White Capitalist Patriarchy + Power = Exploitation of everyone else.

It's the same equation, whether we are talking about human rights abuses against the GLBT community, women, Latin@s, blacks, immigrants, Iraqi citizens, or prisoners either in US prisons or Abu Ghraib. Part of exploiting people is dehumanizing them, and internalizing our own superiority, our own "natural" right to have more than what others have.

The war is not a "major" issue, while gay/womens/immigrant etc rights are "minor" issues. It's all the same issue. We dehumanize people so we can live with the idea that they have less than us because they naturally deserve less. That way we can ask ourselves why don't those people accept what they have, heck the gay people in America have it better than gays in Iran. So why are they complaining?

It's that othering that creates this thought process in the first place. They have more than those people. As long as they are the other, we don't need to confront the question Why do they have less than us?

Sometimes I want to throw my head back and howl with frustration that people can't see the connections.

How the hell does a person get outraged over the prison abuse photos, and not understand that homophobia and notions of male supremacy are interwoven together with each other and with warfare? How do people reconcile within themselves the reality that rape has always been a part of warfare, from the real rapes at Haditha to the more symbolic skull fucking - while at the same time they think those talking about women's rights are just the shrill echoes of manhating feminists?

How does that all get compartmentalized in some people's heads like they aren't related at all, like masculinity and the macho swagger isn't connected with attitudes toward waging war?