Why we need women's actions and feminist voices for peace

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Among the hundreds of groups and actions being mounted against the war on Iraq are a significant number called and organized by women. Code Pink: Unreasonable Women for Peace has disrupted Congressional hearings and mounted an ongoing women's peace vigil at the White House since November 17. Women in Black hold vigils in hundreds of communities around the world on a regular basis. Women Rising for Peace and Justice, the women's caucus of United for Peace, has issued a call for January 17 to be a day of women's actions against the war.

Women are deeply impacted by war, racism and poverty-the three evils named by Martin Luther King. But when we stand for peace as women, it is not to make a case for our special victimhood, but to represent a different vision of strength. Women-initiated and women-led actions have a special energy and power. That power comes not from excluding men-most of these actions welcome men as participants.

To defend those values, we need not just women's voices against the war, but specifically feminist voices. For feminism allows us to analyze patriarchy, the constellation of values, ideas and beliefs that reinforces male control over women.

No set of qualities is innately or exclusively "female" or "male." Men can be compassionate, loving and kind, as women can be tough, brave or callous. But patriarchy assigns the qualities associated with aggression and competition to men, and relegates to women the devalued roles of nurturing and service. Patriarchy values the hard over the soft, the tough over the tender, punishment, vengeance and vindictiveness over compassion, negotiation and reconciliation. The "hard" qualities are identified with power, success and masculinity and are exalted. The "soft" qualities are identified with weakness, powerlessness and femininity and are denigrated.

Under patriarchy, men are shamed and considered weak if they exhibit qualities associated with women. Politicians win elections by being tough.

We need feminist voices for peace because the issues of women's freedom and autonomy are being used cynically to justify anti-Arab racism and military takeovers of Arab countries.

The U.S. and its allies, who now pose as the liberators of women in the Muslim world, are the same powers which gave the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda their start-up funds, supported them and put them in power with no consideration for their impact on women. The "liberators" of Afghan women ignored the grassroots women's organizations such as RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), installed a new government almost equally as oppressive as the Taliban and excluded the heroic women who have risked their lives to educate their daughters and maintain some sense of freedom under oppressive rule.

We protest the hypocrisy which trumpets the oppression of women in Arab societies while the oppression of women in the West is never raised as an issue. Nor is the racism, economic oppression and endemic violence of Western culture acknowledged when the West is hailed as the flag bearer of freedom. Women cannot walk safely through the streets of the West, nor can we be assured of the means of life for our children, of health care in our illnesses, of care and support in our old age. The going daily violence against women and children worldwide, the violence of battering, sexual assault, poverty and lack of opportunity, the global traffic in women's bodies, are all ignored.

The vast global inequalities which benefit the West are also not acknowledged. Nor is the history that Western exploitation of the East and South generated the wealth that allowed our greater "development" and "enlightenment."

Oppression of women is real, in Muslim societies and non-Muslim societies, around the globe. But women cannot be liberated by the tanks and bombs of those who are continuing centuries-old policies of exploitation, commandeering resources for themselves, and fomenting prejudice against the culture and heritage which is also a deep part of a woman's being.

We need a feminist voice for peace to say that those who truly care about life and freedom will work to support, not conquer, those women in every culture who are struggling for liberation and social justice.

The war against Iraq is not about safety, security, or liberation. The war's real aims include gaining control of Iraq's rich oil reserves and establishing U.S. hegemony over the Middle East. Racism is the ideology of empire, the set of beliefs that tell us we deserve to rule because we are superior to some other group.

Racism and patriarchy are the recruitment tools for the legions of enforcers: the soldiers, police, judges, bureaucrats and officials who protect institutions of power. Patriarchy, racism, homophobia, discrimination against Arabs and Muslims, anti-Semitism, ageism and all forms of prejudice keep our eyes trained downward, looking at those we see as beneath us, instead of looking upward and seeing clearly how we are being manipulated.