Sex and War

[shance]

Great read....

Excerpts of "Sex and War" interview with author Stan Goff:


"with masculinity there’s an expectation of strength, with femininity there’s an expectation of weakness, power as opposed to dependency, authority as opposed to lack of authority, courage as opposed to timidity or deference. We also looked at the definitions of masculinity and femininity in a more general sense, masculinity is defined by aggression, control and violence and femininity is characterized by obedience, passivity and even fear."

"war itself in its entirety is also talked about in very sexualized terms. All the way from battlefield strategic concepts described with terms like ‘penetration’, and the feminization of the enemy, ‘we’re gonna catch ‘em with their pants down and pop it to ‘em’ this is all very sexualized imagery, so already in our cultural imagination there’s an association between masculinity and violence, and even eroticized sexuality.

"It plays out as homophobia and the hatred of all things female. Men wouldn’t be caught dead wearing pink, for example, or they’ve got to hate cats, there’s all kinds of crazy expectations, but they’re out there and they’re very powerful norms that are enforced, both officially and unofficially........And this separation of masculinity from all things female translates into a powerful homophobia, the hatred of all things female, it’s not just this misogyny, a supremacy over women, but also this hatred of male homosexuals for being like a female."

(snip)

Some people get distracted by the fact that women took part in the Abu Ghraib abuse, but these women are trying to make it in a very masculine environment, they do some of these things so they will be seen to be as aggressive as the boys. And in a way they serve as ideological decoys, because some people can point to this and say, “See, this is not males doing this.”

(snip)

For centuries, white men have raped black women as part of their property entitlement and later on as their entitlements under Jim Crow. In fact up until very recently in the south it was virtually impossible to convict a white man of the rape of a black woman regardless of the preponderence of evidence. It was virtually impossible because the perception was, (whether it was officially pronounced or not), that black women were promiscuous, and therefore un-rapeable. Blame the victim. In a system of domination, it’s always the victim’s fault, or they’re better off than they would be otherwise."

(snip)

"Right after 9/11, all these pink middle-aged males are jumpin’ up on TV pretending they’re experts on every damn thing under the sun. Some of them are ex-military… Dave Grange, who’s a commentator for CNN now, he’s dumber than a bag of fuckin’ hammers and he used to be my commander. Twice."

"People put him up there, he’s a white guy, he’s military, but if you sit down and try to extract like, any information from anything he says… it’s a pretty painful process."

http://www.gnn.tv/blogs/12185/Stan_Goff_Sex_and_War
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[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. Great bits.

Got a link to the rest?

[shance]

3. Apologies*** I updated my post.

n/t

[the_spectator]

2. Soon to be followed by his next book, "Sex and War in the City" -

For anyone who has ever wondered what it's like to do house-to-house urban combat. In Manolo Blahniks.