Taliban hatred for women?

In the Nov. 4, 2001 Los Angeles Times there's an article by Barbara 
Ehrenreich titled "Veiled Threat" that addresses the question of 
Taliban hatred for women.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000088146nov04.story

She speculates that because men in places like Afghanistan suffer 
from diminished economic expectations, they take it out on women. 

"I don't know, but I'm willing to start the dialogue by risking a 
speculation: Maybe part of the answer lies in the ways that 
globalization has posed a particular threat to men. Western industry 
has displaced traditional crafts--female as well as male--and 
large-scale, multinational-controlled agriculture has downgraded the 
independent farmer to the status of hired hand."

Oddly enough, this analysis evokes the concerns of Susan Faludi's 
"Stiffed," a book that fretted over the insecurities of American men 
in face of the rising economic and sexual assertiveness of women. The 
movie "Fight Club" was linked to Faludi's book as a further 
contribution to the discussion of male frustration. One might suppose 
that Brad Pitt's bar fights were symptomatic of the same malaise that 
makes the Taliban execute 12 year old girls for wearing white shoes 
or for making snowmen.

While I am no expert on the Taliban, it seems that there is a much 
more straightforward explanation. Scholars of the region tend to 
agree that they are orphans of the Afghan war who were sent to the 
'madrassas' in Pakistan, all-male schools where Islamic 
fundamentalism was drummed into their heads. In this context, it is 
not surprising that they haven't reached adulthood with the mindset 
of Alan Alda, Phil Donohue or Stanley Aronowitz.

The appearance of Ehrenreich's article during a period of some of the 
most intense bombing since the Vietnam War is an event in itself. It 
is another instance of left-liberal accommodation to imperialism 
mixed with feminist ideology. During the war against Yugoslavia, 
Susan Sontag and countless other middle-class feminists were always 
harping on how the Serbs lived to rape Bosnian women. (That being 
said, it is a step forward that Sontag has disassociated herself from 
the war machinery that arose after 9/11.)

While Ehrenreich has not jumped on the war-wagon, it is regrettable 
nonetheless that she chooses to castigate those under the gun of the 
most powerful imperialist nation in history in the bourgeois press. 
Furthermore, it is a sign of how detached she is from genuine 
socialism (as opposed to the tepid DSA variety) that she does not 
address the real nature of woman's oppression, namely the social and 
economic structures of capitalist society. To put it as succinctly as 
possible, it seems utterly useless to talk about women's equality in 
Afghanistan as long as the country lacks the objective basis for 
transforming family and gender relations in general. Ironically, when 
those relations began to be transformed back in the early 1980s, 
social democrats like Ehrenreich seemed less interested in welcoming 
those advances than they were in castigating "Stalinism."

Considering the fact that American imperialism has ascended to a 
global role that Great Britain enjoyed in its Victorian heyday, and 
that it is fighting in some of the same places (Sudan, Afghanistan, 
etc.), it is interesting to contrast the imperialist mindset of the 
two epochs. Today, we get American presidents dropping 15,000 pound 
'daisy cutter' bombs in the name of woman's equality. A century or so 
ago, the red-coated vanguard of the British Empire would have never 
dreamed of invoking woman's equality. In fact, they never would have 
dreamed about women to begin with, since the dominant ethos of the 
warrior class was not only Spartan-like, but suggested a misogyny 
characteristic of repressed homosexuality.

In "Eminent Victorians" Lytton Strachey (openly gay himself) slyly 
characterized Col. Charles "Chinese" Gordon, the martyr of Khartoum, 
as being a classic closeted type, without quite coming out and saying 
it:

"Perhaps if he had been ready to make the most of the wave of 
popularity which greeted him on his return--if he had advertised his 
fame and, amid high circles, played the part of Chinese Gordon in a 
becoming manner--the results would have been different. But he was by 
nature farouche; his soul revolted against dinner-parties and stiff 
shirts; and the presence of ladies--especially of fashionable 
ladies--filled him with uneasiness."

http://www.bartleby.com/189/

You see, Gordon preferred the company of boys, even though he 
supposedly never did anything with them.

While poor old Gordon got his head chopped off by the Mahdists, the 
British army led by Lord Kitchener got their revenge a few years 
later, teaching the unruly natives a lesson. Kitchener also shunned 
women:

>>Kitchener never married, belonged to the Guild of the Holy Standard 
(whose members pledged themselves to be "sober, upright and chaste") 
and urged troops in India who felt tempted to visit brothels to think 
of their mothers (Kitchener's own mother had died when he was 13). 

On the evidence here, Kitchener ended his life a virgin. Pollock 
[John Pollock, author of the biography "Kitchener") is particularly 
keen to show that Kitchener's touching relations with young male 
protégés were not sexual. Attempts to fit Kitchener into a precise 
sexual category are probably futile - perceptions of male intimacy 
varied widely in the different parts of the world where he spent his 
life. There are times, however, when Pollock insists too much. He 
claims that Kitchener's savage denunciation of a brother officer 
accused of sodomy was "hardly the reaction of a man affected by a 
similar sexual pull". A more cynical biographer might have argued 
that this is precisely the reaction of a man trying to hide his own 
sexual feelings.<<

(Guardian Apr. 21. 2001)

One denizen of the British Isles who had no trouble hiding his sexual 
feelings or his feelings about national oppression was the Irish 
career diplomat Roger Casement. When Casement was in the Congo, he 
campaigned against the mass murder and mutilation of African peoples 
who were being dragooned into the rubber trade. Later when he was 
assigned to Colombia, he spoke up about the mistreatment of the 
Indians in the Putumayo region, who were also forced to pick rubber.

Eventually, Casement stood up for victims of colonialism much closer 
to home, namely his own Irish race. After joining the Easter 
Rebellion, he was arrested and charged with treason. At his trial, he 
said the following:

"If small nationalities were to be the pawns in this game of 
embattled giants, I saw no reason why Ireland should shed her blood 
in any cause but her own, and if that be treason beyond the seas, I 
am not ashamed to avow it or to answer for it here with my life. 
..We are told that if Irishmen go by the thousand to die, not for 
Ireland, but for Flanders, for Belgium, for a patch of sand on the 
deserts of Mesopotamia, or a rocky trench on the heights of 
Gallipoli, they are winning self government for Ireland. But if they 
dare to lay down their lives on their native soil, if they dare to 
dream even that freedom can be won only at home by men resolved to 
fight for it there, then they are traitors to their country and their 
dream and their deaths alike are phases of a dishonourable fantasy."

http://www.ucc.ie/ucc/depts/history/multitext/1916/casement.html

Since it was known that Casement was gay, the British attempted to 
sway public opinion against him by entering his journals into the 
court records. Apparently, the only two passions in Casement's life 
were fighting against colonial oppression and cruising. While 
scholars are divided on whether the journals were authentic or 
written by the British cops to compromise Casement, there is no 
question about his open preference for gay sex.

During his trial, Casement shocked his lawyer Alexander M. Sullivan 
with the revelation that he "glorified" in his sexuality: "He 
instructed me to explain to the jury that the filthy and disreputable 
practices and the rhapsodical glorification of them were inseparable 
from true genius; moreover, I was to cite a list of all truly great 
men to prove it. He was not a bit ashamed." 

The website gaytoday.badpuppy.com (love that URL!) states, 
"Casement's experiences with colonialism -- and, perhaps, his own 
experiences as a gay man -- awakened him to the conditions of his own 
country, then under British domination. He resigned from the Service 
in 1913 to devote himself to the cause of Irish nationalism. To this 
end Casement visited New York, then as now a source of funds and guns 
for Irish nationalists."

http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/people/122898pe.htm


-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 11/08/2001

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org