Far from the image of an objective reporter, Nicholas Kristoff is a journalist immersed in documenting the moral failures of men which drive them to unspeakably destructive acts. He doesn’t only report but also intervenes, comprehending that some things cannot be encountered with the professional passivity of a paid observer. The violence he describes around the globe is directed both externally and inwardly, as is the usual case with aggression. External battles between nations are most easily documented, such as that between Israel and it’s neighbors. Much of Kristoff’s reporting is devoted to civil divisions in which men seek to subjugate or exterminate portions of their own societies, as seen in his visits to African nations. Unlike most reporters, his attention is draw to the inevitable targeting of women who constitute the lowest rung of all societies. He chronicles these atrocities, and the occasional modest victory, very well.

Kristoff continued his series on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a piece called, “Waiting for Ghandi”.
While a previous column discussed below advised men to forget the past and begin anew in an area where history–and mythology– reign supreme, this column expresses the hope that males immersed in violence might be shamed into negotiations. That shame would be instigated by the sight of women engaged in passive resistance and filmed for posterity as they are met with violence. Yes, it would put a powerful image before many cameras.

But what of the women?

Kristoff, like Ghandi, appears to regard women as if we hold the answer to all of societies ills. As a matter of fact, we do. But, we aren’t going to share these most ‘un-secret’ of all strategies because we’re exhausted. Not only is the demand for these ‘secrets’ unceasing, but we are also expected to be impervious to the retribution exacted by men who fail to meet their own expectations of evolving to that sought-after, higher level of being. There is always a ‘reason’ for continuing their violent games.

And what of the women?

Women are indeed practiced at this because passive resistance (there is nothing ‘civil’ about flagrant disobedience) is a major strategy by which women stay alive in their own homes or retain their places in the work-force. However, passive resistance is not really a model of revolution. It is a protective shield to guard the spark of repressed humanity within oppressed humanity. It impresses others for only a very short time. Then the women will be left to pay the price of their demonstration.

Kristoff demonstrates the usual struggle of all men with the ‘Madonna/Whore’ division in which women are idealized. Nonetheless, that idealization of women still results in punishment for the assigned role of receptacles for male expression of sex and seed; of power and need. And sometimes of love, which is never returned as powerfully as required by the ‘thwarted’. Still, I had to question the very nature of the suggestion and read a bit about Ghandi’s view of women. It was very much the same. Women are necessary to save men from themselves.

Ghandi put women on pedestals to induce men to control themselves by example. By opening the door to females as voters, he assumed they would elect more reasonable individuals among the male half of the population. Females elected to any position of power would be expected to minimize the degree to which they visibly exercised it. Ghandi didn’t actually endorse social equality for women, fearing they would become equally violent and immoral with such freedom. This circular reasoning merely places men at the mercy of their atavistic impulses and makes women responsible for altering men’s goals. None of this requires the necessary and radical shifts in the gender hierarchy within society.

Hopefully, women will be permitted the garb required for their appointed task as peacemaker. A cape and tights, as provocative as the latter might appear, would seem necessary.

Wistful notions by men of peace making and describing huMan history. This reply was posted to Mr. Kristoff’s blog:

254.

July 11th, 2010
3:54 pm
Mr. Kristoff,

You disappoint today with this easy discharge of responsibility from warring, patriarchal factions to solutions which will result in some transient shame to men through the public abuse of women. Women are at the lowest rung of the ladder of oppression in that even an oppressed male can own one. Female lives should not be risked for lack of clear written agreements by men to end their armed conflicts and respect the rights of other men to exist.

You have seen how women are weapons of war in Africa through rape; how women become human shields in Middle Eastern villages occupied by terrorists needing bases for their guns and rockets. Yet now you propose women risk their lives in an effort to shame men whose customs preclude women from appearing in such a public manner for subversive purposes. How should they dress and comport themselves to avoid condemnation and punishment by their own leaders? Their own husbands?

Women can’t solve the problem, when we are even denied equal rights under the constitution – any constitution. Equal rights of citizenship in this country are even granted to paper entities – corporations – as for its human, male residents. Those corporate, paper citizens reap profits from war and provide its weapons – propaganda, money and instruments of violence. Remove those weapons of war instead of placing women between those weapons and their primary targets. Make war unprofitable and refuse recognition to terrorist-led governments.

Having women lie at the feet of armed men with the responsibility of disarming them is simply unfair. The State Department should instead grant women political asylum to leave their men to enjoy their battles and flee to safer environs. Deprivation of the sex class might serve to end war since shame is nonexistent. And, if wars are to be won by media influenced opinion, have journalists travel en mass to these battlefields.

You get paid for it and have medical insurance.

Barbara Rubin

Post Script: A post regarding the column by David Brooks written about Mel Gibson’s case has been postponed pending verification of the content of the tapes by law enforcement.

Many Americans learn their history through movies and animated Disney films about our pasts. It has led us to celebrate victories. Violent acts become crime dramas and ‘movies-of-the-week’, to be replayed over and over again. People enjoyed the sight of (attractive) heroes and heroines triumphing over evil. They were often vanquished by evil warlords but animated people could be shot, stabbed and fall off cliffs and still be reconstituted with a dash of water. Those who weren’t animated, all had medical insurance and would eventually recover from their comas.

Unfortunately, humans are not that resilient and survivors of violence (or merely violent times) often pass on little more than their traumas to future generations. Triumphant and tragic events are both remembered and oral knowledge eventually becomes archived as history. However the repetitive facts and themes contained in the history of men are transformed into mythology. Belief replaces facts and cannot easily be fought with reason. As women have only been rarely accounted for in recorded history, at least outside of mythology, I refer to the subject as huMan history – which tells a story all its own.

Most of the triumphs in historical records of one group are actually tragedies in the records of another. For some reason, success is equated with victory, meaning one can only advance at some cost to another with violence usually in evidence somewhere along the way. The error is actually one of reasoning. We regard each circle of aggression and defense as a closed chapter in group or individual histories. The allies won a war in 1942. A man was executed for killing another man. A wife left an abusive husband . None of these circles have been completed because history has been mistaken as something which is part of the past. The allies have since met the same evil occur within and between countries and executions, oddly, did not appear to deter other murders. Women return to abusive men when they realize they have no other way to raise their children without neglecting vital aspects of their health and safety regarding food, housing, supervision and medical care. Sometimes it is the mythology about two parents always being preferable to one.

HuMan history doesn’t repeat itself but merely continues. How we view history is key in many conflicts where mythology has replaced reason and is used to justify any amount of brutality. “Who did what to whom first?”, is a never ending question huMans ask one another. This first column by Kristoff, “Burrowing Through A Blockade”, attempts to remove huMan history from the equation entirely. He optimistically called for an end to memories of injustices on all sides, yet never addresses the nature of the participants involved. Change requires an alteration of more than circumstances. It calls for a huMan revolution of beliefs about the past and new ways of viewing progress as something other than winning which ensures a loser. Seeking a victory instead of a draw in which all coexist to the detriment of none is the temporary fix we are all condemned to replay. As long as only victories count, huMan history will continue as it is at present.

My posted comment was as follows:

144.

July 4th, 2010

Dear Mr. Kristoff,

Having just read your latest piece about the Middle East, I take issue with your recommendation to “… start over again.”. This is a form of wishful thinking that perpetuates violence around the globe. People tire of repetitive cycles of egregious harm done to various groups, be it to women or entire cultures in genocidal acts. Rather than persevere through the complexities of ending such evil, everyone wants to first wipe these dirtiest of slates ‘clean’.

The problem with recognizing an entity like Hamas must begin with their own stated goals. Have you looked at their charter? I recommend you seek out a person fluent and literate in Arabic to objectively review it. You should also review the failure of the former ruling party, the PLO, to make changes to their charter stating their intentions to destroy Israel until the late 1990s. Such provisions in their charter existed even after the Oslo Accords (I and II) in the early portions of that decade.

How do you ask any nation to negotiate with others whose stated intention is your eradication? The assumption of ‘good faith’ in such negotiations is not just ‘silly’ but ‘suicidal’. The Palestinians will always be deprived of political legitimacy until a governing body dedicates itself to the transformation of that territory into a nation able to respect the standing of other, non-Islamic nations in the world community. We must not mistake the offering of relief to a beleaguered populace as offering legitimacy to its rulers.

Humans suffer under governmental mandates to pursue bad policies. The US went bankrupt pursuing war in Iraq on pretenses of weapons of mass destruction being stockpiled there. Military and civilian casualties in that effort will remain a permanent blot on our record forever, which could not be halted for many years despite protests by citizens free to speak out about the issue. Who can speak in repressive environments by voice or vote? Our July 4th celebration of our Constitution is useless if we allow any of our temporary elected leaders to violate its written provisions.

Slates, like memories, cannot be wiped clean. Slates must boast written proof of current beliefs and future intentions regarding their principles and methods for governing. Aspiring governments must acknowledge that they will be taking their place among a community of nations with diverse beliefs.

Barbara Rubin

Note: A tag of feminism was added to this post since the eradication of women from much of history is symptomatic of the denial which is the basis for so much huMan misery as we see in the next two posts.

Certain cultural premises cannot be hidden although they may be dressed in the finest of linen. Certain terrifying realities about how women in society are viewed have come shining through the writings of two nationally prominent columnists in the NY Times – Nicholas Kristoff and David Brooks. While this blog concentrates on issues affecting health, the fact remains that women are disproportionately harmed by the corporate domination of research which develops and promotes the sale of environmentally and biologically harmful products. The decline in women’s health is considered more of an inconvenience and expense than a national indicator of misogyny. It is all disguised as being a necessary evil if you wish to reap the rewards of a of free-market economy. However, it is hard to call such an economy ‘free’, when it takes so many prisoners among the most vulnerable of consumers. These next three posts discuss columns written about violence involving women. I was shocked at what these columnists said–and failed to say– about my culture.

I came late to feminism due to a combination of inherited and earned privilege, which can sharply skew perception (and acceptance) of reality. A happy, lower middle class childhood meant luxuries were limited, but life was sweet, as loving parents sheltered me from their day to day struggles. There was sufficient food, a roof over my head and an education sharply monitored and reinforced by them. A second generation American, I grew up among those who escaped terrible persecution to come to the US. The worked in factories and even sweat shops, while going to night school, so their children would have better lives. Next to my chair in synagogues would sit elderly women with tattooed wrists. They were treated well in their families so my realization of how women are actually regarded in society was delayed.

That background prepared me to be more accepting of the observations and information that later came my way about hardship and its relationship to class and race. I learned about gender-privilege when faced with it again and again on the job. Reading the writings of anguished women thriving, or barely surviving, in the face of such obstacles led me to begin examining my own privilege. It became easier to recognize just how the inclusion of women within a culture is a gift bestowed upon us by men. It is just as swiftly withdrawn by men for any real or perceived infraction of their codes. As these columns reveal, women are actually held responsible for rectifying the failures of men which perpetuate the oppression of women.

Sisyphus , that mythological King who was condemned to spend all eternity pushing a boulder uphill, must have been a woman.

Unfortunately, the media is just another form of ‘show biz’, further separating people from important direct and concise summations of issues. The NY Times demonstrates how little can be learned from participating in the pomp and circumstance of a 24 hour news cycle when journalists reiterate their diametrically opposing points in ‘counterpoint’. You don’t really have a conversation that way but just fill more space with the same signatures.

So, when this weeks NY Times Op Ed columnists, David Brooks and Gail Collins each posted their views of the current health reform nonsense – that bipartisan race to preserve medical care for the healthy and wealthy – it is impossible not to recognize how this country turns a basic philosophical premise about how we view human life into a comedy sketch. I keep expecting Brooks to address Collins as “Gail, you ignorant slut.”, in a parody of the old Saturday Night Live take-offs of similar debates to the ‘Conversations‘ of these two writers.

In her column this week entitled, “The New Perils of Pauline“, Gail Collins demonstrates the classic dilution of feminist theory and rhetoric as she competes for attention with male colleagues in this still mostly-male domain. David Brooks presented us with his ‘views’ in another colunm, “The Hardest Call“. Brooks is the Times’ resident conservative who continues to make abject apologies to the Republican party for breaking faith with them and voting for Obama.

Let’s get down to the basics. Women in this country are far more likely to be uninsured due to underemployment and therefore more likely to fall into unemployment and disability/homelessness than our male compatriots. Women raise children and are essential to the workforce. How is depriving women of health insurance contributing to the economic stability of the United States? As far as looking for equity in medical care for women (e.g. reimbursed for birth control or coverage for abortion as men are covered for Viagra prescriptions), we have to start with a woman’s right to coverage for a simple appendectomy. The rest will come through legislation or litigation by healthy women in active pursuit of that goal.

Don’t ask David Brooks for answers, Ms. Collins. He cited his fears that a vote to allow another thirty million Americans access to health care will lead to overconsumption of services which will then raise health care costs. Should we assume Mr. Brooks is going to forgo health care when he gets sick in order to prevent such a rise in costs? Never mind, that’s another ‘conversation’ which shouldn’t take place.

Health care costs cannot be studied in the same manner as other relationships between goods/services and consumption. This is because consumption of health care services is not dictated by a positive leaning towards a product like that second TV gracing so many households. It is dictated by a problem which likely shouldn’t exist – that of enormous rates of sickness in the population. The mapping of health care provided to the population is a map for understanding the nature of illness itself and the actual key to reducing need, and therefore demand, for medical services.

Legislation to ban smoking in workplaces and public places was based in the high costs of medical services to people with tobacco-related ailments. The controversy surrounding this landmark legislation meandered around the block many times into the land of ‘free choice’, Big Brotherdom and loss of income to bars and restaurants where smokers gather to, well, choke together over coffee or gin and tonics.

Even physicians were among the doubting Thomases despite knowing how harmful smoking is to their patients. To everyone’s astonishment (okay, not mine but I’m an asthmatic who can detect cigarette smoke from a block away), passage of this legislation led to a reduction in heart disease/cardiac events in the population by one third! Non-smokers were dropping like flies because they became secondary consumers of tobacco products without such legal protections. Imagine the savings in health care costs, not to mention human suffering!

Here is my comment to Ms. Collins as she wanders through the labyrinth of corporate America’s road blocks with her fellow journalists.

368. B.R.
West Lebanon, NH
December 19th, 2009
3:04 pm

Ms. Collins,

Perhaps you are having too many ‘conversations’ with David Brooks. Your writings are becoming more ‘centrist’ than objective views of reality. America is owned by corporations. Corporate interests don’t want universal health care in the U.S. for two reasons:

1. Provision of health care is profitable when given to the privileged at high premiums. I call it a privilege since the corporations can revoke the contract seemingly at will.

2. Universal health care means accurate statistics regarding illness and better tracking of causation for those ailments. That has led the EU to implement such remedies as REACH in which new and untested chemicals must be studied for potential harm to consumers before marketing. The requirement for complete product labeling is also a huge aid to consumers there in making healthy choices. Our corporate owners need to retain their veil of secrecy about how the pollution of air and water, and our adulterated foods and other consumer goods taken into our homes has been responsible for driving up the need for health care services. Fears of overconsumption driving up health care costs (Brook’s position) is completely misleading to the public.

A third of adult Americans (16-64) have a chronic illness or disability according to the CDC; one in six children a developmental disability according to pediatrician, Dr. Phillip Landrigan of Mt. Sinai. Three of ten workers can expect to file for disability according to the Social Security Agency.

Overconsumption of services has its base in the need for said services, all courtesy of corporate America. Please address your sharp journalistic eye to the real underpinnings of our failure to pass health care in any form. There is no debate here and passage of a bill authorizing access to health care is the thin end of the wedge which will lead to further refinements/improvements over time.

Right now, too many are flat out of time. Women are disproportionately affected as well, being more prone to autoimmune diseases provoked by environmental causes. Let’s not pander to the predominantly male game players who are confident they will win while pretending ambivalence in the matter.

Thank you,
Barbara Rubin

First is this column by Charles Blow of the NY Times. Mr. Blow read a blog entry by Tyler Perry, detailing his horrendous childhood experiences at the hands of a drunken father.  Reading the words of this survivor of child abuse made it clear that Perry lost his opportunity to escape his father’s influence because his fleeing mother had been returned to that abusive man, much like the other ‘property’ he’d declared stolen – the family car. Perry was additional baggage, not even separated from his mother during her incarceration while waiting to be ‘claimed’, and a witness to his mother being beaten throughout that endless drive home. 

Being forced to witness abuse is also abuse. Children, by their egocentric natures, feel they are integral parts of the problems surrounding them, requiring tremendous reassurance of their blamelessness. That balm is simply unavailable in the face of overwhelming pathology. This leaves the children of such homes forever marked not just by fear, but the sense of shame and guilt accompanying inaction. That inaction on the part of all who know or suspect abuse extends that helplessness into an all-pervasive characteristic of society.

How convenient for those in authority.
 
Here was my comment (minor corrections added), posted in reply to the column, “No More Suffering”, by Charles Blow (NY Times, 10/10/09):

13. October 10th, 2009

Mr. Blow,

Law enforcement forced Tyler Perry’s mother to return to her violent husband. Violence against women is a way of life, sanctioned in nearly every society, if not actively endorsed. We have only recently seen an end to foot binding in the last century after billions were abused. Female genital mutilation remains a common occurrence in some cultures even where there has been specific legislation against such practices. Here in the US, with our culture of violence, women plead in vain for protective measures against known and unknown parties. Our own rape shield laws are one example of how pervasively society blames violence upon the violated, pursuing them into the court room on the rare occasions sexual assault cases make it to trial. Such assaults are a crime against society, not just the woman (or man) in question.

The CDC notes that a quarter of women endure partner violence, an overt measure of subjugation which makes no mention of the day to day mental cruelty endured prior to physical brutality. Children growing up in the climate of emotional and physical abuse may learn to accept it as normal and repeat the cycle. Those who manage to avoid passing on that legacy of violence are its only true survivors.

One factor is rarely included in the serious issue of violence being ‘under-reported’. Many victims do not initially consider remaining silent. Law enforcement personnel often refuse to record complaints by women of stalking, harassment and assault (never mind investigating or prosecuting them), automatically consigning them to nuisance calls. From there we move on to the insufficient availability of housing options for abused women and children to escape retribution and the need to endure in silence.

Additional benefits stem from ignoring violence. All of societal ills can then be blamed upon histories of self-reported trauma. It conveniently replaces the need for concrete social services with prescriptions of anti-depressants for adults and children (assuming the parties are insured). It continues to ignore a lack of parity in employment between the genders and access to safe, affordable childcare which can go a long way towards preventing and identifying child abuse.

Thank you for keeping this topic in the public eye but it is largely preventable if its roots in misogyny are recognized.

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