Torture as pornography

Not a lot to say more than this article says. It's a good, thought-provoking cultural analysis of what we've been seeing with regard to the abuse pictures from Iraq. It is written by a woman; Joanna Bourke and she says:
"What is particularly interesting in these photographs of abuse coming out of Iraq is the prominent role played by Lynndie England. A particular strand of feminist theory - popularised by Sheila Brownmiller and Andrea Dworkin - attempts to argue that the male body is inherently primed to rape. Their claim that only men are rapists, rape fantasists or beneficiaries of the rape culture cannot be sustained in the face of blatant examples of female perpetrators of sexual violence. In these photographs the penis itself becomes a trophy. Women can also use sex as power, to humiliate and torture"

Perhaps this is of a piece with things like the way increasingly women smoke and binge drink and engage in what would otherwise be called 'laddish' behaviour ... ? The problem with the way that the gender equality thing has gone is that the traffic of values has largely been one way in popular culture; women have been liberated to act like men -including being boorish, abusive and loud. I'd have loved it if some of the traffic of values could have gone the other way ... but it didn't happen. Unless I'm missing something.

Joanne touches on this in a way saying: "the display of cruel pleasure taken in punishing Iraqi prisoners has reverberated throughout the world, confirming in many countries the negative stereotype of westerners as decadent and sexually obsessed."

ALso I commend the article for reminding us of the important lost dimension in most of the heat generated by the photos the victims themselves. We are reminded: "As in Jean Améry's description of being tortured by the Nazis, sexual violation is so devastating not because of the physical agony suffered so much as by the realisation that the other people present are impervious to the victim. Torture destroys "trust in the world . . . Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world." "
And that's the biggest grief of all.