Who's "we"?

I made a comment under this post over at Mr. Smooth's blog, so I hope it eventually appears. Until then, my sentiment is this: who needs to take responsibility for what? Last time I checked, I wasn't making any videos that involved one gender exploiting another. I'm not contributing to the history of misogyny in the United States and around the world. I'm not using racial slurs to refer to my peers, nor am I stating that any and all women I come across are prostitutes and/or female dogs.

This is the same way I feel when I hear people talk about how far the United States has come, and that racism, sexism and homophobia don't exist anymore, because this country was built on democracy and freedom, and it's the greatest country in the world. Most of the people who make those glib, propogandist statements have never left the country. They act like because they supposedly don't know any wife beaters, gay bashers or white hood enthusiasts, everything is fine, and therefore our country is so progressive. Except here's the problem I've often come across: it's not like there has been a large group of nonwhite people perpetrating this institutional bigotry. Meaning, there weren't a bunch of Asian people running the Middle Passage; there weren't a bunch of Native Americans rounding up Japanese American in internment camps; and there aren't a bunch of black people hiring Mexicans and Central Americans for cheap labor while simultaneously enacting discriminatory legislation to keep foreigners from "crossing the border" and "taking our jobs."

I'm not responsible for the bigotry perpetrated on certain non-white, non-male, or non-straight American citizens. I'm not oppressing myself. I'm not one of the people in this country who has "come a long way." I never had anywhere to get to. I've always been here. What needs to be said is the following:

• Certain (white) people in power, and even those not in power, need to stop being racist. I acknowledge that nonwhite racist people exist, but that is another discussion for another time.

• Straight people (and some queer people, too) need to stop hating the LGBT community.

• Men (and certain self-hating women) need to stop oppressing women and end the cycle of misogyny.

We all need to stop acting like the oppressed and the oppressors have, or should have, a equal say in the direction of our country and our society. We don't ask serial killers what we should do to decrease the murder rate. We don't ask rapists how to stop sexual assaults. Mr. Smooth, I agree that there is a discussion to be had about the history and future of hip hop, and the effects hip hop continues to have on our communities. But let's not pretend that every person's opinion is valid and equal, especially the opinions of those "artists" who still choose to making their millions by treating women like worthless whores.

(I'm not saying that sex workers in general are worthless. I'm saying that's how certain recording artists treat the women in their songs and videos.)

We need to tell people, "this behavior is wrong, and you need to stop."

Still Angry, Retroactively.

The other prisoners, by Luke Harding, The Guardian.
May 24, 2004.

Late [2003], [Amal Kadham Swadi], one of seven female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, "happening all across Iraq".

Military Hides Cause of Women Soldiers' Deaths, by Marjorie Cohn, TruthOut.org.
January 30, 2006.

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview. It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.

This makes me angry.

The Women’s War, by Sara Corbett, New York Times Magazine.

If the link expires, you can also read the article here, and here, sans pictures.

A summary of the (not-so) shocking points, posted at Feministing:

...Holy shit, one-third of a nationwide sample of female veterans said they experienced rape or attempted rape during their service. Well, of course rape is rampant in a war zone based on humiliation, sexism, and blind submission to authority. (Hell, rape is rampant everywhere.)

Holy shit, female soldiers are more likely to be diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, sometimes at twice the rate of male soldiers. Well, of course women exposed to the “double whammy,” as Patricia Resick calls it, of sexual trauma and exposure to combat are coming home with some serious mental health issues. Though the 160,000 female soldiers that have been deployed in Iraq often are in roles technically classified as “combat-support,” the violence of this war is ubiquitous. (There were just 7,500 females who served in Vietnam and 41,000 who served in the gulf war.)

Holy shit, the Department of Defense isn’t doing anything to support these women: of the 3,038 investigations of military sexual assault charges in 2004 and 2005, only 329 have resulted in a court-martial of the perpetrator.” Well, of course the government isn’t taking responsibility. Just like they’re not taking responsibility for the rampant brain injuries resulting from this new kind of warfare or the civilian casualties or the lies that got us into this war in the first place or the…you get the point...

And an excerpt from the article that resonated with me:

...There appears to have been little, too, in the way of female bonding in the war zone: most reported that they avoided friendships with other women during the deployment, in part because of the fact that there were fewer women to choose from and in part because of the ridicule that came with having a close friend. ''You're one of three things in the military - a bitch, a whore or a dyke,'' says Abbie Pickett, who is 24 and a combat-support specialist with the Wisconsin Army National Guard. ''As a female, you get classified pretty quickly.''

Many women mentioned being the subject of crass jokes told by male soldiers. Some said that they used sarcasm to deflect the attention but that privately the ridicule wore them down. Others described warding off sexual advances again and again. ''They basically assume that because you're a girl in the Army, you're obligated to have sex with them,'' Suzanne Swift told me at one point...

Read the entire article. It's long, but informative. I have my own observations to make about the article, but I'm too tired to post them all now. Though I will say, I sense a pattern of abuse emerging.