kill the women first

[rm]

Many years ago, I was in a bookstore and saw a book entitled Kill the Women First which posited, among other things, that in any military action against terrorist or other movements, women involved with the movement must be targeted (e.g., killed) first, as a woman who engages in such activities is likely to be exceptionally dangerous motivated as she is by emotion, her own oppression and an instinct to commit action in a manner theoretically atypical to the female gender. Additionally, the elimination of such women would demoralize the others in the group being combated.

*

From what we can tell about what is going on in Iran, women are central to the demonstrations, the protests, the revolution -- whatever it is that is happening over there.

Maybe they are the leaders of it, maybe not. But they are its icons. And its participants, in what seems to be massive numbers.

Reports coming out of Iran today seem to indicate that the Basiji and others are specifically targeting women for the more extreme ends of violence. There have been reports of limbs hacked off with machetes, amputations due to severe beatings, murders, shootings and more.

*

We, the West, we romanticize this, all these brave and bloody girls.

We talk about how beautiful they are. We talk about the timbre of their voices. We talk about their hair. I think it is nearly impossible to avoid this, as a Westerner, no matter how hard we try.

We talk about how they pick up rocks and hand them to those with better arms to throw at the Basiji.

The rocks are all that are available, but I've become fixated on them; unruly women are so often stoned.

*

My father told me, when I was a little girl and like to watch Private Benjamin on the television, that a country that sends its women into war has lost its will to be civilized.

I was no more than eight years old and very angry with him.

I wonder what he thinks about the women in Iran.

*

My mother always used to tell me that because I was Jewish, I could not lash out at those who bullied me as a child, for we who were once treated as animals must not act as animals.

*

To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered.

Comments

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[keith418.livejournal.com]

... like her?

Re: ...

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Actually, like them (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9385.shtml).

!

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Good one!

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

unruly women are so often stoned.

BBC World News America noted there was a new movie out about the stoning of an 'unruly' woman in Iran - and the aunt of said woman who tried to speak out about it all.

Teel deer, you're absolutely right.

Also, that was the first inkling (pun not intended) I had of my dissatisfaction with C.S. Lewis during my reading of an otherwise very entertaining "Narnia" book - the two female leads aren't inactive, but only one is given anything resembling a weapon, and both are told "wars are ugly when women fight" I know, product of his time, yadda yadda, still don't have to like it.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Product of his time, yes. Product of his time who had fought at Passchendaele. No women fought at Passchendaele but if the corollary of "Wars are ugly when women fight" is "And less ugly when they don't" I submit that Passchendaele is the contrary evidence to that proposition.

[finnkveldulfr.livejournal.com]

Wars are always ugly. No matter who fights in them.

There is NO clean way to fight a war. Although-- I also believe there are some things that could happen that are worse than going to fight a war-- but IMO you'd better be damn sure that's your alternative before getting into one.

Personally, having seen one war and being involved in 'peace-keeping' in a place where a war happened and we're trying to keep it from getting started up again-- I don't think it makes much of a difference whether women are involved as fighters or they're 'just civilians' anymore-- the days when you could separate the battlefield and the fighters from everyone else in a country are over and done, near as I can tell.

Whether a war's going to be dirty, but the combatants are trying to behave responsibly (laws of war and all that), or it's really dirty because no-one cares to behave decently (genocide, ethnic cleansing and terror become "acceptable" tactics) depends more on who's fighting and what for and whether they're professional soldiers or amateurs and revolutionaries, than on what gender they are.

I'd rather see women pick up weapons and fight than simply be victims.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Plugging myself here: This (http://eumelia.livejournal.com/412498.html) is what I wrote about the media portrayal of Iran and the Iranian women.

But oh yes, you're absolutely correct.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

...which ties in very neatly with a recent post here about women's bodies as public property, though extending the thesis with the 'othering' of Women from Foreign Parts. Good one.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

Amazing how we influence each other on these here interwebs :D

Edited To Add: And thank you! That was rude of me not to mention the first time around.

[summer-jackel.livejournal.com]

This is beautiful. Thank you.

Animal? Or simply property...

[argentla.livejournal.com]

Perhaps because I'm feeling very cynical today, I am inclined to look at this in Marxist terms, to whit:

All efforts at political control are in the ultimate an effort to control the means of production. In a Marxist-feminist sense, women are the prototypical means of (repro)duction, without which no society, regardless of its political structure or economic style, can survive. It is perhaps inevitable, therefore, that almost every repressive or totalitarian society or movement makes the oppression of women a key tenet of its ideology -- particularly if that movement is reacting to an existing or external power structure with which it is competing.

Many fundamentalist movements (whether religious or cultural) are responses to an external cultural/political hegemony, which these days tends to mean what was once called Western Imperialism and today I suppose we could call globalization. Regardless of ideological pretense, much of that conflict is based on economic issues of territory and resources. The fundamentalist response to globalization/Western imperialism often begins with a call to traditional values, which frequently amounts to a reassertion of control over the behavior and status of women -- in short, a retrenchment of control of the fundamental means of production.

On that basis, some of the romanticization of the women in this situation reflects a malicious glee that a cultural opponent's efforts at maintaining control are breaking down. It also reflects an effort to lay claim to those women by describing them in Western terms -- that is, as sexual objects and public property, rather than private property -- in the same way a conquering army might raise its flag over a foreign capital.

(Did I mention that I feel cynical today?)

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

I mentioned my mum was in the anti-aircraft during WWII, yes? I think that I should choose to keep my mouth quite firmly shut a great deal if your father were around.

[gatheringrivers]

Bumper sticker I see occasionally comes to mind:

"Well-behaved women rarely make history"

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

Possibly Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's best-known quote. Taken liberally out of context, and yet it still works.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

My mother always used to tell me that because I was Jewish, I could not lash out at those who bullied me as a child, for we who were once treated as animals must not act as animals.

I had that coming at me from both my mother for being Jewish, and my father for being Black.

And I wonder why I'm so hard on myself all the time.

N.

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

Non-religious Israeli Jews (like my folks) often have a different idea of how kids should deal with bullies, regardless of gender. I was taught that kids who learn how to beat the shit out of bullies tend to encourage the bullies to look for easier targets. And if a kid can defend someone smaller and weaker from a bully, that kid should go to it. No holds barred. My mom didn't let me start growing my nails at age 11 just for vanity. She knew what I was dealing with in my new school. The swastika carved in the no-parking sign in front of the house was a hint.

Of course, my folks have a different background than most American Jews, and are far less idealistic. My mother's parents and other relatives hid in a basement in Budapest during the Shoah, and my grandmother and mother had a hellish trip from Hungary to Israel when my mother was a little girl. My father's parents, who made Aliyah from Poland during the 20's as "crazy Zionists," were practically the only survivors from what had been very large families on both sides. My father had his first brush with British soldiers at age 5. Wimps of either gender didn't survive that kind of background.

Not all Jewish women are taught to play nicely.

BTW, I'm no crazy Likudnik who supports settlers or dehumanizes the horrors of the Palestinian experience - my father and I can no longer discuss Israeli politics because he is a crazy Likudnik, sadly. I'm just trying to show a very different and yet equally Jewish perspective.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I concur with everything you said, except my background is kind of the other way around :)

Being the first Israeli born in my family, I had to learn the hard way to be "mean" in order to defend myself. It took me till High School to get over the fact that my Anglo-Saxon politeness isn't going to save my ass.

I'm still considered a "Bitch" by many and my parents say I'm abrasive. I'm just your average Israeli Jewish Grrl :P.

My mother doesn't believe me when I say I learned the attitude from her, but the style from my surroundings.

[onemildrat.livejournal.com]

Kill the Women First

Criminy. I remember hearing that advice in the Preacher comic book series. Herr Starr, a member of GSG-9 and a rather twisted fellow, tells his people to shoot the female terrorist first, because she's had to work ten times harder to be accepted among her compatriots and therefore will be ten times more likely to kill.

I'm also remembering a chapter from Nathaniel Fick's One Bullet Away. Saddam has just been ousted. Fick and his troops are distributing water to the locals in Iraq. They're shocked to see how strong the women are. Even the little girls are carrying buckets full of water over their heads. A sergeant remarks, "If we had fought the women instead of the men, we would have gotten our asses kicked."

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered.

This.

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

S'truth. "I am woman, hear me roar." I use it as an amusing one-liner, mainly because the other officers in the fencing club (my college years) made it into my tag-line, I guess. (Quite possibly because I didn't suck and wasn't afraid, so did not fit into any of the Standard Female Molds that folks usually carry in their back pockets. :P)

[tikvah.livejournal.com]

To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered.

Sadly, true. Maybe someday, a future generation of women will have voices that don't have to roar to be heard, voices that will be valued equally. Until then, I guess we're stuck roaring.

It beats being butchered any day.

[woogledesigns.livejournal.com]

To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered.

What do you want to do about that?

[phaenix-ash.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this video of a woman reading a poem on a Tehran rooftop? It's days old but I only just saw it yesterday.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DpKUZuv6_bus&ei=_2FDStvkKKC_twey6tCyAg&usg=AFQjCNF6nlIf-uqj-AdcOufHQu8OLVrYMg

Reading these reports, following them on Twitter, etc, I've been feeling particularly thankful these past few days, but also impotent and frustrated. There's nothing we can do but wait and bear witness and wonder if we'll ever get a clear picture of what's been happening.

[ninjacooter.livejournal.com]

This = FANTASTIC. Thank you.

[marchek.livejournal.com]

I remember my anthopoloy professor in highschool teaching us how the best way to annihilate a popluation is by removing its reproductive center. In other words, kill the women first.

[legionseagle (from livejournal.com)]

Michael Bush's book The Casualties of Peterloo notes that during the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, in Manchester, there was statistical proof that women were targetted: although the crowd split on gender lines 8:1 male/female, the numbers of injured and killed split on sex lines was 3:1 male/female, with (to the extent the precise nature of casulties were known; given that anyone present at Peterloo risked being prosecuted for various things casualties tended to try to get treated anonymously) at least 31 women sabred, 21 trucheoned, 1 bayoted, 1 shot, 8 either shot or sabred and 1 woman severely kicked by a policeman. Women deliberately targetted by the authorities outnumbered those simply crushed by the crowd by a factor of approximately 2.5 to 1, though historians for the next 180 years or thereabouts (until Prof. Bush's study) have persisted in assuming that the female casualties were simply crushed in the melee, being too weak to flee.

[skitty.livejournal.com]

To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered.

Yes.

Your post was recommended to me by a friend, so I came to read it. I just want to thank you and tell you that it inspired me.

[womynchild.livejournal.com]

If you are a woman and also part of any marginalized group, you are born into a double-bind situaton.

As a feminist: I want to roar.

As a lesbian: I was butchered by a morality contract, by the former elementary students who no longer speak to me because I'm with a butch woman, by my mother.

I feel a non subtle pressure to set an example. Its likely that we are the only lesbians that straight people here in the tiny south know and therefore, I attempt to fight every sterotype with my actions.
I'm doing the most politically active thing I can think of: I live my life and do my best to not continually remember the butchers that surround us.

I was a victim of a hate crime as a child (due to me being white, on the surface of the matter). The butcher is not an abstract idea for me. And they were women; which is interesting in and of itself.

[ithinkitisayit.livejournal.com]

My mother always used to tell me that because I was Jewish, I could not lash out at those who bullied me as a child, for we who were once treated as animals must not act as animals.

I kind of find that racist. Not to mention, it discredits your feelings towards bullying. You have a right to be angry and hurt that someone is bullying you, no matter what race you are. You're also supposed to be the bigger person, not because of race, but because, let's face it, you fuck the wrong person up and you're doing 20 to life.

And I totally love the final quote, "To be a woman, I think, is to always be some sort of animal: roaring or butchered."