>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:35:52 -0800
> From: joanna <123hop at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Abortion, not a women's issue. How about
> femicide?
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Message-ID: <43778788.9090801 at comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> "I see the acceleration of physical abuse, abandonment of mothers, sexual
> assault
> to be directly related to the growth of colonialist narco free trade, the
> destruction of land based cultures and the valuing of competition and profit
>
> over healthy relationships."
>
> That's a little bit too easy. In many "relationship-based" that is to say
> "kinship-based" cultures the abuse of women is not even seen as abuse -- just
> as a sign that the owner cares. Cultures in which women are serially raped in
> order to punish the males to whom they belong (a recent incident in Pakistan)
> may be free from market relations and yet persist in femicide and abuse. In
> such cultures women may see a factory job as a step up.
>
> Joanna
These are complex, critical issues that, yes, are a bit too easy to address
without the total context to each unique situation. The progress women make is
all too often undercut by the rapid destruction of customary life and that
destruction is furthered by existing patriarchy, exploited by corporate greed
mongering take over. The situation for women in Afghanistan is definitely
furthered by U.S. invasion terribly augmented by already existing misogyny,
whether it is the Taliban, US allies or those scapegoating women due to their
own hardship. Strange how it is. It is hideous for women all over the planet
and those of us who can adress it must before we are not allowed to.
In the case of Gutemala, the Mayan introduction to patriarchy came from the Spanish and the catholics.
NAFTA flooded the Mexican market with cheap corn ruining over a million and a half farmers forcing millions to head north. Some continue crossing over the border. Millions more inhaibt squalid slums along the border such as in Ciudad Juarez. It is the factory workers of the maquiladoras that comprise the majority of the toruture-rape-mutilation-murders of women in Juarez. The murders of men exceed that of women, but it is not sexualized in nature. This is also the case in Guatemala and other Central American countries as well as Colombia.
In Tuba City, AZ, where hundreds of traditional Dineh (Navajos) have been forcibly relocated due to corporate resource extraction, such murders of the daughters of relocatees are occurring as are murders of men as well.
It is the legacy of School of the Americas mentality that has always afflicted the agenda of colonialism.