Page 8 RAIN April/May 1983 SEXISM AND MILITARISM: Some Connections As a brown woman, bom and raised in the U.S., I find connections between racism, sexism, and militarism to be blatantly clear. The threat inherent in nuclear weapons, as with racism and sexism, results from a mentality referred to by Martin Luther King Jr. as a perversion of the "drum m£gor instinct” — twisting natural desires for recognition into quests for superiority and domination. On a personal level, the obsession to possess leads to jealousy, servitude, and sadism. Politically and socially it leads to colonialism, torture, and war. Wife and child beating are on the rise in the U.S., exacerbated by poverty and unemployment. Studies have shown numbers of beatings rising proportionately to increases in unemployment. One conservative estimate puts the number of badly-battered wives nationwide at well over a million. Other studies reveal that unemployment is directly related to high military spending, with women and people of color suffering the most. The resultant widespread cuts in education, health-care, nutrition, housing, crisis centers, aid for abortions, and inexpensive mass transit make the lives of women and poor people even more unbearable. Is it coincidence that along with the escalating rape of the Earth for the mineral resources needed to maintain high technology energy and weapons systems, so too the rape of women is on the rise? According to the FBI, incidences of rape are jumping more quickly than the rate of any other federal crime. Media, controlled largely by white males, sometimes glamorizes the pain of women just as it sometimes glamorizes the deadly effects that the production and use of weapons create. Violent "erotica” often don’t feature sex, only domination and humiliation, similar to the fascinations necessary for sustaining a militaristic society. Mass marketing this imagery encourages aggression and brutality as acceptable ways to deal with "subordinates.” One of the annual Arms Bazaars held in Washington, D.C., included a full-size mock blow-up poster of a woman in a bikini posing next to a cruise missile. That p>oster all too clearly depicts the plight and role of women in America today. A woman’s body is used to sell the newest generation of nuclear weapons, yet that woman’s body is the same one that continues to suffer the most from radiation effects. According to the Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation of the National Academy of Sciences, twice as many women develop cancer as men when one million people are exposed to one rad of radiation. When exposed to continuous doses of low-level ionizing radiation — such as that emitted from uranium mines and mills, nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons production facilities, waste dumps or transport routes, five times as many women develop cancer as do men. The woman in the cruise missile poster is being used to sell weapons that will guarantee large profits for corporations that make nuclear weapons. Yet the cruel irony is that she is the one who suffers the most economically in a military-industrial culture. Military related civilian jobs — construction, engineering, physics, aerospace dynamics — are held predominantly by men. The capital-intensive. by Ada Sanchez rather than labor-intensive, nature of weapons building hurts the economy by causing high unemployment and takes money away from vitally-needed social programs. Legislation that keeps women and people of color out of decision-making roles in industry, government, and religious institutions is as much a priority for sustaining the global military-industrial complex as the building of weapons and foreign bases. The latest versions of such legislative efforts are the Family Protection Act which calls for prohibiting federal funds for schools that teach children about alternatives to traditional sex roles; and the Human Life Amendment, aimed at charging women who have abortions with murder. The advocates of authoritarian policies understand the interrelationship of the personal and the political all too clearly. To maintain their privileged status in society, men must maintain that dominant status in personal relationships as well. Are women and men who work politically for drastic changes as dedicated to working on the power dynamics that make up our everyday lives? Too often it seems that the way we handle our personal relationships reflects a deeply rooted internalization of patriarchal oppression. An unconscious use of the same manipulative tactics that we abhor in societal and political arenas is oftentimes accepted in intimate relations and within ourselves. In contrast to political changes that require a large collective effort, the realm of personal relationships is one of the few spheres in which we have free-will choice and the clear ability to follow through. The day-to-day reality of shaping relationships that are non-authoritarian, cooperative, and tender provides a milieu in which to prepare, experiment, and learn about creating the small changes that will ready us for the larger successes. Openness in relationships and efforts to confront our contradictions and our possibilities are ongoing processes; relearning takes time and practice. To believe that macrocosmic political- economic changes will occur without simultaneously changing ourselves is to ensure that the transformations will never come. The inner skeleton gives shape to the body just as our inner worlds will give shape to a radically different future. Overcoming the existent power structure means living cooperation. Intimate relationships, group living situations, and political organizations are all places in which we can make progress. Cooperatively, we can continue to pool our skills, our resources, and our insights to actualize the vision of a just, loving, equitable society. Food and housing co-ops have given us reason for hope, as have sexual politics groups, where women and men can explore some of the same issues that used to be almost solely discussed in women’s groups. Those are steps forward. But we need to develop stronger political, social and economic infrastructures which encourage working together on related issues, while looking for the common denominators that will strengthen the political causes we have individually chosen to pursue.oo Ada Sanchez is a writer and speaker on military issues.
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