Uno sguardo di genere sulla guerra, cosa ne pensate dal punto di vista
politico?
t
----- Original Message -----
From: <bert.bjarland@???>
To: <man@???>
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 8:17 AM
Subject: FW: Manhood and War
> FYI - Bert
>
> Manhood and War
>
> by Michael Kaufman
>
> The war and now the occupation of Iraq is indeed about
> oil and the arms industries; it is about a particularly
> nasty dictator; it is about who controls the middle-east,
> and about the long-held political agenda of a small
> circle in the United States who happen to control the
> White House. All true, but it is also about men and
> masculinity.
>
> When I say this war is about men I mean much more than a
> physical description of the vast majority of generals and
> politicians, enthusiastic corporate boosters, or soldiers
> who have been moulded by fear to kill on command.
>
> Rather it is far deeper, embedded in the psyches of men,
> embedded in qualities that far too many men have learned
> to value, embedded in our political, social and religious
> cultures. The stories tell all:
> The former President Bush ushered in the last Gulf war
> twelve years ago with the taunt of a schoolyard bully,
> daring Saddam Hussein to step across a line in the sand.
> The White House and Pentagon evoked Old Testament images
> of patriarchal wrath when they spoke of "shock and awe."
> My dictionary defines "awe" as an overwhelming feeling of
> reverence, admiration, and fear. What does it say about
> those men? Picture an Iraqi mother or father, gripping
> their dead child in their arms, its legs torn from its
> body; would you imagine them feeling reverence or
> admiration? These are words for men who admire their
> ability to kill far more than the ability to give or
> nurture life. They celebrate a destructive brand of
> masculinity far more than the tender feelings they
> associate with femininity and which, apparently, they
> have come to despise.
>
> On the eve of war, Major David Anderson, a spokesman
> for the US Marines, spoke of the mood among the Marines
> who, like real men, never feel fear: "They're not scared,
> but their anxiety level has gone through the roof. It's
> like it's just before game time."
>
> Sexualized imagery around domination and war was evident
> in a photograph of the long muzzle of a US Abrams tank.
> This potent weapon, pointing erect, was painted with the
> words "cohone eh" We'll add the grammatically correct "s"
> to the first word, for it is Spanish slang for "balls."
> Perhaps most unspeakable was an account in the newly
> published book, Jarhead, by a former Marine sniper who
> fought in the Gulf War. He writes that snipers are often
> taught that their ultrasensitive rifle trigger is like a
> woman's clitoris and the bullet exploding into the victim
> is her orgasm.
>
> Such images are no surprise. Jingoistic support for
> leaders who go to war is no surprise. Good Christian, or
> Jewish or Moslem businessmen who see no problem profiting
> from barrages of murderous armaments should not surprise
> us either.
>
> After all, most boys learn from an early age to define
> our self worth in terms of power. What type of power?
> Power to love? To nurture? No. Power to dominate and
> control. We are taunted at school if we are seen as weak
> and unyielding. We taunt political leaders who stand for
> peace rather than war. We reward men who get their way in
> sport or commerce or politics, no matter who else is
> injured along the way. Generations of men failed to learn
> the basic nurturing skills required to hold and feed and
> care for the young, writing off such activities as suitable
> work only for "the weaker sex." Yes, this war is about geo-
> politics, oil and much more, but it is also about the men
> who have brought us this war. George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld,
> and Saddam Hussein share the belief, held by far too many,
> that a real man must show he is tough and in control, no
> matter how many people must die.
>
> And that serves them well, particularly those who mobilize
> public opinion and vast resources to unleash so much
> destruction. They are able to tap into a reservoir of fear
> of impotency and a love of a triumphant masculinity, and
> turn these towards their own economic and political ends.
> The bloody results are always predictable, or so the
> history books tell. This time, however, part of the outcome
> is the unpredictable: this war heralds a period of even-
> greater international instability for which, we will be
> told, more arms and more war will be required.
>
> To save us all and to usher in a future in which our
> children can experience hope rather than fear requires
> many things, most of which are beyond the scope of this
> short essay. However, one necessary requirement is the ever-
> unfolding process of shifting exclusive social power out of
> the hands of men (although, as we know from Margaret Thatcher,
> Condeleza Rice, and Indira Ghandi, women who aspire to a
> certain form of power can be as destructive as any man.)
> That is one of the things that will encourage the shifting
> of social and economic priorities to the long-term needs of
> our children, the nurturing of communities, stewardship of
> our environment, and an end to the proliferation of weapons,
> massively destructive or not.
>
> And it will require new models of manhood. A week or so
> into the war, across the world in Vietnam, Carlo Urbani, a
> forty-six year old Italian doctor who had been active in
> Médicins sans FrontiPres and the World Health Organization,
> died from SARS. Faced with an unknown disease killing his
> patients, he risked his life to be at their side and, in
> doing so, was the first to identify this new disease. He
> lived and died not to control the world, but far more
> simply, to give life. I'll take him as my model of manhood
> any day over the Bushes and Husseins.
>
> www.michaelkaufman.com
>
> © Michael Kaufman 2003
