Andrea Smith
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

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Annex 1

            Many mainstream feminist organizations, particularly anti-violence organizations, have applauded the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan for “liberating” Arab women from the repressive policies of the Taliban. Apparently, bombing women in Afghanistan somehow elevates their status.  The Revolutionary Association of the Women from Afghanistan (RAWA), the organization comprised of members most affected by the policies of the Taliban, meanwhile, has condemned U.S. intervention and has argued that women cannot expect an improvement in their status under the regime of the Northern Alliance of which the U.S. has allied itself. Using similar logic, many mainstream LGBT organizations have also supported U.S. policies in order to oppose the homophobia of the Taliban.  Katherine Acey of the Astraea Foundation criticizes these groups noting that they complained vociferously about the homophobic slurs painted on missiles attacking Afghanistan, but did not oppose the launching of the missiles themselves.   So why do so many U.S. mainstream feminist and LGBT groups either support or at least refuse to publicly oppose the war.  Why are we presented with only two political options–either support the repressive policies of the Taliban or support Bush’s ever-expanding war in Afghanistan and elsewhere?  This support rests on the problematic assumption that state violence can secure safety and liberation for women and other oppressed groups.

            What was disturbing to so many U.S. citizens about the attacks on the World Trade Center is that these attacks disrupted their sense of safety at “home.”  Terrorism is something that happens in other countries; our “home”, the U.S. is supposed to be a place of safety.  However, the anti-violence movement has always contested this notion of safety at home as the majority of violence women suffer happens at home.  Furthermore, it is the notion that violence happens “out there,” inflicted by the stranger in the dark alley, that makes it difficult to recognize that the home is in fact the place of greatest danger for women.  Similarly, the notion that terrorism happens in other countries makes it difficult to grasp that the U.S. is in fact built on a history of genocide, slavery, and racism.  Our “home” has never been a safe place for people of color.

            While, the anti-violence movement has contributed this important piece of analysis; ironically, its strategies to defeat violence, are all based on the premise that violence happens “out there” rather than at home.   For instance, the anti-violence movement has relied on the criminal legal system as its primary tool to address violence.  The use of the criminal legal system to address gender violence is based on the false notion that the perpetrators of violence are a few crazed men that we need to lock up.  When one-half of women will be battered in their lifetimes and nearly one-half of women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, it is clear that we live in a rape culture that prisons, themselves a site of violence and control, cannot change.  Alternative approaches to provide true safety and security for women must be developed.

            Similarly, military responses to terrorism are premised on the false notion that “terrorism” is limited to a few countries run by seeming lunatics.  But given that the U.S military has been the single greatest perpetrator of violence and terrorism in recent history, it obviously cannot provide true safety and security when it supports a society based on terrorism against people of color. 

            Because many mainstream feminist and LGBT organizations are white-dominated, they often do not seem themselves as potential victims in Bush’s war in the U.S. and abroad.  In fact, however, it is important to consider how the definition of who is considered “alien” in the U.S. and hence deserving of repressive policies and overt attack is not limited to people of color.  Since 9/11, many organizations have reported sharp increases in attacks in LGBT communities, demonstrating the extent to which gays and lesbians are often seen as “alien” whose sexuality threatens the white nuclear family thought to be the building blocks of U.S. society. Furthermore, supporting these policies under the rationale that Afghanistan will now be freed of sexism and homophobia allows the Bush administration to remain unaccountable for its sexist and homophobic policies and its support of the Christian Right.  Thus, support for Bush’s policies will ultimately undermine feminist and LGBT struggles in the U.S.

            The organization I work with, Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, developed a joint statement with Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex that speaks to the need to develop strategies that address interpersonal gender violence and state violence simultaneously.  It also developed a statement on the war.  Several members of Incite! also wrote a statement in response to Andrea Dworkin’s analysis of Palestinean suicide bombers.  I have enclosed the following statements below for your information.