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Book
Review
Stan Goff
War and Sex (Lulu Press [www.lulu.com],
2005).
The
US military is the embodiment of patriarchy. It is an institution built
on exclusively masculine principles and therefore breeds men to be hyper-masculine
and women to internalize values of hierarchy, aggression, heterosexuality,
and deference to authority. Stan Goff narrates his personal story of joining
the Delta Force to trace his own psychological transformation into a he-man.
The book is a deconstruction of the military and, in effect, a deconstruction
of his own male narrative; thus we are shown not only the weaknesses of
this masculine establishment that stands in for the US government, but
also the author’s own vulnerabilities which he willingly exhibits.
The book begins with a series of tentative steps toward unmasking its
subject, which, as Goff describes in his introduction, is “sexuality
and state violence.” To deal with this indomitable topic, where
does one begin, he seems to be asking as he shifts from violence on television
to killing in Haiti, to Iraqi casualties and the death of an Iraqi detainee
in custody, mixing anecdotes with theoretical reflections on the psychology
of killing. After the series of early chapters, many of which resemble
diary entries, Goff arrives at the actual beginning of his book with his
chapter, “Selection,” which is his personal tale of joining
the military, a tale that immediately hooks the reader. As we read about
the Delta Force, ironically situated in scenic West Virginia mountains
where “whitetail deer routinely grazed on the airfield at dusk,”
the juxtaposition of nature and the near breaking-point of the Delta Force
candidates fills us with anticipation for not just the story but the argument
that it will carry.
In this key chapter, we are introduced to the central tenet of the military:
“The only standard we had for performance... was to do everything
as hard as we could. Save nothing. Do not pace yourself. Give everything
and see what happens. Survivor without an audience.” In
this most elite unit of the military, where Goff is “exposed to
the darkest skills of power projection” even as his body pushes
itself to its physical and psychological limit, he seems semi-aware of
his own metamorphosis into a military person in whom the body and its
feelings are overcome. This denial of Eros, as he argues later, results
in the widespread injustices the military participates in, such as rape,
pornography and prostitution, all of which involve the subjugation of
the female body, since the body and its feelings have been successfully
“othered” through military training.
Buttressed with critical comments from a century of feminist theory and
western philosophy, Goff lays open the deeply flawed premises on which
the US military is built and which, unfortunately, underscore the policies
the US is pursuing both domestically and internationally, causing widespread
harm to individuals and nations. Capitalism, he finds, is the system that
upholds the military and until we are willing to critique this system,
the ones that will steadily fall victim to its devouring jaws will be
the Other – women, minorities, other nations. This argument has
been well developed especially by theorists such as Maria Mies, Catherine
McKinnon, and, more recently, Arundhati Roy. So it is surprising when
Goff remarks, “The academy is just as hostile to the critique of
prostitution and pornography, oddly enough, as it is to critiquing capitalism.”
A paragraph later, he explains that prostitution and pornography are “vast,
exploitative, patriarchal-capitalist industries, largely violent, very
lucrative, controlled by women-hating men.…” Since Goff fails
to look at “third world” feminists, much anthologized in current
women’s studies text-books, he has missed literature that deals
precisely with the correlation between capitalism and sexually exploitative
industries. However, his despairing conclusion in the chapter, “Pornography,”
is the subject feminists have been contending with in paper after paper
in the last few decades: Quoting D.A. Clark’s statement that “feminist
power has not changed the fundamentals of social power. Men still control
decisive power blocs such as the armed forces, the higher levels of government,
big business and media – and the ‘sex industry’ is a
service industry for men,” Goff concludes: “Decisively, men
control the state.”
As Goff correctly argues, capitalism is not just the partner of sexual
slavery but is foundational to racism and colonization. As many postcolonial
theorists have argued, from Frantz Fanon to Anthony Appiah, gender and
land colonization, and now globalization, which is nothing but economic
colonialism, are all “reducible to capitalistic hierarchies,”
to use Chandra Mohanty’s phrase, as quoted by Goff.
However, it is to Goff’s credit that he takes on the enormous task
of critiquing many of the injustices that emerge from a hyper-masculine
principle (rape, homophobia, war, women in the military, pornography,
prostitution, prisons, etc.). He brings to bear his erudition in delving
into these vast topics, and makes a case for the common thread between
war and sex, which are linked in the masculinist interpretation of human
relations wherein the “other” may be subjugated by assault
and battery.
That he has taken on this challenge of critiquing the military, and therefore,
capitalism and fundamental US policies, is commendable. However, the most
compelling parts of the book are where he narrates his personal story.
If his critique of patriarchy in all-male institutions were to arise from
the personal storytelling, this book would be even more remarkable and
might get more of the attention it seriously deserves. One chapter where
his personal story underscores his point about the underlying patriarchy
of the military is “Weapon-taboo,” in which he describes the
reaction of the young Rangers after one of their members, Sue, performs
as well as the men in a combat operation. Goff sums up their anger: “They
could no longer pass her by in the compound with an air of dismissive
masculine prerogative that said, I am the Man here; I am the warrior.”
The book has several digressions, which sometimes make us lose the thread
of thought. But they often arouse interest. Thus, when we come across
a simple phrase like “Bodies matter, and they are matter”
(in “Metanarrative”), it is a refreshing spot to meditate
on the thesis of the feeling body and the body of the state, both of which
are paralyzed by the social system of colonialism and the economic system
of capitalism.
Since Goff is an insider-outsider, he is privy to the paradoxes of the
military, such as its patriarchal front that hides “feminine”
facts, like attention to detail, obeying of authority, cleanliness, and
multi-tasking. One of the ironies is that while the military requires
everyone to be a team player in the reporting of rape or sexual harassment,
women find themselves without support, as we see in a series of sexual
assault scandals since the Tailhook scandal of 1991. Goff details many
of the sexual assault cases and quotes one particular victim, Captain
Jennifer Machmer, “‘I reported the rape within 30 minutes,’
she explained to a silent Congressional committee, ‘then watched
my career implode.’” Goff’s attention to key stories
and statements of individuals saves the book from becoming too clunky
with theory.
One of his best chapters is “Prisons,” which provides shocking
statistics (“The US now has 2.03 million behind bars, which translates
into 701 people out of every 100,000 in the US, while China is locking
folks up at a measly rate of 117 per 100,000”) to underscore his
parallels between the US military and the US prison system, both of which
operate on the premise of power and subjugation, supported by the state.
Imagine when this premise is carried out in wartime, as we have seen in
Vietnam and in the current US occupation of Iraq!
What can men and women do to subvert the insidiousness of the exclusively
masculine principle that dominates the entire US political/military system?
Goff calls for a feminist state, where any socialist revolution would
demand that male revolutionaries become feminist, become “gender
traitors.” For this to happen, mothering has to be valued, and infants,
regardless of their sex, will have to be socialized into both masculine
and feminine traits. This revised or, rather, original form of socialization
will create a more humane world.
If readers can patiently follow the intricacies of Goff’s argument,
replete with some interesting and some meandering digressions, and can
accept the lack of a Table of Contents, they will find themselves agreeing
with the book’s call for radical change. Finally, we don’t
really know what happened to the man who joined Delta Force and who witnessed
many of the stories in the military. We are left with questions about
his physical and psychological condition and when his feminist transformation
took place.
Pramila
Venkateswaran
Nassau Community College
pramilav@optonline.net
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