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Why We Need Women’s Actions and Feminist Voices for Peace
by Starhawk
Among the hundreds of groups and actions being mounted
against the war on Iraq are a significant number
called and organized by women. Code Pink: Unreasonable
Women for Peace has disrupted Congressional hearings
and mounted an ongoing women’s peace vigil at the
White House since November 17. Women in Black hold
vigils in hundreds of communities around the world
on a regular basis. Women Rising for Peace and
Justice, the women’s caucus of United for Peace,
has issued a call for January 17 to be a day of
women’s actions against the war.
Women are deeply impacted by war, racism and poverty—the
three evils named by Martin Luther King. But when
we stand for peace as women, it is not to make a
case for our special victimhood, but to represent
a different vision of strength. Women-initiated
and women-led actions have a special energy and
power. That power comes not from excluding men—most
of these actions welcome men as participants—but
because of the joy and visionary potential that
arise when we come together as women to defend the
values of life and caring that we hold dear.
To defend those values, we need not just women’s
voices against the war, but specifically feminist
voices. For feminism allows us to analyze patriarchy,
the constellation of values, ideas and beliefs that
reinforces male control over women.
No set of qualities is innately or exclusively ‘female’
or ‘male’. Men can be compassionate, loving and
kind, as women can be tough, brave, or callous.
But patriarchy assigns the qualities associated
with aggression and competition to men, and relegates
to women the devalued roles of nurturing and service.
Patriarchy values the hard over the soft, the tough
over the tender; punishment, vengeance and vindictiveness
over compassion, negotiation, and reconciliation.
The ‘hard’ qualities are identified with power,
success and masculinity, and exhalted. The ‘soft’
qualities are identified with weakness, powerlessness,
and femininity, and denigrated.
Under patriarchy, men are shamed and considered
weak if they exhibit qualities associated with women.
Politicians win elections by being tough—tough
on terror, tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough
on welfare mothers. Calls for cooperation, negotiation,
compassion or recognition of our mutual interdependence
are equated with womanly weakness. In the name of
‘toughness’, the power holders deprive the poor
of the means of life, the troubled and the ill of
treatment and care, the ordinary citizen of our
privacy and civil rights. Force, punishment, and
violence are patriarchy’s answer to conflicts and
social problems.
Patriarchy finds its ultimate expression in war.
War is the field in which the tough can prove their
toughness and the winners triumph over the losers.
Soldiers can be coerced into dying or killing when
their fear of being called womanlike or cowardly
overrides their reluctance to face or deal death.
War removes every argument for tenderness and dissolves
all strictures on violence. War is the justification
for the clampdown that lets the rulers impose control
on every aspect of life.
Wise feminists do not claim that women are innately
kinder, gentler, more compassionate than men per
se. If we did, the Margaret Thatchers and Condoleeza
Rice’s of the world would soon prove us wrong. We
do claim that patriarchy encourages and rewards
behavior that is brutal and stupid. We need raucous,
incautious feminist voices to puncture the pomposity,
the arrogance, the hypocrisy of the war mongers,
to point out that gorilla chest-beating does not
constitute diplomacy, that having the world’s largest
collection of phallic projectile weapons does not
constitute moral authority, that invasion and penetration
are not acts of liberation.
And we need to remind the world that modern warfare
never spares the civilian population. Rape is always
a weapon of war, and women’s bodies are used as
prizes for the conquerors. Women and children
and men, too, who have no say in the policies of
their rulers face death, maiming, wounding, and
the loss of their homes, livelihoods, and loved
ones in a war.
Patriarchy is the brother of racism, which sets
one group of people above another, dehumanizing
and devaluing the ‘other’, who is seen as deserving
of punishment, fair game for violence and annihilation.
We need feminist voices for peace because the issues
of women’s freedom and autonomy are being used cynically
to justify anti-Arab racism and military takeovers
of Arab countries.
The U.S. and its allies, who now pose as the liberators
of women in the Muslim world, are the same powers
which gave the Taliban, Saddam Hussein, and Al Qaeda
their start-up funds, supported them and put them
in power, with no consideration for their impact
on women. The ‘liberators’ of Afghan women ignored
the grassroots women’s organizations such as RAWA,
the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan,
installed a new government almost equally as oppressive
as the Taliban., and excluded the heraic women who
have risked their lives to educate their daughters
and maintain some sense of freedom under oppressive
rule.
We protest the hypocrisy which trumpets the oppression
of women in Arab societies while the oppression
of women in the West is never raised as an issue.
Nor is the racism, economic oppression and endemic
violence of Western culture acknowledged when the
West is hailed as the flag bearer of freedom. Women
cannot walk safely through the streets of the West,
nor can we be assured of the means of life for our
children, of health care in our illnesses, of care
and support in our old age. The ongoing daily violence
against women and children worldwide, the violence
of battering, sexual assault, poverty, and lack
of opportunity, the global traffic in women’s bodies,
is ignored. And the vast global inequalities which
benefit the West are also not acknowledged. Nor
is the history, that Western exploitation of the
East and South generated the wealth that allowed
our greater ‘development’ and ‘enlightenment’.
Oppression of women is real, in Muslim societies
and non-Muslim societies, around the globe. But
women cannot be liberated by the tanks and bombs
of those who are continuing centuries-old policies
of exploitation, commandeering resources for themselves,
and fomenting prejudice against the culture and
heritage which is also a deep part of a woman’s
being.
We need a feminist voice for peace to say that those
who truly care about life and freedom will work
to support, not conquer, those women in every culture
who are struggling for liberation and social justice.
The war against Iraq is not about safety, security,
or liberation. The war’s real aims include gaining
control of Iraq’s rich oil reserves and establishing
U.S. hegemony over the Middle East. Racism is the
ideology of empire, the set of beliefs that tell
us we deserve to rule because we are superior to
some other group.
Racism and patriarchy are the recruitment tools
for the legions of enforcers: the soldiers, police,
judges, bureaucrats and officials who protect institutions
of power. Patriarchy, racism, homophobia, discrimination
against Arabs and Muslims, anti-Semitism, ageism
and all forms of prejudice keep our eyes trained
downward, looking at those we see as beneath us,
instead of looking upward and seeing clearly how
we are being manipulated.
We need strong feminist voices to cry out that there
is no hierarchy of human value, that every child
must be cherished, that we claim common ground with
women, children, and men around the world.
Oil is the lifeblood, and the military is the ultimate
enforcer of economic policies which disenfranchise
the poor and undercut the livelihoods of working
people around the globe, consolidating wealth and
power in fewer and fewer hands, devouring the family
farm, the vibrant neighborhood, the old growth forest
and the last remaining wilderness, eroding the soil,
poisoning the atmosphere, disrupting the earth’s
climate and threatening every life support system
of the planet. The global corporate capitalist
system also exalts toughness and ruthless competition,
and exhibits utter disdain for caring, compassion,
and nurturing values. Women staff the maquiladoras
and the sweatshops that produce the cheap goods
of the global economy. The vast majority of the
world’s poor are women and children.A feminist voice
for peace must identify and address the root causes
of war. "Peace" cannot be separated from justice,
including economic justice. And real security can
only come when we weave a new global web of mutual
aid and support.
We need women’s actions, to make these larger connections,
to assert that compassion is not weakness and brutality
is not strength, to dramatize our support for nurturing
and life affirming values. And ultimately, we need
women and men both to join our voices and roar like
a mother tiger in defense of our interconnectedness
with all of life, the true ground of peace.
Information on upcoming women’s actions can be found
on http://www.codepink4peace.org
or http://www.unitedforpeace.org
(NOTE: either of the above pages will open in a
new browser window.)
Feel free to forward this post or to reproduce in
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rights, and the rights to control how this is edited
and used.
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