Cultural Studies: Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy
Zillah Eisenstein begins Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy with an almost lyrical, philosophical word-play, as she toys with our loaded terminology for gender, race, freedom and equality. However, this teasing and gentle poetic beginning is in stark contrast to the rest of the book’s hard data and cold, sensible logic. Eisenstein uncovers facts such as the unpoliced and atrocious human rights abuses (especially torture) currently carried out by the U.S., the shocking statistics of the human toll of the current war (both in country and at ‘home’), and the increasing divide between those who live in poverty and those who profit from war and privatisation. Her work reveals that the current era’s buzzwords of ‘individualism’ and ‘diversity’ are used to undermine social welfare systems and decimate public health in many wealthy democracies.Eisenstein’s core argument is that just because a person in a position of power is black or a woman does not necessary mean they are working for the rights of blacks or women – more often than not, she argues, their presence acts as a decoy to divert attention from institutionalised racism and sexism. Conservative parties use token figures from minority groups to act as mouthpieces for white male interests – often denying others the very affirmative action programs which allowed them to gain an education and a position of power. By appropriating the odd exceptional individual’s race and gender as a smokescreen for erosion of equal rights, conservatives appear to be advocating ‘diversity’, while at the same time allowing discrimination towards entire groups to continue unabated.
Condaleeza Rice, and in fact the entire Bush administration, comes across in Eisenstein’s analysis as naïve, sheltered aristocrats, deeply unaware of the divide between their upper middle class music lessons and (for example) the day-to-day life of the black population of New Orleans: underpaid, and left to die in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Bush’s recent tax cuts to the wealthy in the U.S., Eisenstien reveals, would have paid for the Katrina reconstruction several times over.
Not only that, but she also points out that the number of African American men currently incarcerated (who thus cannot vote) is greater than entire African American slave population prior to abolition. While Bush has sunk half the budget into waging a pre-emptive strike on Iraq (where were those weapons of mass destruction again?), health care and social welfare barely make up a few percent of his term’s spending.
Sexual Decoys is the most sane and sensible work of scholarship I have yet read. Eisenstein admits to feeling horror and sorrow (and losing sleep) over an awareness of the level of atrocity that is virtually ignored in the world today. However, her detailed and well-substantiated arguments display a calm logic and a healthy irony. One of her more original arguments is that the current focus on same-sex marriage in gay rights agendas is yet another conservative decoy employed to distract attention away from greater abuses.
Eisenstein notes that marriage has gone out of fashion in the heterosexual community, and many individuals are opting for casual and unconventional relationships. Therefore, having gays in favour of marriage is actually something the conservatives would want to see, because, if gays support marriage, it would become ‘hip’ in the straight community again. More importantly, if the gays are busy debating about getting the right to go down the aisle, then they aren’t fighting for AIDS research and funding, legal protections for employment, inheritance and super, or an end to the religious intolerance that encourages gay bashings and the ongoing bigotry akin to ‘gay panic’ defence murders.
Popular culture is another way that the public is manipulated into silent compliance with the use of torture, and a desensitisation to rape. Turn of the twenty-first century, violent intelligence forces TV shows such as 24, Alias, and the prime-time dominance of fear inducing crime dramas such as Law & Order, and CSI., all act to normalise atrocities, and to perpetuate racial stereotypes and prejudices.
As was recently shown in George Gittoes’s Rampage, life in poverty brings with it the constant threat of death and violence for African Americans in Miami. However, this is not the Miami ever really seen in CSI Miami – here it is the rich rappers who are used as decoys for a police force who works in the interests of whites and incarcerates blacks in disproportionate numbers.
The defence forces keenly promote the diversity of their troops. What a surprise that a nation that has dismantled many of its equal opportunity programs finds minority groups and the poor filling the ranks of those who go to kill, die, or be disabled, for their country (and for minimum wage!). Meanwhile, these same minority groups left at home, find themselves also the usual suspects as racial profiling is accepted while affirmative action quotas are abandoned. Prison or the armed forces are rapidly becoming the only choices left to people living in poverty in the richest country in the world.
Even the numbers of casualities in Iraq are misrepresented to the public. Reported figures exclude the deaths in private security forces (who are classed as civilians even though they are doing the work of soldiers) and the large numbers of permanently and totally disabled soldiers. The body armour, which now covers soldiers’ torsos, has led to less death but much more loss of limb, ending many livelihoods of people, although not their lives.
Disability, traumas, and spousal rape and murder are some of the hidden costs of war. The psychological fall out from war remains one of the greatest contributors to the assault and homicide of women, and the suicide of men. The impact of current war will continue to be felt by future generations, and the longer the rape, torture, murder, invasion, discrimination, and propaganda continues the worse things will get.
Controversially, Eisenstein asks why we consider a suicide bomber to be worse morally than a soldier who kills and lives? Both kill, and the soldier lives to kill again, and then, if they do come home, they are likely to suffer Post-Traumatic Stress, or commit suicide or murder. As the destruction rolls on and on in Iraq, the need for reconstruction expands and what a coincidence that Bush gives the job to the same small group of wealthy friends he has given that tax cut which could have saved thousands of lives in New Orleans.
Eisenstein paints a picture of a dystopian world, which is all the more unsettling because it is the reality we live in. This is a work which strips naked the theatrical excesses of cultural propaganda. Sexual Decoys is both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. It is a book you may need to recover from after reading, but it is the most necessary and honest analysis of current culture and economics I have read in a long time.
Sexual Decoys: Gender, Race and War in Imperial Democracy
(2007)
by Zillah Eisenstein
Spinifex Press
ISBN10: 1-876756-63-2
ISBN13: 978-1-876756-63-5
142pp $AU34.95
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