"If it were between countries, we'd call it a war. If it were a disease, we'd call it an epidemic. If it were an oil spill, we'd call it a disaster. But it is happening to women, and it's just an everyday affair. It is violence against women."
- Beginning manifesto of the White Ribbon Campaign

We are now at a very crucial period in the movement to eradicate violence against women. Following the events of Sept. 11, the news on virtually every station featured a white wealthy male expert to interpret the situation and awaken the patriotism of the masses with carefully chosen war rhetoric. Once again, the mainstream media was flooded with violent and militant notions of conflict resolution. Day after day, the media continue to report domestic violence, femicide, and rape without provoking much of a public outcry or collective demand to address the endemic seriously. The gruesome murders of two local women, one on September 20th and the other on August 27, went largely unnoticed by the public. Susan Palmer, of the Register Guard, reported that "such acts don't shock the entire nation the way the terrorist attacks...did, but they are privately horrific" (10-11-01). According to Annie Neal, an advocate in Multnomah County's domestic violence office, 21 domestic violence homicides have been committed this year compared to 10 during 2000 (Register Guard 10-11-01). Violence against women has become an accepted aspect of society. Now that many people are desensitized to it, it is understood to be an inevitable consequence of male power and privilege.

In times of war, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish "legitimate" violence from "illegitimate" violence. Bush has proclaimed the Taliban "aroused a mighty giant" and shall feel the wrath of the United States, yet in the same breath, he urged Americans to practice tolerance and refrain from racist violence directed towards Muslims and Arab-Americans. With the media and government's use of emotionally charged language regarding the urgency of US retaliation, there will inevitably be some who interpret the call for "justice" as a call for violent crimes against individuals. The recent assaults against Arab-Americans and Muslims have been committed within the context of a racist society at war with a predominantly Muslim country. Some Americans have taken it upon themselves to serve their country by taking the battle to the streets and ridding the country of difference, in this case Arabs-Americans and Muslims. The blatant contradictions of the state's military action versus its calls for tolerance go unquestioned by many people. It is as if one is expected to completely disconnect state violence from violence committed in the private sphere.

Militarism is defined as the "pursuit or celebration of war ideals" and/or an adoption of military ideals and objectives as state policy by governments or countries (Encarta World Dictionary). War and the preparation for war are normalized and even considered to be desirable social activities. It is important to recognize that the process of militarization exists regardless of whether a war is being fought or not. The Cold War provides the perfect example of a philosophy of militarism even no country posed a serious threat to national security. According to Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan in War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa, it is women who suffer the consequences of this process because "militarism depends on distorted government budgets, but it also depends on the public denial or trivialization of wife battering, rape, and pornography." The Pentagon's current budget has been inflated to $329 billion with military expenditures expected to top $1 billion a month in these early stages of the war.

Domestic violence and rape become virtually invisible during armed conflict as the interests of the nation take precedence over the rights of women. Though we are finally beginning to hear about the plight of the women of Afghanistan, Ellen Goodman, associate editor and columnist for The Boston Globe, is quick to point out, "we've been more willing to condemn the Taliban for destroying women's rights than to insist on those rights in a post-Taliban world." (Register Guard 11-1-01) In recent plans, constructed by the Afghans, Pakistanis and Americans, to form an ethnic and politically inclusive Afghan government to replace the Taliban, "no one...has called for the participation of women, even though women, after many years of war, now almost certainly make up the majority of the adult Afghan population (Goodwin and Neuwirth, New York Times 10-19-01)." The absence of women in this discussion makes it painfully obvious that liberating Afghan women is by no means a priority in this conflict. They are merely being used to further achieve U.S. political and military objectives in Afghanistan.

The relationship between the militarization of society and violence targeting women cannot be denied. War normalizes the use of violence to achieve political objectives, blurring the distinction between legitimate (state/pubic) and illegitimate (interpersonal/private) violence. How can one condemn family violence while legitimating state violence, such as that of the U.S. against Afghanistan? Attempting to distinguish between 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' violence only leads to a rhetorical war that women will never win. In her article, Learning to Kill: Masculinity, the Family and Violence in Natal, Catherine Campbell argues that violence in the public sphere is reflective of violence within the private sphere:

Because the family is a microcosm of society, the prevalence of violence in a particular society is invariably linked to high levels of domestic violence. Therefore, an understanding of violence in the home lends itself to a broader grasp of violence in the wider societal context.

According to Cynthia Enloe, social workers who address issues of domestic violence "agree that military service is probably more conducive to violence at home than at any other occupation" (Does Khaki Become You? 1983, 87). A recent essay in States of Conflict: Gender, Violence and Resistance (2000) revealed that Canadians shelter workers encountered cases of husbands dressing in uniform before abusing their partners during the Gulf War. The connection between intimate partner violence and military service becomes painfully obvious when analyzing soldiers and men with past military experience.

The media present state violence as something that exists in the public sphere disconnected from domestic violence. Those with the power to mold the consciousness of the masses carefully obscure the impact of that socially organized public violence has on women, on the rape rates, and on the abuse women suffer in all sectors of society.

Public discourse is careful to avoid making the connection between public and private violence. The silencing of dissidents in this time of militant patriotism has provided the state with an immense power to promote their militaristic, sexist, and capitalist agenda. Military objectives are presented as national objectives. The political agenda of the U.S. strongly reflects the nation's leader's stakes in imperialistic ventures in the developing world. Brute force and indiscriminate violence is used to subjugate the less powerful countries. Liberating women has by no means been a national priority. The public must recognize the government's prioritizing of militarization over humanitarianism only benefits the (male) elite. Now is the time to be especially attentive to women's rights. It will prove to be a difficult time for women to speak out about domestic violence, rape (particularly within the military), and other forms of assault in our country's nationalistic and patriotic atmosphere. Many women may not feel their issues are of importance in this time of international conflict. Women in both the US and Afghanistan must have a voice in the rebuilding of Afghanistan, the conflict resolution process, and in the state's response to the international terrorism if we are even to begin dismantling the structural roots of patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny.