An Interview with Kelly Oliver

nnQ: What do you mean that women are weapons of war?nnKelly Oliver: I was inspired to write Women as Weapons of War when I noticed that the news media repeatedly describe women soldiers as weapons. For example, a New York Times columnist calls women soldiers “the most astoundingly modern weapon in the Western arsenal”; a Time magazine headline after news broke about female interrogators at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay Cuba read “female sexuality used as a weapon”; and theLondon Times describes Palestinian women suicide bombers as “secret weapons” and “human precision bombs.” Even Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the U.S. soldier who was captured and rescued early in the Iraq invasion, was labeled a “human shield” and a weapon in the propaganda war. Media and public reactions to the more recent capture and release by the Iranian military of British Seaman Faye Turney displays some of the same tendencies. The British media accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of using Turney as a weapon in a propaganda war, at the same time that conservatives in Britain used this image of a mother prisoner of war to argue against women in the military.nnQ: Is this a new phenomenon?nnKO: I argue that these latest examples of women figured as weapons are a continuation of stereotypes of dangerous women who use their sexuality as a deadly weapon to deceive and trap men. In World War II, soldiers named their fighter-jets and the bombs that they dropped after Hollywood bombshells and “buxom babes” from magazines. For example, the bomber that dropped the atom bomb that ended WWII was named after the pilot’s mother; and the bomb itself was named after Hollywood “bombshell” Rita Hayworth’s most famous femme fatale character, Gilda.nnFrom mythological characters such as Medusa and Jocasta, to biblical figures such as Eve, Salome, Delilah or Judith, to contemporary Hollywood femme fatales, women’s sexuality has been imagined as dangerous; even more so because we imagine that it can be wielded as a weapon by women against men. Perhaps the most extreme example of this fantasy as it appears in recent military engagement is the seemingly intentional use of female sexuality as a top-secret “classified” interrogation technique in Guantanamo Bay prison, where reportedly women interrogators stripped off their uniforms, rubbed up against prisoners, and threatened them with fake menstrual blood. The use of women both here and at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have been described as techniques to “soften up” prisoners. I argue in the book that the use of women in these situations also works to “soften up” public perceptions of abuse and torture. Late night television had a heyday with the reports of women using sex to abuse male prisoners. It didn’t take long for the public to recognize in these images the dominatrix familiar from popular culture and pornography. The image of Pfc. Lynndie England holding a leash wrapped around the neck of a prisoner, cigarette dangling from her mouth, caused international shock and awe, and rekindled debates over the presence of women in the military.nnQ: Do women soldiers get more attention in the press than their male counterparts?nnKO: As I mentioned before, it is telling that of the 15 British seamen captured, the media focused almost exclusively on the only woman. And even though as many men were involved in the abusive activities at Abu Ghraib prison, pictures of the women, Lynndie England and Army Spc. Sabrina Harman, circulated across the globe. Compared to Lynndie England, the so-called ringleader Charles Graner hardly got any press. Instead, the press and the public were fascinated by the smiling teenage girls giving thumbs-up over stacks of naked Iraqi men or prisoners forced to perform sexual acts. And we rarely hear about the male soldiers who abuse female prisoners, almost as if it is business as usual.nnWe also do not hear about female soldiers who are raped and sexually abused within the military, even though recent studies have shown that the rates of such abuse are high. So, in answer to the question, yes and no: there is more media attention on women soldiers when they are violent and abusive, particularly in sexual ways or when their presence is interpreted as a sign of weakness or vulnerability as in the case of Faye Turney and Jessica Lynch—one commentator says that the capture of Faye Turney made the British Navy look like “wimps” who “put mothers in boats with rough men” while “Islamic men ‘rescue’ women and drape them in floral hijabs.” But there is little media attention to the everyday situation of women in the military who not only risk their lives in combat zones but also risk bodily harm in their own units.nnQ: Why do you say that feminism plays a problematic role in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?nnKO: The issue of feminism is complicated. While feminists want women’s liberation across the globe, many also realize that cultural differences between women mean that freedom will take different forms. While we might interpret wearing a veil or hijab as a form of oppression, women in Muslim countries might see the ideals of femininity and motherhood in the United States and Britain as oppressive. Indeed by pointing to the lack of women’s freedoms elsewhere, we ignore the ways in which women are coerced at home, where ideals of femininity lead young girls to eating disorders; religious conservatives try to prevent young women from using birth-control and limit their access to abortions; women continue to have the lioness’s share of childcare, and soccer moms resort to caffeine, Prozac, and sleeping pills to maintain their busy schedules.nnIt is interesting that political conservatives use feminism when it is convenient. For example, the Bush administration talked of liberating so-called “women of cover” in Afghanistan. And women’s rights were an important part of the discourse justifying invasions of Iraq and especially Afghanistan. As we now know, women in Iraq have much less freedom of movement than they did under the rule of Saddam Hussein. Many have been forced to quit their jobs and quit going to school for fear of bodily harm or kidnapping.nnIt is also fascinating that in the West the veil or hijab has become a symbol of women’s oppression. It has become more important than education or career status as a measure of women’s rights. Women’s freedom has become defined in terms of the right to “bare arms” and the freedom to shop. It is noteworthy that in the case of Seaman Faye Turney much of the public and press outrage was over the fact that she was forced to wear a headscarf while in captivity. Photos circulated after her release show her holding the floral headscarf between her index finger and thumb as if it were a dirty rag. One British feminist historian wrote that the “shapeless garments and a headscarf” made Turney appear as “a nobody, a vulnerable, defenseless little woman.” Some feminists in Afghanistan and Iraq, on the other hand, are donning hijab as a statement of protest against U.S. occupation. The headscarf and hijab are powerful symbols that galvanize feminists on both sides.nnQ: Are women suicide bombers victims of patriarchal religions or vicious killers?nnKO: This is a complicated question. Some feminists have suggested that women suicide bombers are forced into their situations by oppressive patriarchal cultures that give them no choice. For example, in her book Army of Roses, Barbara Victor suggests that Palestinian women suicide bombers are outcasts from their traditional culture because of failed marriages, divorce, the inability to have children, and other “amorous disasters” as French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva calls them. Victor wonders how these “bearers of life” become “killing machines.” But interpreting their violent actions solely as a result of their marginal status within their communities denies their agency and figures them merely as victims. It is also important to acknowledge that their bombings are political acts in the theater of war.nnAgain, it is telling that women suicide bombers attract more media attention than their male counterparts. This is not just because there are fewer of them. Rather, somehow the fact that they are young women and mothers blowing up themselves and others seems more shocking to us than men’s violence. Some Islamic Jihad commanders have started recruiting women specifically because they can more easily pass through checkpoints by donning pony-tails and smiles or pretending to be pregnant. Media reports frequently discuss these young women as employing their femininity as a dangerous cover for their murderous schemes. Because of this, women suicide bombers are imagined as more dangerous then male suicide bombers. As I explain in my book, however, in large part this view is the product of age-old stereotypes of women’s bodies and femininity as inherently dangerous, as seductive lures or secret weapons. In one sense, then, it should come as no surprise that women continue to occupy the position that we have built for them discursively. At the extreme, women become weapons, literally blowing up, the “bombshell” become the bomb.nn