War on Terror

I think about power a lot. I connect power to pretty much everything I read and personally experience. Power may seem invisible but let me assure you it is not. It exists everywhere and we all contribute to how power is produced and exists within our societies. As a result of this, power and constructions of power are always at the forefront of my mind.  This is why, compared to all the articles we read last week, Marchand’s piece stayed with me the longest. Marchand really hit the nail on the head regarding how power and knowledge are globally produced and how these productions influence and construct women’s / gender development initiatives. This model has always been the case, but Marchand specifically focuses on these constructions post 9/11.

When Marchand started explaining how women’s rights and gender equality were used as tools to justify military action in Afghanistan I was immediately reminded of book I read last semester, Dangerous Brown Men by Gari Bhattacharyya. If you have yet to read it, I highly recommend that you do. It illuminates how women and bodies are positioned within conflict zones. It directly correlates to power, control and imperialism. Bhattacharyya does not disappoint.

In Dangerous Brown Men, Bhattacharyya further examines how the Bush Administration used women and the bodies of women as tools of propaganda to sell the War on Terror to the general public. Bhattacharyya provides great examples that highlight how the administration used specific cultural and religious representations to create an “us” (Americans) verses “them” (Muslims) feeling. Gender was at the forefront of these representations. 

While reading Marchand I thought more about how the War on Terror was socially constructed. Specifically, I thought about how the Afghanistan and Iraq military invasions were communicated to me as a teenager by both my parents and surrounding community.

I was in 9^th grade when the 9/11 attacks happened. I do, very vividly, remember Bush and other governmental figures making grand speeches that focused around globally expanding “women’s rights” in the months following the attacks. I remember watching numerous ‘talking heads” go on and on about women and the bodies of women in the Middle East. I remember hearing second wave liberal feminists talk about how policy changes within Afghanistan's and Iraq's government and expanding the marketplace would help spread women’s equality abroad. And lastly, I remember being a part of the problem. I listened to these newscasts and thought yes these women need saving. These poor Muslim women need our help and they need it fast. I viewed these veiled women as oppressed and thought that we (America) needed to liberate them from their oppressors.

Of course all of this was positioned against the “freedoms” western women had at this time.  This stance automatically assumed that women in Afghanistan and Iraq wanted to be like and be treated like American women. My personal feelings at the time were positioned against my beliefs that I had freedom and that I was equal to men (oh to be young and naive).  As we all now know, this type of thinking is not transnational feminism. This is the type of colonial feminism and thinking that Mohanty criticizes.

Both Marchand and Bhattacharyya do an excellent job addressing power and how the politics of gender are directly associated to global power constructs. It saddens and frustrates me to know that I have not always seen this construction.  It was not until college did I start to critically think about the world around me. And it was not until graduate school did I start to think in terms of how and where power is produced. How can this progression of thought speed up?