Gender in Terrorism

O.K. So this is my last blog and I have two things that I have been thinking about regarding terrorism and gender. I know I'm supposed to put up things based on news and current events- but its finals and I live under a rock.

In another class that I'm taking we were talking a lot about the usage of sex and sexuality in torture. In places like Guantanamo soldiers make prisoners strip naked and sexually humiliate themselves. Especially in cultures where homosexuality or overt sexuality of any sort is shunned, soldiers use these exact tactics to affect the tortured. The intent with a lot of torture, as we've seen, is to destroy one's sense of self so that they do not hold back, they have nothing to loose as they are completely destroyed and left with nothing. This reveals a blatant hierarchy in our value of humans. In doing this, the soldiers make these men their sexual submissives, their 'bitches'- in effect they make them into 'their women,'. Following this logic the worst things you could be according to the alpha male military authority are: anti-American, then an Arab, then finally a woman. Patriotism and cultural identity are the first things to be attacked, but when you really want to get someone where it hurts- call them a woman. Is this a reflection on all society, the two main societies involved- or is there another group here- independant of the others. Is there an entire other sphere of citizenship, where the laws are rewritten and the reprocussion of every action holds greater weight than we can ever understand? Do these participants have different rights, roles and responsibilities which define them as citizens? Are there citizens of war- is there a social sphere of war?

To go along with this, I was just discussing a very rarely addressed participant in sexualized torture: the female torturer. Apparently, (I had never heard of any of this- why??? hmm..) there is an entire body of female torturers who use their femininity as an added attack on their victims. The simple fact that they are women has an effect in itsself, in that it is seen as a destruction of masculinity that the male victim is prostrate to a woman. Also, these torturers use their sexuality as a deeper method of humiliation. Thier ability to give a man an erection earns them credit, while debasing the man to the extreme (though I wonder which is worse, being sexually assaulted by a collective group of male soldiers, or by one trained female torturer? As a woman, is she not allowed into that society of war, and her attack seen as more vicious than the man-to-man combatants, kind of like the individual who rapes a woman versus the usage of mass rape in military conflict). Apparently, these women are given fake menstrual blood which they smear on thier victims- I would like to see the budget proposal for 'fake menstrual blood' show up on George Bush's desk.

So when I thought about this I was struck by a question that I've had a hard time articulating. I guess it's who wins and who loses in this situation?? I really want to talk to these women torturers because I could easily see thier justification being some perverse distortion of second wave feminism. We've discussed the role of male torturers in war as just being cogs in the wheel- but the active use of women's sexuality seperates her from this wheel, while also giving her added value. In my mind the manipulation of her sexuality is not a beacon to be held or a tribute to her patriotism and ESPECIALLY not to her feminism. I'm really curious to know how that can be justified. I'm trying to get the articles etc that related to this- I'll post em if I do.

OK- I'm going to keep my blogs seperate but I do have another topic to address, (I'm obnoxious, but this is the only thing I'm allowing myself to do other than work on my other paper now that I officially wasted 2 hours on facebook today..) To be continued.... over and out!