Afghanistan Update

Karzai is going to reverse the law legalizing marital rape and rolling back the rights of Afghan women.

Good job, internal and external outrage!

Isolating out the misogyny.

Ok this post is a little different: it's not about the Muslim world. It is inspired by McCain's former campaign manager's comments about gay marriage. It made me think about the unifying ability of culture war issues like gay marriage and abortion, and what unifies the GOP without those issues. I don't think, tea parties notwithstanding, that a philosophy of low taxes and little government intrusion is actually the foundation of the GOP. In reality, many doctrinaire Regan-type Republicans are ok with taxes that enable defense spending, and many religious Republicans are ok with government intrusion, as long as it focuses on private intimate conduct and not on regulation of capital markets. I want to explore, in this post, how some coalitions built on culture war issues are made up of groups that should not agree, even when taking into account ugly and irrational positions. The anti-birth control AND anti-abortion stance is one such coalition. People who believe that birth control availability and a right to abortion ought not to be legal must take that stance because they want to punish women who have sex or else because their religion mandates that stance. Neither of these reasons is an acceptable rationale upon which to make national policy.

The forced-birth crowd, aka anti-abortion, anti-sex education AND anti-birth control people, care only about control of women and not about anything else. Disclaimer: I am making these arguments from a disgusting starting point; I do not accept their premises (for example I don't believe that non-white people are inferior to white people).

White racists and people who hate or resent the poor should be pro government-funded birth control and pro abortion. Poor people are disproportionally non-white. Poor people have the most to gain from government funded programs. So, the government would be funding the birth control that helps to prevent people of color from reproducing. Safe, legal abortion would be available as a backup in case pregnancy is unintended and/or the product of sexual assault (and sexual assault is disproportionately common in communities of color.)

Providing birth control is better than just telling poor people and people of color not to have sex since 1) obviously that doesn't work and 2) it's easier just to give people birth control and not have to try to enforce abstinence. Abstinence education costs a lot of money, though I don't know how much in relation to providing birth control costs. However, I'd be surprised if the decrease in unwanted pregnancies didn't save the government money on emergency room trips for uninsured mothers and early-childhood education and health care.

The third reason to give birth control rather than to just tell people of color and poor people not to have sex requires a bit of intellectual honesty on the part of racists, which I know is a tall order. Bear with me: if you are a racist, you think brown people aren't as good as you, a white person. You think they're not as smart, don't make good decisions, lack discipline or fortitude, and aren't as worthy of human rights. This line of thought presupposes that human rights can be deserved, instead of inherent, but that's another post. Anyway, if you really believe people of color don't make good decisions or lack discipline, then why would you expect them to think: "I can't afford a baby, I better suppress my biological urges all the time so I don't get pregnant". That would take good decision-making skills and discipline! If you're a racist, you can't really hope that non-white people acquire discipline or decision-making skills or those good things you think they lack. If they did, that would totally disrupt your white supremacist hierarchy, leaving you without the white privilege that you depend on for your self-esteem. So, if they lack decision-making skills and discipline and those cannot be acquired, you could just make birth control available and then those problems go away.

Those who think that American-style capitalism is the only acceptable model should be on board with America promoting widespread birth control and abortion rights overseas. During the communist era, the US policy abroad was to encourage population control with the use of contraception, in order to maintain capitalism's hegemony by crippling the growth of communist countries. Michelle Goldberg's book, The Means of Reproduction, examines this history. People who work from a colonialist model and wish to guarantee American economic hegemony rather than a cooperative global economy should like the idea of encouraging small family size and widespread use of birth control in the developing world.

People who believe single mothers are irresponsible and bad parents should be in favor of birth control and abortion. The 80's version of single-mother hate came from Reagan's phrase "welfare queen". When people describe single mothers, the stigmatizing effect of the phrase "welfare queen" is still evident. It is present in allegations that single mothers raise kids on food stamps and welfare, and single mothers' kids go to prison. If women had unfettered access to their reproductive rights, we could address this problem, if it is a problem, and if it can be addressed. We would be able to isolate the cases, which I contend would be rare, where women choose to have babies they cannot afford. Why not just tell women not to have sex instead? Because 1) it hasn't worked yet and 2) if you believe single mothers are irresponsible, undisciplined people, then you shouldn't be comfortable banking on their ability to abstain.

And, finally, people who hate abortion should support widespread birth control availability, since it will decrease the abortion rate. I promise, when faced with a low-cost ex-ante method of avoiding unintended pregnancy, women will use that option. Mistakes will be made, but that doesn't mean women aren't rational actors.

Without misogyny, racists, poor-haters, and single-mom haters would be on board with widespread subsidized or free birth control and abortion. I recognize there's a small wrinkle with the people who believe abortion is murder, but we're talking about the disingenuous wingnuts who want to outlaw birth control AND abortion, making family planning and reproductive control a thing of the past. For these people, the problem with birth control is that it takes away reasons not to have sex, and they reject any model in which a woman's sexuality is under her own control. They would rather tell people not to have sex than make it possible for people to engage in sex without the threat of pregnancy. They think sex has consequences. Only bad things have consequences! Good things have "benefits" and morally neutral things have "results". Sex is good. It is an inevitable part of the human experience. It is fun, and free, and it feels good. Why should I refuse to engage in a perfectly healthy, legal, normal activity that I want to do just because a person I have never met says I should?

Sounds like I am saying they hate sex, not that they hate women. Let me be clear: they do hate sex. However, look who absorbs the costs of sex in a world where birth control is not completely avilable: the woman. Look who should have been more careful or worn something different or sent different signals when a rape occurs: the woman. Look who has to "take responsibility" for having sex by carrying a life she didn't intend to create: the woman. If anti-birth control and anti-abortion people hate sex and their perfect model gives women all the resposibility for the costs of sex, that's misogyny. And, without misogyny, the pro-choice movement would have strange allies in the racist, poor-hater communities. I argue that's a good thing because I believe, when it come to keeping women alive and in control of their own bodies, the ends justify the means.

The abortion issue-as-litmus-test is just one situation in which I see the facade of a unified GOP cracking. People inside and outside the party need to regard so-called Republican core issues with a critical eye: to which faction within the GOP is this issue important? Why? How does it relate to the national platform? For example, the more libertarian wing of the party cannot possibly believe that taxes are an affront but interfering in female citizens' bodily integrity is not.

Entitlement and Marital Rape

Sarah Palin's pick for Attorney General of Alaska is running into some problems. A letter by Leah Burton, reproduced here and here, says that Wayne Anthony Ross spoke at a 1991 meeting of the group Dads Against Discrimination. Burton's letter alleges that Ross said, "If a guy can't rape his wife, who's he gonna rape?" I have several things to say about this statement in isolation, not as an indicator of Ross' potential job performance as AG. It hasn't been proven that he said this yet.

1. This statement might mean, "If a man can't rape his wife, he will inevitably go rape someone else, and that's not good." I would take issue with the idea that a man is inevitably a rapist. Even if this statement doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it might mean that those men who are rapists should confine their activities to one victim. I disagree that it's helpful to the world to assign one woman to absorb the pain of all potential victims. If a wife is made into the mechanism by which society controls rapists, then society completely ignores any punishment or accountability for rapists themselves. How about wives don't have to be victims of sexual assault at all, because men realize that women's bodies should be under individual women's control?
2. The more conventional way to read this statement is "If a man can't rape his wife, then what is a wife for?" This view is akin to the idea that marital rape doesn't exist, because "rape" means "have sex with someone without their permission" and wives, through their marriage vows, give their husbands blanket sexual consent until the marriage ends or one spouse dies. This view depends on the idea that women are not people with full agency within marriage, and that their bodily integrity is secondary to their husbands' sexual desires.
   

The statement attributed to Ross led me to revisit Afghan leader Mohammad Asif Mohseni's statements about the law that grants a husband sexual access to his wife every fourth night. The Globe and Mail reported this story and Mr. Mohseni's statements:

“If she is not sick, and if she does not have another problem, it is the right of a man to ask for sex and she should make herself ready for it. This is the right of a man,” Mr. Mohseni explained.

Mr. Mohseni argued that women and men are very far from equal in today's Afghanistan and should not be treated as such. He pointed out that many rural women are illiterate and would not be able to find work if they were asked to provide some of the family's financial support. Men are typically the breadwinners in Afghan households, expected to provide for their wives and children.

“It is not possible for all women to pay the same amount of money as men are paying. For all these expenses, can't we at least give the right to a husband to demand sex from his wife after four nights?” he said.

Look at the similarity in the worldview of a person who would say what Ross is alleged to have said and someone who advocates legal marital rape. Both view sex as a commodity: something that women give and men take. Neither view women as owners of their sexuality. Rather, both seem to believe that a woman's husband owns her body for the purpose of satisfying his sexual pleasure. Neither discuss the ramifications of forced sexual intercourse on family dynamics or women's physical and emotional well-being. Neither address any non-illness-related reason a woman might legitimately withold consent from her husband, and indeed the decision over whether the reason is worthy isn't mentioned in Ross' statement and is entirely within the law's power (and not the woman's) in Mohseni.

American culture is called "rape culture" by feminists because of statements like the one Ross is alleged to have made. However, somehow we hold ourselves apart from Muslim governments, believing the US to be much more progressive and enlightened. However, our cultures are more similar than many in the West would like to admit, the difference is a matter of degree within the same basic model. Any society that works within the concept of "giving" women rights ignores the fact that women, as humans, are born with rights that nobody has the power to give or take away. If a society keeps women from acting on their own behalf and representing themselves in government and exercising bodily control and sexual agency, that society denies women's humanity.

Marital Rape in Afghanistan

I wanted to address the Afghan law that many liberal and feminist bloggers have spoken about, which guarantees a man's right of sexual access to his wife. Under the law, a man has a right to have sex with his wife every fourth night (which I assume is a minimum). One of the law's drafters, Mohammad Asif Mohseni, has condemned the outcry from Western leaders (including Obama), saying that if the West wants a democracy in Afghanistan, then it needs to let the Afghan people pass laws like this, if the people decide they are necessary.

Mohseni's underlying argument boils down to "Western influence over our laws is unacceptable". This view seems to be shared by Noah Feldman, as described in his article Imposed Constitutionalism (37 Conn. L. Rev. 857, 869 (2005)). To thse who think Westerners should have little or no say in Afghanistan's laws, I must ask: are you serious? How can the West avoid interfering with Afghanistan's legal system? The US was attacked by the Taliban, which was effectively running Afghanistan, since its government was broken. As a response to a devastating attack, we invaded Afghanistan. The logical conclusion of that invasion, whenever it may come, must include a new, stable Afghan government, with American support. And, we as Americans have an obligation, having taken on the burden of invading and trying to stabilize the Afghan state, to safeguard human rights there.

Avoiding Western intrusion into Afghan affairs is impossible in 2009. In fact, an American refusal to get involved with this particular law would be a Western interference that comes down on the side of men who think women exist to be used for sex. There is no neutral, non-invasive ground for the US or the rest of the West in this situation. By standing idly by, Westerners are complicit in deprivation of Afghan women's constitutionally protected rights. We are complicit in the legalization of marital rape and the statutory reduction of women to sex objects rather than people. We ruin our own strategic objectives if we don't push back, because we contribute to the instability of the Afghan state when we support fundamentalists like Mohseni. When fundamentalists and regional clerics are given power over government and the laws thereof, they will not back off and support whatever government we pick to nominally run the country. Giving fundamentalist warlords an inch on these types of debates silences women and legitimizes virulent fundamentalism that reads no human rights guarantees in the Quran.

Mohseni contends that marital rape and women's sexual availability to their husbands is a Quranic principle, and is therefore beyond analysis and reproach:

Afghanistan is an Islamic state and its constitution defers to the Quran as the ultimate authority. Mr. Mohseni said the law simply reiterates rules from Islam's holy book.

The Quran, like every other authoritative religious text, is open to interpretation. Does the Bible say things that were only culturally appropriate in the context (temporal and cultural) in which it was written? You bet. Does the Torah? Sure. It is an indefensible position that the Quran, in 2009, necessarily restricts human rights and mandates that women function as objects of sexual gratification for their husbands regardless of their own feelings on the matter. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world (according to some sources). Not all of them practice or interpret their religion in the same way. It is unnecessary and inappropriate for the US to entertain arguments that the Quran mandates that women are their husband's property, or any argument that similarly reduces women's humanity. To accept such an argument is to support a hard line, fundamentalist interpretation rather than a more progressive, democratic interpretation. There is no reason to accept any interpretation of Islam that doesn't comport with modern understandings of human rights.

Our failure to insist upon a liberal interpretation of Islam in the laws of the Muslim governments we influence will doom our goals in Iraq ad Afghanistan by empowering fundamentalists there. Such a failure would also doom our efforts to achieve democracy in those countries, since it is disingenuous to describe a state as a democracy if it lacks meaningful participation by its women.

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Family Law/Property Law

I'm adopting a new goal to post once per week, on Thursdays or Fridays. But so that I don't lose it, I wanted to talk about an idea I've been ruminating for a while: family law has its origins in property law. In order to flesh this out, I will need to figure out when property law as we understand it came into being and for whom. As for the Western world and the Anglo-American legal tradition, I know that all real property in England ultimately belonged to the crown. What about personal property? What regulations were there over a man regarding his livestock, and how were they different from regulations pertaining to women and children? Is the Bible helpful in understanding this question?

Same questions go for the Middle East. How did property law evolve there? When did a separate family law jurisprudence emerge, and was it part of church or secular adjudication? Is the Quran helpful in understanding this question as it pertains to the Middle East?

I work from a place of curiosity and deep offense with this question. The idea that I am less than a man because I am a woman has always been quite unpalatable to me. Knowing that women in different times or places literally had no human rights and were completely dependent on their fathers and husbands is hard to wrap my mind around. The very idea that my birth as female dooms me to different treatment for life is shocking and maddening. This is why my feminism gave rise to intersectional progressive values and secular humanism: I reject white, able-bodied men as the "default"of humanity. This world does not belong to one subset of its inhabitants.

How did this devaluation of women begin? Women's physical power to create life must have seemed divine in early humanity: goddess worship was most likely, quite common. I had a thought the other day that perhaps death in childbirth contributed to the devaluation of women. It seems inefficient today to keep half the world's population illiterate and weak. Maybe during most of human history, when women were married and pregnant in their teens and deaths in childbirth were frequent, educating women, or indeed becoming attached emotionally to them, must have seemed like a waste of time. Maybe our biology reduced us to death before the patriarchy reduced us to our biology.