Gendering Global Conflict by Laura Sjoberg

Author:Laura Sjoberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

GENDERED EXPERIENCES OF GENDERED WARS

Hedy Epstein escaped from Nazi persecution via the Kindertransport to England when she was 14, in 1938. Since arriving in the United States in 1948, she has been a strong advocate of the rights of Palestinians, protesting Israeli aggression in the Free Gaza movement, founding the St. Louis chapter of Women in Black, and traveling to the Gaza Freedom March with Code Pink. During nonviolent protests, Epstein has been assaulted, labeled a terrorist, and lost her hearing to an Israeli sound bomb meant to break up a protest. Still, she explains, “I’m an inveterate optimist, so someday, there will be peace,” and, in her eighties, marches with women’s peace organizations all over the Middle East and North Africa in pursuit of that elusive goal.2

Fifty-one-year-old Samira Ahmed Jassim was arrested in January of 2009, under allegations that as a member of Ansar al-Sunna, “she directly supervised training of more than 80 female terrorists in Baghdad and Diyala.”3 Nicknamed Um al-Mumenin (mother of believers), she confessed to running a training camp that provided expertise, supplies, targets, and support for twenty-eight woman suicide bombers. Some reports, however, allege an even darker side to her work, claiming “she was a part of a plot in which young women were raped and then sent to her for advice” and “she would try and persuade the victims to become suicide bombers as their only escape from shame.”4 Though these reports were “not supported by subsequent investigations,” they portray a certain idea of a monstrous, violent woman.5

Suhail Najim Abdullah Al Shimari was arrested at his Baghdad home and taken to a prison called Abu Ghraib on November 7, 2003, where he was held by the U.S. military and private contractors for four years “without ever having been charged with any crime or having received judicial process.”6 Suhail was not only deprived of food and sleep, subject to sensory deprivation and extreme temperatures, threatened with dogs, and threatened with death; he was subject to sexual abuse. He was kept naked, forcibly shaved, and was forced to engage in sexual activity with other prisoners. He also watched another prisoner be choked to death. After being released, Suhail returned to his family land and began to farm for a living. He has filed a lawsuit against several private military contractors for torture and other war crimes.7

Kate Bartholomae was trained as a nurse by a convent in the early twentieth century in Germany. Her early career was spent working in a hospital related to her convent, but the advent of the World War I changed that. When the Chicago Tribune reported on her life in November of 1914, reporter James O’Donnell Bennett characterized her as a “fitting example of the ‘sisters’ who mother Kaiser’s men,” as she worked at a hospital for wounded soldiers near a dismal railway station at Maubeuge.8 Kate, working long hours with few resources, was responsible for helping soldiers heal physically and emotionally. While it was expected that she return the soldiers to

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