Andrushka

I had a student turn in a rough draft of a research poem discussing women's issues in the Middle East. Now, whenever someone tackles issues they have no personal experience with, it raises red flags. I know it would take an awful lot of research before I would ever try and write a poem about, oh, say, menopause. Even then, I'm not sure how I would establish any authority over the issue. I might know more about the subject than most men (were I to research it), but I still would feel comfortable only writing a man's perspective on the issue. I believe in learning and offering divergent voices in poetry, but some things are outside of my purview. And unlike some poets, I don't believe in channelling. My point is, she has little expertise on the subject, ergo the red flags. Anyway, this poem posited that the standards regarding hajib ("modest dress") are tools of male oppression of women. Besides being terribly cliche, this is a pretty uncomplicated view. In my experience, uncomplicated views are cop outs and truth is rarely (if ever) simple. We must learn to accept a degree of uncertainty and live between extremes. I would think for many women hajib is very freeing. If we want to talk about tools of male social dominance, what about high heals and miniskirts? More importantly, most of these standards are not imposed by men, but by women. In The Scarlett Letter, it is the women who deal most severly with the adulteress. Likewise, the horror stories of genital mutilations we hear about from Africa and the middle east are almost always carried out by women. I go even further and say that in our culture, women dress in their unhealthy and painful couture not for men but to compete with other women. I for one don't like high heels much or makeup, but women keep wearing them. What do you think? Further on the Muslim v. America culture war, the current "huh?" in the media is the proposed management of US naval ports by a state-owned firm from the UAE. Bush, who has never vetoed any bill, threatened to veto any action Congress would take to block the deal. We all know the individuals comprising the Bush administration have a lot of financial ties to the Middle East, so when he makes these strong statements in support of the UAE, we can only imagine there must be money moving in the background. That doesn't make me say "huh?" though. The astounding thing to me is that this could even be an issue. Congress wants to make a law restricting port management to only US firms. This doesn't answer my basic concern. How can I put this delicately: WHY ON EARTH AREN'T PORTS NATIONALIZED? What is wrong with our nation? If we say that it isn't secure for a staunch ally of ours to administer them, why are we leaving the job to any money hungry corporation? I'm a big believer in nationalization of key industries. Contrary to popular belief, the nationalized industries are often more efficient than privately run ones. Just consider Medicare. While traditional Medicare programs costs $0.02 per dollar to administer, the newfangled Medicare HMOs cost $0.10-$0.20 per dollar to administer because profit taking has been added to the system. Even that is efficient compared to private insurance which costs $0.25 or more per dollar to administer. I also know that Amtrak is a failure of nationalization, but again, it's because it was poorly done. It became an everlasting profit generator for the banks that control it, the board of directors is made up of bankers who borrow money from themselves then let government bailouts pay off the interest without ever paying back the principle. That doesn't stop the principle of nationalization. Perhaps our most recent example of nationalization in the US is the TSA. Regardless what we think about them, at least we can now expect uniform harassment and humiliation at every airport. The Administration thought that the security of our air-ports was too important to leave to private corporations. So why are water ports less important? Huh?

Posted by Scott on 22 February 2006 at 2/22/2006 10:33:00 PM | Permalink