LEARNING SEIG WILL THE HEALTHCARE PACKAGE BE GOOD FOR WOMEN? Her hands are now at rest. Once they were bound. Both by her and by the strong arm of her government. Falima Ibrahim. A A speaker. A union lender for Sudanese women's rights. Her husband won an international Peace Medal. At the same moment he was executed, she was imprisoned. Denied food and medicine, Fatima fell into a coma. Yet few details of her ordeal are forgotten. Today, because of Amnesty International, and people like you, Fatima is considered lucky. She is alive'. Today, she is president of the Women's International Democratic Federation. Let no one tc our hands are bound. Pick up a pen and raise your voice for those who can't. Join Amnesty and become a Freedom Writer. Call 1-800-55-AMNESTY, It's your human right. M N Y N R N T I O N Summer 1993 Contents FEATURES 12 They Could Not be Moved: The Anti-Nazi Heroism of the White Rose by Fred Pelka 18 Healthcare for All — Will It Be Good For Women? by Elayne Clift 23 Communiques From the Front: LEARNING FROM Young Activists Chart Feminism's Third Wave MALCOLM X by Bonnie Pfister 27 29 Update: Inches From Freedom — Forever? The Prolonged Oppression of the Sahrawis by John W. Bartktt 29 What Women Can Learn From Malcolm X by Flo Kennedy and Irene Davall 44 The Deadly Denial An Interview With Feminist Author Susan Griffin by Heather Rhoads SPECIAL SECTION WOMEN UNDER SIEGE 32 For Irish Feminists: Activism=Imprisonment, Strip Search and Death by Betsy Swart The Message in the Murder of Sheena Campbell 34 Like The Phoenix We Rise: Irish POW Bronwyn McGahan Speaks Out 36 Let's Finally Right the Wrongs: Rape is a War Crime by Jean Bethke Elshtain 40 Bosnia: No Place to Hide - No Place to Run The Balkanization of Women's Bodies by Jill Benderly COLUMNS DEPARTMENTS Merle Hoffman—3 Front Lines—2 The Text Behind That Cover Girl Smile Win Some»Lose Some—9 Elayne Rapping—5 Choice Books—48 How the Media Distorts Women's Progress Feedback—58 12 Phyllis Chesler—7 An Update on Aileen Wuornos About the Cover: "Using a Blueprint from Malcolm X" Cover Photo: by David Plakke/Art Ink ( Plakke's photography is exhibited internationally and his award-winning direction can be seen in the documentary "Necros: An Aftermath") (Background; The Pathfinder Mural 410 West Street, NYC) IIUJIIIIIIIU»JJJJJ1M:HJ.MII11 Front Lines VOL.11 NO.3 SUMMER 1993 PUBLISHER/EDITOR IN CHIEF Torture, Rape, Gynocide Merle Hoffman EXECUTIVE EDITOR Beverly Lowy EXECUTIVE EDITORIAL CONSULTANT Linda Gutstein and Silence ASSOCIATE EDITOR Laurie Ouellette Throughout the world women's bodies are being ASSISTANT EDITOR Karen Aisenberg used as battlefields, but you'd never know it if your EDITOR AT LARGE news sources are the major media. Phyllis Chesler It was mid-August, 1992 when I first read of the CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Eleanor J. Bader mass rapes and gynocides in Bosnia. To my knowl- Jill Benderly edge, at that time Neiv York Newsday was the only Charlotte Bunch newspaper to feature the horrors, which they did Vinie Burrows Naomi Feigelson Chase in a four-page spread. Months went by before the Elayne Clift rest of the media followed. Why? Irene Davall bell hooks On the eve of International Women's Day, Roberta Kalechofsky March 2, 1992, a strip search of such violence was Flo Kennedy conducted on women political prisoners in Fred Pelka Elayne Rapping Maghaberry jail in Northern Ireland that 42 of our own Congresspeople sent a letter Helen M. Stummer of protest to the British Embassy. The strip searches included severe beatings and ART DIRECTORS sexual assaults. Did you read about it? Did you see it on your nightly news? I didn't. Michael Dowdy Julia Gran In Spain, in Basque country, women are being subjected to "anti-terrorist ADVERTISING AND SALES DIRECTOR legislation," where they are being detained and tortured: Raped, penetrated with Carolyn Handel objects, electrodes affixed to their breasts and genitals, cigarettes extinguished on their CIRCULATION/BUSINESS CONSULTANT Warren Braren breasts. Not a word of this has appeared in our media. MUSIC/ARTS ADVISOR In the U.S. we have our own ways of torturing women prisoners. In 1989, On the Carrulle M. Barbone Issues reported on the conditions at the Women's High Security Unit at Lexington, ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's KY, where women political prisoners were subj ected to random full-body cavity strip Quarterly: A feminist, humanist magazine of critical searches, kept awake for long periods, denied medical treatment and kept under thinking, dedicated to fostering collective responsibility for positive social change. constant surveillance by male guards, even while they took showers. Not one ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's mainstream news outlet has ever done an expose on the brutal treatment of women Quarterly (ISSN 0895-6014) is published quarterly as an prisoners in this country. Why? informational and educational service of CHOICES Women's Medical Center, Inc., 97-77 Queens In this edition of On the Issues you will read the firsthand accounts of women in their Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11374-3317. various besieged countries. You will be told of the cold-blooded murder of a 29-year- Unsolicited Manuscripts: All material will be read by the editors. For return, enclose self-addressed, old Irish feminist as Bernadette Devlin Me Aliskey reveals the underlying reasons why stamped envelope with proper postage. Articles should this young woman was singled out. You will learn the true story of the horrors of not be more than 2,000 words. All editing decisions are Maghaberry prison from the lips of a prisoner barely out of her teens. What you read at the discretion of the editors. Feminist cartoons are also acceptable under the same provisions. ON THE here will not be found in the major media because those who make the decisions on ISSUES does not accept fiction or poetry. what is newsworthy reveal the act of gynocide only when it becomes genocide, and Advertising accepted at the discretion of the publisher. sometimes not even then. Acceptance does not necessarily imply endorsement. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The opmions expressed by It is up to us women to network throughout the world, wherever we can and by contributors and by persons interviewed are not whatever means possible to shed light on what is happening to women everywhere. necessarily those of the editors. ON THE ISSUES is a forum where women may have their voices heard It is up to us to join together, to raise our voices in protest, to use whatever means without censure or censorship. we can to stop this scourge enveloping the women of the world. Subscription Information: 1 year S14.75; 2 years In the words of Marge Piercy: S2S.75; 3 years S34.75. Institutional rate: Add $10 first year; }5 each additional year. Add $4 per year for "Strong is what we make each other Canadian orders; $4 per year foreign (surface mail) or Until we are strong together." $20 per year foreign (airmail). Send to ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's Quarterly, PO Box 3000, Dept. OTI, Denville, NJ 07834. Second-Class Postage Paid at Flushing, New York and additional mailing office. Newsstand: Distribution by Eastern News Distributors, Inc., 2020 Superior St. Sandusky, OH 44870 Beverly Lowy Postmaster: Send address changes to ON THE ISSUES The Progressive Woman's Quarterly. PO Box Executive Editor 3000, Dept. OTI, Denville, NJ 07834-9838 ON THE ISSUES SUMMER 1993 I S S E S n the morning any notion of power when it came to that I would be women, was conspicuously absent in posing for pho- these purely traditional female poses. tographers for When presenting women, power was an upcoming projected as a prop, much like a costume profile in Lean that can be put on and taken off. Now magazine I of that we have a First Lady who has real course dressed power, a female Attorney General, a myself with more than my customary Supreme Court justice, senators, gover- attention to detail. The issue of what to nors, Cabinet members and more women wear — slacks suit or dress, basic black or in positions of corporate and political color, what color, how to do the makeup, power than ever before, I was struck by the hair, how to control the presentation the fact that women's magazines persist of self — became a far more serious in presenting these and other women in undertaking than usual. variations of the classic feminine submis- Then as I sat in my office awaiting the sive posture. It is a presentation that photographers, I began to muse on how signals accommodation and vulnerabil- the images of'women in women's maga- ity — and it shows us that even when it zines are not merely a question of photo- comes to women with power, we are graphic aesthetics, but are laden with portrayed as merely "women" with a political and social significance. Consid- power that dares not show its face. ering the amount of money spent to Particularly compelling was the De- advertise, publish and purchase them and cember 28, 1992 issue of Neivsweek which the number of women who read, sub- pictured Hillary Clinton on the cover scribe to and buy into their message, their smiling broadly, her head resting on a importance went far beyond the com- closed hand. The cover line read mercial. I began to deduce a sub-text "Women of the Year" and the inside behind the bland beauty of the women story went on to present the top women pictured in them.