McKELVEY Editor Tara McKelvey brings together stories of “women as aggressors and torturers” in the selections here. First, Francine D’Amico points out the gendered aspect of the prison abuses, aka atrocities and war crimes, that happened at Abu Ghraib-- as well as how the representation of these reflect gendered biases.
Lucinda Marshall further critiques the focused chastisement of women victimizers in Abu Ghraib that ignored, say, a superior commander's’ influence, and that used examples of such women to argue that women should not be in the military at all. She illuminates the disturbing link between violence and pornography, noting that a picture’s being on a pornographic website does not preclude it from being abuse. She lists examples of sexual assault in the military, showing that it is not new or isolated to Abu Ghraib. Her most powerful statement is that “sexual abuse against men is considered torture; sexual abuse against women by men is business as usual” (55), calling upon feminists to redirect conversations to shed light on this contradiction and focus on the more common victims of sexual violence in war, the Iraqi women, whose rapes and sexual assaults are underreported because their …show more content…
Obama had said that all of the photos from Abu Ghraib would be released, but later reneged, saying that releasing certain photographs would inflame anti-American sentiment which would put American soldiers’ lives more at risk; also noting that the perpetrators of the violence would be prosecuted, and they were not so remarkable given that other Abu Ghraib photos had been released earlier revealing sensational and disturbing incidents and conditions. Obviously, much of the evidence upon which this article is based is photographic in