Alyssa Figueroa
Log in to comment or register to create your own blog
What makes Charles Ramsey’s interview so great? His pure genuineness. Period. If you need to be reminded of that, please watch below:
We all fall in love with Ramsey after watching his interview because it portrays an honesty, sincerity and openness that is hard to come by today. Instead, however, some bloggers have tried to spin love for Ramsey’s earnestness into a love for black stereotypes. A Slate piece, for instance, claims that “It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform.” The piece also states:
Charles Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor. This plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America.
But the reality is, people like animated characters — black or white, man or woman, gay or straight. And the pure kindness Ramsey exudes only works to illustrate something positive — a “stereotype” that should be welcomed. A blogger for The Christian Science Monitor argues, however, that while these traits should be welcomed, it’s important that they don’t get ridiculed and overshadowed heroism. Who does he contribute the ridicule to? A few idiots who decided to auto-tune his interview or create gifs — both of which, though not funny, work to celebrate Ramsey’s character, not mock it. And Ramsey’s radiating sincerity doesn’t overshadow his heroic act — it adds more compassion to it.
Perhaps the real issue is revealed earlier in the piece when the author states that the black community hopes to appear more mainstream:
Many of us lamented any confirmation of stereotypes and wondered aloud why it seemed that the “educated and presentable” among us never seemed to be chosen to represent the race in front of the breaking news cameras.
My advice to him? Never desire to trade such honesty and sincerity with “educated and presentable” — most “educated and presentable” people are annoying assholes… But really, don’t push for people to conform to the boring, detached individuals that make up today’s status quo. We need more Ramsey's in the world, not more Ivy League grads. Plus, intelligence comes in many forms, and the type of wisdom Ramsey has is certainly the most important.
And about 80 percent of people who took a survey by The Independent agree that Ramsey’s interview is popular because he portrays a virtuous and clever man, not a poor and uneducated one.
Shortly after this whole ‘we must only love a black hero because we love stereotypes’ deal, the media decided that maybe we shouldn’t love Ramsey at all. In a despicable fashion, The Smoking Gun apparently couldn’t let us love this black hero just yet, as they published a piece detailing Ramsey’s past as a perpetrator of domestic violence. Since when do media outlets dig up dirt on heroes instead of glorify them? Rarely. I guess the media couldn’t help but resist its constant tendency to portray black men as criminals.
The news quickly spread through various media outlets. Fortunately, Salon’s Joan Walsh began a wave of defense for Ramsey, writing that no human being is perfect and that Ramsey’s past makes it even more remarkable that he intervened in what he thought was a domestic violence dispute. She wrote, “It would be a shame if Ramsey’s exposure … served to discourage other ex-convicts from helping others for fear that their pasts will come back to haunt them.” And on Thursday, Ramsey told TMZ: "Those incidents helped me become the man I am today and are the reason why I try to help the community as much as I can ... Including those women."
It seems like, no matter what, the media was trying to say people were wrong for loving Ramsey and his beautiful openness. If people did, they were actually only loving a black stereotype or a black criminal. Meanwhile, when race really came into play, the media ignored it. At the end of Ramsey’s initial interview, he said, “I knew something was wrong when a little, pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway.” But, as Townhall reported, “a check of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Cleveland Plain Dealer shows that while the papers quoted Ramsey, none saw fit to include his observation.”*
Why wouldn’t the media want to address Ramsey’s comical yet wise comments about race and its sociological effects? Because maybe then they might actually have to deal with something that’s important.
*UPDATE: The Cleveland Plain Dealer did include the end of Ramsey's initial interview in various posts. Despite this, however, many media outlets still did not.
I can only imagine the panic breaking news reporters felt when they heard on Friday morning that the Boston bombing suspects were from Chechnya — a region they obviously know nothing about based on the crap that was coming out of their mouths.
So what’s a reporter stuck on TV for 24 hours to do? Apparently attempt to become a Chechnya expert, live on air.
Now, I see the merit of explaining the basic facts about the region — where it is, its history, etc. — because many have never heard of it. But to frame it as this ‘other,’ strange region that may have played a key role in influencing the suspects is racist and dangerous, especially when no one was wondering at all how the United States may have influenced them.
Tuning into both CNN and MSNBC’s breaking news, I honestly couldn’t even keep up with the crazy ways they were framing the story. Reporters said that the United States doesn’t have “beef” with Chechnya, so it was odd that they would just “come over here and kill Americans (though the suspects have lived here for 11 years). Then they would link Chechnya with “radicalism,” “al-Qaeda,” “jihad” and made references to 9/11. After the media’s past few days of racist speculation (i.e. the “Saudi National,” the “Bag Men,” and the “dark-skinned male”), you would think the media would stop trying to push this story in a xenophobic direction.
Why won’t they stop?
Perhaps MSNBC Chris Matthews explained it best when he said on Friday that they keep pushing for a connection because if they don’t find one between the suspects and religion or ideology, then “we’re left with nothing here.”
But I don’t care how uncomfortable so-called “senseless” violence makes us, we don’t scapegoat certain nationalities or ethnicities to make us feel better.
On MSNBC, Al Sharpton tried to save his ass by warning that they aren’t “drawing any conclusions.” But speculation is the problem, and encourages people to draw certain conclusions. And these have conclusions have dangerous consequences, as post-Boston Islamophobic hate crimes have already begun.
Now, as the second suspect has allegedly been caught alive, we may soon know the bombers' actual motive. But even if all the speculation has some legitmacy, that still doesn’t make it okay to discriminate against a whole population because of the actions of a few individuals. Instead, we should reflect on why violence is ever so prevalent in our society.
What gives? Everywhere you look there is another version of what women want, or need. Supposedly, women can have it all, do not want it all, or cut out of the "all" in structural ways by their racial, sexual, gendered, classed identity. Housewifery of the rich is being re-claimed as a creative choice; welfare for the poor demands marriage and fathers; Justice Ginsburg says that Roe v Wade overstepped its bounds; North Dakota, Mississippi and Alabama are hell-bent on making abortion totally illegal and impossible; and people seem to think that Hillary Clinton will run again in 2016, and should because "it is time for a woman president". Gays may receive some parcel of equal marriage rights from the US Supreme Court, even if grudgingly. What is a girl to think?
I want to engage in this cacophony of noise, but not with the tired and worn-out critiques. So let me try and radically burst the boundaries of mainstream rights feminism with a radicalised notion of feminism focused on the 99 percent - or at least the 85 percent who regularly move and shake the globe. This demands nuance and subtlety and the ability to maybe forgive past missteps.
Female faces of power
With Margaret Thatcher's death and Hillary Clinton poised to run for US President, feminists committed to radically challenging the inequalities of the globe with its particular impact on women really need to decide what its relation to nation-states and their imperial endeavours is. Thatcher was the first (and only) female prime minister of England and named the Iron Lady for her unrelenting hard core beliefs: she welcomed war in the Falklands, the Gulf and Iraq. She crudely endorsed austerity programmes that broke the back of organised labour. She was a supporter of the powerful and the rich -considering anti-apartheid activists in South Africa terrorists. She authorised and normalised the austerity programmes that are now wreaking havoc everywhere. She might be an icon for conservative women and imperial feminists, but not for the rest of us.
Hillary Clinton is no Thatcher, but she has a troublesome record on the Iraq and Afghan wars. After making the promise of "women's rights" so central to US foreign policy, women in these countries face new vulnerabilities with little sustained attention from here. However, more recently she has been "evolving", on both feminism and gay rights. Although often punished as a feminist icon while First Lady, she said little on behalf of everyday women workers and moms, and neither initiated or supported policies on their behalf. Her early campaign for Presidential nominee in 2008 was really more as Bill's wife than as her own person. That did not work so well for her. She experienced misogyny firsthand, and by the Democratic Party elite. It changed her. By the time the brutal and bruising primaries ended, Hillary had become devoted to her faithful women supporters. Exactly how much she has changed is yet to be seen.
So I am wary. Feminists inclined towards a radically innovative set of initiatives on climate change, sustainable economies, issues of day care, paid maternity leave, new unaccountable illegal forms and uses of war, need to organise such a coalition. And it is not adequately addressed by the talk of abstract and unequal "women's rights" even if this is better than nothing.
The unfinished business of the 21st century is "women's rights", according to Hillary. Many other feminists of the North and South, and First and Third World know that "rights" are not enough. "Rights" need access and access means a different structural relationship between the rich and the middle and the poor. And females of all colours and sexual choices inhabit each of these economic layers. The rights discourse does not need to be rejected; it needs to be radicalised and connected to the structural changes that can give it actual meaning. A "right" to abortion means little if you cannot get one.
The year 2016 should not be used as an endorsement of an imperial rhetoric for "women's rights", which remain seriously unequal and easily undermined by structural constraints of poverty both in the US and across the globe. An Obama or a Hillary might be the best candidate that the US can hope for in these very conservative times, but our liberation movements must remain at the ready to demand more. It is imperative that the US does not go forward as usual on the global stage with a female face: not in "our" name. Biology is not destiny. Vaginal politics is not sufficient even if it might be necessary.
Corporate nations and misogynist 'rights'?
Hillary is said to have done the hard work of readying herself for president. James Carville says she has paid her dues. Please. Do we all need to be married to Bill Clinton or groomed for decades? This might be "rights" feminism writ small; but it needs to be democratised for the rest. A Hillary run may mean something for women's "rights" - but it does not entail enough for everyday life. That is where radically committed feminists come in.
No female appears to have followed in Thatcher's footsteps. And it does not seem clear that all that many women want to follow in Sheryl Sandberg's at Facebook Nation either. This resistance is at the heart of a new anti-imperial anti-corporatist model for feminism of all kinds. Masses of women across the globe and in the US are working triple days of labour if they have been lucky enough to find a post-economic crisis low-waged job.
Maybe this is what is new and changed in the larger scheme of things. After a few more decades of unrelenting and cruel inequality across the globe, and inside our home countries, feminists in what can be loosely termed Western, or Northern climes have become more critical of the intersectional misogyny of the global capitalist market. Its liberal and neo-liberal austere politics seems more problematic as it becomes more exclusive and mainstreamed in singular fashion. Let us put the global violence against women in view here with the women of One Billion Rising. Let there be more generosity of spirit for the fearless feminism of Femen as they bare their breasts in outraged defiance of Putin's patriarchy. Let us connect to the variety of feminist revolutionaries in Tunisia, Egypt and South Africa.
The historical moment we all occupy is always new, even if it also remains old and predictable. At this point, corporatism and militarist imperialism bind together in particular ways to utilise masculinist structures but with more and more females - in the military, in corporations, in politics. The capture of female bodies for these new locations begin to tell a troubling complex story in camouflage.
Given these shifts it is not really all that surprising that Sheryl Sandberg along with Facebook, seem to be, and are everywhere. She is a new female face of corporate/imperial feminism. This is tricky business when corporations are said to be more powerful than countries, as Mark Zuckerberg likes to say and think. For "Facebook Nation" connectivity for advertising is the purpose - the height of the meaning of a privatised nation; a company copying a nation and a nation copying a company (Check out Kate Losse).
The lean inposturing is merely the method that is necessary to be able to succeed. No one presumes this strategy is about or for the masses. The masses are not the players - we are instead the object of desire - to be networked for buying and selling. Work as hard as you can. Keep your focus. There is no end in sight - the endlessness of the day is the new ethic. Stick family inside it and keep going.
The film The Social Network (2010) is an ode to Mark Zuckerberg and the new class power - its sheer arrogance, ruthlessness and technical genius. Hats off to male loners who can celebrate their nerdy white Harvard selves. The new global citizen will be ruthless and singular. Forget that people need one another or might want an interesting life. Life is a lottery and a very few win and they win big.
Hillary, Sheryl and other females in power are in part new cover for old systems. This orchestrates a newer more modern and gender friendly misogyny. But horrific rape remains a scourge across this globe; and the unrelenting assault on legal abortion rights that are constitutional remains at a fever pitch. Hurray for the gains and reforms and the improvements but we need to watch all of our backs here. Yes to the rights of marriage equality for gays, but revolutionary reform still needs to mobilise a radical assault on misogynist heterosexism.
Radically inventive anti-imperial, anti-racist anti-heterosexist feminisms need to become boisterously loud. Hillary is not really the issue here. We are. Pressures resonate from the outside-in. There needs to be a politics outside - when it is too unclear anyway where the "inside" begins - to risk ourselves with simply demanding entry. Women are entering education on all levels across the globe just at the point in time when it is not exactly clear how education will connect to the newest cyber-related jobs of the globe. Women have become the presidents of elite universities just as these very universities are being downsized. Women have entered law and medicine just as these professions are losing their place.
Is it just possible that by the time the exclusivity of a location is made more inclusive or that something is given to women, or anyone for that matter, that what has been withheld and is then given, is no longer power-filled as it once was? I am wondering that in these changing times whether exclusive sites of power open to once excluded groups because the power is shifting elsewhere. Then inclusion of women may not mean what it once did, if it ever did.
Newest audacious feminisms
The varieties of how women can see themselves and their "rights" - from afar or up close - is more necessary than ever as the globe shifts and changes. The imperial forms of feminisms that can hurt any and all women anywhere is more complex and nuanced because of the mixed identities of time and place.
Reform and revolution need reinvention because of the intersectionality and multiplicity of power. Let us revolutionise reforms rather than reform revolutionary commitments. The West is not simply the old "West" - it is filled with complexity and variations.
Despair is too easy and allows the powerful their power. Female corporatism, female militarism, female nationalism does not work because each is deeply embedded in patriarchal and misogynist and racist practices. Let them not re-habilitate, resuscitate, hijack, coopt or feminise the imperial, colonising, oppressive forms.
Women have been excluded from spheres of power throughout history. The particular spheres may shift and change, but exclusion is part of the systematic and systemic oppression of women. But simple inclusion does not change the structural problem sufficiently. It may loosen the grip of discrimination but it does not dissolve it. So I remain cautious of simply reforming the exclusivity of misogyny.
It is important that feminists of all sorts - beyond the biological body - remember the wounds that imperial feminism has caused. They should also forgive them. A forgotten wounding cannot be healed. Instead it is left to fester. But without forgiving there is no movement. This is true of differences themselves - if they are ignored they remain problematic - and when they are remembered and embraced - they become a wonderful cacophony of feminist voices that maybe just can save the planet. So let us remember the wounds of imperial "rights" and re-make them, radically true and real.
In the wake of tragedies like the Boston Marathon, we yearn to make sense of the chaos, the violence and the hatred that unfolded. And so following Monday’s bombing, the media and their followers are desperate to find out who committed the heinous act. With the New York Post falsely throwing in a “Saudi national” suspect in the picture, it seems as though people are on the edge of their seats, waiting for the bomber to be identified. Khaled A. Beydoun, wrote in his Al-Jazeera article “Boston explosions: ‘Please don’t be Arabs or Muslims,’” that the Arab community is hoping that the bomber wasn’t Arab or Muslim. He wrote the anxiety felt “between catastrophe and discovering the real culprits, define what it means to be Arab and Muslim-American today.”
What does it mean if the bomber is Arab or is Muslim? It seems as though the bombing will then automatically be considered an “act of terrorism.” After all, following the Post’s story, both media and social media outlets blew up with racist claims and “terrorist” forecasts.
And if the bomber isn’t? Is it then just an act of “senseless violence”?
Obama says no. At a press conference on Tuesday morning, he said a bombing is a “an act of terrorism … whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual.”
By labeling “bombings,” regardless of motivation, as ‘terrorist acts,’ Obama loosens up the traditional definition, which normally emphasizes a political motive. With no motive or even suspect confirmed yet, Obama essentially associated terrorism with the act of instilling terror in the population.
Yet, the president repeatedly referred to Newtown as an act of “senseless violence,” though fear was certainly been instilled in the population after the massacre. Lanza was labeled as a “madman.”
What gives?
Of course, in the political reality of our society today, the word “terrorism” is hinged on certain racisms. Therefore, I wonder if the bomber will be portrayed as a terrorist or a madman once we know his true identity.
But more importantly, there’s the widespread belief that the “Lanza’s” in our society don’t have political motives like “terrorists” do. Thus, if the bomber had an anti-American motive, we are forced to reflect on our policies domestic or foreign that most likely sparked the violent action — policies that we work so hard to look away from. But if the bomber is deemed “insane” we can more easily find a way to not have to reflect much at all. We treat them as isolated incidents, bad apples and ultimately, out of our control to fix. And in some ways, when the perpetrator is labeled a “madman,” it even provides some with relief. We think, “There’s nothing we could have done.” Of course we fight for things that can bandage the issue, like stricter gun laws and calling for less violence in the media. But we feel that, ultimately, at some point, a “madman” will inevitably strike.
But “madmen” aren't simply "hard-wired" to be "evil;" they have political motives, too. And they are usually aimed at societal structures instead of national policies. These people are screaming to us that our society has made them feel trapped — and this is their one last attempt at gaining control.
Living in a violent, individualistic, technological world has its consequences. We are more lonely, anxious and depressed as ever. And this can turn into rage.
Of course, I’m not sure what exactly goes on in the mind of a “madman,” but the urge to kill doesn’t come from a random place. For example, a family member of Adam Lanza just recently said that Lanza was bullied when he attended Sandy Hook elementary school. This is probably just one of the factors that shaped Lanza.
Thus, when we delve deeper into so-called “senseless violence” we see it’s not very “senseless” at all. This type of violence comes with living in such a violent world.
And so does “terrorism” in the traditional sense. So in reality, the way we differentiate a “terrorist act” and “senseless violence” is unsubstantiated. They both stem from the violence in society and in ourselves.
After using an entire population as a scapegoat for 9/11, I think we have learned that if this act does have an anti-American motive behind it, there is no longer an easy target. The target is ourselves and our complicity with our policies. But if the motive is pure rage, the target is ourselves, too. Let’s stop drawing such a divide between these terms. Let's stop using them all together.
Both "terrorist acts" and "senseless violence" are reactionary to our violent society today, both should cause a chilling queasiness in our bodies and both need to awaken us and force us to explore their cause.
Is “Celebrating Margaret Thatcher's death: Utterly disgraceful, or totally justifiable?” asks The Week today.
The question comes amidst London street parties celebrating the former prime minister’s death. In response, there have been several critiques about these celebrations. For example, a Liberal Democrat MP, Stephen Williams, has been quoted saying that celebrating someone’s death is “entirely distasteful.”
In some ways, I agree. I find it to be eerie when people rejoice death. I’ll never forget getting text messages when Osama bin Laden was assassinated: “We did it! Bin Laden is dead!” And those awful, terrifying “U.S.A.!” chants and celebrations in front of the White House. People celebrated Hugo Chavez’s recent death, too. And though the politics of all three examples are vastly different, they are all people — and when we fail to humanize people (and instead claim them evil upon death), we fail to grasp the reality of how big a role society plays on those in power.
Glenn Greenwald wrote yesterday that the “demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous.” I completely agree. But I disagree on the premise of his piece, which suggests that it’s okay to completely trash Thatcher because she was a public figure, not a private individual. Ultimately, Greenwald and The Week are asking the wrong questions. Instead of arguing over whether it’s justifiable to critique Thatcher’s policies (which it certainly is), we should be asking how to most effectively issue this criticism.
Right now, what is most dangerous about some of the criticism of Thatcher is the attack on her person, instead of her policies. Yet, too often people (and especially the media) obscures the two. And although the personal and political may be impossible to separate, I believe an attempt to frame the criticism around her policies is more valuable. Now, I’m not trying to make Thatcher out to be innocent or completely clear her of her free will. But we have to realize her actions were brought about by a belief system. Although Thatcher may embody all the policies we hate, rejoicing her death, in some ways, makes it seem as though this system that sparked her policies is dead, too. And we must remember that, in the end, Thatcher was an agent of neo-liberal ideology — which is still very much alive.
For some, perhaps celebrating her death provides some cathartic relief to the damage her policies have caused. But I hope all those popping open bottles of champagne in Trafalgar Square this week will be there to protest austerity cuts, privatization, deregulation, etc. in the future.
Thus, instead of framing someone as a monster, let’s take the more courageous road and frame the ideology as monstrous. If we talk about Thatcher’s legacy in this way, we have a much better chance of really focusing on defeating the huge battle ahead of us.
There were, perhaps, stupider things said recently than “How did it become so difficult to call a woman good-looking in public?” but I didn’t happen to hear them. So congratulations, Dylan Byers of Politico. Your commentary on the president calling California Attorney General Kamala Harris “by far, the best looking attorney general” made my brain hurt.
It is not “difficult to call a woman good-looking in public,” not in a world where women’s looks are considered public property, to be commented on, uninvited, whether it’s on the street, in a job interview, or in the press. Many people find it quite easy to do, many of them men, and many people who should know better, like Barack Obama.
This is hardly the first time Obama has been smarmily sexist under the guise of paying a compliment. In the same New York magazine story on Christine Quinn in which Mayor Michael Bloomberg was notoriously quoted saying, “Look at the ass on her,” Obama got a pass for a more politely phrased brand of creepiness. According to the piece, Obama said to a Republican legislator, 32-year-old Nicole Malliotakis, that she didn’t look a day over 23. Quinn promptly joked that Malliotakis should become a Democrat, and the president chimed in, “Come on, honey! I said you’re pretty! I said you look 23!”
Yes, women who seem young and are considered pretty by men obtain certain advantages in our society. That doesn’t mean that the purportedly progressive president of the United States needs to do his part to enforce all that. (Don’t get me started on “honey,” or “sweetie.” No, I can’t take a fucking compliment.) Yes, people notice and appreciate attractiveness in men and women, which is not incompatible with being smart or successful. But women, above all, are subject to a can’t-win calculus in which the desires of men, rather than their objective qualifications, determine how they’re treated — for better or worse. It applies wherever women exist in public, even when looks are entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
After the NYPD had failed to catch the man behind a brutal mugging on Mar. 9, they released a video of the crime Tuesday in hopes of gaining leads. And within minutes, they surely did.
Gawker posted the video on its site on Tuesday night at 11:49 P.M. Within an hour, a commenter by the username "secretsout" wrote: "https://www.facebook.com/Stugotz27 link to most likely suspect. take care of business guys."
The link led to the Facebook page of 21-year-old Aidan Folan, who had photos of him taken hours before the robbery. According to Gawker, the photos revealed the same sweatshirt the mugger wore in the video — with large fraternity letters on front. Commenters on the New York's Daily Intelligencer site, which also posted the video, also linked back to Folan.
Folan has since been arrested and charged with robbery and assault.
So what can we take away from the NYPD's 3-week fail and the Internet's 1-hour win besides a good (yet sad) laugh?
Perhaps an awareness that social media is not just the place where people post silly statuses and pictures with friends. Social media acts as a timeline of people's lives — accounts of their activities. And now they are playing significant roles in helping to solve crimes — most notably exposing the Steubenville rape case back in January.
But while ordinary people can clearly solve crimes via social media too, don't think Big Brother has been late to the game. The FBI, CIA and police in cities across the nation have been investigating people's social network sites for years — often, however, raising privacy concerns for spying on citizens in the name of protection. In a recent article, for example, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department even admitted to being the first known agency to monitor social media sites 24/7.
Another major fail for the Republican Party's rebranding effort: Today's edition features the chairwoman of the Georgia Republican Party, explaining why marriage equality is a bad idea:
Sue Everhart, chairwoman of the Georgia Republican Party, told the Marietta Daily Journal in a story published Saturday that once gay nuptials are legally permitted, there will be nothing to stop a straight person from exploiting the system in order to claim marital benefits. [...]"There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride."
Well, sure. Because it's a well known fact that heterosexuals do not commit fraud. It's just so ... gay.
But, to be fair, potential fraud isn't Everhart's only concern:
"Lord, I’m going to get in trouble over this, but it is not natural for two women or two men to be married," Everhart said. "If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship."
Hmmmm. Perhaps someone should tell Sue that having sex isn't limited to being flat on your back with a (flannel) nightgown thrown over your face.
The beginnings of the US wars with Iraq started with Bush Sr in 1991. Embargoes, sanctions, and bombing raids have strung together decades of militarised US brutality towards Iraq. Repeated lies about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's capabilities ignited the 2003 illegal invasion. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives in this period and several million have been displaced by this US occupation. Huge numbers of these people are women - the very women that Laura Bush promised to "save".
In the weeks leading up to this 10-year anniversary of the 2003 war there has been precious little said about actual women's rights in Iraq. Media venues and screens of all sorts instead are in full gear discussing feminist dilemmas in the US, from Sheryl Sandberg's need for powerful women to lean in, to whether women - that fantasmatic unspecified category - can "have it all", or "not".
These are messy times we live in. Wars are said to end (and they really don't) and the war/s on women across the globe - from Congo, to Egypt, to Afghanistan, to the US Republican party - are not counted amongst them anyway. There is much noise about Sandberg of Facebook fame telling women to lean in - meaning to stay at the table and persevere - to get top leadership roles, while most women here and elsewhere have no chance for the top rungs of power. Do not be confused by the fact that Secretary of States Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton oversaw the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hillary - who leans in readily - spoke on behalf of women's rights while getting little in return.
It is problematic and troubling that Sandberg readily claims to be a feminist, without qualifying that her kind of feminism is corporatist and way too exclusionary. Her notion of "true equality" requires more women to be at the top - in leadership positions in government and the corporate structure. She supposedly believes that these women can change the world for the rest of women, and men. But, so far, they have not done so in meaningful ways. Shall I remind us of Madeleine Albright's famous statement when asked about US sanctions against Iraq that endangered the lives of 100 of thousands children? She said: "We think the price is worth it."
So what is a girl or woman to think? Hillary finishes up her stint as Secretary of State and is lauded as one of the best, ever. She is acclaimed for her "women's rights" foreign policy agenda and the gratitude of women worldwide. Little is said about the imperial stance of her framing, or the gender violence that US policy has triggered and continues for women across the globe under her watch. Women in Iraq, and Afghanistan and Egypt are standing up, what Sandberg might term leaning in, but against patriarchal practices that US policy is implicated in.
These complex relations and their related exclusionary silences seem to appear everywhere. The new Pope Francis is hailed as a friend of the poor. He is lauded for his dedication to a simple life and a concern with poverty. But he has a fraught history with Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner over the right of women to free contraception and also the acceptability of gay marriage. It seems that the Pope is no friend to women and/or gays or trans people whether they are poor or not. Little is said of his exclusionary doctrine, so it remains invisible - like much gender violence and inequality alongside wars for women's rights.
Whose feminism?
A first query is: whose interests does imperial feminism meet in its rendering of gains for women? Whose interests are met by Sandberg's notion of lean in? Obviously corporate America or she would not be receiving such endless publicity. But it is also more complicated than this because much of what Sandberg writes in Lean In many women from across class and racial and geographical lines can identify with. Her stories may readily remind people of their own insecurities, lack of self-confidence, and self-regulating personalities. Yet, most women in our jobs and lives cannot do what we must do to make a living and care for our loved ones without working beyond our limits - standing firm, and stirring things up. Most women - especially those who live in war-torn countries already "lean in" to their lives with no choice but to do so.
Sandberg says that the feminist revolution is stalled; that women need more ambition to get to the top and change things from there. Really? Corporate exploitation of the 99 percent is left intact. The rigid structuring of work and home remains in place even if she wants men and women to traverse the divide equally.
Women in leadership posts just mean that women will be in place to lead this structural exploitative imperial nightmare. We do not need more women in the power slots that already exist. We need a different non-hierarchical formulation of power - one that is not rooted in gender violence across the globe, and then feminists of whatever sex and race can occupy places of leadership.
Few people would criticise Sandberg's feminist wish that her/our children find happiness and passion in whatever desires they choose. So let me extend this view beyond her "blind-spots" and dialogue from there. She invites us to "keep talking" and not end the conversation too quickly. So I will continue, but differently.
Wars and women in Iraq
Wars start and often continue all too silently. They continue even when they supposedly have ended. New forms of war are in process and few of us may be looking in the right places. And, the oldest war - on female bodies - is too often made invisible when it is horrifically real. Local wars - named for their geography - like Iraq or Afghanistan trump the war on gender, but in name only. Yet, gender violence is systematic: kidnappings, public beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, and killings make women the particular targets. One Billion Rising gave public viewing to a global war of sexual violence.
MADRE, a US-based international women's human rights group, has been on the ground in Iraq for over the past decade. They work against gender violence in conflict situations and are presently working alongside their partner group, the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), to combat growing violence against women in the country. It is hard to say which is worse: an almost secular state with a totalitarian ruler named Saddam Hussein, or right wing religious extremists vying for their patriarchal vision of life. But the Iraq War has left its women with less rights and more violence.
The US war in Iraq utilised sexualised torture. MADRE has called special attention to the widespread use of rape and other forms of torture against women detainees by US and Iraqi forces. The OWFI further documents these atrocities in their Women's Prison Watch project. Right wing militias stepped into the power vacuum left after the overthrow of Hussein and they continue their attack - abductions, assassinations and rapes - on women in the hopes of establishing their preferred extremist theocracy.
MADRE has disclosed that the US armed and trained right wing Islamist militias using torture and gender violence in Iraq and yet anti-war activists have been slow to highlight the gendered aspect of the violence gripping Iraq. US media has largely ignored the thousands of Iraqi women who have been detained and tortured during the US occupation. Instead of a thunderous critique of "feminicide" in Iraq, there is a pretense of concern for women's rights. Similar conditions exist in Afghanistan.
According to Yifat Susskind, executive director of MADRE, they along with OWFI have established a network of women's shelters in the non-Kurdish part of Iraq to address the violence towards any gender non-conforming person. These safe houses include protection for gays and lesbians and others in danger of gender violence, uniting women's rights and LGBT activism for a first time. This action allowed for a particular kind of Iraqi Arab Spring in Baghdad's Tahrir Square in 2011.
Contrary to popular understanding in the US, neither the Bush nor Obama administration has put the protection of women's rights in Iraq (or Afghanistan) at centre stage. Instead it has traded women's rights for a fragile cooperation at great cost to women's equality. Wars of all and any sort are not good for most of us, anywhere. And, they create human and environmental disasters beside all else.
These disasters afflict children in particular, and the women who care for them as well. According to Yanar Mohammed, director of OWFI, at this ten-year anniversary there is an alarming increase in birth defects and cancers among young children. This is especially the case in places like Haweeja, a town about two hours drive from Baghdad, used as a munitions dump by the US military. This consequence of the war will not end any time soon.
Beyond imperial feminism
So, I have wandered far afield here, and also, not. The Iraq War in its many articulations bleeds over a 22 year period. Never has there been a war that so few in the imperial country have cared so little about. There has been too little attention paid, and much too little grieving done.
Attention and action is still needed. Those living with the aftermath of war, especially the gender violence of militarised countries at home and abroad need us to lean in - stand in, stand with and stir up resistance - with them. As the war in Iraq transforms and the war in Afghanistan is downsized, the gender/ed violence on women continues. Resistance to it must be sustained as well.
Imperial feminism does not work for most women in the US or abroad, so it makes little sense to endorse it. Feminism promised to the many by the few does not work. Trickle-down feminism does not work.
I am reminded of my friend Egyptian feminist Nawal el Saadawi's response to a question asked to her at a teach-in in New York City just after the revolution in Tahrir Square. When asked what people in the US could do to support the revolution in Egypt she said: "Make your own revolution and change your government for us."
Sounds right.
