified for traditional loans with far lower costs.

B of A is the official bank of the US military and has branches by or on many bases, which allows them to entice military personnel to take out loans at usurious rates. Personal loans made to soldiers for a few thousand dollars can actually keep them indebted for the rest of their lives. Last May, Bank of America paid $22 million to settle charges of improperly foreclosing on active-duty troops.  The list of reasons goes on and on – there’s even a published list of 10 reasons to hate Bank of America.

And what’s the ask of Bank of America?  Activists are asking that Bank of America be regulated and broken up into smaller, safer pieces that won’t take America down with them if they fail.  B of A can invest in the planet and stop funding coal projects that are polluting our communities and ruining the climate.  B of A can pay the statutorily required 35% corporate income tax instead of draining the government of revenue through off-shore tax shelters, loopholes, and scams.  Instead of endless home foreclosures, B of A could help stabilize the housing market and revitalize the economy by reducing principal for all underwater homeowners to current market value. This would end the foreclosure crisis, reset the housing market, pump billions of dollars back into the economy, and create 1 million jobs a year.

Moving our money is one of the powerful ongoing direct actions that has come out of the growing Occupy movement.  Let’s escalate our individual efforts by coordinating actions at Bank of America in solidarity with the existing campaigns targeting B of A coordinated by Rainforest Action Network, Public Citizen, and others.  And let’s ask our cities, organizations, and other institutions to divest from big banks and invest in local economy and sustainability.  Together we can send a loud message to Wall Street and big banks: not with our money, not on our dime!

There will be cursing.

I was perusing sordid silly news the other day when I came across the unlikely teaser, “Jerry Lewis told fuck you by Hollywood producer”. I thought it was kinda rude to tell a dead guy “fuck you” and I’m not sure what purpose it serves…. so I went on to read what precipitated such –well, fuckery. Turns out, he’s not dead! But he is a jackass.

A few years ago, Jerry Lewis answered a question about women in comedy with “I don’t like any women comedians. A woman doing comedy doesn’t offend me but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”

Wow! Jerry Lewis. Wow! That is some magnificent mildew.

I repeated this gem to a friend of mine, and she wryly commented that maybe it was actually a funny comment, but it was only understood in France. Possibly, but I tend to come down on the side of that guy who said “fuck you Jerry Lewis”.

I know Jerry Lewis has about as much cultural relevance at this time as a Clara Bow sexual dalliance, but even so, sometimes the assholes shine a light on some sordid beliefs stinking and lurking under the couch next to that damn sock.

Joel Apatow, the producer/director of much vanilla, but benign fare, was the one who said “fuck you” to Lewis. He would like more female comedy to be produced, hence his ire towards the mastodon–but he just didn’t go far enough though. There’s some more fuckery that needs to be addressed. That “producing machine” comment didn’t occur in a vacuum.

I’ve come across it before. When women make a joke it’s often disregarded unless it’s a self-debasing “math is hard” kind of  laugh. And I would say humor is the great connector. It can tie people together in warmth and empathy in a manner cold logic never can. It’s hard to maintain a war against a person, group (or an entire gender) when someone can point out the common absurdities of life.

Of course, the Jerry Lewis creeps of the world don’t enjoy a funny woman. It might erase some boundaries. Suddenly the mysterious withholder/controller of sex becomes just another poor schlub trying to make sense of the world too. The enigmatic virgin/whore or “baby producer” is just a more comfortable way of processing the world than addressing the fact that if you have issues with half the population….well maybe it’s you.

But women are not blameless in this. I have cracked jokes (that were pretty fucking good) in the company of women only to be given a cold look from them, but a hearty laugh from the men. Women can be gatekeepers of accepted behavior as well. These are the ones that can really sting you.

I’ll never forget an early, quite crappy job I had in college, not even 20 then.  It was as a hostess at a restaurant that hilariously considered itself to be quite elite, even though it was about one rung above Cracker Barrel. And the ladder rung was broken and hanging on the wall. It was incredibly boring, standing in front of the place, ushering people to tables so I humored myself by cracking jokes, basically being silly with the patrons waiting for tables to open when it was crowded and full. The owner noticed this and in a frigid manner told me it was my job to stand there and be pretty, not to do stand-up comedy. She actually got angry at me for this! Weird ass reason to be chastised by your boss. I wish I had pilfered a side of beef or something. Anyway, this was the same women who discarded a job application from someone because that individual was in her (gasp) 30′s… too long in the tooth to hire she said! I giggle with malignant glee sometimes thinking about this previous employer and how she would be firmly in old age by now. I can only hope she has urinary incontinence and a rascal. So fuck you too, women gatekeepers of feminine decorum. Fuck you right along with Jerry Lewis.

But it all really does get a bit more serious than just the issues of cracking jokes and looking unsexy. It’s a culture that springs from organized religions that peddle tales that women are the source of all that is unclean, and are to be viewed as the lesser “creation”. There’s not much love there in that dogma! I could go on and on how I think that worldview was necessary to push forward a culture of dominion and control, over not just women, but all fluid goodness on the planet. The end result sucks for most men as well, I’m thinking.

And hell, it’s not just that a woman can’t be funny, but it’s that she needs to be viewed as a two-dimensional being. It’s hard to denigrate those that we relate to, and discouraging female humor is about keeping those walls up. So fuck you organized religion for firming up the base that implies women aren’t every bit as fully fleshed out creations of humanity. Fuck you right along with Jerry Lewis.

And fuck every single person who can’t accept a person for what they are as long as it isn’t harming others.

So, yes, I think there is a lot of fuck you to go around. But Jerry Lewis is a start. The start of a fuck you dialogue and that makes me proud.

Now don’t even get me started about those who think women shouldn’t curse.

At its heart the book conveys a simple fact.  The rate of population growth has been decelerating for decades – well before the publication in the 1970s of Paul Ehrlich’s alarmist, implicitly racist, and dead wrong neo-Malthusian tract, The Population Bomb.    It is amazing that many environmentalists are unaware of the crucial fact of slowing population growth, and that some react with hostility to it.  Further, somewhere between 2050 and 2100, growth will stop and then come crashing down.  It is not the sky that will be falling but the population.  From Eastern Europe to Southern Italy to Singapore, that day has already arrived and sooner or later it will come to all parts of the planet.  In fact, it may well be that in the next century the problem will be a population that is not large enough to be optimal; but that will be for the 22nd century humans to decide and act on.

And why has this happened?  The key is the successful assault on patriarchy by women determined to control their fertility and their lives.   Yes, prosperity helps; and population control programs, most notably in China, have had some effect, but they are not the essential factors.  In rich countries and poor, religious and secular, Islamic and Christian, the trend is under way and irreversible.  Of that there can be no doubt.

The reason is simple.  In the latter half of the 20th Century the survival rate of infants increased dramatically so that women did not have to continue to have children for a reproductive lifetime to replenish the population.  At the same time, the sexual revolution and easy contraception came along.  Now bearing children takes only 10-15 percent of the adult lifetime of a woman.

As Pearce puts it, “Women have grabbed the chance created by that change.  While having children remains important to most women’s lives, it is no longer the only thing or even the main thing they do.  They cease to wield power only within the home. Now they are out of the front door.  Across the rich world and in much of the poorer world too, women outnumber men on university campuses and dominate entry to professions like medicine, media and the law.  They run the farms and even the governments, sometimes.  The reproductive revolution has created a feminist revolution that has a long way to go.  But it has already changed the world. For thousands of years men ruled the world.  Patriarchy was regarded as necessary to produce the next generation.  It was deeply engrained and tenaciously defended by men,” their social institutions, both church and state, and mores that condemned lesbianism and homosexuality.

The reproductive revolution kicked away this system of patriarchy, because it was no longer necessary to sustain populations.  Women have always wanted equal rights.  Feminism is not a new idea And some women have always broken free.  But for most women the reproductive revolution has taken feminism from the ‘realm of utopia to practical possibility’.

So while we hear a great deal of alarmist talk about “peak oil” from certain quarters we scarcely ever hear of “peak population.”  Fertility in the world peaked at between five and six children per woman in the 1950s.  It is now down to 2.6 and still dropping.  Replacement is about 2.1, and we are almost there.

What about the aging of this population?  The other side of contemporary Malthusianism is the claim that an older population means more mouths to feed and fewer younger working hands to feed them.  But that is also false.  We have gone from a revolution in agriculture, where it takes an ever smaller fraction of the population, and an ever smaller amount of land per capita, to feed us, to an advanced technological revolution where, for example, productivity in manufacturing in the U.S. is growing exponentially with a rate constant of .035 per year and in all areas at an exponential rate of 0.02 per year.  (Productivity here is output per person hour.)  So when you hear a voice telling you that we cannot afford Social Security or Medicare benefits for all that is the voice of Malthus, always wrong, calling from his grave.

In fact, Pearce sees a great benefit in an older population.  Not only will it be healthier than in the past and capable of making contributions well into the eighth decade of life, but it will be less testosterone driven, with more historical sense and more wisdom and less given to the calls of demagogues.  Let us hope so.

In the end the greatest philosophical debate of the modern era may be the one between Marx (and Godwin) versus Malthus.  Marx famously labeled Malthus’s views as a “slander on humanity” and its capabilities.  Malthus’s views have been used, explicitly or implicitly, to justify some of the worst atrocities in human history, way beyond that of the great Irish famine.  But in addition to being cruel, Malthus has always been wrong.  He remains so to this day.  If we ignore his false prophecies and those of his heirs, we have a very bright future indeed.

If week one of Occupy Wall Street was about surviving, week two has been about finding our voices – this protest is about the 99% percent of people in America who have been on the short end of the economic stick, but it appears that the media believes its 90% made up of men. Some of the organizing and facilitation processes we’ve developed to make our movement inclusive and participatory have proven not to be enough, and we are constantly adapting and regrouping to ensure that everyone’s voice in this broad and vibrant coalition is heard.

During Monday’s General Assembly I announced through the call-and-response system of people’s microphone that CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin would be leading a media training session for women and gender queer/non-male identifying members of the demonstration.

Here’s what I said–and what they responded — (this is how we as protesters can get on the same page):

This morning I watched // This morning I watched

News coverage of this protest // News coverage of this protest.

10 people were interviewed // 10 people were interviewed

1 of them // 1 of them

Was a woman // Was a woman

The 99% // The 99%

Is not 90% men // Is not 90% men

The message was received enthusiastically. When we did our introductions in the training, we realized many people are not only finding it difficult to speak to press but also during the General Assembly (GA). CODEPINK members following from across the country via livestream have expressed similar concern that women’s participation in the GA seems limited to logistical report-backs from working groups that run the encampment at Liberty Plaza rather than more weighty discussions about our principles of solidarity and Declaration. As these important discussions have intensified, so has women’s insistence on meaningful inclusion and representation in the drafting of our “living documents.”

During the training Medea offered some suggestions on how to make sure everyone’s voices are heard – we tell her about the speak-easy caucus of the General Assembly, which is a safe space for women and non-male identifying members of the GA. That evening a new group, the “Safer Spaces” Committee, announced, call-and-response, its formation to address the problem of sexual harassment:

Please keep in mind // Please keep in mind

Not everyone // Not everyone

Wants to hug you // Wants to hug you

You might need a shower // You might need a shower

If you want to dance with someone // If you want to dance with someone

Or talk to them // Or talk to them

You should find a way to ask them // You should find a way to ask them.

When we got to the practice portion of the training my partner, Anna, was shy and said she didn’t want to try it. I asked her why she’s here. She froze up. I told her to imagine she’s on the phone with her best friend, someone close to her, who’s wondering what all this is about. Without so much as a pause or an “um”, Anna told me she was here because she’s been unemployed for two years and she’s tired of seeing media blaming young people for being jobless. We immediately bring the livestream camera over to record her story, and those of the other people in the group, which are more compelling and personal than any I’ve heard covered thus far.

*****

Since the demonstration began two weeks ago, I’ve been coordinating with members of CODEPINK, the Granny Peace Brigade, and the Speak-Easy Caucus looking to take the demonstration to the “next level” by staying overnight, and wanting to generate a critical mass of trusted friends to create a safe encampment for the night. On Friday we gear up for our first Occupy Wall Street sleep-out. After last Friday’s was rained out, this time we are ready. At least most of us are – I still don’t have a sleeping bag.

I receive an email from Eve Ensler – she wants to pay a visit and is wondering if there’s anything we need that she can bring. Problem solved. I notify one of the founding members of the Speak-Easy caucus. Her eyes well up – “Omigosh! Are you serious? HERE?! When?!” She tells me about how her closest group of friends formed around a high school production of the Vagina Monologues and still lovingly refer to each other as “The Vaginas.” When Ms. Ensler arrives she tells her “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

Eve and Alicia – one of the V-girls – arrive at the encampment with bags of supplies – including a wonderful sleeping bag that I gratefully accept. Eve tours the ground, interviewing people, and says they will return tomorrow night with the rest of the V-girls – for now she just wants to take it all in. Her face glows with awe, praise, and curiosity: “A second wind is coming.”

CODEPINKers came and went from the square throughout the day and gathered for the march against police brutality at 5:30. After the march more members stop by to offer support and delicious home-baked chocolate chip cookies. As night falls I went to the nearby fast-food restaurant that has become our bathroom. It was packed with young women from Occupy Wall Street. One [Nicole, 20] watched me take out my toothbrush and nodded knowingly. I asked her how long she’s been staying in the square – since last Saturday. She told me she didn’t plan on staying, just came down one day to check out the scene, met some cool people, and didn’t want to leave. “You can’t capture that on camera, that sense of community. I’ve never felt so close to the people around me.” A woman who I recognized from the encampment’s medic committee reminded us that our cell phones will be the first thing taken by the police and instructs us to take down the National Lawyers’ Guild number in case of emergency. We obediently pen the number on our forearms in pink sharpie and wish each other luck.

As I consulted with the Safer Spaces committee – identifiable by their pink armbands – where to set up camp, it began to rain. I ran over to where the General Assembly was meeting and ducked under a big red umbrella with Sara Beth, a member of the speak-easy caucus. We reminisce over how the umbrella originally brought us together in a moment that seems years ago but was probably last week, when I asked to trade my red umbrella for her pink one. The rain gets harder and louder. A young woman in a poncho tours the square with a cardboard sign shouting like a newsboy: “FREE HUGS!” People huddle under tarps and shout jokes across the square to keep spirits up: “Two fish are swimming in a river. One slams into a concrete wall. Dam!”

I asked Sara Beth what she wants to do if the rain continues. We decided to stick it out. I ducked from tarp to tarp trying to cover my belongings and rally together other speak-easies. Eventually we sought refuge in the WikiLeaks truck, owned by fellow Bradley Manning supporter Clark Stoeckley. Referring to our Occupy Wall Street-induced evolution from twitter-following to friendship, I joked that I’ll thank the bejeesus out of him on Twitter. There’s about 7 people in the van already, only one of whom is a woman. They welcome us in joking that it’ll make her feel better. This is not exactly the “safe-space” we were envisioning, but it is warm, cozy, and most importantly, dry. Someone pokes their head in asking if anyone would like a pair of clean, dry socks. A few of us hold back out of politeness before accepting. Wiggling our toes with glee in the too-large white tennis socks, we all agree: they are the best socks we have ever worn in our lives.

At around 11 pm I receive a text from my husband asking where I was. I replied “still in Liberty”, expecting him to text back that I should come home because it’s pouring. Instead, he arrived about half an hour later with a huge Tupperware of freshly-baked brownies. More people stop by the truck as the night progressed, including members of the Security Committee, who leave us with one of their yellow walkie-talkies in case we should need them. Like many of the committees, they mention they are looking for more women members. People returning from bathroom runs report back: “We have occupied McDonalds!”, “they’re singing ‘this little light of mine’”, and then eventually – “we have been evicted! Need to find a new bathroom!” We keep a running tally of the number of people in the truck, joking that we should adopt the restaurant’s slogan: 17 served. Everything is funny to us. One of the served says he wants to make a big sign that says “For the first time in my life I finally feel at home.”

At 5 am I return to the 24-hour fast food bathroom. It is as hot as a sauna, and we pack in, taking turns using the hand drier. Some are changing, some cutting each other’s hair, some just sitting on the floor to get some warmth into their soaked bones. People tell each other they’re beautiful, reunite, hug, and compare horror stories of the rough night we just survived. One joked that tonight we should all just sleep here in the bathroom where it’s safe and dry – “let the guys figure out their own thing.”

Hillary Clinton and President Sarkozy might loath to admit it, but the desire to turn back the clock on women rights in Libya constitutes one of the chief goals for NATO Rebels on the Transitional Council.

For NATO Rebels — who are overwhelmingly pro-Islamist, regardless of NATO propaganda¹ — it’s a matter of restoring social obedience to Islamic doctrine. However the abaya is more than a symbol of virtue and womanly modesty. It would usher in a full conservative doctrine, impacting women’s rights in marriage and divorce, the rights to delay childbirth to pursue education and employment—all the factors that determine a woman’s status of independence.

That makes this one War Libya’s women cannot afford to lose. For those of us who support Islamic modernity, there are good arguments that Gadaffi would be grossly irresponsible to hand over power to a vacuum dominated by NATO Rebels. Given the savagery of their abuses against the Libyan people¹ — and the Rebel’s agenda to reinstate Shariah and retract women’s rights, Gadaffi has an obligation to stand strong and block them for the protection of the people.

Indeed, it’s somewhat baffling that France or Italy would want to hand power to Rebels, outside of an election scenario. Elections would be a safeguard that would empower Libyan women to launch a leadership alternative that rejects the Abaya. That’s exactly what the Rebels fear, and it accounts for their deep, abiding rejection of the election process. Democracy poses a real threat to NATO’s vision of the “New Libya.”

The abaya carries so much weight in the battle for Islamic modernity that Gadaffi pretty much banned Islamic dress from the first days of his government. Getting rid of the abaya was part of Gadaffi’s larger reform package supporting women’s rights—one of the best and most advanced in the entire Arab world. The transformation of women’s status has been so great that the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran imposed a fatwa against Gadhaffi years ago, declaring his government blasphemous to Islamic traditions.

To gain insider perspective on Gadaffi’s reforms for women, members of a fact-finding delegation in Libya spoke with Najat ElMadani, chairwoman of the Libyan Society for Culture and Sciences, an NGO started in 1994. They also interviewed Sheikh Khaled Tentoush, one the most prominent Imams in Libya. Imam Tentoush has survived two NATO assassination attempts, one that was particularly revealing.

Tentoush said that he and 12 other progressive Imams were traveling to Benghazi to discuss a peaceful end to the conflict. They stopped for tea at a guest house in Brega — and NATO dropped a bomb right on top of them, killing 11 of the 13 Imams, who had embraced Islamic reforms that empower women’s rights and modernity.

There were no military installations or Gadaffi soldiers anywhere nearby that would have justified NATO bombing. This was a deliberate assassination of Islamic leaders who give religious legitimacy to Gadaffi’s modernist policies, and therefore pose a great threat to the conservative ambitions of Islamic Rebels. NATO killed them off.

What’s got radical Islamists so upset in Libya? Here’s a primer on women’s rights under Gadaffi:

No Male Chaperones in Libya

In Libya, women are allowed to move about the city, go shopping or visit friends without a male escort. Unbelievable as it sounds, throughout most of the Arab world, such freedoms are strictly forbidden. In much of Pakistan, for example, a 5 year old male child would be considered a suitable chaperone for an adult woman in the marketplace. Otherwise she’d better stay home. In Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, women are frequently locked in their apartments while their husbands, brothers or fathers go off to work. Yes, there are exceptions. Some families individually reject these practices. However, before readers protest this characterization, you must be honest and acknowledge that the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Saudis/Kuwaitis aren’t the only groups that constrain women’s freedoms in the Arab world. This is common social behavior throughout large swaths of Arab society.

In Libya, women are never locked in their homes, while their husbands, fathers and brothers go to work. Gadhaffi forbids restricting women’s mobility.

In Libya, women have full legal rights to drive cars—unlike their sisters in Saudi Arabia. In a lot of Arab countries, a woman’s husband holds her passport. So she cannot travel outside of the country without his approval.

Marriage Rights

Tragically, in Kabul, Afghanistan, a young woman can be locked in Prison for rejecting her father’s choice of husband. Until she changes her mind, her prospective mother in law visits the prison every day, demanding to know why her son is not “good enough” for this girl. Why does she disobey those who know what’s best for her? That poor woman stays locked up in Kabul prison until she changes her mind. And it happens right under the noses of American and NATO soldiers. A NATO Occupation won’t protect Libyan women, either.

All over the Arab world—from Yemen to Jordan to Saudi Arabia to Iran — fathers and brothers decide what age a young woman will be given away in marriage, usually as soon as she hits puberty. She has no choice in the most important decision of her life. Frequently a young girl gets married off to one of her father’s adult friends or a cousin. Throughout the Arab world, it’s socially acceptable for a shopkeeper to ask a young Muslim girl if she has started to menstruate. A good Islamic girl is expected to answer truthfully.

Not in Libya. To his greatest credit, bucking all Islamic traditions—from the first days of government, Gadaffi said No Way to forced marriages. Libyan woman have the right to choose their own husbands. They are encouraged to seek love marriages. Under strict Libyan law, without exception no person can force a Libyan woman to marry any man for any reason.

Forced marriages have been such a problem throughout the Arab world, that in Libya, an Imam always calls on the woman if there is an impending marriage. The Imam meets with her privately, and asks if any person is forcing her to marry, or if there’s any reason she’s marrying this person other than her desire to be with this man. Both Najat and Imam Tentoush were very adamant on these points.

In Libya, the Imams are expected to protect the woman from abuse by relatives.

Right to End a Marriage

Divorce is brutally difficult for a woman throughout the Arab world. A husband can beat or rape his wife, or commit adultery or lock her in a room like a prison. No matter what a woman suffers, as a wife she has no legal rights to leave that marriage, even for her own protection. When her father negotiates that marriage contract, she’s stuck for life. A man can divorce a woman in front of two witnesses by repeating three times: “I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.” He can text that message on a cell phone, and it’s over. The woman has no reciprocal freedom. She’s stuck in that marriage until her husband lets her go.

Not so in Libya. A Libyan woman can leave a marriage anytime she chooses. A woman simply files for divorce and goes on with her life. It is very similar to U.S. laws, in that a man has no power to stop her. It’s completely within her control to initiate a divorce.

In Libya, if a woman enters a marriage with her own assets and the marriage ends, her husband cannot touch her assets. The same is true of the man’s assets. Joint assets usually go to the woman.

These “abnormal” marriage rights stir deep anger among conservative Libyan men. Rebels particularly hate Gadhaffi’s government for granting marriage rights to women.

But consider how delaying marriage impacts women’s opportunities in society.

Delayed marriage means delayed childbirth, which empowers young women to continue education and gain employment. Not surprisingly then, Libyan women enjoy some of the best opportunities in the Arab world. That might also cause simmering resentments among conservative Libyan men.

Education of Libyan Women

In Libya more women take advantage of higher education than men, according to Najat. There are professional women in every walk of life. Many Libyan women are scientists, university professors, lawyers, doctors, government employees, journalists and business women. Najat attributes that freedom and the range of choices to Gadaffi, and his government’s insistence that women must be free to choose their lives and be fully supported in those choices. Najat and Tentoush said that some Imams in Libya would like it to be otherwise — especially those Imams favoring the Rebels —
but Gadaffi has always over ruled them. For example there are many women soldiers, and they are very strong and fully capable of contributing to the military defense of the country.

Women receive education scholarships equal to the men’s. All Libyans can go abroad and study if they so desire — paid for by Gadhaffi’s government. Single women usually take a brother or male relative with them, and Najat said all expenses are covered for both the woman and her companion.

In Libya, women are not required to seek a husband’s permission to hold a job, and any type of job is available to her. In contrast, many employment opportunities are proscribed in many other Arab countries, because work puts women in daily proximity to men who are not their husbands. That eliminates many types of job opportunities.
Bashing Women’s Rights

These are some of the reasons why Rebels consider Gadaffi an “infidel.” They frequently express a desire to reinstate the Shariah. It’s an open secret in Arab circles. In ignoring this point, NATO resembles the three monkeys. See no truth. Hear no truth. Speak no truth. But the Arab community understands this dynamic. Rebels are going to pat Hillary Clinton and Sarkozy on the head right up until they capture power. Then they’re going to do exactly what they started out to do. Reinstate Islamic law—under the protection of the United States and NATO governments. Conservative social codes will be enforced just like Afghanistan.

Libyans understand this point, even if Americans and Europeans are lost in denial. It should surprise no one, therefore, that some of Gadaffi’s greatest support comes from Libyan women. Nor should it surprise Libya watchers that Gadhaffi’s not exactly “clinging to power” as the corporate media likes to suggest. Quite the contrary, Gadaffi’s support has skyrocketed to 80 or 85 percent during this crisis. President Obama, Sarkozy and Bersculoni would be thrilled to enjoy such intense popular support.

NATO bombing has backfired and alienated the Libyan people from the Rebel cause, destroying community infrastructure that Libyans are truly proud of. Rebels are chasing pro-Gadaffi families out of Benghazi, a sort of political cleansing. But they have no street credibility that would give them power in negotiations with other Libyans, because losers don’t get to dictate the terms. NATO can propagandize until Sarkozy falls over in a fit, but the people have resoundingly rejected these Rebels.

NATO is pushing a political resolution, because Europe wants off the merry-go-round. In truth, the music is getting uglier every day. NATO never should have jumped on this bandwagon in the first place. There’s no sense to it. They’re fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and embracing Al Qaeda and conservative Islam in Benghazi.

Those of us who support Islamic modernity should be relieved that Libya’s people are smarter and savvier than NATO bureaucrats. And we should all say a prayer that Gadhaffi holds on.

1. see www.obamaslibya.com.

Produced by Jesse Freeston.

I do intend to make this book required reading in two of my courses, including a seminar on the politics of identity which has a gender component. However, as will become clear below, my only hesitation for not totally embracing Barry’s thesis derives from questions I have about the political lessons she draws from her research. But more on that later.

In recent years the gendered dimension of U.S. imperialism has received increasing attention and this book is a welcome addition. Certainly the dominant organizations supporting the empire are gendered and it behooves us to incorporate an understanding of the masculinization of these institutional subcultures into our analysis. Indeed, as Robert Jensen has noted, there is a close overlap between how men are socialized and the mission of the U.S. military’s killing machine: “Dominance and conquest through aggression and violence, in the service of deepening and extending elite control over the resources and markets of the world.”¹ Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Blood Politics, depicts this perverse construction of masculinity, coupled with warfare, as “mutually reinforcing enterprises.”

In a small but telling example of this phenomenon, political scientist Cynthia Enloe wonders about the male soldiers who remained silent about the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. “Did any of the American men involved in the interrogations keep silent because they were afraid of being labeled ‘soft’ or ‘weak,’ thereby jeopardizing their status as ‘manly men’?”² And Francis Shor, a preeminent historian of U.S. imperialism, reminds us that “For hypermasculine warriors, compassion and caring become signs of feminine weakness, marking someone as a wimp or wuss.”³

This foreshadows how Barry answers the vexing question that prompted her to write this book, namely, “Why do wars persist in the face of our human urge to save and protect human life?” Her response is that “War will not be unmade without remaking masculinity.” In fact, the author’s answer to virtually all questions surrounding war is the same: masculinity of the violent, aggressive and militaristic form. The term she coins for this phenomenon is core masculinity. Here she’s careful to specify that this means core socialization and not violence as an essential biological trait in men. Barry argues that early on men are set up to be the protectors of women, children, tribe, and state. Violence and aggression follow from this role. Her argument is more nuanced than I can do justice to here, but she asserts that only by undoing core masculinity, eliminating blinding macho, and violent standards of manhood can we begin “remaking men from the ground up, from the personal to the political.”

The most compelling parts of the book are those in which she explains how masculinity requires that men’s lives be expendable; how the military’s intensive brainwashing reinforces and exploits earlier socialization of boys and men; and the dynamics of the process she labels “From Soldier to Psychopath.” The result is a soldier who kills without remorse, acts without conscience or regret—and then is praised for it. The personal trauma and “loss of one’s soul” that often follows in the wake of this behavior receive careful and sensitive treatment. This heart-rendering recital is driven home by anecdotes collected from firsthand accounts and interviews with soldiers. If empathy is putting oneself in another’s shoes, the indissoluble combination of core masculinity with brainwashing, degradation, and stripping away any sense of self aims to foreclose this response.

Further, there is general agreement in the literature that sociopathy is defined as the lack of empathy. Barry contends that by replacing empathy with desensitized callousness, the military is creating sociopathic characteristics, that the military itself is a sociopathogenic institution. That is, the task of the military is to “normalize amorality for soldiers … the same amorality found in sociopaths.” Here I was reminded of an interview with former combat marine Chris White (not included in this book) who recalled his recruiter explaining the purpose of the initial twelve-week indoctrination as removing any “undesirable traits, such as anti-individuality for the sake of a team work ethic, and, most importantly, the ability and even desire to kill other human beings.”⁴

Why Soldiers Fight

The debauched spirit reflecting an absence of remorse appears in this refrain from grunts on the ground in Vietnam:

Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.

She quotes one Marine who recalls that shooting to kill “becomes muscle memory, you don’t think about it. You just do it.” Soldiers have “the remorse driven out of them” and the military counts on insensitivity to fill the void, allowing more killing without a second thought. Another Marine tells Barry that “shooting someone was like watching a moving target, hitting it, and watching it fall. It wasn’t real.”

To reshape human groups into effective killing machines the military uses male bonding and attendant fears of being ostracized. It would be unmanly, cowardly behavior not to proceed, even toward one’s own likely death.⁵ Even in retrospect, after feeling a modicum of remorse at “taking someone out” the soldier’s mantra remains “I was only there to defend the person next to me,” even as they return to the killing fields.

Barry understands that one of the consequences is that “support for your buddy and unit is as far as sympathy for others is allowed to go” (emphasis added). Anyone who threatens a buddy’s safety is “the enemy,” a potential enemy, and someone without a life at all. In putting forward this “fighting for each other” argument, Barry’s position is compatible with research suggesting that soldiers fight because those in their unit are depending on them.

Historian S.L.A. Marshall’s study “Men Against Fire” in 1942 concluded: “I hold it to be of the simplest truths of war that the one thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapon is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade…. He is sustained by his fellows primarily and by his weapons secondarily.” This conclusion apparently holds true for recent wars.

A military study of American soldiers from Iraq concluded that the primary motive was “fighting for my buddies.” One soldier’s answer was typical as he responded, “That person means more to you than anybody. You will die if he dies. That is why I think that we protect each other in any situation.”⁶ And this view wasn’t limited to the “grunts.” Just prior to the start of the Gulf War in January, 1991, one Marine Corps lieutenant colonel remarked, “Just remember that none of these boys is fighting for home, for the flag, for all that crap the politicians feed the public. They are fighting just for each other, just for each other.”⁷ Journalist Sebastian Unger, after five months of observing U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan, concluded that “The guys were not fighting for flag and country. They maybe joined for those sorts of reasons, but once they were there, they were fighting for each other.”⁸

Patriotism, fear of jail if drafted, lack of economic opportunities, job training, naivete, or boredom might explain a recruit’s enlistment and undoubtedly there are individual exceptions, but topping the list for actually engaging in combat is the social connection of not wanting to let down one’s comrades. This unit cohesion bleeds into self-preservation because remaining alive means keeping fellow soldiers alive. Of course, while the soldier is fighting on behalf of joint survival, the larger context of the mission means he or she is a resource expended on behalf of state-sanctioned killing.

In Vietnam, Prof. James McPherson found that Army psychologists became intensely concerned because the largely draftees not only didn’t want to be there but “didn’t understand in many cases, why they were there.” But the pressing problem for the military was that because fresh replacements arrived individually, the indispensable bonding with other members of the unit was the issue.⁹

In terms of how to unmake war and remake men, Barry wisely advises that we adopt an attitude of critical empathy. This will allow us to see through the lies and disinformation suffusing these matters. That is, we need to employ the potent combination of emotion and intelligence. In that spirit and because I felt Barry was selective in applying the cognitive dimension of critical empathy, I’ll raise a few questions about her analysis.

First, the Pentagon might well prefer to rely on robotic warfare, a variation on empathy-devoid androids.¹⁰ “Closing with the enemy” already occurs with some frequency as “cubicle warriors” in suburban Las Vegas dispense death from 7,500 miles away. This wholesale substitution for “boots on the ground” is projected to occur sometime between 2020 and 2035.9 This doesn’t mean these changes won’t be masculinized or that recruiting posters will soon read “we’re looking for a few good androids.” But it has been suggested that because the combat warrior ethic has been inseparable from the military’s historic emphasis on face-to-face killing, change in military doctrine might strongly influence future generations of military masculine culture.¹¹

Second, military indoctrination is complementary, albeit in more intense form to the subtle and arguably more comprehensive indoctrination of the civilian population under neoliberal ideology. Neoliberalism’s pathological numbing of our empathic disposition is what Shor terms “the hectored heart,” and those “imperial mental enclosures often work to deter most U.S. citizens from expressing empathy toward those brutalized by U.S. imperial policies.”¹²

As products of this empathy-deficient cultural programming, a certain preconditioning may soften up and facilitate some aspects of military training. However, as a tool of the state, the military is less concerned with what a soldier thinks or believes about “the system” because the objective is absolute compliance in service to a specific mission. Empire requires a “trained to kill” culture or the system would break down. Recall that the definition of Marine Corps discipline is “instant willingness and obedience to follow others”—all orders—and to follow them absolutely.¹³

For instance, the respected Zogby polling organization found in 2006 that 72% of American troops in Iraq believed the U.S. should exit the country within one year.13 No matter, as long as they follow orders in the field of combat, this is a non-issue.

Finally, it’s unarguable that the American empire currently requires this particular version of gender construction. In that sense, Barry’s book sheds needed light on the intersection between masculinity and empire. But as Shor argues in his comprehensive and accessible account of recent approaches to understanding U.S. imperialism, this endemic masculinism is only one constituent element deployed on behalf of creating, expanding, and defending political-military control of the globe.¹⁴ Therefore, in trying to understand war, it’s not helpful to claim, as Barry does, that U.S. presidents have repeatedly led the country into “unnecessary wars” to test and prove their machismo, their virility. In her treatment of psychopathic leadership, Barry specifically identifies machismo as the primary shared pathology of “leaders,” from George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon to Bin Laden and Dick Cheney. But not brutal war-mongers like Golda Meier, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher? And what of our rogues’ gallery of militarism enablers including Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton? If it’s socialized and not essential, it’s not confined to men.

Perhaps it’s the lack of opportunity for women rather than core masculinity? Women now make up 20 percent of new recruits for the U.S. military, 14 percent of the active-duty force, 17 percent of the reserves and some 16 percent of senior officers. Women in the military have bitterly complained about the heretofore “military exclusion” rule because the lack of combat experience slows down their promotion through the ranks. Valorizing these behaviors for women will facilitate career advancement and based on reports requested by Congress that rule is now being reconsidered. Here I’m reminded of political scientist Michael Parenti’s observation (I’m paraphrasing) that it’s not what’s between one’s loins but what’s between one’s ears that matters. U.S. imperialist wars require empathy anesthetizing socializing agents that we generally associate with traditional masculinity—whether the soldiers are male or female. I wish Barry had done more to address these questions and I expect she’ll do so in the future.

At still other points she cites masculine revenge and irrational masculine thinking as the key factors behind U.S. interventions around the globe. I would argue that making core masculinity the stand-alone, virtually monocausal explanation for U.S. (and all) war making tends to weaken an otherwise sterling contribution. And to argue that all this violence is the result of a culture of socialized masculinity is more of a tautology than an answer. Don’t we need to understand whose interests are being advanced by this culture? Exactly who is reinforcing it? Yes, in some important aspects the military is an end in itself but I felt that Barry failed to address its primary role as servant to the ruling interests and their capitalist state. In fact, unless I missed them, Barry never mentions capitalism or imperialism, the critical political-economic context. Here I reference Parenti’s definition of imperialism: “The process whereby the dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear military and financial power upon another country in order to expropriate the land, capital, natural resources, commerce, and markets of that country.”¹⁵ Unquestionably “core masculinity” complements the overriding motive of protecting and advancing the interests of transnational capital. However, I didn’t detect any appreciation of the very real geopolitical and economic motives behind U.S. global behavior. There’s not a single reference to pillaging of natural resources like oil and gas, military Keynesianism, exploitation of workers, the reasons for 750+ U.S. military bases around the world and related factors. I offer these few objections only to suggest that while socialized masculinity facilitates war-making, in and of itself it can’t explain the basis for U.S. imperialism.

1. Robert Jensen, “Critiquing Masculinity at the Corps.”
2. Cynthia Enloe, “Wielding Masculinity Inside Abu Ghraib: Making Feminist Sense of an American Military Scandal,” Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 10/2/2004.
3. Francis Shor, “Hypermasculine Warfare: From 9/11 to the War on Iraq.”
4. Chris White, “Double Think: The Bedrock of Marine Corps Indoctrination,” Counterpunch, July 13, 2004.
5. I was reminded of Becky Johnson’s counter recruitment postcard reading “You Can’t be All That You Can Be If You’re Dead.”
6. Leonard Wong, “Why Soldiers Fight.”
7. Former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges in James M. Skelly, “Iraq, Vietnam, and the Dilemmas of United States Soldiers,” Open Democracy, 24 May, 2006.
8. Quoted in Skelly.
9. James McPherson, “Why Do Soldiers Fight?” Interviewed on NPR.
10. The classic sci-fi treatment is Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, 1968.
11. Paul Higate and John Hopton, “War, Militarism, and Masculinities,” in M. Kimmel, J. Hearn and R.W. Connell, Eds., Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinity (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers, 2005), p. 442.
12. Francis Shor, Dying Empire (London: Routledge, 2010, paper).
13. Chris White, “First to Fight Culture,” Counterpunch, May 29/30, 2004.
14. Shor, Ibid., 37.
15. Michael Parenti, The Face of Imperialism (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2011, paper), p. 7.

The first breast augmentation processes popped up (pardon the pun) in the late 19th century. In 1889, Austrian physician Robert Gersuny tried paraffin injections. In 1895, German physician Vincenz Czerny placed tissue from a benign growth on a patient’s back in a breast where he had removed a tumor to “avoid asymmetry.”

In the first half of the 20th century, the race for the perfect fake boobs heated up. Well-apportioned actresses like Lana Turner and Ava Gardner were lighting up the big screen and gracing the covers of all the big-name magazines. Women and their husbands wanted topographical equality and doctors were eager to lend their talents and pad their bank accounts. By the late 40s, physicians were augmenting breasts with glass balls, ground rubber, ivory, ox cartilage, Terylene wool, gutta-percha, Dicora, polyethylene chips, polyvinyl alcohol-formaldehyde polymer sponge, polymer sponge in a polyethylene sac, polyether foam sponge, polyethylene strips wound into a ball, teflon-silicone, polyester rubber, etc.

In 1950, New York doctor Jacques Maliniac tried a “flap-based” augmentation and rotated a woman’s chest wall tissue into her breast to increase volume. In the 1950s and early 1960s, approximately 50,000 women received silicone injections, but they led to dangerous granulomas and painful breast hardening.

In 1961, the first silicone breast implants were developed by Dr. Thomas Cronin and Dr. Frank Gerow, two plastic surgeons from Houston. They were made of a tear drop shaped rubber sac and filled with a thick, viscous silicone gel. They caught on in Hollywood first, because the price tag for the prosthetics was cost prohibitive. But, eventually, prices came down and they migrated back home.

Today, in most affluent areas in Texas, you can hardly stand in line at the supermarket or go watch your kids’ basketball games without being confronted by trophy topography, and it’s a little bit sad.

What happened to dancing with the ones that brung ya? Are the real things just not good enough for us anymore? And wasn’t there a revolution in the 1970s that involved women railing against sexual objectification?

Is there any greater embrace of sexual objectification than fake boobs?

In the end I guess my own gender is most to blame. Gratuitous breast images sell us material goods and anchor the marketing campaigns for some of our favorite entertainment mediums. Even as adults, middle-aged dads and graying solitary or married men, we still lead with or can be led by our loins. And the bearings of our existential compasses are too often affected by women’s breasts, real or fake.

Men are obviously pathetic for placing a premium on such things, and women are silly for caring so much about male premiums. Perhaps it’s simply our nature but, if so, it’s probably time for a little transcendence. Topographical transcendence.

It’s often said that everything is bigger in Texas and, 50 years ago, two Houston doctors developed prosthetics to make sure such was the case. But their invention was a mockery of the Lone Star quality of authenticity. And I’ll take authenticity over artificiality any day.

When you get right down to it, fake boobs are about as attractive as toupees. And I don’t know how folks are turned on by the former any more than the latter.

Logan, according to an official CBS announcement, was attacked by a group of about 200 Egyptians and “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers.” The mob, probably pro-Mubarak supporters, but never identified by CBS, had separated Logan from her camera crew.

About a week earlier, Mubarak’s army detained, handcuffed, blindfolded, interrogated, and then released Logan and some of her crew after several hours. The government ordered her expelled from the country, probably for her on-air comments about the government intimidating and harassing foreign journalists. Logan returned to Cairo shortly before Mubarak resigned. She returned to the United States the day after the assault, and spent the next four days recovering in a hospital.

The Mubarak administration at the beginning of the protests had expelled the al-Jazeera news network, and began a random campaign against all journalists, the result of the government believing that the media inflamed the call for revolution and the overthrow of Mubarak. There were about 140 cases of assault and harassment of journalists during the 18-day protest, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Ahmad Mohamad Mahmoud, an Egyptian journalist, was killed by sniper fire, probably by pro-Mubarak supporters.  Among American reporters physically assaulted were CNN’s Anderson Cooper and photojournalist Dana Smillie, who was seriously wounded by what appeared to be a dozen BB-size pellets. Journalists displayed “admirable levels of courage as they — initially as individuals and small groups, and eventually in droves — made statements and took actions that exposed them to immense personal and professional risk,” according to the CPJ.

There can be no justification for the rogue gangs of thugs who attacked Logan, dozens of journalists, and hundreds of citizens. But, from the story of reporter and citizen courage against a 30-year dictatorship, no matter how benevolent it may have appeared, there emerged another story, one not as dramatic, nor as compelling, nor as important. But it is a story, nevertheless.

Because of deadlines and a sense of having to get the story at any cost, news organizations sometimes become in-your-face inquisitors. Privacy isn’t usually something the more aggressive news organizations give to those they want on air or in print. It’s still common to see microphones stuck inches from faces of people who have suffered tragedies

But when it comes to one of their own, news organizations seem to have a different set of standards. The brutal attack upon Logan occurred February 11, but it was four days until CBS released any statement. After a brief review of the facts, CBS refused to make further comment or to respond to reporter inquiries. “Logan and her family respectfully request privacy at this time,” the network said. A four day delay to give a basic statement is inexcusable by CBS; a statement that it did not give more information about the attack in order to protect the correspondent’s privacy is hypocritical, and trumpets a double standard that the news media are somehow exempt from the reporting practices it demands of news sources.

There is another factor in this mini-story. Judith Matloff, a journalism professor at Columbia University, told the L.A. Times, “Generally, female correspondents do not come out and talk about it [sexual assaults] because they worry that they won’t get sent on assignments again.”

Paternalism in the news profession often has editors and news directors, most of whom are male, “protecting” their female reporters and correspondents. Journalists and news crews who go into dangerous situations, including riots, demonstrations, and war must be trained to deal with violence — and must be given every assistance by their organizations when they have been harassed or attacked. But, for news executives to discriminate on who to send because of the “fear” that women may be subjected to sexual assault, and for women not to report it to their bosses, is to acknowledge that they, and probably society, haven’t come far in eliminating sexism within the profession.

There is a further reality. The news media often don’t identify adults who have been raped or sexually assaulted, a belief that somehow these crimes are more personal and more traumatic than any other kind of assault. However, sexual assaults and rapes are always brutal and vicious crimes of power and control. For the news media to continue to adhere to some puritanical belief that they are protecting womanhood by not reporting names and details perpetuates the myth that rape is purely a sexual intrusion, and not the brutal attack it truly is.

In this interview, Law discusses her new article, which provides a history of radical feminist resistance to the criminalization of women who have defended themselves from gender violence. Furthermore, Law presents a prison abolitionist critique of how the mainstream women’s movement has embraced the US criminal justice system as a solution for combating violence against women.

Previously interviewed by Angola 3 News about the torture of women in US prisons, Law is now on the road with the Community and Resistance Tour.

Angola 3 News: In your essay “Sick of the Abuse,” you write that “a woman’s right to defend herself (and her children) from assault became a feminist rallying point throughout the 1970s.” You focus on the four separate stories of Yvonne Wanrow, Inez Garcia, Joan Little, and Dessie Woods. All four women were arrested for self-defense and their cases received national attention with the support of the radical women’s movement. Can you briefly explain their cases and why they were so important for the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s?

Victoria Law: Yvonne Wanrow was an American Indian mother of two living in Washington State in the 1970s. In 1972, her 11-year-old son was grabbed from his bike by William Wesler, a known child molester. He escaped and fled to the house of a family friend named Shirley Hooper, whose 7-year-old daughter had been raped by Wesler earlier that year. When Hooper called the police, they refused to arrest Wesler.

Understandably shaken, Hooper called Yvonne Wanrow and asked her to spend the night. Wanrow, who was 5 foot, 4 inches, and had recently broken her leg, brought her gun. At five in the morning, Wesler came to their house. When he refused to leave, Wanrow went to the front door to yell for help. She turned around to find Wesler, who, at 6 foot 2, was towering over her. She shot and killed him.

At her first trial, the judge instructed the jury only to consider what had happened at or immediately before the killing. This omitted (1) Wesler’s record as a sex offender; (2) Wesler’s assault on Hooper’s 7 year old; (3) His attempted assault on Yvonne’s son

Wanrow was convicted of murder and sentenced to 25 years.

However, various groups and people involved in the women’s movement and the American Indian movement had taken up her cause. They recognized that a woman had the right to defend herself and her family from assault. They held events that raised awareness, educated people, and tied her case into issues of violence against women and the systemic violence against Native people in the US. They also raised funds for her legal defense, which enabled her to have a better defense than she might have been afforded otherwise.

As a result, in 1977, the Washington State Supreme Court granted her a new trial, partially on the basis that the jury should have considered ALL relevant facts when considering self-defense. At her new trial in 1979, Wanrow pled guilty to reduced charges & received a suspended sentence, 5 years’ probation and 1 year of community service. The court decision also established that that women’s lack of access to self-defense training and to the “skills necessary to effectively repel a male assailant without resorting to the use of deadly weapons” made their circumstances different from those of men.

Two years later, in 1974, Inez Garcia shot and killed the man who had blocked her escape from rape. She was arrested and charged with 1^st degree (or premeditated) murder. Like Wanrow, her cause was taken up by the women’s movement, which organized teach-ins and fundraisers and galvanized popular support with the recognition that women had the right to defend themselves against rape.

During her first trial, the judge did not allow testimony about the rape as part of the evidence. After her conviction, the women’s movement continued to rally on her behalf and hired feminist attorney Susan Jordan to take over her defense.

Two years later, an appeals court reversed her conviction because the trial judge had instructed the jury not to consider the rape

During the re-trial, Susan Jordan challenged potential jurors about their preconceptions of rape, making the assault an integral part of the case from the beginning. Garcia was acquitted. The entire jury agreed that the rape and threat of further harm were adequate provocation for Garcia’s action.

That same year, Joan Little, a black woman and the only female prisoner in North Carolina’s Beaufort County Jail, killed Clarence Alligood, a sixty-two-year-old white male guard, after he had entered her cell, threatened her with an ice pick and forced her to perform oral sex. Little was charged with first-degree murder which, in North Carolina, carried a mandatory death sentence.

Again, there was a HUGE outpouring of support from various movements, including people and groups in the women’s liberation and Black Liberation movements as well as more mainstream groups. During her trial, Little’s defense exposed the chronic sexual abuse and harassment endured by women in the jail and prison system. Countering the prosecution’s argument that Little had enticed Alligood into her cell with promises of sex, the defense team called on women who had previously been held at the jail. They testified that Alligood had a history of sexually abusing women in his custody.

Little herself testified about Alligood’s assault.

After seventy-eight minutes of deliberation, a jury acquitted Little, establishing a precedent for killing as a justified self-defense against rape.

Dessie Woods was a Black woman in Georgia who shot and killed a man who tried to rape her and her friend while they were hitchhiking. She was sentenced to 22 years. Black nationalist women took up the case of Dessie Woods, framing it as a case of colonial violence. Radical (White) feminists also took up her cause and used it as a way to challenge white feminists to examine not only sexism and patriarchy but also racism and colonialism.

However, unlike the cases of Little, Wanrow and Garcia, the larger White feminist movement(s) did not rally to her cause.

Even though she did not have the massive outpouring of support as the other three women, the prolonged support that she did have eventually won Woods her freedom in July 1981. A lawyer from the People’s Law Center challenged the use of circumstantial evidence and the use of a special prosecutor (hired by the dead man’s family). The U.S. Court of Appeals determined that there had been insufficient evidence to convict and imprison her.

The first three cases were groundbreaking in that they established legal precedents stating that women had a right to defend themselves (and their children) from sexual assault. In the case of Inez Garcia, her lawyer Susan Jordan extended the legal interpretation of “imminent danger” beyond the immediate time period, thus laying the groundwork for battered women’s defense—that a woman who kills her abuser is acting in self-defense even if she is not under attack at that time.

A3N: What impact did activism have in these four cases?

VL: The activism and organizing around those four cases enabled the women to have better legal defenses than they would have otherwise been afforded. For example, $250,000 was raised for Joan Little’s defense. Almost $39,000 was spent on social scientists who devised an “attitude profile survey:” designed to detect patterns of (racial) prejudice. The defense used their findings to win a change of venue from conservative/racist Beaufort County to Raleigh, which was key in her acquittal. Without the money garnered by supporters, Joan Little, a poor Black woman, would never have been able to have that kind of legal support. Instead, she would have been convicted and executed.

A3N: How are things different today, in 2010?

VL: We don’t see the same outpouring of support for women arrested for self-defense today. We can look at the case of the New Jersey Four, who are four Black lesbians arrested and incarcerated for defending themselves against a homophobic attack on the street. Their case has garnered support from groups working around incarcerated women’s issues and queer issues, but it hasn’t been taken up as widely as, say, the case of Joan Little or even Dessie Woods. Women who are incarcerated for defending themselves against partner violence receive even less public attention and support.

A3N: Shifting our focus to the issue of domestic violence, you write that the early women’s shelters formed by the radical women’s movement in the 1970s “utilized the self-help methods, egalitarian philosophies, and collective structures that had developed within the women’s liberation movement, striving to be democratic alternatives in which women had the space to safely communicate, share experiences, examine the root causes of the violence against them, and begin to articulate a response. However, these efforts received nowhere near the amount of attention, publicity, and support that the women’s movement paid to Wanrow, Garcia, Little, and Woods.”

Why do you think these projects, as well as court cases where women defended themselves from intimates, did not receive the attention they deserved?

VL: Then (and now), people saw battering as a “personal” issue and were reluctant to get involved. Some felt that marriage (or partnership) somehow condoned abuse. Others felt that this was not an issue that a movement could be built on. Perhaps it was also recognized that the issue could divide a movement. After all, when reading histories of revolutionary groups during the 1960s and 1970s, we see that abuse and misogyny often went unaddressed.

A3N: What did these radical activists identify as the “root causes” of violence against women were? What is your personal opinion regarding these root causes?

VL: Radical activists identified society’s misogyny and patriarchy as root causes of violence against women. They pointed out that women are most often the ones who are attacked and abused because they are often the ones with less power (both physically and in terms of resources).

I strongly agree with this analysis and feel that only when we radically transform societal attitudes around gender and power will we be able to have a world without gendered violence.

A3N: The number of battered women’s shelters grew (by 1982, there were an estimated 300-700 shelters nationally), but you write that “the increased interest in the issue by those who did not identify with the women’s liberation movement resulted in a watering down of the radical feminist analyses that led to the first refuges for battered women. These emerging institutions emphasized providing services without analyzing the political context in which abuse occurred. There was a shift from calling for broad social transformation to focusing on individual problems and demanding greater state intervention.”

How do you think this watering down and shift towards greater state intervention has since played out in later decades, leading up to today?

VL: Today abuse is treated as an individual pathology rather than a broader social issue rooted in centuries of patriarchy and misogyny. Viewing abuse as an individual problem has meant that the solution becomes intervening in, and punishing, individual abusers without looking at the overall conditions that allow abuse to go unchallenged and also allows the state to begin to co-opt concerns about gendered violence.

For example, 29 states have some form of mandatory arrest policy in a DV call. There is also the possibility of dual arrests (in which both parties are arrested). In addition, many states now have “no-drop prosecution” in which the District Attorney subpoenas the battered spouse to testify with threats of prosecution if she recants or refuses.

The shift towards greater state intervention has also resulted in resources such as battered women’s shelters mirroring some of these same abusive practices (such as isolating the survivor). It also ignores ways in which the state inflicts violence upon women. I would greatly recommend the INCITE! anthology, entitled The Color of Violence, which explores various aspects of violence against women.

A3N: If you were dialoguing with those sectors of today’s anti-violence movement that embrace the criminalization approach, what are the key points you would make in arguing that prisons are not the answer? What do you think is the best way to reduce and prevent violence against women both inside and outside prisons?

VL: The threat of imprisonment does not deter abuse; it simply drives it further underground. Remember that there are many forms of abuse and violence and not all are illegal. It also sets up a false dichotomy in which the survivor has to choose between personal safety and criminalizing/imprisoning a loved one.

Arrest/imprisonment does not reduce, let alone prevent, violence. Building structures and networks to address the lack of options and resources available to women is more effective. Challenging patriarchy and male supremacy is a much more effective solution (although not one that funders and the state want to see).

A3N: Can you please tell us about recent cases of women who are facing charges or have been wrongly convicted for defending themselves?

VL: There’s the case of the New Jersey Four, whom I mentioned above.

There’s also Sara Kruzan, a 31-year-old woman incarcerated at the California Institution for Women. When Sara was 11, she met a 31-year-old man named G.G. who molested her and began grooming her to become a prostitute. By the age 13, she began working as a child prostitute for G.G. and was repeatedly molested by him. At age 16, Sara was convicted of killing him. She was sentenced to prison for the rest of her life despite her background and a finding by the California Youth Authority that she was amendable to treatment offered in the juvenile system.

There’s been a letter-writing campaign to the governor urging clemency. Sara is also up for resentencing and needs letters of support. The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) are working on publicizing and garnering support for her case. However, we’re not seeing a fraction of the support from women’s or other non-prison groups that the cases of Wanrow, Garcia and Little received in the 1970s even though you would think that her story would provoke widespread outrage and calls for release.

I recently received an e-mail from CCWP about Mary Shields, a domestic violence survivor incarcerated for nineteen years on a seven-to-life sentence for attempted murder. This past September, Mary was found suitable for release by the Board of Parole Hearings. In 2006, the Parole Board had also found Mary “suitable for release” but rescinded its decision after Governor Schwarzenegger recommended against release. This time around, the governor has until January (when his term will be up) to either let the Board’s decision stand or recommend that it be reversed and so CCWP is calling for people to send letters supporting Mary’s release.

A3N: Anything else to add?

VL: I want to remind readers that if we’re not coming up with solutions to gender violence, then the fall-back becomes relying on prisons and policing to keep women (and other vulnerable people) safe. It is also imperative to support women incarcerated for killing their abusers as well as to support battered women on the outside and to remember that abuse isolates people.

We should be working to end violence against women without strengthening government control over women’s lives or promoting incarceration as a solution to social problems.

It is this last point that the authors of Reclaiming the F Word use as a beginning point for their recently published book. Furthermore, write authors Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune, neither has feminism. Indeed, as long as the issues denigrating women and forcing them to accept less than what they are capable of exist, then feminism will exist. Today’s feminism does not look like the mass movement of the 1970s, but is arguably more integrated into women’s daily lives. It also does not always call itself feminism.

It was that movement of the 1970s–a movement known historically as second-wave feminism–that made the phrase “the personal is the political” popular. The essence of this statement is that what we do in our private daily lives is as political as the overtly political actions we take on the public stage. One effects the other and to pretend otherwise is not only hypocrisy but dishonest. Overall, the entrance of this concept into the leftist and countercultural movements of the time did create a greater consciousness regarding the relationship between the private and the public personas we all have. Simultaneously, it also created a dynamic where a personal mistake could often become a greater issue than one’s positive political acts, consequently destroying whatever potential those political acts may have had. Perhaps the most obvious example of this for many liberals in the United States was the Clinton-Lewinsky affair. Those liberals who truly appreciated Clinton’s political acts and policies were forced to watch the man’s personal mistakes being used as a justification by those who hated the man and his policies to discredit both. The irony is that Clinton’s destroyers had absolutely no use for feminism, but were able to manipulate “the personal is political” dictum into one more element of a hypocritical puritanical attack on everything he stood for.

Second wave feminism–or women’s liberation as it was called back then–assumed that the liberation of women would occur within the wave of universal liberation that many believed was near in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As we know, that struggle for universal liberation ultimately slipped into the particularities and occasional pettiness of identity politics. Identity politics is a politics that, among other things, removes the question of class struggle from the equation and replaces it with a combination of victimhood and special privilege designed to “make up” for previous wrongs. Of course, many of these wrongs cannot be compensated for because they are based on one’s economic relationship to the masters of capital, not to the relationships between different elements of those subordinate to the masters. Reclaiming the F Word walks a fine line between these two opposing understandings. While generally understanding that women’s rights can only be obtained through the struggle for universal human rights, the authors tend to work within the framework of identity politics when it comes to specifics. This approach is no more evident than it is in their failure to discuss the world’s greatest violator of human rights–imperial war. The omission of this discussion clearly weakens the book, especially at a time when both Washington and London have used women’s rights to justify their wars against Muslim nations.

Redfern and Aune are British and therefore write mostly about Britain. They discuss current efforts to end violence against women, for equal pay and for sexual and reproductive freedom and choice. While doing this, they comment on the nature of British society in the 2000s. It is a society that is considerably more ethnically and religiously diverse, with a large population of Muslim and other non-Christian women. This fact creates a new way of looking at conventional women’s issues. The need for cultural sensitivity is a challenge to conventional western feminists who may not understand the reasons a woman might wear a burqa or chador or accept the roles proscribed by non-Western cultures. Yet, oftentimes women working with these women find that the common bond of womanhood is enough and it is from that point that they begin their work.

A discussion in the book that I found particularly intriguing revolved around the relationship between feminism and religion. No religion is held out for special scorn or praise and all of the monotheistic ones (which form the bulk of believers in the West) are looked at honestly. Attempts by feminists who consider themselves believers to transform their churches are discussed as are those women who want nothing to do with religion, considering such attempts to be pointless in the face of those religions’ fundamental patriarchal belief systems.

The overriding theme of Reclaiming the F Word is that women’s rights are human rights. From the right to control one’s own body to the right to an education and healthcare, Redfern and Aune do a good job of elucidating the current approach modern-day feminists are taking in the struggles for these things. If one wants to read an honest discussion of where modern day western feminism stands, this book is a good place to begin. Accessible and informative, it is a brief survey of many of the issues faced by women in the early part of the 21st century and the attempts by many to address them.

Women have been enthusiastic activists since this country’s earliest days. They’ve become political prisoners after joining movements which have been anti-capitalist—as labor organizers, socialists and anarchists, running afoul of pro-business/ corporate/government authorities; anti-patriarchal—critics of a male-dominated/militarist society; anti-white supremacy—black civil rights activists and revolutionaries, or Native-American or Puerto Rican nationalists; or anti-imperialist/anti-war—pacifists or protesters of American empire, from WWI to Viet Nam, to Iraq/Afghanistan.

A number of these “unnatural” female activists have been in the news, at least in the “alternative” news, this summer. They are: Lolita Lebron, Marilyn Buck, Lynne Stewart, and Aafia Siddiqui. The first two women have recently died, and the last two have been re-sentenced (Stewart), or are awaiting sentence (Siddiqui). They represent different time periods and eras of American dissent and repression.

Lolita Lebron and Marilyn Buck were anti-white supremacy/anti-imperialist activists from the 1950s-80s. Lolita Lebron, who was a Puerto Rican nationalist, died on August 1st at the age of 90. From the 60s through the 80s, in a serious, comprehensive and all-encompassing attempt at revolution, women participated in groups that favored radical action—even armed resistance—against what they saw as an oppressive American state. Puerto Ricans have been fighting US control since the American takeover in 1898. An uprising in the 1950s was followed by martial law, and Puerto Rican Independistas took the struggle to America. In March of 1954 Lolita Lebron wanted to dramatically tell the world that Puerto Rico was “a U.S. colony.” Shouting “Viva Puerto Rican libre!” she led a small group which opened fire in the House of Representatives, firing 30 shots and wounding five Congressmen. She said she had not intended to kill anyone. But she was not sorry for the “act of freedom for my country.”² Lebron got life in prison, but was pardoned by President Carter in 1979 and returned to Puerto Rico, where she continued in the struggle versus US colonialism. She was arrested at age 81 for protesting the American bombing range at Vieques. Fellow women Puerto Rican nationalists have also received harsh jail sentences. After conviction of involvement in a movement-led Connecticut robbery in 1983, Alejandrina Torres was raped in prison and then placed in solitary at Lexington prison in Kentucky.³

Dovetailing with Lebron’s jail time, was that of a woman who also spent a very long time in prison: Marilyn Buck. She died of cancer, an illness very much exacerbated by her incarceration, at age 62 just recently, right after her she finally secured release. Marilyn Buck was an activist in the intense politically-charged atmosphere of the 60s and 70s, part of the huge movement challenging the American system: the capitalist state and white supremacy. Such activists were using words and ideas that, according to historian Dan Berger, “the state deemed too powerful to let slide as so much free speech.”⁴ The full force of the state came down on groups like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground, advocates of armed struggle against what they saw as a racist colonial power. Marilyn Buck protested against the Viet Nam war, racism, brought “women’s lib” to the SDS, was pro-Palestinian, anti-Shah (of Iran) and pro-Native-American, Mexican-American, and Black Panther.⁵

In 1973 Buck was arrested for securing two boxes of bullets for, and being associated with, the Black Panthers. She got 10 years. After three parole attempts were rejected she escaped in 1977. In 1985 she was recaptured, accused of helping prisoner Assata Shakur escape, and for being part of the Weather Underground’s “Resistance Conspiracy”—which purportedly planned several governmental bombings in the East. For that, she got 80 years in a California prison, where she wrote prize-winning poetry and analytic articles on the psychology of female repression. She argued that women political prisoners have bad experiences unique to them since women “already endure both social and cultural oppression and repression from childhood on … women are vulnerable to even deeper humiliation and degradation.”⁶ Considered a “terrorist,” she was put in solitary and held incommunicado after 9/11. In a sentiment with which Lebron would have agreed, Buck said she did not want to be a forgotten woman prisoner but a “comrade in an ongoing struggle versus imperialism, oppression and exploitation.”⁷

Lynne Stewart and Aafia Siddiqui, who were also arguably victims of white supremacy and imperialism, have both felt the enormous consequences of the anti-“terrorist”/anti-Muslim era, beginning with the 9/11 bombings. Stewart’s case actually pre-dates the 2001 bombings in the US—although she was convicted under a Patriot Act that some argue should not have been applied to her by Attorney General Ashcroft; while Siddiqui was on a watchlist created by that same AG. The “war on terror” hysteria has resulted in rapid and profound changes for political and civil rights in this country. One immediate occurrence has been a concentration of power in the executive, making the president the “Decider” in matters of war, peace and the law. Bush, and now Obama have used the law in a politicized Justice Department, enforcing laws like the Patriot Act, which has led to the arrest of thousands of innocent people without charges or legal representation, and has also been used to punish lawyers who represent the accused “terrorists.” Lawyer Lynne Stewart was recently re-sentenced after her Patriot Act conviction.

In the wake of the terror hysteria, 69-year-old Stewart became a political prisoner in January, for trying to defend her client, Sheikh Abdel Rahman, convicted for a 1996 New York City terror plot. Technically, she was charged for providing material support, through a press conference, to her client’s intended “terrorist conspiracy.” It’s questionable that she should have been tried under a Patriot Act passed in 2001. Her surveillance started in 2000, and the provision regarding “special administration measures” severely limiting the ability of the accused to communicate with the outside world, probably shouldn’t apply to lawyer-client communication. Disbarred, disgraced, and sentenced to 28 months, in spite of having breast cancer, colleagues say she was really jailed for being a long-time zealous advocate for Black Panthers and Weather Underground “bombers.” Stewart thinks she was being made an example to deter other lawyers, male or female, from defending “controversial figures and causes.”⁸

In her re-sentencing trial of July 15th, this is even more apparent. As this country accepts greater infringements on civil liberties, lawyers, especially those with “progressive” political beliefs⁹ are among the first to feel the effects. Stewart’s sentence was increased nearly five times, to 10 years. Her judge, John Koeltl, on re-considering her sentence, said she lied in court, abused her position as lawyer, and showed “no remorse.” Stewart talked about how prison had “diminished” her… she was “losing pieces” of her personality.¹⁰ As she has also said: “The police state has now arrived.”¹¹

“Police state” may sound extreme, but maybe not. Political prisoner Laura Whitehorn has argued that torture is not new in the US, even of women, but now it is an “integral part of U.S. imperialism, with white supremacy as a fundamental element”—torture as a “weapon of domination.”¹² So when Pakistani-born neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, 37, who studied and worked in America for years, was convicted of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents, it’s not surprising that her bizarre and murky story includes her torture at the hands of her American captors. Siddiqui, after a strange, unsettling trial in New York City in January, was found guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced, after a recent postponement, on September 23rd. Watched in the early 2000s because of her Muslim activism, she disappeared in Pakistan in 2003, only to re-appear in Afghanistan in 2008, disoriented and carrying plans to blow up New York buildings.¹³

Many believe she was kidnapped by the Americans in 2003, with her three children; raped, tortured, with one of her children dying, one missing, and one now with her sister. British journalist Yvonne Ridley has written that Siddiqui and other women have been, and are, at Bagram and other US torture prisons. There is very shaky evidence of her attack on soldiers with an M4 assault rifle that was somehow left unattended. But she was the only one who got shot, grievously, in the stomach. “Lady al Qaeda” (so-named by the NY Daily News ) was convicted in January. Her mind seemed to wander. She was forced by the judge to come to the court every day, which meant undergoing daily strip searches, just continuing her horrors. Although human rights groups say she is no extremist, in her testimony, Siddiqui insists she was held in a secret prison by the Americans.¹⁴ Siddiqui was supposedly tried for assault, not terrorism, but the government lawyers constantly told the jury she was a terrorist. Solid evidence was never presented that she was an assaulter or a terrorist. During her trial, witnesses described Siddiqui as a “completely broken human being.”¹⁵

We can celebrate woman’s suffrage and work for an ERA, but we have to remember the underside, the dark side, of women and politics in this country. For women who are politicals, for Lebron and Buck, for Stewart and Siddiqui, life in jail can be horrible in ways peculiar to women. Historian Dylan Rodriguez writes of a “gendered degradation” for political women in prison, through “profound, discrete acts of violent male authority.”¹⁶ Women, traditionally supposed to be docile and relatively non-political wives and mothers, have to suffer for not only being anti-imperialist or anti-white supremacist, but for being “unnatural females.”

1. See James Ridgeway’s site.
2. Democracynow.com, August 2, 2010.
3. See Matt Meyer, ed., Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners, 2008, 15; Joy James, ed., Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, 2007, 166.
4. In Meyer, “The Real Dragon,” 4.
5. Meyer, 771-772.
6. James, 238.
7. Meyer, 772.
8. Meyer, 680, 801; Marjorie Cohn, Commondreams.com, November 25, 2009.
9. Meyer, 682.
10. Democracynow.com, July 16, 2010.
11. Stewart, “Afterword,” 753, in Meyer.
12. James, 273-274.
13. Cageprisoners.com, February 1, 2010; Draafia.org, December 16, 2008.
14. Petra Bartosiewicz, Time, January 8, 2010.
15. Siddiqui representative Tina Foster in Chris Hedges, “The Terror-Industrial Complex,” truthdig.com, February 8, 2010.
16. Rodriguez, Forced Passage: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime, 2006, 195-195.

In late July, it issued a new report titled, “Our Bodies Are Still Trembling: Haitian Women’s Fight Against Rape,” a problem Amnesty International (AI) highlighted in March saying:

“Sexual violence is widely present in the camps where some of Haiti’s most vulnerable live. It was already a major concern (pre-quake), but the situation in which displaced people are living exposes women and girls to even greater risks,” the issue IJDH examined in its report, explaining that Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps “exacerbated the already grave problem of sexual violence,” two US lawyer delegations and a women’s health specialist investigating the problem first hand in May and June, interviewing over 50 rape or attempted rape survivors.

IJDH didn’t quantify the incidence, but learned that “rapes in the camps are dramatically underreported,” women and girls in them extremely vulnerable, dozens of documented cases now known, suggesting the tip of a huge iceberg, worse for lack of security or concern by police, UN Blue Helmets, or Haiti’s pro-business, anti-populist government.

“Rape survivors… told interviewers that reporting rape to the police is an exercise in futility, since they could not identify their assailant or assailants,” one survivor saying police told her the problem was President Rene Preval’s, not theirs, a shocking indifference to a brutal crime — for most women and girls, their worst ever experience, one they’ll never forget or get over.

Dismal camp conditions “render women and girls particularly vulnerable….” Overcrowding and inadequate shelter make it easy for predators to take advantage, especially late at night when people are sleeping. Survivors noted the lack of lighting;  privacy even to bathe; tents; and police presence or concern.

When rape crimes aren’t investigated or prosecuted, violence is implicitly condoned, making illegal acts normal and justice denied. Most victims are girls under 18 – impoverished, displaced and denied redress under the 2000 UN Resolution 1325 and UN Guiding Principles on International Displacement, requiring a gender-based perspective to ensure their human rights, including preventive measures against rape and other violent acts.

According to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Gen Rec. No. 19, Violence Against Women (1992), gender-based violence (GBV): 

includes violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty.

Structural inequalities pre and post-quake left Haitians vulnerable, especially women and children — surrounded by rubble, homeless with inadequate food, clean water, sanitation, medical care, and protection, leaving them vulnerable to predators.

Most traumatizing is lost loved ones and friends, a support network when most needed, exacerbated by extreme deprivation, creating a dangerous GBV environment, rape and other sexual violence its most prominent feature, women and young girls victimized.

Despite no official figures, the evidence is overwhelming. Post-quake, rape escalated dramatically, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) July 19 Preliminary Report on Rape tracked 230 cases in 15 of the hundreds of Port-au-Prince camps. A University of Michigan March survey found 3% of women and girls sexually assaulted since January, half under 18. Doctors Without Borders reported treating 68 rape victims at one Port-au-Prince facility in April. Haitian authorities downplay it, belying documented evidence. The main issues are overcrowding, lack of shelter and security, AI saying: “inadequate protection (and) lack of measures to prevent and respond adequately to the threat of sexual violence is contributing to the humanitarian crisis.”

Even with a security presence, Haitians say it’s “not effective largely because of their lack of coordination and failure to engage in partnerships with neighborhood associations and community,” on their own to address what authorities won’t. Women’s organizations have been especially active, but it’s not enough without state and UN aid, their neoliberal priorities other-directed, ignoring vital needs, including security.

Rape Incidence in Displacement Camps

Victims ranged in age from five to 60, suggesting a comparable profile throughout the camps, given “the strikingly similar patterns among the testimonies” gotten.  Most women reported being raped by two or more unknown assailants, most armed with guns, knives or other weapons.

Though unable to identify them, women believe they’re gang members or prison escapees, their motive rape, at times robbery or other crimes as well, mostly committed from 9:00PM-3:00AM, occasionally during the day. Women reported being attacked in IDP camp tents, under tarps, in latrines, and on nearby streets. One woman was forcibly taken to a house at an unknown location, then gagged and gang raped by an unknown number of assailants for two or three days, repeatedly abused and beaten until she escaped.

Some survivors mentioned widespread transactional sex for food aid cards. When coerced, it’s rape, a topic beyond IJDH’s investigation. 

A March delegation of psychiatrists and trauma victim specialists conducted a psychological evaluation, finding 95.7% of victims suffering from PTSD, including extreme fear, nightmares, suicidal tendencies and depression. Another 53.6% experienced depression alone. Nearly everyone complained of physical discomfort, including stomach pain, headaches, difficulty walking, and vaginal infection and bleeding. At least one woman became pregnant.

Besides being raped, women were beaten, stabbed, and injured in other ways. Their scars, bruises, and other physical signs bore witness to their ordeal. Most hadn’t seen a doctor or other medical professional, for some not knowing about free services, for others fearing retaliation, humiliation and stigma. “When victims did reach out, they were often shunned or ignored.”

Those getting treated reported quality and type care varied depending on the facility and available supplies. Some offered no HIV prophylaxis or emergency contraception. Waits were excessively long, doctors often not seen. In addition, little privacy and few female health providers were available. Several victims relied on traditional remedies, including special teas and baths.

With one exception, women reporting rape crimes to police were ignored or mocked, one victim saying “only the rich get the attention of the police.” For Haiti’s poor, they’re more enemy than ally, and that’s why most Haitians fear and shun them.

Except during Aristide’s presidency, government response has been hostile. Haiti’s long history is infamous for targeting anyone supporting democracy and human rights, women especially vulnerable, including being subjected to gender-based violence, rape its most prominent feature.

After the 2004 coup, AI said it again “became a political weapon by armed insurgents to instill fear and to punish women believed to have supported the democratic government.”

A 2006 Athena R. Kolbe/Royce A. Hutson Lancet-published study titled, “Human Rights Abuse and Other Criminal Violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti” concluded that 35,000 women were raped from March 2004-December 2006 in Haiti’s capital alone, almost 12% of the perpetrators identified as right-wing political supporters.

More recently, authorities took modest steps to address the problem, including adopting the 2006-2011 National Plan to Combat Violence Against Women, its objective being a mechanism to collect data, prevent violence, and other measures.

Although progress was made, inadequate resources nor serious concern prevented real change, Haitian women and girls more vulnerable than ever under post-quake conditions, exacerbated by a dismissive, pro-business government, rarely ever deploying police inside camps for protection, despite a March 2010 MINUSTAH Human Rights Section “IDP Camp Joint Security Assessment Report,” recommending an “IDP Camp Strategic Policing Plan,” increasing patrols, especially at night.

Few female officers is another concern, women generally reluctant to report rape crimes to men, notably when they’re mocked, treated dismissively, and at times blamed, accused of promiscuity or involvement in domestic violence. As a result, authorities downplay the issue, allocate few resources, and help the rich, not vulnerable Haitians out of luck and on their own, rapists free to seek other victims or the same ones again.

Pre-quake, two women’s advocacy organizations took on the issue: Dwa Fanm in New York and ENFOFANM in Port-au-Prince, demanding justice for Haitian rape victims. In late May, the Women’s Ministry, Ministere a la Condition Feminine et aux Droits des Femmes (MCFDF), launched a national “End rape in Temporary Settlements!” campaign, encouraging women to come forward and report them to police.

UNICEF and UNFPA (the UN Population Fund) coordinate a Gender-Based Violence Sub-Cluster, addressing the issue during national emergencies like earthquakes, but, in fact, delivering little aid according to victims. Six months post-quake, “the Sub-Cluster still has not effectively implemented” measures it’s mandated to undertake… “in large part, (it’s) failed to include the voices of poor women living in the camps in planning and leadership roles,” or helping victims.

“Haiti’s history and the deep fissures within Haitian society between the poor majority and more affluent, educated classes, require attention” so far not provided. In addition, UN officials, like Haiti’s police and government, downplay the problem, shirking their responsibility for camp security, leaving it up to grassroots groups like KOFAVIV and others to act in their stead as best they can with limited staff and resources.

Legal Issues

Article 19 of Haiti’s 1989 Constitution obligates the State:

“to guarantee the right to life, health, and respect of the human person for all citizens without distinction, in conformity with the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man,” including protection against rape and other forms of violence, written in law but enforced only for the rich.

Haiti is also party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women’s Convention), mandating domestic law abide by its provisions. In 2005, Executive Decree No. 60 introduced Haitian Penal Code changes, including the classification of rape and penalties, increasing them to 10 years, 15 if victims are under age 16, and life in prison for gang rape, reasserting a previous provision.

Yet legal and enforcement gaps remain because of judicial system corruption and indifference, resulting in lighter sentences when imposed. Most often, however, rapes aren’t reported or prosecuted, authorities doing little to address them, Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital not issuing medical certificates verifying them, calling them a “non-essential service.”

Yet under Haiti’s Constitution and international law, authorities are required to address GBV, “prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sex, protecting the right to bodily integrity, and guaranteeing the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Besides the Women’s Convention, Haiti is obligated under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children’s Convention).

As an OAS member, it must also enforce provisions of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women  (the Belem do Para Convention) as well as the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). They’re automatically Haitian law under the Constitution’s Article 19.

Article 1 of the Woman’s Convention defines gender-based violence to be “directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately” – including physical, mental, or sexual harm or suffering; threats of such acts, or coercion.

Gender-based violence also denies women their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, guaranteed under Haitian and international law. The 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women inspired the OAS Belem do Para Convention to affirm “that violence against (them) constitutes a violation of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and impairs or nullifies the observance, enjoyment and exercise of such rights and freedoms.”

Other international standards and UN Resolutions address the same issues, all UN members obligated to enforce them, including gender-based violence against women and girls. The laws are clear, standards high, yet Haiti’s government doesn’t enforce them for its poor, only the rich. Failing to do so “sends a message of impunity — that such attacks are justified or, at a minimum, will go unpunished.”

Enforcing international law falls mostly on States. However, UN members and international organizations share responsibility, especially when local efforts can’t adequately do so in emergencies like earthquakes.

In recent years, the international community established important principles to maximize foreign aid effectiveness, including for gender-based issues. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), recognized under customary international law, specifically identify gender equality and empowerment as a key goal, its operational framework prioritizing combating violence against women and girls, especially for the poor, and in conflict and post-conflict situations.

The OECD developed Guiding Principles for Aid Effectiveness, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, endorsing global agreements and conventions addressing them.

A Final Comment

Despite Haiti’s obligations under international law and its Constitution, authorities have fallen far short, failing to confront issues as vital as gender-based violence, turning a blind eye to a pressing problem, leaving poor women and girls vulnerable to the worst kind of abuse, doing little to address or halt it, and virtually nothing for victims or survivors, often blaming them, not their violators.

America, UN member states, and the world body are more a problem than a solution, Haitian women and girls on their own and out of luck, especially under post-quake conditions when needs are greatest, including security against predatory rapists, what the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Rashida Manjoo, addressed, saying:

“If we are to secure women’s rights and their freedom from violence, it is imperative that we adopt an integrated human rights perspective that stresses the equal importance of civil and political rights and economic and social rights. Unless women can develop their capabilities and achieve economic independence, the human rights they are promised will not be realized,” especially in Haiti, given its violence-plagued history.

Aisha was attacked by the Taliban last year, the same time that thousands of foreign troops were running around the country under the guise of liberating it. Time is repeating the inexcusable and now redundant mantra used by the Department of Defense and by just about every neocon politician: We’re in Afghanistan to save the women. Here’s the problem: as US troops remain in the country and have dominated it for the past 10 years, violence against women in Afghanistan has been increasing – not decreasing. The actions of the Taliban have been reprehensible and the farthest thing from Islamic doctrine; however, Time magazine and Katie Couric (who gave a humiliating endorsement of the cover and succeeding article) seem intent on fueling the fire of Islamophobia using such images.

The media incessantly teaches us that Muslims – particularly the male gender – are cruel and behave scathingly towards females. In the case of the Taliban this is the truth, and it’s an insult to Islam that such vile characters claim adherence to it. However, equally insulting is the notion of the US being in Afghanistan to protect the women from the Taliban, which was created and funded by the United States during the Cold War against the now-defunct Soviet Union. Those absurd enough to propagate that the US is out to liberate Muslim women seem at a loss to explain why the US is not currently sending F-16′s into Saudi Arabia to free its women from the chains of oppression, and from the threat of honor killings and child marriages. Then again, the United States has no qualms about supporting Saudi Arabia with billions of dollars in military sales and various “aid” packages each year – in addition to whiskey and other unmentionables – in order to maintain the status quo that currently operates the Middle East for American interests.

The same misogynistic warlords and drug lords responsible for mass murder in Afghanistan are now running the government, thanks to the US support they enjoy. Perhaps the only difference now is found in the suits they wear and the masks of so-called democracy. There are currently three major parties at play in determining the fate of women in the country: the US-installed government, the Taliban-influenced insurgency, and the US itself. Here’s a wild thought: at those top secret meetings between these three altruistic set of agendas, the last thing they concern themselves with is whether or not little Fatima or Aisha is allowed to go to school without acid being thrown on her face. Instead, the rights of women becomes a breaking point only when the Afghan government and US make undignified concessions to the insurgency regarding women’s rights, in order to maintain a cease-fire with the insurgents or to obtain more political leverage.

The United States shows such grave concern for the plight of Afghan women that they continue to ensure support for Hamid Karzai, even deeming the latest elections “legitimate” despite the apparent fraud and voter intimidation that keeps him in power. In addition to open negotiations and concessions with the Taliban, Karzai is also gaining concessions from Hezb-i-Islami (Islamic Party) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatya – a faction whose attitude towards women rivals that of the Taliban in cruelty and oppression. There is another myth being promoted by the Afghan and US policy makers that some form of moderate Taliban exists; in reality, it is the same group of terrorists responsible for making life an utter hell for millions of Afghan women, but with more power and money.

The numbers sold to the media paint an upbeat picture of the state of Afghan women. In reality, these statistics are a cruel joke and do nothing to improve the social standing of women. Ten years and 300 billion dollars later, the United States has done little to empower females in the war-torn country. In the Uruzgan province there are officially 220 schools, but only 21 of them function. According to researcher Rachel Reid in Kabul for Human Rights Watch, “only four per cent of secondary school age girls reach grade 10.” Instead of bringing democracy and social equality to Afghanistan, the US helped turn it into the world’s largest opium producer, at 93% of the world’s opium produced. That is hardly shocking when we consider that Hamid Karzai’s brother is the country’s biggest drug dealer. While the warlords are profiting from the neocolonialism brought forth by the occupation, the most recent United Nations Human Development Index ranked Afghanistan 181 out of 182 countries. Around twenty million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. For many mothers in impoverished Afghanistan, the situation has led them to consider selling their children due to their inability to feed them.

Only in Afghanistan can child rapists and war criminals be allowed to enter negotiations with a so-called democratic government, and to top that – with US support. Take the rise of Mohammed Mohaqiq into political power for example. In 2001 and 2002, Hezb-e Wahdat began a systematic targeting of Pashtuns in Afghanistan due to their ethnic ties to the Taliban. As a result, whole villages of civilians were attacked and young girls were abducted on their way to school by Mohaqiq’s armed thugs. In 2002, Mohaqiq landed himself a position as the Vice-Minister of Planning in the new and “democratic” Afghan government. In 2007 he masterminded the Afghan amnesty law which granted total protection and forgiveness to Taliban warlords. The law was not passed in 2007, but during the 2009 Afghan elections – an event which history will forever paint as the paragon of the corrupted – Mohaqiq threw his support behind Karzai who promised him a new position in the new government. Interestingly enough, Karzai would also quietly place in effect the Afghan amnesty law in 2010, subsequently forever immunizing Mohaqiq and his criminal counterpart for their crimes against women.

The “let’s save Afghan women” rhetoric looks terribly hypocritical, considering that the US and NATO stood by idly as Karzai and the warlords mounted the biggest voter fraud scheme in modern history. The Time article ponders the fate of Afghan women once the US stops sending down packages of humanitarian aid on them in the form of drone attacks on civilian populations and attacking wedding parties, among other dangerous targets. However, in defense of the US army, once you legitimize the Taliban and even enter secret negotiations with them, they aren’t really your enemy anymore – so why not bomb the civilians to death? In Afghanistan, the very presence of a foreign army has brought with it indiscriminate bombings by the “forces of freedom,” massacres of civilians by US troops, and wide-spread public corruption by US-installed stooges.

It is an unforgivable sin by the US media and policy-makers to continue shamelessly claiming they are in Afghanistan to liberate its female population.

Perhaps it makes sense for the US and Taliban to enter into agreements, considering that they both have a knack for killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Instead of asking what happens if we stay in Afghanistan, Time is jumping on the pro-war, right-wing media juggernaut and throwing its weight behind the continued destruction of Afghanistan ‘s social and civil infrastructure. The US owes it to Afghanistan ‘s women to at least cease to insult them by claiming that making their living conditions more reprehensible is somehow “liberating” them. These women and young girls have been through enough. Let’s not make them the poster children for more airstrikes on civilian neighborhoods.

Deion Harris’ story is both typical and extraordinary. It is an extraordinary example of the corruption of the criminal justice system in the US. It stands out and attracts attention because of some of its most unusually dramatic aspects. Deion is probably the only woman recently convicted for a murder she did not commit because the jury thought she was a witch. It is extraordinary that 7 years after her imprisonment Deion met and then married an upper middle class man who fell in love with her and became determined to free her and expose the injustice committed against her. Had this meeting not occurred Deion, like most other victims of the justice system falsely convicted of murder, would have died in prison (as she still may): voiceless, unknown, unappreciated, unloved.

What makes this story typically American is that Deion, a poor white girl from rural America with a high school education, was falsely imprisoned for murder although the evidence indicates she was guilty only of trying to save her own life. What makes it typical of red state America (and California) is that although Deion had not committed a murder she was held responsible for murder under the archaic and unjust “felony-murder rule.” What makes it typical of rural America is that the scapegoat was a poor white woman–“white trash.” Like increasing numbers of the non-rich in America Deion is a dispensable person in the eyes of the system. It is all too typical that Deion was accorded inadequate counsel for a capital crime–a lawyer who did not call to testify her strongest witnesses and who failed even to make a closing argument on her behalf. What makes it typical of rural red state America is that Deion was a very pretty girl-next-door type who was dominated as well as repeatedly raped and abused by males from the time she was a child until she was a young woman who got caught in the criminal justice system and then was abused again. This time by powerful white men who decided her fate—local attorneys who rallied to the support of her boyfriend, the murderer, one of the boys, while scapegoating Deion and pinning the rap for the murder upon her.

The attorney for the state General Gus Radford had charged Deion, and the other tag-along on the day of the murder, Stacy Ramsey, with felony-murder. Felony murder is a common law provision (outlawed in most states)which holds that the defendants may be charged and convicted of a murder if they are guilty of the felony that led to the murder.(In one famous case a woman was convicted of felony murder, although she was sitting in police car when the murder was committed by her partner.) Evidently Radford was afraid that persuading a jury that Deion had committed a felony might not be enough to persuade the jury to bring back a conviction for a capital crime, so he decided to go an extra mile and convince the jury that Deion was the instigator of the murder. Part of his “proof” that Deion was involved in the murder, besides being a witch, was the evidence that she had cooperated with the murderer in the cover-up, the disposal of the evidence. Deion did not deny she cooperated with Walter; she stated that she did so only because she feared that had she not cooperated, Walter would have killed her .

I first became aware of Teresa Deion Harris when watching an episode on TV in March 2010 of Prison Wives (Investigative Discovery TV), a series about women and men who married persons serving long prison sentences, often life terms. The show focused on the relationship of Deion Harris and the man who married her six years ago, retired airline pilot Captain Tim McDonald. Mr McDonald is the only man in America who is married to a woman prisoner he met and wed after her imprisonment although the analogous situation is not uncommon among women. McDonald met Deion in 2000 while doing prison research which he became involved in through a string of unusual circumstances At the time he was in his mid-50s and going through a mid-life crisis and divorce after 30 years of marriage. In 2003 McDonald married Deion (who is now 39) although he realized he might never be able to consummate the marriage–that his wife might spend the rest of her days, and his, in prison. Although the show did not discuss the trial at all, I found myself wondering: Why is this articulate and sensitive woman serving a life sentence for murder?

I wrote to Tim McDonald expressing my suspicion that Deion did not get a fair trial and wondering if she had appealed. Evidently both state and federal appeals had failed–Tim had doubts about the proficiency of Deion’s appeals lawyers. The first appeals lawyer appointed was a divorce lawyer. I asked Mr McDonald to send me some excerpts from the trial transcript. In addition, there is an excellent account of the trial written by local Tennessee journalist Jim Chandler whose objectivity was not compromised by his bias toward the State and against Deion.¹ The best article about the whole episode with a focus on Deion was in the Nashville Scene, “To Have But Not to Hold” ( Sept. 27, 2007, http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/to-have-but-not-to-hold/Content?oid=1195241). As the title of the Nashville Scene article indicates McDonald’s marriage to Harris enabled her to attract publicity–and thus to expose the injustice. Clearly had Deion not met McDonald she would have had no opportunity to seek remedy for the injustice committed against her. In fact she did not even realize that there had been an injustice until McDonald, an urbane well traveled man raised near Seattle, helped her to view the past from a perspective larger than that of rural Tennessee. After reading excerpts from the trial transcript it was clear to me: Deion was the victim of a witch trial–in every sense of the term. Within a few weeks, I had joined the nascent campaign to free Deion Harris–at the time this consisted of McDonald and half a dozen others.

Deion had not had a happy life before the incident that landed her in prison for life. She was born in Western Tennessee. Her father was a school bus driver. Her mother suffered from crippling injuries due to an accident in her teenage years and she spent much of Deion’s life bedridden. Deion’s closest relationship was with her paternal grandmother who was killed in an automobile accident when Deion was in 7th grade. It was after this loss that Deion became depressed. She became addicted to alcohol and drugs by the time she was 15. She made her first suicide attempt when she was 14–she took an overdose of Tylenol. She was first sexually molested at 6 years old and repeatedly sexually abused and raped in the years that followed. Deion was angry at her mother for doing nothing to protect her from her male relatives–cousins and in-laws–who were responsible for much of the abuse.

Deion’s own boyfriends were mostly physical abusers. “My daughter was never involved with a man who did not abuse her,” Deion’s mother wrote the court. As a teenager she had been hospitalized several times for injuries inflicted upon her by her boyfriends. When Deion was 18 she made another suicide attempt–she slit her wrists.

She became involved with Walter Smothers when she ran into him in the town bar only two weeks before the murder. She recognized Walter–she had been raped by him several years before. Despite the inauspicious history, Walter became her live-in boyfriend immediately. If Deion had any hopes that Walter had changed, they were soon dispelled. She wrote in a document “Even though I had been previously raped by [Walter] he kept me supplied with drugs and alcohol and I began dating him… He claimed to have killed someone before and threatened to kill me while my kids watched if I ever resisted him. ”

The murder took place July 29 1993. The couple was smoking joints and drinking beer and whiskey with a neighbor, Stacy Ramsey. Walter got in an argument on the telephone with one of Deion’s ex-boyfriends, and decided to go over to his house and fight him. They all got into Stacy’s pick-up truck and went looking for him. Deion pretended to have forgotten his address because she was afraid of what Smothers might do to him. Stacy’s car broke down. It was decided that Deion would flag down a car for help.

Nineteen-year-old Dennis Brooks stopped his pick-up truck to help Deion. Walter and Ramsey came out of hiding. Walter threatened the driver Dennis Brooks with Stacy’s shotgun which had been in his truck and the trio hijacked Brooks and his truck. At one point, Smothers told Deion to hold the gun on Brooks while he changed his position in the truck. She held the gun for a several seconds and then gave it back to Smothers. Shortly thereafter, Walter lost his balance as the truck driven by Ramsey picked up speed and he accidentally fired the gun, which was pointed at Brooks, right into his hip.

As Brooks screamed in pain, Smothers agreed to take him to the hospital, a promise he later confessed he had no intention of keeping. As the truck approached a busy area Brooks screamed louder, hoping probably to be heard and rescued. Walter shot him in the head and turned to Deion and said, “I just blew his fuckin brains out.” Deion testified “I remember looking at Stacy and Stacy looked at me. We was both in shock. We didn’t know what was going on.” “I shot him because he was hollering,” Walter admitted to the court.

Walter then decided they had to dispose of the evidence. When the vehicle they intended to use to bury the body was unavailable, Walter, according to the testimony of all three parties, came up with the idea of dismembering the body. Walter claimed he thought that would be a more efficient way to dispose of the evidence (which was eventually set on fire), but there is no reason why that would be the case. Butchering the body evidently had a perverse appeal for Walter. It probably also occurred to Walter, who was very shrewd, that this ritual would make the others feel complicit in the murder, and thus less likely to talk to the police. Stacy and Walter drove the pick-up truck with the body to a remote area, with Deion following in her car. Deion testified she accompanied Walter because she was scared to defy him, “He had just killed somebody and he could kill me too.” Deion stood by while the two men dismembered the body.

When it was finished, Walter led the trio in a bizarre ritual over the body. Although this was hyped by the local press as devil worship, Walter had no history of participation in Satanic cults. The trio then drove to an empty field and set Brook’s corpse and pick-up truck on fire. Deion testified, “I was scared for my life and I was scared for my kids too. I thought maybe he might try to hurt my kids.”

When the police came to investigate the day after the murder, Smothers warned Deion not to “squeal.” Deion was terrified yet she courageously told the police that if they protected her from Walter she would tell them the whole story. Stacy Ramsey had already been visited by the police before they questioned Deion and he denied any knowledge about Brooks. Had Deion Harris not told the police what occurred, had she not led the police to evidence linking Walter Smothers to the crime–for example, Smothers’ bloody t-shirt–Walter might never have been discovered and caught. He might not have been arrested. He might have left town. He might have murdered again. The fact that the one person who was responsible for turning in the murderer was framed for the crime and given a sentence of life without parole gives one pause now to look back seventeen years later and ask: What went wrong?

The trial of Deion Harris did not conform to due process norms; it was a witch trial, in every sense of the term. After securing the approval of the victim’s father, District Attorney G. Robert Radford made a deal with the murderer, Walter Smothers: He would be spared the death penalty if he testified against Deion and Stacy. Deals are made with defendants to strengthen the State’s case when evidence is weak. But this deal was unnecessary: There was a plethora of forensic evidence, two witnesses against Smothers, and Smothers himself had already confessed. Even local reporter Jim Chandler, an admirer of Radford, wondered: “It was never addressed as to why, with so much condemning evidence… it was necessary to make a deal with the man who actually killed the victim.”²

After Radford had Smothers’ new testimony he indicted Ramsey and Harris for felony murder and Harris for first degree murder as well. (In the middle of Deion’s trial, Radford dropped the count of 1st degree murder; it was unnecessary to procure a death sentence for Deion.) But what could Walter Smothers say to implicate an innocent woman? After the deal, Smothers changed the testimony he had given to the police on many points. Before the deal Smothers stated he asked Deion to stop a car when Ramsey’s truck broke down. This was what both Stacy and Deion had also told the police. Deion testified, “I thought I was just getting us a ride.” After the deal Walter claimed he had actually had a discussion with Deion and Stacy to plan hijacking the car and the driver. This new testimony enabled Radford to charge Deion and Stacy with “felony-murder”(auto theft, kidnapping).

Walter also told the Court that he had warned Stacy and Deion before she agreed to stop a driver that “we might have to kill someone.” He had said nothing about such a warning in his original confession, and neither Deion nor Stacy recalled any such warning. The warning that Smothers now claimed he gave Deion provided Radford with “evidence” to argue that Deion was “premeditating” murder–and thus it enabled Radford to indict Deion for 1st degree murder. In his altered testimony Walter also now claimed that the gun was still in Deion’s hands–she was passing it to Walter–when it accidentally misfired. Walter’s original statement was in accord with Deion’s: He was holding the gun when it misfired. Deion did not have her hand on the gun. This change made Deion guilty of the first shooting as well.

Radford’s star witness in court against Deion (and Stacy) was the murderer himself whose new testimony saved his life. There were only two other “eye-witnesses” who testified. This was a couple who lived in a house near where Brooks was abducted. They heard Deion aggressively scream at the victim to get down. (Deion said she did this because she was afraid Walter would kill him.). Why would Radford make such a deal with the murderer and why would he believe the altered testimony of a man whose life depended upon implicating his two friends and diminishing his own responsibility for what occurred? Or did Radford believe it? It is notable that Smothers’ testimony did not just become more detailed–it was revised in such a way as to provide new evidence to sustain the charges against Deion and Stacy. It was as if he had been coached by someone with knowledge of the law. By his lawyer? By Radford?

No one knows why Radford made the deal with Smothers, evidently negotiated by Smothers’ lawyer. The sentiment in town was against leniency. Chandler noted that “[t]he cold-blooded and grisly manner of young Brooks’ murder generated a lot of anger throughout the entire county.” “Many people would have enjoyed seeing the trio dragged out of jail and lynched.” We don’t know what influence Walter’s lawyer was able to bring to bear upon Smothers. Or what influence was exerted by Walter’s family who united behind him immediately. Or for that matter what infuence upon Radford did Walter’s father-in-law and protector, a Huntingdon policeman, have? Maybe Radford sympathized with Walter Smothers. Maybe he disliked Deion, maybe he hated women–or at least “poor white trash.” During the trial Radford oozed contempt for poor Deion Harris.

Radford had to face an election in 1994. How could he justify giving the murderer a deal — how could he justify rescuing Walter from facing a jury that would determine his sentence? According to Chandler many in the community were “infuriated” by the deal. Everyone in the community was watching–the local media rapaciously covered the murder and the trial. To rationalize the deal to the community, and perhaps to himself, Radford had to diminish Smothers’ guilt for the murder, which he did by depicting Deion as a demon and placing the primary moral and legal responsibility for the murder upon her.

It was not enough for Radford to argue that Deion was a collaborator–he demonized her and imbued her with supernatural powers. He recycled the ancient misogynist trope of the witch–without using the word of course. In his closing argument he made an effort to make Walter look as likeable as possible–he depicted him as Deion’s reluctant uxorious dupe. Even Stacy’s attorney was deceived. He described Deion as “the general of the army” and Smothers as “her lieutenant.”

Attorney General G. Robert Radford told the jury in his closing argument that Smothers was under the spell of Deion. Radford implied that Deion had instigated the murder. No motive was given. No motive was needed–she was just bad, evil to the bone. Smothers had confessed that it was his idea to dismember the body–supposedly in order to hide the evidence. And Smothers agreed that Deion took no part in actually dismembering the body. But Smothers said that during the ritual dismemberment Deion who was observing suddenly said “I want his heart.” And Smothers said she had a preternaturally (my word) evil “look” in her eyes. In his closing argument Radford stated, “I don’t know that look. You haven’t seen that look. We’ll just have to take Mr Smothers word for that and I suggest to you that you can.” Why did the jury have to take the murderer’s word for anything and why should they trust a person who was lying to save his life? But the jury did, or more precisely they took Mr Radford’s word for it, as he was the one they trusted, he was the one who vouched for Smothers.

Deion and Stacy, and originally Walter, had told a different story. They agreed that dismembering the body was Smothers’ idea. Deion said Walter chopped off one leg and then handed the axe to Ramsey and ordered him to chop off the other one too. Deion said it was also Smothers idea to remove the victim’s heart. “He handed it to me and told me to drink the blood,” she said weeping. “I put it to my mouth and acted like I drank the blood.” She dropped it on the road. Smothers picked it up and drank blood from it (or pretended to), then passed it to Ramsey and told him to drink.

But Walter’s story was different and Radford assured the jury that Walter’s story was “the truth.” How did he know? Because Walter had promised Radford that he would tell “the truth.” Walter said Deion had demanded the heart and Attorney Radford assured the jury that was the way it was. Radford stated, “And he did it. [He gave Deion the heart.] If Deion wanted it, he’d do it. And he cuts out Dennis Brooks Jr’s heart. And Teresa Harris then takes it in her hands, holds it up, kisses it, sucks on it, whatever.” Radford then asked the jury rhetorically, “Who is in control of this situation, ladies and gentlemen? Who is at the center of the whole thing?” By the whole thing he made it clear he meant everything–the felonies, the murder. Radford answered his own question: Teresa Deion Harris. Radford had deceptively transferred the responsibility for the murder, for everything, from Smothers to Deion. Radford’s argument went unanswered: Deion’s attorney was evidently so intimidated by Radford’s closing argument that he said he had decided he was not going to make a closing argument!

Radford managed to deny the reality of Deion Harris, a confused submissive young woman who had been dominated, physically and sexually abused by men her entire life, who had a drug habit as well as the poor judgment and bad luck to get involved with a psychopathic murderer, a poor woman who was terrified and appalled when she saw her boyfriend kill a man. Instead Radford created a fiction and convinced the jury and himself of its truth: Deion Harris, a demonic powerful evil woman who was herself responsible for the murder of Dennis Brooks Jr. Radford told the jury not to be fooled by Deion’s pretty face and innocent veneer. Radford pointed at Deion as she sat there crying and said, “See her for who she is. See her for what’s on her insides… See her for a mean, vicious murdering woman.” Radford asked the jury for the death penalty for Deion. The jury was prepared to give her the death penalty but they were dissuaded by the father of the victim who asked for mercy. So they gave her life without the possibility of parole.

Radford had been a lawyer for decades. Anyone with common sense knew that Walter Smothers had a motive to lie. When Radford told the jury Smothers had no reason to lie, Radford was lying. I maintain that General Gus R. Radford deliberately–unethically and illegally–suborned the perjury of Walter Smothers and framed Teresa Deion Harris and Stacy Ramsey for the murder of Dennis Brooks. And it worked; the community of Huntingdon insists to this day that all of defendants are equally guilty of the murder.

Walter Smothers not only took the life of Dennis Brooks Jr in 1992. After that evil deed, he destroyed the lives of Deion Harris and Stacy Ramsey who were framed for murder and caged for life without possibility of parole, just like the murderer himself. Smothers said in jail before the deal was made, “If I go down I’m taking them all with me.” And so he did. He took them all down–with the help of the attorney for the state of Tennessee, General Gus Robert Radford. And the town of Huntingdon accepted this excuse and adopted the myth that three people killed Dennis Brooks. The truth is that one person, Walter Smothers, killed Dennis Brooks and he never had to face a sentencing hearing for his crime.

One year after the trial Smothers wrote to Deion admitting that he had lied to the court, and that on the night of the murder he had indeed threatened them with a gun: “Sorry about the state’s evidence from me, but I would have fried. Now I’m ready to make amends… You and Stacy said I held a gun on ya’ll. Well, I did. If there is anything I can say or tell your lawyers that might help…” (Chandler also concluded from the evidence that Walter had threatened Stacy with a gun.) When the time came for Smothers to help, to testify to the appeals court, he changed his mind. He told the judge he had nothing to say and that the letter to Deion was his way of getting out of prison for a day to “come to court, see the countryside.” Perhaps someone had reminded Walter that the deal he had made with Radford stated that if he ever changed his testimony he could be tried for murder.

A few weeks ago there was a breakthrough in the case. WeTV broadcast a show about Deion in its series Women Behind Bars which provided startling new information confirming that Ms Harris was innocent. In a candid interview with Walter Smothers, Smothers admitted to the TV interviewer that he had been considering killing Deion and Stacy after he killed Dennis Brooks Jr for fear that one of them would “squeal” to the police! This clearly contradicted the State’s argument that Deion instigated the murder. It indicated that, contrary to Radford, Smothers did not perceive Deion and Stacy as dependable allies; he knew they might turn him in. Smothers also revealed to the TV interviewer that he was thinking of killing the policeman who was pursuing him for speeding after the murder; fortunately the policeman was unable to catch up with him. Here is further confirmation that Deion had good reason to fear that she would be killed if she defied Smothers, as she told the jury. Contrary to Mr Radford, Deion did not have Smothers under her spell. Deion was dominated and abused by Walter as she was dominated abused and betrayed by Gus Radford as the representative of the people and State of Tennessee.

Anyone who saw Women Behind Bars could not help but notice the difference between Smothers and Harris as they appear today. Smothers showed no guilt about the murder. Deion is still plagued by guilt almost 2 decades later. This should not surprise anyone who had been paying attention. Deion had been a drug addict (with a history of sexual abuse), not a psychopath like Mr Smothers. The psychiatrist, Dr Morson, who examined Deion in 1994, before her trial, had written that she was “a person who felt guilty about associating with the wrong people and who felt great remorse at the senseless death of the victim, remorse so great that she had repeated thoughts of ending her own life.” (Ms Harris’ public defender did not even call Dr Morson as a witness before the jury convicted Deion–another instance of his irresponsibility as her attorney.) In fact after this interview Ms Harris tried to commit suicide–twice before her trial. Deion’s remorse was not because she had abetted the murder, she had not done so, but because she had been helpless to stop it..

I hope the people of Huntingdon of Tennessee have the courage to re-examine the facts in the light of what was revealed on the TV show Women Behind Bars. There is little evidence that this will happen. Shirley Nanney, editor of the Huntingdon newspaper repeated on Women Behind Bars the opinion she had expressed to Nashville Scene–that Deion and Stacy Ramsey were as guilty as Walter Smothers. Huntingdon listens to the voice of authority and that voice was DA Radford. Deion Harris has now served over 17 years in prison for a murder she did not commit, a murder she would have prevented had it been within her power. She was framed by General Gus Radford and Walter Smothers. (Stacy Ramsey is also an innocent scapegoat.) Ms Harris should be rewarded at long last for the service she provided to the people of Tennessee in helping to put Walter Smothers behind bars before he murdered another person. The Brooks family in particular owes a debt of gratitude to Teresa Deion Harris for turning in the murderer of their loved one. I think that the best way the Brooks’ family could now honor the memory of Dennis Brooks Jr is by asking the Governor to commute Ms Harris sentence, to free her from prison at long last.

Please sign the petition from residents of America to Governor Bredesen of Tennessee asking him to commute the sentence of Deion Harris.

1. Death on a Dark Highway, p. 70-6 by Jim Chandler, 2010, self-published.
2. Ibid, p.50.

Tidholm made several trips to the brothel during a three-year period to find out why sex is so important to men.

Paying the €5 entrance fee gives you access to all eleven floors. Over 700 men pass through the entrance of the brothel every day to enjoy the 150 women that work here. For only €30 you can get an orgasm on the first floor (the brothel even offers a money-back guarantee in case customers are unsatisfied). There are different themes on different floors. Dream about doing a nurse? Then you’ve come to the right place. Are you into Asian women? The fourth floor is theirs. You’ll find the transvestites on the seventh floor.

During daytime hours, Tidholm says, most of the people that make a visit to the brothel are businessmen, especially when big conferences and fairs take place in Cologne. Family men stop by late during the weekends, or on Monday mornings, after a tough week with the family.

We meet Sonia, a cute, dark-haired woman working at Pascha. It was very hard in the beginning, she admits, but eventually you “get used” to it. The job doesn’t make her feel bad about men (“men are men, you know”). Sonia believes that prostitution serves a purpose, that it prevents violence against women and children. In Romania, her country of origin, she was raped seven times.

“You don’t have to think it’s bad because if you think it’s bad you start crying, you get depressed,” she explains. It’s better for her to make a living by selling sexual favours than to be a murderer or thief. She wants to have a family in the future and by soliciting she can make some money. “I think this is the last thing that I wanted in this life.”

Sonia says that some men like to talk, and some even start to cry when telling her what it’s like at home. “What do you feel when they cry?” Tidholm asks. “Sometime I cry also. You feel compassion. You feel bad for them.”

We meet André, a fairly good-looking, German man. He recalls one time when he and his girlfriend spent a week at her parents’ home, during which they had to abstain from sex. Upon returning he was in the mood, she wasn’t. “I was so angry I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go to Pascha’.”

Of course, that’s not what he told is girlfriend: “I said I had to go to a meeting with my clients.”

He goes to the brothel once or twice a month. Most men change their behvaiour when they enter the brothel, André says. “They feel like a cowboy on the ranch. … They say, ‘Okay, I’m the boss, and these are all my girls’. That’s the reason why people are enjoying themselves.” He goes on explaining that there are two types of visitors. There are those who just want to fuck or get a blowjob and then leave. André himself belongs to the other category, those who want to party and have fun before getting to it.

When Svante Tidholm made his first visit to Pascha he found the place to be “abnormal, almost unreal.” But as time went by, he started to feel that he was the one who’s abnormal. Sad, yet understandable. Human beings can get used to almost anything. Everyone at the brothel defends prostitution. An employee thinks it’s simple: “When you feel your teeth hurt, you go to the dentist. And when you need sex, or just to talk to someone… you come here.” Needless to say, the men who visit the brothel don’t seem to give a second thought about what they’re doing to the women.

“A brothel is a symbol of how we try to solve a problem in society,” Tidholm says in the beginning of the documentary. “We have a lot of men with some sort of idea about sex that isn’t working particularly well. The brothel is an idea of how to solve this problem.” He adds that in the brothel—just like in the rest of society—it is women who are to take care of men.

Pascha is a place where these men can run away from their problems and their families, if only for a short while. The brothel symbolises a solution to a problem that isn’t a solution at all. In reality, it is a legal way for men to exploit women. But it also symbolises the failures of Western society where there’s equality on paper but not in real life. It symbolises the failures of the Left, which has fallen for the capitalist scam that exploitation and abuse is alright as long as the victim gets paid. And worst of all, legalising porn and prostitution tells men (and women) that it is fine to exploit others for your own personal needs.

Spoken by the inimitable character of Samantha Jones, this is the dubious moral message of Sex and the City 2.  The movie has been justly disparaged for its absurd plotline, crass materialism, shallow feminism and palpable Orientalism.  But here’s a point the movie’s numerous critics have missed:  what’s really worrying about Sex and the City 2 is not its Orientalism or crass materialism, but how easily this seemingly benign bubble-gum flick ends up fighting a very macho war of global one-upmanship on the bodies of women and gay men.  Let me elaborate.      

The movie is clearly inferior to the HBO series, which – within the parameters of crass materialism and shallow feminism – at least offered up some punchy writing during its seven-year run from 1998 to 2004 (in 2007, Time magazine honoured it as among the top 100 TV shows of all times).  Beyond this obvious difference in quality, however, movie and series share an interesting trait: each speaks to a uniquely American moment. If the series reflected the self-assuredness of the late 1990s, the movie is the face of post economic meltdown America – a country that’s struggling to cope with the loss of its once-unquestioned status as economic and cultural superpower. 

The series, at its core, was a celebration of American strength and the ideal of individualism, albeit with a “girl power” twist that was regretfully mistaken for feminism.  The four central characters were independent women who could do anything they put their minds to; who wanted men, but didn’t seem to need them (Samantha famously rejected a lover because of the “funky” taste of his cum).

It was also a tribute to the modern, affluent American metropolis as a site of economic dynamism and self-discovery, where one could transcend the parochial ties of class and background, along with the small-mindedness of racism, ageism and homophobia. It wasn’t an accident that we knew little of the girls’ pasts and that Carrie’s favourite drink was ‘the cosmopolitan.’ The city was portrayed as an incubator of ‘progressive’ values – the kind that was thought to make America truly great, and New York City even cooler than Paris.  This wasn’t rocket science, but it was breezy, all-American oomph.   

In the movie, there’s deflation all around.  Manhattan’s avant-garde chic is reduced to boxed Chinese take-out, a gloomily lit apartment and bad, reality TV.  The girls are vulnerable and grasping, desperate to hold on to their depleted youth, vitality, and money.  There are multiple references to the miserable state of the economy.  One can’t help but feel sorry for these fallen icons, saddled as they are with stressful jobs, screeching children and clunky husbands (who, in one scene, haplessly gape the braless breasts of Charlotte’s Irish nanny). 

It’s no wonder that when the girls finally do find relief, it is outside the city – and country – when a wealthy sheik offers Samantha a PR job in Abu Dhabi. The girls tag along as Samantha sets off on an all expenses paid trip to the “Middle East,” where Carrie anticipates “desert moons, Scheherazade, magic carpets.” 

But the “new Middle East” far exceeds such standard Orientalist fare.  While there are camels, harem pants and picnics on the desert, there are also fleets of Mercedes, seven star hotels (with suites priced at $22,000 per night), and posh nightclubs populated by professional soccer players and other jetsetters. 

Abu Dhabians are depicted as having a jolly good time, despite their “layers and layers of tradition.” The women, covered up though they are, have lavish, leisurely lives: they wear couture, eat French fries by the pool, and airily chat on bejewelled cell-phones.  This is no backwater, this “Abu Dhabi” (the film’s actually shot in Morocco).  In fact, in what seems to be the new global epicentre, Carrie casually bumps into ex-flame, Aidan, who’s out on a business trip. 

Critics riled up about the film’s Orientalism should reconsider.  Though unwittingly, Sex and the City 2 actually challenges ethnocentric and colonial stereotypes of the world order, and the expectation that knowledge, goods and power will always flow from a (Western) centre to a (non-Western) periphery.

If anything, the film reflects the self-serving auto-Orientalism of new Arab capitalism, which markets cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi as enviable hybrids of mystical traditionalism and cutting-edge cosmopolitanism; where one can enjoy a romantic Arabian Nights lifestyle while achieving mega business success.  Not surprisingly, parts of the film roll have the feel of an ad for Emirates Airlines, and we’re also presented with a ‘purity’ that Americans apparently lack. There’s Carrie’s genteel butler, a migrant worker from India, who cherishes whatever little time he spends with his wife, and a kind-eyed shoe salesman, who returns Carrie’s misplaced passport while graciously refusing her cash reward.  An Australian financier, whom Samantha wants to bed, acknowledges that he finds the veiled sexuality of Arab women most alluring (he says so while she’s groping his crotch in public!).

In the end, the movie sets itself up for a culturally anxious question. Why should the girls return to their sagging lives in stale old Manhattan? What is America’s U.S.P.?

The answer, of course, is sex – loud, in-your-face sex, and the right of women to have it. 

American cultural and moral superiority, it seems, boils down to its women’s ability to fill their purses with condoms, drop their panties in the office, and simulate oral sex at parties.  Abu Dhabi may be a paradise filled with peacocks and Lamborghinis, but it’s a “backward” land of sexually silenced women.  America may have had its butt kicked by this parvenu of globalization (symbolically, the girls are evicted from their plush hotel after Samantha’s arrest for indecent behaviour), but it’s where women run bra-less and free, wear tuxes to gay weddings, and radiantly sing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” at karaoke bars. 

Though overstated and caricatured in the movie, the message is one with tremendous appeal among American liberals and self-defined ‘social progressives.’  Director Michael Patrick King, who knows his audience, has shrewdly tried to cash in on it.  But if women’s rights and gay rights are a means of renovating America’s troubled identity, we should be very, very worried. 

Don’t get me wrong. I celebrate the America of same-sex marriage and unapologetic, ageless libido.  However, turning hard-won sexual rights and gender equality into badges of national honour and smug patriotic pride is not only pitiful, it is dangerous.  Especially when one considers how easily doing so is exploited by, and for, power.

Colonial regimes have routinely used the “liberation of women” as a justification for imperial intervention and expansion.  Predictably, the bombing and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan have been repeatedly legitimized along these lines.  Parts of Sex and the City 2 could believably have been scripted by a George W. Bush (in one of his more lucid moments) or a Bibi Netanyahu – an eerie quality that’s made this rather idiotic, forgettable movie stick in my mind.

The excitement expressed by Arab-Americans conveys the perception of achieving a milestone on the long, treacherous road towards what appears to be Arab America’s grand dream: acceptance into mainstream American society. This is confirmed by Fakih’s own statement: “It would show the world that yes, there are Arabs that are beautiful not only in looks, but also on the inside. There are Arabs that are caring, that are good people, and who love the country they live in. I think it would make the Arab image a more positive one.” As an Arab living in the US, nothing could be further from my mind. In light of the US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, I believe the main political objective of Arabs living in the west generally and the US specifically ought to be disruption of, and eventually putting a halt to, the war machine that has devastated and exhausted the lives of innocent millions. Arab-Americans are in an ideal position to demand this. They live in the belly of the beast, and they are in no need to be educated on the fundamentals of the realities of war and occupation, at least in comparison to the general American public the majority of which is frequently found unable to find Afghanistan and Iraq on a map. Arab and Muslim-Americans’ perpetual quest for acceptance, pursued with disregard for the responsibility of seriously opposing the wars and occupations, brings to mind Malcolm X’s statement addressing African-American involvement in opposing war on Congolese: “they’re able to take these hired killers, put them in American planes, with American bombs, and drop them on African villages, blowing to bits Black men, Black women, Black children, Black babies, and you Black people sitting over here cool like it doesn’t even involve you. You’re a fool. They’ll do it to them today, and do it to you tomorrow. Because you and I and they are all the same.”

To seek approval and acceptance by American (read: white) society by an Arab or Muslim in America at a time like this is as ludicrous as a Vietnamese seeking acceptance from American society in the 60s and 70s instead of focusing their energies on putting an end to the carpet bombing and use of napalm on fellow Vietnamese. It’s as ridiculous as an Algerian’s seeking acceptance into French society during the zenith of Algeria’s colonization or a Black slave presenting his best appearance to his master during the Transatlantic slave trade. It is even more ridiculous when such validation arrives in the sexist, degrading vehicle of a beauty pageant, which we’re willing to dismiss in return for 15 minutes of fame. Blogger Will Youmans had no qualms with commenting that he was “happy for her even if the pageant is wack and debases women.” Contrary to common understanding among Arab-Americans, an Arab’s winning of a beauty pageant does not challenge stereotypes of Arab women. In fact, it confirms them. Subservience to males from underneath the hijab isn’t the only stereotype regarding Arab women. The image of the bellydancing, exotic harem girl also permeates western imagination of the Arab world. The physical requirements of winning a beauty pageant do not differ significantly. The image of a bikini-wearing Arab is not exactly a radical shift from the characters of Arabian Nights.

In this vein, Rima Fakih’s accomplishment alleviates some of the pressure sensed by Arab-Americans, generally speaking; the responsibility to prove their humanity to the west. I strongly reject this burden. I believe the burden is on the west to prove its humanity to Arabs and Muslims simply because the US, the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” according to Martin Luther King Jr., is occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. I would have understood Arab-Americans’ need to give themselves a human face if Afghanistan and Iraq were occupying the US. To date, the Afghani and Iraqi peoples have not shock and awed Washington, used depleted uranium on the American people, attacked people at weddings, imposed crippling sanctions or destroyed American culture. Neither have there been any recorded sightings of Afghani tanks roaming the streets of Chicago or of Iraqi fighter jets disrupting the peace of San Francisco.

I have heard my Arab and Muslim brethren argue that this is a “strategic” move. That is, if we want to gain political clout and influence US foreign policy, we must first challenge the negative stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. I see at least two flaws in this argument:

First, humanizing the victim in the perspective of the aggressor is not a prerequisite to liberation. If anything, it’s a stalling technique to postpone venturing outside one’s comfort zone in order to stand up for justice. I am not aware of any successful liberation campaign that suspended its demand for justice pending successful humanization of the victim in the oppressors’ eyes. This “strategy” certainly did not preclude MLK Jr. from condemning his government’s policies towards Vietnam while simultaneously working to end Jim Crow and desegregate the south. In any case, an Arab winning the beauty pageant does not threaten the status quo, as the US does not categorically reject Arabs occupying high-profile and even powerful establishments positions. Need I say more than “John Abizaid”? The US cannot genuinely claim that it respects Rima Fakih while it continues to imprison, torture, rape and bomb our sisters in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is not the case that the US may consider respecting its Afghani and Iraqi female hostages after an Arab Muslim wins a beauty pageant. The opposite is more likely true; true respect for an Arab beauty pageant and her entire ethnicity and religion may stand a chance only after Afghanistan and Iraq are fully decolonized.

Second, even if we were to assume there is merit in the strategy of humanizing Arabs and Muslims first as a step towards eventually achieving Arab and Muslim political influence, what greater agent for humanization is there than opposing the inhumane occupations? If we want to give ourselves a human face before the American public, what better way to accomplish that than to express genuine concern for the lives and self-determination of those under brutal military occupation? In the words of the late Rachel Corrie, “I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this [occupation] stop.”

I can’t blame Arab-Americans for feeling happy about Fakih’s new title despite its glaring problems. A community deserves a break when it endures ethnic profiling at workplaces, schools and airports, harsh immigration policies, hate crimes and overall political marginalization. But the yearning for the elusive carrot of acceptance by a society that overwhelmingly continues to acquiesce, if not support, colonization of two Muslim countries is an exercise in futility.