Opinion Piece: Libya: When In Doubt, Blame It On The Women

When In Doubt, Blame It on the Women

Emine Dilek, Editor WVoN

Radio Host Women’s Voice

I am not a big Robert Dreyfuss fan. I admit this was his first article I’ve ever read in The Nation. He has done an excellent job getting my attention with a title “Obama's Women Advisers Pushed War Against Libya.”

This title in and of itself has managed to put women and the President down at the same time. War is bad, women caused it, President can’t make his own decisions, and takes advice from women.

Article did not have to mention the gender of the advisors; the writer could have just written "President's advisors," but he choose the word "women" to make his case which as we mentioned before made the President look weak because, it is assumed in our culture, if you take advice from "women" as a man you are less-than...

As our country is financially and emotionally struggling with the two major war fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan, another one was not going to be popular regardless of its legitimate reasoning. Mr. Dreyfuss obviously is clever enough to know that, so he found an excellent way to twist it.

I don’t know who said “How good does a female athlete have to be before we just call her an athlete?” But this article reminded me of it. And I ask “What does a female advisor have to do before we just call her an advisor?” Come to your own conclusions and tell me why this writer had to mention the “gender” of the President’s advisers.

He also makes the assumption that women are pacifists and less pro-war. I agree that more men waged wars than women, but women are neither pacifists nor warmongers; women are just human beings with similar thoughts and emotions. Like Robin Morgan once said “Women are not inherently passive or peaceful.  We're not inherently anything but human.”

These are the subtle insinuations we need to work on. These are the undercurrents of deep rooted sexism and patriarchal tendencies, let’s not be timid in recognizing and correcting them.

This feature has been published in The New Agenda