Ever since Eve tempted Adam with her apple, women have been regarded as
a corrupting and destructive force. The very idea that women can be used
as interrogation tools, as evidenced in the infamous Abu Ghraib torture
photos, plays on age-old fears of women as sexually threatening weapons,
and therefore the literal explosion of women onto the war scene should
come as no surprise.
From the female soldiers involved in Abu Ghraib to Palestinian women
suicide bombers, women and their bodies have become powerful weapons in
the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. In Women as Weapons of War, Kelly
Oliver reveals how the media and the administration frequently use
metaphors of weaponry to describe women and female sexuality and forge a
deliberate link between notions of vulnerability and images of violence.
Focusing specifically on the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq,
Oliver analyzes contemporary discourse surrounding women, sex, and
gender and the use of women to justify America's decision to go to war.
For example, the administration's call to liberate "women of cover,"
suggesting a woman's right to bare arms is a sign of freedom and
progress.
Oliver also considers what forms of cultural meaning, or lack of
meaning, could cause both the guiltlessness demonstrated by female
soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the profound commitment to death made by
suicide bombers. She examines the pleasure taken in violence and the
passion for death exhibited by these women and what kind of contexts
created them. In conclusion, Oliver diagnoses our cultural fascination
with sex, violence, and death and its relationship with live news
coverage and embedded reporting, which naturalizes horrific events and
stymies critical reflection. This process, she argues, further
compromises the borders between fantasy and reality, fueling a kind of
paranoid patriotism that results in extreme forms of violence.
