Torture, Seeing it as a Defense by K. Rodriguez

Author Paul Kahn expresses his opinion about torture by saying, “I am most certainly against torture just as I am against terror,” (13). Beginning with this statement I believe that torture is not something I personally disagree with. Of course if terror did not exist, I am sure that I would undoubtedly have agreed with Kahn’s statement(s).  I understand that on many occasions he articulates that torture and terror go hand in hand. Both terms are significantly linked together in the sense that they both create fear, violence and tend to have a specific goal. “…terror and torture speak in the same voice: they are matched forms of behavior at the level of symbolic meanings,” (13).  As harsh as my disagreement may sound compare to him, I believe that any extreme measure should be used to protect nations. This does not mean I agree with the idea that people should be suicide bombers to make a point, or that people should use religion to justify that any action taken is correct. I just believe that there needs to be a defense that is equivalent to the force that someone is against. In this case being governments against governments or religion against religion or governments against religions, or vise versus. In whichever way, I think that torture should not be looked down upon if ever used in a matter necessary- and of course when that kind of power is not exploited. Sadly, that is not always the case.

For example, women and even men at times are tortured. Not because someone is trying to get information out of them. Torture does not always mean that someone is getting beat up or that it is used for the right reasons. Just like the women from Juarez and from all over the world. “Violence against women occurs in many forms, from rape…battering to psychological and verbal attacks including threats and intimidation,” (K. Staudt, 29).It has even been discussed in class that being abused of does not have to be physical and it is just as painful. And maybe this is why it should be a reason for me to disagree with torture but at the end of the day no matter what kind of violence it is, may it be justified violence, fake violence (ex: action movies/shows…), violence against innocents, violence against those who deserve it; torture does not stop from being torture and neither does terror.  And because terror does exist and it is used to its fullest, torture should be too.

I thought it was very interesting that Kathleen Staudt, before beginning her essay, she quotes Hanna Arendt. “[E]very decrease in power is an open invitation to violence,” (29). And I couldn’t agree more with that statement, to a certain extent. In my opinion, it is just a way of saying that if you have power and use it appropriately there is a better chance of not being attacked by an opponent, if you are, at least it should be known to others that there are severe consequences that follow.  The government and military’s, though they abide by the prohibition on torture mentioned in Kahn’s introduction, they still have the power to use violence. Maybe it is thought as immoral but Kahn says, “The torture that survives occurs in places closed to public regard… torture has the opaque presence of the “deniable.” It must be known but not seen…” (3). So, if its already used, why not use it in a manner that is effective and not be abused by those who potentially have the authority to use it?

Perspective on London, 2005 by J.Y.

It is one thing to watch horrifying events like terrorist attacks unfold before your very eyes on a television screen in the comfort of your own living room thousands of miles away. It is a whole other thing to be smack-dab in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world that, in a matter of seconds, transforms into absolute pandemonium. Blood everywhere, sirens blaring, women and children screaming, men crying, smoke ascending to the sky like some ominous marking of destruction. That was London in 2005. I was 12 years old, and right in front of King’s Cross station (one of the most popular train stations in the city) when the bombs went off.

 

It turns out that four terrorists who identified themselves with the Islam religion were responsible for the attacks. Three bombs were detonated within ten minutes of King’s Cross Station and another one exploded on a double-decker bus. Fifty-two civilians were killed along with the suicide bombers, and approximately 700 others were wounded. Later that September, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks in a video tape.

 

I am not religious by any means, nor do I possess immense knowledge about the Islamic faith (and I when I question the motives of the bombers, that does not also imply that I feel that way about those who practice the Islamic faith). The idea that a person could make themselves a martyr for their religion by murdering other people is something I cannot wrap my head around. Kahn states that martyrdom is “a test of faith, not a matter of consent,” implying that the bombers might have felt an obligation to prove their worth to their religious figure-head or the like (33). However, in the Christian faith (who advocates most strongly for virtues like forgiveness), when Jesus gives himself up to God, it is seen as the ultimate sacrifice for the greater good because it establishes principles of compassion and mercy, it is an anecdote recognized all around the world. Jesus was being tortured and eventually gave himself up to the Lord, succumbing to His almighty authority while later establishing the doctrine of Christianity. While the death of Jesus Christ can be seen as horrific from any outsider, it carries significant religious implications. Relating back to the terrorist attack, it was not a single “martyr” that wanted to send a message, but four. Instead of sacrificing ONLY themselves to advocate their religious faith or devoutness, they take the lives of 52 INNOCENT people with them.  So why would somebody feel so obliged to act in this way to convey their religious faith? Kahn believes that “sacrifice is compelled by the presence of the sacred…it does not emerge form within, as if it is the product of a personal decision, but neither can we say that it is forced upon us from without…at stake is not a romantic idea of an inner-self but the objective truth of the world and of the self in that world” (29). Were the bombers feeling obligated to provoke these attacks because they felt pressured? What greater good were they sacrificing themselves to? Was it a personal choice? Questions like these still puzzle me to this day. After all, watching the scene unfold before your young eyes leaves you able to mutter only one single word, “why?”

 

Removing the religious context from the attacks, and it is seen as simply a severe and brutal act of violence, murder. On top of that, the terrorists emotionally scarred those who were not victims but happened to be in the vicinity of the attacks. Myself included.

 

However, a ray of hope.

 

Kindness.

 

People of all different ethnicities, ages, countries, religions, you name it, worked together to ensure that everyone was safe. I watched an African-American man help a Chinese woman away from the damage, I watched a Middle-Eastern man throw his jacket over a white woman’s face to cover her eyes from the dust as he ushered her away. I watched compassion before my very eyes. Retrospectively, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Civilians associated with the Islamic religion were not crying victory up and down the streets. Wouldn’t that mean that these attacks were seen as tragic despite any religious affiliation? I strongly believe so. There is an idea of religion and then above that comes natural law; implying that there are basic human rights that everyone is entitled to. When these rights are violated, it strikes a chord with the hearts of everyone involved, not just appealing to a particular religion. Though the attacks on London may have been seen as a religious sacrifice by the bombers, watching compassion emerge literally from the ashes from people of all different backgrounds reminded me that, despite religious affiliation, people generally have a strong sense of human decency. While I still am haunted by the attacks (I cannot ride an underground train), the aftermath of the attacks resonates with me in one of the mot powerful ways.  Torture and sacrifice can empower one particular person or group of people, but when innocent civilians are victimized, the collective organization of compassion that stems from all sorts of people over-rides that. All of this happened in less than two minutes, but it’s something that still resonates with me to this day. This “spectacle of sacrifice” did initiate fear into those involved or watching, including myself, but failed immensely to ignite religious furor in it followers, but instead sparked the human compassion that lies in all of us (25).

 

Culture and Globalization by Angela H.

Kathleen Staudt examines violence against women with a global and cultural perspective. She analysis how violence against women “has become so common as to call it ‘normalized’ behavior in the Americas” (Staudt 30). She argues that violence against women is a custom of male dominance that has survived through the pass of time and is “legitimize by government inaction” until recently (Staudt 30). To support her argument Staudt takes into account cultural aspects such as the machismo culture argument and the links between child victimization and interpersonal violence.

Staudt also argues “violence against women is connected with the large society that is amenable to change, depending on economic context and public intervention”(Staudt 34). This can be attributed to arguments such as the Malinche myth, which represents women as traitors to men. Women are also seen chingadas, both as a state of being and personal trait. These ideas lead to a “historical justification for and anguish about violence against women, against the mother or wife who abandoned and/or betrayed the son or husband” (Staudt 36).

Staudt also argues that violence against women, especially in Juarez, is a result of the growing labor market that created jobs for women and low paying jobs for men. By working, Mexican women are challenging cultural obligations, such as homemakers and motherhood. She concludes that “perhaps male rage against cheapened wages under the global economic regime produces backlash and revenge, but they exercise that rage against an easier target than the global political-economic octopus; their partners” (Staudt 46).

Personally I agree with Staudt, being from a border town where the maquiladora industry has created job opportunities for women. As a former illegal maquiladora worker, I recall many of the women that I worked with feeling frustrated. The couple of women that I had the opportunity to work and become friends with were the only financial providers and their husbands/partners were unemployed or alcoholics, making these women feel the multiple pressures of financial instability and cultural compliance.

Masculinity and the Totality Machine in Nazi Germany by E. Brandon

Hannah Arendt used the phrase “banality of evil” to describe Eichmann’s surprisingly underwhelming appearance, which outraged her audience. “Most people still assumed that murder was committed by monsters or demons.” (xiv) The portrayal of Nazis as the ultimate evil represents the portrayal of the German army as the pinnacle of masculinity, an idea explored throughout the war.

In class, we discussed the idea of the “feminization of Jews” in concentration camps. Mainly, this was achieved through forced nakedness, rape, beating, etc. A binary that existed between the German army and the Jewish victims; by feminizing the Jews, Germans were seen as more masculine which increased their power and prestige. Ernst Jünger, a famous German WWI veteran turned writer, once wrote about the concept of the totality machine. The idea revolved around self-improvement in order to better the army as a whole. The National Socialists clung to this idea, seeing individuality and distinguishing from others as trivial. Each person functioned as a small part of a common goal, to be viewed as a strong and unwavering machine.

The Nazi party was seen as monstrous because of all the crimes they had committed inside concentration camps. Eichmann was the face of the Nazis in his televised trial and was blamed for most of the evils that took place, even though he was only a small part of the Nazi machine. While the party was perceived as being strong and masculine, Eichmann was almost the exact opposite. This surprised Arendt, noting, “he personified neither hatred or madness nor an insatiable thirst for blood” (xiii). While this may have spawned outrage and criticism from Arendt’s readers, her shock simply displays the falseness of the idea of the Nazis as the pinnacle of masculinity, contrasted with the feminization of the Jews.

T: A Personal Account by Y. J.

I should begin by quickly glossing over my cultural and ethnic background, just to ensure everyone is completely cognizant of where my experiences stem from. My father is Punjabi, and was born in Scotland. My mother is white, from Newcastle, England. I was born in New Brunswick, Canada where I learned French. I’m an unusual amalgam of various traditions, experiences, and languages.

During a discussion in class about gender binaries and categorization, the mention of the Hijra came up and immediately prompted me to write this post. Known to me as Khusra (the Punjabi word for it), they are males with female gender identity.  In the more conservative parts of India, these people group and live together, usually because their families kicked them out the house upon the discovery of their deviant sexuality and gender expression. Thankfully, this was not the case for a Khusra I consider myself extremely fortunate to know, my cousin A. (A prefers to go by “T” and be referred to with female pronouns, so out of respect for her, I will continue this throughout the post).

My father has five brothers, and each of their families has sons, making me the only (genetic) female.  T’s dad and his wife moved to Vancouver in 1981. Their first son, H, was born in 1983, and T was born in 1987. Both of them were raised with as much love and nurturing you would expect from any harmonious family. Religious practices were routine, as was dressing according to their gender. H and T attended formal occasions in a sherwani, typical male garb, and began wearing turbans when they became teenagers. H was the more masculine of the two, he played sports and was the most passionate about upholding traditions and being stringent about behaviors in different social situations. T, on the other hand, was usually discovered among the girls at special occasions or family get-togethers. Many of my family members would joke about him scoping out females for a future wife, but this expectation of a devout following of tradition was ruptured when T was 20, and revealed she was gay.

As aforementioned, T was very fortunate that her family was more westernized than other Indian families. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to tell her story because I would have probably never seen her again.

After T came out, it took the entire family completely by surprise. Tears were shed, judgment was passed. Her parents accepted her after a period of time, but it was still hard news for them to hear. As resilient as ever, my cousin embraced her sexuality and expression more fully by dressing up in sarees and applying make-up before she left the house. When I called her and asked her about disclosing her secret, she told me, “I always knew the gender and sexuality of my brain did not coincide with my anatomy and my upbringing. As a child, I felt restricted in those guy clothes, I wanted to be like the girls and put on dresses and flirt with guys…I decided over a period of time that I would be miserable keeping who I really was under wraps. I was a gay man, but I was born to be a girl, I just knew it. Imagining myself in a t-shirt with jeans or suits for the rest of my life didn’t fit with who I wanted to be. I wanted to be pretty…girls are beautiful and if it was really forced onto me, I could survive in a relationship with one.  I could have a family with her and fake complete happiness for the rest of my life. But when I thought about being in a relationship with a girl, the sex I’m not sexually attracted to, I always imagined myself missing out on the experience of being with a guy. That’s why I identify as a khusra…I was meant to be a woman, and I am attracted to men…” (T, 14 Sept. 2012).

Joan Scott wrote that “gender is…a social category imposed on a sexed body” (pg. 1056). generally a binary. Twofold systems such as this provide much difficulty for T. She usually complained about the inconvenience of filling out the forms for her passports or driver’s license. As much as she wants to check the box next to “female,” because that is what she identifies as, she selects “male” since it’s her sex, just to keep things uncomplicated. Though her family accepts her and refers to her with the female pronouns, other families she passes in the streets stare, sometimes mumbling prayers to save her from her “misjudgment”.

I admire T greatly for her strength; especially because of the cultural stigma her preferences entail. For example, in Punjabi culture, much strength is placed on the patriarch. Westernized countries are a little more lenient, but the father still usually holds the most power. Though Scott writes that “gender is a primary field within…power is articulated (1063),” T saw embracing her gender expression as a means to her own happiness despite her deviation from the traditions and expectations of her own culture, rather than seeing it as a demeaning switch from the male gender to the female. Admittedly yes, she technically went from being the ‘more powerful’ gender in the Punjabi culture to the ‘less powerful,’ but T remains proud and happy of the decision she made to fully embrace her expression and sexuality. She has not undergone any sex-change surgeries or hormone therapies as of yet, and she does not plan to.

“Sometimes I wonder if I really made the right decision, and whenever I think back to how miserable I was stifled in man’s clothes without any makeup or jewelry, I can’t see myself looking back…the best thing about this entire experience so far was realizing how much my family cared about me. I was frightened to death to tell everyone, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. If my mom and dad could love me despite the things I had done in my life, I couldn’t imagine them hating me for who I was…them not talking to me was difficult, but they are now supporting me and my boyfriend every step of the way…I just wish that I could tell others that their stories will have happy endings like mine did, but I would by lying to them…I hope to eliminate that uncertainty someday among those like me” (T, 14 Sept. 2012).

T is now 26 years old and lives in Canada with her boyfriend.

*Also, if you have any questions for T, about her life or anything, let me know and I can forward them to her so you can receive answers. She still has a lot more to say that I didn’t include in the blog post.

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This is a student blog written by my classmate, the names have been removed and certain details omitted to avoid any backlash to either the author or the brave individual the response focuses on. If there are any further questions or comments, I would love to hear from anyone who stumbles across and will relate them back to the author of the post. This post was publicized with permission from the original author.

Chants, Catch-phrases, and Charlotte Bunch –C. Barrons

“Women’s rights are human rights.” This simple passive tagline of the feminist echoed throughout the late eighties and early nineties. Women of the global south and global north banned together on this catchphrase, making it the basis of the thesis for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights petition in Vienna 1993. Charlotte Bunch explains the strength in this phrase throughout her preface entitled “How Women’s Rights Became Recognized as Human Rights”, and she calls it “… an organizing tool for feminists to provoke discussion of why human rights were not already systematically seen as including women’s rights…” (Bunch 30). She claims that via this “organizing tool” or catchphrase that “human rights abuses of women and girls moved from being seen as lamentable (read: ‘inevitable’) problems to being the responsibility of governments who would be held to account for redressing them” (Bunch 36) after several conventions engraving and soaking it into the framework of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Her story appears heroic– feminist women from the global North and South discuss the issue of women’s rights in a human rights framework with “few disagreements by region” (Bunch 34). The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women spurred as a result of women’s rights appearing as a hot topic, and CEDAW worked to draft women’s rights in regard to gender in “… areas including refugees and asylum, socioeconomic rights, torture, armed conflict, and transitional justice” (Bunch 36).

Noting these justices in women’s rights, I wonder how we devolved from these triumphs. Even now, in the torrential storm against women’s rights in partisan politics, some the women I speak to regarding “women’s rights” think the fight is over. Many of my family members giggle that I’m a Gender and Women’s Studies major. In one of my early gender and women’s studies courses in the beginning of my academic career (at UW-Madison), I overheard two females discussing “women’s rights”. One declared it futile (the word she used: stupid), claiming embarrassment to even be seen in the class. The other said, “Feminists are scary.”

This scene is obviously embarrassing to all womenkind, at least the informed ones. Despite the grand effects of framing women’s rights as human rights– propelling such new international entities like the International Criminal Court, the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Its Causes and Consequences, and CEDAW– women’s rights are still not fully human rights… especially in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Despite CEDAW’s implementations to help achieve less violence against women, the U.S. has not ratified this document, and thus young eighteen year old girls sitting in their 101 courses are not safe via the only global body seeking to decimate violence against women. Essentially, these female students in front of me scoffing at women’s rights live in a country that has turned their back against their basic rights, their human rights.

This mis-education of my peers baffles me, and I wonder if the long scrutinized feminists of today can rally again behind a catch-phrase, something to help them achieve what the feminists of yesterday started. Can we even begin if “women’s advocates have found themselves needing to focus on defending previous gains rather than advnacing ton the difficult tasks of implementing these rights” (Bunch 38).

I really hope we’re not all doomed.

Beyond the Binary — J. Lane

It strikes me as strange that while the inequalities between the sexes is something generally known and talked about, the formation of the gender binary in itself is largely unexamined.  Personally, I had never thought of the concept before, and from what I gathered it seems that many in our class would say the same.  Our look at the curtsy as symbolizing a kind of “thank you” and the bow, in turn, as a “you’re welcome” really highlighted the ways in which gender “roles” subliminally thrive in our culture even today.  Many of the readings we examined discuss the formation of the definition of “gender” and the distinctions between that and “sex.”  Joan Scott makes an interesting point by saying “gender becomes a way of denoting “cultural constructions”- the entirely social creation of ideas about appropriate roles for women and men…Gender is, in this definition, a social category imposed on a sexed body.”  Only recently, as studies of the sexes and gender categories have become more popular and legitimized, has the issue of defining what is “woman” and what is “man” become troublesome.  Those that don’t fall into either category are no longer kept as outliers without any place in society, for there is a growing awareness of at least the possibility of a third category, one which defies any single concrete definition (though in my mind this category is an altogether real one).  Now, more so than in the past, human rights activists and especially promoters of gender equality have a whole other issue to deal with- the promotion of rights and recognition for all we might refer to as “others,” as in those that don’t quite fit “male” or “female” categorization.  Looking beyond the binary system of gender categorization is, indeed, going to be quite a change.

Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” pg. 1056

Sex and Gender Fluidity –N. Stevens

I didn’t actually start thinking about gender and sexuality as spectrums, rather than binaries, until earlier this year when I was assigned an excerpt of a Butler work as homework. We use those binaries to categorize and try to understand ourselves and our relationships, so much so that the idea of only male or only female, only heterosexual, is naturalized, “an expectation that ends up producing the very phenomenon that it anticipates” (Butler xiv). A feature in the New York Times published last month chronicles the experiences of parents of gender-queer sons: “It’s hard to put a finger on why gender identity makes such a difference to our sense of who a person is, but it does. As a parent, it’s really destabilizing when that’s pulled out from under you.” (Padawer 2). These parents all chose to support their sons’ decisions to wear dresses in public and play with conventional girls’ toys; however, they still felt they needed to send emails to their childrens’ classmates’ parents before the first day of school, and sometimes even limit the days and times their sons could wear conventional girls’ clothing.

Butler states that “the aim of [her] text was to open up the filed of possibility for gender without dictating which kinds of possibilities ought to be realized” (viiii). The more willing parents are to confirm instead of suppress their children’s early claims of gender identity, the easier it will be for cisgender and heterosexual people to accept gender as “ambiguous without disturbing or reorienting normative sexuality” (Butler xiv).

Padawer, Ruth. “What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?.” New York Times, August 2012.

Butler, Judith. “Gender Trouble.”

(Article linked to picture.)