'Girls say yes to boys who say no': Four Artists Refigure the Sex War on Terror

Abstract

One month after the attacks of 11 September 2001 President George W. Bush issued a White House press statement addressed to the recent United States invasion of Afghanistan in which he made passing reference to Muslim women as ‘women of cover’.1 This seemingly casual invocation of the American feminist term ‘women of color’ presaged what would soon become a significant mobilisation of feminism as part of the ideology of the so-called War on Terror.2 A month later, and with the Afghan invasion in full swing, the First Lady Laura Bush made her first serious political speech. In a radio address to the nation, she offered feminist politics as the humanitarian alibi that accompanied the invasion of Afghanistan. ‘Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan’, the First Lady asserted, ‘women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment’ and so as not to mince her words, she went on to boldly state, ‘the fight against terrorism is also the fight for the rights and dignity of women’.3 The American media was soon saturated with images and accounts of ‘women of cover’ being liberated in the name of feminism's very first emancipatory ideals: the right to vote, to be educated, to work outside the home etc., to pursue feminism as equal rights. Not to mention the more familiar capitalist appropriation of egalitarian feminism, the all-important, all-American right to shop.4