Tension in Turkey

I still have a great big pile of blog posts and news clips to blog about, which I’ve finally organized into posts based on topic, but since my week is a little crazy, I’d just like to make a little off-the-cuff comment about what’s going on in Turkey.  For those of you who don’t know, the highest court in Turkey ruled today not to allow a ban on the ruling party but instead to cut its state funding in half for trying to impose Islam on the secular nation.

When the news was first coming out about the headscarf issue, I found it very interesting to hear the perspective of my Turkish teacher, Bahar, who like many women in Turkey is Muslim but believes strongly in the secular state.  The way she described it, secularism is the most fundamental principal of the Turkish state and thus allowing women to wear headscarves in school would be a threat to the state’s historical foundations and its values.  In other words, there is a huge fear of the slippery slope.

I have trouble deciding where I stand on this – not that it really matters, as I’m not Turkish, but I still tend to have an opinion on foreign politics.  On the one hand, I see her arguments, especially in light of what has happened in neighboring states and considering Turkey’s position and reputation as a unique secular, modern, democratic state whose population is mostly Muslim.  On the other hand, I grew up in the US where freedom of religion is heavily valued, and it seems strange to me that someone would ban a political party based on its religious ties – not all that democratic, I would think.  It will be interesting to see how all this plays out, in any event.

I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It

So to be fair, most of the lesbians I’ve seen referring to this songs on their blog do so either sarcastically or at least in a mildly disapproving tone.  But, that said, I’m a little annoyed at the bloggers who have heralded this song as some sort of a grand gesture or a sign that our culture has embraced homosexuality and doesn’t need legal change as a result.  Okay, that particular reaction was only one blogger:

Anyway, for the record, I’m not turned on at all by the prospect of two girls making out–it’s not my scene–but I do love the fact that this is a big hit among teens, those voters-in-waiting. There is a reason for the generation gap in attitudes about same-sex marriage and LGBT rights: culture. Which is all a way of saying that “I Kissed a Girl” has gotten me thinking, yet again, about the intersection between law, culture, and norms. Can the law ever really change norms in a positive way? And if we were to compare their impact, can we really say that Lawrence v. Texas (outlawing the criminalization of same-sex sex), or Goodridge v. Dept of Public Health or In re Marriage Cases (Lockyer) (finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and California) have had more of an impact on the everyday lives of LGBT folks (their interaction with employers, co-workers, relatives, neighbors, etc.) than Will & Grace, Ellen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and “I Kissed a Girl”?

What?  WHAT?

Oh God, I hope thats sarcasm.  I don’t really think he thinks that pop culture makes legal change unnecessary, but I do think he views it as a positive step and a sign that young people accept homosexuality.  Uh.

No, see, what it’s saying is that women can feel free to be “edgy” and “controversial” by making out with another woman when they’re drunk.  “I hope my boyfriend doesn’t mind it,” tee hee, watch me be my own woman.  I’m not saying that women shouldn’t experiment (though I stay far, far away from those who do) and I’m not saying that there’s necessarily anything wrong with straight girls kissing other straight girls or queer girls.  What’s wrong is confusing this with acceptance of queer culture.  There’s nothing queer about this situation.  It’s only a baby step away from the traditional woman-as-object using lesbianism to titilate the men bit.  Yes, Perry indicates that the subject in her song is doing something that her boyfriend doesn’t know about, but it’s still all about the boyfriend.  It’s still clearly a straight woman experimenting.  This has zippo to do with lesbian culture or lesbian acceptance.

Case in point?  Let’s come up with a new song, “I Kissed a Boy,” by I don’t know, Justin Timberlake or someone.  I don’t think it’d get the same popular reaction.  The fact is, girls kissing is not seen as threatening to heteronormativity.  This doesn’t mean that the country is ready to give lesbians rights.  This doesn’t mean that if we take the kissing girls out of the structure Perry is using and put them in a long-term relationship that society will support them.  

Ironically enough, this song came on in a bar Saturday night (why I never go to undergrad bars unless forced) while several men were trying very desperately to grope and/or rub against my ass.  I decided to change the lyrics to “I fucked a girl and I like it – I think my girlfriend liked it, too.”  I doubt it’ll catch on.

Mama Mia!

I’d seen the trailer about a hundred times, as it’s the default load for AfterEllen video blogs, but I figured I probably wouldn’t see the movie.  As much as I love musicals and as huge a crush as I have on Meryl Streep, I just don’t have easy access to a movie theatre.  However, yesterday my friend Rita and I were hanging out at the Johnson County fair after my shift tabling for the clinic and we got the idea to go see a movie.  Apparently movies cost eight fifty now, which made my wallet cry a little, but it was a lot of fun.  It’s as feel-good as you would expect, with enough irreverence to excuse watching a chick flick, and Meryl is as always gorgeous and amazing in it.  I also thought the three men did a great job, and I giggled just a little seeing Dakin from History Boys in such a straight role.  Meryl’s performance of “The Winner Takes it All” was by far the best number, though the three women doing “Dancing Queen” (the first time) is hillarious.  I also thought Pierce Brosnan wasn’t bad with his musical numbers – not the best voice I’ve ever heard, but not bad either.  And of course, you can’t fault a PG-13 movie that puts a positive spin on sex and acceptance of women who have multiple partners.  Whoo!

When consent fails

As you know if you read this blog, I’ve been doing research on sadomasochism and consent, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the law is bordering on pathology in its obsession with protecting masculine subjectivity, while using the other hand to perpetuate feminine objectivity just as much as it damned well pleases.  

Case in point: I read a law review article arguing that Laskey, the European Court of Human Rights case where prosecution of several homosexual men who were practising consensual sadomasochistic sex was upheld on the basis of public morality, was all about protecting the masculinity of the male “victim” by not even allowing him to consent.  This makes a lot of sense to me.  Ideally, what we want is a system of informed consent, where yes means yes and no means no.  What we get is, on the one hand, the legal system refusing to let men say yes to erotic pain in order to “protect” them, and on the flip side, refusing to acknowledge women who say no to date rape because they “accepted a risk” – ignoring the fact that true informed consent means they accepted the risk of what actually happened, not just the risk that consensual sex might occur.  Consent, essentially, doesn’t mean anything in the legal system – it’s just another tool of sexism.  Grand.

Half-naked fifteen year olds, clearly what we need

Today’s sexism in the media rant focuses on a disturbing trend of sexualizing children.  Now I admit I have some somewhat old fogie-esque views on this topic, because I think the longer people wait to have sex, in most cases, the better.  As much as I embrace sexual freedom in some ways, and am uncomfortable saying that you shouldn’t be allowed to have sex if you’re under eighteen (and definitely don’t think we should demonize those that do), it bothers me that children and young teenagers are having sex.  Maybe this is part of my middle-class privilege, in that I was “protected” from that in ways (and also just exempted by the fortunate fact that I was not a gorgeous fifteen-year-old), but it creeps me out when I see children marketed as sex objects.

Feministing recently posted two examples, here and here.  The poster’s focus in showing the first ad, a creepy television spot demonstrating how a new cell phone can be used for stalking your sleeping neighbor, was that stalking/objectification is wrong.  The poster’s focus in the second ad, a BMW magazine spread, is again the objectification of the woman pictured.  Both perfectly good points, but I was surprised that neither poster noted that the “women” shown are teenaged girls.  The actresses themselves may be eighteen, but I would pin them both in the 12-15 age range.  What creeps me out is not only that we’re objectifying women, but that we’re objectifying kids, more or less.  Especially in the second ad, the whole “yeah, you know she’s not a virgin” message nearly made my mouth drop open.  Sure, in today’s culture perhaps it’s not inaccurate to assume that a teenager or preteen has probably been abused in the past, but should we be celebrating it?

What are the acceptable limits of consent?

Consent is something that we obviously value very greatly in modern Western society.  Consent is often the difference between a crime and an unpunishable act.  In the realm of sexual acts, consent (sometimes) is what makes activity acceptable to the law.  When we talk about sodomy laws, we frequently repeat the phrase “consenting adults.”  These are consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom, therefore the state shouldn’t interfere.  Consent is one way to mark a line between activity protected by the right to privacy and activity into which interference by the criminal system is justified.  If there isn’t consent, then at least one of the parties’ privacy rights – or more broadly, right to individual autonomy – is not being respected.  Autonomy is to right to do as we will with our own lives, as bodily integrity is the right to do as we will with our bodies.  When these rights are breached, the other party can no longer say that he or she was justified by autonomy – the limit to autonomy is where it interferes with someone else’s.

Of course, this is all well and good, and as a general rule I agree to consent as the line we should use.  I don’t think, for example, that the government should interfere due to some overriding “public interest” when consenting adults participate in sadomasochistic activities.  I don’t believe that the public morality, when people are having sex in private, all consenting, and therefore not harming anyone else’s autonomy, can override the autonomy interests of the participants.  But that said, I found an interesting paradox in an essay I was reading for a paper I’m writing on sexual autonomy.  The author gave the example of two gay men kissing in the street.  The men argue that they have an autonomy interest in being able to express themselves affectionately – and indeed, autonomy goes behind a mere geographic sense of “privacy,” so that the interest exists on a public street as much as in a private home.  But then some bystander argues that her autonomy interest is being violated because she doesn’t want to see men kissing.  Where do we draw a line?  If autonomy only goes so far as the limits of others’ autonomy, then they men shouldn’t be able to kiss – but do we want to go this far?  I certainly don’t.  Does everyone in the neighborhood have to consent, or only the “reasonable” ones?  What is reasonable?  A member of the moral majority?  An interesting paradox.

File this under “no such thing as bad publicity”

I wrote a very brief article today on Obama and McCain’s stances on LGBT issues, just a quick highlight of their positions on a few of the major questions.  It’s easily my quickest-to-gain-popularity article on Suite101, but the funny thing is that I’m getting several people coming from a website called savecalifornia.com, which is apparently a site in favor of the marriage amendment there.  A link to my article is prominently placed in the center of the page, labelled “Their positions on the ‘LGBT’ agenda.”  Wow, I never thought I’d get scare quoted!  What an honor!

Middle Earth? Totally a real place.

I’ve been watching short bits of Fellowship of the Ring before bed, and I’ve just been struck by how much those films can just get me, even though I’ve seen them so many times and every time I put them in I think “is this really going to be worth it?”  I think the great thing about those films, though, is that they put such a deep, amazingly detailed literary universe in full colour, twelve hours of viewing, cinematic form.  The scenes I find myself getting really excited about are those that just barely hint at the significance of, for example, Aragorn’s lineage.  It’s funny to think that twelve hours of footage really just scratch the surface, but it’s true.  There’s something extremely rewarding about reading thousands of pages of material but then feeling like the keyholder to the legacy, the one who gets all the jokes.  It’s the same sort of feeling you get when you read the trilogy after having recently read the Silmarillion, when suddenly ever few words are pregnant with meaning.  I sound like a complete nerd, I know, but I wonder if any other author’s quite managed this, to the point of feeling real triumph every time you re-read.  Of course, if anyone knows of a comparable experience, please do let me know!  For now, I’m off to re-read.  Or, ooh!  Maybe I can finally get started with the Unfinished Tales.  *rubs hands together in nerdy glee*

Why “exporting democracy” bothers me

1)  Democracy’s a decent system, I’ll agree.  But democracy occurs in context.  It works well in America for a number of reasons, including an old and successful Constitution, historical precedent, our collective value system as it has evolved historically, our socio-economic condition as a nation, etc, etc.  Oh, and let’s not forget that we’re technically a republic.  Democracy works well in other areas, too, but it isn’t the only system.  I don’t think it should be the only system.  When you become obsessed with one or two options, in any area, things start to get bad.  Diversity has something to show for itself.  And I think that in some areas, given geopolitical reality, value systems, etc, democracy isn’t the best choice.  What are we doing when we “export” democracy?  We’re colonizing.  A lot of people have talked about the Imperial United States, and they all have a good fucking point.  I read an article in 2001 or 2002 in Der Spiegel  called “Das zweite Rom” (or was it “der?”  irrelevant, anyway).  The Second Rome, yeah, very good point.  Really, what business do we, as an overextended, declining state, have to try to shove democracy at every little country (and some big ones) that we can find?  What right do we have to use our military to conduct “diplomacy?”  Here, have a democracy, folks, we’ll just physically ravage your country and starve your people first.  No biggie.  America’s going to get what’s coming to it, sooner or later.

2) Beyond my problems with insisting on democracy for the world, uh, newsflash.  This thing we’re exporting?  It ain’t democracy.  If we truly wanted to bring democracy to the world (through non-violent means) I might be okay with it.  If we were to genuinely ask “hey, who would you Iraqis like to run our country?” I wouldn’t be so up in arms.  If we were to get behind self-determination, and lend diplomatic aid in some way, or if the UN were to send in unbiased teams of people to monitor elections and make sure they were conducted fairly, I’d be cool.  But these people wouldn’t be electing someone George W. Bush is happy with.  So what does he export?  “Democracy.”  Dudes with guns saying hey, sure, you can have an election… wink, wink, nudge, nudge.  This is why we need to step back from the situation.  Because we’re too greedy, and too tempted by a chance to extend our sphere of influence.  What if we actually had left the political situation in, say, Africa, up to Africans?  (And with that example I mean a broad “we,” which includes Europeans).  I have some hope that they would have come up with a creative solution that worked for their continent.  Borders that made sense, for example.  Politics based on value systems as they actually exist in the country.  Hey, there’s a novel idea!

Oh, America.  When do I get to abandon you?

Humanitarian intervention (still intervention)

My Foreign Relations Law professor, who is a Russian national, made an interesting point today.  He was talking about the decision to bomb Kosovo, and referred to the humanitarian intervention as a pretext, which I don’t agree with.  However, it’s good to remember that there are two sides to every story, and though I think in this case intervention was the right thing given Serbia’s history of ethnic cleansing, the credibility of the threat, and the lack of national interest beyond humanitarian concerns (very unlike Iraq), there is a Serbian side to the story.  Of course, Russia is an ally of Serbia, and it was due to the promise that Russia and China (nervous about the idea of invading sovereign territory) would veto the move in the Security Council that NATO chose to strike out on its own without UN approval.

The professor was making a link to one of the Federalist Papers, wherein the author (I believe it was Hamilton) mentions the inability of a young United States to remonstrate with dignity.  To illustrate the meaning of this phrase, he used the example of Russian Prime Minister Primakov flying from Moscow to Washington to meet with Vice President Al Gore.  Before leaving, Primakov was informed by Russian intelligence of NATO’s plan to bomb Kosovo.  He called Gore, who informed Primakov that his information was bad.  Primakov got on the plane, and when he arrived at Shannon to refuel, he called once again, again receiving intelligence information that the bombing was imminent.  Gore responded in the same way.  Well, Primakov was over the Atlantic when he found that the bombing was taking place.  Had he arrived in Washington and had his picture taken with the Vice President, the obvious message would have been that Russia supported the mission.  So Primakov asked the pilot to take a U-turn, and he returned to Russia. In my professor’s words, “that was when the United States lost Russia.”

I find this story interesting in two respects.  One is the perspective that many Americans have when it comes to Russia.  I grew up thinking of Russia as a country that was strong throughout the Cold War, though it had trouble feeding its own people and was probably in some way inferior, and after the war ended, I didn’t really think of Russia as anything.  It was this state out on the other side of world that we didn’t have to worry about any more, essentially.  But I’ve come to realize that Russia is a country to watch for, and also to respect.  I think Russian leaders have done some horrible things in terms of human rights, but I also think that to ignore or try to manipulate Russia is a bit foolish. 

The other respect in which I find the account interesting deals directly with Kosovo.  I’ve been reading Richard Falk’s recent book, in which he talks a lot about how Kosovo was illegal but legitimate.  One side you don’t really get, however, is the Russian (or Serbian) side.  Again, I think it’s fairly clear that the mission saved a lot of lives, and that imminent humanitarian attrocities justified the attack, but the nature of the attack is another question.  Humanitarian intervention is still intervention, and respect for sovereignty is one of the key rules of diplomacy.  I think we could do better.  High-altitude bombing, for example, doesn’t seem like the solution.  I think the global world order needs restructuring so that nations can show respect for each other and universal non-acceptance of human rights violations.  If Russia, for example, had been able to retain the option of being Serbia’s ally but at the same time could have refused to use its veto due to the human rights violations going on, and at the same time NATO powers had agreed to use only targeted military force when absolutely necessary in a way that would avoid civilian casualties and ensure quick withdrawal, maybe we’d be in a different position today.  I think that we should work to prevent human rights tragedy no matter what the geopolitical consequences, but I also think we should be careful about verifying the threat and using appropriate responses.  Losing Russia, I think, is proving to be a relatively big deal.  

So what is the goal?  I think universal acceptance of at least the very most basic human rights is a good start.  This is an extremely difficult goal to achieve, but it is in the self-interest of nations to adhere to the principle.  If we could all carry out diplomatic relations as sovereign states, but at the same time understand that none of our allies will help us if we commit human rights atrocities, even within sovereign territory, that our international reputation will be irrevocably tarnished and our economic position threatened… who knows.  Maybe the situation would improve.  I’m not naive enough to think that the world will go pacifist anytime soon, but I have to believe that there is a better way of doing things.

As a human rights activist, my personal goal is to be more sensitive to geopolitical realities and cultural concerns.  Though I do strongly believe that people deserve a minimal standard of living, the way to go about it isn’t to burst into a country and declare that I’m right.  Situations are often complicated, and cultural understanding is essential to intelligent diplomacy.  I do believe that diplomacy is the way to achieve human rights victories, not force.  If international organizations can gain more respect on the world stage, they also may have a critical role to play in informing nations of their human rights violations in a way that appeals to national self interest and cultural context, not just the universal “civilizing mission” that nations are understandably hesitant to embrace.  Even in the human rights field, there are two (or many) sides to the story.  Hopefully we can reconcile them and still manage to save a few lives along the way.