Misogyny and State Violence

1. Misogyny and State Violence Andrea Smith, “Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide,” in Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (2005), 7-34. Gloria Anzaldúa,”We Call Them Greasers” and “To Live in the Borderlands Means You” from Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Mary Ann Tetreault, “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib:
 Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror,” Feminist Formations, 18:3 (Fall 2006), 33-50

2. https://www.colorlines.com/articles/native-feminism-white-women-passing-and-sad-tale-andrea-smithhttps://www.colorlines.com/articles/native-feminism-white-women-passing-and-sad-tale-andrea-smith

3. Andrea Smith, “Sexual Violence as a Tool of Genocide” (2005) • Native peoples, in the eyes of the colonizers, are marked by their sexual perversity. (10) • Because Indian bodies are “dirty,” they are considered sexually violable and “rapable,” and the rape of bodies that are considered inherently impure or dirty simply does not count. (10)

4. We cannot limit our conception of sexual violence to individual acts of rape—rather it encompasses a wide range of strategies designed not only to destroy peoples, but to destroy their sense of being a people. (3)

5. Patriarchal gender violence is the process by which colonizers inscribe hierarchy and domination on the bodies of the colonized. Ironically, while enslaving women’s bodies, colonizers argues that they were actually freeing Native women from the “oppression” they supposedly faced in Native nations. (23) A dead Sauk and her surviving child with a U.S. officer at the Bas Axe Massacre, 1832. D.H. Strother (illustrator) -Illustrated life of General Winfield Scott (1847), Barnes and Co., New York

6. 1985 ad, discussed in Smith, p. 24.

7. The project of colonial sexual violence established the ideology that Native bodies are inherently violable—and by extension, that Native lands are also inherently violable. (12)

8. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) stands as a manifesto of Anzaldua’s ideas about culture and identity construction.

9. Discuss Anzaldúa’s “We Call Them Greasers” in light of Smith’s analysis of sexual violence as a tool of genocide.

10. Anger and Rage in “We Call Them Greasers” Oh, there were a few troublemakers who claimed we were the intruders. Some even had land grants and appealed to the courts. It was a laughing stock them not even knowing English. Still, some refused to budge, even after we burned them out. And the women—well I remember one in particular. She lay under me whimpering. I plowed into her hard kept thrusting and thrusting felt him watching from the mesquite tree heard him keening like a wild animal in that instant I felt such contempt for her round face and beady black eyes like an Indian’s.

11. In the Borderlands you are the battleground where enemies are kin to each other you are at home, a stranger, the border disputes have been settled the volley of shots have shattered the truce you are wounded, lost in action dead, fighting back; To live in the Borderlands means the mill with the razor white teeth wants to shred off your olive-red skin, crush out the kernel, your heart pound you pinch you toll you out smelling like white bread but dead; To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras be a crossroads.

12. Sex, Sadism, and Citizenship in the U.S. War on Terror:Making Sense of Abu Ghraib

13. The military’s role in preserving gender difference in U.S. civil society: The arena of warfare [is] not just [a field] of battle but [a field] of gender, in which enemies are depicted as feminine, wives and mothers and girlfriends are justifications for fighting, and vocabularies are sexually motivated. It is the crystallized formations of masculinity in warfare that enable gender relations in society to survive, offering territory in which to adjust, test, and reformulate general social relations. --Susan Jeffords, 1989

14. How do we read the gender and sexual dynamics of Abu Ghraib in light of the cultural and demographic shifts in the U.S. military? The relationship of women to state violence challenges us to know considerably more about the relationship between gender and aggression and to consider more precisely the way in which this relationship has been, and ought to be, deployed by the state. We live at a time when traditional markings of systems of gender difference are changing. What we are learning . . . . is that is it possible to revise even this most traditional system of gender difference while at the same time keeping systems of male dominance intact. --Linda Kerber, 1998

15. Acts of torture versus their digital reproduction: • Which is seen as the greater atrocity? • Situating Abu Ghraib in the broader visual representation of the War on Terror . . .

16. The Bush Administration’s faith in “the magical power of spectacle” : • “shock and awe” – telegenic bombing of Baghdad • media’s restricted access to the war zone

18. The people taking the photographs exult in the genitals of their victims. Men are forced to masturbate and simulate fellatio [W]e have all participated in the pornographic gaze. . . Uniformed people strip a group of hooded men, then laboriously assemble them into a pyramid. A woman ties a noose around a naked man's neck and forces him to crawl across the floor

19. Both the Abu Ghraib photographs and narratives and the orientalist high and popular art of the nineteenth century are examples of “the politics of the gaze” (Betterton 1987, 3-14; Wilson 1987, 166). To be “looked at” in this way is to be put in a feminine position as an object of the masculine gaze. (38)

20. The pornographic “truth” of Abu Ghraib It is important . . . not to see these sadistic images as unique. After all, torture and sexual violence are endemic in wartime. In the past, as now, military personnel tend to simply accept that atrocities, including sexual ones, will take place. Joanna Bourke, “Torture as Pornography,” The Guardian, 7 May 2004

21. Sexuality, coded according to complex cultural norms of feminine subjection to masculine power, infuses the language and acts of members of dominant groups against those they seek to subjugate. The pornography of Abu Ghraib constitutes a field report on the production and reproduction of US global dominance. • In the Abu Ghraib photos, Arab male captives are feminized by showing them in settings that emphasize both their sexuality and their helplessness. . . . • Mary Ann Tetreault, “The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror”

24. Gender scapegoating

25. STATEMENT OF LT. GE. LANCE L. SMITH, USAF, DEPUTY COMMANDER, UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND These few have acted in a manner that is inconsistent with the proud history of the American soldier. There is no excuse for their actions, nor do I offer one. Their unprofessional and malicious conduct has caused considerable harm to our attempts to win the trust and confidence of the Iraqi people. Unfortunately it has also facilitated the efforts of our enemy to malign our national intent and character, and gives weight to the charge of American hypocrisy.

26. “I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation. I mean, this is lesson, you know, one million and 47 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious.” --Right-wing columnist Ann Coulter, quoted by People for the American Way, 2004

27. 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. --Barbara Ehrenreich, 2004

28. Characteristics of military culture: • “the institutional promotion of male dominance, the aura of hypermasculinity, the collective male imperative to disparage women in general and specifically women in the military.” • “The widesread display of pornography . . . [on] military bases . . . reinforce[s] the separate and superior male position.” • “Pornography institutionalizes male supremacy the way segregation institutionalizes white supremacy.” • Linda Bird Francke, Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 152

29. Military culture as sexually charged: • “I’d be afraid to be in a foxhole with a gay person. I don’t trust them. I’d be afraid that if I looked the other way, he’d do something.” • “I’m worried that when I’m holding up a piece of armament, someone might come over and grab me.” • “Sexual Orientation and US Military Personnel Policy: Options and Assessment” (1993 RAND study)

30. “The S&M Man” (based on “the Candy Man”) Who can take a chainsaw Cut the bitch in two Fuck the bottom half And give the upper half to you . . Chorus: The S&M Man, the S&M Man, The S&M Man cause he mixes it with love And makes the hurt feel good!. . . Who can take some jumper cables Clamp them to her tits Jump-start your car And electrocute the bitch . . . (Chorus)