War is a Women’s Issue

Source: https://www.marchonpentagon.com/single-post/2018/04/17/War-is-a-Womens-IssueBy: 

Cheryl Biren

Date: April 17, 2018

Imperialist War is an atrocity and atrocities make up the whole of the atrocity. When they cannot be suppressed, the Pentagon and corporate media work in tandem to convince the public that the rapes, the massacres, the torture, the targeted murders of civilians, the sexual exploitation of girls and women are isolated incidents while insisting that these wars of aggression are just. Ultimately, the devastating aftermath of U.S imperialist war is deemed to be the fault and responsibility of others.

Classism, Racism, Sexism, Misogyny and Xenophobia serve as the grease that keeps the U.S. war machine running. U.S. imperialism also necessitates that the people are numb to the full-scale decimation of the living Earth.

Poor and working-class women, women of color, women who are immigrants, female refugees, women in conflict zones and those who live where U.S. military bases loom are especially harmed by the U.S. government’s fixation on world domination.

The UN Security Council reports that women suffer disproportionately during and after war. Can we expect to end war without recognizing the inherent role misogyny plays in it and how that misogyny runs through class, racial and ethnic lines? 

This is a call for Solidarity among Women and Solidarity with Women.

How can we in good conscience address the war on women within the U.S. without recognizing what U.S. imperialist wars are doing to our sisters globally?

Rape, for example, is “standard operating procedure” in war and militarism. The evidence is incontrovertible, yet the U.S. antiwar movement appears reluctant to highlight these crimes as part and parcel of the functioning of U.S. imperialism.

Ask a veteran about the chants, cadence calls or “jodies” they remember. Like the sexist indoctrination that begins at birth, they ready men to exploit, to rape, to torture and murder girls and women and to destroy their homes and communities.

Who can take a chain saw,

Cut the bitch in two,

Fuck the bottom half

And give the upper half to you…

If you are able to dismiss the chant above and others like it as macho bluster, read the entirety of the Peers Inquiry of the My Lai mass rape and massacre. Read the accounts of the Mahmudiyah rape and killings. Read Kill Anything that Moves. Read the Rape of Nanking.

With war comes sexual exploitation and rape by men (including members of the military, contractors, and aid workers) of civilian girls and women in war zones and refugee camps, many of whom have been impoverished, traumatized and displaced by U.S. military aggression.

There is, of course, the practice of rape (of women and men) and sexual harassment within the military with retaliation for reporting the norm. Many female soldiers deprived themselves of fluids at Camp Victory in Iraq in an attempt to avoid being raped by male soldiers on their way to the latrines at night. Some of those female soldiers died from dehydration.

Misogyny, Rape and War culture delivered up the Tailhook, Aberdeen, 2003 Air Force Academy, USAF Basic Training and the United States Armed Forces Nude Photo “scandals.”

How can we separate all this from civilian rape at home, from male violence against women here in the United States where between 3 and 4 women are murdered a day by a former or current male intimate partner, and where Indigenous women endure the highest rate of rape and assault of all women in this country? 

We talk about state violence, but are we also noting that studies show that police officers “beat their wives or girlfriends at nearly double the rate” of the general population? Further, how comfortable is the U.S. antiwar movement in discussing the increased rates of intimate partner violence at home by returning combat veterans suffering with post-traumatic stress?  

How do we discuss the lack of resources for women in the U.S. who are on the run or trapped in their homes because of male violence or the hundreds of thousands of untested rape-kits without recognizing the impact of the war economy along with classism, racism, sexism and misogyny?

How do we in the U.S. antiwar movement discuss the “economic draft” without recognizing its relation to the ongoing assault on female reproductive rights and access with poor and working-class women among those hit the hardest. Do those on the left stop to consider that these future “draftees” are born of the bodies of women? When racism intersects with sexism we find that Black mothers are dying in childbirth at three to four times the rate of white mothers in the U.S.

Women are struggling, and we need to make these connections.

As the Women’s March on the Pentagon moves forward with organizing, this space will be used to highlight war-related issues that impact girls and women globally and here in the U.S.

Imagine and Live the Power of Women in Solidarity.

Cheryl Biren