Feminism and War

I do love it when I find support for my position among women a whole lot smarter than I am.
The war's consequences on feminism and the international community were the focus of a panel discussion held at Cornell University on March 25.

The opening speaker addressed the positions of organizations such as Code Pink, which confronts "war as a women's issue." Code Pink claims that current ideologies of international politics are poisoned because they are "dominated by testosterone and a military which engenders a culture of aggression."

[Pardon me, but wooo hooo. Wasn't that what I was just recently saying??]

The five panelists were Prof. Marcia Greenberg, law; Jane Marie Law, the H. Stanley Krushen Professor of World Religions; Prof. Andrea Parrot, policy analysis and management; Prof. Anna Marie Smith, government and Christine Cuomo, Society for the Humanities postdoctoral fellow.

Smith began the panel with her talk, "How to Be a Feminist in an Empire: Feminism and American Imperialist Expansion...." She suggested that .... "Women need to be un-American enough to shift the current dialogue. We have to suspect the empire will try to use us. Women on the periphery need our solidarity now more than ever....." Smith concluded, "This war will definitely not install democracy. It will either result in a puppet regime or a fundamentalist government. History will judge us by our un-American international solidarity."

The final panelist was Cuomo, presenting "Feminist and Women's Anti-War Activism...." She noted her own experiences in antiwar activism, saying that "we are in the midst of a moment with incredible potential to rebuild the American left...." She gave particular note to the organization New Yorkers Say No to War, a group created on Sept. 16, 2001, founded as "a Ground Zero peace movement knowing where the Bush-Cheney regime was going."

In the question and discussion section of the panel, Michelle Krohn-Friedson '05 asked, "Where could I go for unbiased information on issues such as these?"

Cuomo responded that the presence of independent media is especially noteworthy because "in order to get good information these days, you cannot be passive; you have to seek it out."