Nigeria and White [Male] Supremacy: an analysis by Chinweizu

[image above is of author Chinweizu, and was found here]

[For the website with the original post, please click here.]

Nigeria and White Supremacy
A Letter in Response to "Nigeria A Failed State in the Making?"
By Chinweizu

My impression in reading Chinweizu is that Nigeria, despite its oil wealth, is not a model African state because of "white supremacy." I derive this impression or conclusion from this Chinweizu statement:

"White power controls Black Africa today through country presidents, generals, company directors and Board chairmen who are all black. White supremacy, as a matter of historical record, does not disappear with the emergence of even a complete phalanx of black office holders. For example, Nigeria is under the thumb of white supremacy, though it has been ruled for some 50 years by black Heads of State, all-black legislatures, all-black armies, etc." (Chinweizu, Commentary in "The Death of White Supremacy?")

From Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh we get an entirely different perspective on Nigeria. He concludes in his Nigeria A Failed State in the Making? that the Nigerian governments and its officials, especially, and its "populaces" are the causes of the lack of support for general free education and other deteriorating aspects in Nigeria, rather than "white supremacy."

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh allows that there probably should have never been a Nigeria. He says, “The country Nigeria was an imposition. . . . our constitution was an imposition.” Ogbunwezeh points out, “Just like in Animal Farm, we exchanged our slavery to British official whims to the capricious and monumental indiscretions of Nigerian politicians. This exchange created a crop of home-grown colonial Lords, who exploit the people like their former Lords did.”

That is to say, Ogbunwezeh does not allow Nigerians to escape their responsibilities for the present state of their conditions: “The home-grown masters have now new masters: namely their inordinate greed. They shipped their loot to Switzerland; housing it in numbered accounts. The rape of the country assumed the same trajectory in both epochs. Our local pirates in some space of four decades succeeded in out-performing the colonial masters in greed, thievery and plunder of our commonweal.”—Rudy

Rudy,

Like Neely Fuller, Jr. said, "If you don't understand white supremacy—what it is, and how it works—everything else that you understand will only confuse you."

The picture painted by Franklyn, though illuminating as far as it goes, does not go far enough. It is like a picture of a train that leaves out the engine. To complete the picture we need to add the role of the white supremacy institutions of the new imperialism in initiating and maintaining the disaster that is Nigeria.

If we understood the devious ways of white supremacy, in this stage of what Nkrumah called "Neo-colonialism", we would see that my account and Franklyn's are not contradictory or alternative accounts, but are complementary. Franklyn describes the body of the snake, I pointed at its head )albeit in passing, in the context of our discussion of white supremacy). The combined and fuller picture allows us to see how the mess in Nigeria serves a white supremacy which manipulates Nigeria through institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the UN agencies, The (British) Commonwealth, which link Nigeria to the global system of white supremacy.

Nigeria, like other black African countries, has been misruled by local Black Comprador Colonialists whose paramount interest is to preserve the subordination of their countries to the imperialist interests of their "former" colonial masters. It is that subordination that permits them to loot their own people for their imperialist masters, and allows them, as the junior partners and agents of imperialism, to keep a share of the loot, which is their own consuming interest.

Of course, to that end they have frustrated, in their own local interests, any attempt to develop an autonomous polity that is answerable to its own people, that responds to the will/desires of its own people. A Nigerian polity that responds to its own people would have less to hand over to the imperialist masters, and would come under imperialist pressure and attacks. A current example is Mugabe's Zimbabwe. For so long as Mugabe did not try to take back the land stolen by the whites, he was okay. But when he began to respond to his people's land hunger, he became a pariah and came under sanctions and destabilization from the white supremacist powers like the UK, the USA and the EU.

In contrast, Nigeria, under Obasanjo, handed to the foreign creditors a whopping $12bn to allegedly get Nigeria debt-free (which it did not) while leaving Nigeria with badly decayed roads, power supply, education, etc. that still need massive capital injection to refurbish them. Needless to say, the debt-free mirage was just a scam. Nigeria is still not debt free and still goes aborrowing.

But since Obasanjo was a loyal servant to the white imperialist powers, he had a free hand to rig elections, sack villages that contested his misrule (e.g., Odi in the Niger Delta was sacked by Obasanjo's soldiers), and to loot to his greed's content. By the way, the bulk of the loot from what is misnamed "corruption" gets stashed away in the banks of Europe and America, thus adding to the total plunder that the imperialists extract. In that way, even the much decried corruption of the Nigerian elite ends up serving the white powers. It also bribes the Black compradors with part of the imperialist loot so they don’t buck the system.

We need to keep this fuller picture in view if we are to understand the so-called "failed state" of Nigeria. Nigeria, from the viewpoint of its population, is a failed state, has always been a failed state, i.e., a state that has failed to serve them or address their interests. And it has been that way right from its founding by the British a century ago. But it is not yet a failed state from the standpoint of its British and other imperialist masters. It has always served the white power interest, and consistently, at the expense of the interests of its population, during both the period of White Expatriate colonialism which ended in 1960, and the period of Black Comprador colonialism that began in 1960. We need to be ever mindful of these two senses of the phrase “failed state”.

Incidentally, though Nigeria is financially in a position to give free education to all its citizens—let’s leave aside the matter of the damaging white supremacist content of that education—part of why it does not do so is that much of its resources is pumped abroad to the coffers of the white supremacists through "debt" repayments and the routine looting by the foreign companies and their Nigerian comprador agents. If Obasanjo had chosen to apply to Nigeria's needs the $12bn he eagerly handed over to the white shylocks, there would be more than enough funds for the free education Franklyn is talking about, and for much else.

Nigeria could become like Kuwait, Dubai etc., or even like Cuba, if it organized to use its oil earnings in the interest of its population. But for 50 years, the Black comprador colonialists have not seen fit to organize that. With their Eurocentric education and blancophile brainwashing and their mental allegiance to White supremacy, they have fallen for every conman advice that the white supremacists gave them on "development", especially through the IMF and the World Bank and the foreign aid outfits like Britain's ODA and America's USAID.

The ways of white supremacy are comprehensively devious. In fact one of its uses for the "independence" imperialism granted its colonies was to enable it to deny responsibility for what its Black comprador agents do to their own people, even though it is all part of what they are prompted and encouraged to do for the continuing imperialist plunder of these "ex-colonies". These black misgovernments are serving as monkey's paws and fall guys for the plundering of Black Africa by and for the white powers.

Like the Black Slavers in the era of the Chattelization Wars, a.k.a. the Slave Trade, and like the plantation overseers and house niggers of ante-bellum USA, the Black colonialists of today operate within the framework and mandate given them by white supremacy, but they add their own peculiar twists to the master's mandate. The executive anarchism of the Nigerian comprador elite just happens to be, perhaps, the most abominable of these local twists to the basic mandate given by white supremacy to its local black agents.

We all need to continually deepen and update our understanding of white supremacy and its manifold and morphing ways if we are to see its dominant and directing roles in our condition. We also need to understand the roles of its black colonialist agents among us, and their own special contributions to the mess. If you want more insights into the Nigerian case, I can send you "Black Colonialists"—an interview I did two years ago on the roots of the trouble with Nigeria. You could also read The West and the Rest of Us, for insights on the ways and means of white supremacy especially during the post WWII transition to Black colonialism in Africa.

* * * * *

Responses

Nigeria: White Supremacy, Criminal or Traitorous Behavior

Chinweizu, the criminal and corrupting behavior of African heads of state, I suspect, existed long before there was the British, the French, or the Americans. This point was made by the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem in his novel Bound to Violence and in his 1971 interview in Commonweal. Yambo said, "It was the black aristocrat who made black people become Negroes. If you look at the entire history, you find there were three stages of oppression: blacks oppressing blacks, Arabs oppressing blacks, and whites oppressing blacks" (Yambo Ouologuem). So we have come full circle. Now we have again "blacks oppressing blacks."

There has always been a "global" struggle for resources and power. Indeed that struggle has "morphed" in magnitude and character. And there probably has always been enticements from foreign powers. But because there are external enticements (say from the West), there is no reason to conclude that the enticing power (say USA or France or UK or white global corporations like oil companies) or the powers that lend some sort of assistance in a nation's reign (say China's recent sale of tanks to the Khartoum government) that we can conclude that that nation (say Nigeria or Sudan or South Africa) is a mere puppet of foreign influence (the agents of "white supremacy").

Nigerian (or South African or Sudanese) leaders made political decisions—without an American gun at their heads, or a French tank on the lawn of government house, or UK threats of invasions—about Nigeria (or South Africa or Sudan), its people, its economies, its internal development. We (Nigeria or South Africa or blacks leaders in the diaspora) will never have a situation in which there will be no foreign power that will not provide enticements as well as threats. The onus of the national oppression problem settles on black leaders and heads of state, not on the heads of foreign states or the heads of global corporations.

If you want to call the present black national oppression, "neo-colonialism," okay. But do not make a fool of us and common sense and say that this neo-colonialism was instituted and is sustained by "white supremacy" and there is nothing these leaders can do about it. If you insist on doing so, you must offer much more evidence of this "Black Comprador" relationship in which black leaders are being compelled to oppress and murder their own people and that they are receiving direct payments from Western corporations and Western states to do so.

As you have pointed out with regard to the Khartoum government, it is not so much that they are subject to the foreign powers who sustain "Arab Supremacy," that is, that they are not puppets of Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Syria, but rather that their heads are filled with Islamic political ideology that they are willing to slaughter and displace their own citizens because of native greed. If you are suggesting that the heads of states for Nigeria and South Africa are operating in such a was as they are in oppressing their native populations because their heads are filled with foreign ideologies and greed, I might agree. But that indeed is a far cry from saying that Nigeria and South Africa are the puppets of "white supremacy."

Chinweizu, your view of "white supremacy" as the primary culprit in Nigeria or South Africa's present difficulties is essentially different from that of Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh, who says, “The home-grown masters have now new masters: namely their inordinate greed. They shipped their loot to Switzerland; housing it in numbered accounts. The rape of the country assumed the same trajectory in both epochs. Our local pirates in some space of four decades succeeded in out-performing the colonial masters in greed, thievery and plunder of our commonweal” (my italics).

That is, you place your emphasis on external influence and puppetry (rather than traitorous behavior), whereas Ogbunwezeh places his emphasis on a problem of internal governance and national or individual character (that is, criminality). If you eliminate such individuals whose emphasis is greed for money and power, he implies, Nigeria and South Africa and others such black states have a greater possibility of building up individuals who dwell on the true and good and thus the likelihood of developing model states. The political problem is not across the ocean but much closer to home.—Rudy

* * * * *

Pre-Obama White Supremacy

I have Pre-Obama thoughts about "white supremacy". I have been thinking about this phrase "white supremacy" for a long time, especially ever time you, Rudy, have brought it up again and again to prove your several points about it. Almost three years ago, your arguments suggested that you believed it existed in large measure. Lately, you seem to be arguing from the point of greater responsibility among Blacks, as if White Supremacy is not monolithic. Then I noticed that I tended to agree with both the new you and with Chinweizu, which really made no sense to me. How could both of you be correct, I thought?

But then, lately, as I have tried to imagine a pre- and a post-Obama America, I have come to this conclusion: Even where and when only one of us in America or the world is confused about White Supremacy's existence, that confusion suggests that White Supremacy's hegemony over us is, indeed, in our cognitive struggles. The thing about this white supremacy is that even if it were never again practiced—if white America did nothing to racialize us ever again—it would not cease to exist. Its greatest control over us is in making us think that it does not exist in any degree any longer.

Here is my best example of why I believe it does exist in a palpable way and does hold sway over our cognitive activity. Remember—my example does not assume that there is a Barack Hussein Obama on the horizon. If Obama becomes our next President and proves to be what we hope he will be for all America, then my example may no longer make sense (for me at least).

So here's my pre-Obama thinking about white supremacy: It does not matter one iota which party is in the White House. And it does not matter which Ray Nagin or Tavis Smiley or Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Mark Morial or black police chief or black school board superintendent is in position. No, it especially does not matter which party is in the White House! When the Democrats or the Republicans lose the White House, the outgoing party—all the aides and staff people, and some Congress administrators and members—spreads out into the Greater Washington, D.C., or into home states, and assumes lucrative appointments.

They simply await their turn to return. Nothing transformative emerges. And then the next party gets in, and the outgoing folks take up their appointments in the land and await their turn to return. Nothing transformative emerges. The two parties simply swap positions, dust off the chairs, and assume business as usual in this land of free-market politics.

And Black on Black crime in America and Africa continues to increase. You can not convince me that down in our counties and cities and states, and among the tribal and sectarian divisions of Africa, that we cannot halt crime on this planet. I am convinced that Supremacy does not want to stop it, because it's the best way to rid the planet of unwanted peoples—just let them kill one another. Let them die on dope and sadness and religious slogans.

It is because the face of White Supremacy is sometimes also black that we think that White Supremacy is diminishing and that we are our own responsibility. But it's the same lesson being perpetrated over and over again! We argue about its existence while it exists. We commit crimes against one another while it exists. We are still as a nation and as an African continent on lesson one. Supremacy was our first teacher in the New World and all we are doing is mimicking our First Teacher.—Mackie

* * * * *

Two Aspects of White Supremacy: Practice and Cognitive

My changed view on "white supremacy" surfaced in 2008 after Iowa voted for Barack Obama. So it is a recent thinking. It's an inward questioning that is going on. In some sense in these correspondences and editorials, I’m thinking out loud. I expected that in Iowa Obama would come in at best in third. He came in first. It shocked me and many others Americans—black and white. I concluded that white people I had in my head did not correspond to actual white people in America. This vote suggested that no position in America existed that a black person could not occupy. In short, that Jim Crow politics and any extension of it were dead in America.

Your view of “white supremacy” is most serious and thoughtful, especially since it is not wholly and entirely political as was the case with my previous discussions in the pieces Nigeria and White Supremacy and The Death of White Supremacy? Yours is a far more nuanced perspective. That’s the path, I think, we should take by necessity if we are to be fair and balanced in talking to ourselves and talking to white people about "white supremacy."

For one of the truisms of Obama's rhetoric, I believe, is that we Americans (black and white) are more alike than different and that white Americans are more accepting of black Americans than we think. The former hostilities and hatreds and prejudices are declining rapidly, especially among the younger generations, who have had no experience of Jim Crow or no sense what it was really like, as we of our generation have no real sense of the antebellum slave world of the Southern states, except through literature.

You have broken "white supremacy" up into two aspects 1) as practiced and 2) as cognition. In some sense I can testify to both aspects. The first relates to the palpable easily perceivable racial exclusion whose basis is the inferiority of the Negro; in short, that the Negro is another species of being who should not be granted the same rights and privileges of citizenship as whites. I was raised in this segregated world and observed and experienced it in separate educational facilities and in transportation on buses between southern Virginia and Baltimore. I had little or no contact with whites except in public places, at stores or in the fields of work.

Jim Crow politics laid the ground and conditioned my adulthood. It only began to change as I was making my way to college with the federal passage of the 1964 and 1965 racial integration laws. Probably by the 1980s they were more or less fully in force. But my Jim Crow conditioning was not fully wiped away. As Dick Gregory pointed out recently, he hears a police siren behind him and he holds the steering wheel tighter and when the police car passes him by he thanks God. I do not think that black kids today have the racial fears that their grandfathers have or had. So in some sense I see this as the cognitive aspects to which you referred.

That is, that "white supremacy" exists in our minds and hearts because of its former palpable existence in our lives and that our recognition of it was a means of survival. Possibly older whites retain some of this white skin privileging and wish for its return. But for many blacks every act or symbolical aspect of racism reminds us of its former sway and the possibility of its resurfacing with its former sway. One might compare this mental state to those Jews who survived the reign of Hitler or their descendants and that any or the slightest hint of anti-semitism unsettles, whether that person is a practicing Jew or whether he or she has only a Jewish grandmother.

Now for the second part. I suppose indeed that "white supremacy" can have a black face if that means that a black person can assert racist opinions with respect to blacks and commit racist acts against blacks. But these are insignificant vestiges or shadows of that which was a state of white supremacy. There were such persons as Anglo-Africans, but often these persons were also black nationalists and Pan Africanists, such as Alexander Crummell, the mentor of W.E.B. Du Bois, who thought that English should be the language that all Africans should adopt and who thought as well very little of African languages. Of course, he did not view blacks as inferior, which I think one must assert as the key aspect of white supremacy.

Have we eliminated every vestige of racism in our society? No. Will racists with white supremacy views continue to exist? Yes. Are there sick white people who receive pleasure from black deaths and suffering? Possibly.

The world we grew up in has changed, Mackie. We are far beyond the world of our childhood. Many more opportunities exist now for blacks and their children. The world is changing quickly for better and worse, but not necessarily in the old categories of the past. Admittedly, race and ethnic distinctions will for sometime yet be used in economic exploitation and for political positioning. They have some impact in our justice and educational systems which remain in great need of reform.

But many of these problems are the result of economic policies that have been signed onto ignorantly or thoughtlessly by both blacks and whites, for more selfish economic reasons than for racial reasons, though these policies may have an anti-black impact. For instance, there are too many Americans working more than 60 hours a week for less than $10 an hour. Deregulation of the economy and anti-union practices have had an impact on the expansion of the criminal justice system as well as deleterious impact on the education system, and have had a greater impact on blacks than whites, for blacks started farther down the ladder of success because of past racial crimes.

In turn, blacks have to adapt at a quicker rate to cultural, economic and political changes. As presently organized, American society, less tolerant, provides fewer chances for catching up. This new state of things requires more restraint, more focus, more discipline, more discretion. These internal changes cannot be organized on the basis of racial pride. There might indeed be too much racial pride, especially of the warped kind. Immigrants are coming into the country and on the basis of character they are out achieving our young men and women.

These positive acts of awareness and social consciousness by politicians, religious, social and business leaders, I think, combined with a friendlier economy of corporate regulation for the working man will cut into those markings and statistics that ideologues brandish as emblematic of the existence of white supremacy.—Rudy

* * * * *
Dear Rudy,

What you are ignoring is the fact that 90% of Black people in any Western culture are also "White Supremacist".You can't be Culturally British or Culturally French or Culturally American without being "White Supremacist".In Africa, as well, a very large portion of the most Colonized areas are made up of people who have a "Quasi White Supremacist" mentality. The fact that they still have their own languages, traditions, names, etc. is what keeps them from being totally WS, but they are still carriers.

The description you gave of Blacks and our "self-undoing" is true, but then so is Chinweizu's argument.

Otherwise, why would 90% of black women wear processed hair? Why would 90% of black men desire Mulatto women and consider them black? Why do we accept the idea that Mulatto OBAMA is to be the "first Black President" when in fact he's the first "Biracial" President? We accept all of this, because we, too, harbor White Supremacist belief systems. You can't have a SEXIST society, Rudy, unless the Mothers of the boy children are also predominately sexist.

You can't have a EUROCENTRIC society unless most of the people in it adhere to Eurocentrism.

How many Black men in America dress in African garb every day, Rudy? How many Black men in America have endeavored to speak an African language in their daily lives? No, to be culturally American, is White Supremacy itself.

Who is featured in the Black man's music videos, Rudy? The white man's mother (or an imitation of her).—Kola

* * * * *

Kola, I love you too much to argue with you.

But let me say this. All the instances of incongruence you point out are in some ways humorous and point out contradictions in the racialized life of the modern as well as the post-modern world, and attempts to reconcile them. They are one might say hangovers passed down from an experience of white supremacy. Or they are the result of nonwhites living in a society in which the majority of the population is of European extraction. Most of the acts you have chosen to highlight are choices rather than impositions. Some of them I do not care for but I find most tolerable or desirable.

I am culturally an American. And I in no way consider the popular culture "white," neither in its music, its dance, its speech, in contemporary art, in body language, its food, its literature, even in its dress. The cultures of the world have come to this land and found a place. American culture is, what they say in New Orleans, a gumbo, very unique and very global.—Rudy

* * * * *

Rudy, I love you, too, King.

Feel free to argue with me anytime, because I respect your opinion so much. You and Chinweizu are my Lion Kings. Also feel free to curse me out. If people could actually see my movements, facial expressions and tone of voice when I say things they find "volcanic"---they would see that I am a comical, loving wise-talking black mother. Not the serious bitch they envision. I am always prepared to change my mind, but no one ever tries to change it. They fear me. Which is ridiculous. My thing is this—I love my people. You are one of my favorite ones.

On another note: Rudy, I still have not gotten the book deal that my agent expected,therefore, I am not able to send you the money I had planned just yet. Hold tight, however, because it will happen.—Kola

* * * * *

Blame-mongering vs. Factor-analysis‏

First of all, let me make it clear that I am not interested in "blame". I am a scientist, my interest is in investigating the factors relevant to a phenomenon, not in assigning blame. I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE!!! Blame mongering is for moralizers; factor analysis is for problem solvers."—Chinweizu

* * * * *

Chinweizu, Is "white supremacy" some unembodied phenomena unattached to persons that one studies like one studies say AIDS? The social sciences are among the weakest and most inexact of sciences and some might say that it is not science at all, except when statistics are used. In any case, all science must in some way deal with morality and ethics, especially when one is dealing with human behavior.

I did not note any factor analysis in your expositions. What stood out was racial ideology."—Rudy

* * * * *

Rudy, I suspect Chinweizu thinks that your goal or end in everything you write is to establish blame. I think he believes that that is your conclusion and not one of your several premises leading up to a more significant facor. So you need to clear that up. Of course, one way to clear all of this up is for all of us to keep reading Chinweizu and you. So, for me, you do not need to withdraw your own personal take on Chinweizu's scholarship.

I am sure—well, certainly, I hope—that when Chinweizu calms down and thinks about it, he'll reason that while scholars can have no hold, outside of the classroom, over how readers process, experience, interpret, read their scholarship. Chinwezu calls his work factor analysis. Rudy suggests -- for him as a reader—that Chinwezu's work is blame analysis, and Rudy does not mean this negatively.

Failure analysis might be a better term, because the way factor analysis is used in the "The West and the Rest" scholarship—whether the term is mentioned in the scholarship to hand or not, these texts concentrate on the failure of the West against Islam.

There is a whole slew of The West and the Rest texts in print. Here are just two Google lists.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=The+West+and+the+Rest&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=The+West+and+the+Rest+of+Us&btnG=Google+Search

Chinweizu's work is, indeed, a comprehensive example of factor analysis. Whether implemented in the physical or mathematical or psychological or sociological sciences, factor analysis reduces the plethora of variables under observation and discussion by grouping and then analyzing these variables down to the most overarching category or factor. What Chinweizu has published on this web site certainly amounts to being very excellent examples of factor analysis in the social sciences, particularly on the clash of civilizations between the West and the Rest.

This West and the Rest scholarship—not necessarily Chinweizu's, I hasten to add—is usually framed as The West and the Rest Against Us. The rest here are the Arab or Islamic lands. Roger Scruton's work falls into this frame:

ROGER SCRUTON
http://www.morec.com/scruton/ [VIDEO LECTURE]
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-scruton092302.asp

Chinweizu's scholarship, I believe, analyzes the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial criminality of Africans against their own people and sets this criminality up side by side with that of the West in equal weight and measure. He points out the failure in both our houses. He does not blame. He shows where and how we have all failed. That said, if readers wishes to use this scholarship to place blame where blame may need to be placed, these readers need to reveal what end they have in mind. We already know that the goal or end of most of the The West and Rest scholars is to privilege Christianity over Islam, the West over the Rest.

I would also suggest that Chinweizu could be more forthcoming and reveal his underlying end in his scholarship. What motivates him to do this scholarship and not some other kind? What end does he want to accomplish? Surely, his aim is not only "objective scientific scholarship." We have known far too long now that such a motivation driving our scholarship is a myth. Everything has subconscious as well as conscious slant.

A BUDDHIST ANALYSIS OF FAILURE (BLAME/FACTOR) ANALYSIS http://www.bpf.org/tsangha/loy-westrest.html

—Mackie

One More Thing, for now, on George Sodini and woman-killers who then commit suicide

It's a shame these men don't have what I'll term "Male Misogynist Murderer's Dyslexia" (MMMD) whereby they shoot and kill themselves first, and then... do nothing else to harm anyone.

To all men who plan to kill women, please kill yourselves first.

Thanks.
END OF POST.

Woman-Killing, Media, and How We Report Misogyny

[this disturbing image is the even more disturbing avatar for a 21 year old straight man, who calls himself "Misogynist". For more on him, see here]

This post exists, in part, to honor the tragic loss of humanity of three women who were recently assassinated by a misogynist murderer:

Betsy Gannon, age 49;

Heidi Overmier, age 46; and

Jody Billingsley, age 37.

There are nine other women to whom I offer prayers and best wishes for their healing:

Ashley Ferragonio, 23, seriously injured;

Gretchen Lewis, 26, critically injured;

Heather Sherba, 22, seriously injured;

Jackquilyne Gallagher, 25, seriously injured;

Lisa Fleeher, 27, critically injury;

Mary Primis, 26, critically injured;

Melinda Williams, 22, seriously injured;

Srimeenakish Sankar, 31, seriously injured; and

Stephanie Latusick, 33, treated and released Tuesday night.

For more about these women, please click here. And note the overt sexism and heterosexism that informs how some the women are described. If one or more is lesbian, would we know? The reports seem obsessed in telling us all about these women's connections to men. One of the women, Jody Billingsley, is shown in a photo in which she appears to be sitting close by another woman, who is partially cropped out. We are given the following information about her: 37, Mt. Lebanon, deceased. Single. Master's in physical therapy. Worked as sales representative for Medtronic. Enjoyed gardening, sports. "She was a beautiful girl, very sweet, very nice, very friendly," neighbor John Williams said.

And if she weren't beautiful, sweet, and nice, and if she weren't friendly, would her death be any less tragic?

It is no accident that the dominant news media want us to know the extent to which the three murdered women, and the nine other women injured by the white heterosexual male woman-killer George Sodini, 48, were partnered with men or were, or would soon be, mothers. So we learn right away that one of women was "a newlywed" (I presume wed to a man) and one of the surviving women, the instructor of the Latin Dance class, was "pregnant": Mary Primis, pregnant fitness trainer, shot once in each shoulder. Being treated for injuries at hospital. Unborn child survived.

I get the sense that if Ms. Primus had survived but not the fetus, this would be more tragic than if the fetus survived and Ms. Primus did not. Is it not "crucial" here to know how the woman is doing? Can the news of her pregnancy remain none of our business? Will the news of a woman having recently married a man ever be irrelevant in a report about a group of women being shot in the dark, by a man--some to death? Why aren't women's lives valued as human lives, on their own, independently of whether or not they were married to men, or had children, or were pregnant? Or "a beautiful girl". Or sweet. Or nice.

In mass misogynist media, a woman gains human status and worth by being in relationship with men, and by mothering "men's" children. Hence the hatred directed at single mothers, especially if of color, at women who do not bear children through sex with a man, such as Nadia Suleman, and at lesbians who are partnered and parenting their children with women.

On to other matters related to this horror.

CNN reports: "He felt lonely, said he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984. He said his father didn't love him. And he detailed plans to kill young women."

As if these follow in some logical sequence. Given this information, why didn't he show up at a gathering of fathers, turn off the lights, and let bullets fly? Because women are supposed to be the targets of men's wrath or loneliness?

What follows is part of a news report about the contents of his diary:

The December 22 entry says: "Time is moving along. Planned to have this done already. I will just keep a running log here as time passes. Many of the young girls here look so beautiful as to not be human, very edible. After joining this gym, started lifting weights and like it."

Two days later came an entry about loneliness.

"Moving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984, last Christmas with Pam was in 1983. Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29)."

By December 26, the writer seems to have picked a date. "I will shoot for Tuesday, January 6, 2009, at maybe 8:15. I have list of to-do items to make."

In an entry dated January 5, he laments, "Every evening I am alone, and then go to bed alone. ... Why should I continue another 20+ years alone? I will just work, come home, eat, maybe do something, then go to bed (alone) for the next day of the same thing. This is the Auschwitz Syndrome, to be in serious pain for so long one thinks it is normal. I cannot wait for tomorrow!"

Then he loses his nerve.

"It is 8:45PM," reads an entry dated January 6. "I chickened out! [Expletive] I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"

What is in bold was made so by me. To my knowledge Auschwitz Syndrome was not typified by a male concentration camp survivor going out and killing women due to his emotional and physical pain. And apparently his pain wasn't normalised sufficiently. He was well aware of it, focused on it quite intensely, and used it as a terrible excuse to execute a killing spree against "girls so beautiful as to not be human, very edible." Given that horrendous understanding of their humanity he wasn't, in his view, killing anyone; he was merely fixing his dinner. Too bad for them he wasn't vegetarian. The question remains, why didn't anyone stop him? How much information do men need to know about a man who is going to kill women before we prevent it from happening?

Apparently, there is no reasonable answer to this question. He can proclaim his plans and still only be seen as harmlessly expressing himself. As we know, men who threaten to kill women and have restraining orders placed against them do find and kill the women they wish to kill. As we know, men's ways of expressing their feelings for women often result in women being injured and killed. Clearly, men's right to express their feelings about and to women is not abridged or "repressed" in our patriarchal society, it is revered and protected.

If you think "protected" is too strong a term, note this, by a police officer:

George Sodini "had a lot of hatred, he was hell-bent on committing this act, and nothing was going to stop him," Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said at a news conference Wednesday. (Source: here.)

[image of Officer Moffatt is from here]

So even when a man tells the world he's planning on killing women "nothing was going to stop him"?!? What about you, officer? Isn't that your job? (Or is just harassing people of color?)

Take note of this particular murderer's stated intentions. (More detailed portions of his online diary can be read but be warned: this is utterly disturbing.) There and elsewhere we are reminded that this regular misogynist was "a lonely man", in "despair"; he was a man who hadn't had much heterosex in his life--according to Nightline's report, a man who was not asked out on dates by women. This probably describes many men, and what we are being told is that one way for such men to act is to become a mass killer of women. (If, by preventing radical feminist women from speaking on the air, we are given no other explanations for how it is that he came to be a woman-killer, other than this inadequate psychological sketch, what other conclusion are we supposed to arrive at?) He was especially well-armed with four guns. Does the number of guns a man carries reflect his level of despair? I wish the media would spare us all this patriarchy-denying psychologising.

For millennia, men, without any systematic interference from other men, have chosen to misogynistically and in many racist ways express their feelings of hurt and upset--or boredom, or loneliness, or need for pornographised sexual gratification, or out of a inhumanely self-serving wish to control, dominate, humiliate, subordinate women. Male supremacist media claim that there's some inevitable connection between women not paying enough attention to men and those men retaliating with violence against women; this histerical hypothesis, mired in the protection of patriarchal imperatives, is not new. But it remains dangerous. It is wrong information about why men harm women. Every man I know has been hurt in the context of intimate relationships with women (and, um, men).

Even the media is into showing us how heart-broken men can be. In the latest run of "The Bachelorette" the nice guy who is told he's not the one reflects on his heart-break and sorrow:

"It's the day of the final rose ceremony and we're a bundle of nerves, just like Jillian. Our heart sinks a little when we see that Kiptyn's limo is the first to arrive. It's never easy to let a great guy go but Jillian manages it with class. Kiptyn is not happy to hear that she's fallen in love with someone else, but as he exits, he's glad he put himself out there and told her how he felt."

In the follow-up show, we ought to note that Kiptyn didn't come back armed with weaponry with which to kill her and the man she did chose to be with. He did return, at the producers request (or mandate), and tell her that he's glad she is happy, even though the experience was deeply painful for him. See men, our violence against women is not biological or inevitable; it is willful, not adequately discouraged, not opposed en masse by men, and is, to the contrary, overwhelmingly and systematically supported.

Consider the following all-too-typical story by one woman about her experience with a man she doesn't know, on the street. It is a comment by a woman who goes by the name sojourner truth, and is located here, on the blog, Celie's Revenge:

I honestly believe that women in urban areas, particularly Black women in urban areas, should daily document the same race sex harassment that we have to endure daily in case people think that we are being 'hysterical' or exaggerating. I am seriously considering carrying a hidden camera and microphone and using the footage in an art installation project.

I was walking down the street again today in my urban, gentrification-resistant 'hood. Again, walking with a clear purpose, blinders on, earplugs in, going about my business, covered up much more than I wanted to be on a muggy, humid, late spring day.

At crosswalks, I am constantly scanning ahead to navigate which side of the street has more people, to make sure that no just released parolee or sex offender ex con who may happen to be watching my movement does not take my choice to simply WALK down the fucking sidewalk as an opportunity to stalk, harass, other otherwise menace me without witnesses. As I am doing this, waiting for the light to change, who do I spy? This same "bruuuutha" who, just a few days ago, questioned my sanity and sobriety for having the unmitigated GALL to have ignored his attempts to 'holla' at me as I attempted to walk down the street. He saw me and yelled, "Ay, ay". I ignored his obnoxious lack of home training and continued to wait for the light. My attempts to ignore him spur him on to further engage me. I have no idea why he insists on continuing this masochistic game of being obviously and painfully ignored by me in spite of his constant bellowing, perhaps in his pea sized brain, I am being a 'challenge' and playing hard to get, so of course, he ratchets up his efforts to get my attention, this time whistling and crooking his ashy finger at me as if I am his errant dog run astray. Yet again, I continue to ignore him. He crosses the street and walks alongside me, looking at me, then says, "It seems like we are having a communication problem". I do not respond, pretending to be mute and deaf as he walks alongside me, wanting to shout, "No, mutherfucker, WE do not have a 'communication problem', YOU have a self-entitlement and boundaries problem!"

Of course, I continue on my way and he FINALLY left me alone, probably because more people were gathering on the sidewalk, and he didn't want any witnesses to his harassment and sidewalk stalker bullshit.

I got to thinking, who are these males, and who taught them to think that this shit is ok?

I believe the answer to who teaches men to think that this shit is ok is other men, not women. And society-at-large, including its media, teaches men how to operate oppressively inside white heteromale supremacist systems of domination and entitlement.

A heterosexual woman I once knew for years in a professional context left her boyfriend; she broke up with him. After that, armed with a loaded gun, he came back to her rural home where she lived alone and killed her. He did this why? Because she did not wish to be with him any more? Because he was "in pain"? Because he "felt rejected"? If that's your answer, you're not paying attention to how society works against women. Clearly nursing his grief alone or with male friends wasn't sufficient; and in his social world it may not even have been a viable option. But he terrorised and murdered her not because he was ill-equipped to handle his pain. He had to remove her from his world, a man's world, which is the world. He did it because he learned from other woman-killers that murdering your ex-girlfriend is doable. He did it because there were no men to stop him from doing it. He did it because he knew how and where to have access to her. He did it because he had the means to do it.

Over two decades ago, a self-defined antifeminist walked into a college in Montreal and massacred many women, for being women. At that time, news coverage focused on how he must be "mad" (meaning insane, not angry), and that such a thing was inconceivable. In a society in which men kill and injure women by the minute, how can such an act be perceived as inconceivable? He wasn't the first to conceptualise it, after all. Men's mass murder of women has a long, long history.

Weekly, daily, hourly, minute by minute, women are violated and killed "by the men who love them" or the men who don't love them any more, or the men who don't know them at all. Men are taught to believe we should be endlessly appreciated and attended to by women, even women we don't know. Women are punished in ordinary and heinous ways by men in society, for being women who are human, with wills, with senses of self and personal agendas that are not wrapped neatly around men; women are punished if and when they do not behave the way one man or many men demand that they behave. (And even then.) Harassment is seen by men as appropriate if a woman he doesn't know doesn't respond to his hello (or whatever other derogatory four- or five-letter words he uses to open up lines of communication).

Rape is the a gendered collective punishment men routinely enforce directly on women for disobeying a cardinal patriarchal law: "You (woman, women) must want to be socially and sexually subservient to me (man, men) always, at any time of day or night. But regardless of your (any woman's) wishes, you will be accessible to me(n)." The gross predatory video voyeurism targeting ESPN broadcaster, Erin Andrews is not surprising, while it is horrifying. Gross (meaning here, both on a large scale, and egregious) predatory video and digital camera voyeurism/violation/victimisation is now normal. It relatively innocuous terms like "up-skirting". Websites, which get millions of hits, are dedicated to providing men with images from other men who have taken photos of women's bodies by positioning their cell phones or video cameras in ways that women don't know they are being physically and psychically violated.

The continued murder of women by men is likely--but not inevitable outside of a patriarchal context--in a society that, in so many ways, subordinates women to men's wills and wishes. When the subordination, the exploitation, the degradation of women by men is routinely called "just the way things are" we can be sure there's not likely to be a mass revolt against the status quo. What's the point of organising resistance to a turbulent sea? You accept fate or get out of the way. But for women, there is no where to go where they are "out of the way". And when battered, raped, and pimped women leave patriarchally possessive men to try and find that place, far too often they are hunted down and killed for it.

This particular murder of three women and maiming of nine is only the most currently media-reported story of such misogynist violence.

For more information on this story and specifically on Sodini's expressed hatred of women, see this video report, this webpage, and also this one. And please keep in mind, this is but the latest story of a normal man whose normal hate was expressed in a variety of ways. One way was him "spraying" (the media's terminology) bullets in a room at exercising women. However much exercise women do, women cannot, quite apparently, exercise their unofficial right to not be harmed by men.

There is much more to note in this latest crime and how it has been reported. For now, I'll mention one portion of a television news report. (It is linked to above, but to make things less complicated, I'll re-link to it. The relevant part is "-3:40" into the video report. In it, a sweet white woman in a lime green t-shirt who appears to be a neighbor, says with regret, "I never knew that he was that bad off or I would have invited him over more, you know, maybe to have coffee or to have a picnic, or something." My first reaction to hearing her say this was to be very frightened for her. When one hears this, one might temporarily forget how powerful the misogynistic cultural mandate is for women to never treat men harshly or unkindly; to never ignore or refuse a man's offer of contact; that men's pain is women's responsibility; that it is women's job to ease the hurt and appease the anger of men. So when one hears a woman says out loud what men want and expect women to do silently, we might remark, "Is she nuts?!" But let's not forget: In the patriarchal media and beyond it the woman-killing man (a term I prefer to the more romantised one used ubiquitously in the dominant media: "gunman") is always humanised well beyond the level of humanity he demonstrates in becoming a notorious public figure. We are all asked to withhold judgment--news reports must tell us what he allegedly did. We are allowed to offer pity or sorrow for this "lonely man", for this misogynistic mass murderer who didn't get asked out on enough dates by women. We are inundated with messages that the real victim here was the a poor dear heterosexual white man who was in such profound emotional pain that, well, he just had to plan for a long time how he was going to obtain guns and kill lots of women. Does the media care about the pain women are in because of all-too-typical woman-hating assholes like this guy? Apparently not so much.

To answer Catharine A. MacKinnon's politically significant while rhetorical question: "No; according to patriarchal men, women are not human."

A note to the fortunately dead George Sodini, who also expressed his sentiments this way: "Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one".

Wrong, George. YOU didn't like women. And whether you found them desirable has nothing to do with whether they would or should find you desirable. Women not giving you the time of day is not the same thing as you not being liked, fuckhead. I don't like you, for example. And I wish you had killed yourself, and no one else, years ago. Before your final atrocious actions most women couldn't care less about you. And that's exactly as it should have been and should remain, you despicable self-absorbed prick. May you burn in hell.

Healthy Communication and Mutual Respect: A Rare Practice of Equality in Sadistic Patriarchies

[image is from here]

What immediately follows is from the book Love and Pornography (2009). (See the previous post for more.)

A few months after arriving in California, and not long after I'd had my realization about the pervasiveness of porn, I invited a local NVC [non-violent communication] teacher to my home to tell me what training was available locally. As I've experienced with most people I meet in the NVC world, I felt safe and comfortable talking with him about what was going on in my life. When I brought up my angst about Garry's porn, he listened empathically, which helped settle my anxieties some.

Then I asked, "Why do so many people, including Garry, look at porn?"

"Well," he replied, "looking at porn is just a strategy for meeting needs, so if you can identify the needs he is meeting with it, you will have your answer. For example, most people strive to get money, but it's not the actual pieces of paper they're after, it's what money gives them. So money is the strategy to meet the need. For some, the need is purely survival: it's a way to put a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. For others, it's a way to get the respect or acceptance they want. The same goes for pornography -- people are after something when they look at it."

[Julian's note: His explanation for why men look at pornography, or procure women, is woefully inadequate in my view and patriarchally by-passes the whole issue of how it is that men set up society so that we have so much access to women's bodies. But he never said he was a profeminist and he does have valuable insights to offer her.]

I was starting to get it, and I was really curious now. "Got any ideas on what it might be that Garry is after?"

"I don't know about his motives specifically, and I think it's probably different for different people. But some people might want relief from the complications of a relationship, and they still get to feel the aliveness that comes from sexual energy."

[Julian's note: This completely fails to explain why it is men, disproportionately, who seek out images of raped, molested, incested, and economically exploited women to obtain "uncomplicated" sexual pleasure and relief; how is it that a man, any man, feels relief and pleasure when viewing images of human beings turned into sexxx-things, through many forms of covert and overt coercion and violence?]

We were quiet for a while and then he added, "But that doesn't mean porn is meeting all of Garry's needs. Often, a person will do something to try and feel better in one part of their life that has consequences for other parts of it. And then there is your side of things."

"What do you mean, my side of things?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "your pain is telling you that there are some needs that are not being met for you when he looks at porn. If you can see those needs clearly, it will give you a greater understanding of what is so important to you."

I was hanging onto his every word. This was what I had spent weeks trawling the internet for but couldn't find: a way to understand what might be going on for the both of us. With these simple statements, I found what I was looking for and the door barring peace and understanding sprung open [...]

It would take a while for Garry and me to understand what this teacher meant [...], and longer yet before we could find ways to [consistently live in this approach to communication]. This book is the story of how our insight evolved--and how we ultimately created the love we had always wanted.

* * *

From the bits of the book I've read so far, there is a clear commitment on the part of Victoria and Garry to struggle together to work towards greater intimacy and healthier communication built on the values of honesty, compassion, and empathy.

It is rare, in my experience, that couples and friends know how to communicate with one another with mutual compassion, especially when both people are feeling psychologically defensive or emotionally threatened in some way. At those times in particular, caring communication tends to break down, no longer flowing in a constructive way that allows each person to feel genuinely heard and understood.

Victoria Prater's book, Love and Pornography gives me a deep experience of what that sort of communication sounds like and feels like in action. It is, to say the least, refreshing.

In this regard alone, I find this book to be both solidly feminist and activist on the interpersonal level, and now, with the book's publication, on the social level.

I come to relationships with various levels of openness, wariness, distrust, curiosity, and longing. But I am not especially good at identifying what I am needing, in part because I grew up in a family where me identifying my needs, let alone expressing them, did not seem to be welcomed. Or, at least, that was my experience of my family; others' needs seemed to take priority. Additionally, due to various forms of trauma, I had learned to dissociate from my body and to partition feelings, putting some away to be felt at a later date. Often it takes days for me to know all of how I feel about something that has happened that caused some level of dissociation. (And I know this is not uncommon.)

Additionally, though, white and male supremacist socialisation allows white men to be oblivious to a lot of what is happening in the world, including the world of women and girls around them. Not only are boys are shamed by other boys and men for expressing vulnerable feelings, we are simultaneously encouraged to pride ourselves on being tough, on not feeling the hurt that comes from living life. For example, we are told by grade school sports coaches (and also in college, if we get that far) to shake off pain, to push through it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard men in boys' lives tell them to "be a man" when the child gets hurt and starts crying. It's disgusting. I despised male team sports because of this, seeing it as utterly inhumane. This enforced lack of self-care, and learned callous disregard for the human who is hurting, is directly related to being able to inflict pain on others, including, horrifically, for fun or a sexual thrill. Various combinations of sadism and self-unawareness are hallmarks of men's treatment of others, historically and currently. Society, in so many ways, teaches boys to be hurtful to others as badge of honor, as a route to status-among-men. Those who enlist in the military and go abroad to slaughter people are frequently called heroes, particularly when they die. To say that patriarchy is a death-worshiping form of civilisation is an understatement.

I remember one time a male child I babysat was with his mother and the man she had chosen as a romantic partner. Thank god it didn't last between them; he was such a jerk in so many ways, in my view and also, not soon enough, in hers. The boy, around eleven, had slipped on a rug and landed against an active wood stove, burning his forearm badly. He cried in obvious pain. Soon this adult male jerk was around him, verbally encouraging him to be tough and not cry. I was furious. I think I intervened, saying "He doesn't have to be tough; he just got badly burned!" but it may be something I only said in my head. I lost all respect for him then, as did the boy and his mother.

As I read Love and Pornography my heart is warmed by the heterosexual couple's commitment to caring communication that is not just aimed in one direction--from her to him.

The warmth cools on occasion. I do have issues with Garry; so far, he doesn't name or take responsibility for his male supremacist privileges. Seeing how that lack of naming and irresponsibility impacts her negatively makes me angry. I get that obliviousness comes with privilege. But, often, if not always, there's a level of willful (self-serving) ignorance that is usually present in the privileged as well. I'm curious to see what he is willing to "get" and hope he does his homework, so the humanisation of a man doesn't fall on the shoulders, once again, of a woman.
END OF POST.

Love and Pornography, a new book: check it out

[cover of new book, Love and Pornography]

I have recently become aware a book that may be helpful to women, particularly and especially to a woman who is in some way intimately involved with a man who uses Internet pornography. It is called Love and Pornography and is authored by Victoria Prater, with assistance from her husband Garry.

Below is the link to it. After I finish reading it I may review it. For now, I just want people to know about it, as, by all accounts, it is a book whose form and contents don't exist elsewhere in text. (There is a book called The Porn Trap and I know nothing at all about it, but I see from its table of contents that it is structured more as a traditional self-help book, whereas Love and Pornography is structured more as a personal journey the author takes you on through her very difficult struggle to hold onto a relationship with a man who is deeply involved in looking at online pornography--a dilemma so many heterosexual women face.) This is a book written from a woman's point of view--and in this case the writer is a woman for whom joining in on the allegedly harmless fun of looking at pornography with her husband is not an option. It is very inclusive of her husband's voice in many ways, in many places. It is an intimate, challenging conversation between them, and an honest, open conversation between Victoria Prater and the reader. It is a chance to know how one heterosexual couple faced this issue together, with honesty and courage.

Please check it out here, get it, read it, and let me know what you think.

The author(s) also have a webpage with additional information, Get Help With Porn: http://gethelpwithporn.com/.

-- Julian
END OF POST.

Malalai Joya: The woman who will not be silenced

[the image is credited to Getty; what follows here is the original caption to this photograph located, in a cropped version, with the article about her:]
The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan - the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda

Thanks to Jenn McLune for linking to this news piece from The Independent, which may also be found here as well as below:

* * *

Enraged by Taliban oppression Malalai Joya became a women’s rights activist, and after the US-led invasion, took on the new regime as an MP. But speaking out has come at a cost. She tells Johann Hari why death threats won’t stop her exposing ugly truths about Afghanistan.

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

I am not sure how many more days I will be alive," Malalai Joya says quietly.

The warlords who make up the new "democratic" government in Afghanistan have been sending bullets and bombs to kill this tiny 30-year-old from the refugee camps for years – and they seem to be getting closer with every attempt. Her enemies call her a "dead woman walking". "But I don't fear death, I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice," she says plainly. "I am young and I want to live. But I say to those who would eliminate my voice: 'I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.'"

The story of Malalai Joya turns everything we have been told about Afghanistan inside out. In the official rhetoric, she is what we have been fighting for. Here is a young Afghan woman who set up a secret underground school for girls under the Taliban and – when they were toppled – cast off the burka, ran for parliament, and took on the religious fundamentalists.

But she says: "Dust has been thrown into the eyes of the world by your governments. You have not been told the truth. The situation now is as catastrophic as it was under the Taliban for women. Your governments have replaced the fundamentalist rule of the Taliban with another fundamentalist regime of warlords. [That is] what your soldiers are dying for." Instead of being liberated, she is on the brink of being killed.

The story of Joya is the story of another Afghanistan – the one behind the burka, and behind the propaganda.

I "We are our sisters' keepers"

I meet Joya in a London apartment where she is staying with a supporter for a week, to talk about her memoir – but even here, her movements have to be kept secret, as she flits from one safe house to another. I am told not to mention her location to anyone. She is standing in the corridor, small and slim, with her hair flowing freely, and she greets me with a solid handshake. But, when our photographer snaps her, she begins to giggle girlishly: the grief etched on to her sallow face melts away, and she laughs in joyous little squeaks. "I can never get used to this!" she says.

Then, as I sit her down to talk through her life-story, the pain soaks into her face once more. Her body tightens into a tense coil, and her fists close.

Joya was four days old when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. On that day, her father dropped out of his studies to fight the invading Communist army, and vanished into the mountains. She says: "Since then, all we have known is war."

Her earliest memory is of clinging to her mother's legs while policemen ransacked their house looking for evidence of where her father was hiding. Her illiterate mother tried to keep her family of 10 children alive as best she could. When the police became too aggressive, she took her kids to refugee camps across the border in Iran. In these filthy tent-cities lying on the old Silk Road, Afghans huddled together and were treated as second-class citizens by the Iranian regime. At night, wild animals could wander into the tents and attack children. There, word reached the family that Joya's father had been blown up by a landmine – but he was alive, after losing a leg.

There were no schools in the Iranian camps, and Joya's mother was determined her daughters would receive the education she never had. So they fled again, to camps in western Pakistan. There, Joya began to read – and was transformed. "Tell me what you read and I shall tell you what you are," she says. Starting in her early teens, she inhaled all the literature she could – from Persian poetry to the plays of Bertolt Brecht to the speeches of Martin Luther King. She began to teach her new-found literacy to the older women in the camps, including her own mother.

She soon discovered that she loved to teach – and, when she turned 16, a charity called the Organisation for Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities (OPAWC) made a bold suggestion: go to Afghanistan, and set up a secret school for girls, under the noses of the Taliban tyranny.

So she gathered her few clothes and books and was smuggled across the border – and "the best days of my life" began. She loathed being forced to wear a burka, being harassed on the streets by the omnipresent "vice and virtue" police, and being under constant threat of being discovered and executed. But she says it was worth it for the little girls. "Every time a new girl joined the class, it was a triumph," she says, beaming. "There is no better feeling."

She only just avoided being caught, again and again. One time she was teaching a class of girls in a family's basement when the mother of the house yelled down suddenly: "Taliban! Taliban!" Joya says: "I told my students to lie down on the floor and stay totally silent. We heard footsteps above us and waited a long time." On many occasions, ordinary men and women – anonymous strangers – helped her out by sending the police charging off in the wrong direction. She adds: "Every day in Afghanistan, even now, hundreds if not thousands of ordinary women act out these small gestures of solidarity with each other. We are our sisters' keepers."

The charity was so impressed with her they appointed her their director. Joya decided to set up a clinic for poor women just before the 9/11 attacks. When the American invasion began, the Taliban fled her province, but the bombs kept falling. "Many lives were needlessly lost, just like during the September 11 tragedy," she says. "The noise was terrifying, and children covered their ears and screamed and cried. Smoke and dust rose and lingered in the air with every bomb dropped."

As soon as the Taliban retreated, they were replaced – by the warlords who had ruled Afghanistan immediately before. Joya says that, at this point, "I realised women's rights had been sold out completely... Most people in the West have been led to believe that the intolerance and brutality towards women in Afghanistan began with the Taliban regime. But this is a lie. Many of the worst atrocities were committed by the fundamentalist mujahedin during the civil war between 1992 and 1996. They introduced the laws oppressing women followed by the Taliban – and now they were marching back to power, backed by the United States. They immediately went back to their old habit of using rape to punish their enemies and reward their fighters."

The warlords "have ruled Afghanistan ever since," she adds. While a "showcase parliament has been created for the benefit of the US in Kabul", the real power "is with these fundamentalists who rule everywhere outside Kabul". As an example, she names the former governor of Herat, Ismail Khan. He set up his own "vice and virtue" squads which terrorised women and smashed up video and music cassettes. He had his own "private militias, private jails". The constitution of Afghanistan is irrelevant in these private fiefdoms.

Joya discovered just what this meant when she started to set up the clinic – and a local warlord announced that it would not be allowed, since she was a woman, and a critic of fundamentalism. She did it anyway, and decided to fight this fundamentalist by running in the election for the Loya jirga ("meeting of the elders") to draw up the new Afghan constitution. There was a great swelling of support for this girl who wanted to build a clinic – and she was elected. "It turned out my mission," she says, "would be to expose the true nature of the jirga from within."

II "I would never again be safe"

As she stepped past the world's television cameras into the Loya jirga, the first thing Joya saw was "a long row with some of the worst abusers of human rights that our country had ever known – warlords and war criminals and fascists".

She could see the men who invited Osama bin Laden into the country, the men who introduced the misogynist laws later followed by the Taliban, the men who had massacred Afghan civilians. Some had got there by intimidating the electorate, others by vote-rigging, and yet more were simply appointed by Hamid Karzai, the former oilman installed by the US army to run the country. She thought of an old Afghan saying: "It's the same donkey, with a new saddle."

For a moment, as these old killers started to give long speeches congratulating themselves on the transition to democracy, Joya felt nervous. But then, she says, "I remembered the oppression we face as women in my country, and my nervousness evaporated, replaced by anger."

When her turn came, she stood, looked around at the blood-soaked warlords on every side, and began to speak. "Why are we allowing criminals to be present here? They are responsible for our situation now... It is they who turned our country into the centre of national and international wars. They are the most anti-women elements in our society who have brought our country to this state and they intend to do the same again... They should instead be prosecuted in the national and international courts."

These warlords – who brag about being hard men – could not cope with a slender young woman speaking the truth. They began to shriek and howl, calling her a "prostitute" and "infidel", and throwing bottles at her. One man tried to punch her in the face. Her microphone was cut off and the jirga descended into a riot.

"From that moment on," Joya says, "I would never again be safe... For fundamentalists, a women is half a human, meant only to fulfil a man's every wish and lust, and to produce children and toil in the home. They could not believe that a young woman was tearing off their masks in front of the eyes of the Afghan people."

A fundamentalist mob turned up a few hours later at her accommodation, announcing they had come to rape and lynch her. She had to be placed under immediate armed guard – but she refused to be protected by American troops, insisting on Afghan officers.

Her speech was broadcast all over the world – and cheered in Afghanistan. She was flooded with support from the people of her country, delighted that somebody had finally spoken out. One dirt-poor village pooled its cash to send a delegate hundreds of miles across the country to explain how pleased they were.

An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons – one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: "I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear."

She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: "You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me."

But the US and Nato occupiers instructed Joya that she must show "politeness and respect" for the other delegates. When Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador, said this, she replied: "If these criminals raped your mother or your daughter or your grandmother, or killed seven of your sons, let alone destroyed all the moral and material treasure of your country, what words would you use against such criminals that will be inside the framework of politeness and respect?"

She leans forward and quotes Brecht: "He says, 'He who does not know the truth is only a fool. He who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a criminal.'"

The attempts to murder her began then with a sniper – and have not stopped since. But she says plainly, with her fist clenched: "I wanted the warlords to know I was not afraid of them."

So she ran for parliament – and won in a landslide. "I would return again to face those who had ruined my country," she explains, "and I was determined that I would stand straight and never bow again to their threats."

III "In every corner is a killer"

Joya looked out across the new Afghan parliament on her first day and thought: "In every corner is a killer, a puppet, a criminal, a drug lord, a fascist. This is not democracy. I am one of the very few people here who has been genuinely elected." She started her maiden speech by saying: "My condolences to the people of Afghanistan..."

Before she could continue, the warlords began to shout that they would rape and kill her. One warlord, Abdul Sayyaf, yelled a threat at her. Joya looked him straight in the eye and said: "We are not in [the area he rules by force] here, so control yourself."

I ask if she was frightened, and she shakes her head. "I am never frightened when I tell the truth." She is speaking fast now: "I am truly honoured to have been vilified and threatened by the savage men who condemned our country to such misery. I feel proud that even though I have no private army, no money, and no world powers behind me, these brutal despots are afraid of me and scheme to eliminate me."

She says there is no difference for ordinary Afghans between the Taliban and the equally fundamentalist warlords. "Which groups are labelled 'terrorist' or 'fundamentalist' depends on how useful they are to the goals of the US," she says. "You have two sides who terrorise women, but the anti-American side are 'terrorists' and the pro-American side are 'heroes'."

Karzai rules only with the permission of the warlords. He is "a shameless puppet" who will win next month's presidential elections because "he hasn't yet stopped working for his masters, the US and the warlords... At this point in our history, the only people who get to serve as president are those selected by the US government and the mafia that holds power in our country."

Whenever she would despair in parliament, she would meet yet more ordinary Afghan women – and get back in the fight. She tells me about a 16-year-old constituent of hers, Rahella, who ran away to an orphanage Joya had helped to set up in her constituency. "Her uncle had decided to marry her off to his son, who was a drug addict. She was terrified. So of course we took her in, educated her, helped her." One day, her uncle turned up and apologised, saying he had learnt the error of his ways. He asked if she could come home for a weekend to visit her family. Joya agreed – and when she got back to her village, Rahella was forced into marriage and spirited away to another part of Afghanistan. They heard six months later that she had doused herself in petrol and burned herself alive.

There has been an epidemic of self-immolation by women across the "new" Afghanistan in the past five years. "The hundreds of Afghan women who set themselves ablaze are not only committing suicide to escape their misery," she says, "they are crying out for justice."

But she was not allowed to raise these issues in the supposedly democratic parliament. The fundamentalist warlords who couldn't beat Joya at the ballot box or kill her chanced upon a new way to silence her. The more she spoke, the angrier they got. She called for secularism in Afghanistan, saying: "Religion is a private issue, unrelated to political issues and the government... Real Muslims do not require political leaders to guide them to Islam." She condemned the new law that declared an amnesty for all war crimes committed in Afghanistan over the past 30 years, saying "You criminals are simply giving yourselves a get-out-of-jail free card." So the MPs simply voted to kick her out of parliament.

It was illegal and undemocratic – but the President, Hamid Karzai, supported the ban. "Now the warlord criminals are unchallenged in parliament," she says. "Is that democracy?"

We in the West have been fed "a pack of lies" about what Afghanistan looks like today. "The media are 'free' only if they do not try to criticise warlords and officials," she says in her book, Raising My Voice. As an example, she names a specific warlord: "If you write anything about him, the next day you will be tortured or killed by the Northern Alliance warlords." It is "a myth" to say girls can now go to school outside Kabul. "Only five per cent of girls, according to the UN, can follow their education to the 12th grade."

And it is "false" to say Afghan culture is inherently misogynistic. "By the 1950s, there was a growing women's movement in Afghanistan, demonstrating and fighting for their rights," she says. "I have a story here" – she rifles through her notes – "from The New York Times in 1959. Here! The headline is 'Afghanistan's women lift the veil'. We were developing an open culture for women – and then the foreign wars and invasions crushed it all. If we can regain our independence, we can start this struggle again."

Many of her friends urge her to leave the country, before one of her wannabe-assassins gets lucky. But, she says, "I can never leave when all the poor people that I love are living in danger and poverty. I am not going to search for a better and safer place, and leave them in a burning hell." Apologising for her English – which is, in fact, excellent – she quotes Brecht again: "Those who do struggle often fail, but those who do not struggle have already failed."

Today, she fights for democracy outside parliament. But, she says, any Afghan democrat today is "trapped between two enemies. There are the occupation forces from the sky, dropping cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and on the ground there are the fundamentalist warlords and the Taliban, with their own guns." She wants to help the swelling movement of ordinary Afghans in between, who are opposed to both. "With the withdrawal of one enemy, the occupation forces, it [will be] easier to fight against these internal fundamentalist enemies."

If she were president of Afghanistan, she would begin by referring all the country's war criminals to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. "Anybody who has murdered my sisters and brothers should be punished," she says, "from the Taliban, to the warlords, to George W Bush." Then she would ask all foreign troops to leave immediately. She says that it is wrong to say Afghanistan will simply collapse into civil war if that happens. "What about the civil war now? Today, people are being killed – many, many war crimes. The longer the foreign troops stay in Afghanistan doing what they are doing, the worse the eventual civil war will be for the Afghan people."

The Afghan public, she adds, are on her side, pointing to a recent opinion poll showing 60 per cent of Afghans want an immediate Nato withdrawal. Many people in Afghanistan were hopeful, she says, about Barack Obama – "but he is actually intensifying the policy of George Bush... I know his election has great symbolic value in terms of the struggle of African-Americans for equal rights, and this struggle is one I admire and respect. But what is important for the world is not whether the President is black or white, but his actions. You can't eat symbolism."

US policy is driven by geopolitics, she says, not personalities. "Afghanistan is in the heart of Asia, so it's a very important place to have military bases – so they can control trade very easily with other Asian powers such as China, Russia, Iran and so on.

"But it can be changed by Americans," she adds. She is passionate now, her voice rising. "I say to Obama – in my area, 150 people were blown up by US troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m (£11m) to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? I say to Obama – change course, or otherwise tomorrow people will call you another Bush."


IV "It's hard to be strong all the time"


"It's not good to show my enemies any weakness, [but] it's hard to be strong all the time," Joya says with a sigh, as she runs her hands through her hair. She has been speaking so insistently – with such preternatural courage– that it's easy to forget she was just a girl when she was thrust into fighting fundamentalism. She was never allowed an adolescence. The fierce concentration on her face melts away, and she looks a little lost. "Yes, my mother is proud of me," she says, "but you know how mothers are – they worry. Whenever I speak to her on the phone, the first sentence and the last sentence are always 'Take care'."

Two years ago, she got married in secret. She can't name her husband publicly, because he would be killed. Her wedding flowers had to be checked for bombs. She will only say that they met at a press conference, "and he supports everything I do". She has not seen him "for two months", she says. "We meet in the safe houses of supporters. I cannot sleep in the same house two nights running. It is a different home every evening."

Where does this courage come from? She acts as if the answer is obvious – anyone would do it, she claims. But they don't. Perhaps it comes from her belief that the struggle is long and our individual lives are short, so we can only advance our chosen cause by inches, knowing others will pick up our baton. "When I die, others will come. I am sure of that," she says.

She certainly has a strong sense of belonging to a long history of Afghans who fought for freedom. "My parents chose my first name after Malalai of Maiwand. She was a young woman who, in 1880, went to the front line of the second Anglo-Afghan war to tend the wounded. When the fighters were close to collapse, she picked up the Afghan flag and led the men into battle herself. She was struck down – but the British suffered a landmark defeat, and, in the end, they were driven out."

When she ran for office, she had to choose a surname for herself, to protect her family's identity. "I named myself after Sarwar Joya, the Afghan poet and constitutionalist. He spent 24 years in jails, and was finally killed because he wouldn't compromise his democratic principles... In Afghanistan we have a saying: the truth is like the sun. When it comes up, nobody can block it out or hide it."

Malalai Joya knows she could be killed any day now, in our newly liberated Warlord-istan. She hugs me goodbye and says, "We must keep in touch." But I find myself bleakly wondering if we will ever meet again. Perhaps she senses this, because she suddenly urges me to look again at the last paragraph of her memoir, Raising My Voice. "It really is how I feel," she says. It reads: "If I should die, and you should choose to carry on my work, you are welcome to visit my grave. Pour some water on it and shout three times. I want to hear your voice." I look up into her face, and she is giving me the bravest smile I have ever seen.


'Raising My Voice' by Malalai Joya is published by Rider at £11.99. All profits will go to supporting the cause of women's rights in Afghanistan. You can donate to her campaigns at malalaijoya.com/index1024.htm

A Not So Open Question by a Patriarchy-denier

[the image above, of the superbutchboys of cinema, Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino, is called "Righteous Kill" which is the name of the 2008movie they starred in. It has to do with men killing other men, primarily in racist and other atrocious ways. It was found here, and the review of the movie the image goes with is copied below my commentary]

I came upon the following question recently, and it typifies the what I would assume would be an embarrassing level of stupidity and displaced rage of MRAs and antifeminist men generally.

The question was posed by some doofus over to one of the most pathetic sites on the web, antimisandry.com. Bizarrely, it was actually picked up by answers.yahoo.com. It reads: Why aren't hateful women like Andrea Dworkin demonized by feminists?

A bit of commentary. Then that movie review written by John Lingan.

Andrea Dworkin was never hateful. She was a humanity-loving justice-seeker and a truth-teller. That her cogent critiques of men are seen as hateful only proves how fragile, if also grandiose, many men's egos are. White men, not women, have hated men (especially men of color, and women, and non-human animals, and the Earth) quite actively for millennia. Note, for example, every man-made war since civilisation existed. Note how men torture one another. Why don't these "antimisandry" jerks focus their attention on them? Hmmm. Because they're too busy focusing on approximately six white women, many of whom died a while ago, who said some things that "weren't nice" about men. Poor, poor babies. It's so easy to focus one's rage against women, isn't it? And so, so cowardly to avoid taking on the men who really do beat the shit out of each other, crap out as fathers, bully those males less powerful than them, and murder one another for every stupid reason imaginable.

Who maims and kills more men per year? Women, or men? Answer: men.
Who insults and degrades more men per year? Women, or men. Answer: men.
Who actively and unrelentingly hates men, and demonstrates this hatred through overt acts of warfare? Women, or men? Answer: men.

Why aren't assholes like the man who posted that stupid question demonised as irrational jerks? Why aren't antifeminists and patriarchy-deniers rejected by the majority of caring citizens who oppose violence against women? Why aren't patriarchy-deniers understood as just as unfit to speak truth as Nazi Holocaust deniers?

Now, on with the review:

ATTN: Angry white men
SUBJECT: Have we got a movie for you!

The Mighty Keep Falling
by John Lingan

Do you hate your job? Do you have a nagging, general animosity towards other people, specifically minorities and authority figures? Do you blame them for your own deep-seeded dissatisfaction with your personal and professional life and wish that someone would just shut up and do as you say every once in a while? Do you enjoy reading Maxim because it keeps women at a disrespectful, marginalized, and over-sexed distance and therefore masks your own inability to please your wife and/or girlfriend either physically or emotionally?

Well today is your lucky day. We’ve made a movie that can be summed up in just a couple words: De Niro. Pacino. Righteous Kill. This is a movie for men, real men, guys who know the right answer when your boss asks why you’ve been late to work recently: Fuck you. Guys who know that sometimes a woman just needs—no, wants—a good, hard, doggy-style fucking to put her in her place. Guys like you.

Here you can watch the guy from Scarface and the other guy from that taxi movie act like real men, even more than the first half-hour of Heat that you watched on TNT before it got boring. They’re old detectives with real guy names, Turk and Rooster, and sick of all the bureaucracy and paperwork; what they really want to do is clean up the streets. You know, get rid of all the riff-raff and drug dealers, specifically black and immigrant ones, with a couple well-placed bullets. They quote Dirty Harry with reverence. They lift weights together (in a totally not-gay way) and say “fuck” a lot, like when they get asked if they’re willing to risk their pensions for a little renegade vengeance and they respond in unison: “Yeah. Fuck yeah.” And these guys are almost 70 years old. If they can kick a cocky rapper’s ass—did we mention that 50 Cent is in this? Could you forward this to any black friends you may have?—then just think of how tough you could be.

There’s more: They talk down to a couple of younger hotshot cops, one of which is Hispanic, and share an honest, working-class Roman Catholic upbringing. They drink whiskey and wear a lot of black. There’s a lot of chugging, angry rock music playing in the background, the better to drown out all the pussies and ballbusters that stand in the heroes’ way. And there’s even a big surprise twist at the end, because this isn’t just some piece of crap action movie…these guys have Oscars and stuff. Prepare to have your mind blown.

You’re a real man, a man who has the answers that nobody seems to want. What you need is a movie that reminds you it’s okay to kill people as long as they’re scum, particularly black or immigrant scum. You need a movie that validates your long-held beliefs that other people are stupid and that women, especially big-lipped and big-titted women who get off on rape fantasies, should be defended righteously in word and then borderline abused in deed. Get a big popcorn and settle in.

Fuck yeah.

END OF POST.