A
Uterus Is No Substitute
For A Conscience
By Barbara Ehrenreich
May 21, 2004
Zmag
Even
those people we might have thought were impervious to shame, like the
secretary of Defense, admit that the photos of abuse in Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison turned their stomachs.
The photos did something
else to me, as a feminist: They broke my heart. I had no illusions about
the U.S. mission in Iraq -- whatever exactly it is -- but it turns out
that I did have some illusions about women.
Of the seven U.S.
soldiers now charged with sickening forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three
are women: Spc. Megan Ambuhl, Pfc. Lynndie England and Spc. Sabrina
Harman.
It was Harman we
saw smiling an impish little smile and giving the thumbs-up sign from
behind a pile of hooded, naked Iraqi men -- as if to say, "Hi Mom,
here I am in Abu Ghraib!" It was England we saw with a naked Iraqi
man on a leash. If you were doing PR for Al Qaeda, you couldn't have
staged a better picture to galvanize misogynist Islamic fundamentalists
around the world.
Here, in these photos
from Abu Ghraib, you have everything that the Islamic fundamentalists
believe characterizes Western culture, all nicely arranged in one hideous
image -- imperial arrogance, sexual depravity ... and gender equality.
Maybe I shouldn't
have been so shocked. We know that good people can do terrible things
under the right circumstances. This is what psychologist Stanley Milgram
found in his famous experiments in the 1960s. In all likelihood, Ambuhl,
England and Harman are not congenitally evil people. They are working-class
women who wanted an education and knew that the military could be a
stepping-stone in that direction. Once they had joined, they wanted
to fit in.
And I also shouldn't
be surprised because I never believed that women were innately gentler
and less aggressive than men. Like most feminists, I have supported
full opportunity for women within the military -- 1) because I knew
women could fight, and 2) because the military is one of the few options
around for low- income young people.
Although I opposed
the 1991 Persian Gulf War, I was proud of our servicewomen and delighted
that their presence irked their Saudi hosts. Secretly, I hoped that
the presence of women would over time change the military, making it
more respectful of other people and cultures, more capable of genuine
peacekeeping. That's what I thought, but I don't think that anymore.
A certain kind of
feminism, or perhaps I should say a certain kind of feminist naiveté,
died in Abu Ghraib. It was a feminism that saw men as the perpetual
perpetrators, women as the perpetual victims and male sexual violence
against women as the root of all injustice. Rape has repeatedly been
an instrument of war and, to some feminists, it was beginning to look
as if war was an extension of rape. There seemed to be at least some
evidence that male sexual sadism was connected to our species' tragic
propensity for violence. That was before we had seen female sexual sadism
in action.
But it's not just
the theory of this naive feminism that was wrong. So was its strategy
and vision for change. That strategy and vision rested on the assumption,
implicit or stated outright, that women were morally superior to men.
We had a lot of debates over whether it was biology or conditioning
that gave women the moral edge -- or simply the experience of being
a woman in a sexist culture. But the assumption of superiority, or at
least a lesser inclination toward cruelty and violence, was more or
less beyond debate. After all, women do most of the caring work in our
culture, and in polls are consistently less inclined toward war than
men.
I'm not the only
one wrestling with that assumption today. Mary Jo Melone, a columnist
for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, wrote on May 7: "I can't get
that picture of England [pointing at a hooded Iraqi man's genitals]
out of my head because this is not how women are expected to behave.
Feminism taught me 30 years ago that not only had women gotten a raw
deal from men, we were morally superior to them."
If that assumption
had been accurate, then all we would have had to do to make the world
a better place -- kinder, less violent, more just -- would have been
to assimilate into what had been, for so many centuries, the world of
men. We would fight so that women could become the generals, CEOs, senators,
professors and opinion-makers -- and that was really the only fight
we had to undertake. Because once they gained power and authority, once
they had achieved a critical mass within the institutions of society,
women would naturally work for change. That's what we thought, even
if we thought it unconsciously -- and it's just not true. Women can
do the unthinkable.
You can't even argue,
in the case of Abu Ghraib, that the problem was that there just weren't
enough women in the military hierarchy to stop the abuses. The prison
was directed by a woman, Gen. Janis Karpinski. The top U.S. intelligence
officer in Iraq, who also was responsible for reviewing the status of
detainees before their release, was Major Gen. Barbara Fast. And the
U.S. official ultimately responsible for managing the occupation of
Iraq since October was Condoleezza Rice. Like Donald H. Rumsfeld, she
ignored repeated reports of abuse and torture until the undeniable photographic
evidence emerged.
What we have learned
from Abu Ghraib, once and for all, is that a uterus is not a substitute
for a conscience. This doesn't mean gender equality isn't worth fighting
for for its own sake. It is. If we believe in democracy, then we believe
in a woman's right to do and achieve whatever men can do and achieve,
even the bad things. It's just that gender equality cannot, all alone,
bring about a just and peaceful world.
In fact, we have
to realize, in all humility, that the kind of feminism based on an assumption
of female moral superiority is not only naive; it also is a lazy and
self-indulgent form of feminism. Self-indulgent because it assumes that
a victory for a woman -- a promotion, a college degree, the right to
serve alongside men in the military -- is by its very nature a victory
for all of humanity. And lazy because it assumes that we have only one
struggle -- the struggle for gender equality -- when in fact we have
many more.
The struggles for
peace and social justice and against imperialist and racist arrogance,
cannot, I am truly sorry to say, be folded into the struggle for gender
equality.
What we need is
a tough new kind of feminism with no illusions. Women do not change
institutions simply by assimilating into them, only by consciously deciding
to fight for change. We need a feminism that teaches a woman to say
no -- not just to the date rapist or overly insistent boyfriend but,
when necessary, to the military or corporate hierarchy within which
she finds herself.
In short, we need
a kind of feminism that aims not just to assimilate into the institutions
that men have created over the centuries, but to infiltrate and subvert
them.
To cite an old,
and far from naive, feminist saying: "If you think equality is
the goal, your standards are too low." It is not enough to be equal
to men, when the men are acting like beasts. It is not enough to assimilate.
We need to create a world worth assimilating into.
Barbara Ehrenreich
is the author, most recently, of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting
By in America."