feminist blogs

What the…?

A US Army general in northern Iraq has defended his decision to add pregnancy to the list of reasons a soldier under his command could face court martial.

It is current army policy to send pregnant soldiers home, but Maj Gen Anthony Cucolo told the BBC he was losing people with critical skills.

That was why the added deterrent of a possible court martial was needed, he said.

The new policy applies both to female and male soldiers, even if married.

It is the first time the US Army has made pregnancy a punishable offence.

I understand not wanting soldiers to get pregnant while in combat zones. I don’t understand court martialing them.

Up until recently, I lived in Jordan. I worked. I played. I was in love. I had two cats named Fanty & Mingo. I also got sexually harassed. I got sexually harassed so much that I’d sometimes sit in my apartment after dark and seriously consider not doing an emergency tampon run, because I knew that inevitably, some dudes would wander into my path and have a field-day. Trying to prevent said harassment, I wore hijab for a while. The results of that little experiment were recently published in JO Magazine.

I tried to go for nuance. Hijab, for me, wasn’t a “wonderful cultural experience.” Neither did I emerge from that particular episode screaming about how it’s time to “liberate” Muslims from their headscarves. I tried to apply similar logic to the proposal to ban the burqa in France. I felt I could draw some parallels there, or maybe I was wrong to have done so. You guys can draw your own conclusions.

The saddest part for me today is that while that article hints at a happy ending, the reality is different. I had to leave. I let my ex keep Fanty & Mingo.

Having dealt with assault, I found I wasn’t coping with the aggression too well. It caused too much self-doubt. Like, “wait a minute, for years now, I’ve been telling myself – Natalia, you’re a human being and not a lump of meat, you deserve to breathe the same air as everyone else and walk on the same sidewalks and stuff – but the things in your head that you were running from, they’re now coming out of the mouths of the little kids outside. In the immortal words of Armageddon: ‘Wow, this is a goddamn Greek tragedy.’ ”

I’m in Ukraine right now, and I do miss Jordan. I miss what we had with my ex, I miss my Jordanian friends, I miss the kind of weather that doesn’t give me a hacking cough. I miss the way the people at the mini-market knew me by name. I miss the ancient history beneath my flip-flops. I don’t miss being a fake hijabi – in the end, I simply hated having to pretend to be someone else for a scrap of respect – though I must acknowledge that in Kiev, in the doldrums, it would keep the ears warm.

My last day as a guest blogger!  I want to thank the Feministe regulars for sharing your corner of the interwebs with me.  Thank you to the readers who read my posts, and especially thank you to those of you who posted thoughtful responses to them.

Like many guest bloggers before me, I leave you with many thoughts un-posted.  I have a half dozen half finished posts on my hard drive, posts on subjects ranging from Arabic hip hop to Zionism, veganism to 9/11.  Etc.  I’m gonna mash a few thoughts into this goodbye post.

First, I really want to talk a little bit about  Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine while I’m here.  I specifically want to talk about being a Jew who does anti-occupation activism and opposes Zionism.

When I say “Zionism” I am referring to a nationalist ideology holding that Jews have a right to a Jewish-majority nation state/”homeland” in historic Palestine.  Although over time there has been much debate about the definition of “Zionism”, I am using the meaning that carries currency currently on the global political stage.  Some Jews have more personal definitions of Zionism that are different; some may have nothing to do with nation states and refer instead to an important religious/spiritual connection to the land; I may not share such sentiments (I feel that Brooklyn and the Lower East side are enough of a homeland for me), but I certainly don’t object to them.  Such definitions are not being referred to when most people across the globe express objections to Zionism.

Along with anti-Zionists in general, I do not question the right of Jews to live in historic Palestine.  Jews have always lived there, often in peace with their neighbors.  There’s no problem there.  The problem is with the belief that Jews have more of a right to be there than anyone else, and that the “right” of a state with an artificially maintained Jewish majority to exist trumps the rights of all the people in the region.   These beliefs are racist, though it’s taboo to say that in most public spheres here in the United States.  Since the ‘67 war (when the IDF proved itself to be very useful as military muscle), we’ve had a special relationship with Israel, supplying their military with an unprecedented amount of aid.  The US government also has a long history of supporting Jewish migration to historic Palestine, at least in part as an alternative to a feared massive arrival of Jews on our shores.

The US stands apart from world opinion in our official, unyielding support of Zionism and our active participation in the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish politics.  I’m old enough to remember being appalled in 2001 when reps from the US and Israel walked out of the UN World Conference against Racism rather than discuss the relationship between Zionism and racism, slandering participants from every other country as anti-Semites.  Similar dynamics played out when the US pulled out of participating  in this years conference because Israel’s crimes were on the table.   This should raise red flags for those of us committed to fighting racism.  It is US and Israeli exceptionalism.

I view anti-Zionism as a logical piece of a broader anti-imperialist, anti-oppressive politic.  Of course I abhor anti-Semitism, but I am also disgusted at Jews (and fundamentalist Christians, and assorted other pro-Zionist factions) who exploit the historic persecution of Jews for their own political ends.  It in no way diminishes the horror of the Nazi Holocaust to suggest that the expulsion and murder of Palestinians in 1948 does nothing to honor its victims.  It is not anti-Jewish to resist Jewish colonialism.  The refugee crisis and ongoing oppression of those living in the Palestinian territories are not going away soon, and no amount of righteous anger at Hamas will shift the balance of power in the situation.  Those of us in the US-Jewish and not–are directly implicated, as our tax dollars fund the ongoing occupation.

The number of Jews who identify as anti- or non-Zionist is growing.  A 2006 study sponsored by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman philanthropies found that among non-Orthodox Jews under 35, only 54% are comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state. (as opposed to 81% of those 65 and older. ) Last year saw the launch of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network as well as an increasing amount of Jewish organizing against the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine within a specifically anti-Zionist framework. In 2008, I participated in the nation-wide No Time to Celebrate: Jews Remember the Nakba campaign, which sought to counter celebrations of Israel’s 60th anniversary with events commemorating and spreading awareness of the correlating “Nakba” (or “Catastrophe”) of 1948 which resulted in the death or displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.   This is a shift-it’s often controversial enough to criticize Israel at all, let alone dispute Zionist ideology.  But this controversy comes not from some kind of Jewish “consensus” on the matter (there never has been any such thing) but from which factions hold institutional power and the lengths they’ll go to silence their opposition.

I also want to plug my new favorite movie, Slingshot Hip Hop, a documentary chronicling the emerging Palestinian hip hop scenes and movement.  It is particularly interesting from a feminist perspective, as the consciousness around the need for women’s voices in Palestinian hip hop displayed by both male and female musicians in the film puts to shame the gender analysis of most music scenes I’ve ever been around. Please, order it and watch it if you haven’t yet.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll probably learn things, you’ll be left both angry and inspired.

What else.

It’s a little early, but September 11 is next Friday and I won’t be blogging here then.  This year I hope to get tickets to the big Jay-Z 9/11 benefit concert thing at Madison Square Garden.  That would be nice.  Not that most years I do anything, other than reflect.  It’s still a date on the calendar that provokes a visceral response from me.  On the morning of September 11 2001 I was at work at a phone sex call center in Manhattan.  I was on a call when the first plane hit the tower and yes, caller, you really will always be very special to me.  On 9/11 I thought I was maybe gonna die at various points.  Not to be dramatic, I wasn’t near the towers. There were initially rumors reported on the news that there was a third plane headed towards New York, and I was near other famous NYC stuff that people speculated might be a target.  Obviously the third plane didn’t exist.  No one I knew was hurt or killed.  Some I knew lost friends and family.

It was a really, really fucked up day.

The thing everyone says about the city coming together was true, in my experience.  I was unlike anything I had experienced before or have experienced since.  From the women at my job banding together and helping one another through those early, awful hours to just about everyone I saw after wards.  Strangers talking to strangers, asking each other how we’re doing, offering whatever aid or comforts we could.  I don’t have the words to express the power of experiencing that this is what happened to my city when hit with a crisis of such proportion.  We didn’t know what to do but try to help one another.

And then Bush and Giuliani got on TV and told us we needed to shop and “smoke out” the terrorists.  And suddenly the horror was constant and everywhere.  Attacks on Mosques and random people perceived as being Arab and/or Muslim.  The looming war.  A lot of us started having anti-war strategy meetings, back when opposing the war on Afghanistan was a fringe wingnut thing to do.  Now the majority of the country opposes it.

And yet, we’re still there.  In fact we’re sending 14,000 additional combat troops, on top of the increasing number of contractors from firms like Blackwater (excuse me, I mean the re-branded “Xe Services LLC.”) We’re still in Iraq, too, despite the popularity of Obama’s anti-Iraq war platform.   The horror marches on.  I wish I could see an end.

And on that cheery note…I guess I’m out?  You can follow my pop culture critiques, short videos, vegan recipes and political griping at my blog.  Hope to see you around the internet.

Cross-posted at RH Reality Check

I received two emails in my inbox today. One was from The Big Push for Midwives, asking for help in advocating for greater access to Certified Professional Midwifery (CPM) nationally. The group is basically petitioning Congress to add CPMs to the Medicaid provider list in order to make midwifery an actual option for more women in the United States. Why?

I’ve written extensively about all of the reasons why access to out-of-hospital birth is critical for women in the United States but if you want the quick run-down, check out this synopsis from The Big Push (and sign the petition if you’re so inclined, while you’re there!).

Why is this an uphill battle? Part of the problem is that professional organizations like the AMA and ACOG, while quite supportive of safe abortion care, are not keen on expanding childbirth options to include out-of-hospital settings and use of CPMs, for healthy, low-risk pregnant women. As well, in this country, we’re still enmeshed in seeing childbirth as a medical condition – a condition that must be treated clinically by a physician – regardless of whether or not there are any “medical conditions” present. Culturally we have strayed (if we were ever there) from women experiencing childbirth as normal and healthy, providing opportunities to bond with other women, and receiving support from a midwife and a community of other women.

This is not to say that CPMs do not care for the health of pregnant and birthing women but more that the medical establishment has succeeded in over-medicalizing birth to the point where, ironically, women’s health and lives (as well as the health and lives of the fetuses’ and newborns’) are placed at greater risk through unnecessary interventions. Jennifer Block has written an entire book on the subject!

Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that prenatal care and childbirth care are not critical. As I’ve referenced in the past, the United States’ maternal mortality rates are dismal for an industrialized nation. African American women are four times as likely to die during childbirth as white women are, in this country. This dire situation is precisely why we need to expand options to a range of care for all women – not limit them.

So, I know you’re probably wondering at this point what that other email was? The New York Times has an excellent article on the critical role midwives can play in rebuilding Afghanistan, specifically addressing maternal health. The country is second only to Sierra Leone, in the entire world, in its numbers of women dying directly as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.

Amid war, after suffering for years under the Taliban, Afghan women are truly in trouble:

The main causes of these deaths are hemorrhage and obstructed labor, which can be fatal if a woman cannot obtain a Caesarean section.
Even if the mother survives, obstructed labor without a Caesarean
usually kills the baby. Most of the maternal deaths — 78 percent,
according to the Lancet report — could be prevented. [emphasis mine].

But there is one woman under whose leadership Afghanistan is beginning to rebuild its midwifery battalion, literally saving women’s lives.

Her name is Pashtoon Azfar and she works for Johns Hopkins University but also heads up the Afghan Midwives Association. Her mission? It is to remedy Afghan women’s death rate from pregnancy and childbirth by training and disbursing the next generation of midwives in Afghanistan.

The article notes that there is a long way to go. Apparently 80% of women in Afghanistan birth alone or without the help of a skilled birth attendant. And cultural issues plague Afghan women as well:

Afghanistan’s problems mirror those of many other poor countries:
shortages of personnel, supplies and transportation to clinics or hospitals,
especially in remote regions and mountainous areas that are snowbound
half the year. The deeper problems are cultural, rooted in the low
status of women and the misperception that deaths in childbirth are
inevitable — part of the natural order, women’s lot in life.

As we all know, Afghanistan wasn’t always mired in these battles. Before the Taliban, women enjoyed equality similar to that of women in the West. After years of war, however, it is certainly women and girls who have suffered unimaginably, without choice or options, surrendering their bodies and babies to a militant power.

But Azfar calls the midwives she trains “champions” and has great faith that they will help turn things around.

The link between these two stories? It’s not just that midwives can provide critical assistance, support and care to pregnant and laboring women regardless of where we live. It’s that women around the world must demand the right to life – the right not to “surrender our bodies and babies” to powers that tell us we are not worthy of care; and that whether we’re talking about safe abortion care, access to contraception, HIV protection or bringing new life into this world safely, we’re talking about reproductive and sexual health and rights.

The East, the West and Sex by Richard Bernstein.

The Slate review is actually pretty good. It points out Bernsteins troubling view of women, and “Eastern” women in particular — with “East” apparently meaning Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Bernstein basically argues that, sure, colonialism was kinda bad and racist, but the sexual interactions between colonizers and the colonized wasn’t always exploitative; additionally, when European men commented on the sexual depravity of th “East,” they weren’t totally wrong. From the review:

Bernstein deserves credit for raising a tortured subject from which it is easy to avert our gaze. And yet, and yet … there is something deeply uncomfortable about a book that seems at times so complicit in the very exploitation it aims to scrutinize. It’s not just the tone, though Bernstein’s oblique confession to having his first sexual experiences in an Asian brothel is creepy. It is the fetid attitude toward women.

Bernstein’s view of the role of women in his story of cultural and sexual collision is nuanced to the point of being myopic. He is describing men who went to foreign places, toppled their leaders, stole their resources, and then tossed their women a few pennies to spread their legs. Yet he writes: “From the standpoint of the currently fashionable political morality, [this behavior] appears very bad, an illustration of the unfairness of colonial rule. … But let’s try to see the erotic history of the West and the East as part of a great human pageant, one in which the women, the girls and the boys involved were not necessarily passive.”

Wait, why should we try? Bernstein’s own attempts to claim that the women were involved in choosing their fate are extraordinarily feeble. He tells a story about an Arab queen choosing to have sex with a Western traveler, but how typical was she? He concedes that “much of the sexual opportunity presented by the East has always been, and still is, based on exploitation and injustice.” But he goes on to defend the men who took part in that exploitation. Of Burton and Flaubert, he says, “They used no force; they abused no children; they did what they were invited to.”

…right. As the reviewer points out, Bernstein’s own book is loaded with information about the “harems” of young women who were actually slaves. Colonists certainly did abuse children and women. Were some sexual relationships entered into voluntarily? Of course they were. Were many entered into without explicit force but without consent? Probably. And did many more rely on force, coercion and extreme power imbalances? Yes. But I suppose when you’re writing a sweaty psuedo-academic justification for your “Asian babes” fetish, it’s easy to overlook that fact.

The reviewer compares Bernstein’s take on sex in the “East” with his own experiences as a reporter investigating brothels in Bangladesh. While the comparison is certainly powerful and a necessary counterpoint, especially in the context of challenging the “harem” mythology, it also obscures the complex realities that women live, and reduces “Eastern” women to the other side of a tired dichotomy: Whores or victims; tempting or exploited; Asian babes or broken chinadolls.

I’ve met and seen men like Richard Bernstein. I’ve seen them walking down the street in places like Cambodia and Thailand, sometimes alone and scoping, sometimes negotiating with another man on the age and price of a woman or girl or boy, sometimes with an Asian woman trailing a few feet behind him. I’ve read their views when perusing books in various airports on how to marry a Thai woman, or how to find the best sex workers in Singapore. I’ve seen them online, talking about how Asian women are superior to “Western” women, because Asian women know their place and are so submissive and feminine. I have a feeling we’ll see some of them on this thread. They’re almost always white, either European or American. They almost always justify their exoticization and dehumanization of Asian women, and their participation in sexual exploitation, with the argument that the women like it and want it. I’m sure they’ll write off this post as me being jealous. I find them repellent — not just because they exploit women and justify it by casting their racial fetishization as admiration, but because, as far as I can tell, the exploitation is part of the titillation. It’s just easier to mask exploitation when you can convince yourself that this “other culture” is so sexually liberated that it’s acceptable to pay a man $15 to have sex with a 14-year-old girl. It’s easier to mask exploitation –even to yourself — when you see the person you’re exploiting or fetishizing and a little less human than yourself. Again, I haven’t read the book and I don’t plan to, but I would bet that the author focuses primarily on the experiences of men. I’ll bet that his descriptions of the sexual culture of “the East” are based on male interpretations, reports and writings. I’ll bet that female voices factor in very, very little, if at all; I’ll bet that they’re usually filtered through male writers and speakers.

I haven’t spent enough time in “the East” to say much of anything about anyone else’s sexual culture. But a small period of time in South East Asia was enough to make some basic observations about the behavior of many white male tourists. It’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for the past year, but can never quite work up to doing. I’m not going to do it in full now, because it’s too depressing; the very little bit of sexual colonialism that I saw was enough to make me feel physically ill when I recall it (I don’t feel all that well writing about it now). It’s a few scenes: A white man, hands jammed in his pockets, walking quickly with an furrow-browed, frowning Asian woman following five feet behind him. Me stepping away from my male travel companion for a few minutes, and having a Cambodian man approach him to ask, “What do you want? How young? 15? 14? Girl or boy?” Spending the day in a genocide museum where the impact of colonialism and the West was illustrated in disturbing detail, then going out at night to see so many white men alone or in pairs, more than you usually see traveling, and feeling like — and this is not a description I use lightly — I was in this beautiful, sad little country that had been repeatedly raped. Walking through the killing fields, where there are still bones sticking out of the ground from the genocide, and watching as a little boy offered male tourists oral sex through a hole in the fence.

I didn’t go into brothels. I wasn’t able to speak to most of the local people or solo male travelers, and nor did I want to approach strangers to ask about sex. I’m nowhere near an expert on any of this. I won’t claim to have some sort of deeper — or even basic — understanding about anything. I only saw what I saw. There was also incredible beauty and human innovation and goodness. I was shown incredible kindess by the people I met. Like anywhere else, realities were complex and varied, and the sliver that I witnessed was colored by my own experiences, assumptions and background. But there are a few things, small things which I realize have a greater context, which I saw that made me despise other human beings. And at the risk of being quoted on an anti-feminist website or sounding like a caricature, they made me despise male human beings in particular. Not forever, and not all men, and of course the feeling faded, but for a few minutes there…

The idea that Asian women are just culturally or naturally more sexually tempting or submissive or open, or whatever happens to be the justification du jour, has real-life effects for the women fetishists claim to value so much (I use the word “value” intentionally). It’s not just about what kind of porn you like, or what your “type” of woman may be. The fact that this book was published — that there’s almost certainly an audience for it — makes me sick. I hope it’s roundly rejected. I have a feeling, though, that it will sell quite well.

It’s been a busy week for me and so I haven’t been doing as much meaty blogging as I would have liked, but I wanted to point you all in the direction of two Iran-related articles of note:

1. Iran’s Michelle Obama. I hate the title, but it’s an interesting, if brief, profile of Zahra Rahnavard.

2. From the Ground Up: Democracy and Women’s Rights in Iran. A wonderful piece about exactly what the title says.

Enjoy.

Peter Daou has a great piece up at UN Dispatch about Obama’s speech in Cairo, and the emptiness of his rhetoric surrounding women’s rights. Obama is certainly not in an enviable situation: The previous administration paid lipservice to women’s rights as an excuse to invade entire nations, and framed gender equality as a Western invention that we were going to bring to the backwards, barbaric Middle East by force. As a result, American talk of feminism is understandably met with skepticism and even hostility, and local women’s rights movements in places like Afghanistan, Iran and Egypt have experienced profound setbacks, as men in power are increasingly able to argue that feminism is a colonialist import and a tool of destruction. So I can’t blame Obama for not hammering the gender equality point, and I’m a big believer in providing quiet support for local women’s movements instead of “offering” equality at the barrel of a gun.

But all that said, Peter is right to point out that human rights (and women’s rights) shouldn’t be ignored just because the previous administration used them as weapons of war (and because the previous administration was remarkably hypocritical in their total disregard for human and women’s rights at home). Peter writes:

Take the issue of women’s rights, addressed in Obama’s Cairo speech with the most tepid language:

“The U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.”

“I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality. And it is no coincidence that countries where women are well-educated are far more likely to be prosperous.”

“Now let me be clear: issues of women’s equality are by no means simply an issue for Islam. In Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, we have seen Muslim-majority countries elect a woman to lead. Meanwhile, the struggle for women’s equality continues in many aspects of American life, and in countries around the world.”

“Our daughters can contribute just as much to society as our sons, and our common prosperity will be advanced by allowing all humanity - men and women - to reach their full potential. I do not believe that women must make the same choices as men in order to be equal, and I respect those women who choose to live their lives in traditional roles. But it should be their choice. That is why the United States will partner with any Muslim-majority country to support expanded literacy for girls, and to help young women pursue employment through micro-financing that helps people live their dreams.”

Is that a joke?

With women being stoned, raped, abused, battered, mutilated, and slaughtered on a daily basis across the globe, violence that is so often perpetrated in the name of religion, the most our president can speak about is protecting their right to wear the hijab? I would have been much more heartened if the preponderance of the speech had been about how in the 21st century, we CANNOT tolerate the pervasive abuse of our mothers and sisters and daughters.

I return to the example of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow:

“13-year old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was stoned to death in Somalia by insurgents because she was raped. Reports indicate that was raped by three men while traveling by foot to visit her grandmother in conflict capital, Mogadishu. When she went to the authorities to report the crime, they accused her of adultery and sentenced her to death. Aisha was forced into a hole in a stadium of 1,000 onlookers as 50 men buried her up to the neck and cast stones at her until she died. When some of the people at the stadium tried to save her, militia opened fire on the crowd, killing a boy who was a bystander.

A witness who spoke to the BBC’s Today programme said she had been crying and had to be forced into a hole before the stoning, reported to have taken place in a football stadium. … She said: ‘I’m not going, I’m not going. Don’t kill me, don’t kill me.’ “A few minutes later more than 50 men tried to stone her.” The witness said people crowding round to see the execution said it was “awful”.”

Enough with the perpetual campaign. True justice, true peace, these are earned through courageous decisions and bold actions. Real truth to power.

If we are to fix America’s image in the world and if we are to heal the planet’s myriad ills, it will not be done through contrite kumbaya speeches about how we are all one world and how we should all coexist peacefully, no matter whether the remarks are delivered in Cleveland or Cairo. It will be done by leading through example, by righting the many wrongs here at home, by seeking justice and fairness for all, by doing what is right, not saying what sounds pleasing to the media elite and the pliable punditocracy.

Exactly. It’s time for Obama to start setting an example on human rights issues.

Natalia has conducted a wonderful interview with Rana Husseini, one of my feminist heroes. Husseini is a journalist who has long covered “honor killings” in Jordan. The whole thing is worth a read, but this is my favorite part:

N: And what about the “it’s their culture” argument? I’ve had highly educated people say that to me when honour killing is brought up, as in “it’s their culture, you can’t change it, you’re a bigot for even thinking about it in these terms.”

R: First of all, I would say to you - violence against women is part of global culture. It’s not isolated to any religion, class or country. However, some societies develop quicker than others and have better mechanisms for coping with it and discouraging it, and people there can’t ignore the struggle going on around the corner.

We need to remember that we are all human beings, and honour crime goes against human dignity. Ending this violence means a better world for everyone.

TRIGGER WARNING. Discussion of violence to follow.

Hello! Today, Jill is generous enough to let me guest-blog about Rana Husseini’s new book - Murder in the Name of Honour. I attended the Jordanian launch last night, and finished the book within the space of a few hours. Reading it took precedent over biological functions such as eating and sleeping. I couldn’t put it down.

Rana Husseini is a Jordanian journalist and human rights campaigner. When she first started investigating honour crime, she had the pleasure of sifting through death-threats in her mailbox. She pressed on, and her badass determination served as an example to others. Murder in the Name of Honour speaks of years of struggle on many fronts.

I first interviewed Rana in 2007, in connection with an honour killing memoir she helped reveal as a hoax. “Forbidden Love” (American title: “Honor Lost”) dealt a severe blow to the anti-honour killing campaign in Jordan - it gave detractors ammunition to argue that the effort was run by Western propagandists trying to ruin Jordanian society.

A chapter of Murder in the Name of Honour deals with this epic fuck-you to Jordan’s actual activists. For further information, please check out Anna Broinowski’s documentary “Forbidden Lie$.”

I recently did another interview with Rana, which should come out shortly. We talked about the book, sensationalism vs. sensitivity, the present state of honour crime in the world and so on.

In the book, Rana provides gut-wrenching accounts of interviews she did with men who murdered their sisters. She shows how both personal and public judgment influences a family to purge a woman as if she’s not a human being but a disease.

At one point, the younger sister of a murdered rape victim says she blames her dead sister for everything. Not only is the scene pure horror, it makes you think about how, once one sister has been raped, the “seal of freshness” on the other sisters is up for public scrutiny. In that sense, honour crime is like a monster that feeds on itself.

Many of these crimes have nothing to do with “family honour.” Some women are killed over inheritance issues. Some are killed when their husbands get bored with them. And so on. Laws granting leniency to men who supposedly surprise their female relatives in an “act of adultery” are still on the books in Jordan, and law enforcement and the justice system can still act sympathetic toward men who kill their female relatives, which means that these murderers can also get off with a slap on the wrist by hiding behind “honour.”

Rana covers honour killing in many other countries, including Brazil, Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Israel & Palestine, Italy, etc. The book includes a horrific transcript of an 1989 honour killing in the U.S., when an audio surveillance tape revealed how a father and a mother teamed up to stab their daughter to death. The mother held her down as the father did it. It reads like something out of Heart of Darkness - only worse.

Rana draws attention to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s fight against honour killings. Hirsi Ali’s work for a conservative think tank and harsh criticism of Islam means that the larger progressive community is often rightfully mistrustful of her, but I also believe we should note that she must live in seclusion to protect her life, and speak out against the thuggish intimidation against her. Whatever you may think of her politics on the whole, in this book, Hirsi Ali is revealed as someone who has done a lot to fight honour crime in the Netherlands.

In a chapter on the UK, Rana quotes a British police officer on an incident involving a man who burned his family to death:

“Honour is completely the wrong word. It is a control murder… It is not honour crime; it is ‘control crime’ and fear of losing that control.”

I believe these words ring true across cultures. Women need to be controlled. We shouldn’t have silly ideas about our bodies belonging to us. God help us if we should make a man feel as though he no longer has the upper hand.

Murder in the Name of Honour is a book that opens up a window on a world of sweaty, claustrophobic anxiety that finds a sick refuge in slaughtering women. Although both male and female defenders of honour crime babble about “family values,” Rana’s book clearly shows that the concept of “family” is tossed out the window when an honour crime is committed. She accentuates how deeply unnatural and barbarous this phenomenon is.

Last night in Amman, I saw people - men and women, expats and locals, children and grandparents - come out to support Rana’s work. The book sold out quickly. This fight is far from over, but more and more Jordanians are looking beyond platitudes on female chastity and subservience and to the horror underneath. Even some people from highly conservative backgrounds are openly talking about how this phenomenon is unacceptable.

Women are still dying. In Jordan, there have been 9 killings so far this year. But the ball is rolling now. I don’t believe that anyone can make it stop.

Rana’s book is due to hit the shelves in the States on the 26th of June, 2009. I hope you check it out.

By now, you’ve likely heard of the most recent allegations regarding U.S. soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners: they include rape and other sexual assault, of both female and male detainees, and there may be photographs of the assaults among those which Obama has recently decided not to release.  You can read the details here — it probably goes without saying that they’re immensely disturbing.

It’s hard to know what to say to this.  I’ve spent the last day trying to figure it out, to come up with something intelligent.  Instead, all I can muster is seething rage, crushing sadness, and unbearable shame.  I’ve never been a patriot.  Honestly, I don’t even understand patriotism.  And I’ve certainly been ashamed of my country before.  But this is certainly a new low.  As a rape survivor myself, particularly.

I think that Jennifer Pozner hit the nail pretty much right on the head in under 140 characters on Twitter.  Rape is a part of war.  And U.S. soldiers have been raping the “enemy” ever since the U.S. military was established.  It’s one of the many reasons I oppose war.  That doesn’t surprise me, though it doesn’t lessen my rage, sadness or shame.

What is shocking (if not surprising), and only magnifies that rage and shame, is the fact that all of these abuses were seemingly sanctioned by our government.  The soldiers who committed other abuses at Abu Ghraib claimed that they were following orders.  While that in no way absolves them, seeing the government’s stance on torture, we also have little reason to doubt them.  And I see little reason to believe that these rapes and sexual assaults were somehow vastly different.  What’s shocking is that in the 21st century, the U.S. government is condoning and possibly even promoting rape as a war tactic.

Of course, the Obama administration is trying to deny that the photos exist.  The automatic response to that is, the only way we’ll ever know is if you just release them like you promised.  At the same time, Mark Leon Goldberg makes an excellent point that these victims have rights. And it is indeed pretty damn difficult to justify releasing photographs of rape and sexual assault to the public without the victims’ consent.

So I don’t know where to go from there, on any of this.  I guess I’ll just open up the floor to all of you.

ETA: Ashley has some good and difficult thoughts over at the SAFER blog.