Feminism and War

The authors made several poignant points about the relationship between women and the military. As feminists, it is important for women to have equal opportunity and access to opportunities that men have been able to obtain. However, there is also danger for women in the military when they are able to enlist and be part of the organization along with their male counterparts. The authors talk about how women in the military are exposed to abuse and assault perpetuated by their fellow soldiers (10). They also pointed out that women back home are the ones who suffer and carry the burdens of war.

Throughout our semester, we’ve discussed that poverty is prevalent among women and women often are in need of services. This article points out that women suffer during war both at home and within countries targeted. People in other countries are killed by the U.S and women in the U.S are unable to receive access to services because of increasing costs for war (10). It’s ridiculous to think that the money that is going to military in order to “protect” us is also what causes damage to people in our country and harms women and other marginalized people. Those who need to be “protected” are the ones in danger from the very same people who supposedly protect our country.

It is also women in other countries who are being harmed by the U.S “protecting” themselves and creating “peace.” Women and queer people are killed and raped in order for the U.S military to create a false sense of international safety. Money that could be invested into the livelihoods and wellbeing of women in the U.S who desperately need it, is instead being funneled into a system that perpetuates harm and violence against people all over the world.

It’s ridiculous that people at home can be denied benefits in order to fund a violent institution. The authors did a good job in pointing out how military practices are hypocritical and do more harm than good. I’ve seen the argument that feminists who argue for equal pay should also argue for women being forced to enlist in the draft. In many people’s minds, feminism simply means women being equal to men, when in fact it is much more than that. Enlisting in the draft and being part of an imperialist system like the military is not feminist. The military displaces people all over the world and like I mentioned, the military is an instigator of violence on women.           

If the military is part of a system that often instigates violence towards women, children, and queer folk, can it also be feminist to join the army?

Stamps_Marla_Undocumented-Immigrant_Blog 5

In Olivia Salcido and Madelaine Adelman’s article, “He Has Me Tied with the Blessed and Damned Papers”: Undocumented-Immigrant Battered Women in Phoenix, Arizona. The authors argue that U.S policies are oppressing immigrant women.

Many people from Mexico come to America in search of better opportunities. And the reason for that is due to there not being enough opportunities for growth and economic advancement in Mexico. In a previous course, we talked about the International Monetary Fund (IMF). When countries are experiencing economic trouble, the IMF will loan money to the country with a list of incentives to receive that loan. And often the incentives revolve the privatization of social benefits. By privatizing everything it enforces the concept of individualism. And this affects women because if they have families, they have to find solutions on their own. In terms having the money to pay for education and health care for their children. Because of the debt in Mexico, people try to leave for a better life.

Once women cross the border, they enter relationships with men who are U.S citizens. Often, this could lead to them being able to become U.S citizens down the road. As the authors discussed in the article, immigrant women who are in abusive relationships cannot call the police for help. They are fully dependent on their partners for safety and finances. So, when they are subjected to abuse, they do not have the option of asking for help because of the fear of being deported back to Mexico.

With the current political climate, the need to keep immigrants out of the U.S is a big deal. And immigrant women in particular, are affected the most by Trump’s presidency. Women have to undergo harsh treatment and potentially rape, so that they will not be deported. If a woman were to be sexually assaulted, nothing would probably happen to the perpetrator because the woman is an immigrant. In January a male immigrant came forth and said that while he was detained by ICE he was raped. He took the case to court and received a settlement. But, was still deported. So, not exclude men from the narrative, it happens to them as well.

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/23/audemio-orozco-ramirez-immigration-customs-rape-deported/

I do not have a question, but it is really unfortunate what immigrant women and men have to go through. The fact the U.S refuses to accept immigrants as well as make it difficult for them to become U.S citizens is sad. The hope would be that one day, immigrants from Mexico will not have to experience this anymore. But, it just seems unlikely because of the systems of power created. 

Fregoso- Rethinking State Terrorism

In “The Complexities of ‘Feminicide’ on the Border,” Rosa Linda Fregoso makes the point that state violence is not a problem for the state, but a problem because of the state. Fregoso makes this point by noting that the violence against the indigenous, dark-skinned, poor women has been indirectly allowed because the state oppresses this group of people already.

In the section “Rethinking State Terrorism,” Fregoso emphasizes that sexual violence is not primarily the outcome of global capitalism. Sexual violence roots from the traditional forms of patriarchy occuring in the state already. This is notable because it suggests that sexual violence occurs because it was indirectly allowed before. It is easy to agree with this point because the societal standards in Mexico are traditionally more patriarchal and more reliant on gender expectations. This becomes further more agreeable when you take into account that poor, indigenous, dark-skinned women often fall victim to the violence. Fregoso mentions that the women’s relationship with the state is already racialized and ethnicized. This further proves the point that sexual violence is already deeply rooted in the state and not just a problem for the state.

In this same section, Fregoso makes note that this is considered terrorism against the indigenous people. The author goes as far as labeling it as state-sponsored terrorism. This too is also agreeable when taking into account, once again, the patriarchal society and the racialized and ethnicized relationship the state has with women. One could think of it as the state just further taking advantage of the indigenous people through their women. The state is primarily the reason for the oppression of the indigenous people and most likely linked to them being in a lower economic class.

Overall, I find Fregoso’s main points to be completely valid because it all connects to a patriarchal umbrella that is in control of their society. In the United States, state violence against the indigenous people is occurring all the time and has been occurring for centuries. One particular event in the United States is that on February 14th every year, indigenous women call attention to the murders of Native American and Alaskan Native women. This occurs every year, but we do not see this often publitizied nor is society generally aware that this is an issue. In the United States, just like Mexico, patriarchy and racialization is so deeply rooted into our society that we do not see how it is such an issue now.

In class I would like to further discuss if others also believe that the author's point are easily agreeable with.

Who is the REAL Terrorist?

In their statement, Transnational Feminist Practices Against War, the authors list and describe 5 responses to the events of the September 11 attacks. The response that stood out to me the most is their challenging of the constant jump to label terrorists and acts of terrorism based on stereotypical profiling of what the "ideal terrorist" looks like to American citizens. The challenge the U.S. discourse to reflect their definitions of terrorism on their own domestic and international agendas.

The writers, in this response critique, discuss two major factors in the static stereotype of terrorism. One of the factors is the broad and racist portrayal of what a terrorist looks like. The authors describe the profiling of a a terrorist in the eyes of the American society as, "anyone who looks like a Muslim, in which targets of racism include Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, and any other people with olive or brown skin". They explain that the racism which fuels the current definition of "terrorist", it allows for all other people of color to be vulnerable to the scapegoat tactic of white Americans. The racial profiling of people who look like "terrorists" is one of the main causes of ignorance to the needs of POC in America and across the globe, specifically South Asians, Arabs, and other brown people and their diaspora, as they are not deemed worthy enough of our allyship or aid. This creates a hostile environment for victims of racial profiling, something which, coincidentally, the so-called "War on Terror" is trying to eliminate.

The other factor the authors point out is the participation of America in its own terrorist agenda in other countries. What is meant by this? The authors break it down; "We also want to inquire into construction of 'terrorism' that continue to target nonnative or "foreign" opposition movements while cloaking its own practices of terror in euphemisms such as 'foreign aid'. Deconstructing the trope of 'terrorism' must include a sustained critique of the immense resources spent by the U.S.  in training 'counter-terrorists' and 'anti-communist' forces who then, under other historical circumstances, become enemies rather than allies, as in the now famous case of Osama bin Laden". It is hard for many Americans to believe that the U.S. government not only aided in the start up of well-known terrorist groups targeting the U.S. as well as citizens of their own countries, but in the colonization and imperializaation of many countries, either directly, or with the help of their "foreign aid" policies. It is scary to think that we might not be protected by our "own people" because the so-called keepers of our freedom and safety, have themselves been very hypocritical in their "War on Terror".

A great example of this is America's allyship to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In order to get its foot in the door of the Middle East, America has teamed with Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine, which the U.S. funds to an enormous extent. In doing this, the U.S. is actively condoning and participating in a terrorist regime to cleanse Palestine of its native peoples in order to give the land to its occupiers and to slice the U.S. a piece of the Arab pie. This isn't talked about, because the discourse around the Israeli occupation and U.S. contribution to it intentionally portrays is as a civil dispute between the two religious groups of the nation, and fails to address the uneven advantage Israelis have over Palestinians. Furthermore, Israel's reputation is protected under U.S. society while Palestine is exploited for its Arabic ethnicity by racist stereotypes of the community.

I wonder, taking into consideration these 5 responses to the 9/11 attack the authors discuss, what are solutions to each of these responses that we can implement in order to change the discourse around Arabs and Arab Americans and other POC caught in the crossfire?

Andi Razo on Johnson and Kuttab

One of Johnson and Kuttab’s main points is that when considering the role of women in the intifadas, it is not enough to encourage more of their participation in existing strategies and demonstrations but rather allow them to change and shape revolution based on their own experiences. The difference in visibility of women’s political participation between the first and second intifadas does not mean that women were less involved in resistance, but rather that their new forms of participation were less recognized by the mass movement.

Johnson and Kuttab explain that many activists don’t believe that it is fair to compare women’s participation of the two intifadas since their roles in both of them were so different and in the case of the second, harder to quantify and measure and so thus is not as evident as “on the ground, in the streets” activism and demonstrations. I am not extremely familiar with the intifadas and to be honest, found this piece a little hard to follow. But from what I understand is that during the second intifadas, the role women had was not necessarily more “support” but de-militarized, or engaging less with either State and instead focusing on the personal effects of the violence committed.

And this is not to say that women didn’t form resistance groups or weren’t actively part of Palestinian forces or fighting Israeli militants, because that’s not what I think and this piece does not lean that direction either. So I think it’s important that this piece critically examined the more interpersonal nature of these Palestinian women’s resistance because it validates and values it in the same way that more violent resistance is usually praised. But, it makes it seem like this is a “step in the right direction” or the “correct form” of resistance for women. While violent acts are usually deemed masculine and the less visible resistance is automatically labelled feminine, it almost seems like the authors are asking readers to accept that this resistance is inherently feminine and therefore the way to behave. I doubt that these are the authors’ intentions,  and in fact demonstrate the respect and power that women have in these roles (when they explain that women were able to dissuade reactionary young men from acting rashly in a confrontation).

Additionally, I hesitate to say that I feel this way due to my own limited viewpoint. I am familiar enough with dire situation in Palestine to understand the article, but sadly too ignorant of the Arab feminists’ efforts to critique the general move of women’s participation from being more in the spotlight to doing more organizing and interpersonal appeals--which is great on its own, but it does not seem that men are sharing in this responsibility equally. Again, the lack of the authors’ critique of this seems as if this trend has formed new although still divided gender roles within the resistance.

Similarly, this article from Al Jazeera highlights the value of women in leadership positions while seemingly maintaining yet redefining gender roles. While the women subverted expectations Israeli militants had of them in order to covertly plan the intifada, it again repeats the narrative that women are inherently peaceful and nonviolent while men are inherently violent and political. Violence in the name of self defense and self preservation should of course be respected, but I am by no means advocating that women should necessarily be violent too--violence and oppression are not good for anyone and personally I don’t believe it would resolve any political or social complaints in any society, not just Palestinian.   

THE FORGOTTEN ISM

It is an inherent part of the colonization process to create racialized mythos of people native to the lands. US politics, during much of the “Manifest Destiny” period of spreading further west (and prior, mind you), racially lumped people of the Americas as “savage” or “inferior” to the white American. As Nadine Naber, Eman Desouky, and Lina Baroudi point out in “The Forgotten -Ism”, this racialization is heavy throughout much of Zionist discourse, painting Arabs as inferior to the white Israeli or the westerner.

I feel as though I was ignorant to how far back the visibility of Arab peoples as a racial formation went. Post-reading this piece, I feel more knowledgeable. Granted invisibility is also in and of itself, a way of constructing a non-import around a people’s oppression, but my process was that the formation around Arab people in US discourse today was really shaped around 9/11, having become hyper-visible as a result. What this essay did was really enhance my knowledge of the racial mythos of Arabs (particularly Palestinians) surrounding much of American discourse. Though Zionism as a framework extends beyond just being that of American thought, having been birthed in Europe and the very building block of the Israeli state existence, zionism is heavily present in America’s approach to Israel (Naber, Desouky, Baroudi 2001). The US is frequently defending and supporting the state of Israel and their colonization of the Palestinian land. Much of US policy around Palestine serves to further the US’s own imperialist agenda, supplying the state of Israel with the powers and tools to continue to oppress the Palestinian natives. The image of Arab peoples within much of US discourse has been shaped by a hyper-visibility centered around colonization within the land that conveniently, pits Palestinians as violent and threatening to the Israelis. In turn Israelis are painted as victims.

What The Forgotten-Ism really had me thinking due to both this hypervisibility under this image and the invisibility they face in fighting for justice, Arab people, most particularly Palestinians exist and have existed in this space between hypervisibility and invisibility. They are painted as violent and overly volatile due to this racial mythos and due to this, are often talked over and unheard in most spaces. Because of this Zionist fear mongering targeted on scapegoating Arabs, Palestinians have no voice within most of, if not all of the public domain.

I was raised Jewish and being raised Jewish is constantly being informed that Israel is your true home. Mind you, none of my family was particularly Orthodox, but this was always insisted upon when Palestine was brought up. It took a lot of personal research and discussion to solidify that I wasn’t going to be a Zionist like, a good 70% of my family. I’ve been called anti-semitic, my cousin went as far to liken my anti-zionist beliefs to Hitler. Maybe the shoe fits on the other end, that is on the Israeli government and all of the west for withholding necessary resources to the Palestinian people and killing them in masses. This is something I often struggle with; how could a people go through something as horrific as the Holocaust, then turn around and push another peoples into the same conditions? The entire zionist movement to me is built on hypocrisy.


IMAGE LINK: https://i2.wp.com/www.jweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BAzioness-1-e1519752707984.jpg?resize=1280%2C720px&ssl=1

I choose this image mostly because it encapsulates the same hypocrisy set forth with the rest of the zionist movement. How can one stand for equality of any kind yet still endorse major human rights violations? The feminist-zionist movement (as with many of the aspects of the third wave this image shows so generously) needs to die as it has no place in an inclusive model of feminism that is in fact, anti-zionist.

QUESTION: We’ve talked a lot about stepping outside the boundaries that the state provides us in our own activism. How can we step outside these boundaries in solutions for Palestine?

Alex Phistry on Forgotten-ism

In “The Forgotten ‘ism:’ An Arab American Women’s Perspective on Zionism, Racism, and Sexism,” the authors describe how Zionist practices from Israel to America and throughout the world have demonized, excluded, and/or silenced Arabs and Arab-Americans. In particularly, they argue that Zionist propaganda portrays Arab women as the most oppressed women in the world who “need to be saved and/or spoken for by their Western feminist ‘sisters,’” (6).

The fact that Palestinian / Arab women have been portrayed in such an oppressive light in order to provide a reasoning for Zionist colonization is not a new idea—however, that makes it no less infuriating. Colonizers have always provided false, negative over-exaggerations of the native or indigenous people of the lands they are colonizing in order to excuse the dehumanizing way they treat and displace those people. In painting native or indigenous people as “uncivilized,” “immoral,” or even “violent,” it provides colonizers with an excuse for their brutalities in the eyes of Western society. This idea is especially true for Western women—and even more so for the Western feminist woman.

The Western feminist savior complex is an idea that places Western feminists as the bleeding-heart spokespeople for those seemingly more-oppressed Third World women. However, the best way to approach feminism is through an intersectional lens. That being said, it would not take much research by a true intersectional feminist to realize how over-dramatized Zionist propaganda has portrayed Arab women in an unfavorable light simply to justify their demonizing, excluding, and silencing Arab / Palestinian people. In doing so, Zionists have sparked an empathetic outcry in the Western feminist who now believes that in order to “save” these overly-oppressed women, Zionism must be upheld and those “uncivilized,” indigenous people must become “civilized” through colonization. This tactic has been used for hundreds of years and, though it is successful, it negatively shapes the way the world views the people in certain countries or who belong to certain religions, creating lasting, false images in the minds of those who do not dig deeper into the cultures.

Colonization and its repercussions are felt throughout the entire world. The cultures who are colonized are forcibly silenced, demonized, and excluded from society, and the false ideas spread by the colonizers are perpetuated throughout Western society. It is the misunderstandings of these cultures perpetuated by the colonizers that create and justify the Western feminist savior complex. However, Arab / Palestinian people do not need the “saving” that can come from the Western feminist. Those, as well as seemingly all other colonized people, simply need a true understanding of their culture and values in order to be legitimized in Western society. By marking cultures we do not understand as “uncivilized” due to them not fitting into the Western expectation of what a culture should look like, we are creating the “forgotten-ism” the authors are talking about—thereby perpetuating the normalization of Western societies and the demonization of native and indigenous societies.

The only questions I can think of are what can be done in order to lessen misunderstandings of non-Western societies/cultures? Is simply having a better understanding of the cultures enough? Or is there more that could be done to lessen the global effects of colonization?