Rape and State Secrets–It’s All About Power

 3 Responses »
Dec 162010
 

Never mind that for the most part I am a huge fan, at the moment I am just the teensiest bit annoyed with Michael Moore for having this to say about the Assange rape charges,

For those of you who think it’s wrong to support Julian Assange because of the sexual assault allegations he’s being held for, all I ask is that you not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey. Please — never, ever believe the “official story.” And regardless of Assange’s guilt or innocence (see the strange nature of the allegations here), this man has the right to have bail posted and to defend himself.

Yes, I agree, the charges do seem strange,  and I do support Assange’s work (we’ll get to that in a few paragraphs) and of course he should have the right to defend himself. But treating the charges dismissively because Assange’s work is for the greater good isn’t okay because men,  powerful dudes included, do have a wee bit of a history of using their penises in inappropriate ways while their accusers get trashed (1), even by so-called progressives who all too often are dismissive and trivializing of the charges (2).

As feminist author and attorney Jill Filipovic puts it,

just because the vigor with which Assange was pursued was clearly politically motivated doesn’t mean that the accusations against Assange are totally incredible, or that it’s unjust that he will have to face them.

And Feministing’s Jessica Valenti points to the absurdity of the way the case is being deliberately described,

The truth?  There’s nothing in Swedish law about “sex by surprise” or broken condoms.  (Here’s the penal code, see for yourself.)  And despite reports to the contrary, Assange’s accusers have always said that this was not consensual sex.

For more thoughts on this, see Footnote 2 below.

Troubling as the dismissiveness of rape charges for the greater good line of reasoning is, Grit TV’s Laura Flanders makes this additional and very salient point that regardless of the integrity of the rape charges, since when did rape charges become such an almighty Interpol priority, not that it wouldn’t be a good idea if they did, but the answer of course is when they are politically expedient, and certainly not out of sudden concern for the welfare of the alleged victims:

let’s be clear, he should face the charges. But since when is Interpol [the investigative arm of the International Criminal Court at The Hague] so vigilant about violence against women? If women’s security is suddenly Interpol’s priority — that’s big news!Tell it to hundreds of women in US jails and immigration detention centers — who charge that they can’t get justice against accused rapists — or women in the US military (two of out three of whom allege they’ve experienced assault.) In Haiti hundreds of unprosecuted cases of rape in refugee camps could use some of Interpol’s attention…

…It seems we only care about women’s bodies when there’s a political point to be proved.

And there we get to another point of great dis-ease; it serves a lot of powerful agendas to prosecute Assange for rape, but for the overwhelming majority of rapes, that is not the case. As Meredith Tax points out, never mind Interpol, even the International Criminal Court which is supposed to prosecute rape cases is doing a piss poor job of it.

At the crux of it, women’s human rights are routinely and systemically ignored unless it serves the political agenda of patriarchy to shine a light on the pandemic abuse of women. We only trot out women’s rights when they are convenient. The examples are endless.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently made a surprise appearance at the TED Women conference.  She told the audience that if you give women equal rights, the whole nation will be more stable and secure.  Indeed.  Maybe we could try that in the United States?  Passing an Equal Rights Amendment, ratifying CEDAW,  and insisting on equal pay would be a good place to start.  Imagine if we took that approach to security instead of waging endless wars against other countries.

And what about the rights of women in Afghanistan that we are allegedly defending? As MADRE’s Diana Duarte says so succinctly,

It is not only valid but also necessary to reject the conflation of support for Afghan women’s rights with support for the war.  This conflation has obstructed our view of what alternatives may exist.  It has blocked us from recognizing that perpetual war clamps down on the space that women have to build solutions for their future.

And then there is the U.S. military which is being sued for access to rape records in an effort to determine the extent to which the military has addressed the appalling rates of sexual assault and lack of prosecution thereof in the ranks,

“Much of the information about the extent and cost of the (military sexual trauma) problem, along with the government’s reluctance to prosecute offenders and treat victims, is not in the public sphere,” the lawsuit states. “The public has a compelling interest in knowing this information, given the potential enormity of the problem, the emotional and financial cost that it imposes on military service members and the increasing number of women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

It goes on and on–in New York, rape crimes have been deliberately covered up,

until exposed through a series of recordings as well as an FBI report, New York City police officers had been covering up sex crimes with the full knowledge and even the direction of their superiors. In fact, it seems likely it’s still happening.

So those rapes should be covered up, but the charges against Assange are the stuff of Interpol charges? Just a bit of a double standard.

———-

I have been thinking a great deal about the juxtaposition of the issue of Assange’s exposure of government and corporate secrets while being accused of a crime that all too often is also shrouded in secrecy.  In the end, the common thread is power, which so often depends on secrecy at the expense of truth, be it in the personal or political realm.

Many intelligent and thoughtful people, while acknowledging that much of what has been exposed thus far is quite troubling, are concerned that Wikileaks endangers the secrecy necessary to function in the corporate and political world. (3) That however makes the assumption that keeping those systems functioning as they are is a good idea, and that is what we need to re-examine because for the most part, if there wasn’t something offensive if not illegal about what is being kept secret, those in power would not be so concerned about keeping those secrets.  And in the end, wouldn’t we be better served by those in power acting honorably in a way that would pass the test of transparency?

And so we  need to ask ourselves, just what is it that the powers that be are afraid will be exposed and subsequently lost by these revelations.  And the answer is one word, Patriarchy, and this is why:  In the process of leaking documents, Wikileaks and Assange have gifted the power and commodity of secrecy.

In an essay by Israeli writer Erella Shadmi, Trapped By Patriarchy in the anthology Women and the Gift Economy we get an understanding of why gifting secrets that are needed to maintain power is so terrifying to patriarchal structure in both the public and private realm.  While she refers to Muslim and Israeli societies, her analysis is universal to patriarchy.

Muslim tradition puts revenge and honour up on the private and public agenda of every believer. And Israeli modern culture is dominated by the Culture of the Freiher. Freiher is a vulgarism meaning “sucker.” The culture of freiher defies a person that is ready to give way, to be used, to forgive. Such a person is viewed as one that does not care for his honour or power. For example: you are a freiher if you yield to other drivers. And especially, you are a freiher if you talk with “terrorists,” if you let your wife dominate you. In a culture of the freiher you do not take responsibility for your mistakes, you do not share your ideas lest they be stolen, you are never weak lest you are exploited. So you learn to manipulate, to lie, to exploit people, to hide your feelings.

Wikileaks has dared to question the culture of freiher and the very structure of patriarchy in a way that we must defend and from which we cannot go back. Yet that very act also demands that we respect and fully address the personal charges against Assange, no matter how badly brought they have been, while at the same time not allowing them to be used as an excuse to undermine the defense and imperative of freeing ill-conceived secrets.

———-

In an effort to keep the body of this essay at a manageable size, I have pulled a lot of important material into the footnotes because it is crucial to the full understanding of the issues addressed above.

(1) In this case, this has been done in particularly frightening ways. The Washington Examiner reports,

Posting their addresses and phone numbers isn’t intended to encourage vigilantism, but to send a bigger message to women like Ardin and Wilen – if you lie about being raped, this is what will happen to you. Your anonymity will be compromised, your life will be laid bare for all to see, and your name will be destroyed. No rape shield law or journalistic ethic can protect you. You will suffer as the man whose name you vindictively dragged through the mud has suffered.

I want women to see that their choices have consequences. If enough false rape accusers have their identities and personal data exposed to the jeering Internet hordes, others will think twice before they accuse men of heinous crimes for petty and selfish reasons.

(2) A few non-negotiable facts that we should get straight from the get-go in this conversation:  Rape and sexual assault are the most under-reported and prosecuted crimes in the world. Yes, a few rape charges are false, most aren’t. And yes some rapes are committed by women and some of the victims are men, but mostly it is men that commit these crimes and women who are the victims.  And to be clear–the basis of these claims comes from the U.S. Department of Justice, the World Health Organization, etc.

Jaclyn Friedman, executive director of Women, Action & the Media and  editor of  Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, suggests that statements like Moore’s and other progressives amount to just one  more incident of what she aptly calls a Rape Apology Day,

Keith Olbermann used scare quotes around the word rape as though the charges themselves (which are that Assange held one woman down against her will, and in a separate incident raped another while she was sleeping) were silly, and everyone from Glenn Beck to Naomi Wolf rushed to belittle the accusers, along the way employing every victim-blaming, rape-denying, slut-shaming trope ever invented, from “they’re just lashing out because they got their feelings hurt” (that’s both Beck and purported feminist Wolf, paraphrased) to my personal non-favorite, popular blogger Robert Stacy McCain’s suggestion that women who consent to any kind of sex are sluts who deserve whatever happens: “You buy the ticket, you take the ride.”…

…As soon as a rape accusation makes it into the news cycle (most often because the accused is famous), it’s instantly held up against our collective subconscious idea about what Real Rape (or, as Whoopi Goldberg odiously called it, “rape-rape”) looks like. Here’s a quick primer on that ideal: The rapist is a scary stranger, with a weapon, even better if he’s a poor man of color. The victim is a young, white, conventionally pretty, sober, innocent virgin. Also, there are witnesses and/or incontrovertible physical evidence, and the victim goes running to the authorities as soon as the assault is over.But let’s face it, actual rapes almost never match up to this ideal. Most rape victims know their attacker (estimates range from 75 percent to 89 percent), most rapists use alcohol or drugs to facilitate the assault (More than 80 percent, according to researcher David Lisak), not weapons, and most of the famous men whose accusers receive media attention aren’t poor men of color. But once the accusation hits the news cycle, whatever pundit gets there first uses the non-ideal details of the alleged assault to argue that surely, we shouldn’t take this seriously, and other pundits nod their head in agreement.

And investigative journalist Lindsay Beyerstein adds,

It is curious that charges against Assange were brought, dropped almost immediately, and later reinstated. The fact that authorities were so quick to charge Assange based on uncorroborated testimony should raise questions about whether prosecutors are treating him differently from your run-of-the-mill alleged sex criminal. However, it’s pure rape culture apology to argue that so-called “he said/she said” cases should be automatically dismissed in favor of the alleged rapist.

We can agree that the legal response to what Assange allegedly did reeks of politically-motivated prosecution without passing judgment on the merits of the allegations against him.

(3) Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW)’s Anne L. Weismann also makes the peculiar argument that Wikileaks endangers freedom of information by not working within the system,

At first blush, WikiLeaks’ disclosure of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables seems like a win for transparency and accountability in government. After all, these documents offer a never before seen window into U.S. diplomacy. But upon closer inspection, WikiLeaks’ document dump illustrates the perils of going outside the system, and is likely to result in less transparency in the long run.

For those of us in the transparency business, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) offers a useful tool to pierce government secrecy. Designed to let the public know what its government is up to, the FOIA mandates disclosure upon request, subject to nine limited exemptions. Those exemptions represent a congressional balancing of governmental interests, such as national security and investigative needs, against the public’s need to know. For agencies that stray off course, the FOIA provides judicial review, allowing courts to view requested documents in camera to determine if they were properly withheld. While the FOIA is far from perfect, it provides the public with a useful tool for scrutinizing government actions and policies balanced by oversight and procedural safeguards.

Also worth noting, Deanna Zandt has some excellent  commentary on the issue of internet rights and access,

When we face issues of free speech on the Net, we’re confronted with a severe reality in the harshest moments: we consider this here to be public space, but in reality it’s owned and operated by private companies. There is currently no set of accepted standards that say we have a set of rights online.

This is a crucial issue and with Net Neutrality in grave peril as I write this, if nothing else, we should seriously be thinking about the issue of how we access the internet and as PayPal, Amazon, Mastercard, etc. have proven, how easily that can be cut off.

Finally, I want to point to this weird example of the oft ignored sexism of the left. CommonDreams, in its  ongoing coverage of Wikileaks, ran this illustration without comment, the use of “Gentlemen” in the graphic apparently was not considered remarkable.  It should have been.

–Lucinda Marshall

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 Posted by Fempeace on December 16, 2010

Continuing To Address The Needs In Haiti From A Gender-Informed Lens

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Jan 292010
 

The following provides additional news and comments about the particular needs of women in the aftermath of the the  earthquake in Haiti:

From the Washington Post:

(A)s health and safety conditions in the capital city worsen, putting Haitian women and children at particular risk for disease and sexual exploitation.

Reports show that violence against women and girls was already common in Haiti before the earthquake. In a 2006 study by the Inter-American Development Bank, one-third of women and girls said they had suffered physical or sexual violence, and more than half of those were younger than 18.

“We have to keep in mind that disasters make existing inequalities even worse,” said Marijke Velzeboer-Salcedo, an expert on gender issues for the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization. “Those who are stronger and more powerful, whether physically or psychosocially — or both — are going to have better access to scarce resources. But when women are deprived of resources, entire families are likely to be deprived, too.”

About 37,000 pregnant women affected by the earthquake are in desperate need of food, clean drinking water and access to health care, said Franck Geneus, who directs health programs in Haiti for CARE, an Atlanta-based nonprofit group that helps women and children around the world. As many as 10,000 of the women could give birth in the next month.

Workers in the battered town of Leogane carefully planned the distribution of hygiene kits by first sending in an assessment team and coordinating with local leaders to ensure that the neediest women would be helped, officials said. The goal is to prevent the aid from ending up in the hands of people who try to sell it or force women to trade sexual favors for food and supplies.

“Stand in line! Stop pushing!” officers yelled as others handed out bags of rice, corn, sardines, sausages and beans. There were separate lines for men and women. But only men were at the front, clawing for the food; women and children waited behind in longer lines that did not move.

In an interview by Anne-christine D’adesky with promminent Haitian journalist Liliane Pierre-Paul published in World Pulse,

“From the minute the buildings fell,” Liliane informs me, “women were there and everywhere. They were leading the way into buildings; leading stunned children into safety; tending to the wounded; screaming and demanding help; speaking to the foreign media and CNN; setting up instant street kitchens and camps; singing, witnessing, praying.”

“There’s no doubt that the earthquake has had a massive impact on Haitian women,” Liliane confirms, “in ways that we as feminists and women leaders have yet to really take in—we haven’t been able to analyze this. It’s just survival now. We’re so busy trying to cope right this minute, to just get through this day. But we know… I know… it’s huge.”

Erica Guevara-Rosas, Program Director for Americas for the Global Fund for Women:

There has been a lot of concern that the humanitarian aid is currently lacking in gender-sensitivity – not just in terms of what is being distributed, but also how it is distributed. In isolated areas, the aid is distributed by air, leaving women and children vulnerable to abuse. The reports we have heard so far about the plight of women and girls on the ground affirms our fear that risk of gender and sexual violence escalates during times of such grave crisis. It is very important to give visibility to the needs of women and girls, as well as to the importance of including women in the decision-making of all reconstruction efforts and aid distribution.

The resource mobilization to respond to the tragedy has been impressive. UN agencies, governments, cooperative agencies, relief organizations, individual donors and other actors are raising funds from all over the world to address the immediate needs of Haitians. Equally important and impressive has been the response of international women’s movements. Feminist and women’s organizations from around the world are sending support or offering technical assistance to help Haitian women with the reconstruction of their communities. The Latin American and Caribbean women’s movements have quickly mobilized resources to prioritize the distribution of gender-sensitive assistance, as well as to revitalize the Haitian women’s movement. While the response has been encouraging, the needs are increasing and the conditions are increasingly chaotic. Thousands of Haitians, mainly women and children are crossing the border to seek assistance on the Dominican side or are trying to leave in small boats, risking their lives in order to get to the US. The government of Dominican Republic estimates that more than 10,000 people are already across the border, where conditions are not suitable to establish camps with basic services.

Besides the much-needed humanitarian aid, we need to ensure that long-term support for the reconstruction phase and to protect women and children from violence, as well as support to ensure that women will be participate in decision making are crucial in the following months. The Latin American and Caribbean feminist movement is coordinating efforts in an unprecedented manner. Coalitions to respond to the crisis, e-mail lists, blogs, joint statements and other actions have been established to coordinate and organize long-term strategies to support women and children. (Continue reading here.)

Madre’s Yifat Susskind:

Right now, there is a window of opportunity to ensure that Haiti’s reconstruction process upholds the full range of women’s human rights and uses gender awareness as a starting point for successful recovery efforts. Nothing less than the future of Haiti is at stake.

Eve Ensler on the sad death of Haitian feminist leader Myriam Merlet:

And CNN with more on Merlet as well as 2 other prominent Haitian women, Anne Marie Coriolan and Magalie Marcelin.

Finally, Cynthia McKinney has written an excellent piece addressing the implicit racism and militarism in the U.S.government’s response to Haiti,

President Obama’s response to the tragedy in Haiti has been robust in military deployment and puny in what the Haitians need most: food; first responders and their specialized equipment; doctors and medical facilities and equipment; and engineers, heavy equipment, and heavy movers. Sadly, President Obama is dispatching Presidents Bush and Clinton, and thousands of Marines and U.S. soldiers. By contrast, Cuba has over 400 doctors on the ground and is sending in more; Cubans, Argentinians, Icelanders, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, and many others are already on the ground working–saving lives and treating the injured. Senegal has offered land to Haitians willing to relocate to Africa.

The United States, on the day after the tragedy struck, confirmed that an entire Marine Expeditionary Force was being considered “to help restore order,” when the “disorder” had been caused by an earthquake striking Haiti; not since 1751, 1770, 1842, 1860, and 1887 had Haiti experienced an earthquake. But, I remember the bogus reports of chaos and violence the led to the deployment of military assets, including Blackwater, in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One Katrina survivor noted that the people needed food and shelter and the U.S. government sent men with guns. Much to my disquiet, it seems, here we go again. From the very beginning, U.S. assistance to Haiti has looked to me more like an invasion than a humanitarian relief operation.

It’s a thought-provoking piece and I recommend it in its entirety.

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 Posted by Fempeace on January 29, 2010

Providing Gender Responsive Aid in Haiti

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Jan 152010
 

In Haiti, as is always true in the aftermath of a major disaster, in addition to the urgent need for what we traditionally consider the pillars of immediate aid–food, water, shelter, medical care–there are  needs that are specific to women, particularly for pregnant women and mothers with new babies and the need to address the added vulnerability to violence that women face when government infrastructures are dysfunctional. According to the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA):

(W)omen of reproductive age face limitations in accessing pre-natal and post-natal care, as well as greater risk of vaginal infections, pregnancy complications including spontaneous abortion, unplanned pregnancy, and post-traumatic stress. An increase in violence against women was also recorded…

…(I)n natural disaster situations and in post-disaster recuperation, the cases of violence may increase. “Given the stress that this situation caused and the life in the refuges, men attacked women more frequently.

Additionally as the MIndanao Commission on Women and Mothers for Peace Movement points out:

women suffer most from the impact of climate change and natural disasters because of discrimination and poverty. The same happened to women victims of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami as documented in a report on “Gender and Climate Change.”

Tracy Clark-Flory addresses these issues relative to providing aid in Haiti in a piece on Salon’s Broadsheet:

It isn’t just that women often require special care and resources post-disaster; human rights organizations say that they could also play a critical role in distributing much-needed aid. Women “are central actors in family and community life,” says Enarson, and are more likely to know “who in the neighborhood most needs help — where the single mothers, women with disabilities, widows and the poorest of the poor live.” Diana Duarte, a spokesperson for MADRE, an international women’s rights organization that has joined the relief effort, put it this way: “Women are often more integrated and more aware of the vulnerabilities of their communities.”

Even beyond the initial emergency response, there lies a long road to recovery that holds other unique challenges for women and girls. They are “at increased risk of gender-based violence, especially domestic violence and rape but also forced marriage at earlier ages” due to their increased dependence on men for protection and support, says Enarson. After a disaster of this magnitude, there will also be scores of “newly disabled, widowed or homeless women” in need of help. MADRE’s Duarte points out that women’s generally higher “level of poverty negatively effects their ability to access resources to rebuild.”

Clark-Flory also points to the work of the Gender and Disaster Network which calls for a gender-responsive approach to aid in Haiti and has a wealth of resources on the topic here.

Madre’s Marie St. Cyr and Yifat Susskind offer this excellent view of what such an approach needs to look like in Haiti,

All Haitians are suffering right now. But, women are often hardest hit when disaster strikes because they were at a deficit even before the catastrophe. In Haiti, and in every country, women are the poorest and often have no safety net, leaving them most exposed to violence, homelessness and hunger in the wake of disasters. Women are also overwhelmingly responsible for other vulnerable people, including infants, children, the elderly, and people who are ill or disabled.

Because of their role as caretakers and because of the discrimination they face, women have a disproportionate need for assistance. Yet, they are often overlooked in large-scale aid operations. In the chaos that follows disasters, aid too often reaches those who yell the loudest or push their way to the front of the line. When aid is distributed through the “head of household” approach, women-headed families may not even be recognized, and women within male-headed families may be marginalized when aid is controlled by male relatives.

It is not enough to ensure that women receive aid. Women in communities must also be integral to designing and carrying out relief efforts. When relief is distributed by women, it has the best chance of reaching those most in need. That’s not because women are morally superior. It is because their roles as caretakers in the community means they know where every family lives, which households have new babies or disabled elders, and how to reach remote communities even in disaster conditions.

Moreover, women in the community have expertise about the specific problems women and their families face during disasters.

Unfortunately, in big relief operations, already-marginalized people are usually the ones who “fall through the cracks.

None of this sits too well with the men’s rights movement.  Robert Franklin, Esq. has this to say at Men’s News Daily:

(A)ccording to Clark-Flory, ”women in general will be in need of ‘hygiene supplies…”  Men and boys apparently will not need those things.  And “women often require special care and resources post disaster.”  Men and boys don’t need those things either.  Is that because men and boys are supermen who don’t need help?  Or is it because they’re less deserving of it than are women and girls?

First of all, the piece did not say that men and boys don’t deserve aid, it said that women have some needs that men don’t have  that  also need to be addressed.  Secondly (having hopefully given female readers time to pick themselves up off the floor from laughing)–apparently Mr. Franklin, Esq. does not go to the grocery or drug store very often or he would know that hygiene is our oh so clean euphemism for sanitary products–oh wait, that is a euphemism too–okay, excuse my indelicacy–it means tampons and pads that women use when they MENSTRUATE (there, I said the word). As a general rule, most of the people who use those products are FEMALE.  But if Mr. Franklin, Esq. really feels that he needs them, I’m sure we can send him a box with explicit instructions on where to shove them.

As for special care, unless men get pregnant and have babies, they probably do not require that assistance either.

Over at Spearhead (they’re not subtle are they?), they also object to Gender and Disaster Network’s “Elaine Enarson (probably a Swedish woman)” saying that,

They are “at increased risk of gender-based violence, especially domestic violence and rape but also forced marriage at earlier ages” due to their increased dependence on men for protection and support.

with this,

So now when men provide women with protection and support they are suspected rapists, child molesters and batterers? Are these strange, foreign women more trustworthy than Haitian girls’ fathers, brothers and grandfathers? I try to refrain from inserting my opinion when I am writing these news pieces, but Ms. Enarson is making one of the most offensive insinuations possible with the above statement, and she is dead wrong. It is matriarchal societies where women cannot rely on men for support in which women face the most danger.

Really?  Name one matriarchal society where this is or was so.  And yes, women who are in general more likely to be victims of intimate violence are far more likely to be victimized when they suddenly become more physically vulnerable.

International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) offer this framework for re-prioritizing the way we offer aid:

In the face of obstacles and the needs that have been identified, the evaluation proposes a series of concrete recommendations, amongst which are to: improve the sexual and reproductive health of women and adolescents in natural disaster situations and in post-disaster recovery; ensure access to contraceptive measures, particularly condoms for the prevention of transmission of HIV; provide post-natal care; medicine to combat infections and post-traumatic stress; provide an adequate response to cases of violence against women, girls and boys; include the provision of health and legal services; and improve the security situation of shelters to prevent cases of abuse of power by guards.

The UNFPA is currently working to rush maternal health supplies to Haiti.

As Bill Quigley puts it so eloquently, we need to:

Prioritize humanitarian aid to help women, children and the elderly. They are always moved to the back of the line. If they are moved to the back of the line, start at the back.

There are several organizations that are working to provide aid to meet women’s specific needs in Haiti.  The women’s human rights organization Madre is,

working to send support to women’s human rights defenders. We are hearing reports of a horror that often accompanies disasters like this – namely, an upsurge of violence against women. It’s critical that women human rights defenders in Haiti have the support they need to help survivors and reach out to women who are trying to keep themselves and their children safe in the chaos that has gripped Port-au-Prince.

You can make a donation to help their efforts here.

In addition, the U of t Feminist Law Student’s Association reports that,

V-Day is trying to reach our sisters in Port au Prince who run the V-Day Haiti Sorority Safe House, which provides shelter to women survivors of violence and their children, as well as psychological, legal and medical support. While we have not been able to reach the staff at the Safe House, it is clear that increased help will be needed for women survivors of violence in the aftermath of the earthquake. Reports state that over 50,000 lives have been lost, and that Port Au Prince has been “flattened.”

You can donate to VDay’s Haiti Rescue Fund here.

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 Posted by Fempeace on January 15, 2010

Friday Frenzy 8/28/09

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Aug 282009
 

This, that and the other thing that I didn’t quite get to this week…

Laura Flanders of Grit TV talks to Yanar Mohammed, President of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and Yifat Susskind, communications director at MADRE about the underground railroad for women in Iraq.

Science Progress has a very interesting gendered analysis of male contraception here that examines the economic and health inequities that are implicit in regard to the lack of more options for male birth-control, something that may change in light of a new genetic discovery.

Not being responsible for some or all of these economic, health-related, and other burdens is a significant boon for men. Men typically do not have to dedicate time and energy to contraceptive care, pay out of pocket for the usually expensive and sometimes frequent (often monthly, or at least four times a year) supply of contraceptives, acquire the knowledge about contraception and reproduction needed to effectively contracept, deal with the medicalization of one’s reproductive health, endure the bodily invasion of contraception, suffer the health-related side effects and the mental stress of being responsible for contraception, and face the social repercussions of their contraceptive decisions (such as whether to use a particular contraceptive or to switch contraceptives), and the moral reproach for contraceptive failures. Women who contracept have to devote and sacrifice many aspects of themselves and what they value: their body, health (physical and mental), time, money, etc. These contraceptive burdens and sacrifices limit people’s freedoms. Since men are frequently not responsible for contraception, they are absolved from these burdens and thus their freedom is not infringed upon. In short, men’s autonomy is enhanced by their freedom from contraceptive responsibility.

At the same time, however, men’s autonomy is also diminished by the fact that they are usually not responsible for contraception.

As the article points out, even if  there were more options, social mores regarding male responsibility for contraception would clearly need to change.

Sign the MomsRising petition telling Kraft it is so not okay to put “synthetic growth hormones, artificial colorings like yellow #5, and chemical sweeteners like aspartame” in the macaroni we feed our kids, especially since they no longer use those chemicals in the products (I hesitate to call this food) in other countries.

Our Bodies Our Blog has an interesting piece about tactics used by Merck to market Gardisil.  Regardless of the efficacy and safety of the vaccine (and the long-term answer to that is still unknown), the marketing strategy leaves a lot to be desired.

And last, in the WTF department, a study finds that women are 3 times more likely to be arrested in domestic violence cases in England even though men are far more likely to be the perpetrators.

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 Posted by Fempeace on August 28, 2009

How The U.S. Military Presence In Afghanistan Continues To Imperil The Already Precarious Lives Of Afghan Women

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Jul 212009
 

I have a vintage 1960′s poster on my wall that says, “War is not good for children and other living things.”  Those sentiments were true then, have always been true and and are certainly still true today.  As the Feminist Peace Network website has noted  since it  began in 2001, military actions of all kinds also perpetrate specific forms of violence against women, including:

  • Mass rape, military sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced “marriages” and forced pregnancies.
  • Multiple rapes and gang rape (with multiple perpetrators) and the rape of young girls.
  • Sexual assault associated with violent physical assault.
  • Resurgence of female genital mutilation, within the community under attack, as a way to reinforce cultural identity.
  • Women forced to offer sex for survival, or in exchange for food, shelter, or “protection.”

But the devastation experienced by women during conflict goes beyond that. War today is not fought on some obscure battlefield.  It is fought in cities and towns where people live. When hospitals and homes and fields and schools are destroyed, there is no place for women to obtain medical care, or a warm shelter to call home, food to put on the table or a way to educate themselves or their children. As the human rights organization Madre notes, the impact of U.S. military action in Afghanistan has had  truly horrific implications for Afghan women:

The US and NATO did manage to oust the Taliban in 2001. Afghan women then gained some relief from a regime that publicly beat and executed women, and denied them education, healthcare, employment, participation in public life and any recourse from widespread domestic abuse. But that relief was short-lived. Today, a resurgent Taliban controls most of Afghanistan’s southern provinces and is encroaching on Kabul, the capital. In 2007, the number of US/NATO troops was increased by 45 percent. During that surge, more civilians were killed than in the previous four years combined. Each year that the occupation drags on, more Afghan civilians are killed. In 2008 alone, more than 2100 civilians were killed, a 40 percent jump over 2007.

The Bush Administration justified the invasion of Afghanistan by pointing to the Taliban’s systematic abuse of women. But subsequent US policies in Afghanistan did not uphold women’s human rights. As a result: 1.    One in every three women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence 2.    70 to 80 percent of women face forced marriages 3.    Every 30 minutes, a woman dies in childbirth 4.    87 percent of women are illiterate 5.    70 percent of girls have no access to education 6.    44 years is the average life expectancy rate for women

Madre also notes that, “According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban.” All of which makes it baffling and quite discouraging that  the Feminist Majority’s Eleanor Smeal would state  that FMF supports the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan:

Though we’d prefer that all U.S. funding be spent on development aid, we cannot in good conscience advocate the immediate military pullout that some are suggesting. The 2009 UN Humanitarian Action Plan noted that in 2008, “Approximately 40% of the country, including much of the South, remains inaccessible for most humanitarian organizations.” Last year, 92 aid workers were abducted and 36 were killed, double the number from 2007. In recent public opinion polls, Afghans put security in their top three concerns right after food. Without stabilizing the country, there can be no significant redevelopment effort.

Smeal feels that,

If the U.S. were to pull out of Afghanistan, the United States would be once again breaking our promise to the Afghan people, and the country would likely fall under Taliban control.

This statement is naive at best.  Our promises to the Afghan people were never more than window dressing to make our actions more palatable both here and in Afghanistan.  Our mission there has never been for the sake of Afghanis, it is to further our own perceived interests and to fight that ever elusive enemy called “terrorism”. Smeal also expresses gratitude for what she terms “substantial U.S. funding for women and girls programs in Afghanistan — $367 million to date.”  Is she kidding?  That is a mere drop in the war funding bucket. As Tom Hayden points out,

it’s still hard to believe that they (FMF) think Afghan women can be liberated by an invading, bombing, imprisoning American army. It’s hard to believe that Predators, drones, Special Forces, detention camps and foreign occupiers are solutions to Taliban fundamentalism. Even the US-supported Kabul government showed its real character this year by passing a law requiring women to obey their husbands in sexual matters, in violation of the country’s own constitution and international norms. A top United Nations official this month told a Kabul audience “that violence against women is not being challenged or condemned.” This was eight years following the Bonn Agreement which included human rights at its core. In northern areas under Western occupation, the UN report found that in 39 percent of rapes “that perpetrators were directly linked to power brokers who are, effectively, above the law and enjoy immunity from arrest as well as immunity from social condemnation.”

At the end of the day, militarism is not about upholding human rights,  it is about asserting control and the cost of that is always  the loss of life and  liberty for those who have the misfortune to be in the line of fire.  The U.S. is not waging war in Afghanistan for the benefit of Afghanis and their welfare is purely incidental to that mission.  As  FPN noted in April, the AP reported that President Obama has stated that,

(W)hile improving conditions in Afghanistan is a commendable goal, people need to remember that the primary reason that U.S. troops are fighting there is to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.

Our continued military presence will not benefit the Afghan people, only make their lives more precarious, and is doomed to failure as Sonali Kolhatkar makes clear.

The likelihood of American success in Afghanistan is at best dim and, at worst, heading inevitably toward a lose-lose situation. Given the impossibility of surgically identifying and killing a moving and elusive target, there are only two possible outcomes: killing a lot of civilians, or pushing the insurgency to the rest of the country, or both. After the Iraq debacle, are Americans ready for yet another unpopular occupation, protracted war and thousands of U.S. casualties?

However we do need to re-frame what is indeed a human rights disaster for women in Afghanistan and ask what is to be done.  Hayden offers this,

Ending a military occupation through a negotiated settlement among countries in the region, and parties in Afghanistan, is the only way out of this latest adventure in The Long War. Making any future economic or diplomatic assistance contingent upon women’s rights to health care, child care, education and dignity should be among the terms for a US and NATO withdrawal. In all seriousness, top US officials in a future Kabul embassy could be feminists linked to Afghan women’s groups. Hillary Clinton knows how to be relentless if she chooses. The struggle will be long and bitter, won in civil society, not on battlefields. Even if all the Taliban are killed, Afghanistan will be a deeply patriarchal Muslim country where change will emerge from outside and inside pressures.

It is also important to note that women in the U.S. military are also grievously harmed.  There is an epidemic of sexual assault and rape within the ranks which has been the subject of countless hearings and reports and recent hearings and reports also shed light on the difficulties being faced by women veterans. Those harms are a result of the culture of impunity that is a de facto part of military ethos and are not resolvable within the mindset that issues can be resolved by the usurpation of power. Moreover, they are intimately linked to the harms experienced by those that we fight against.  We are naive to think that they can be addressed separately or as problems that can be resolved without addressing their root cause.

And finally, it needs to be said that while we prioritize our spending on military destruction, funding for services that protect women’s lives are woefully lacking.  There is not funding for shelters in our own country or for fighting maternal mortality (which kills more than 500,000 every year), an entirely solvable problem that would require far less money than we  spend saving ourselves from ‘terrorism’.

Smeal’s statement is damaging and unfortunate. It displays a woeful lack of understanding of American politics, militarism and global realities. For a major feminist organization not to understand the truly damaging impact that militarism has on women’s lives is unacceptable and does not represent the truly feminist thinking, nor should it be taken to speak for the feminist body politic.

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 Posted by Fempeace on July 21, 2009