She's as Good as Any Man
Jan. 30th, 2010 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eumeliaOne of the most lauded attributes the IDF uses to promote itself as an enlightened and ultimately is the egalitarian treatment between female and male soldiers.
This is bullshit, but it is an image that it quite convincingly manages to throw around - persuading us that through service social equality is gained - yeah.
Combat units in which female integration have supposedly worked the best are the border patrol units. Many women serve at the check points and in the units that patrol the West Bank.
I've blogged about Breaking The Silence (BTS) before, which is an NGO that collects testimonials from soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories and publish it for public knowledge and consumption.
Obviously, they and other organisations critical of the IDF are quietly persecuted and spoken about in the most Antisemitic and anti-Humane terms I've ever heard - "Self-hating", "deluded", "bleeding hearts", "self-destructive".
As though loyalty to the IDF is the litmus of being loyal to the notion that our lives are worth something.
Any way.
BTS published on Friday the 29th of January (yesterday) a new testimony booklet. This one is testimonials of female soldiers.
This is a quote from the article (which is problematic and essentialist. Then again, it's YNET) and a woman in this "feminist" army needs to prove she's as good as any man.
She must be violent towards the population the army is policing.
I always find it hair raising when I hear women who serve in the IDF call themselves feminists. It is a kind of feminism. A feminism that only focuses on her own career trying to gain the privilege allotted only to men in that position.
Not too long ago, I had a class in which the discussion of whether the use of the word "feminist" wasn't shooting ourselves in the foot because of the negative connotation.
It's an old and tried debate in my opinion, so I won't regale you on what was said - but one classmate said that as a reserve pilot she refused to consider her gender when she put on her uniform and flew - then, she was just a pilot.
Related though tangential, I have a friend who participates in sexist jokes in her workplace in order to have an environment that she isn't considered a stick in the mud and "one of those" women. Yeah.
Back to the IDF.
Female soldiers in order to show and prove that they are as good as any man, have to be "worse" than their male fellow soldiers.
Prove she's got the "balls", so to speak.
All the people who give testimony to BTS bear witness to the Occupation from the vantage point of those who actively perpetrate it. These soldiers are the nuts and bolts of the Occupation and they come back into "civilian society" with this baggage.
People wonder why Israel can't let go of trauma.
We're all infected with PTSD.
The testimonies are hard to read. They were harder for me to read than previous ones by men, because alas, I am socialised to view men as violent. And women who are violent are aberrant.
Not the case.
So very much not the fucking case.
If this is the meaning of an egalitarian army and this is the means through which Israeli Jewish women gain more power later in life, then the very basic notion of a human being is, is utterly, completely and foundationally twisted in the hegemonic Israeli mind.
Here are the links to the PDF file of the testimonials: In Hebrew and in English.
This is bullshit, but it is an image that it quite convincingly manages to throw around - persuading us that through service social equality is gained - yeah.
Combat units in which female integration have supposedly worked the best are the border patrol units. Many women serve at the check points and in the units that patrol the West Bank.
I've blogged about Breaking The Silence (BTS) before, which is an NGO that collects testimonials from soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories and publish it for public knowledge and consumption.
Obviously, they and other organisations critical of the IDF are quietly persecuted and spoken about in the most Antisemitic and anti-Humane terms I've ever heard - "Self-hating", "deluded", "bleeding hearts", "self-destructive".
As though loyalty to the IDF is the litmus of being loyal to the notion that our lives are worth something.
Any way.
BTS published on Friday the 29th of January (yesterday) a new testimony booklet. This one is testimonials of female soldiers.
"A female combat soldier needs to prove more…a female soldier who beats up others is a serious fighter…when I arrived there was another female there with me, she was there before me…everyone spoke of how impressive she is because she humiliates Arabs without any problem. That was the indicator. You have to see her, the way she humiliates, the way she slaps them, wow, she really slapped that guy."
This is a quote from the article (which is problematic and essentialist. Then again, it's YNET) and a woman in this "feminist" army needs to prove she's as good as any man.
She must be violent towards the population the army is policing.
I always find it hair raising when I hear women who serve in the IDF call themselves feminists. It is a kind of feminism. A feminism that only focuses on her own career trying to gain the privilege allotted only to men in that position.
Not too long ago, I had a class in which the discussion of whether the use of the word "feminist" wasn't shooting ourselves in the foot because of the negative connotation.
It's an old and tried debate in my opinion, so I won't regale you on what was said - but one classmate said that as a reserve pilot she refused to consider her gender when she put on her uniform and flew - then, she was just a pilot.
Related though tangential, I have a friend who participates in sexist jokes in her workplace in order to have an environment that she isn't considered a stick in the mud and "one of those" women. Yeah.
Back to the IDF.
Female soldiers in order to show and prove that they are as good as any man, have to be "worse" than their male fellow soldiers.
Prove she's got the "balls", so to speak.
All the people who give testimony to BTS bear witness to the Occupation from the vantage point of those who actively perpetrate it. These soldiers are the nuts and bolts of the Occupation and they come back into "civilian society" with this baggage.
People wonder why Israel can't let go of trauma.
We're all infected with PTSD.
The testimonies are hard to read. They were harder for me to read than previous ones by men, because alas, I am socialised to view men as violent. And women who are violent are aberrant.
Not the case.
So very much not the fucking case.
If this is the meaning of an egalitarian army and this is the means through which Israeli Jewish women gain more power later in life, then the very basic notion of a human being is, is utterly, completely and foundationally twisted in the hegemonic Israeli mind.
Here are the links to the PDF file of the testimonials: In Hebrew and in English.
