Note: What follows is a fairly long article of about l6 double- spaced pages. It can be disseminated as long as credit is given to Media Development. Forthcoming in: Media Development (Journal of the World Association for Christian Communication), London, no. 2, 199l. FEMINIST PEACE RESEARCHERS, CULTURE AND COMMUNICATIONS by Colleen Roach [Colleen Roach is an Associate Professor in the Communication Arts and Sciences Department, Queens College, City University of New York. From 1988-1990 she directed the Information/Culture track of EXPRO (Exploratory Project on the Conditions of Peace).] "First we're going to cut it off and then we're going to kill it." -- General Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. The above statement was made in February 199l shortly before the launching of the ground phase of the Persian Gulf War. However chilling General Powell's explanation of the US strategy for dealing with the Iraqi army may have been, many people outside of military circles undoubtedly understood it only as a metaphor and not an actual course of action. As we now know, reality proved otherwise. The US-led Western coalition engaged in what has been described as "the most devastating aerial bombardment in history." We may never know exactly how many Iraqi soliders died during this phase of the war (estimates of total Iraqi soldiers killed range from 35,000 - l50,000) but we do know one thing: General Powell's words were not a methaphor. All the men and women killed in the Gulf War - be they Americans, Kuwaitis, British or Iraqi - are to be mourned. But the senseless slaughter of the thousands of Iraqi soldiers departing Kuwait will certainly be remembered for years to come as one of the most barbaric military expeditions of all time. The scale of calculated brutality in this war obliges us to probe more deeply into the phenomena of war and peace. In this probing, we would do well to look at an important but generally unacknowledged body of feminist literature that has been quietly produced over the last decade. It may not only shed some new light on the age-old question of "why we go to war against another country" but also help us to understand how this question is connected to another: why we are at war with ourselves. The Literature of Feminism(1) There are two sorts of feminist literature that are of relevance to war, peace and culture. First of all, there is a very interesting body of work by feminist peace researchers whose writings are directly linked to the study of war and peace. Here, some of the names that come to mind are Elise Boulding (Boulding, 1987, 1988(a), 1988(b); Betty Reardon (Reardon,1985), Riane Eisler (Eisler,1987) and Birgit Brock-Utne (Brock-Utne, 1985); there are many others who have written on women and peace, such as Leslie Cagan and Barbara Ehrenreich. My own introduction to feminism in fact took place through the literature of feminist peace researchers. I think that many women (and perhaps men) who are social activists but "put off" by the academic jargon of some feminist writing on communications and culture will be pleasantly surprised with what they will find in these writers. Many feminist peace researchers have incorporated both "hard" and "soft" issues into their work: there is a real concern, for example, in the writings of Elise Boulding and Betty Reardon with the political economy of oppression and the effects of militarism in the Third World. Yet they are not afraid to also talk about the need for "imaging" and "imagining" new strategies for peace, and relying more on the intuitive and nurturing sides of human nature to build a new peace process. Secondly, there is a body of feminist literature not directly related to peace but which has been used by women peace researchers because of its relevance to their work. Here, I am referring, for example, to the work of Carol Gilligan, the Harvard educator, whose book In A Different Voice (Gilligan, 1982) became a touchstone for many peace researchers who have argued that the different moral development of women make them more prone to peace than men. Another example would be the work of feminist theoreticians of language (cf. Thorne, Kramarae, and Henley, 1983), which has also fed into feminist critiques of the dominant male discourse of the military establishment. A third example: an increasing number of feminist peace researchers feel that deciphering the forces of militarism must ultimately lead to a critique of Western scientific rationality and, in particular, technology. Here the work of feminist scientists and science philosophers such as Sandra Harding and Evelyn Fox-Keller has been of great use (Harding, 1986; Fox-Keller, 1985). Finally, it should also be mentioned that although much of it does not have an explicitly "feminist" orientation, the work being done on women's representation and role in the media and popular culture can offer support for a feminist approach to peace. Culture and Language For many years, the dominant thinking on the causes of war followed Freud and the biological determinists. Freud posited that there is an innate instinct of man towards aggression, usually linked to the frustration of impulses. Biological determinists reach a similar conclusion by holding to the assumption that the roots of war and collective violence lie somewhere in the biological mechanisms that animals and men have in common. However, in recent years there has been a growing number of anthropologists and psychologists interested in peace research who are essentially concluding that war is above all a cultural phenomenon. The anthropologist Carol Greenhouse, while acknowledging that the literature in anthropology is "highly diverse" nonetheless writes: "...Is human aggression innate? Are the causes of war in nature or in culture...the orientation of the literature strongly suggests that war is a cultural phenomenon, that is, that its roots are in the human mind, and not in the genes" (Greenhouse, 1987:32). Robert Holt, a psychologist engaged in peace research, agrees that "...the overwhelming consensus of behavioral scientists rejects the notion that something in human nature makes war inevitable..." (Holt, 1987: 9). Holt's central argument, like that of Greenhouse, is that war is primarily part of a vast "cultural complex" comprised of "value systems, ideology and mythology," all of which are conveyed by the mass media, mass culture, and education. The conclusion of Greenhouse, a woman, points in a direction followed by certain feminist peace researchers: the power of the imagination: "We do know that war is an aspect of many cultural ideologies, but we also know that ideologies... are flexible idioms that express selectively the cultural propositions that are capable of life in human minds. This is cause for hope, since cultural analysis suggests that the causes of war lie not in the land, nor in some implacable demand for blood or honor, nor in human genes, but in imaginations that tolerate both the image and the reality of wholesale violence, at least for the moment" (Greenhouse, 1987: 44). When culture is defined in the way of writers like Greenhouse and Holt to include values, ideology, mythology and imagination, then virtually all feminist peace researchers are in agreement that war is a cultural phenomenon. One of the primary conveyors of culture is the medium of language. For this reason, it is an increasingly important area of inquiry for feminist writers. General Powell's statement referring to the Iraqi army as "it" obviously is much more than words; "it" translates a military mindset that has converted the enemy not only into an "other" but into a non-human "other". This is not the only example of how language was used - or rather misused - in the Gulf War to prevent public opinion from thinking in terms of the loss of human life. Sanitized phrases heard throughout the war such as "collatoral damage", "saturation strikes" and "carpet bombing" all meant one thing: killing. One of the most well-known analyses of military language circulating in feminist peace circles was written by Carol Kohn at Harvard University's Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age (Cohn, 1987). Kohn spent a year with all male members of the defense establishment and was struck by their use of language. Death, destruction, and war were all reduced to an ice cold, rational discourse with a definite sexual sub-text (i.e. constant references to "penetration aids," and nuclear weapons that give you "more bang for your buck."). Emphasizing that this language does not originate in individuals but in a "broader cultural context," Cohn found that the only way to engage in dialogue with the defense teams was to adopt their own language. The better she got at this discourse, however, the more she found herself unable to express her own ideas and values: "...at the same time as the language gave me access to things I had been unable to speak about before, it radically excluded others...This language does not allow certain questions to be asked or certain values to be expressed. To pick a bald example: the word 'peace' is not part of this discourse" (Cohn, 1987: 708). In a recent issue of the feminist magazine Ms., Cohn wrote that "the Gulf War has apparently inspired military briefers to new heights of obfuscation." Instead of death and destruction, we hear of "flying sorties," "engaging the Iraqi army," "taking out" Iraqi "assets," "softening up" the Republican Guard. Cohan's conclusion is that language is designed to hide one central fact: "war is a contest between states, in which the fundamental activity is destroying human creations, and injuring and killing human beings" (Cohn, 199l: 88). The Tie That Binds: Violence The violence of war, according to feminist writers on peace, is profoundly connected to the violence against women. Many feminists such as Betty Reardon and Leslie Cagan, in fact, find that the essential connection between sexism and the war system is, in fact, that both rely on the prevalence of violence. Their argument is as follows: Since widespread violence towards women is socially sanctioned by prevailing cultural norms - with the mass media and mass culture playing a very important role - it serves as a sort of "primal" paradigm for violent warfare against other peoples. In short, since violence towards "the other" represented by women is commonplace in almost all societies and cultures, it makes sense that violence towards other races and countries is widely accepted. This connection was made explicit in a statement made to the press by a delegation from the Woman's International League for Peace and Freedom in Baghdad on January l0, 199l: "...We are against the use of force in settling conflict situations. When people develop the attitude that differences can be settled through violent means, then we perpetuate a mentality that brings violence into all human relations, and right into the home, where women and children are the primary victims" (Reported on Peacenet, January l6, 199l). There are several sub-arguments made on the issue of violence. Leslie Cagan, who states that "violence against women stands as a cornerstone" of their oppression draws a parallel between women and weaker nations preyed upon by larger forces: "The ever-present possibility of rape parallels the threat of military intervention strong nations use against weaker ones. Stay in line or you will get hurt. Play by the rules or the most brutal force will bear down upon you. In both cases a broader and more subtle system of ever- present inequality lies behind and is defended by the more overt form of coercion" (Cagan, 1983: 95). Riane Eisler's work summarizes a common finding of many anthropologists and sociologists: the more highly militarized a culture is, the more likely it is to have a high degree of violence towards women (Eisler, 199l: 9-l0). Betty Reardon, who drew extensive parallels between militarism and sexism in her book Sexism and the War System (Reardon, 1985), makes another observation common to many feminists: women are not just victims of physical violence but are also much more oppressed than any other social group by the structural violence exacerbated in highly militarized societies. But it is actual physical violence towards women that provides me with a particularly striking illustration of how militarism relates to violence towards women. In December 1989, the country of Canada experienced the worst mass murder in its history. A lone gunman, Marc Lepine, went to the University of Montreal's engineering school, and, separating the men from the women, systematically slaughtered l4 females with a high-powered hunting rifle. Before killing himself, Lepine had ranted and raved about the women being "a bunch of feminists." This massacre of women, which has received very little attention in the US media, has been widely explored in the Canadian press. Two journalists for the Toronto Star did an extensive background study of the killer. (Toronto Star, February 8, 1990). On the one hand, the journalists' in-depth story offers few surprises: Lepine was a loner, with a history of bad professional and personal relations, particularly with women, whom he felt had "ruined his life." Buried in the "There is mayhem in the main corridor outside Room 230. The 50 men who left the room as ordered are screaming at others to run away. Inside the classroom 6 women are dead...He is out in the main corridor again, down at the other end of the photocopier, moving with the methodical precision of a trained soldier. He keeps his back to the wall. He wheels. Fires. Wheels and fires again. The wounded are moaning for help." In discussions about women and violence at an EXPRO meeting, Liane Norman, Director of the Pittsburgh Peace Institute, told an interesting story. She had been on a trip to Nicaragua during the war, and her group - made up of both men and women - was being escorted through a rather dangerous military zone. They were afraid, but one of the men noted that many of the men seemed more afraid than the women. He asked her why, and she realized that it was because women are used to being afraid all the time. Is it any wonder that Ms magazine's editorial against the war in the Persian Gulf noted that "for most women, daily life is a combat zone?" ("Digressions", by Robin Morgan, Ms., vol. l, no. 5, 199l.) Mass Culture and Violence The role of mass culture in war, in general, has been a fruitful area of exploration for several years. Writers have looked at many different aspects of popular culture that promote "machismo" and militarism, such as the ever-popular "Rambo" movies of the 1980s, the video war games, and even the military garb worn by civilians. And anyone having lived through recent events in the United States certainly knows that both mass culture and the mass media played no small role in promoting pro-war sentiment against Iraq. Here, I am referring not only to television's hi-tech glorification of the war, but also to the racist anti-Iraq and anti-Hussain t- shirts that could be bought at your local gas station, as well as the yellow ribbons and flags that festooned homes and automobiles.(2) However, there is another very disturbing aspect of American mass culture in recent months, which relates to the connection between the violence of war and the violence against women mentioned above. Precisely during the months of the build-up to the war and the war period itself (December 1990- February 199l) there was one of the biggest media "hypes" promoting a movie that I have seen in recent memory. One of the stars of the movie (Jody Foster) was ubiquitous on the little screen, appearing in innumerable interviews, talk- shows, etc. Late-night news and the print media rivalled each other in their ample references to this new "thriller," billed as outdoing "Psycho" and other murder classics of the silver screen. The movie in question was "Silence of the Lambs" and its story- line was truly gruesome: an imprisoned psychopathic genius killer, who was apt to eat his victims, is called upon by a young FBI agent to help find another serial killer on the loose. This particular serial killer has the habit of If this sounds in bad taste, it is apparently outdone in another recent product of American mass culture that unlike "Silence of the Lambs" has generated extreme controversy. Precisely during the period of the Gulf War heated debates took place over the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Ellis' work offered such graphic descriptions of the dismemberment and torture of women that NOW (National Organization of Women) launched a boycott, even establishing a hot-line with taped excerpts from the book so readers could judge for themselves. The controversy became so intense that the book's orginal publisher even backed out of its contract, forfeiting a considerable advance to the author. I am not saying that there has been any kind of conspiracy of mass cultural industries to harden people against feeling anything about war by getting them accustomed to the brutalization of women. I am suggesting, however, that we should learn to "make connections" ( a feminist slogan) and take note of the synchroneity of massive violence inflicted upon a country and the violence against women that is part and parcel of our mass culture. The Silencing of Women on Peace For centuries women have played very important roles in peace movements both as activists and organizers. Women have taken leadership positions in countries such as Israel, Northern Ireland, and Argentina. Yet, when issues of war and peace are discussed in mainstream media, women's voices are heard about as often as they are in the corridors of military power. And in spite of the important work being done by some of the feminists cited above, peace research is still, as Betty Reardon reminds us, very much "another male preserve" (Reardon, 1985: 7l). While the silencing of women in the mainstream media is not surprising, one might have hoped that progressive information channels more open to the peace movement would seek out women's voices. In the United States, unlike many countries in Western Europe, there are only a handful of progressive media. One such publication, with a long history of progressive politics, is The Nation magazine. In September 1990, The Nation launched a new "peace forum." Within two months, it had published four contributions, all from men. I wrote a letter to the editor pointing out that whereas it had started the series by stating that it "was asking several people to comment on the peace movement" it would have been more accurate if it had written that it "was asking several men" to comment. I also pointed out that The Nation's record put it in the same ranks as The New York Times, which published an article surveying progressive voices on the Gulf Crisis in November 1990, which referred to no less than l2 men with not even Although The Nation never published my letter, they did answer it in a manner of speaking. Since it was sent, they have published two additional authors in the series; both men. The Nation also published a recent forum titled "How to End the War". Again, we find four male experts. Another important alternative publication in the United States is The Progressive. Its editor, Irwin Knoll, was one of the few left- of-center commentators to be interviewed on the war by the public television system. Although its promotional literature promised a more feminist agenda than The Nation, this does not seem to be the case. In March 199l, it published an issue entirely devoted to peace. There were nine authors with one woman. The fact that the few established alternative media in the United States seem to be no less open to airing the opinions of women than the establishment media confirms what both Riane Eisler and Betty Reardon have concluded: conservative political movements have been much more successful in gender politics than progressive political formations. Hope on the Horizon? In January 199l, as the US congress debated on whether or not to go to war, there were some small signs that feminist discourse had filtered throught to the corridors of power. For example, on January ll, 199l, Congressman Joseph Kennedy II of Massachusetts made an impassioned speech from the floor of the House, stating that "There's a misguided machismo mentality in America now, a John Wayne attitude, that says some how or another, this is the way we should conduct foreign policy. We ought to be the bully boy." Kennedy's sentiment was not seconded by many of his cohorts, leading one to the conclusion that women cannot expect to find much pacifist support from those representing the State. But an essential question needs to be posed: Is there any basis for believing that women do, in fact, believe more strongly in peace than men? Judging from recent opinion polls conducted during the recent Gulf crisis, the answer is a resounding "yes." Louis Harris, of polling fame, noting that "decisively, women oppose a war," referred not to a gender "gap" but to a "gender gulf." Prior to the onset of war, in early December, the gap between women and men favoring US intervention was a full 25 points. ("The Gender Gulf", New York Times, December l, 199l). Another hopeful sign on the horizon is the creativity shown by many feminists promoting peace through new actions. With her colleague Warren Ziegler, Elise Boulding has been conducting "image workshops" in various sites around the country. Based upon the insights from psychology and the social sciences that people must be able to visualize positive change, these workshops bring together groups of individuals to "image" what a peaceful world would look like (Boulding, 1988). Riane Eisler's work is also extremely innovative. In her well- known book The Chalice and the Blade (Eisler, 1987) she examined a wide range of archaeological and anthropological evidence that indicated a recurrent pattern of what she calls "partnership resurgence and domination regression." In sum, Eisler finds that since pre-historic times, there have been repeated attempts to create peaceful, loving cultures where women and men worked together as partners. However, each resurgence of these societies has been met by a cycle of resistance by militarized male dominator societies. Eisler believes that the "cultural transformation" necessary for peace will only be brought about by promoting partnership models of human relations and is also conducting workshops around the country. Conclusion: Women and the Third World This article began by referring to recent events in the Persian Gulf. I have argued that the pervasive war culture of our societies has contributed to both sexism and militarism. If the Gulf War was only a prelude to increased military actions in the Third World - and there is every indication that this is the most likely scenario - women will be very much affected by the new wave of rising militarism. Since the 1970s, an important strain of feminist literature has called for solidarity between women throughout the world and the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This may be an idea whose time has come. Notes (1) Defining feminism is no easy task. Leslie Cagan, an American feminist and social activist, offers a definition that is to my liking: "Feminism is a political perspective that demands an end to the oppression of people because of their gender, and an end to the institutional and individual structures that define men as more valuable than women. Feminism rests on a belief that we can live in a world without hierarchies of control and domination, that people can exercise control over their own lives and live in harmony with others, and that women can share equality of opportunity and freedom" (Cagan, 1983: 94). (2) Yellow ribbons became a symbol of hope for the American hostages taken by Iran during the 1970s [sic]. In the Gulf War, although there was some sparring over symbols between pro and anti-war activists (with the latter attempting in some cases to appropriate the flag and yellow ribbons) the ribbons were widely interpreted by politicians as a sign of support for the US military action. References Boulding, E. (1987) 'Warriors and Saints: Dilemmas in the History of War.' Talk presented at the International Symposium of Women and the Military System at Siuntio Baths, Finland, January 22-25. Boulding, E. (1988a) 'Image and Action in Peace Building," Journal of Science Issues, 44 (2). Boulding, E. (1988b) Building a Global Civic Culture: Education for an Interdependent World. New York: Columbia University Teacher's College Press. Brock-Utne, B. (1985) Educating for Peace. New York: Pergamon Press. Cagan, L. (1983) 'Feminism and Militarism,' in M. Albert and D. Dellinger (eds.) Beyond Survival: New Directions for the Disarmament Movement. Boston: South End Press. Cohn, C. (1987) 'Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,' Signs, l2 (4). Cohn, C. (199l) 'Decoding Military Newspeak,' Ms. l (5). Eisler, R. (1987) The Chalice and the Blade. New York: Harper and Row. Eisler, R. (199l) 'From Domination to Partnership: The Foundations for Global Peace,' forthcoming in C. Roach (ed.) Communications and Culture in War and Peace. Sage: 199l. Fox-Keller, E. (1985) Reflections on Gender and Science. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Gilligan, C. (1982) In A Different Voice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Greenhouse, C. (1987) 'Cultural Perspectives on War,' in R. Varynen (ed.) The Quest for Peace: Transcending Collective Violence and War Among Societies, Cultures and States. London: Sage. Harding, S. (1986) The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Holt. R. (1987) 'Converting the War System to a Peace System: Some Contributions from Psychology and Other Social Sciences.' Paper prepared for a Conference of EXPRO, May 1987, at Cohasset, MA. Reardon, B. (1985) Sexism and the War System. New York: Columbia University Teachers College Press. Thorne, B., C. Kramare and N. Henley (eds.) (1983) Language, Gender and Society. Rawley, Mass.: Newbury Publishing House.