The American torture scandal in Iraq is of course bad. But one thought I had on it is that some of the alleged "torture" may be esp. effective against Arab, and in particular, Iraqi, men. An article cited in Instapundit today points out that their attitude towards women predates Islam by a millennium. An email from Jim Lindgren points out:
This attitude about women in Iraq predates Islam. The ancient Assyrian Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon
(ca. 681-668 B.C.E.) include this oath:
"If you sin against this treaty . . . may they use you like women in the sight of your enemy."
2 Ancient Near East 65, 68 (Pritchard abridged ed. 1975).
Female MPs laughing at the masculinity of nude male Iraqis is probably more effective as torture than some actual physical torture that could have been done to them. They could at least maintain their masculine pride if physically tortured.
I can not see male American soldiers being nearly as degraded by such "torture". Maybe a little at first, for the more macho guys, but I suspect that any torture value would wear off fairly quickly. Being in the position of the torturees, I cannot see myself being that upset that long. Probably no worse to my masculinity than being thought attractive by gay men. And indeed, many of us have suffered through our female partners making some comments as to our masculinity.
Indeed, probably not much worse than what I go through on a fairly regular basis with my erstwhile girlfriend. Her previous fiance to me apparently had a very large male organ. And her ex-husband is still "massive", 250 lbs of muscle at 53. She claims he could make her climax just by barely touching her. How do you compete with this, if you are a normally built and sized guy? (If you ever met her, you would understand why I bother). Part of the answer is that she would rather spend time with me than with them.
In any case, I can't personally see getting that upset at the opinions of a couple of fairly butch looking female MPs about my masculinity. I would figure that they had problems of their own.
