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Benazir Bhutto, 21 June 1953 - 27 December 2007
I spent much of yesterday in a state of stunned incomprehension after awakening to the news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Even though the threat of her death by violence was clear enough, I know I’m not the only one who was truly shocked and shaken when it acutally happened.
The daughter of a deposed Prime Minister murdered by a military dictatorship, Benazir Bhutto came back from exile to challenge a military dictatorship not once but twice. Whatever her personal or political failings might have been, her physical courage and willingness to deploy her own life in the service of a larger goal cannot be denied. From here — where no politician of her stature stepped forward to challenge the Bush regime’s seizure of the apparatus of government in 2000 and where radical opponents of the regime tend to confine themselves to safe pursuits such as marching in circles on empty city streets on Saturdays — that level of courage and commitment seems pretty admirable.
(On NPR yesterday, I heard an interview with one of Bhutto’s close associates here in the States. He said that he and others had repeatedly implored her to use her considerable intelligence, education, and wealth in other ways so as to be able to have a safe and happy life in someplace like Dubai or London rather than returning to face possible death in Pakistan. She told him that the restoration of democracy in Pakistan was her life. Since these were private conversations with a close friend rather than soundbites for the media, I believe that, whatever doubts we may have had about her as a vehicle of democracy or her means of seeking that end, she sincerely believed that to be her life’s work. Surely, if her goal were merely more wealth and power, she could have obtained both of those by considerably less dangerous means.)
Rightly or wrongly, Benazir Bhutto embodied the hopes of Pakistan’s dispossessed. Their grief, rage, and confusion in the wake of her death radiate beyond national borders to cast a palpable pall over the world today. I can feel it. I’ll bet this was how it felt in other countries when MLK and RFK were assassinated here.
So, who killed Benazir Bhutto? As usual, I have a lot of thoughts. Bush and Musharraf are blaming Al Queda and the Taliban, and that might be true but would be awfully convenient for them. Already, on the day of her death, Musharraf — to whose regime Benazir Bhutto was the greatest threat — was using the assassination as evidence that his strong-arm style of rule is needed in the context of the “war on terror.” As Bush did with the attacks of 11 September, Musharraf wants to twist his own failure to prevent an attack into justification for giving him even more power.
Bhutto knew it would come to this. That’s why she left behind messages blaming Musharraf in the event of her death. When her convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber in Karachi upon her initial return to Pakistan earlier this year, she called for forensic experts associated with the FBI and Scotland Yard to be brought into the investigation. That didn’t happen. The media and the governments upon whose largess Musharraf depends need to put the pressure on to make sure that happens this time. Even then, it may not be possible to determine whether Musharraf’s US-funded security forces were in any way complicit (either by omission or comission) with the assassination.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that Bhutto was targeted by Islamic fundamentalists without the active complicity of the Musharraf regime. This would not leave Musharraf (or his US backers) blameless. We know for sure that Bhutto made scores of specific security requests that Musharraf ignored.
Why would Bhutto be targeted by the fundamentalists? Because it was she, rather than Musharraf’s military, who was their most formidable enemy. And, no, it’s not just because she was a female who was widely revered as a leader by devout Muslim men, although that had to be a source of constant aggravation to the Mullahs who insist that women must be not seen and not heard.
Bhutto’s supporters grieve deeply
To understand Bhutto’s threat to the Islamic fundamentalists, we must understand that her party, the center-left Pakistan People’s Party, really does have the loyalty of common people, poor people, the kind of people whose disaffection and anger at existing states of affairs are converted by fundamentalists into religious fervor against percieved enemies. (The same thing happens here, although here the grievances felt by fundamentalists tend to be as fictional as their biology books.) As the writer of an editorial in yesterday’s Hindustan Times explains, “Pakistan’s formidable military establishment seems helpless in dealing with the jihadis operating with impunity against their own people across the country…. Benazir was more dangerous to the jihadis than Musharraf. She was a political leader who could fight the battle of ideas, who could tell people why the jihadis were not their friends. That’s why she had to be killed.”
And that may be why Bush and Mush may have wanted her dead too. Remember, Pakistan is the third biggest customer for the arms manufacturers whose interests Bush serves. More terrorism means more money for them. I know it’s hard to think about. I know we want to believe that everybody wants peace. But Benazir Bhutto undoubtedly knew, spent enough time at or near centers of power to know for sure, that munitions manufacturers, military dictators, and other war profiteers like nothing more than patriotic gore.
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? Musharraf? Possibly. Terrorists? Certainly. But also all of us who pay taxes that end up in the pockets of arms manufacturers, who “tolerate” truly hate-full political ideologies as long as they call themselves “religions,” who do nothing when the henchmen of war profiteers seize control of our government and then use that power to provoke and exacerbate conflict around the world, who enjoy the corrupt pleasures of globalized capitalism without really risking anything to challenge it.
Who was Benazir Bhutto? Was she flawed? Certainly. Corrupt? Quite possibly. Also insanely corageous and hopeful. What we need is for everybody — all of us flawed children of violence — to be that hopeful and courageous instead of waiting for leaders to save us.
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? All of us. Who was Benazir Bhutto? All of us. The question becomes: Since we already share her flaws, can we use her death to provoke us to recognize and nurture our own insane hope and courage?
Yet again, a sex worker has gone missing and ended up dead. Some experts believe that murder is the leading cause of death among prostitutes. Usually, we don’t hear about it. This time, the identity and life circumstances of Emily Sander — a white college student leading a double life as an internet porn star — combined to excite media attention to the case of what otherwise would have been just another dead prostitute.
(Prostitute? Didn’t I say she was an internet porn star? Pornography is prostitution. Even thought the consumers of pornography don’t touch the people who have been made into objects for their sexual pleasure, they still pay money for sexual access which otherwise would not have been granted to them. Furthermore, pornography often requires its objects to touch or be touched by one another in sexually intimate ways that they would not otherwise have allowed. Being paid to touch or be touched by someone sexually is prostitution.)
Prostitution is inherently dangerous work. Study after study shows what those of us who have worked or lived within the sex trades already know: Sex workers are routinely sexually and physically assaulted. Many are murdered. Many more go missing.
A majority of prostitutes endure rape (penetration without consent) while virtually all encounter other forms of sexual assault (e.g., touching breasts or genitals without consent). One study of prostitutes in San Francisco found that 82% had been physically assaulted since entering prostitution, 68% had been raped since entering protitution, and 48% had been raped more than five times. A study of prostitutes in Chicago found that 50% of women working for escort services had been raped by clients and 24% of street prostitutes had been raped by police offficers.
Rape can feel like murder. I remember, when I was dealing with the aftermath of a rape, telling people that I felt like “I’ve been murdered but still have to get up and walk around every day.” (Anthropologist Cathy Winkler has written an extraordinarily insightful article entitled Rape as Social Murder [pdf].)
Many sex workers are murdered. In one long-term study of women working as prostitutes, “murder accounted for 50 percent of the deaths among presumed-active prostitutes.” In other studies of mortality among sex workers, murder has been the cause of anywhere from 29% to 100% of deaths.
Rape and murder are not simply the occupational hazards of an otherwise benign field of endeavor. Prostitution Is Sexual Violence, argues researcher Melissa Farley in a Psychiatric Times article. (Please don’t leave me sarcastic comments about the absurdity of that statement unless you’ve read that article and the others to which I’ve linked in this post.)
Women who enter this dangerous field of endeavor usually do so as a result of past or present trauma. The San Francisco study found that 57% of responding prostitutes had been sexually assaulted as children (by an average of three (!) perpetrators), 84% were or had been homeless, and 75% struggled with drug addiction. The researchers report that, because of the high rates of both physical and sexual abuse in childhood, “many seemed profoundly uncertain as to just what ‘abuse’ is” and often failed to recognize their own victimization as such.
This helps us to understand why women who are still engaged in forms of sex work where non-rape sexual assaults are routine (e.g., erotic dancers who endure nightly unwanted groping of their breasts, crotch, and buttocks) will sometimes assert that their work is not psychologically dangerous and does not subject them to assault. They are so used to being treated as sexualized objects that being treated as such feels normal rather than oppressive.
Does that mean that we shouldn’t listen to such women when they speak about their work? Not at all! It just means that we listen with the same careful empathic attention to what they don’t say as well as what they say, in the same way that we might listen to a friend who is caught up drug use, an abusive dating relationship, gang membership, military service, or any other occupation or life circumstance that hurts people in ways that they often are not able to see while in the midst of it. And we should listen most carefully to women who, after surviving sex work, have had some time to reflect on their own experiences and the experiences of their peers.
Most importantly, we must listen closely to the voices of the murdered and the missing. We cannot allow the loud rationalizations of the defenders of prostitution and pornography to drown out their resounding silence. The spaces where their words should be tell us what we need to know about the unspeakable violence inherent in the commodification of our bodies and our sexuality.
Please read the title of this post in big, swirly, cursive letters that implicitly mock my pretensions.
In recent years, it’s been my habit to devote holidays to writing one-off essays on whatever I happen to be brooding about that day. I’m not going to do that today. I’ve got too much to do for the sanctuary and I’m also in the middle of working on a couple of long and certain-to-be controversial essays on topics that are (in my view) of potentially greater import than whatever pattrice happens to be thinking about today.
But I’ve still got the impulse to spout off about holiday-related issues. So, here are links to some of my “deep thoughts” of previous holidays:
Thanksgiving 2006
Throwing the homosexuals to the hounds sounds like a metaphor for the Republican Party’s electoral strategy of recent years, but it actually happened back in 1513 in what is now Panama. Then, governor Vasco Nunez de Balboa condemned 50 homosexual Indians to be torn apart by dogs.
Seen by both Catholic Conquistadors and Protestant Pilgrims as a sign of godless animality, same-sex pleasure was ruthlessly suppressed throughout the process of the subjugation of the Americas. Today, the conquest of the senses continues, as billions of people and animals are forced to forgo all kinds of natural happiness so that a privileged few can enjoy the empty gluttony that has brought us to the brink of planetary catastrophe.
Christmas 2005
Grey rain hangs in the sky. Translucent drops splash on the blacktop, sluicing like a summer thunderstorm on this Christmas Day. I gaze with glazed eyes at the glassy surface of the water until the blare of a car horn blasts me back into my body. Heart pumping, I wave weakly. I’m cold and wet.
Six of us stand in a line with picket signs. One of the signs says HONK FOR PEACE.
Thanksgiving 2004
“Body parts are everywhere!” That’s what one US soldier had to say about the saddest city in Iraq, according to an AFP report. It’s also an apt description of the state of US dinner tables during the festival of gloating and gluttony known as Thanksgiving.
This year, the United States celebrates Thanksgiving in the wake of the taking of Falluja. Waving “drumsticks” and fighting for “wishbones,” complacent Christians will gorge themselves without fear, safe from the threats of gay marriage and Iraqi self-determination. Stuffing themselves beyond satiation, they and their children will partake of the proud Puritanical tradition of ruthless, reckless expansion.
Christmas 2002
As the Christians gather to celebrate the birth of the founder of their religion, I find myself asking a question that I wish Christians would ask themselves: Who would Jesus kill?
And, don’t forget not to go shopping tomorrow!
Here in the USA, where “liberation” means occupation and a judge can’t hope to be named Attorney General unless he proclaims support for torture and disregard for the rule of law, Orwell’s Doublethink and Newspeak are alive and well in chicken country.
The fabulous Karen Dawn of the always useful DawnWatch service has alerted us to a remarkable article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Published in the heart of Tyson territory, this mainstream newspaper has taken the bold step of parsing and challenging the language used by the poultry and egg industries to make cruel and unusual industry practices seem normal and humane. The article reports on an industry meeting at which executives openly discussed their reasons for adopting euphemisms, such as “knife operator” for the job previously known as “killer,” much in the manner that the Bush regime likes to call torture by partial drowning “waterboarding,” as if it were some kind of surfing.
Speaking of Arkansas, this is a good time to alert new readers that this blog was begun in honor of the memory of Arkansas poultry worker turned animal advocate Virgil Butler, whose death late last year left so many of us bereft. Follow the About SuperWeed link for information about Virgil and links to a few of his remarkable blog posts about his experiences within the industry.
Speaking of this blog, when I began I swore to myself that I would never be one of those bloggers who explains and apologizes for not posting, as if readers were waiting with bated breath for every word. But somebody actually called me “a lazy blogger” last night just because, for the first time, I let a couple of weeks go by between posts. So, for the record, I’ve not been a lazy blogger, I’ve just been in a phase of starting posts and then going off on tangents that took me so far from my original aims that I became dissatisfied and abandoned them. I was in an oddly indecisive frame of mind in general, so maybe that explains it. Anyway, the phase seems to have passed, so I guess I’m back.
I’m still waiting for my brain to stop seething before I get to talking about the issues raised by the comments on my posts on Pornography and Global Warming and the Pornography of Violence. Meantime, check out “Just a prude? Feminism, pornography, and men’s responsibility”, which is a talk delivered by University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen at the Sexual Assault Network of Delaware annual conference in 2005. Jensen is the co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality, which is a book that I need to read and maybe you do too.
Warning: Jensen’s talk includes a description of a mainstream but still quite violent pornographic film, which you might find upsetting.
Jensen goes on to say, “I am afraid of the sex I just described to you” and to express empathy for both the women who appear in such films and the women they portray. Taking into account the well-documented escalation in the amount and extent of degradation portrayed in mainstream for-profit pornography, Jensen concludes that the feminist “critique of pornography is truer today than it was when the founding mothers of the movement first articulated it in the late 1970s.” Perhaps most importantly, he talks about what men who don’t want to live in the world described and inscribed by such pornography need to do.
That said, let me come back briefly to the problem of the disappearing bees, as I promised to do some time ago. I’m not ready to venture my own conclusions just yet but, in the interim, let me direct you to an article that asks, “Are the bees dying off because they’re too busy?” Read it if you’re curious about Colony Collapse Disorder. Even if you’re not yet worried about that, read it if you don’t know about modern beekeeping practices, which are, in essence, factory farming of insects.
What do pornography and disappearing bees have to do with each other? I’ve got some thoughts about that but why don’t you tell me?
if you’ve not yet done so, check out the ongoing Washington Post series on Dick Cheney. It’s interesting to me that the series, which details Cheney’s behind-the-scenes machinations in favor of torture, is entitled “Angler.” That’s Cheney’s Secret Service code name, I guess because he is an avid practitioner of the form of fish torture known as angling. So, a man who tortures fish for fun, literally pulling strings while using deceptive lures, used tricky maneuvers to encourage the torture of prisoners in the ongoing war for profits. And we should be surprised because why?
