The Los Angeles Times editorialized on the ethics of psychologists helping the Catholic Church screen out gay priests. As they state:
Pope’s new edict on the priesthood
How can psychologists ethically help the Catholic Church screen out gay priests?
Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2008
The Roman Catholic Church requires its priests to refrain from any sexual relationship, whether heterosexual or homosexual. So one might think that the sexual orientation of an aspirant for the priesthood would be a nonissue — especially in light of the distinction the church has drawn between homosexual conduct, which is considered sinful, and homosexual orientation, which is not.
One would be wrong.
The Vatican recently issued a statement re-emphasizing that even chaste gay men are to be barred from the priesthood. Never mind that large numbers of gay priests — estimates range from 25% to 50% — already serve the faithful, with most adhering to their vow of celibacy.
“Guidelines for the Use of Psychology in the Admission and Formation of Candidates for the Priesthood,” released Oct. 30 by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, not only reiterates the teaching that men with “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies are unworthy of ordination, it also urges seminaries to enlist the aid of psychologists in screening candidates for homosexuality and other “psychic disturbances.”
Yet even if the U.S. church is following a more compassionate policy than Vatican pronouncements would seem to authorize, the role of psychologists in screening applicants raises troubling ethical questions, as even psychologists who approve of such cooperation admit. Aiding the church in weeding out homosexuals is hard to reconcile with these guidelines of the American Psychological Assn.:
“Psychologists are aware of and respect cultural, individual and role differences, including those based on age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language and socioeconomic status, and consider these factors when working with members of such groups. Psychologists try to eliminate the effect on their work of biases based on those factors, and they do not knowingly participate in or condone activities of others based upon such prejudices.”
If the church — or a diocese within the church — takes the Vatican decree literally, it’s hard to see how a psychologist could lend his or her expertise to the thwarting of a young man’s aspiration to serve God simply because he happens to be gay. In our view, that’s not just cruel; it’s unprofessional.
An additional issue regarding such “screening” is that it is questionable that psychologists have a valid way of determining who is “gay” that would not generate many false positives.
Here is the whole editorial:
The Vatican’s hard line against chaste gay priests seems to be inspired by the condemnation the church justly received for its passive response to the sexual abuse of minors — most of them male — by some priests. But, as Pope Benedict XVI conceded during his visit to the United States this year, homosexuality isn’t the same as pedophilia. That statement was a rebuke to conservative Catholics, and others, who have attempted to equate the two. (Despite the pope’s enlightened comments, he approved last month’s statement.)
Obviously, the church must be free to define the qualifications for its clergy based on theological arguments that many outside (and within) the fold find unpersuasive. In this country, the 1st Amendment allows the church to bar homosexuals from the priesthood, just as it does women. But even many Catholics will be horrified by the idea of the church employing psychologists to “out” prospective priests. Nor is it much comfort that the psychological scrutiny will be voluntary. What young man who feels called to the priesthood will feel free to object?
To be fair, the Roman Catholic Church in the United States — including the Archdiocese of Los Angeles — operates under its own guidelines for the screening of prospective priests, which can include consultations with psychologists. Although the U.S. policy professes to adhere to Vatican pronouncements (and was approved by the pope), it seems to adopt a narrower definition of “deep-seated” homosexual inclination, one that allows gays to be ordained as long as their sexual orientation doesn’t interfere with their ministry.
Yet even if the U.S. church is following a more compassionate policy than Vatican pronouncements would seem to authorize, the role of psychologists in screening applicants raises troubling ethical questions, as even psychologists who approve of such cooperation admit. Aiding the church in weeding out homosexuals is hard to reconcile with these guidelines of the American Psychological Assn.:
“Psychologists are aware of and respect cultural, individual and role differences, including those based on age, gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, language and socioeconomic status, and consider these factors when working with members of such groups. Psychologists try to eliminate the effect on their work of biases based on those factors, and they do not knowingly participate in or condone activities of others based upon such prejudices.”
If the church — or a diocese within the church — takes the Vatican decree literally, it’s hard to see how a psychologist could lend his or her expertise to the thwarting of a young man’s aspiration to serve God simply because he happens to be gay. In our view, that’s not just cruel; it’s unprofessional.
November 17th, 2008
Most researchers recognize that research is inherently affected by social beliefs, norms, and practices. But the Census Bureau is about to give us an enormous demonstration. They have decided to remove all gay marriages from their marriage data for the 2010 census, despite laws in Massachusetts and California legalizing those marriges. Perhaps next they’ll remove “Islam” from the list of reportable religions.
U.S. Census Bureau won’t count same-sex marriages
By Mike Swift
Mercury News
Tens of thousands of same-sex couples are expected to marry legally in California by 2010, if a constitutional ban on gay marriage doesn’t pass at the polls in November.
But no matter what the voters decide, the official government count of the number of married same-sex couples in California is not in doubt. It will be zero.
The U.S. Census Bureau, reacting to the federal Defense of Marriage Act and other mandates, plans to edit the 2010 census responses of same-sex couples who marry legally in California, Massachusetts or any other state. They will be reported as “unmarried partners,” rather than married spouses, in census tabulations - a policy that will likely draw the ire of gay rights groups.
The Census Bureau followed the same procedure for the 2000 census, and it does not plan to change in 2010 even though courts in Massachusetts and now California have ruled gay men and lesbians can marry lawfully.
“This has been a question we’ve been looking at for quite a long time,” said Martin O’Connell, chief of the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch. “It’s not something the bureau could arbitrarily or casually decide to change on a whim, because our data is used by virtually every federal agency.”
The Census Bureau is not falsifying people’s responses, O’Connell said, because the bureau will retain people’s original census responses.
“We’re not destroying data; we are keeping that data,” O’Connell said. “We are just showing the data published in a way that is consistent with the way every other agency publishes their data.”The Census Bureau does not ask about sexual orientation, but it does ask people to describe their relationships to others in their household. If a respondent refers to a person of the same gender as their “husband/wife” on the 2010 census form, the Census Bureau will automatically assign them to the “unmarried partner” category. Legally married same-sex couples will be indistinguishable in census data from those who chose “unmarried partner” to describe their relationship.
Researcher’s view
Critics say the census plan will mask the records of legal, same-sex, married couples and therefore degrade the quality of the government’s demographic data.
“I just think it’s bad form for the census to change a legal response to an incorrect response,” said Gary Gates of the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California-Los Angeles law school that studies gay-related public policy issues. “That goes against everything the census stands for.”
Gates, a prominent demographer who was consulted by Census Bureau officials about counting legally married same-sex couples, said one result is that the census will undercount marriages in states with gay marriage. And because the bureau defines a “family” as two or more people related by birth, adoption or marriage, it also will remove many same-sex married couples from being counted as families.
“It’s a systematic hiding not only of married gay couples, but gay couples as families, which I would argue is a fundamentally political decision,” Gates said.
One recently married couple called the policy “frustrating.”
“It’s just another layer of the hurdles we have to jump, as far as our relationship being recognized,” said Jim Winstead of Hollister, who recently married his partner, Rodney Naccarato-Winstead. The couple have an 18-month-old son.
Gay rights groups, learning of the policy this week, were also critical.
“To have the federal government disappear your marriage I’m sure will be painful and upsetting,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “It really is something out of Orwell. It’s shameful.”
A spokeswoman for ProtectMarriage.com, campaigning in favor of the constitutional ban, declined to discuss the census issue in detail, but said it illuminates how the legalization of gay marriage potentially could dictate policy changes on government.
“One of our campaign cornerstones will be the fact that if the initiative doesn’t pass that public schools will be forced to teach the difference between gay marriage and traditional marriage,” said Jennifer Kerns.
Bureau’s reasoning
A census technical note that explains the bureau’s rationale on counting same-sex partners for the 2000 census notes that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act “instructs all federal agencies only to recognize opposite-sex marriages for the purposes of enacting any agency programs.”
O’Connell said the Census Bureau has been unable to find any federal agency that collects data on same-sex married couples. Changing the policy before the 2010 census also would be a huge and difficult logistical issue.
“The last thing anyone wants is to use the 2010 census as a trial run,” O’Connell said.
Gates said, however, that the limitations on access to people’s original responses will make it very difficult for private researchers to analyze raw data and back out the number of same-sex spouses in California or other states.
“It’s an official closet,” Gates said, “that the government has built.”
July 12th, 2008
Ellen Goodman in the Boston Globe has a thought-provoking perspective on the Democratic race:
The female style - modeled by a man
By Ellen Goodman
On Tuesday, I got a sarcastic e-mail from a Hillary supporter. She forwarded a crack made by Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s media man, about Obama. “Senator Clinton,” he scoffed, “is not running on the strength of her rhetoric.” To which my friend added: “Unfortunately.”
By evening, the Wisconsin blowout was serious enough that the posters in last-chance Ohio read: “We’ve Got Your Back Hillary.” Clinton’s speech sounded ominously shopworn: “One of us is ready to be commander in chief . . . One of us has faced serious Republican opposition in the past.”
These are disheartening days for Hillary supporters. Not just because of the string of losses but because of the kind of loss.
This was nothing if not a careful campaign. Neither the strategists nor the candidate had illusions about the hurdles that would face the first woman president in American history. They knew women have to prove and prove again their toughness. They knew women have to prove and prove again their experience.
They began as well by framing Clinton as the establishment candidate. But then the establishment became “the status quo” and the historic candidacy became “old politics.” She even got demerits for experience.
Something else happened along the way. If Hillary Clinton was the tough guy in the race, Barack Obama became the Oprah candidate. He was the quality circle man, the uniter-not-divider, the person who believes we can talk to anyone, even our enemies. He finely honed a language usually associated with women’s voices.
Does this transmutation resonate with women who have tried to become CEOs of lesser enterprises than America Inc.? Women of Hillary’s generation were taught to don power suits and use their shoulder pads to push open corporate doors. In the 1970s, the lessons on making it in a man’s world were essentially primers on how to behave like men. As University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee political scientist Kathleen Dolan says, “They had to figure out a way to go undercover. They could only be taken seriously if they filled the male model with XX chromosomes.”
But the next generation of advice books urged women to do it their own way. The old stereotypes that defined women as more compassionate and collaborative were given a positive spin. They were framed and praised as women’s ways of leading.
Today’s shelves are still full of titles - from “Seducing the Boys Club” to “The Girl’s Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch)” to “Enlightened Power” - that tell us to act like a man or act like a woman. But in many ways, the transformative inspirational, collaborative, “female” style has become more attractive. Especially to a younger generation. And - here’s the rub - especially when it is modeled by a man.
Dolan sees Obama as “the embodiment of the gentle, collaborative style without threatening his masculine side.” But she adds, “He’s being more feminine than she can be. She is in a much tighter box.”
This too is a bit like what’s happened in business. Whatever advice they follow, women are still only 3 percent of the CEOs in Fortune 500 companies. Meanwhile, it’s become more acceptable for a man to take an afternoon off to watch his kids play ball than for a woman.
Ilene Lang heads Catalyst, which surveyed more than 1,200 senior executives in the United States and Europe. This research calculated the tenacity of double binds and double standards. It showed how hard it still is for a woman to be seen as both competent and likable. And it led her to the conclusion that “What defines leadership to most people is one thing. It’s male.”
As for the Obama style? “Both men and women are much more likely to accept a collaborative style of leadership from men than from women. From women it seems too soft,” she adds ruefully.
Hillary was quite right that she needed to be seen as the experienced, competent, commander in chief. Obama was quite right about the country’s desire to reach across boundaries and beyond divisiveness.
We have ended up in a lopsided era of change. After all, how many of us wanted to see male leaders transformed from cowboys to conciliators? Now we see a woman running as the fighter and a man modeling a ‘woman’s way’ of leading. We see a younger generation in particular inspired by ideas nurtured by women, as long as they are delivered in a baritone.
So, has the women’s movement made life easier? For another man?
Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
February 22nd, 2008
A long time ago, I first wrote of the specter of prostitution in Iraq. Evidence is now emerging that, like many countries in conflict, many poor women are being forced into prostitution, either by economic means or by force. Aljazeera sadly reports on the rise of prostitution:
In Iraq, sex is traded for survival
By Afif Sarhan in Baghdad
When Rana Jalil, 38, lost her husband in an explosion in Baghdad last year, she could never have imagined becoming a prostitute in order to feed her children.
A mother of four, Jalil sought out employment, but job opportunities for women had decreased since the US invasion.
She begged shop owners, office workers and companies to hire her but was treated with what she calls chauvinistic discrimination.
Within weeks of her husband’s death, a doctor diagnosed her children with malnutrition.
Fighting tears, she recalled the desperation which led her to the oldest profession: “In the beginning these were the worst days in my life. My husband was the first man I met and slept with, but I didn’t have another option … my children were starving.”
She left the house in a daze, she recalled, and walked to the nearest market to find someone who would pay her for sex.
She said: “I’m a nice-looking woman and it wasn’t difficult to find a client. When we got to the bed I tried to run away … I just couldn’t do it, but he hit and raped me. When he paid me afterwards, it was finished for me.
“When I came home with some food I had bought from that money and saw my children screaming of happiness, I discovered that honour is insignificant compared to the hunger of my children.”
Iraqi widows desperate
Prior to the US invasion, Iraqi widows, particularly those who lost husbands during the Iran-Iraq war, were provided with compensation and free education for their children. In some cases, they were provided with free homes.
However, no such safety nets currently exist and widows have few resources at their disposal.
According to the non-governmental organisation Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), 15 per cent of Iraqi women widowed by the war have been desperately searching for temporary marriages or prostitution, either for financial support or protection in the midst of sectarian war.
Nuha Salim, the spokesperson for OWFI, told Al Jazeera: “Widows are one of our priorities but their situation is worsening and we are feeling ineffective to cope with this significant problem. Hundreds of women are searching for an easy way to support their loved ones as employers refuse to hire them for fear of extremists’ reprisals.”
She said the NGO has documented the disappearance of some 4000 women, 20 per cent of whom are under 18, since the March 2003 invasion.
OWFI believes most of the missing women were kidnapped and sold into prostitution outside Iraq.
Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of widows in Iraq, the ministry of women’s affairs says that there are at least 350,000 in Baghdad alone, with more than eight million throughout the country.
Bitter trade
As Iraqi families continue to fall on hard times, some have been forced to make the most painful of decisions – selling their daughters.
Abu Ahmed, a handicapped father of five who is himself a widower, sold his daughter Lina to an Iraqi man who came to Iraq to “shop” for sex workers. Abu Ahmed said he could not afford to buy food for his other children.
He told Al Jazeera: “I’m sure that whatever she is, at least she is having food to eat. I have three other girls and a son and what they paid me for Lina is enough to raise the remaining ones.”
Abu Ahmed had been initially approached by Shada, the alias of a woman living in Baghdad, who sought young women for Iraqi gangs running prostitution rackets in neighbouring Arab countries.
She told Al Jazeera that her role was to convince young women from impoverished families that a better life awaited them beyond the country’s borders.
She said: “Families don’t want them and we are helping the girls to survive. We offer them food and housing and about $10 a day if they have had at least two clients.”
“Our priority is virgin girls; they can be sold at very expensive prices to Arab millionaires.”
Shada said she sleeps in a different house every few nights as armed groups have marked her for trial and assassination.
Escape from Jordan
OWFI’s Salim says cases like Lina’s have become very common as poverty is increasing in Iraq and desperate families sometimes sell their daughters for less than $500 to traffickers.
But increasingly, young Iraqi women arrive in neighbouring capitals to find that prostitution carries a heavy and dangerous price.
Suha Muhammad, 17, was sold to an Iraqi gang by her mother, herself a prostitute, after her father was killed.
When she arrived in Jordan, she was gang-raped by four men who told her they were teaching her the tricks of the trade.
She told Al Jazeera she had been sold to a gang that caters to VIPs in Syria and was often shuttled to Amman, the Jordanian capital, for high-profile clients.
After six months, she escaped: “I ran away and an Iraqi family helped me by driving me to the immigration department where they helped me get a passport to return to Iraq.
“My aunt is now taking care of me in Baghdad. She never imagined that my mother could sell me, but unfortunately women in Iraq are not important and respected.”
Traffic
Mayada Zuhair, a spokesperson for the Baghdad-based Women’s Rights Association (WRA), said Iraqi and Arab NGOs are trying to monitor the trafficking of young women from the war-ravaged country to neighbouring destinations.
She told Al Jazeera: “We are trying to find out the fate of many widows and teenager girls who were trafficked. Unfortunately it is not an easy process and without international support, funding, and resources, we fear more young Iraqi women will be taken abroad to work in the sex trade.”
In the meantime, however, prostitution remains the only option for Nirmeen Lattif, a 27-year-old widow who lost her husband in an attack on Shia pilgrims south of Baghdad.
When she turned to her husband’s relatives for financial support, they could not afford to help her.
She says she tries not to think of the gravity of what she does or the dishonour it carries in conservative Muslim society.
“I think of my children, only my children; without money we starve in the streets.”
August 15th, 2007
In response to last night’s posting of an article by Debra McNutt [Is the Iraq Occupation Enabling Prostitution?] a colleague sent this disturbing Reuters article on the Nazi’s use of forced prostitution in the concentration camps in order to control and divide the inmate population. It’s a reminder that the ways of human cruelty are manifold, and that manipulation of sexuality often plays a role in this cruelty. It also reminds us of the shame that victims often feel regarding their self-perceived perceived participation in their abuse, and of the personal and social pressures to maintain silence. We Americans should remember that one of the reasons believed to have been behind the Abu Ghraib photographs was as material to blackmail those prisoners forced into the humiliating “sexual” scenes:
Secrets of Nazi camp brothels emerge decades on
By Alexandra Hudson
For decades no one wanted to remember the concentration camp “special blocks” where the Nazis forced female inmates to entertain their male peers.
Nazi commander Heinrich Himmler had ordered the creation of camp brothels in 1941. His logic was chilling — male prisoners would work harder if offered the incentive of sex, and if only a few had this privilege it would crush solidarity.
As the horrors of Hitler’s death camps emerged, the brothels swiftly became taboo. The mainly German women who had staffed them were too scarred by the experience to speak of it, whereas the male inmates who used them remained silent in shame.
Now an exhibition in Ravensbrueck women’s concentration camp north of Berlin aims to shed light on the brothels and expose the Nazis’ sinister attempt to manipulate prisoners’ sexuality.
One man who tried to break this enduring silence is former Buchenwald prisoner Albert van Dijk, a Dutchman from the town of Kampen, close to the German border.
“Often I raised the subject of the ’special block’ at meetings of former inmates of Buchenwald, but nobody ever wanted to discuss it or they said I was mistaken,” said Van Dijk.
The 83-year-old still vividly recalls how at the age of 18, among the despair and degradation of the camp, he fell for a blonde prostitute called Frieda and lost his virginity to her in the “special block.”
Although prostitution was officially forbidden by the Nazis, the elite SS guards had set up a network of brothels catering to German soldiers, forced laborers and prisoners, which they intended in part to stamp out homosexuality.
From 1942 onwards, 200-300 gentile prisoners from the camp were forced to work in 10 camp brothels across Germany, Austria and Poland. Almost all had been imprisoned as “anti-social.”
At first some women volunteered for service as prostitutes, falsely informed they would be released after 6 months. Later they were forcibly recruited during roll call or even from the camp sick bay.
Although the women got slightly better rations and could wear civilian clothes, the work reduced most to physical wrecks. Many caught sexually transmitted diseases, were subject to medical experiments or were forced to have abortions.
Each woman used a small room where male prisoners, after a brief examination, were allowed 15 minutes. Guards looked through peep holes to check sex only took place lying down, as stated in the rules.
After a full day of work in the camp, women spent two hours each night entertaining male prisoners, who paid two Reichsmark. Those who came to them held the most privileged positions among the hierarchy of prisoners, and had the best rations. The vast majority of the male prisoners were much too weak for sex.
FRIEDA
Frieda was the first woman Van Dijk had seen in 6 months. He was a teenager, sent to Buchenwald for fleeing a forced labor troop and smuggling rations to Kampen’s Jews and was in awe of her. She appreciated his youthful coyness.
“One day I was sent to clean in the block and I found myself alone with her… She gave me some Schnaps, blew cigarette smoke in my mouth and we landed in bed. It was my first time and you never forget.”
Later he had to pay like the others to see Frieda, a privilege allowed him as he was imprisoned neither on racial nor political grounds.
“You could let your relatives send you money which was written on an account to spend in the camp,” recalls Van Dijk.
With grotesque efficiency, the SS camp administrators sometimes billed prisoners’ families for services rendered in the brothel.
Other prisoners told him he should be ashamed for spending his mother’s money in the brothel, but in an environment where sexual exploitation was rife and young men sometimes bartered with sexual favors, Van Dijk saw nothing wrong.
“Some young guys slept with older prisoners for an extra morsel of bread … I was young and naive and thought Frieda was interested in me,” he recalled.
After liberation, forced laborers began their fight for compensation. But women who had worked in the brothels found they were unable to claim damages, because of the supposed “voluntary” nature of their work.
Others, fearing stigmatization and the scorn they had already attracted from other prisoners, simply fell silent.
The exhibition in Ravensbrueck, where tens of thousands of women were murdered or died of hunger or disease, has video extracts of former prisoners remembering the brothels and their victims, as well as vouchers which were handed in for sex.
“The theme invites voyeurism,” said Insa Eschebach, head of the Ravensbrueck memorial site, which is why the exhibition relies mainly on the written word.
Concentration camps have featured as a backdrop in some erotic films and a realm of sexual fantasy, exploiting the extreme power gulf between SS guards and prisoners, she said.
Also on display are the few remaining photographs of the special blocks, where the rustic German furniture, vases of flowers and tablecloths belie the horror of what took place.
July 12th, 2007
A while ago I wrote an essay pointing out how little we knew about the sex lives of the American troops in Iraq. [The Sex Lives and Sexual Frustrations of US troops in Iraq: An Ocean of Ignorance]. Since then, only a tiny amount of information has filtered out. Now, in this submission, Debra McNutt adds to our knowledge of this sordid and hidden aspect of the US occupation. She points out the connection between two aspects of the US invasion of Iraq: the traditional military creation of a class of prostitutes, and the inmcreasing reliance on private “contractors,” subject to no laws.
Privatizing Women: Is the Iraq Occupation Enabling Prostitution?
By Debra McNutt
debimcnutt@gmail.com
Military prostitution has long been seen around U.S. bases in the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and other countries. But since the U.S. has begun to deploy forces to many Muslim countries, it cannot be as open about enabling prostitution for its personnel. U.S. military deployments in the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War have reinvigorated prostitution and the trafficking of women in the Middle East.
Another major change has been the reliance of the U.S. military on private contractors, who have now surpassed the number of soldiers in Iraq. Public attention has begun to focus on the role of these contractors in U.S. war zones. Less attention has been paid to how private contractors are changing the nature of military prostitution. In the best known example, DynCorp employees were caught trafficking women in Bosnia, and some indications suggest that similar acts may be taking place in Iraq.
I am researching whether civilian contractors are enabling military sexual exploitation in Iraq, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Muslim countries. My research is investigating new patterns of sexual exploitation of women by the U.S. for military purposes, and how institutionalized prostitution has changed as U.S. forces have been stationed in Muslim countries. I am especially interested in the possible role of civilian contractors in promoting prostitution of local women, or in importing foreign women into U.S. war zones under the guise of employment as cooks, maids or office workers.
I have come to this research as a feminist activist who has long worked on issues of women and militarism, influenced by women such as Cynthia Enloe, Katherine Moon, and Saralee Hamilton. I have organized against the sexual exploitation of Filipinas near U.S. military bases. More recently, I have worked on the related issues of sexual harassment and assault of women GIs within the U.S. military. I have also been actively opposed to the U.S. attacks on Iraq since the Gulf War.
During the brief Gulf War, the U.S. military prevented prostitution for its troops in Saudi Arabia, to avoid a backlash from its hosts. But on their return home, the troop ships stopped in Thailand for “R & R.” After the Gulf War, harsh economic sanctions forced many desperate Iraqi women into prostitution. The sex trade grew to such an extent that in 1999 Saddam ordered his paramilitary forces to crack down on it in Baghdad, resulting in the executions of many women.
The U.S. invasion of March 2003 brought prostitution back to Iraq within a matter of weeks. The Iraq War has now lasted eight times longer than the Gulf War deployments, and is marked by a huge reliance on private security contractors. A U.S. ban on human trafficking, signed by President Bush in January 2006, has not been applied to these contractors.
The rebirth of prostitution has generated fear that permeates all of Iraqi society. Families keep their girls inside, not only to keep them from being assaulted or killed, but to prevent them from being kidnapped by organized prostitution rings. Gangs are also forcing some families to sell their children into sex slavery. The war has created an enormous number of homeless girls and boys who are most vulnerable to the sex trade. It has also created thousands of refugee women who try to escape danger but end up (out of economic desperation) being prostituted in Jordan, Syria, Yemen or the UAE. Our occupation not only attacks women on the outside, but attacks them on the inside, until there is nothing left to destroy.
If foreign women are imported into Iraq for prostitution, they would almost certainly follow the already established channels of illegal labor trafficking, as documented in the Chicago Tribune series “Pipeline to Peril.” For example, independent journalist David Phinney has documented how a Kuwaiti contract company that imported workers to build the new U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone also smuggled women into the construction site.
Within the Green Zone, a few brothels have been opened (disguised as a women’s shelter, hairdresser, or Chinese restaurant) but are usually closed by authorities after reports about their existence reach the media. The U.S. military claims that it officially forbids its troops to be involved in prostitution. But private contractors brag on sex websites that they have sometimes been able to find Iraqi or foreign women in Baghdad or around U.S. military bases. These highly paid security contractors have much disposable income, and are not held accountable to anyone but their companies.
One contractor employee living in the Green Zone reported in February 2007 that “it took me 4 months to get my connections. We have a PSD [Personal Security Detail] contact who brings us these Iraqi cuties.” Western contractors’ e-mails also suggest that some Chinese, Filipina, Iranian and Eastern European women may also be prostituted to Americans and other Westerners within Iraq. (Other reports indicate that Chinese women might also be prostituted in Afghanistan, Qatar, and other Muslim countries where it may be difficult for rings to find local women.)
On leave from Iraq in 2005, Army Reservist Patrick Lackatt said that “For one dollar you can get a prostitute for one hour.” But as the war has escalated in Baghdad and the other Arab regions of Iraq, it has become too dangerous for Westerners to move around outside of the military bases and the Green Zone. Contractors are now advising each other to do their “R & R” in the safer northern Kurdish region, or in the bars and hotels of Dubai, the UAE emirate that has become the most open center of prostitution in the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, any prostitution rings in Iraq have to go deeper underground to hide from Iraqi militias.
As observed by Sarah Mendelson in her 2005 Balkans report Barracks and Brothels, many U.S. government protocols and programs have been implemented to slow human trafficking, but without enforcement they end up merely as public relations exercises. Military officials often turn a blind eye to the exploitation of women by military and contract personnel, because they want to boost their men’s “morale.” The most effective way for the military to prevent a public backlash is to make sure that the embarrassing information is not revealed. It is not necessary to cover up information if it does not come out in the first place.
It has been difficult for me (and other researchers and journalists) to get to the bottom of this crisis. In his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Rajiv Chandrasekaran observed, “There were prostitutes in Baghdad, but you couldn’t drive into a town to get laid like in Saigon.” The question of who is behind the trafficking of people is as hard to crack as the trafficking of drugs (if not more so). It is difficult enough to track the widespread illegal trafficking of workers to Iraq. But the trafficking of Iraqi or foreign women for prostitution is even better concealed. The prostitution rings keep their tracks well hidden, and it is not in the interest of the military or its private contractors to reveal any information that may damage the war effort.
The fact that information is difficult to find, however, is a reason to intensify the search, and to make military prostitution a major issues of the women’s and antiwar movements. It is our tax dollars that fuel the war in Iraq, and if any women are exploited as a result of the occupation, we owe it to them to take responsibility for these crimes.
I am currently writing a larger report on my findings, and am seeking any input from researchers and journalists, military veterans, private contract employees, exiles and refugees, or former prostituted women who may shed light on military prostitution in the Middle East, and the role of the military and its private contractors.
My ultimate purpose is doing this research is not only to help expose these crimes against women, but to help build a movement to stop them. Missing from the discussions about Iraqi women’s rights is how the U.S. occupation is creating new oppressions that destroy women’s self-worth. It is our responsibility as Americans to stop our military’s abuses of women, by ending the occupation.
Debra McNutt is a feminist and antiwar activist and researcher living in Olympia, Washington. She can be contacted at debimcnutt@gmail.com
July 11th, 2007
Men talk less than women. This has become a common piece of folklore. Women utter almost three times as many words as men do, several textbooks tell us. A new study actually counts the words uttered by college men and women and finds a trivial, not statistically significant, difference. Time reports on the study, published in Science [subscribers only]:
Study: Women Don’t Talk More Than Guys
Thursday, Jul. 05, 2007
By AP/RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Another stereotype — chatty gals and taciturn guys — bites the dust. Turns out, when you actually count the words, there isn’t much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking.
A team led by Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, came up with the finding, which is published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science. The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.
The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669.
The difference: 546 words: “Not statistically significant,” say the researchers.
“What’s a 500-word difference, compared with the 45,000-word difference between the most and the least talkative persons” in the study, said Mehl.
Co-author James W. Pennebaker, chairman of the psychology department at the University of Texas, said the researchers collected the recordings as part of a larger project to understand how people are affected when they talk about emotional experiences. They were surprised when a magazine article asserted that women use an average of 20,000 words per day compared with 7,000 for men. If there had been that big a difference, he thought, they should have noticed it.
They found that the 20,000-7,000 figures have been used in popular books and magazines for years. But they couldn’t find any research supporting them. “Although many people believe the stereotypes of females as talkative and males as reticent, there is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended periods of time,” Pennebaker said.
Indeed, Mehl said, one study they found, done in workplaces, showed men talking more. Still, the idea that women use nearly three times as many words a day as men has taken on the status of an “urban legend,” he said. “We realized we had the data,” Mehl said in a telephone interview, so they went back to their recordings and calculated the actual numbers.
Their research began with one group of students in 1998, two groups sampled in 2001, two in 2003 and a final group in 2004. One of the 2003 groups involved 51 students in Mexico, the rest were all in the United States. The students were fitted with unobtrusive recorders that sampled their conversations — the students didn’t know when the recorders were on. From the samples, a total number of words for the day could be calculated.
Of the six groups sampled, women used more words than men in three and men used more words than women in the other three, including the one in Mexico. The research was limited to college students, but Pennebaker said he believes it would probably apply to others in the same age range. “The question is, how it applies to people as we get older,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. Mehl said he thinks it should apply across age groups, but he wondered how it would be affected by different cultures.
July 5th, 2007
McClatchy Newspapers explains about the so-called “medical report” that the Iraqi Prime Minister used to discredit the alleged rape claim earlier this week:
The single sheet, apparently part of a multi-page report, said that there were “no vaginal lacerations or obvious injury.” An accompanying statement asserted that the medical report “confirmed” there had been no rape, but several rape experts in the United States said the report did no such thing.
The report didn’t disprove the woman’s allegations, the experts said, and it indicated that the woman suffered extensive injuries, including at least eight bruises on the front of her thighs consistent with a sexual assault.
“Generally it occurs when the suspect is holding the victim’s legs open and the victim is attempting to close her legs,” said Tara Henry, a former head of the sexual assault unit at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage, who reviewed the report at the request of McClatchy Newspapers….
Most rape victims, especially those who already are sexually active, don’t suffer vaginal injuries during an assault, said Dr. Dan Sheridan, the coordinator of the forensic nursing program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Other experts said the report indicates that medical personnel took numerous X-rays and CT scans, perhaps bolstering Sunni claims that the woman had been beaten.
“They did a CT scan of the head, the pelvis, and the neck. These tests would not have shown if someone was sexually assaulted, so there had to have been some kind of other trauma that they found,” said Dr. Karen Simmons, medical director of the Rape Treatment Center in Miami, Fla.
“It shows that she was brought into a trauma unit in bad shape,” said Joshua Weintraub, an attorney who once ran the sexual crimes office of the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office.
At this point, it is clear that no investigation occurred before al-Maliki dismissed the claims and gave honors to the alleged rapists. Where’s Congress and the Democrats on support for a government that honors alleged rapists?
February 23rd, 2007
Monday brought news of a Sunni Iraqi woman taking the unusual step of going public with her accusation that she wa raped by Iraqi security forces. This accusation created outrage among the Iraqi Sunni community, as can be seen in this post by Riverbend: The Rape of Sabrine…:
As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.
She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents….
I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too.
As usual, the Iraqi government took decisive action. The “Prime Minister” announced an investigation. He obviously was vying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for Fastest Investigation. A few hours later the PM announced the results of the investigation:
Hours later, Maliki reversed course, issuing another statement calling the woman an impostor and a criminal with three outstanding warrants.
“After confirming the falsehood of these claims,” it said, Maliki “has ordered that these distinguished officers be honored.” It did not identify the officers or explain why the accolades were justified.
Presumably, in the interests of “justice,” the woman will now be hunted down and turned over to these distinguished officers for the “punishment she deserves.” At this point, she’s either in hiding or dead.
Every Sunni woman is now a target for the Shiite militias. By tomorrow, Shia women will be targets for the Sunni insurgents. Thus is democracy built, rape by rape. Another great victory for Iraqi justice and democracy. And another myth of injustice added to Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, and the Death Squads.
UPDATE: Riverbend on Maliki’s exoneration:
No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives….
This is meant to discourage other prisoners, especially women, from coming forward and making claims against Iraqi and American forces. Maliki is the stupidest man alive (well, after Bush of course…) if he believes his arrogance and callous handling of the situation will work to dismiss it from the minds of Iraqis. By doing what he is doing, he’s making it more clear than ever that under his rule, under his government, vigilante justice is the only way to go. Why leave it to the security forces and police? Simply hire a militia or gang to get revenge. If he doesn’t get some justice for her, her tribe will be forced to… And the Janabat (the Al Janabis) are a force to be reckoned with.
Maliki could at least pretend the rape of a young Iraqi woman is still an outrage in todays Iraq…
February 21st, 2007