Course:WMST 307: Student Pages: 307:Daniel Maki

Monster-Terrorist-Fag and Abu Ghraib

Jasbir Puar, in her essay Abu Ghraib: Arguing against Exceptionalism sets out to examine the characterizations given to the physical and sexual abuse by the involved governments as well as activist figures and groups from the queer and feminist communities, and it is from this examination that one of the roles that the monster-terrorist-fag as a queer figure has taken on in the War On Terror can be recognized. Much of the most sensational public discussion that occurred revolved around the horrific sex acts conducted against the prisoners, as they were “demarcated as the place of "sexual torture"-specifically, violence that purports to mimic sexual acts closely associated with homosexuality such as sodomy and oral sex, as well as sadomasochistic practices of bondage, leashing, and hooding,” sometimes using objects or weapons, between guards and prisoners, prisoners and other prisoners, and prisoners by themselves. She notes that what is central to understanding the nature of the Abu Ghraib scandal in the greater sexual and political discourse of the War On Terror is the discussion surrounding these sex acts: they were branded in nearly every echelon of the media debate as being homosexual in nature. Critics from all sides of the political spectrum were supportive of this branding, and “the focus on purported homosexual acts obscure[d] other forms of gendered violence and serves a broader racist and sexist, as well as homophobic, agenda.” Moreover, Puar explains: "[An] Orientalist discourse has resurfaced in relation to the violence at Abu Ghraib, as both conservatives and progressives claim that the illegal status of homosexual acts in Islamic law demarcates sexual torture as especially humiliating and therefore very effective from a military security perspective. A parallel homophobic logic is deployed by many sources in the recent commentary on the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Bush's administration claims that these forms of torture were particularly necessary and efficacious for interrogation because of the ban on homosexuality in Islam."

The discussion surrounding the Abu Ghraib scandal can be viewed as an extrapolation of Puar’s notion of the monster-terrorist-fag, her reoccurring figure of the manifestation of homophobic, sexist, racist and generally Orientalist elements of the American nationalist perception of Middle Eastern culture. The feminizing and application of sexual deviance in the othering of Middle Eastern cultures is inherent in this figure, and the perception by both progressives and conservatives that Muslim (and Arab, as so often distinction is not made) peoples could be particularly sensitive to sexual torture, as opposed to the idea that any person might, is one indication of the integral roll that the monster-terrorist-fag plays in governmental policy debate. The dichotomy between the weak, helpless Arab Muslim, sensitive to sexual violence projected onto him (cisgendered maleness is crucial to this body) by the more sexually civilized Western world is one that has been utilised by detractors of the Abu Ghraib torture, while the juxtaposition is seen as an important way of viewing Muslim culture in the winning of the War On Terror by supporters.

The queering of Abu Ghraib, that is, the making of the Abu Ghraib scandal queer and a queer issue of a very specific character is apparent in the response exhibited by both LGBT and feminist critics as well. Jasbir Puar cites several feminist scholars’ reactions to the role of Specialist Lynndie England in the torture scandal, specifically the photographs that depict her as directing some part of the sexual torture, summarizing that “the image[s] [are] both about the victories of liberal feminists, who argue that women should have equal opportunities within the military, and also about liberal feminism's failures adequately to theorize power and gender beyond female-male dichotomies.” She specifies that these dichotomies “situate women as less prone toward violence than men and morally superior to them.” Similarily, the LGBT press advocated the stance that the scandal was evidence of “rampant homophobia in the armed forces,” as well as relatable to the debate surrounding ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ rather than as an opportunity to speak critically of the overall racist, imperialist, or sexist structure of the occupation of Iraq. She explains that “LGBT progressives” have a propensity to uphold versions of normative masculinity in which “passivo is naturalized as bad.” This is one unintended side effect of the focus on homosexuality, which “tends to reproduce misogyny in the effort to disrupt homophobia.” Puar concludes that the rendition of the Abu Ghraib scandal as gay “evades a conversation about what exactly constitutes the distinction between gay sex and straight sex” and, moreover, “presumes some static normativity about gender roles as well.” Ultimately, the role of queering in the Abu Ghraib scandal occurs in such a way that the labelling of simulated and actual sex scenes and sexual torture as replicative of gay sex represents a distinct channel through which “mass media, Orientalist anthropologists, the military establishment, LGBT groups and organizations” are able to continue to circumvent discussion of the “perverse” proclivities of heterosexual sex as well as the spectre of gender normativity “immanent in some kinds of gay sex.”

Interesting links

Here are some links to some interesting media that will very likely deploy some version of queered Musli: bodies.

Expect to see the monster-terrorist-fag or sexualized torture at work in Katheryn Bigelow's upcoming War On Terror liberal apology film Zero Dark Thirty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXkccpnoetw

Here is a link to a trailer for a show called Homeland, it's enjoyable and stimulating for a number of reasons, but it also falls into imperial-feminist tropes in its racist and islamaphobic depiction of Arab Muslims, and even queer Arab Muslims: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4-KYAWPKzY

Here is an essay from Puar on Pinkwashing, a related and highly interesting subject: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4273/the-golden-handcuffs-of-gay-rights_how-pinkwashing

Here is a more recent breakdown of Pinkwashing and its counterpoint, Pinkwatching: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/6774/pinkwatching-and-pinkwashing_interpenetration-and-

Works cited

Puar, Jasbir K. "Abu Ghraib: Arguing against Exceptionalism." Feminist Studies 30, no. 2 (2004): 522-534.

Puar, Jasbir K. and Rai, Amit. "Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots," Social Text 20, no. 3 (2002): page 117-148.