Why Women Should Oppose War?

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 31, 2003

Why Women Should Oppose War?

Women are deeply impacted by war, racism and poverty. But when we stand for peace as women, it is not to make a case for our special victimhood, but to represent a different vision of strength.

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Women are deeply impacted by war, racism and poverty. But when we stand for peace as women, it is not to make a case for our special victimhood, but to represent a different vision of strength.

Women-initiated and women-led actions have a special energy and power. That power comes not from excluding men - most of these actions welcome men as participants - but because of the joy and visionary potential that arise when we come together as women to defend the values of life and caring that we hold dear.

No set of qualities is innately or exclusively "female" or "male." Men can be compassionate, loving and kind, as women can be tough, brave, or callous. But patriarchy assigns the qualities associated with aggression and competition to men, and relegates to women the roles of nurturing and service.

Patriarchy values the hard over the soft, the tough over the tender, punishment, vengeance and vindictiveness over compassion, negotiation, and reconciliation. The "hard" qualities are identified with power, success and masculinity, and exalted. The soft qualities are identified with weakness, powerlessness, and femininity, and denigrated.

Under patriarchy, men are shamed and considered weak if they exhibit qualities associated with women. Politicians win elections by being tough - tough on terror, tough on crime, tough on drugs, tough on welfare mothers.

Calls for co-operation, negotiation, compassion or recognition of our mutual interdependence are equated with womanly weakness. In the name of "toughness," the power holders deprive the poor of the means of life, the troubled and the ill of treatment and care, the ordinary citizen of our privacy and civil rights. Force, punishment, and violence are patriarchy's answer to conflicts and social problems.

Patriarchy finds its ultimate expression in war. War is the field in which the tough can prove their toughness and the winners triumph over the losers. Soldiers can be coerced into dying or killing when their fear of being called womanlike or cowardly overrides their reluctance to face or deal with death.

War removes every argument for tenderness and dissolves all strictures on violence. War is the justification for the clampdown that lets the rulers impose control on every aspect of life.

Wise feminists do not claim that women are innately kinder, gentler, more compassionate than men per se. If we did, then the Margaret Thatchers and Condoleeza Rices of the world would soon prove us wrong. We do claim that patriarchy encourages and rewards behaviour that is brutal and stupid.

We need raucous, incautious feminist voices to puncture the pomposity, the arrogance, the hypocrisy of the warmongers, to point out that gorilla chest-beating does not constitute diplomacy, that having the world's largest collection of phallic projectile weapons does not constitute moral authority, that invasion and penetration are not acts of liberation.

And we need to remind the world that modern warfare never spares the civilian population. Women and children and men, too, who have no say in the policies of their rulers face death, maiming, wounding, and the loss of their homes, livelihoods, and loved ones in a war.

Patriarchy is the brother of racism, which sets one group of people above another, dehumanizing and devaluing the "other," who is seen as deserving of punishment and fair game for violence and annihilation.

The United States and its allies, who now pose as the liberators of women in the Muslim world, are the same powers which gave the Taliban and al-Qaida their start-up funds, supported them and put them in power, with no consideration for their impact on women. We protest the hypocrisy which trumpets the oppression of women in Arab societies while the oppression of women in the West is never raised as an issue. Nor is the racism, economic oppression and endemic violence of Western culture acknowledged when the West is hailed as the flag bearer of freedom.

And the vast global inequalities which benefit the West are also not acknowledged. Nor is the history, that Western exploitation of the East and South generated the wealth that allowed our greater "development" and "enlightenment."

Oppression of women is real, in Muslim societies and non-Muslim societies, around the globe. But women cannot be liberated by the tanks and bombs of those who are continuing centuries-old policies of exploitation, commandeering resources for themselves, and fomenting prejudice against the culture and heritage which is also a deep part of a woman's being.

Voices for peace must identify and address the root causes of war: "Peace cannot be separated from justice, including economic justice. And real security can only come when we weave a new global web of mutual aid and support."

We need actions, to make these larger connections, to assert that compassion is not weakness and brutality is not strength, to dramatize our support for nurturing and life-affirming values. And we need women and men both to raise their voices and roar like a mother tiger in defence of our interconnectedness with all of life, the true ground of peace. (China Daily News)

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