Rape and Abortion in the Western News: Hidden and Hijacked

You wouldn’t necessarily know it but there is a lot in the news about sexual violence and abortion rights at the moment. Needless to say these issues don’t need to be gendered, they are inherently so, but their presentation in the media says a lot about the society we live in.

On Friday 27^th November there was a shooting at a Planned Parenthood sexual health clinic in Colorado in the US which killed 3 people and damaged the clinic detrimentally. Planned Parenthood is the United States’ number one provider of abortions for those in need but they also take care of other sexual health problems including screening for cervical cancer. The male attacker has been named as Robert Lewis Dear who was supposedly heard shouting ‘no more baby parts.’ He was arrested following the shooting. Unfortunately, this story has been hijacked by the election agenda and anti-gun activists alike, missing the real issue here. Whilst Obama condemned the access to and use of guns in random shootings like these in the US, he said little about the political statement this man was trying to make and the political environment in which these views are curated. Additionally, whilst much has been written about scaling down the anti-abortion rhetoric in the US, few have deemed this an act of terrorism against women and their right to their own bodies. As is often the case when an incident is played down and presented as a ‘bad egg’ incident in the press, the attacker has been presented in the news as a loner and a basket case. In reality, anti-abortion misogyny is rife in the United States and beyond. The political and gendered nature of this shooting has not been addressed by the mainstream media.

Across the pond in the UK the chancellor’s autumn statement (budget) revealed that after a lot of dissent from women and ironically right-wing eurosceptics, the 5% VAT that is charged on sanitary items because of their status as ‘luxury items’ (see my thoughts on this here)  will now fund women’s shelters and charities. That is, instead of, not on top of pre-existing government funding to these shelters and charities which has been cut to an almost negligible amount throughout Britain’s austerity program. This is yet another swipe at women from today’s conservative government in the UK. Of course, men can and do get raped however we have to acknowledge the preponderance of rape, sexual and domestic abuse as happening to women. This does not mean to say it should be classified as a “women’s problem” and this so-called solution manifests an unpleasant image of Osborne and Cameron sitting around discussing the budget and how to solve the problem of tampon tax:

Osborne: “Why not make them feel guilty for complaining by funding those shelter-thingies for slutty women with the money!"

Cameron: “Brilliant idea Osborne! Now that’s all the women’s issues sorted let’s get on to the important business like slashing those tax credits and our invasion of Syria!" 

(...incidentally the very same tax credits that hit single mothers the hardest and the very same bombs that will hit refugee families in Raqqa which is long since an ISIL HQ.) It leaves a nasty taste in your mouth and perpetuates a vicious circle of poverty and violence. Not to mention it does not stop this issue continuing to be hijacked by anti-Europe politicians.

Furthermore, today northern Ireland’s anti-abortion laws have been condemned as against human rights following a judicial review of the law which currently states that a woman can only have an abortion if a woman’s life is in danger, not in cases of rape, incest or foetal malformation. The religious anti-abortion rhetoric is equally as sinister in Northern Ireland and remains a political and religious football as opposed to any genuine concerns for the lives of women. In the midst of all of the Islamic State chaos much of these issues can be drowned out and when they are bought to the surface they are often commandeered by other political agendas. It is crucial to look at the real issues here and how they reveal underlying patriarchy in many of our western societies.

Islamic State Hysteria – Should we be bombing Syria?

Hysteria surrounding the threat from the Islamic State in the UK has reached fever pitch this week after they supposedly planted a bomb on a Russian plane flying over Sinai province in Egypt killing all 224 passengers on board. At the same time defence secretary Michael Fallon has pronounced it morally indefensible for the UK not to join its allies in bombing Syria and the US have officially announced 20 special operations forces on the ground in Syria. You will notice a great deal of italics in those last few sentences demarking my cynicism here! Whilst I agree with the logic that bombing Iraq and not Syria is ridiculous given the ‘Caliphate’ spans both territories I still disagree with Fallon. I find it staggering and extremely suspect how quick the UK government has been to assume an Islamic State bomb downed the Sinai plane particularly before there was any evidence to support such claims. Media sensationalism is playing straight into the hands of the opportunistic Islamic State whether they are responsible or not. Hysteria is what they want. Terror is a synonym for fear – fear is what they want. It legitimises and encourages their war. This hysteria is extremely reminiscent of the post 9/11 era: it feels as though new boundaries are being drawn and extra-ordinary action is slowly being trickled into public acceptance. Would I be surprised if we saw a boots-on-the-ground debate in the House of Commons before Christmas? Not at all.

And where does gender come into this?

As usual according to mainstream narratives it doesn’t. Appeals to the need to bomb for the sake of ‘women and children’ remain abundant in arguments for air strikes. Particularly given the atrocities committed against women and girls by the Islamic State documented in that pivotal New York Times article. What the media doesn’t focus on is how previous intervention by the Middle East in the West has actually made things worse for Muslim women because of the backlash of extremism and jihadism which promotes a hideously patriarchal version of Islam. Women serve as cultural signifiers, their oppression is the ultimate rejection of western ideals. Furthermore, as mentioned before on this blog the media seems keen to ignore the progress being made by the Kurdish Peshmerga which is made up of predominantly women and remains the only force making real progress in pushing back Islamic State. Islamic State fighters believe that should they be killed by a woman they will go to hell so they are genuinely afraid of these women in contrast to the western bombs which only emblazon their ideological vengeance and recruit more willing martyrs. This is a difficult concept for the West to come to terms with because it subverts several narratives underpinning our entire identity. The ‘brown women victims in need of saviour from barbaric brown men by noble white men’ narrative underpins the very premise of the War on Terror ideology and the Peshmerga completely turns this on its head. When they have been reported on they have been glamorised and sensationalised rather than taken seriously and understood both politically and historically.

The highly militarised, hyper-masculine environment in which these events are perceived is also crucial to understanding why bombs and boots our presented as our only options. Foreign policy and defence remain masculine domains epitomised by men like Michael Fallow where stoicism, rationalism and aggression are heavily relied upon in decision making and the agenda is set by history instead of innovation or insight. Equally, it is overly-simplistic argument to say if there were more women in foreign policy positions more diplomatic or internationalist options may be put on the table in the fights against Islamic State. Hell, Hillary Clinton would be in there all guns blazing given her past! However, fighting fire with fire (fire being militarised, hyper-masculine warfare) only seems to have made things worse in the past and whilst I don’t claim to know any of the answers sticking to the same out-dated and ignorant strategy of simply throwing bombs at the problem seems mad to me. The male, pale and stale defence departments worldwide need new ideas to fight this new threat.