kill the women first
Jun. 24th, 2009 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmMany 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.
*
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.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-25 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 09:00 pm (UTC)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.