(no subject)
Neg in response to Dont Ask Dont Tell Aff
TURN: INCREASING THE ADMISSION OF GAYS IN THE MILITARY ONLY AFFIRMS THE INHERENTLY DEHUMANIZING NATURE OF AN INSTITUTION WHOSE JOB IT IS TO VIOLENTLY DOMINATE OTHERS - WHILE YOU ARE VOTING FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY, IT IS THE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO BE ON THE FRONTLINE OF ATROCITY. VOTE NEGATIVE TO AFFIRM JUSTICE AND EQUALITY AS THE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO RESIST AN OCCUPATION THAT REQUIRES YOU TO SHOOT PEOPLE IN THE FACE.
Angela Davis in 2005 [“Sexual Coercion, Prisons, and Feminist Responses,” Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture, Pg. 64-65]
The representations of women soldiers were quite dramatic and most people found them utterly shocking. But we might also say that they provided powerful evidence of what the most interesting feminist analyses have tried to explain: that there is a difference between the body gendered as female and the set of discourses and ideologies that inform the sex/gender system. These images were a kind of visualization of this sex/gender conjunction. We are not accustomed to visually apprehending the difference between female bodies and male supremacist ideologies. Therefore seeing images of a woman engaged in behavior that we associate with male dominance is startling. But it should not be, especially if we take seriously what we know about the social construction of gender. Especially within institutions that rely on ideologies of male dominance, women can be easily mobilized to commit the same acts of violence expected of men-as black people, by virtue of being black, are not therefore immune from the charge of promoting racism.
The images to which you’re referring to evoke a memory of a comment made by Colin Powell during the first Gulf war. He said that the military was the most democratic institution in our society and created a framework in which people could escape the constraints of race and, we can add today, gender as well. This notion of the military as a leveling institution, one that constitutes each member as equal, is frightening and dangerous, because you must eventually arrive at the conclusion that this equality is about equal opportunity to kill, to torture, to engage in sexual coercion. At the time I found it very bizarre that Powell would point to the most hierarchal institution, with its rigid chain of command, as the epitome of democracy. Today, I would say that such a conception of democracy reveals the problems and limitations of civil rights strategies and discourses.
This is true not only with respect to race and gender, but with respect to sexuality as well. Why is the effort to challenge sexism and homophobia in the military largely defined by the question of admission to existing hierarchies and not also a powerful critique of the institution itself? Equality might be considered to be the equal right to refuse and resist.
This is how I would rephrase your original question: How might we consider the visual representation of female bodies collaborating in acts of sexual torture-forcing Arab men to engage in public masturbation, for example-as calling for a feminist analysis that challenges prevailing assumptions that the only possible relationship between women and violence requires women to be the victims?
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I'm thinking about a cloning Aff, which says:
Resolved: The United States federal government should establish a policy substantially increasing the number of persons serving in one or more of the following national service programs: AmeriCorps, Citizen Corps, Senior Corps, Peace Corps, Learn and Serve America, Armed Forces; by cloning current members of the program(s) on a volunteer basis.
So, we played in the talent show today. I wonder if we won..
So bored as of late. Too much band I expect.
*yawn