By Patricia Lee Sharpe
"Fie on goodness! Fie!”
A bunch of disconsolate knights hang around, mewling about their fate in the Broadway musical Camelot. They’re mourning the loss of the fun-filled, good old days, when “no virgin could wander unmolested.”
I laughed, believe it or not, the first time I heard that line. Now I know better.
Here's the way the knight business used to work: first you conquer. Then you get to rape any female in sight. You also get to smash and loot, of course. Swaggering throughout.
Armies, in time, dumped horses for tanks. Conquering heros continued to get the girls, whether the girls liked it or not.
Rapine has always served three purposes: physiological, psychological and biological. The first two feel mighty good here and now, a jolly reward for risking your life. The third consolidates the conquest.
So, in our time, we’ve had “manly” West Pakistani soldiers killing “effete” Bengali men and raping Bengali women, to procreate “real” men, as a matter of policy as well as pleasure, in 1971. Serbs did the same to Bosnians only a decade ago, and as I write some Arab Janjaweed type is probably victimizing a non-Arab Darfur woman in the Sudan. No doubt the instruments of stock-pollution enjoy their work, but their violations are genocidal crimes disguised as ordinary rape. (Sorry about the “ordinary.”)
Meanwhile, although the woman typically never has a chance to evade her rapist, she’s seen as soiled, dirty, dishonored, and thus, pregnant or not, she’ll likely be disowned. This turns out to be quite beneficial to occupying armies: disowned women augment the prostitute supply.
There are many permutations to the theme of keeping soldiers happy by making sex available, on demand, and with no consequences—and why should abusers suffer? It’s human nature, after all. Boys will be boys, soldiers soldiers, and women who get raped deserve it. So general officers have traditionally shrugged off the sexual crimes of their boys, even during peacetime, and even when the victim is also an officer-in-training at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
But times are changing. Realizing that his own daughter could have been on the receiving end of rape in Colorado Springs, an American senator called for reform at the Academy. And American soldiers who raped some local teenagers in Okinawa generated grave complications for Japanese-American relations. The locals didn’t play according to the ancient script and hide the victim in shame. They marched and shouted, “Get out, Yanks! Close the base and get out!”
The United Nations has also seen the light. A report on sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers has recommended that originating countries punish offending soldiers and their commanders as well. (The UN, it seems, has statutory power only to admonish.) The report also wants salaries already paid to the miscreants to be retrieved and used to recompense the victims. Countries who wish their troops to take part in peacekeeping missions would have to comply or keep their troops home and on the national payroll.
The offences which precipitated the recommendations by Prince Zeid Raad al Hussein, Jordan’s Ambassador to the UN, took place in the Congo, but similar charges have arisen during other peacekeeping operations. Now, it seems, a tipping point has occurred.
Particularly juicy is the report’s prescription for “peacekeeper babies” left behind by departing soldiers. They, as well as their mothers, would be beneficiaries of the forked-back funds, an idea whose time has definitely come. Too bad it arrives too late for the mixed-race children of the Viet Nam war. I remember stories of the bullying and ostracism such children, mostly poor, suffered after their American fathers abandoned them. Money doesn’t erase painful memories, but cash buys better food.
If garnisheed, the emitters of the peacekeeper sperm that won all those egg rolls will, no doubt, protest. Unfair! I can’t afford it! I didn’t know she was pregnant! It’s not my child; she cheated on me! I have another family to support! They can borrow all the squawks they need from the litany of excuses put forth by delinquent American fathers, who seem to think the children they’ve engendered are throwaways. Oh yes, this one, too: She’ll spend it on herself, not the kids!
Moral arguments have never stopped rape or philandering, so the UN report seems to have it right: you breed, you pay.
Thank you, Prince Zeid.
Meanwhile, back in Camelot, the knights of woeful countenance are wailing over "nine years of philanthropic labor, making sure that the poor are treated well."
That's another line that doesn't seem funny anymore.