MascuIinil, MiIilavisn and FaniI VaIues AJlevlIougIls on Anevican EIeclion

AulIov|s) Vina LaI

Souvce Econonic and FoIilicaI WeeII, VoI. 27, No. 48 |Nov. 28, 1992), pp. 2591-2592
FuIIisIed I Econonic and FoIilicaI WeeII
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Masculinity, Militarism and
Family Values
Afterthoughts on American Election
Vinay Lal
Most Americans view the eroding strength of America, as the
recent presidential debates showed, through the prism of problems
closer to home, which include not only loss of jobs but also
declining standards at schools, high rates of violent crime and
rampant drug abuse. America's economic 'emasculation' goes hand
in hand with what is sometimes called loss of 'moral fibre'
IT is a matter of very wide agreement that
the presidential election of 1992 was
decided by the American public's percep-
tion of who is likely to lead the country
to an economic recovery. The high rate of
unemployment, the continuing decima-
tion of America's manufacturing base, the
decline of American dominance in world
markets, the fall of the dollar, and other
related indicators point to a greatly
weakening economy that every candidate
promised to restore to its full strength so
that America can once again proudly say
it is 'number one. (Not that Americans
have ever doubted that their country,
founded as it was with divine dispensa-
tion, will always be god's country on
earth.) Most Americans view the eroding
strength of America, as the recent presi-
dential debates showed, through the prism
of problems closer to home, which include
not only the loss of jobs, but declining
standards at schools, high rates of violent
crime, and ramnpant drug abuse. America's
economic 'emasculation' appears to have
gone hand in hand with what some people
would call the loss of 'moral fibre'.
However, as the Republican convention
in August, and the subsequent campaign-
ing by candidates, was to show, a number
of other seemingly disparate issues had
also come to the fore. Long before the
Republican convention, one had already
heard the charge that Hilary Clinton, the
wife of Bill Clinton, was rather too well-
qualified, and was thus likely to assert
'behind the scenes' power in the event of
thnt election of her husband to the presi-
dency. At the convention itself, this charge
was considerably muted, but Hilary
Clinton's advocacy of the rights of
children, tor which she has provided some
pioneering arguments, was pilloried as
another instance of the attack upon the
'traditional American family'. Indeed,
'family values' were to be emblazoned as
the focal point of The New Domestic
Order, an order from which such disorder-
ly elements as gays, lesbians, bisexuals,
AIDS activists, feminists, and other
friends of satan, sin, and sodomy are to
be excluded. In the weeks just preceding
the election, the chant of 'family values'
had receded somewhat, and instead the
Republican party sought to impugn
vigorously the character of Clinton, par-
ticularly on the grounds that he not mere-
ly dodged the military draft but allegedly
even gave comfort and aid to America's
enemies during the Vietnam war.
As I think can reasonably be argued,
the purported cowardice and thus 'ef-
feminacy' of Bill Clinton; the deep suspi-
cion of Hilary Clinton's strength and in-
telligence as 'manly' qualities scarcely
befitting the first lady, and the relentless
attack upon those whose sexual life does
not conform to the heterosexual heaven
of the pious, are all fragments of a unitary
view which sees the presidency, and as a
consequence the American nation itself,
as an embodiment of 'masculinity'. To
render this argument clear, we might first
consider that this election, like many
previous elections, led to an intense
scrutiny of the military records of the can-
didates, and their engagement with the
spirit of militarism. We know that Ross
Perot is an avid supporter of the war
machine; as he proudly put it to the
American people in the third televised
debate, "I've spent my whole adult life
very close to the military. Feel very strong-
ly about the people who go into battle for
our country. Appreciate their idealism,
their sacrifices. Appreciate the sacrifices
their families make" (New York Times,
October 20, 1992, p A21). Ross Perot once
served in the navy; he has been active in
keeping the issue of missing prisoners of
war before the public, and even organised
a private military mission, coded 'On
W'ings of Eagles', to rescue his employees
from prison in Iran. George Bush, on his
part, continued to flaunt the fact thathe
was a navy pilot in the second world war,
and his commitment to militarism is of
course not in doubt, as the American
invasion of Panama and the barbarous
decimation of Iraq only too vividly
demonstrated. Clinton, alone of the three
candidates, did not serve in the military,
although it is not clear whether he evaded
the draft or obtained a deferment, and is
on record as having stated that he was op-
posed to the
VietnaT
war. Moreover, he
is said to have participated, while he was
a Rhodes scholar, in a demnonstration that
called for withdrawal of American troops
from Vietnam. Bush sought, as one would
expect, to exploit Clinton's stand on the
Vietnam war as a sure sign of his pusil-
lanimity, effeminacy, and even treason.
"Well, I've expressed my heartfelt dif-
ference with governor Clinton".
Bush was
to say in the third debate, "on organising
demonstrations while in a foreign land
against your country when young ghetto
kids have been drafted and are dying"
(New York Times, October 20, 1992,
p A21).
It is seldom that Bush expresses any
concern for 'young ghetto
kids'.
and it is
sheer hypocrisy on his part to pretend that
he has ever had the interests of African-
Americans and other underprivileged
people in his mind. We should take um-
brage at the fact that America shamelessly
employs its African-American and other
minority groups out of all proportion to
their share of the population as cannon-
fodder to stage pyrrhSic victories in the
name of 'freedom' and 'democracy' but
when Bush appears indignant on this
score, it is simply laughable. The critical
issue is that Bush saw Clinton's participa-
tion in anti-war demonstrations while he
was overseas as an instance of treason not
only against America, but treason against
his sex. A man must stand up for his
country, and this patriotism must be com-
plemented by chivalry, or a willingness to
stand up for women and children. The
'draft issue', according to Lyn Nofziger,
a former Reagan aide, put Clinton's
'manhood' in question (New York Times,
October 10, 1992, p A9). A man who
evades the draft is like the male politician
who cries in public; womanly and weak.
To properly appreciate this, we might
consider the case of a former Democratic
presidential candidate, senator Edmund
Muskie, who shed copious tears during
the New England primary in 1972.
Muskie's tears were prompted by attacks
upon his wife by the conservative news-
paper publisher William Loeb, who noted
with gleeful sarcasm that Muskie's wife
had proposed to newspaper reporters on
the campaign trail that they could alleviate
their occasional boredom by exchanging
dirty jokes. It is usually men who tell dirty
jokes, and women who weep, and no
doubt the reversal of gender roles was
troubling to Loeb. But much more unac-
Economic and Political Weekly November 28, 1992 2591
ceptable was what Loeb took to be the evi-
dent implication of Muskie's descent into
'hysteria': as Loeb was to write, "I think
Senator Muskie's excited performance
again indicates hes not the man that many
of us would want to have his finger on the
nuclear button" This very sentiment is
precisely what Bush attempted to evoke
by making Clinton's activities during the
Vitnamn war a matter of public discussion.
The military man, if we are to believe
Pcrot and Bush, is also the family man.
We might note, parenthetically, that
homosexual men are not allowed to serve
in the military. Fifteen thousand homosex-
uals have been dismissed from the United
States' armed forces in the 50 years since
the ban went into effect (New York Times,
November 14, 1992, p 9). The one-time
ideologue of the conservative movement,
Marvin Liebman, was himself dismissed
from the army in 1944 without veterans'
benefits for homosexuality, or what was
referred to as "habits and traits of
character not beneficial to the armed
forces of the United States" (Village
Voice, September 1, 1992, p 29). The
homophobia of the right-wing has not
made Liebman abandon his support for
the Republicans. Could it have been sur-
prising, then, that at the Republican con-
*vention, not only were 'family values'
lauded, but the reverend Pat Robertson
and his cronies were heard railing against
the 'homosexual plague', and that women
like Hilary Clinton and Anita Hill, no
great feminists themselves, were denounc-
ed as 'feminazis'?
It is frightening enough that queer
baiting could
so.easily
be part of casual
conversation, but vice-president Dan
Quayle had promised to reign in 'lifestyle
alternatives: and this mood was bound to
find more substantive expression in many
parts of the country. In the north-western
state of Oregon, also on the ballot for the
presidential election was Measure 9, which
defines homosexuality as "abnormal,
wrong, unnatural... and
perverse'.
akin
to sado-masochism and paedophilia.
Measure 9, sponsored by the Oregon
Citizens Alliance, an association of Chris-
tian fundamentalists, proposed to with-
draw civil rights protection from gays and
lesbians, and would, in the event of passage
into law, have required government agen-
cies and public schools to discourage
homosexuality. Under Measure 9, gays
and lesbians could have been denied ac-
cess to public facilities, such as parks and
other places of association, libraries
would have had to remove all literature
deemed to tolerate homosexuality, and
AIDS treatment centres would have been
shut on the grounds that they were wont
to encourage promiscuity. As the initiators
of Measure 9 see it, America is predomi-
nantly a nation of Christians with family
values, and homosexuals like wild bulls
have gone on a rampage that will leave a
land that was carefully tilled incapable of
bearing seed. As one organiser of the
Oregon Citizen Alliance recently explain-
ed, "One of the main principles this coun-
try is founded on is equal rights, not
special rights! Our founding fathers would
turn over in their graves to see our nation
tembroiled in a cultural war by people who
demand special treatment because of what
they do in the bedroom!" (Village Voice,
October 13, 1992, p 30).
When those who had once been disen-
franchised, or were otherwise the subjects
of discriminatory policy, take the decision
to ameliorate their grievances, their ac-
tions are at once construed as an attempt
to procure 'special rights'. The invocation
of the 'founding fathers' the men who
supposedly initiated a revolution, in
American political discourse is now
almost always a coded plea to retain some
fictional 'common culture' in which the
entire nation is believed to have partaken
before numerous 'others' began to find
their voice. Measure 9, it is true, did not
succeed, but the narrow margin of 12 per
cent by which it lost is an indication
of how far the battle lines have already
been drawn. Quite significantly, measures
similar to Oregon's proposed anti-discri-
minatory
lggislation
succeeded in other
states, most notably in Colorado. There
the measure will have the same effect as
Measure 9 would have had in Oregon, but
its proponents, working for a group called
'Colorado for Family
Values'.
wisely
resorted to less extreme and offensive
language.
The defeat of Measure 9 is no mean
achievement for gay activists, but nonethe-
less it is, in some respects, a hollow vic-
tory. To appreciate this, we have only to
try to conceptualise what it means for a
national election to have been waged,
along with the question of what is to be
done with America's tottering economy,
over such issues as 'family
values'.
abor-
tion, gay rights, and affirmative action.
It appears inconceivable, for example, that
privileged white men, the very embodi-
ment of power, should still seek to deter-
mine the contours of the debate on abor-
tion, and that this hard-won right should
be held hostage to their corrupt version
of a 'moral politics'. That homosexuals,
lesbians, women, and minorities should
have had to fight merely to safeguard the
few rights and privileges they have gained
over the last two decades, and which of
course they should never have been denied
in the first place, suggests that the con-
servative movemnent has largely succeeded
in determining the socio-economic and
political agenda. Far from being able to
take initiatives that hold out.the promise
of greater equality, activists and intellec-
tuals striving for change are perforce com-
pelled to react to right-wing forces. In this
scenario, what has been gained must yet
again be secured from loss. This threat of
loss may recede from time to time, but it
is never far from the horizon, and it would
be altogether illusory to suppose that the
victory of Clinton will enable lesbians,
gays, women, minorities, and others who
are marginalised to consolidate their
gains. On the contrary, it is the next elec-
tion that will decide, as must be apparent
to everyone, whether this country is pre-
pared to make fundamental accommoda-
tions with those whom it once consigned
to oblivion, or whether the next four years
will see the armed organisation and
strengthening of those forces who, heed-
ing the Biblical injunction to 'be fruitful
and multiply', will seek to imprint the ap-
parently timeless values of militarism,
masculinity, and the family upon the
fabric of American life.
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dent on it will take more than the rest of this century. In the welter of recent exchanges
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is therefore more than ever necessary today to recognise the magnitude of the problem
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Economic and political Weekly November 28, 1992