Dreams Into Lightning

The Long Road Home

The Long Road Home
Asher Abrams, 1st LAI Battalion USMC, 1989-1993
Posted to the unit veterans’ bulletin board.

“That is a chapter of ancient history which it might be good to recall; for there was sorrow then too, and gathering dark, but great valour, and great deeds that were not wholly in vain.”
-- J.R.R. Tolkien, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ I:2

“It is not your job to finish the task -- but neither are you free to abandon it.”
-- Rabbi Tarfon, 1st century

We gave what our leaders asked of us. If they had asked more, we would have given more.

Before the ground campaign began, we were told that the American forces’ final objective would be Baghdad, and that we would eliminate Saddam Hussein. As we all know, this did not happen. “The word was passed; the word was changed.” But we did liberate Kuwait.

All of us need to know that what we are doing has meaning and purpose. This is especially true in war. War is a hard thing -- having a reason gives us the motivation and the will to fight. Sgt. Michaels talks about this in his book (pp. 97-100): “It’s about my comrade, and his tiny Kuwaiti flag...” I don’t think this is naive. I think it is honest, truthful, and inspiring.

Nothing we do will ever be complete or perfect. If you’ve read ‘The Lord of the Rings’, or seen the movie, you might have noticed that theme. It’s not a story of superheroes, but of little people who are at the mercy of forces greater than themselves. They don’t set out to do great things; they love their home and dream of returning to it. They confront evil in a world that gives them no choice. Only then do they discover what they are truly capable of. Their victory comes with the loss of teachers, leaders, friends, and innocence. But they win, and some come back alive. It falls to them to tell the tale.

One of Dave Snyder’s favorite sayings was, “This isn’t fun anymore. I want to go home!” What made it funny, of course, was that in the military you can’t go home when you want, and a lot of what you do isn’t fun. But in the end Dave got his wish -- he went home before the rest of us.

Those of us who returned alive from Desert Storm have done many things with our lives. Some are still defending our Nation, either as “lifers” or as defense or security personnel. Others may have turned to teaching, creativity, or volunteering, enriching other people’s lives in whatever way we can. (Ken has contributed this site, where we can share our thoughts and memories, and honor our fallen comrades.) Many of us have married or had relationships, raised children, or discovered things about ourselves we had not known before. All of us have given of ourselves, and continue to do so.

We must all, each of us, find our purpose in the world. In war, your purpose is clear: defeat the enemy and come back alive. Life off of the battlefield is not so simple. All of us must find our own way home. It is a long, hard road.

Journey to America

July 10, 2005 - With the music of Sixteen Horsepower blasting from the speakers of Michael's black Chrysler LeBaron, Michael Totten and your present writer took off early Friday morning to escape the comfy enclave of Portland, Oregon. Soon the firs changed to pines and we were out of Ecotopia and heading straight for the heart of the Empty Quarter. It was Michael's idea. Michael is a native of Oregon and a travel addict, and there are few places in the Northwest he hasn't seen; for this trip, he wanted to visit Pyramid Lake and The Playa in Nevada. I agreed to go along, not having a terribly clear idea of where these places were, but fairly sure that a trip out of town would be fun, and might do me some good. It was, and it did.

Cross the Cascades, and the land is drier, the climate harsher, the life unforgiving. But already I'm lapsing into cliches. I want to describe the land as "barren", but it's not entirely true, and anyway I don't think you can really understand the idea of "barrenness" unless you have actually worked on a farm, which I have not. So instead I will say that the land is bare. In lush areas like the Willamette Valley, you don't spend much time thinking about the land (again, unless you work the land yourself) because you never really see the land. What you see is the stuff that grows on the land - grass, trees, utility poles, roads, houses, office buildings. Out there, though, you see the land itself. You see dirt. You look down at the ground and there's dirt, sand, rock, or salt, with a smattering of low scrubby plants or spindly pine trees, and the occasional stretch of road, a few telephone poles, and maybe a couple of buildings here and there. Then you look up, and there's the Western sky, which is famously "not cloudy all day" - it's just sky and nothing but sky, not blanketed by couds or smog or trees or buildings. And sandwiched ridiculously in between, there's you.

We drove through south-central Oregon, one of the most sparsely populated regions of the lower 48. We passed through Lakeview, with its big wecome sign depicting a genial cowboy waving to newcomers. We passed a big body of water, Goose Lake, on our right. We cut through a conrner of California and passed into Nevada. You can tell immediately where the California highway ends and the Nevada road (using the term somewhat loosely) begins. And from there on it was nothing but sand and mountains until we got to Pyramid Lake.

I took a camera but somehow didn't feel moved to take many photographs. Michael did, and I'm sure he'll post these on his blog before long. I'm looking forward to seeing them myself. (Update: they're here.) We made Pyramid Lake by late afternoon. The lake is big, and lies entirely within a Paiute reservation - as Michael said, on of the few good pieces of land the Indians got. We hit the lodge at about 5pm, after ten or eleven hours driving, and went down to get a good look at the lake.

Pyramid Lake is said to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the Western Hemisphere, and baby, they ain't kidding. It's a magnificent turquoise blue, and surrounded by sand and mountains. There are no high-rise hotels or any of that crap. The lodge we stayed at adjoined a general store / saloon / casino, which serves as the area's cultural center. Over a can of Miller beer (to my chagrin, I'd made the mistake of asking the barmaid what they had "on tap"), Michael and I unwound after the trip. I ordered dinner, which consisted of a basket of onion rings.

Now I have to say a word or two about food in the West. Quite simply, there isn't any. That is, if you're spoiled on the kinds of food you can get in Portland or San Francisco or Seattle, there is no food in the West. Period. What you can get is deep fried everything, and hot dogs. That's it. Oh, and omelettes, if you're lucky. My entire diet for the whole trip was two cheese omelettes. (I counted myself fortunate because the second one - eaten in Gerlach, home of the Burning Man festival - actually contained vegetables.) The concept of a salad just does not exist.

But that's part of leaving Ecotopia. The food - or whatever they call that stuff - quite literally goes with the territory. As Michael explained it, people in the West don't see Nature as benign because it is not. It is something to be wrestled with, mastered when possible and accommodated when it cannot be mastered. Michael pointed to an area that some of the early settlers had attempted to irrigate in the hopes of growing crops. Not only had it not worked, he explained, the attempt had actually made the soil even worse, resulting in whole expanses of lifeless sand, devoid of even the local vegetation. Nowadays people take the more pragmatic approach of importing truckoads of canned and frozen foods from elsewhere. This is why you're gonna have a tough time finding that organic vegetarian burrito you're hankering for (or even a celery stick), and it's why you don't have to spend a whole lot of time looking for a recycling bin to dump that plastic pop bottle in when you're done with it. Why, after all, should man respect nature? Does nature respect man?

We sat for a while in the saloon as evening came on. Local men and women - heavyset, somehow cheerful and melancholy at the same time - laughed and gossiped and shot pool. I bought a few items at the store; the girl behind the counter, who was pretty and simply cheerful, wished me a pleasant evening. Someone turned on the jukebox and we endured a godawful song about "the drinkin' bone's connected to the party bone"; after that we heard a surprisingly compelling number, "Holy Water" by Big and Rich. I turned in at about 9:30; Michael stayed up a little later to work on a piece for Lebanon's Daily Star.

I was talking about the land. The mountains are stony, rugged, and refreshingly solid-looking (not like the ones around here, which will occasionally blow up on you). We drove by a number of lakes - a few, like Goose and Pyramid, actually had water in them. Most did not. There is a curious custom of charitably naming a dry lakebed "Lake So-and-so" when the "lake" has been a flat expanse of dirt for countless years. They're even labeled that way on the map: "Coleman Lake (dry)", "Alkali Lake (dry)". And when I said dirt, I really meant dirt and salt; in some places the ground is literally white. It's the most amazing, humbling thing to see.

And this brings us to the Playa. We left the lodge at Pyramid Lake early to get there. I thought Michael was crazy for wanting to go at all, but I'm glad we did. Playa means beach in Spanish, and a beach implies sand, which the Playa certainly has. A conventional definition of "beach" generally involves the presence of an ocean as well, and thus implies water; this element, once again, is absent from the Playa. But it wasn't always so: in prehistoric times, that whole region used to be underwater, a huge inland sea; so the name (like the names of the waterless "lakes") is not entirely a misnomer.

The Playa is a huge expanse of dry sand and mud. In the hot summer months, it's dangerous to drive across because the temperature can get to over 120 degrees Fahrenheit. In the cool winter months, it's dangerous to drive across because the sand is wet an your car can get stuck. We were lucky: we got there when the temperature was mild and the ground was mostly dry. Still, we didn't venture out too far; I had vivid memories of my armored vehicle getting stuck in Saudi sabkhas "back in the day", and Michael's LeBaron didn't have a winch cable or recovery vehicle handy.

So there we were: the geographical center of nowhere. There is something therapeutic about just going out into the wasteland for a while. We got out of the car, and, without a word, wandered slowly away in separate directions, and simply stayed there for about an hour - standing, sitting, just letting the noise and chatter drain away. I did a quiet breath meditation for about 20 minutes. We took turns looking through the binoculars, noticing how the mountains seemed to float above their mirror image on the horizon.

This was a trip to the part of America we rarely get to see from where we live. It was a chance to purge some of the accumulated mental chatter and garbage, and to remind ourselves just how small we are and how big the world is. Standing on the caked clay of the Playa, surrounded by the mountains and the invisible coastline of what had once been a sea, we were probably as close to standing on Mars as either one of us will get. Eventually some clouds did start moving in from the west. Over the peak of one of the mountains, one of those strange, flying-saucer-shaped clouds hovered and then dissipated. It is at moments like these that you truly feel like an alien on your own planet.

Yet little more than a hundred years ago, that trip itself would have been science fiction. To drive a horseless motorcar, traveling a mile a minute, into the middle of a desert that even the Indians dreaded? And to do it as easily as we listen to recorded music out of a box, or write for a newspaper on the other side of the globe. And then there's Nevada itself: the land where our own Government tested atomic weapons, turning whole stretches of the desert into glass.

I've written elsewhere about the role of the wilderness in American spirituality. It is one thing to read about these things in books, and quite another to experience them for yourself. Michael's choice of Sixteen Horsepower for the ride was a good one, because their lonely and unforgiving sound perfectly captures the spirit of the landscape. Outside of the car, though, the only music is silence.

Why should man respect nature, if nature does not respect man? Because we have no choice. Nature is big, the wilderness is big, the world is big, and we are small. In such a world, it is very difficult to believe in a Sunday-school deity, some guy named "God" with a long white beard and a bag of gifts for good girls and boys. G-d is not a man, and if we expect human qualities from the Spirit we will only be disappointed.

On a hot July day more than 250 years ago, a Connecticut preacher used these memorable words:

"There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God." By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty, any more than if nothing else but God's mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment. ...

Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.

The very fabric of our world is held together by forces hanging in the most minute balance. The strong nuclear force is, to within a miniscule fraction, exactly enough to keep the protons in the nucleus of an atom from flying apart, repelled by their neighbors' electric charge. Were this balance to falter for even an instant, we would be annihilated in a flash. Humankind, having discovered the secret to upsetting this balance, now possesses this frightening power. With each generation, the consequences of our successes and our failures, our virtues and our sins, become greater. And the wilderness is still there, no less hostile. It gives us room to wander, room to get lost, and abundant room to die. So we are tempted to treat the wilderness as harshly as it treats us.

But if, as Jonathan Edwards believed, we are all in imminent danger of destruction, then our exile in the wilderness also gives us the liberty to find the spiritual materials of our own salvation. We must do this for ourselves; it will not be handed to us. Every one of us, from the moment we're thrust screaming into this world until the moment we're taken from it, faces this same exile. And every one of us faces the same task.

Why should man respect nature, if nature will not respect man? Ask instead how humankind may best show respect for the Power that lies beyond nature, and that lies inside each of us as well. Ask how to act in the face of the undisguised Nothingness, from which everything emerges and to which everything will one day be driven home. Nature makes no choices and asks no questions. Nature cares nothing for man because it is only the veil before the Void. Humans alone have the power to seek the presence of that nameless Source, to walk in its ways, and to honor it.

We got home at about 11:30 last night. I'm not gonna lie to you, it was good to be back in the land of fresh salads, micro-brews, Starbucks, and Powell's Books. Back in the rich and civilized climate of Portland, it feels like another world altogether. We can get the best clothes, the best books, the best food, and the best coffee. We have safe streets, comfortable weather, a pleasant city park, and a respectable college. We have all of the best things in life.

And we're living on top of a volcano.

The Hours, the Days, and the Years

Sometimes interesting things happen when you watch two totally incongruous movies back-to-back. I had such an experience this week when I watched "The Matrix" on DVD, followed by "The Hours". And while Stephen Daldry's beautiful film with Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf seems to have little in common with "The Matrix", it occurred to me that there are some points of connection.

There are no computers and no kung fu fights in "The Hours"; and when people fall out of buildings, they don't get up again. And yet, like the denizens of the apocalyptic world of "The Matrix", many of the characters seem to live in an invisible prison - one they cannot "smell or taste or touch". And some of them, like Neo and the other inhabitants of Zion, choose to confront the reality of their world - even if it is unpleasant and dangerous, even if it threatens their very sanity. Virginia Woolf has no use for the comforting retreat of the suburbs, and precious little patience for the well-intentioned efforts of others to "take care" of her. She, too, prefers "always to look life in the face, and to know it ... to love it, for what it is." She is a red-pill person.

But there are many kinds of prisons. Mental illness - Virginia's depression, Richard's schizophrenia - can also be a prison. Sometimes the only way to exercise your autonomy is to have some say (as Virginia says) in your "own prescription", just as Neo must choose for himself which pill to take. (Or like Richard, who simply takes too many pills.) The choice is in your hands; but once the choice is made, you must live with the consequences.

I live alone, and spend a great deal of time in my own company. Often, this blog is the only conversation I get during the day. It's a strange conversation, the one you and I are having: we do not meet face to face, and with the exception of a few friends who read my blog, we are probably strangers to each other. All you know about me is what you read here; and all I know of you is the anonymous statistics collected by SiteMeter.

Sometimes I have a certain feeling - as if something is wrong, it's not fitting together somehow, and it's not a problem that's definable, and it's not a problem that is fixable. As if no matter where I go or what I do, I'll always be surrounded by this invisible membrane that keeps me separated and locked away from the rest of the world, from humanity, from life. I don't even know what name to call it; I don't know if it has a name.

I do know that I can make my own choices. I do not want anyone making them for me. I don't want anyone telling me how to live, or what to read, or what to listen to, or how to think. I don't want anyone feeding me pre-digested answers like some kind of processed food. And I do not want to be stuffed into some kind of mental coccoon and told that it's for my own good.

We do not get a choice whether or not to die. That decision is made for us, and in the end, without exception, it will always end the same way. The choice we do get is whether to face each and every day. Sometimes it is not an easy choice. Even the most fortunate among us may inhabit prisons invisible to others. Freedom from fear does not, alas, bring freedom from suffering. To choose, consciously, to live each and every day that is given to us - to say with Audre Lorde, "Today is not the day" - this is the real test of our humanity.

We are at our most when we forget ourselves. Clarissa is sustained through the difficult years - which seem to go on and on - by her duty to her old lover. ("When I'm gone," Richard mockingly reminds her, "you'll have to think about yourself.") Neo can fulfill his mission only after the Oracle convinces him that he is not "the One", the messiah of Zion.

When Virginia walks into the river, she makes a choice that many of us have contemplated at one time or another. Perhaps, like many people who make the same choice, she is no longer the master of her own actions. Do such people sin by this act? Perhaps that is for the Righteous Judge to decide. What we do know with a certainty is this: That just as the actions and kindnesses of others have affected our own lives, so too do we affect the lives of others, even in ways that are hidden from us. We have the choice to extend and accept such kindnesses - whether in the form of a fancy dinner or a simple cookie - at every moment we draw breath. By choosing kindness and love, we also choose conflict and suffering; but we choose life.

Connecticut Students Sent Home for T-Shirt Protest

Originally posted April 22, 2005.

Gay rights took a step forward in Hartford yesterday, but free speech suffered a setback in South Windsor last week when four students were sent home from South Windsor High School for wearing T-shirts protesting Connecticut's civil unions legislation. The Manchester-area Journal Inquirer reports:

By Candace Taylor, Journal Inquirer April 16, 2005

SOUTH WINDSOR -- Four high school students were sent home Friday after they wore T-shirts bearing anti-homosexual slogans to school, causing a series of disturbances as other students became "emotionally distraught," students and school officials said.

The boys, who wore white T-shirts on which they had written, "Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve," say their constitutional right to free speech has been violated.

"We were just voicing our opinions," said Steven Vendetta, who made the T-shirts with his friends, Kyle Shinfield, David Grimaldi, and another student who asked not to be identified. "We didn't tell other people to think what we're thinking. We just told them what we think."

But other students say they felt threatened by the shirts, which also quoted Bible verses pertaining to homosexuality.

"I didn't feel safe at this school today," said Diana Rosen, who is co-president of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance. ...

Now this is a perfect example of "political correctness" run amok - and ultimately hurting the struggle for gay rights. The article indicates that the offending T-shirts bore the slogan "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" and some "Bible verses pertaining to homosexuality." Nobody was calling anybody "f*ggot", nobody was threatening anybody. And yet, Diana Rosen "didn't feel safe", and that was enough.

Vendetta said the impetus for the T-shirts came earlier in the week, when students at the high school took part in the annual Day of Silence, a project orchestrated by the national Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network. On the Day of Silence, students across the country do not speak, as a reminder of the discrimination and harassment experienced by homosexuals.

Students at the high school also wore signs showing their support for legislation that would recognize civil unions for same-sex couples in Connecticut, Vendetta said.

Vendetta and his friends, who oppose civil unions, wanted to make their feelings known.

"We felt if they could voice their opinions for it, we could voice our opinion against it," he said.

But he was wrong. SWHS principal John Dilorio, who had initially approved the students' protest, apparently backed down by the afternoon.

Eventually, DiIorio called the boys into the office and told them that other students were becoming "emotionally distraught," Shinfield said. He then asked the boys to remove the shirts. They refused and were sent home.

Who were these "emotionally distraught" students? Apparently Miss Rosen herself:

Rosen said that when she first saw the shirts, she "almost didn't believe it." She became very upset, crying and spending most of the day in administrators' and guidance counselor's offices. She also got into several arguments, she said.

Well, you poor little dear. I hope you weren't too terribly traumatized by the incident. Do yourself a favor: Never, EVER pick up a Bible, read the editorial pages of a newspaper, or log on to the internet. Don't go out and get a job, either - you might have to work with people who disagree with you. In fact, just to be on the safe side, don't leave your house.

Contrast her reaction with Vendetta's:

"I walked down the hall, and people were either cheering me on, yelling at me, or just sneering," he said. "It was the most intense experience."

Here is someone who is not afraid of being challenged. I wish more gay-rights advocates had this attitude.

Read the full JI article at the link.

As it happens, I attended South Windsor High School from 1978 to 1981. I think it's fair to say things were a little different back then. We didn't have a "Gay-Straight Alliance". We didn't have teachers, counselors, and administrators falling all over themselves to make sure we "felt safe". We didn't have a "Day of Silence", either - if you were gay, or if you were just different, your day of silence was every f*ing day. So I'm afraid I can work up precious little sympathy for Diana Rosen and her self-created victimhood.

I'm pleased to see that schools like my old high school are finally taking anti-gay harrassment seriously, but I'm deeply disappointed that they have chosen to do so at the expense of free speech. The students who wore the shirts sparked controversy and debate; and in the end, it was not they, but the administration of South Windsor High School, that hurt the cause of gay equality.

State vs. Defense

Originally published May 6, 2004.

When you first read the article linked at my post “Chalabi Aiding Iranian Mullahs?”, didn’t you think it was just a tiny bit curious that “intelligence agencies” (meaning the CIA) were suddenly concerned about about those Iranian insurgents in Iraq? Especially when the Agency has never said peep about them? I know, it sounded odd to me too. But, according to the Newsweek piece, “the State Department and the CIA are using the intelligence about his Iran ties to persuade the president to cut him loose once and for all” [my emphasis – aa]. While “Chalabi still has loyal defenders among some neoconservatives in the Pentagon,” according to the article. (Those pesky neoconservatives! That damn Pentagon!)

In an April 30 article, Barbara Lerner addresses criticisms of what has been termed “Rumsfeld’s occupation” of Iraq. “First,” she says, “it’s not Rumsfeld’s occupation; it’s Colin Powell’s and George Tenet’s.” And second, that’s the problem. And one more thing: now there’s talk of handing Iraq over to the United Nations and Lakhdar Brahimi.

There are two factions at work in Washington: one, led by the White House and the Defense Department, and the other, led by the CIA and the State Department. According to Lerner, “Rumsfeld’s plan was to equip – and then transport to Iraq – some 10,000 Shia and Sunni freedom fighters led by Shia exile leader Ahmed Chalabi” to join Kurdish freedom fighters led by Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani. General Garner would have then handed power over to these three, and six others, in “a matter of weeks – not months or years” thus greatly enhancing the legitimacy of the new Iraqi government.

But State and the CIA had other ideas. Garner was replaced with State man Paul Bremer. The Iraqi exile force was slashed to a few hundred, while Rumsfeld’s trio was inflated to a total of 25, with the result that “Bremer’s face [was] the only one most Iraqis saw.”

In Bemer’s GC, many Iraqis “saw a foreign occupation occupation of potentially endless length” led by untrustworthy Americans, while Syria and Iran set about trying to carve up the newly liberated Iraq.

Now check out David Frum’s new piece (May 6). Money quote: “Those inside the government pushing the line that Mr. Chalabi has divulged secrets to the Iranians come from the same bureaucracies, the State Department and CIA, that have also advocated for the inclusion of Iraqi parties with more open links to Tehran in the Iraqi Governing Council, such as the Dawa Party.” Attention, Department of Pots and Kettles.

And speaking of Foggy Bottom and Tehran, read this from Frum’s May 5 post:
“And those intrepid foes of Iranian imperialism at the State Department? What have they done? In March 2004, Colin Powell agreed with the European allies to drop US demands for Security Council action against Iran. US policy is now one of “engagement” with Iran – even as Iran hosts al Qaeda on its territory and supports terrorism inside Iraq.” For Frum’s devastating analysis, read the whole post at the link.

But I digress. Back to the original question: Is the Iraq occupation Powell’s or Rumsfeld’s? With the horrifying revelations that have come to light since Barbara Lerner’s article was published, Rumsfeld’s reputation is now badly tarnished. But in any event, Lerner is adamant that the occupation must not be Brahimi’s. “The UN as a whole is bad; Lakhdar Brahimi is worse,” she writes. “Men like Chalabi, Talabani, and Barzani have nothing but contempt for Mr. Brahimi, the UN, and the Old Europe.” These are the ones we must support – regardless of where Rumsfeld’s career may take him.

Disengagement: The Messy Divorce

Originally published May 6, 2004.

Evoking Ellen DeGeneres, Clifford D. May insists that Ariel Sharon does, after all, have a strategy. Simply put, he is determined to pull out of Gaza despite the best efforts of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Or say it like this: he will punish the terrorists by ending the Israeli occupation, leaving Arafat with “such mundane tasks as attracting foreign investment, building new housing and filling pot holes in downtown Ramallah.”

What is Sharon’s strategy? “... not coexistence but only disengagement. His goal is to divorce Israelis from Palestinians.”

The plan is disengagement. It is withdrawal into defensible borders. It is refusing to play the enemy’s game. In short, it is all about setting boundaries – which is why May’s “divorce” metaphor is so apt. Israel and Palestine are like an unhappy couple, living together out of habit, unable to stand each other, making one another’s lives miserable, and yet unable to let go. It is the very study of a dysfunctional and co-dependent relationship.

The literal boundary of the fence is necessary to this disengagement process; and not surprisingly, William Safire stresses the importance of Israel’s security barrier in persuading the Israeli right that disengagement is in Israel’s own best interests. This, in his analysis, is why Sharon will press forward at full speed with the fence.

And will everyone be perfectly satisfied with the placement of the security barrier (let alone its existence)? Categorically, no. I’d venture to say that not one person will be completely happy with the placement of the fence. But that’s the point: it’s a place to begin negotiating. The Head Heeb makes an indespensible observation about justice and peace. Soundly rejecting the cliché of “no peace without justice”, he contends that “In fact, all peace requires some sacrifice of justice . ... A compromise may be workable, and even fair, but it will rarely be seen as just by any of the compromising parties, because each will be required to give up something to which it feels it is entitled.”

Freedom activists understand that the democratic process – which is, ultimately, none other than the process of life itself – is not about perfection, but about growth. By withdrawing into secure boundaries, Israel will be better able to nurture its own needs while Palestine finds its way forward.

Remarks on Gender and Sexuality

Originally published August 13, 2004.

The key to the IRI regime's approval of male-to-female gender reassignment ("sex change") is the assumption that all transgender people are heterosexual-identified; that is, they want to transition to the desired gender (in this case female) and then have relationships with the "opposite sex" (men). But in fact, leaving aside for a moment all the misogyny and homophobia of the islamist regime, this is a false assumption. While accurate statistics are hard to come by, transgender activists now estimate that about half of all TG's - both male-to-female and female-to-male - are gay identified. That is, they are born as males and become lesbians, or are born as females and live as gay men.

"But if you were born as a guy, and you like girls, or you were born as a girl and you like guys, then why go to all that trouble? Why make life twice as hard for yourself?" Because gender identity and sexuality are distinct from one another - although they are interrelated. Everyone knows that men and women are different, and that therefore a relationship with a man is different from a relationship with a woman. By the same token, doing a relationship as a woman is different from doing a relationship as a man; there's simply a different dynamic to it.

The subject of "transhomosexuality" and its evil twin "transhomophobia" (to use the ten-dollar words currnet in the queer community) is still new. There has been tremendous progress in the gay world in recent years. (And for you nitpickers, I'm using "gay" in the broad sense because I hate having to hit caps-lock every time and say "GLBT".) But before we go further in discussing lesbian- and gay-identified transgenders, we need to take a quick look at the relations between the transgender and lesbian/gay communities in the West in recent years.

One of the ironies of the gay movement of the 1970s was its quiet disenfranchisement of the transgender community. Ironic because many of the activists of the Stonewall rebellion (most notably the late Sylvia Rivera) were either cross-dressers ("drag queens") or transgendered people. Ironic, too, because the gay liberation movement began mirroring the same prejudice it experienced from the outside world.

The gay movement believed that "fitting in" was the key to success. (I realize this is a bit of an oversimplification, but I'm referring to the mainstream gay movement, which by definition had to be ... well, mainstream.) Gay and lesbian stereotypes were frowned on - but in a telling asymmetry, butch lesbians were accepted while effeminate gay men were not.

During the same period, a similar tactical move occurred in the feminist world. Feminists bought into the fallacy that "in order to be equal to men, we must be like men". Consequently, it became "politically incorrect" to acknowledge any innate differences in gender, other than the obvious reproductive differences. All apparent gender differences in behavior, mannerisms, temperament, language, style of learning, and so on, had to be dismissed as the result of "gender stereotyping" and the "nurture" school prevailed over "nature".

So women tucked themselves into unisex business suits in the "dress for success" fashion, while gays worked hard to prove they were just like everyone else ... except for the small matter of being gay.

These intellectual fads had serious consequences for the transgender world: because if there are no internal differences between women and men, how are we to understand the case of someone who believes they properly belong to the opposite gender? For women throwing off the shackles of patriarchy, it could only mean one thing: betrayal. Women who wanted to be men were betraying the cause of their feminist sisters, and must be trying to gain "male privilege" by going over to the other side. Even worse, men who wanted to be women were charlatans, trying to take away from "real women" the one thing women could call their own: their identity. Such were the attitudes of early feminists toward transsexuals.

Transsexuals represented undesirable "baggage" for the gay and lesbian community, by being visible, and different, and everything gays weren't supposed to be. Perhaps they also made gay men uncomfortable, as many gay men have experienced harrassment for their own feminine mannerisms. Certainly lesbians, being both gay and (perforce) feminists, did not take kindly to the thought of biological males - even postoperative transsexuals - intruding on their world. This was the era in which "womyn-born-womyn only" music festivals like the legendary Michigan Womyn's Music Festival were born.

But as Meg famously declared in A Wrinkle in Time, "Like and equal are not the same thing at all." Countless experiments in egalitarian child-rearing, and mountains of laboratory studies, eventually dispelled the notion that gender differences could be ignored. As lesbians became freer to explore their own sexuality, they discovered that some of their own number were so far at the "butch" end of the butch/femme spectrum that basic assumptions about gender had to be called into question.

In recent years, the lesbian community in particular has made dramatic advances toward the acceptance of differently-gendered people. The MWMF, which still strictly excludes transsexuals, has engendered a protest movement, and the policy is now a matter of serious debate in even the most orthodox lesbian circles. And major lesbian magazines were affected: Girlfriends confronted its readers with the news that one of its columnists, veteran activist Pat Califia, would soon be Patrick Califia; and Curve, in a groundbreaking article titled The Opposite of Opposite Sex, tackled the unique challenges of transgender relationships. [Note: if the article is no longer available at the original link, you can view it at my reference page.]

And now we are back to transhomosexuality. In the previous post, we saw that some authorities in islamist regimes can accept transsexuality within certain limitations. But it is these limitations that tell us everything. No mention is made of female-to-male transitions. Nor does the article say anything about lesbian relationships; but we may assume that transsexual women in Iran face the same prohibitions as other women, including this one.

In the West, of course, things are much better. But it's instructive to look at traditional attitudes toward gender and sexuality, because they often reflect an internalized model of a "gender hierarchy" which has difficulty grasping relationships that don't fit a particular paradigm. And I'll write more on that soon, but I have to stop for now.

Women and Power

In the August 2003 issue of Curve Magazine, an actress is photographed wearing a T-shirt depicting a woman holding an M-16. As a combat veteran, my gut reaction was: “If you’re ready to accept the moral and psychological consequences of using that thing ... then you go, girl!”

This year’s feminist We’moon Calendar – a visually stunning work, available for the first time in full color – is dedicated to the theme of “Power”. (The women of the We’moon Collective decided a few years back to choose a theme for each year’s calendar suggested by the cards of the Major Arcana. Last year was represented by the High Priestess and was titled “Priestessing the Planet”; this year’s card was the Emperor – re-named “the Empowerer” – to be followed by the Hierophant.) The texts included in this calendar are particularly interesting: they shed light on the struggles of a community of feminist, separatist, and mostly lesbian women to come to terms with the meaning of power in a changing world.

“In the middle of putting together this We’moon,” the editors note, “we participated in a Peace March in Portland, Oregon, with 25,000 people of all ages and stripes. Although we had no illusions that our protest would reach the inner chambers of the war councils of this nation, we came away from it feeling empowered.” The introduction goes on to explain that “Our work ... is not driven by the impulse to ascend to the throne; reversing roles would just perpetuate the same old disempowering pattern. We would rather overturn the patriarchal paradigm of power itself, reaching for empowerment that connects people with one another ...” (We’moon 2004 calendar, pp. 33-34.)

So when Celestina Pearl writes on p. 70, “I go out into the world as a Woman Warrior”, we must assume that this is a metaphor. Like the M-16 on the T-shirt.

What is the proper role for women in a world full of conflict?

I served with the Marines in Operation Desert Storm in 1990-91. I shared in the pride of liberating Kuwait from a brutal Iraqi occupation; but I also shared in the shame of our nation’s cruel betrayal of the Iraqi uprising against Saddam Hussein, and I lived with this burden for twelve years until Saddam’s overthrow. Even now it haunts me. A bitter irony: the great crime of that war was not what we did, but what we did not do.

Now the evil Ba’athist regime is gone, and there exists the possibility -- only the possibility -- of something better.

According to Iraqi women like Zainab al-Suwaij and Rania Kashi, the Iraqis were eager to be rid of Saddam, and their chief concern was (and still is) a better future for their country. And it is here that the efforts of feminist activists and other progressives might best be focused.

But many in the feminist and lesbian communities opposed the war, invoking platitudes about “women and peace” and vaguely suggesting that women possess some special insight into “other ways” of resolving conflicts – without ever specifying what “other solutions” might have rid Iraq and the world of Saddam Hussein. They missed the opportunity to inform themselves about the atrocities committed against women and children (to say nothing of men) in Ba’athist Iraq, and thus relinquished a potentially valuable voice on behalf of Iraqi and Middle Eastern women.

The removal of an oppressive regime is a step towards freedom, but it is only the first step. In Kuwait, the Iraqi tanks are gone but women still do not have the right to vote. Iraq is no longer a giant concentration camp (no thanks to the peace movement), but a nation of 24 million traumatized people will not get back on its feet overnight; the Iraqi people will need our help as they find their own way. Iraqi women, originally promised 40% of the seats in the new Parliament, had to settle for 25%. If all the women who marched under such banners as “Code Pink” had instead raised their voices on behalf of their Iraqi sisters, might it have made a difference? If instead of choosing to “feel empowered”, they had accepted the burden of real power – and responsiblity – could they have helped? We’ll never know.

Those who truly care about the well-being of the Iraqi people will continue to pressure Washington to follow through on its commitments for humanitarian aid, security, and ultimately democratic autonomy for Iraq. We must continue to fight for the rights of Iraqi women and minorities. And Western feminists must begin to look past the “women = peace” cliche. They must realize that, with all due respect to Audre Lorde, sometimes “the master’s tools” are the only way to dismantle the master’s house.

Ever since I was a kid I knew I was supposed to be a girl. I was very effeminate acting as a child; in the first grade two of my classmates cornered me in the boys' room and demanded to see my "c**t". Throughout public school I was harassed for being a "faggot" even though I was never attracted to boys. Eventually I learned to act more "masculine", a process I perfected in Marine boot camp.

Coming out as transgendered in mid-life forced me to confront my experience of growing up as a girl in a boy’s body. I realized that I had learned a lot about misogyny – and that what I’d experienced as a gender-variant “boy” was nothing compared to the sexism that women-born-women experience throughout their lives. But I also learned many lessons from the world of men – and some of these lessons have proved valuable.

Power means many things. As the feminist thinkers have rightly pointed out, power does not reside only, or even primarily, in the force of arms. Power can belong to individuals or to a group; and it can be material or spiritual, as Starhawk has comprehensively explained in her activism manual Truth or Dare. In the 1970s, in the early days of the Women’s Land movement (which was especially prominent here in Oregon), women sought to create egalitarian utopias in the countryside; they learned that treating power as taboo only leads to chaos. But whatever else power may be, it is also, in its most raw and elemental form, the mechanism by which evil men gain the ability to oppress others – and the means by which they can be defeated.

If you were raised as a girl, you learned that “to be a girl is to be weak”; if you were raised as a boy, you learned that “to be weak is to be a girl.” It is understandable that women and gays, traditionally excluded from the patriarchal power structure and more often its victims than its beneficiaries, will be tempted make a virtue of necessity and condemn all forms of force and power. This is a mistake. To eschew participation in the power process because of a misplaced fear of “the master’s tools” is an abdication of the very power women rightfully seek to claim. As the pioneers of the Women’s Land movement discovered, power and conflict ignored are simply driven underground.

Lesbian iconography often depicts women wielding swords and labryses (and now, it would seem, assault rifles). A better index of women’s progress might be the willingness to take responsibility for difficult decisons in a violent world. As women gain access to the tools of power, they must be prepared to deal with the consequences of using that power -- and of not using it.

Originally published on April 23, 2004.