Abu Ghraib and Gender Abu

Abu Ghraib and Gender

Abu Ghraib and the Question of Gender

The first time I saw the picture of Lynndie England, posing in a photograph at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, I was disgusted at the sight of her. How could a woman behave like that, I asked myself? I wondered about the question until I read Marita Gronnvoll's article "Gender (in)visibility at Abu Ghraib." Gronnvoll's article forced me to explore the assumption behind my question. Why did I not ask "how could a human being behave like that" instead of "how could a woman behave like that"? Apparently, I, like many other Americans and media commentators who were especially outraged at the photo of England, saw the photo with certain pre-conceived notions of how a woman should behave. Gronnvoll helped me understand this gender bias.

The central question of Gronnvoll's article is the visibility of gender in discussing female soldiers at Abu Ghraib and the invisibility of gender in discussing male soldiers. Women in Abu Ghraib, she notes, are held to gender standards, while men are nongendered. These gender standards are again used in discussing sexual behavior of England but not of her partner Charles Garner. Gronnvoll also notes that media tried to construct England as representative of all female soldiers whereas there was no suggestion linking Garner to the general male population in the U.S. military. Finally, Gronnvoll argues that the media depictions of Iraqi male prisoners focused on their gender and homosexualized them, while preserving presumed heterosexuality of American male soldiers. The analysis, I believe, is telling about gender relations in America in general. We held men and women to different standards and we have a tendency of assuming our nation's manhood as essentially heterosexual, at the same time homosexualizing nonwhite peoples around the world.

Many critics, lawyers, journalists, and public figures discussed Abu Ghraib in the media. Most, however, focused on the chain of command that was responsible for the incident. People became outraged with George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. Many assumed that Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, dismissing larger implications of what happened there. But Gronnvoll brings many neglected issues into our attention. She specifically analyses gender implications of not only what happened in Abu Ghraib but also of the way the photographs were portrayed and discussed in media. And her analysis reveals that there are larger issues that are at play at Abu Ghraib. For instance, the fact that the media presumed heterosexuality of American male soldiers and homosexualized Iraqi male prisoners suggests that the tendency to dehumanize the Iraqis was not restricted to a few American soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib. Disturbing though it may sound, but those soldiers who abused Iraqi prisoners followed standard American gender attitudes with regard to homosexuals. While the soldiers displayed their homophobia through the photos, the larger American public displayed homophobia through the portrayal of the photos.