Here is another piece of Women On The Rise journalism, with
an imposing date. Relax, just
ovaries are mentioned this time.
- KWC
Women
Will Have to Save the World
Marlene Nadle, Pacific News Service,
September 11, 2003
President
Bush may not face much opposition in Congress to his plan for perpetual
preemptive war, but he better watch out for the women. Angry over the swagger of violence
coming out of the White House, disgusted by the bring-'em-on itch for a
fight as the solution to political problems, women around the globe are
organizing in new ways.
These
gender activists are on the Internet, in the streets, packed into rooms
forming more groups and pushing resolutions through the United Nations.
Some are setting up an Occupation Watch Center in Baghdad, and others are
building a transnational movement. They even have their first martyr in
Rachel Corrie, the young American who was killed trying to stop an Israeli
bulldozer from destroying Palestinian homes.
The
surge of women's activism is happening now partly as a response to 9/11.
That event accelerated the growth of new groups like England's Global Women's Strike and Central
Asia's Worldwide Sisterhood Against
Terrorism and War.
Explaining
her own reaction to that trauma and the macho strut of both bin Laden and
Bush, Code Pink founder
Medea Benjamin says, "I had feelings and fears I never had in all my years
of organizing. The male aggressive voice was so very dominant. We needed
to strengthen the voices opposed to that. Mobilizing women was one way to
do it." Her reaction to violent solutions is shared by Indian writer
Arundhati Roy who calls bin Laden Bush's "dark doppelganger."
The
new organizing is more than an attack on personalities. As Jasmina
Tesanovic, a member of Women in Black in Serbia, says, "My enemy is no
longer a bad hero, or a politician, or a person in power, but the culture
that makes such primitive people possible and empowers them." The
organizing is part of a culture war to end the love of military glory,
power, dominance and hierarchy often taught as part of male traditions.
New Profile, a women's group in Israel, demands a complete reevaluation of
its country's "military consciousness."
To
counter a male habit of imposing power and dominance in postwar periods
women diplomats and non-government organizations pressured the United
Nations to pass Resolution
1325, calling for women's full participation in nation
building. Now, Iraqi women are organizing to stop Bush from running their
country as a Boy's Club. They are being supported and advised by the U.N.
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Network of Kosovo Women, Women to Women International,
PeaceWomen, and a deluge of
visiting groups.
This
international alliance is aiding Iraqi women's own efforts to protest
violent rapes, honor killings and the rise of fanatics. "We fear the
threat of fundamentalist religious movements which an occupying army
inspires," the Iraqi Women's
League said in a recent statement.
The
activists count on women in postwar and prewar situations to argue for
political solutions to macho face-offs. They encourage them to use their
social training in settling issues with words, cooperation, and even
empathy for enemies.
There
are no illusions about ovaries making all women good and peaceful.
Instead, Ann Snitow of the Network of East-West Women urges women to
acknowledge their past complicity with men's wars. Few expect Bush
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to give up her allegiance to
traditional male stomp-and-rule values. But men who share their alternate
vision are welcome in the movement.
The
women may be waging a culture war, but that doesn't mean they can't do
down-and-dirty politics with Bush. In an incident that's an early warning
about the 2004 elections, a group of women greeted a fundraising George W.
Bush in Los Angeles recently with a 40-foot pink rejection slip that read:
"You're Fired!"
More
significant is the change in young women who haven't been voting. In a
recent article in a weekly magazine on youth voting, 23-year-old Chantel
Azadeh said, "The last two years have done a number on a lot of people's
minds. This election I plan on getting involved. I think it's crucial that
we get Bush out of the White House." An MTV survey showed only 41 percent
of the young are planning to vote for Bush.
The
president's ominous mutterings about nuclear weapons in Iran and North
Korea are enough to keep gender activism going. Ditto the economic attack
on women's domestic needs in America and in countries that are its once
and future allies. Niki Adams of London's Global Women's Strike is helping to
organize a demand for a Women's
Budget in 24 countries where her group has members including,
the United States.
"Our
slogan is 'Invest in caring, not in killing'," she says. Even Madonna has
joined the post-9/11 resistance with her new music video "American Life"
which satirizes the military superhero. Driven by dread, the women
activists will continue to multiply. They are haunted by nightmare images
of where the punch and counterpunch of superpower and terrorist, occupier
and occupied, will lead.
"This
is a desperate moment in our history," says playwright Karen Malpede, who
only half-jokingly adds, "I guess women will have to save the world."
Marlene
Nadle is a journalist and Associate of the Transregional Center for
Democratic Studies at the New School for Social Research in New
York.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16761