Feminism's Assumptions Upended

Abstract

Of the seven US soldiers now charged with sickening forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three are women: Pfc. Lynndie England, Specialist Sabrina Harman, and Specialist Megan Ambuhl. It was Harman whom we saw smiling an impish little smile and giving the thumbs sign from behind a pile of naked Iraqi men as if to say, Hi mom, here I am in Abu Ghraib! We've gone from the banality of evil ... to the cuteness of evil. It was England we saw dragging a naked Iraqi man on a leash. If you were doing PR for al Qaeda, you couldn't have staged a better picture to galvanize misogynist Islamic fundamentalists around the world. Here, in these photos from Abu Ghraib, you have everything that the Islamic fundamentalists believe characterizes Western culture, all nicely arranged in one hideous image imperial arrogance, sexual depravity . . . and gender equality. Maybe I shouldn't have been so shocked. We know that good people can do terrible things under the right circumstances. This is what psychologist Stanley Milgram found in his famous experiments in the 1960s, which found most people willing to follow orders and deliver what they believed were painful electric shocks to others. In all likelihood, England, Harman and Ambuhl are not congenitally evil people. They are working class women who wanted an education and knew that the military could be a stepping stone in that direction. Once they got in, they wanted to fit in. And I shouldn't be surprised either because I never believed that women are innately gentler and less aggressive than men. I have argued this repeatedly once with the famously macho anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon. When he kept insisting that women were psychologically incapable of combat, I answered him the best way I could: I asked him if he wanted to step outside . . .