Penis
Politics
By Lucinda Marshall
14 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
I recently told a sweet but sometimes
dense (by his own admission) male friend that it isn’t all about
penises. I meant it in a personal sense, but when I opened my morning
paper and saw a story about a prostitution ring that involved smuggling
women into the country in packing crates, I was reminded that actually
it is.
My birthday fell on the same
day that the story broke about the latest terrorist threat to airplanes
(known for some time, but conveniently made public the day after Leiberman’s
defeat). Next year maybe I can go on a trip and travel in my birthday
suit at the rate things are going. In the meantime, I read that women’s
lipsticks are being confiscated. Hairspray too. We should have expected
this after they tried to take away our knitting needles and started
frisking us if we were wearing underwire bras after 911. I have done
some intensive research on this and so far as I can tell the murder
rate attributed to any of these items is 0%. Unless of course you tell
a woman that she can’t carry them, in which case all bets are
off.
But in the meantime…our
ports are still unsecured (which no doubt is why it is probably painfully
easy to bring women into the country in crates). Gun laws are being
eased in this country and weapons (many curiously penis shaped) are
raining/reigning down on innocent people all over the world.
My friend Yanar Mohammed
writes from Baghdad, “I do not want to tell you ugly and disgusting
stories we hear around us every day, but it is a reality.” A reality
of impossible living conditions that include violence specifically targeted
against women. She tells me of a young woman whose uncles have dug her
grave in their garden, an honor killing waiting to happen. She sends
me a picture of an achingly beautiful woman.
At the same time, Cheney
lets spew this bizarre rant implying Lamont win in some way helps Al
Queda and the Bush Brigade can no more recognize a civil war, let alone
their own culpability, any more than they can admit to the reality of
global warming. Well actually they know that these things are true and
that they fit nicely into their real agenda of destroying entire segments
of the population of the world, but it just isn’t pc to say so
publicly.
In Israel and Lebanon, both
sides hold up the pictures of children killed by the other side’s
weapons. As if the death of any child is a call for the death of someone
else’s baby. In Africa condoms are frequently unavailable (yet
more of the immoral morality of the Bush Administration) and even when
they are, men won’t use them (why is this surprising, even in
my white privileged world, too many men are still saying please honey
it ruins my penis-centric experience) and women and children are now
dying of AIDS at catastrophic rates.
My local paper proclaims
that tomorrow it will print the names of parents (presumably mostly
male parents) who are behind on child support. But we fail to make the
connection between men who won’t support their children financially
in this country and the same men who have no scruples about going halfway
across the world and killing children as a systemic part of our military
policy. It all comes down to penises.
My male friend tells me I
should speak out about my needs and desires. This should not be hard
as I am so outspoken on many issues. But as I examine my reluctance
to talk, I know that this is hardly a personal issue. Day in and day
out we read about the abuse of women, of honor killings and women stashed
in crates. If we dare to make the connections in our personal lives,
we promptly get slapped with the man-hating bitch label. In Israel,
in Iran, in Afghanistan, when women speak out about the global ramifications
(word used intentionally) of penis politics, they are screamed at, shot
at, arrested. But this is a truth that must be spoken and we dare not
be silent.
Lucinda Marshall
is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the
Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org.
Her work has been published in numerous publications in the U.S. and
abroad including, Counterpunch, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs,
The Progressive, Countercurrents, Z Magazine , Common Dreams and Information
Clearinghouse. She blogs at WIMN Online.