La fem ir shell

Impacts / Case Turns

Commodification

Commodification is inevitable absent feminism – objectification starts with the subordination of the female body

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

Consider the actions of the Navy brass in the so-called Tailhook scandal, in which “officers and gentlemen” man-handled female officers at an annual fliers convention. The brass did nothing at first. According to journalist Amanda Smith, this is because “Naval officers knew perfectly well this behavior was quite ordinary” (Smith 1992). Carol Burke, a professor at the Naval Academy at Annapolis for seven years, describes woman-hating as deliberately taught at that tax-supported institution, often in marching songs and the way soldiers are penalized for unsoldier-like behavior. Examples of a marching song sets the stage for the depth and historical reality of this hatred: “My girl is a vegeta- ble . . . my girl ain’t got no eyes, just sockets full of flies.” The song continues to boast of “cutting a woman in two with a chain saw or ramming an ice pick through her ears, then using the pick as a handlebar to ride her like a Harley motorcycle.” Men keep “Hog Logs” of female visitors to the Academy recep- tion office whom they deem unattractive, and “male midshipmen wear Chiquita and Dole banana stickers in their hats to mark each time they have sex with a date on the academy grounds” (Smith 1992).7 As recently as October 4, 1993, Xme magazine reported that “in heterosexual litigation, meanwhile, the Navy withdrew all charges against a pilot in one of the 120 Karen J. Warren and Duane L. Cady 11 sexual harassment cases stemming from the infamous Tailhook Association convention two years ago. Prosecutors abandoned the case against Lieutenant Cole Cowden after determining there wasn’t sufficient evidence to go to court. The Navy has now dropped half of the Tailhook cases” (Erne 1993). The Tailhook scandal is just one more piece of evidence that the historical con- nections between the military and the treatment of women as inferior subor- dinates. Any peace politics which fails to centralize the treatment of women in war and by the military in general will simply be male gender-biased (if not blind) and, hence, grossly inadequate.

Third-Worldism

Patriarchy is responsible for the extreme abuse of those who live in the third world

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

Consider a different sort of case: In Somalia today, women, children, and the elderly are most in risk of starvation and violent death in part because they are least empowered and are most vulnerable to rape and disease in their war-torn country. Their defenselessness is cultural and political as well as practical. While men and boys are not immune to starvation and suffering, they have greater access to various means of self-defense and military protec- tion. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, women and girls have been raped and molested in horrific numbers in addition to the death, injury, and dislocation they have experienced as the “generic” victims of war. A recent article on war rape (gang rape by soldiers, beatings, and sexual enslavement) reports that victims are largely “being ignored in Croatia, where predominately male, Roman Catho- lic, and conservative health officials are too discomfited by the subject to provide care or compassion (Minneapolis StarlTribune 1992). Most of the 10 Hypatia victims will be ostracized in their tradition-bound societies once the war ends; many already have been cast out of their homes and left to fend for themselves. Their experiences are horrifying and legion. In the same article, according to Zorica Spoljar, a volunteer with the Kareta feminist organization who has been visiting refugee shelters to talk to rape victims, says, “Men rape during war because it is considered an act of the victors. In traditional societies, like those in the occupied areas [of Bosnia], women have always been considered prop- erty, so violating them is a way for the winners to show who now controls that property.’’ Women’s groups and antiwar organizations constantly protest that nothing is done for the innumerable victims of sexual violence which is viewed as a logical, predictable, rightful consequence of war. The Zagreb feminist movement has been making such appeals with virtually no success. 3. Historical Connections Sadly, current reports of huge numbers of war rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rigoberta Menchti’s recent testimony of rape and sexual violence agaiqst women by military oppressors in Guatemala (Menchti 1983) are just contem- porary extensions of a patriarchal legacy documented by Susan Brownmiller in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (Brownmiller 1975). The history of rape shows it to be a “natural” part of war. Such empirical data itself establishes important historical connections between how one treats women, the poor, racial minorities, and the nonhuman environment, on the one hand, and engagement in military, war, and other violent conflict resolution strate- gies on the other. But one can look elsewhere as well.

Environmental Destruction

Destruction of the environment stems from the same fount of subjugation as the destruction of the female body

Warren and Cady 94, Karen J. and Duane L., “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 4–20, May 1994

5. Symbolic/Linguistic Connections Much of feminist critique regarding war and violence focuses on language, particularly the symbolic connections between sexist-naturist-warist language, that is, language which inferiorizes women and nonhuman nature by natural- izing women and feminizing nature, and then gets used in discussions of war and nuclear issues. For example, naturist language describes women as cows, foxes, chicks, serpents, bitches, beavers, old bats, pussycats, cats, bird-brains, hare-brains. Sexist language feminizes and sexualizes nature: Nature is raped, mastered, conquered, controlled, mined. “Her” “secrets” are “penetrated,” and “her” “womb” is put into the service of the “man of science.” “Virgin (not stud) timber” is felled, cut down. “Fertile (not potent) soil” is tilled, and land that lies “fallow” (not cultivated) is “barren,)’ useless. Language which so feminizes nature and so naturalizes women describes, reflects, and perpetuates the domination and inferiorization of both by failing to see the extent to which the twin dominations of women and nature (including animals) are, in fact, culturally (and not merely figuratively) connected (Adams 1988,61).