Foreign Women and Children Can Leave Iraq, Hussein Says
Imagine a law requiring our daughters to enter a jungle and risk being shot through their heads. If you heard a news report lamenting that innocent men and children were being shot, would you want to shout, "Wait a minute, my daughter is innocent too!”? We would all know the news reports were blaming the victim.
When a country goes to war, all the citizens of that country are equally innocent and equally guilty. When the United States attacked Iraq, 76 percent of women approved, as did 87 percent of men.49
Who is guilty? Who causes war? War is caused by our primal fear of not surviving. This is a two-sex fear. And because the fear is so primal, we are easily seduced into exaggerating the evil intent of anyone we become convinced might threaten our survival. Why? One mistake of underestimating a threat could leave everyone wiped out; many mistakes ofot*erestimat — ing would just leave men wiped out. Because our fear of not surviving was so primal, it led to the distortions of nationalism and our willingness to make men’s humanity secondary to their disposability. It is time to stop blaming men for this two-sex fear.
When conservatives and liberals passively accept phrases like "innocent
women and children," few understand how phrases like this actually keep women in their place, the more the woman accepts the innocent role, the more she requires a protector, thus reinforcing her innocence and justifying more protection It’s actually a powerful place, but it comes with a price tag: the more she needs protection, the more she seeks male chauvinists who protea her but don’t respea her. Why?