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Women In Uniform
By Gilad Atzmon© May 30th 2004
Now the Iraqis are truly liberated..... Some of them have been lucky enough
to practice the most advanced forms of western bondage practice. Those
Iraqis could never even dream of the possibility before the blessed American
came and opened their minds. This is what liberation is all about. Toppling
Sadam was just an excuse. From its very beginning, it was all about introducing
the Arab people to the advance and beauty of American female domination
and general S&M.
As matter of fact I am pretty confused and not just because of these images.
I have seen worse. I do find it pathetic that no one has yet come up publicly,
to confront us all with the obvious fact that, at the centre of images
of torture of Iraqi detainees, we find young females in uniform. The image
of a giggling female soldier pointing at the pines of naked hooded prisoners
is, no doubt, a novelty. In our western wars, women in uniform always
had kept the most precious position. They were providing the fighting
men with care, love, mercy and calmness. In their white nursing uniforms
they were often described as an instance of sanity and humanity in the
midst of a masculine flesh-mincing machine. Not anymore, under the command
of Mr Donald Rumsfeld, Private Lindy England and her comrade, Specialist
Sabrina Harman are serving as angels of death. Women in the American army
have a new role, they are providing the enemies of America with sexual
humiliation. They are providing all of us with the ultimate pornographic
image of war.
Let’s face it, Private England didn’t invent the notion of
sexual abuse. Abuse has been here since time began. More than one victorious
army celebrated its triumphant moment raping the defeated nation. Usually
it was women who were the first to pay the price. We all know about Nazi
platoons who brutally raped Soviet women all the way to Stalingrad. Soviet
soldiers were not different when arriving on German soil. American GIs
did it in Nam, Serbs did it in Kosovo. Apparently war is a horny event.
The confrontation with death and blood leads the active participants towards
a vivid and extreme realisation of the notion of life. More than a few
London grannies would enthusiastically share their hot juicy blitz tales.
Apparently, the engagement with young fireman in action, as well as young
off duty American pilots, turned WW2 Britain into an explosive libidinal
setting. War, as it appears, has some positive erotic connotations.
But yet, ‘strategic sexual humiliation’ is very new to us
all. Moreover, it seems to be a ‘well orchestrated’ new American
doctrine. The Americans have always proved to be innovative in introducing
evil strategies and destructive weapons. If they do something they do
it big. But yet, it is hard to realise how they got so far this time.
Thinking about the subject in military terms leaves me pretty puzzled.
The story of 20th century wars does not provide us with any sort of historical
background relating to tactical sexual humiliation. I cannot recollect
images of naked Soviet soldiers sexually abused, neither by sporadic female
SS officers nor by male Panzer platoons. We can neither remember any form
of such abuse conducted by any Allied soldiers. True, Jews where stripped
of their clothes before they where pushed into gas chambers but again
those scenes had nothing sexual, erotic or pornographic in them, just
a devastating practice.
No doubt, these new American images are a complete revelation; and yet
no one points out that we might be confronting an unprecedented, new image.
No one points out that it is a female soldier at its very centre. No one
dare say that the notion of femininity might have gone through a serious
metamorphosis. We might confront here a newly devastating feminine role
and yet hardly anyone stops to reflect about it loudly. This is probably
the beauty of political correctness. Willingly, we are becoming slightly
blind; imposing on ourselves a form of foolishness. It is a cheerfulness
that is coupled with stupidity. This very idiocy is the ultimate condition
of the post colonial western democracy. We would politely blame Blair
and Bush for dragging us into wars; we will democratically protest in
the centres of our big cities; we would raise questions about WMD; but
we will turn a blind eye to the evident fact that the women around us,
the core of our innermost libidinal desires, might change their spots.
Somehow, they appear to be far more cruel than we have ever pretended
to acknowledge.
***
It took more than a while for Women's Groups to generate enough pressure
to persuade orthodox Generals to allow their young sisters to become combatant
soldiers. Those resistant orthodox Generals were always repeating the
same laconic silly argument. A female soldier, they used to say, would
confront some severe risks of sexual abuse when falling into enemy hands.
In fact, they where completely wrong, it is very much the other way around.
It is the male POWs who find themselves bare, naked, confronting relentless
humiliation in the hands of those young enthusiastic armed ladies who
entertain the joy of power beyond any recognised measure.
Using those orthodox General’s arguments, it would make sense to
argue that men should be left out of the battlefield just to save them
from the chance that they would fall in the hands of devoted female combatants.
As it appears, both Private England and Specialist Harman enjoy the colour
of war to the very limit. It might be that those Women's Groups were right
all the way through. Women are far more qualified for the battlefield.
Men tend to complain all the time, some of them prove to be cowards when
asked to kill. It is more than likely that we should leave wars for women,
for sure the food in the front lines will improve a lot.
***
But the issue is slightly more complicated. Since, one should agree, that
the sudden appearance of sexual humiliation in military life is a real
novelty, we should ask ourselves what really went wrong?
I can think of two possible answers:
1. That American society is going through a severe process of moral and
intellectual regression. Sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees is just
a single symptom.
2. The introduction and presence of the female combatant in the firing
zone turned the battlefield into a theatre of erotic domination.
The former is pretty obvious; America is going through a rapid process
of moral and intellectual deterioration. The fact that America is the
last country on earth to back Israel is enough to prove that something
has gone dramatically wrong on the other side of the Atlantic. But again,
leaving the Zionists aside, it is clear that the war in Iraq is involved
with more than one immoral aspect. Actually, it is pretty impossible to
find anything moral about it. For more than a while we are facing an endless
stream of pornographic images. To start with real-time images of mass
destruction and murder of innocent civilians - and to end with explicit
images of brutal sexual abuse. The Internet is flowing with images of
Iraqi women being raped by American GIs. Many of those images have now
been found to be forged. They were commercially made just to satisfy the
thirsty American market demands. The brutal rape of a defeated nation
is transformed in Bush’s America into hard-on-cash. This is no doubt
a new form of a collective masturbation.
But we do not have to go that far. The genuine photos of abused Iraqi
POWs that where shown repeatedly all over the American media say it all.
While most American commentators appear to express deep disgust, we have
a good reason to suspect their honesty. Dr. Susan Block, the American
sex therapist says in an article about the subject that many of her clients
“will say something to disgust them at first, only to confess a
few sessions later that it really turns them on” (Bush’s POW
Porn, Dr. Susan Block , Counterpunch 14.5.04). While Block was referring
in her article solely to Bush, I would suggest we attribute her diagnosis
to the entire, allegedly devastated American media, and the political
world. America is full of contrasts: on the one hand, an extremely conservative
society and deeply sexually oppressed, but on the other hand, it has the
biggest porn industry and by far the wildest one. In that very sense America,
a place conceived on opposites, these images serves as a snap shot of
some very devastating reality. I would say, a glimpse into the Lacanian
‘Real’. A gaze at the reality of brutally deteriorating society.
An explosive image of volatile sexual domination. This reality is so terrifying
and hard to acknowledge, that most of us, both men and women, cannot even
articulate it verbally.
The later option is leading towards even further complications. The fact
that females, when protected with power, expose a completely new form
of sexual domination and abusive practice is rather alerting. First, we
have to ask ourselves whether we were mislead all those years, assuming
that our beloved women are caring and loving. If this is the case, if
women are in fact wild, brutal creatures, we must believe that the female
peaceful image we were so used to was just a camouflage, or might even
be a conspiracy. If women are brutal and monstrous we must assume that
the very attractive image of them, soft and caring, is a direct outcome
of the male patriarchal society. Now that women are liberated we can see
what they really are. While a confrontation with the odd militant separatist
feminist might support such a wild assumption, being surrounded with men-loving
women makes it hard to take such an option seriously. As a matter of fact,
here I want to declare: women are generally great, we love them all, in
every shape and colour. Also, it appears, I am failing to produce an argument.
True, but then, after seeing Private England in action I prefer to be
on the safe side. The last thing I need is to have the feminist women
coming up against me and cutting off my testicles in the middle of the
night.
Another way around the loophole raised by Private England et al. is to
assume that there is something pretty particular about those strange women
who join the armed forces in the first place. I think that many would
agree that there is something unique about those women who want to be
'man'. I myself find it bizarre, mainly because ‘man’ is a
pretty vague concept. Most men do not have a clue what being man means,
they simply can’t be bothered. All we know about ourselves is that
we like cars and computers. By the time we know how to entertain women
our biology turns against us. From that stage, more or less, we are just
running down the slope. We usually enjoy the down-hill journey, mainly
because our female counterparts become sexually frustrated. Women are
very amusing when defeated by their desires. By the time our women buy
their first pair of stockings we are too tired to keep our eyes open after
ten o’clock news. It is great fun being in the centre of the desire
of the other without being able to do anything about it. Giving our pathetic
condition, thinking of all those young women who want to be us, is really
ridiculous. I assume that those poor militants, tom boys probably, hold
a rigorous, deloused, picture of what man is all about. Mistakenly they
endorse an awkward vision of man as a brutal and violent creature while
in fact, we are deeply romantic.
As we know, in most cases the impersonated version is far more extreme
than the real McCoy. Those kind of tragic amplified misinterpretations
can easily lead towards an radical strengthening of evilness. It is typical
for marginal political movements to fall into this very trap. Zionism
exceeded, far beyond most political movements of its time, in its interpretation
of the notion of Nationalism. The result is devastating. A notorious bloodthirsty
nationalistic society entirely occupied with daily murder of Palestinian
civilians. Militant separatist feminists are no different at all. Like
the Zionist they went too far in their demand for rights and equality.
Unlike Zionist they are yet to assassinate their opponents. When one is
stressing the importance of equality, the image of equality is often replaced
with a claim for supremacy and even an appetite for hegemony.
In general most marginal political movements fail on this very particular
issue. In the long run those opposing tendencies leads towards a clear
intensification of unbearably vulgar behaviour. I assume that Private
England fail right there. She tried to be a man, but found herself exercising
a brutal amplified version of her original prototype. We must admit that
we have never seen a photographic image of a male soldier standing staring
at a naked hooded woman, ridiculing the shape of her clitoris. It might
be the right time for women to ask whether being man-like is a very clever
choice. But yet, we should give some justice to Private England and Specialist
Harman. We should mention that they were not acting alone; as a matter
of fact they were surrounded by perplexed men, who very much like these
two women tried to pretend to be men. Not that hard to understand, since
it is almost impossible for one to impersonate oneself. In a social environment,
where women are supposed to be "as man", men tend to forget
what "man" ought to be.
***
So now the Iraqis are truly liberated. They all know what America stands
for. But then who is going to liberate the American people? Who is going
to sustain those women who want to be men? Who is going to save the man
who wants to be a man?
Private England is probably sorted, we shouldn’t worry about her,
for the type of services she gave in Iraq for free she can make a fortune
in down town Manhattan. In the end of the day America is all about money.
God save America. Because if it is down to the Americans they don’t
have much time left.