Women Don't Do This

On Sept. 11, 2001, I turned on CNN to hear a witness describe a man with his skin hanging off, Mayor Guliani reference people “jumping from the towers” and an observer depict the bodies falling from the sky. One thought passed through my mind: Women don’t do this.

Women don’t form terrorist group and attack civilian populations. Women don’t hijack planes with an explicit intent to kill thousands of innocent workers in a statuesque office building. Women don’t kamikaze themselves and 91 innocent passengers into a governmental monument filled with employees. It may be cultural construct, it may be gender stereotype, it may be biological influence. But women don’t do this.

Ninety-eight percent of all violent crimes are committed by men, and killing, violence and war have long been a man’s game. Armies have always been overwhelmingly male, instigating wars characterized by big egos, over-aggression and nervous women wringing their hands out at home, in prayer for their husbands and sons. (There’s a book called War and Peace outlining the phenomenon.)

Add poor education to the mixture, and the results are deadly. Uneducated male groups have a history of violence: According to historian Linda Gordon, America’s late-19th century mining towns were “violent because they were male enclaves.” They were “aggression dominant because there were not yet enough women and families to challenge it with respect for discipline and vested interests in peace.” These miners were not even engaged in a terrorist community, and their innate response to a homosocial situation was violence.

When females first entered the American armed forces, opponents banged down doors haranguing the horrible disturbance women would cause to the already deadly history of military science. In the words of Anna Quindlen: “A new Navy training program, for the first time in history, features sexually integrated boot camp. After all the arguments about fatal distractions, they’ve discovered that putting men and women together actually improves training and fosters the much-vaunted cohesion. ‘It’s more cooperative and there’s more teamwork,’ said one instructor. Armed forces, meet real life.”

Unfortunately, the terrorists who attacked America last week are part of real life. It is widely suspected that militant Osama bin Laden is responsible for Tuesday’s terrorism. If so, I find it no coincidence that the country which bin Laden makes his home is a patriarichal society where male word is gospel and where women are not allowed to show their faces.

If Islamic organizations did partake in the crimes committed against America (though I am disturbed at the speed with which we’ve jumped to this conclusion), I am certain that no woman’s opinion was considered in the clandestine terrorist group meetings leading up to the attack.

This was a man’s game.

And yet, in response to these barbaric terrorist tactics, our president reacted —before the wreckage had even hit the ground—with a knee-jerk pledge reeking of just as much testosterone: To hunt down and punish whoever is responsible.

Hunting is the last thing we need to do. Memo to W: Retaliation and hunting are not the same thing.

America does not need hairy-backed war tactics right now, particularly the vigilante kind that resulted in Saturday’s murder of an “Arab looking” gas station attendant. (He was South Asian.)

Instead, we need compassion. We need caring solidarity among all Americans. We need to protect our country, to care for the victims and their families and actually identify our enemy.

There should be no hunting. Intelligent, effective retaliation against our actual enemy can come later.

Arianne R. Cohen ’03, a Crimson editor, is a women’s studies concentrator in Leverett House.