Kyriarchy is a Bitch, Part Two: This Time It's Personal

Despite its vast, unbounded openness sometimes the internet is a small town. When I wrote about freelance "race and gender" writer JoNubian's bizarre, anti-Arab racist twitter-rant yesterday I didn't think she'd see it--or if she did, certainly not right away. But I was wrong. Out of nowhere she tweeted me this afternoon.






In case you didn't follow that, here is a brief play-by-play:

* Calling out anti-Arab racism is degrading... to the anti-Arab racist.
* Calling out anti-Arab racism is the same thing as street harassment... if the person doing the calling out is an Arab.
* Pointing out racial intolerance is racist.
* Jo thinks this would have been better handled between us, despite the fact that when I tried to do that she blocked me, making such a discussion impossible.

... At least she admitted that she'd made an "unfair generalization." So that's something, right?

Thoughts?

With Friends Like These (or, Kyriarchy is a Bitch)

So this happened:

Um, what?

What the entire fuck? I log on to Twitter to see what's what and I'm confronted with this? From someone on my own timeline?

JoNubian is ready to drop some science on you Sand Monkey, so don't get it twisted! ... Sure, if you own a Bodega in Brooklyn you are probably South Asian but the fact that she can't tell the difference will not slow her down. (Just the opposite, apparently. Keep reading son)

Her "humanity." Hm. Right.

So, to clarify JoNubian is a graduate student at Texas Southern University who writes critically about human rights, race and gender on her own blog and at Race Talk. Seriously.

I can't remember why I started following her. We chatted every so often at first--mostly about a shared interest in Frantz Fanon-- and I promoted a few of her pieces on my blog. In return she put me in touch with the editor of Race Talk, although I was too busy to submit anything there. Up until this point Jo's tweets were pretentious in a faux-academic/ Afrocentric way-- a lot of florid Zora Neale Hurston, Fanon and Baldwin quotes-- and she describes herself in her profile as a "Dreamer. Lover. Provocateur." (I kid you not, see below) In other words, unoriginal but harmless: i.e. a grad student. So I was hoping I'd misunderstood. I questioned her about what she'd written to make sure I hadn't wandered into the middle of an inside joke or something.

Although I was hurt and put off I didn't automatically write her off as a racist. Twitter lends itself to a speak-before-you-think style of posting. I was hoping she'd see that she was acting out and modify her thought. If she'd responded with, "Know what? You are right, I wasn't thinking when I posted that. Peace." we would be good.

I figured her reaction would tell the tale and unfortunately I was right...

So... Jo was offended not because the attention was unasked for and unwanted, but because she thinks an Arab woman in the same circumstance wouldn't also be harassed? Which is why she is "especially" offended by Arab men who act inappropriately on the street? What? Even if she had some way to know what street harassment is or isn't suffered by Arab women (and let's be clear, she doesn't) what does that have to do with anything? I repeat: Jo specializes in writing about race and gender. At this point I thought, wow, that is ten different kinds of fucked up.

I also thought, "the hood"? Where are you tweeting from, 1995?

Jo, who has over two thousand followers on her feed, then turned to them for a bit of twitter-affirmation...

...And it worked! This thought-- not wrong in general but grotesquely inappropriate in this context-- was retweeted. But here's the thing, if the only way you can articulate your oppression is to oppress me, then we have a problem. Arab men are not "savages" we are just men. Some good, some not--just like everybody else.

I wasn't arguing that street harassment never happens, or that there isn't sometimes a racial component to it--or even that Jo herself hadn't been harassed. I was saying that stereotyping all of us for the actions of a few is complete bullshit. Especially slathered with a creamy frosting of orientalist stereotypes about violent, aggressive Arab men and passive, over-protected Arab women. Unlike Jo I keep my Twitter-feed small, mostly to avoid having to deal with crap like this.

Still, I thought--she got harassed on the street and she is upset. What she is saying is not okay but I don't want to downplay that.

To which she responded:

The reality is that Jo doesn't see anything "constantly" in New York, she lives in Houston. She is a tourist in my city and she is trying to school me on how it is in New York. In the, ah, "hood." Right. But even if street harassment by Arab men is a common experience for her making racial generalizations based on a small, unrepresentative group through her unacknowledged bias doesn't lead anywhere good. I am looking at you Dr. Kanazawa. At this point it seemed clear that her pride wouldn't let her admit she was wrong and in her defensiveness she was escalating her racism.

Given that she'd gone from pretending to know what is inside the heads of all "Arab Dudes" to pretending that she knows what's inside of mine I finally got angry and said so:

And to make sure it was clear I wasn't dismissing her justifiable anger at being harassed I wrote:

And then, one last ditch effort to make her understand her actions as racist by asking her to imagine herself n my place:

So she blocked me.

Right. Now let's review the World According To JoNubian, "a freelance writer whose writing focuses on human rights, especially issues of race and gender" :

* JoNubian is human but Arab men are savages.
* Arab women--those pampered creatures-- don't get harassed on the street, but if they did Arab men would behead the perpetrators.
* It isn't racist to say so because Jo has seen this "constantly" in New York (despite the fact that she does not live here).
*If you object to her racist anti-Arab generalizations, then you are lying.

I think expecting people of color in general and Black people in particular to be more racially enlightened because of their own struggles is a racist idea. It's a close cousin to the "Magical Negro" idea where it is the responsibility of Black people to uplift and educate everybody else, while simultaneously bearing up under the vicissitudes of racism with quiet, noble dignity. Yick.

But it is fair--and necessary-- to hold bloggers, journalists and academics who specialize in race to a higher standard, regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. Race "experts", even if they are entirely self-appointed, perhaps especially if they are self-appointed, must be more self-reflective than the average person. Which doesn't mean always saying (or thinking) the most virtuous, racially enlightened thing under all circumstances--that is unrealistic. But rather that if we fuck up we own it and move forward, trying harder. So this post isn't really about poor, shallow JoNubian. I'm not mad at her: She is a tourist, not only in New York City but in a world of ideas she does not fully understand. Academia is busting at the seams with people like her. She'll either grow up and out of this or she won't. Either way , she isn't my problem. But she does provide a perfect case study of kyriarchy, which the way that marginalized people oppress one another.

Our particular subject positions can create blind spots that seem natural to us, but are created--and can therefore be dismantled if we try. And if you are going to promote yourself as race "expert" you have to try. Period. In my experience anti-Arab racism (and its close cousin Islamophobia) are pervasive on the self-described left, even among people who specialize in writing about racism. There really isn't anywhere to go to escape it, even your own Twitter feed.

That is the reality of orientalism and Islamophobia.

Before signing off Twitter I scrolled down Jo's timeline and came across this gem, posted just before the anti-Arab stuff above. I add it by way of a post script:


Hm. Yeah.

Jeffrey Wiesenfeld Explains It All For You: Palestinians Aren't Human

This handsome devil is Jeffery Wiesnfeld.

Photo by Michael Appleton for The New York Times

The story so far: Jeffery Wiesnfeld, a City University of New York trustee and semi-professional Zionist, got his knickers twisted over the inclusion of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Tony Kushner among a stack of proposed recipients of honorary degrees to be rubber stamped by its Board. After an impassioned, if factually dubious, recounting of Kushner's criticisms of Israel, (among other things Kushner is the Co-Editor of Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict) the Board caved like a... I'd like to think of a clever metaphor here but currently there is nothing that caves as fast or completely as the CUNY Board of Directors.

What ensued has been a fairly predictable push and pull: Kushner responded. Former honorees Barbara Ehrenreich and Michael Cunningham have returned their honorary degrees to CUNY in solidarity with Kushner. And Wiesenfeld responded to Kushner's response. In the New York Times Jim Dwyer tried to get a defensive Wiesenfeld to clarify his position, which he did by asserting that the Palestinian people aren't human.

Dwyer writes,

I tried to ask a question about the damage done by a short, one-sided discussion of vigorously debated aspects of Middle East politics, like the survival of Israel and the rights of the Palestinians, and which side was more callous toward human life, and who was most protective of it.

But Mr. Wiesenfeld interrupted and said the question was offensive because “the comparison sets up a moral equivalence.”

Equivalence between what and what? “Between the Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “People who worship death for their children are not human.”

Did he mean the Palestinians were not human? “They have developed a culture which is unprecedented in human history,” he said.

To paraphrase one of my favorite bloggers, Shark-Fu of Angry Black Bitch:

Pause.

Blink.

Right. So how do you engage with someone who believes (and reports that belief to the New York Times) that people like you aren't human? Short answer: you don't.

Like their Evangelical Christian brethren (who also do their level best to bend US civil discourse to suit their political concerns) it is pointless to engage rationally with Zionists. So rather than answer the various–-frankly ridiculously inaccurate and/or sensationally distorted–-racist and Islamophobic claims of various post Kushner-kerfuffle commenters (or of Wiesenfeld himself) I’d like to make three points:

1) The particular context of this debate aside, it should be clear that this incident sets a dangerous precedent at CUNY. Our universities are settings for the rehearsal of such arguments–to the great benefit of their students. The threat implicit in Wiesenfeld’s objection is premised on the potential economic consequences for CUNY based on public opinion, which is not fixed. If I were a Zionist I’d be very wary of opening this particular door. The times they are a-changin'.

2) The cultural behaviors, religious beliefs and legal policies of the various nations of the Arab world (and/ or Muslims in general) are utterly beside the point: the actions of the State of Israel toward the Palestinians are still wrong. They are not *less* wrong (or even somehow “right”) because some of the Palestinians do things that you (or Wiesenfeld, or even I) don’t like. Period. Ethnic cleansing doesn’t magically become justifiable when you use it against people with whom you disagree. In other words we don’t say “Well, slavery was okay because we don’t like the way the Africans treated women or gays.” We say, “Slavery is wrong.” Period.

3) This action–described by Wiesenfeld as “boycotting the boycotters”–has achieved nothing except to betray Zionist fear over the growing international influence of the cultural boycott of Israel. Bad move. I have never been more convinced that the Boycott is working than I am at this moment.

If they cannot see that this is not a Zionist “moral” victory but rather a sloppy, public misstep then they are kidding themselves.

State of the Blog: Happy New Year? A Toe Story.

Yes We* Can!
(*we does not include Arabs, Muslims or Latin@s)

So thanks to about a million tweets and status updates I am now aware that it is 1/1/11, which is vaguely ominous and futuristic. Is this the year the intelligent machines take over? Will anyone notice when they do? Am I the only person in America who didn't get a Kindle for Christmas?

But despite the sci-fi subtext the year began gently-- at least for me. Dog slept late (the only trick I ever taught him he managed to learn) and peed right away in the snow. I ate a delicious breakfast to the sounds of the Honeymooners marathon and then, lost in thought about the upcoming year I smashed--and possibly broke, it isn't yet clear--my little toe. I jumped up and down like a Looney-Tunes character with a giant pulsing toe. A Looney-Tunes character that was yelling "FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" (The dog, now sound asleep on my bed did not stir. Not exactly Lassie, him.) Then I sat down hard on a vintage chair, snapped one of the legs and wound up on the floor. As I sit here staring at my broken chair with a bag of organic frozen blueberries I bought five months ago as part of an antioxidant experiment slowly defrosting around my swollen toe I am struck by how quickly things can change.

I have a picture of myself from the exact moment Barack Obama won the 2008 election to become the 44th President of the United States. In it I am dumbstruck with happiness and relief. The long national nightmare of the Bush Administration was over because the American people have decided we have had enough, I thought. Obama's race was the lead story for most people, for obvious reasons. Although for me it was always secondary--since the few Arab-American politicians are extremely conservative (Darrel Issa, Jeanine Pirro) it never occurs to me to vote along ethnic lines. If an old money white guy had the right politics I wouldn't hesitate to support him over an Arab guy with the wrong ones, full stop. But the symbolic significance of Obama's ascension to the Presidency cannot be denied and I thought it represented not only a shift in the racial landscape of the US but a rejection of Bush-era conservatism.

Turns out, not so much. At least not for people like me.

It's hard to remember now given the rancorous obstruction and race-baiting of the past year and a half but there was a golden moment at the start of the Obama Presidency when his detractors weren't sure yet how to criticize him (and even many of his future enemies were still congratulating themselves for the social progress associated with his win). After dipping so low in the eyes of the world Obama's entry into our highest office seemed to signal a necessary sea- change and even conservatives seemed relieved to finally have something to celebrate.

Every American President enjoys a honeymoon period--Bush did--and how they choose to spend this political capital is instructive. Clinton, who also rode a wave of dissatisfaction with conservatism into office nearly derailed his young Presidency by trying to reform health care in 1993. (And in the process earned his wife, who'd lead the aborted effort, a reputation as an over reaching political opportunist that clings to her still). But unlike so many others I was unable to enjoy the Obama honeymoon because despite the fact that he cuts an inspiring figure I wanted to see what he was actually going to do. On the second or third day of his Presidency Obama affirmed his commitment to closing Guantanamo and I was relieved. I shouldn't have been. Not only did he not close the prison and interrogation camp at Guantanamo by his own deadline he has now--via US Press Secretary Robert Gibbs--announced that it won't close at all. At least, not anytime soon. Near the one year anniversary of the Administration's failed closure timetable--nestled conveniently in the midst of the holiday news-cycle--Gibbs said, "It's certainly not going to close in the next month [...] I think part of this depends on the Republicans' willingness to work with the administration on this.''

So this he is willing to blame the Republicans for?

Like the Obama Administration, Guantanamo is both a symbol and a functional system. It represents the corruption of US American justice and our willingness to torture and degrade our foreign "Others." (It bears remembering that the site was used to "detain" Haitians fleeing Aristide to prevent them from entering the United States as refugees under Clinton.) Functionally Guantanamo is a lawless space where the US does its dirty work and its closure would symbolize a turn of the page away from the worst excesses of the previous administration. But that did not happen so instead it signals that despite Obama's campaign promises to the contrary, the radical expansion of Executive powers engineered by Bush Administration are the new Normal for the United States. Despite a much-publicized troop withdrawal the US military presence in Iraq persists and the war in Afghanistan continues apace. So despite his campaign rhetoric Obama actually expanded US Military presence in the so-called "Muslim World." Of course he also never misses an opportunity to be made a fool of by Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, a country that would not exist without the billions of dollars we pump into it. And the so-called "peace-process" has never seemed more like a puppet show than it does under the rubric of his Presidency. It would not be much of a stretch to see Obama's repeated public humiliations at Netanyahu's hands as a rehearsal for his many embarrassing concessions to Republicans at home. And the overall message derived from these events is clear: President Obama does not care about Arabs and Muslims at home or abroad. Of course a similar list could be made by Latin@s with similarly disappointing results. The discourse linking "homeland security" with "illegal immigration" puts Arabs, Muslims and Latin@s in the same boat (pun intended) with this Administration. Even though Conservatives are the ones who have described us (All of us) as bacteria infecting the host body of the West the lack of challenge to that view put forth by the Obama Administration allows it to stand--and worse, to become an increasingly mainstream position. In sum, under President Obama Arabs, Muslims (and Latin@s) are no better off than we were under George W. Bush.

Under Bush I was angry. But under Obama I feel hopeless, the exact opposite of his promise. And as he gears up for re-election the apologists of the mainstream Left are already beginning to poo-poo the concerns of people like me and marginalize us as too radical. But is it too radical to ask that you be included among the list of concerns for your own President? To not have him sell you out to conservatives and foreign governments to earn points with the public by playing to their racism, ethnocentrism and Islamophobia?

Like my poor toe, I have been numb. But sooner or later you have to peel off the wet bag of soggy blueberries and assess the damage. Like my toe, I hope America is only bruised and not broken.

But it is too early to tell.

A rapist who dodged jail, or a Palestinian man unjustly accused?: A Discussion, Part Two

Sigh.

A little background in case you haven't been following along: My post about the case of Sabbar Kashur, the Palestinian Israeli man charged with "rape by deception" of an Israeli Jewish woman was inspired by a post on the blog/online magazine +972 (subtitled "Independent commentary from Israel and the Palestinian Territories") written by Lisa Goldman. As I wrote in Part One Goldman, a Canadian-Israeli based in Jaffa, responded to a cover story about the case by Lital Grossman that ran in the Tel Aviv weekly magazine Ha’Ir (The City), in which she questioned the role of anti-Arab racism in Kashur's sentencing. Goldman suggested that since the lesser change of "rape by deception" was a plea-bargain Kashur actually benefited from being Palestinian by using his ethnicity to avoid jail time. The subtext, that excessive Israeli compassion for Palestinians blinds them to their criminality, is a familiar--if mournful-- refrain among "Liberal Zionists", and it was the red flag that drew my attention in the first place.

Before writing about it here at the POMEGRANATE I responded to Goldman on the comment thread following her post at +972. When our interaction went past a few posts I tried to opt out--in my experience the internet often inspires an obsessive tit-for-tat that kills potentially productive discussions. So, rather than dominate her comment thread I wrote my own post and told Goldman she was welcome to continue our interaction here. Unsurprisingly she did not take me up on my offer but I want to reproduce our final exchange anyway as a folow up because it was fruitful in teasing out the multiple threads--gender, race, Orientalism/Islamophobia (which she dismissed as "hackneyed terms" Ha.), sexism , nationalism etc.--that are tangled together in this case. Anyone interested in reading our exchange in its original context should refer to the comment thread following Goldman's post.

ME: Lisa, I don’t want to bicker with you and clog up your comment thread. But: of course I am not suggesting that it is impossible for Kashur to be guilty because he is Palestinian– I am arguing only that the case for rape against him could not be proved. However, once B’s testimony was made widely available Grossman and you (and others around the net) decided that it was credible, despite her universally understood mental instability, which is a bit unnerving. You wrote , “B’s story sounds believable”… Why? And what makes you conclude that Kashur may be guilty of rape after all because he served time on a lesser charge? As I have said, that makes no sense to me. In fact, the only way I can think of to justify your conclusions in the above post is anti-Arab racism.

[...] If you feel I have misrepresented your argument please let me know and I’ll happily note that. In your last response you made a distinction between Grossman’s take on the case and your own that is not clear to me from the original post. I do not want to attribute opinions to you that are better described as Grossman’s, even if I ultimately disagree with the rest of what you have written. I appreciate that you have responded to me and I’ll publish any comment you make over at VS the POMEGRANATE. Does that seem fair?

LISA GOLDMAN: [Responding first to another commenter who'd critiqued my earlier post.] Maayan, you and Joseph are exactly the same types. If you had been born a Palestinian-American, you would have chosen his argument. Neither one of you is capable of seeing beyond your biases to examine a case based on facts. You are both blinded by your agendas and your prejudices.

LISA GOLDMAN: Joseph, if Sabur Kashur had been a Jewish Israeli man, the charges against him would have been dismissed.

However, the charges would have been dismissed not because he was innocent, but because he could not have been charged with rape by deception.

The defense attorney wanted to question the plaintiff about 14 previous incidents of rape and incest. Neither her attorney nor the judge thought she capable of maintaining her composure while she was questioned about previous rapes. At that point, seeing that he was about to lose his conviction, the prosecutor charged Kashur with rape by deception. And even here the ‘deception’ was not only the odious charge that Kashur presented himself as a Jew, but that he presented himself as a *bachelor* Jew, when he was in fact a *married* Palestinian.

My comparison between the judge’s wording of the plea bargain and EM Forster is not sarcastic, by the way; it is literal. The transcripts show that the judge would have convicted on the evidence, but could not legally override the defense’s request to question the plaintiff about her past. But his dissatisfaction with the plea bargain does not make his racist, colonialist wording acceptable.

The physical evidence against Kashur was solid. Police found the victim battered, bleeding and naked in a stairwell. She was taken to a hospital, examined and given a rape kit. Based on that evidence and her statement to the police, charges were brought against Kashur. Based on the transcripts of the trial, her testimony sounds very credible. If the defense attorney had not insisted on his right to question the plaintiff about her past, Kashur would most probably have been convicted on the original charges.

ME: Lisa, Thank for your last response to me (Sunday , December 26, 4:09)– In it, you were much more clear than in your original post, which conflated Grossman’s conclusions with your own. As promised I will integrate it into my own post.

However, based on your response it seems you missed an opportunity with your original post. The fact that the Defense has the right to question an accuser about her past in a rape trial is the point here, *not* the ethnicity of the alleged perpetrator. Under these terms an Israeli Jewish man would have gotten off completely so Kashur’s ethnicity actually worked against him here, which is the exact opposite of what Grossman (and you) suggest. But if you had focused on the fundamental sexism of Israeli rape law and its subsequent role in earning Kashur a reduced sentence you might have really had something here. I cannot help but wonder why you centered your post around Kashur then? Do you blame me for wondering about your motives when, given the opportunity to critique a sexist Israeli law you instead blamed the Palestinian guy? Especially given that Kashur’s conviction was predicated on his ethnicity, since a Jewish Israeli man committing the same crime would have gone free in the same circumstances?

I appreciate your devotion to “facts”, even if you framed your concern for the truth as a dig at me. If your original post about Kashur had been that straightforward and factual I wouldn’t have commented in the first place. But it wasn’t. And that you became so extraordinarily defensive when I pointed out the blind spots and inconsistencies in your post (some of which you still have not addressed) is telling. You have entreated me to “research” your past positions as a way to contextualize this post but if you had written it in such a way that was consistent with the kind of analysis you are clearly capable of, I wouldn’t have to.

Look, you live in a racist society. As an American, so do I. Any analysis of a case involving members of a privileged majority and an oppressed minority that does not engage with that simple fact is flawed at the root, even if it pretends toward “objectivity.” That has been my only point here.

Couple things tough:

1) I am not a “type” I am a man–singular. Don’t you think it is bad form to erase my humanity so summarily? Please note that at no point did I do this to you.
2) I am not Palestinian or Palestinian-American. Or Muslim, if you are wondering.
3) I do not have an “agenda” here beyond holding you accountable for being clear about what you are trying to say.
4) I don’t hate anybody. I’m just not an idiot–when liberals from racist societies (however unintentionally) reproduce racist ideologies in their work I notice. Sometimes if it is important enough I am compelled to comment. That’s all.

A rapist who dodged jail, or a Palestinian man unjustly accused?: A Discussion

Sabbar Kashur, on the cover of Ha’Ir (The City) magazine

On Christmas Eve in among the silly holiday tweets on my feed was an RT from Slate's @amandamarcotte that pointed to a blogpost from Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman about Sabbar Kashur, a Palestinian Muslim Israeli man accused of raping a Jewish Israeli woman. Marcotte urged those of us who were "hand-wringing" over the treatment of the Palestinian Kashur by the Israeli court to "go read this", implying that there was new evidence of Kashur's guilt. On December 3rd Ha’Ir (The City), a weekly magazine distributed only in Tel Aviv, published a cover story by Lital Grossman that openly questioned the allegations of anti-Arab racism in light of the details of Kashur's sentence, which was revealed to have been a plea bargain. Grossman's article inspired Goldman's blogpost (and Marcotte's tweet) and all three summarily dismiss the effects of anti-Arab racism on Kashur's case on feminist grounds.

After two years under house arrest Kashur was finally charged earlier this year with "rape by deception", based on the accusation that he had mis-represented himself to his accuser--called "B" by the court to protect her identity--as a single Jewish Israeli rather than the married Palestinian Israeli Muslim he is. The court's decision was openly questioned and sparked debate about the secondary role of Palestinians with Israeli society and their subsequent vulnerability to the law. In response to these criticisms the judge revealed that Kashur's sentence of rape by deception was a plea bargain. The lesser charge, which led to an 18 month sentence for Kashur, was proposed by the prosecution because the more serious rape charge could not be proved. In her unsealed testimony B affirmed,

“He took off my pants and underwear [...] and all of this was done with force, I didn’t agree to anything… I was left in just my shirt. Then he took off his clothes… then he put saliva on his penis and then, it was like full penetration, like, it wasn’t with consent as he claims. He laid me on the floor… and asked to kiss my chest too and then like when I asked him to stop and tried to push him away, he started pressuring me with his arms forcefully on me… when I tried to push him with my hand in his stomach, this happened in a more advanced stage, when he was already inside of me, then he said that if I stay silent and I don’t resist, then it would like end faster and it wouldn’t be, like, he wouldn’t use force. I still resisted him and it was forced.”

The blogger Goldman concludes that B’s story "sounds believable"... although she does not explain why she thinks so. She writes, "Based on her testimony it appears that she was not a racist but rather a terribly vulnerable, emotionally damaged woman who was desperate for affection." So for Goldman B's emotional vulnerability precludes the possibility of her racism, a false binary that disregards the fact that, however desperate her circumstances, B is a member of a privileged ethnic group within Israel and Kashur isn't.

According to Goldman,

“B,” was an emotionally traumatized woman in her 20s who had been raped by her father from the age of six. On the day she met Kashur, she was living in a women’s shelter. Before that, she had worked briefly as a prostitute and spent some time living on the streets. Kashur lured her into the building on Hillel Street with the claim that he worked there and wanted to show her his office; he then assaulted her and raped her, leaving her naked and bleeding – which is how the police discovered her. B. was later hospitalized in a psychiatric institution, where the police questioned her about the rape, which led them to Kashur. During the trial, after it became apparent that B’s past, combined with her emotional state, made her a vulnerable witness, the prosecution came up with a plea bargain of rape by deception.

Goldman sums up her evaluation of Kashur's case, writing, "Kashur was not unjustly punished because he was an Arab, but the opposite: [...] he managed to avoid the punishment he deserved because his ethnicity made it possible to plead guilty to the lesser charge of rape by deception, thus avoiding jail time." This gymnastic logic employs lack of evidence for the greater charge, which would normally be construed as lack of guilt (if not proof of innocence) as the opposite. In other words, for Goldman the fact that the prosecution could not make a case against Kashur for rape is "proof" of his guilt.

Goldman writes,

The judges’ wording of the verdict seemed to be inspired by E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, or an Oriental version of To Kill a Mockingbird, with Kashur as Tom Robinson, the black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama. “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated,” wrote the judges. Judge Tsvi Segal added, “The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls .”

The angle of Goldman's post (and Grossman’s story), that being Palestinian is in any way advantageous in Israel is utterly fantastic… But the notion that minority populations derive benefit from their abject status is a pretty standard charge. She makes light of the obvious comparisons to Forster and Lee’s stories even as she recounts the Israeli court’s description of Kashur as a “sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminal” who preys on “innocent (Jewish, female) victims”, which is pretty much the basic narrative of all the “Darkie Wants Our Women” stories ever written. Further, his accuser's lack of mental coherence, which substantiates her accusations for Grossman, Goldman and Marcotte could also easily disqualify them... And no, it is not "victim blaming" to point that out, especially since all parties involved agree that B is mentally unblanced. Neither is it "rape apology", given the long history of male racial and ethnic "others" getting tortured, killed and/or imprisoned based on the say-so of white women in racist societies. Or white men acting of their behalf, regardless of their wishes. The story of Emmet Till, a black fourteen year old boy who was literally beaten to a pulp because he was alleged to have flirted with a white girl in 1955 Mississippi is emblematic of the special vulnerability of men of color to charges of sexual violence.

Emmett Till, before and after reportedly flirting with a white woman

I would never suggest something as stupid and vile as the idea that men of color are never guilty of sexual violence or that racism (Orientalism, Islamophobia, etc.) is ever an excuse for rape. But racism inevitably shapes the dynamic when the alleged victims are members of a privileged majority, the accused attackers are minorities, and the society in which the charge is made is based on a fundamentally racist distinction between them. A blanket dismissal of such entrenched hierarchies grants free access to a wealth of racist repertoires about "dark"men under the cover of liberal discourses like feminism. If we can agree that allegations of rape should be taken seriously, can we not also agree that institutionalized racism should not be waved away because it complicates the frame in which they are made? This dynamic is especially stark in a country like Israel, whose ethno-nationalist illusions are formalized as law, but it is no less a factor in the United States, with its melting-pot pretensions. It seems clear though, based on Gloria Steinem's remarks during the last election that there is a line of feminist thinking--often espoused by white, middle class, westerners-- which argues the reverse: that gender trumps all other considerations, a proscription that has potentially deadly consequences for men of color.

Goldman writes,

There are few unassailable facts or bottom lines here. A woman who may or may not have been raped is in a psychiatric hospital, traumatized and unable to communicate coherently. Perhaps a rapist who should have have been jailed is now a free man, wandering around Jerusalem shopping malls with his kids while the woman he raped is institutionalized, physically and emotionally traumatized. Or perhaps an innocent man was forced to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, in order to avoid being sentenced to jail by judges who were biased against Arabs. None of these issues were raised in the original reporting of the affair. None of the reporters covering the story when it first broke, in July, mentioned having applied to the courts to obtain the unsealed testimony. The polarized, angry atmosphere in contemporary Israel seems to make rational, detached analysis nearly impossible. This is a very troubling state of affairs. It is also quite dangerous.

There is no way for anyone to know for certain what went on between B and Kashur, which is why in democracies we depend on the law to guide us to resolution. If proved guilty of B’s rape there is no question that Kashur should be punished, but he wasn’t and he was punished anyway. Goldman's post (and Grossman’s story), which suggest that Kashur’s Palestinian identity earned him a legal advantage purposefully obscures two key points: 1) The court made his ethnicity an issue and the justification for his charge and 2) His ethnicity is only important in the first place because Palestinian Israelis are not equal citizens with their Jewish neighbors. No matter how “macho” Israeli society is--another argument made by Goldman to explain Kashur's reduced sentence-- the notion that Jewish Israeli men feel solidarity or even empathy (!) with a Palestinian man accused of raping a Jewish Israeli woman is too ridiculous to contemplate. Israeli Apartheid precludes the possibility of such collusion.

Goldman is correct when she writes that the particular arrangement of Israeli society make "rational, detached analysis nearly impossible" but she seems to exempt herself from this dynamic. However in raising concerns about Kashur's case without acknowledging the role of institutionalized racism in Israel she perpetuates its most pernicious memes about Arab criminality (which occurs only in a vacuum and never as a response to living within a racist system). Only someone who benefits from it could conclude that a Palestinian accused of a crime that could not be proved has somehow beaten the system by serving eighteen months in an Israeli jail. Goldman is also correct when she describes the situation around Kashur's case as "dangerous."

What is less clear in her analysis is, dangerous for whom?

UPDATE:

Lisa Goldman responded to my critique of her post about Kashur on her blog +972. Because this post is already long I have reproduced the key section of our exchange in Part Two.

Suspicious Packages: Liberals, Libertarians and the TSA -or- "Don't Touch My Junk"

Friday Charles Krauthammer wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "Don't Touch My Junk."

Um, okay.

Krauthammer was responding to the recent uproar over the new, aggressive Transportation Security Administration procedures, which include a full-body scan that renders an image of the traveler's naked body or, alternately, a thorough full-body pat down. Very thorough. As in a stranger's hands on your genitals-and-not-in-a-good-way thorough. Perhaps predictably people have begun to freak out over this. Including John Tyner, a San Diego man who refused the scan or the pat down announcing that he would call the police if they "touched [his] junk." All of which he captured on his iphone and posted to You Tube. Krauthammer writes,

...everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone... But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

This is a dozen kinds of racist and wrong, but entirely within Krauthammer's character and the spirit of his appalling discourse. So, in a sad way, unsurprising. Nevertheless, The American Prospect's Adam Serwer responded to Krauthammer in his own Washington Post op ed titled "Touch His Junk" writing,

Racial profiling is no more statistically accurate than those random searches conservatives always complain about. Thousands of Muslims travel on airplanes every day, and an infinitesimal number actually turn out to be dangerous. But the argument here is pretty clear -- the problem isn't that the violation of privacy isn't worth an unknown gain in security. It's that the TSA should be frisking "Nigerian nutjobs" instead of grandma. Conservatives like Krauthammer aren't angry that the TSA is infringing on individual liberty, just that it's infringing on their individual liberty.

Of course Serwer is right, but something about his response bothered me and I couldn't quite articulate it until I read Avon Snarksdale's supplement to his argument, titled "This Type of Ish Happens Every Day", at Post Bourgie (and subsequently quoted at length by Serwer at The American Prospect). Snarksdale writes,

It should be pointed out that for plenty of people of color in the nation’s inner cities, these kind of uncomfortable, vaguely legal searches — with the stated intent of finding people carrying guns and drugs — are essentially de rigueur... In one four-block section of Brownsville, Brooklyn, the NYPD made 52,000 stops over a four-year period, which averaged out to about one stop for every resident in the area each year. And it’s no more efficient than the profiling Adam decries: for all that scrutiny and all those stops over four years, the police in Brownsville recovered just 25 guns, and less than 1 percent of all those people who were stopped — and questioned and patted down and humiliated as they went about their lives — were ever arrested. (All of the personal info taken during the stops, however, was entered into a citywide database.)

I cosign the spirit of Snarksdale's critique and I completely agree with his analysis of street stops. But his essay (and Serwer’s before it) stops well short of addressing a) the unprecedented legal shift away from civil rights initiated by the Bush Administration and perpetuated under Obama and b) that Arabs and Muslims–regardless of their race–are the disproportionate target of this new legislation. In other words, it is now perfectly legal in the United States for me to be removed from my apartment for writing this blog post and imprisoned indefinitely with no legal right to counsel. And further, for me to be tortured physically, psychologically and sexually at the discretion of my captors, who would suffer no consequences for those acts even if they came to light. That is NOT an “every day” scenario. That is a new, radical abrogation of civil rights and Arabs and Muslims are its unambiguous focus.

Charles Krauthammer is arguing against the TSA’s invasive security theatre in favor of profiling Arabs and Muslims, an increasingly mainstream position. That the main refutation of this argument at Post Bourgie and at The American Prospect is “but it doesn’t work” does not fill me with confidence. So… what if it worked? Would it be okay then? Every couple of years or so when some conservative nutbag advocates fencing off ghettos or forcing women who receive welfare benefits to submit to state-enforced birth control we don’t click our tongues and say “but it wouldn’t work.” We say, “Fuck you for suggesting that we legally dismantle civil rights for your racist political agenda.” So would it kill these guys to take such an unambiguous, ethical stand against targeting Arabs and Muslims? The fact that in the space of two short posts we got from Charles Krauthammer calling for the profiling of Arabs and Muslims in a mainstream newspaper to a complete reframing of his arguments in terms of a Black-White racial dynamic profoundly disturbs me. How is it that Serwer and Snarksdale--putative Liberals-- managed to do what Krauthammer couldn't and made Arabs and Muslims disappear completely?

Snarksdale is quite right that the law is selectively applied to Black people–and that this is exponentially worse for poor Black people. And he is completely right that institutional racism goes down to the bone in US society. And a critique of the responses of old white guys like the pilot who was so shaken by his groping pat down that he refused to fly afterward using a racial lens is valuable and completely valid… But the selective application of civil rights (as in “random” police stops in Brownsville) is *not* the same as legally removing them entirely.

Which is a thing that has happened. Bush did that and Obama has done nothing to undo it.

So let’s be clear. Enduring a humiliating pat down is not the same thing as getting sodomized by a fluorescent light tube (which is another thing that has happened to Arabs and Muslims imprisoned in the “war on terror”). Do violations like that also happen to Black men in police custody? We know that they do. But we also know that when they happen they are completely illegal. Not so for Arabs and Muslims at Bagram, Gitmo, or any of the numerous Black Sites around the globe. When US soldiers screamed at the Arabs and Muslims who were collected almost entirely at random for imprisonment and torture at Guantanamo Bay “You are property of the US Military!” as they sodomized them, it was completely legal. That is a paradigm shift. Period.

Now is it a slippery slope from one to the other? You bet. But that isn’t really what Snarksdale is arguing (If he were believe me, I’d be thrilled) Instead he is saying it “happens every day” to Black folks and so, in some sense, it is not a big deal that it is happening to folks like me. This is a grotesque sentiment that I have unfortunately heard over and over from Black Liberals. (Who have also made the same point about Latinos in the ongoing immigration debate, to similar effect.) But here’s the thing guys: Our experiences are different, mine are not a weak metaphor for yours.

Don't get me wrong, I love Post Bourgie. That I felt free to post a frank response to Snarksdale's essay is a testament to my respect for the intelligence of that community. So if I sound angry it’s only because I AM angry. Posts like Snarksdale's that argue But This Has Always Happened To Black People Anyway are fundamentally dishonest if they do not acknowledge the material circumstances of life for Arabs and Muslims under the USA Patriot Act. There is a fantastic, intersectional analysis of US racism and orientalism/Islamophobia waiting to be written. But that analysis cannot be made if we begin from assumptions like those upon which his essay is based.

Between you, me and the CIA operatives monitoring my internet activity, a better analogy than institutional racism to the USA Patriot Act and its ultimate effects would be Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933, which legally expanded the reach and powers of the government to selectively apply constitutional rights and protections… And we all (I hope) know how that ended up. Still, if Liberal bloggers wrote about Arabs and Muslims by relating our situation to what Black folks endure under institutionalized racism I think that would be great. But if they only want to use us to make a point about their experiences– delegitimizing ours in the process–then I wish they'd do us a favor and please don’t.

Dealing with the Krauthammers of the world, who are not in short supply, is exhausting enough. But, as an Arab, the lack of will to speak out for me among the US Left is at least as frightening as the open hatred among the Right. As far as flying is concerned I have already made the decision to go for the pat down over the scan. They want to feel for a suspicious package? Okay then. We'll see who blinks first.

Why You Should Care About Christine O'Donnell's One-Night-Stand (And Why Caring Does NOT Make You A Misogynist)

Christine O'Donnell, contemplating the state of her Ladybug

Last Thursday Gawker posted a story titled "I Had a One-Night-Stand With Christine O'Donnell" written by an anonymous Philadelphia man who recounted a 3 year-old fumbling encounter with recent Tea Party candidate for Delaware Senate--and staunch abstinence advocate--Christine O'Donnell. According to "Anonymous" (who has since been identified as Dustin Dominiak) O'Donnell showed up at his door three Halloweens ago with a friend in tow asking to borrow his bathroom to change into her costume. Dominiak barely knew O'Donnell (he was renting an apartment from her aunt) but went along as she, now dressed as a ladybug, persuaded him to accompany her to a bar on Philadelphia's South Street.

Both drank heavily and later that evening/early that morning found themselves naked in his bed, fooling around. According to Dominiak, O'Donnell seemed sexually unskilled, announced her intention to remain a virgin and sported an all-natural pubic bush, all turn-offs for him. Dominiak, who had to get up early for work cut his losses, rolled over and went to sleep. Despite the awkwardness of their encounter O'Donnell contacted Dominiak and suggested that they get together again. He writes, "I didn't see any reason to try and see her again. But two or three days later, she emailed me to ask me if I wanted to hang out again. I made an excuse. But she didn't take a hint and emailed or called a few more times over the next couple of weeks before I was forced to make it clear to her that I wasn't interested."

So, to review:

Two adults have a consensual sexual encounter that leaves one of them unsatisfied and with no desire to see the other again. Happens every day. If you adjusted for the details what sexually active adult with a history of more than one partner hasn't been on one side of this equation or the other? Or, if we are really being honest... both? Speaking of details, most people are focusing on O'Donnell's alleged all-natural pubic hair situation, but for my dollars the image of Dominiak rousting her in the morning so he can get to work, is the gold here. And not only because it involves a still-drunk, panty-free Christine O'Donnell but because the embarrassing banality of this scenario makes it so ordinary. And if this were a story about any two people trying to connect and failing that would be the end of it.

... But the dump-ee in question here is Christine O'Donnell, a politician whose positions (sorry) are largely derived from an extreme interpretation of Christian doctrine that precludes pre-marital sex, a proscription she famously extended to include even masturbation. Under most circumstances I am completely disinterested in the sex lives of famous people (or, anybody really who I am not having sex with) but Christine O'Donnell long ago blurred the lines between her public and private life by continuously using herself as an example in her activism. O'Donnell, a Catholic convert to evangelical Christianity, has said that looking at pornography is tantamount to adultery, that homosexuality is an identity disorder and has argued for the adoption of a "higher standard than abstinence" as an expression of personal righteousness. As a politician O'Donnell's take on sex and sexuality informs her public stance on multiple issues: she is pro-abstinence education, virulently anti-gay, and opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest. So when a person with such a rigid public stance on sexuality is revealed betraying her stated values in private, it is news. There have been many recent revelations of such hypocrisy from conservative politicians in recent years and this is merely the latest example, right?

Apparently not. The negative response to the Gawker article has been overwhelming, even among people who are deeply opposed to O'Donnell's political agenda. The National Organization of Women (NOW) rushed to defend O'Donnell Thursday when spokesman Terry O’Neill issued a statement describing the Gawker article as a "sexist, misogynist attack." O'Neill clarified, "NOW/PAC has proudly endorsed women's rights champion Chris Coons, O'Donnell's opponent in the Delaware Senate race, and finds O'Donnell's political positions dangerous for women. That does not mean it's acceptable to use slut-shaming against her, or any woman." In the New York Times, David Carr characterized the Gawker article as a "drive-by" that feeds O'Donnell into "the digital wood chipper" in an essay pointedly titled "By Any Means Necessary." The reaction online has been even more knee-jerk as Slate's Jack Shafer describes Gawker's O'Donnell post as a "tawdry... sleazy...nonstory" and Jessica Coen at Gawker's sister-site Jezebel dismisses the entire thing to an anti-female witch hunt. She writes,

If the politician in question were a man, this wouldn't be a story — an anonymous woman probably wouldn't even think to contact a gossip site with her story about how she once played spin-the-bottle with Mr. Candidate. Because who hasn't made out with someone? (With apologies to you, over there, looking sheepish in the corner.) Anyhow, big whoop. Wait — let me revise that a bit: perhaps a lady from Mr. Candidate's innocent past would step forward with such a small faux-scandalous tale, and we'd briefly pay attention to it — but only if Mr. Candidate were viewed as patently ridiculous as is O'Donnell. Really, the dude has got to be captivatingly idiotic in order for this kind of story to be of even the most remote interest. And that brings us back to the Would Never Happen column, because even the most absurd male candidates aren't considered half as loony as their female equivalents are.

Um, what? So, a scandal like this would never happen to a man... Except that it would, but only if he were as nuts as O'Donnell, and that wouldn't happen because men are never considered as nuts as women. And then everyone would forget about it right away anyway so it would be like it never happened. Besides, a woman would never publicly reveal embarrassing details of a sexual encounter with a famous man... because that is a thing that never, ever happens, right? Yeah, I am going to have to call bullshit on the pearl-clutch.

I am also going to save this paragraph forever so that when people ask me what I mean by "straw man argument" I can have one at my fingertips. But aside from being based on--literally--nothing, Cohen's argument relies on a purposeful revision of very recent political history: sadly, there is no shortage of male conservatives who are every inch as batshit crazy as O'Donnell. Am I expected to believe that if, say, Glenn Beck were caught in a similar situation it wouldn't become a giant story? (I know Beck isn't technically a politician, but with the rise of Tea Party politics the line between "pundit" and "politician" has been completely blurred, a la Sarah Palin.) At any rate, we don't need to speculate. There are many, many examples of male public figures--conservative and otherwise-- whose private lives did not match their stated public values and were embarrassed by the revelation of their various indiscretions. Like, oh... Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggert, Mark Sandford, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, Jim Bakker, Randal David Ankeny, Bob Barr, Parker Bena, Ken Calvert, Mark Foley, Phillip Giordano, Matthew Glavin, Bob Packwood, Ed Schrock, Jim West, Michael Duvall, Mark Souder, Glenn Richardson, Daniel Stout, Roy Ashburn, Jim McGreevey, Gary Condit, David Vitter, George Rekers, Eliot Spitzer, John Ensign, Paul Stanley, Bob Bauman, David Dreier, Jim Kolbe, Jim McCrery, Coy C. Privette, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Henry Hyde, Don Sherwood, Tim Mahoney, Vito Fosella, John Ensign, Richard Curtis... By any realistic standard then Christine O'Donnell is not being singled out and treated differently because she is a woman. Rather, she is being treated in exactly the same way as any man in her position would, and the same as many already have, which is pretty much the functional opposite of sexism.

And the charges of misogyny (!) leveled at Dominiak for blowing the whistle on O'Donnell by talking about their night together are completely ludicrous. Exactly how is he expressing any hatred for women? By being honest about not being sexually attracted Christine O'Donnell because of her pubic hair? You may find that a shallow reason to become turned off to someone sexually... but that isn't really yours to judge, now is it? A broad coalition of commenters at Jezebel don't get a vote in who Dustin Dominiak does or doesn't have sex with and why. Here's the thing: Adults get to have sex with whoever they want, as long as their partners are willing and of age, even if their choice of partners and rationale for being sexual with them is very different from yours. So if there's slut-shaming going on here it is being aimed at Dominiak, whose sexual behavior is being judged by other people's standards and found wanting. In reality, his behavior toward O'Donnell was pretty honest and straightforward. He hardly cast himself as a sexual James Bond in their story. They both come off like awkward , sexually unsophisticated young people... except that Dominiak was 25 and O'Donnell was almost 40 at the time of their encounter. What emerges from this story is the image of a woman sexually immature for her years, whose repressed attitudes led her to make reckless personal choices : a similar narrative to a dozen other conservatives who have publicly railed against sex in its various forms only to collapse under the weight of taboo temptations in private.

The most bothersome element of this entire affair is the patronizing assumption that Christine O'Donnell somehow requires protecting. She is a grown woman who entered into a consensual sexual encounter that ended badly. It's only newsworthy because of the extremity of her anti-sex positions. And downplaying the explicit danger posed by those positions in favor of a vision of Christine O'Donnell as some sort of victim is utter bullshit. Her famous pronouncement decrying masturbation is a punchline in 2010... but when it was made in the early 90s it was a direct refutation of Joycelyn Elders' assertion that masturbation might be encouraged as part of safer sex education, a position that cost her the job of Surgeon General of the United States. In those deadly, pre-drug cocktail days safer sex education was a life or death proposition for an entire generation and Christine O'Donnell actively worked against it, telling young people , "Condoms will not protect you from AIDS." So lets not get it twisted, Christine O'Donnell's extreme anti-sex positions are NOT a joke. Or worse, the harmless, kooky ramblings of a misguided girl who needs "our" protection. They are the hateful pronouncements of a death-merchant, whose Christo-Nationalist world-view makes her very fucking dangerous indeed.

... And let's be real, would it even be a question if O'Donnell weren't a middle-class white lady, whose apparent distress activated the white-lady-as-perpetual-victim bat-signal?

Fuck her (or don't).

And if you think it is your job to protect her from the legitimate revelation of her hypocrisy, then fuck you too.

On "Burqa Barbie": Girls, You Can Be Whatever You Want! Except a Muslim.

Sigh.

Italian designer Eliana Lorena created over 500 Barbie dolls for an auction hosted by Sotheby's for Save the Children. The dolls, created to coincide with Barbie's 50th anniversary, represent women from all over the world and three of the 500+ are meant to be from Islamic cultures and are covered to varying degrees.

The UK Daily Mail article on the exhibition (titled "It's Barbie in a burkha: World-famous doll gets a makeover to go under the hammer for 50th anniversary") quotes a Barbie collector with over 250 dolls in her collection who said, "I think this is really important for girls, wherever they are from they should have the opportunity to play with a Barbie that they feel represents them... I know Barbie was something seen as bad before as an image for girls, but in actual fact the message with Barbie for women is you can be whatever you want to be." This response, while decidedly Barbie-centric (more on that later), is a pretty reasonable assessment of the goal of the project, which was designed to be inclusive.

Nevertheless, the presence of dolls representing covered, Muslim women has driven a strange-bedfellows-coalition of establishment feminists, Zionists and Christo-conservatives completely APESHIT. The dolls are not being mass produced, but were designed for the purpose of the charity auction, however the fear-mongering rhetoric around the auction has suggested otherwise. While such Islamophobic/Orientalist rhetoric itself is nothing new, the dust up over the production of so-called "burqa Barbies" is instructive of the way these particular racist themes are expressed on the western Right AND Left. Let's have a look, shall we?

The amusingly-named blog Angry White Dude (which is subtitled, In defense of the the most ridiculed and unappreciated being on the planet... THE WHITE MALE. I am not making this up), covers the Barbie-imbroglio thusly:

"Just forcing the burkha upon women is terribly degrading. When one considers the horrible culture of genital mutliation, stonings, honor killings and the rest of the degradation forced upon Muslim women, it is appalling a doll maker or any other organization would manufacture the Burkha Barbie. Islam is deeply seated in barbarism and violence. There is no good that comes from this “religion.” Only death and violence. All the PC wishes in the progressive world cannot hide or deny the violence perpetuated by Islam and its followers. Of course, you will hear nothing about Burkha Barbie from the mainstream media and (lesbian and ugly) women’s groups such as NOW. Women’s groups don’t care about women…they only care about women aborting babies."

In other words, for the "Dude" the Arab/Islamic world is a single monoculture wherein every bad thing that happens to women at the hands of men is permitted, justified by religion and even celebrated. And that is Bad. However, homegrown American feminists are ugly, abortion-loving lesbians. This dynamic, justifying colonial violence under the premise of feminist concern while simultaneously denigrating western women who demand rights like reproductive freedom at home, is an old patriarchal trick designed to use the concerns of women against them. But apparently no one seems to notice (or care) that such "civilization-building" projects are less about freeing Arab/Muslim women from local patriarchy than it is about installing a new-and-improved colonial version. Or, that the loudest male western voices critiquing the position of women in the Arab and Islamic worlds often actively work against the rights of women in their home countries.

However, despite his thoughtful analysis, it turns out the "Dude" is wrong, mainstream feminists are all over this Barbie thing. Marcia Pappas, President of the New York State National Organization of Women (NOW) released this statement,

“As feminists we believe that women must be able to make their own choices and that includes choices about the clothing they wear. But the burqa is more than a choice. Women are forced to wear the burqua or risk being murdered. Mattel should be ashamed. Making a profit by selling a doll that is clearly wearing a symbol of violence is not acceptable and there should be a public outcry to take this doll off the market.”

Okey-doke. So: covering is always about men controlling women. (Scary, violent, mostly Brown men who will murder you as soon as look at you! Because hey, if history has taught us nothing it's that white, Christian, European men LOVE women's rights. Love 'em!) In this paradigm Muslim and Arab women have no agency whatsoever to make choices that shape their lives. They need white feminists to save them. So that's the liberal feminist position. Check. And if we go a bit further to the right?

Feminist/Orientalist/Zionist Phylis Chesler's article on the dolls screeches, " What will they think of next? A be-headed doll?" (I wonder who she means by "they"? The list of related articles running alongside Chesler's "Boycott Burqa Barbie" includes, "Under the Islamic Veil: Faces Disfigured by Acid", so that should give you an idea where she is coming from). She writes,

"A wonderful Muslim feminist hero just stayed with me for a week. She is a lawyer and an author. Her name is Seyran Ates, she is a Turkish-German, and she lives in Berlin. Like Algerian-American professor Marnia Lazreg, whose book about the Islamic Veil I’ve previously discussed, Ates absolutely opposes the veil in any form. She will not wear a headscarf. Ates is a religious Muslim woman."

Oh, okay. You know a Muslim woman and she agrees with you. Well that changes everything.

My bad.

Although... if there are religious Muslim women who don't wear the scarf --and become lawyers and scholars and get to stay in your guestroom even-- then there must not be a direct relationship between Islam, covering and violence against women after all? Or are they safe from such oppression only in the West? And because they are halfsies? Is that the point, that their big brown badness has been properly diluted by western blood and culture? Ahhh, so it's not Islam per se, but rather those scary brown men of Africa/The Middle East/ South Asia who are racially predisposed to violence, you have to get rid of. Got it. Chesler concludes, "Mattel: take Burqa Barbie off the market. Parents: Boycott it. Calling all Charities: Save the children from it." Like her left-er leaning colleagues Chesler is calling for a boycott of Mattel for daring to acknowledge that covered women even exist. The logical paradox here: that the best way to support such women is to not allow them to be represented at all, seems to not bother anyone.

And a tick or two further Right on the crazy-lady meter?

Pin-up girl for internalized racial/orientalist self-hatred, Michelle Malkin writes, "No word yet on whether the dolls will be subjected to female genital mutilation or come with stoning pits in order to accurately represent their 'diversity.'" Yeah, diversity really sucks, Michelle. It inevitably leads to female genital cutting. Let's burn some books!

Malkin echoes the Dude's earlier point about genital cutting--a chorus that is echoed throughout the blogosphere, equating covering with genital cutting and then globalizing both throughout the entire Arab and Islamic worlds. Once again, these conflations rely on a blatantly racialized imaginary Islam, which flattens cultural differences between countries and confuses cultural practices for religious ones. Cutting is practiced mostly in Africa and Asia while Muslims live all over the world. The styles and requirements around covering differ greatly throughout the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. Even within single countries covering is not always consistent and there is no direct relationship between covering and religious piety. And there are significant historical examples of women assuming the veil specifically to frustrate their colonizers, as in Algeria and Palestine... But you probably knew that already, right?

As I've said before, I have no attachment to covering one way or the other. It isn't a religious or cultural value in my family. And like a lot of people who write about the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia I am weary of rehashing the same arguments about covering over and over. Which is not say that covering, like pretty much everything else connected to women can't be used against them. But the point I consistently return to is: what do Muslim feminists have to say about the practice? And then I take my cues from them. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that all of this "outrage" and "concern" for Muslim and Arab women doesn't ever translate into a large-scale western platform for their voices tells the tale.

Neither am I especially interested in the gender politics around Barbie dolls, whose dubious history as icons of femininity has been well-documented by others. Like the veil, Barbie has been reviled as a tool of the patriarchy and celebrated as a strategic weapon against it. I have no problem admitting that I have no idea which is the proper take, although it seems to me that such a range of interpretations suggests that simple answers are reductive and arbitrary. And, not incidentally, politically motivated.

So for me the element of this Barbie scandal that is most telling is that it was instigated merely through the presence of dolls representing unambiguously Islamic women. Imagine what might happen if they actually spoke.

The entire spectrum of western politics is invested in the silence of Muslimahs, from aggrieved white men to mainstream feminists whose common concern, the overriding threat of super-violent, oppressive maleness emanating from the East, unites them. So in the end, this conflict over Barbie dolls is not about Arab and Islamic women at all. If it were, someone might have asked them how they felt and taken their thoughts into consideration before making sweeping racist, culturally and historically inaccurate statements. Rather, this--like almost everything else-- is really about the threatening specters of Arab and Islamic boogeymen, who must be conquered, controlled and/or destroyed to preserve "our" way of life.

The Paucity of Hope

As we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving here in the United States, a holiday devoted to being thankful for the bounty we enjoy, which has a dubious colonial history, my thoughts turn again to Palestine. I have been struggling to express my disappointment with the Obama administration about its Middle East policies. As I write this the prison and interrogation camp at Guantánamo Bay remains open, Iraq is in shambles, we are sending more troops into Afghanistan and Palestine... sigh. This essay by Yousef Munayyer, the Executive Director of the Palestine Center describes the current situation in Palestine eloquently.

By Yousef Munayyer (via the Palestine Center)

"Ibrahim Abu Jayyab, 23, was a big Barack Obama supporter and during the election campaign he spent hours phone-banking for him. However, unlike some of Ibrahim’s Palestinian-American counterparts, he was calling from Gaza, dialing internationally to American households, urging votes for Obama.

Today, a year since the election, prospects for “hope and change” coming to the people of Palestine have all but vanished. Despite fifteen years of talk of creating a Palestinian state, Palestinians have seen only increased illegal Israeli colonization of the land that was supposed to be their future state. A devastating assault on Gaza which left over 1,400 people, mostly civilians dead, was the culmination of eight years of failed George W. Bush administration policy. Still, you cannot blame Ibrahim and his fellow Palestinians for being hopeful when Barack Obama first took office.

Things could not seem worse during the Bush administration for the Palestinians, so Obama was an improvement before his first day in office. Many Palestinians felt President Obama would carry out an evenhanded policy for the first time. His lofty and populist rhetoric during the campaign resonated with a people long trying to appeal to a sense of international equality and justice. Despite failed peace efforts and a heinous attack on an already suffocated Gaza, many still remained hopeful.

However, the only real change taking place since Obama’s election is Israel’s continued illegal geographic expansion in the West Bank and increased defiance of international law. Israel continues unchecked settlement expansion and evicting scores of Palestinians and demolishing their houses in Jerusalem, defying their obligations under the 2003 Road Map for Peace.

Factually, there is little change between the Bush and Obama administrations’ approaches to the peace process. Both administrations have failed to enforce Israel’s obligations under the Road Map. Furthermore, the Obama administration has adopted the Bush administration’s failed and flawed policy of supporting one Palestinian faction against the other, rather than unite them under a common theme of mutual interest.

Despite repeated requests from the Obama administration for Israel to stop colonizing Palestinian land, the colonization continues unabated. Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has openly defied and publicly ridiculed U.S. policy.

Yesterday, Israel announced the expansion of yet another illegal settlement. The Obama administration’s response was a toothless statement expressing “dismay”. The failure of successive U.S. administrations to increase political and financial pressure on Israel for violations of international law and U.S. policy has led to a West Bank littered with Israeli settlements and only emboldened the Israeli government to defy us further. Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has put what little domestic legitimacy he had left on the line to participate in fruitless negotiations, said yesterday that Obama is “doing nothing” to advance the peace-process right now.

Today the effect of this, especially at this moment in history, is devastating. Palestinians were at the brink after the attacks on Gaza and the only thing that brought them back from the edge was optimism about the future. The focus now has returned to the pain of Gaza and years of wasted time invested in a process that has only resulted in dispossession of the Palestinian people.

There is a communication gap between the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians when defining the goal of a “peace process”. Palestinians, and most of the world, believed the goal was to end the illegal occupation that started in 1967, creating a state in that territory for Palestinians which would ultimately lead to peace in the region. However, Israel’s actions continue to defy that goal. The Israeli government’s continued apartheid-styled occupation jokingly refers to a “piece process” as it continues to carve up Palestinian land one piece at a time. The world is not laughing.

The United States must immediately define to Israel and the Palestinians clear goals with specific and reasonable time tables enforced with tough political and financial repercussions for any party that fails to follow obligations.

Palestinian youth are unlikely to dedicate time to volunteer for President Obama’s re-election and, the way things are going, are unlikely to be living in a free and independent state of Palestine by that time either. The future of the next generation of Palestinians, their ambitions, hopes and desires reflect our policies. So far, these policies have been hopeless."

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.