XX Factor: the blog

War Is Not a Feminist Value

Dana Goldstein's article about the few feminist groups that came out in support of a long-term occupation in Afghanistan sure has tongues wagging, as is inevitable every time a perceived gap between liberal and feminist interests opens up. Eleanor Smeal and a few other feminists object to President Obama's plan to leave Afghanistan in 18 months because they correctly believe that leaving will cause reactionary forces to swoop in and eagerly oppress women to the fullest extent possible. But the few feminists Dana covers hardly represent majority feminist opinion on this front. Many of us believe that we should leave Afghanistan sooner rather than later, even as we sympathize with Smeal's concerns.

How can I, as a good feminist, believe that we should just get out of Afghanistan, knowing full well what will happen to women when we do? It's a good question. On one level, the answer is actually quite simple: I don't buy the idea that you can shove good values such as feminism down people's throats with violence. And that even if you could, it's irrelevant in this case. As Dana notes, the human rights arguments about Afghanistan have never been put forth in good faith but have always functioned as a rationale for the war. Because of this, I fail to believe that we're doing anything but putting off the inevitable by occupying Afghanistan. And by putting off the fall, we are also putting off the potential for legitimate feminist forces within Afghanistan to start working to improve things the only way possible, from the inside.

There's a deep arrogance to the long-standing argument that Westerners can simply visit the lessons we learned the hard way on other countries at the end of a gun. Our society didn't move in the direction of equality because outsiders forced it upon us. As painful as it is to admit it, women don't gain power through violent coercion. They have to build it, step by step. That's why interventions that give women control and power over their own lives, such as microlending, work so much better than trying to create a feminist society by fiat.

To say that war is against everything that feminists stand for is not to make a mere theoretical argument, either. It's pragmatic. Invading and occupying a country causes many of the men of that country to feel disempowered and emasculated. And men in that situation lash out at women, making themselves feel powerful again by dominating women. It operates by the same principle as schoolyard bullying, but on a global scale. If we truly care about women's equality, the last thing we need to be doing is creating incentives for men to oppress women to build themselves up.

Tags: afghanistan, feminism

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Amanda Marcotte recently moved from her home state of Texas to Brooklyn, NY. She blogs at pandagon.net and rhrealitycheck.org.

Comments

Priorities.

By: mjoy | Wed, 12/09/2009 - 13:01

I can appreciate fellow Americans seeking ways to relate to the eight-year war effort from which most people easily detach themselves. But I do not understanding dismissing a very critical engagement based on personal values.

The bottom line is we are engaged in this war to establish global security. The world has been terrorized in numerous attacks by people who have based themsleves in networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they are spreading. And they are harbored by people who claim autonomous rule illegally and unethically over their own countrymen enforcing their own strict Islamic values on them all.

The goal of our effort is not to place on them our own Westernized values in their homes, but to help bring them the security they need to eventually build their own sovereign nation to stand up for themselves against these shadow governments, and ultimately, eliminate safe-havens for organizations that inflict harm to the world at large. Afghanistan is a very old country with a very rooted culture. They certainly do not need our values.

And I can say this from experience because I am on the ground with these women and their families. There is no "feminist movement from the inside," because when you face the threat of bribery, extortion, rape, murder, hunger, illness, forced child marriage, kidnapping, and so on, you cannot begin to even worry about gender equality.

My fellow 30,000 troops are coming to help bring security, train the Afghans on how to provide that security, and eventually leave them to provide their own defense and build their own country.

And I certainly believe that "violence" is a very effective tool when freeing a region from tyranical extremists. But I do not believe an ethnocentric attitude about feminist ideals can make an Afghan change her or his values.

Forcing Values

By: iar | Tue, 12/08/2009 - 17:31

I agree that we shouldn't necessarily stay in Afghanistan for worry about the status of women there, since that has never been a primary goal of the war. Women's lives have improved, but not as much as if that had been a priority.

However, I couldn't disagree more strongly with your assertion that you can't use violence to force someone to adopt positive values. World War II is the ultimate counter-example to that belief. Germany was violently anti-Semitic beyond anyone's imaginations, yet Germans are now in the European mainstream in terms of their attitudes toward Jews. Japan was a warrior culture and had been for centuries, yet they are now, as a nation, almost pacifistic. The obvious difference between World War II and Afghanistan is that we'll never commit enough troops to Afghanistan to take control of the country to the level that we did Germany and Japan. Still, you have to admit that both of those cultures were completely transformed--in positive ways--as a result of values mandated for them by the countries who defeated them in war.