1
Simulating images of death anesthetizes us to real death and produces a culture of
structural violence that makes infinite destruction appear desirable- vote neg to
embrace a pedagogy of debate outside of violent spectacles.
Giroux ‘12
Henry A Giroux, Frequent author on pedagogy in the public sphere, Truthout, “Youth in Revolt:
The Plague of State-Sponsored Violence,” March 14, 2012, http://truthout.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7249:youth-in-revolt-the-plague-ofstatesponsored-violence
One consequence is that "the sheer numbers and monotony of images may have a 'wearing off'
impact [and] to stave off the 'viewing fatigue,' they must be increasingly gory, shocking
and otherwise 'inventive' to arouse any sentiments at all or indeed draw attention.
The level of 'familiar' violence, below which the cruelty of cruel acts escapes attention, is constantly
rising ."(23) Hyper-violence and spectacular representations of cruelty disrupt and block
our ability to respond politically and ethically to the violence as it is actually happening
on the ground . In this instance, unfamiliar violence such as extreme images of torture and
death become banally familiar, while familiar violence that occurs daily is barely
recognized relegated to the realm of the unnoticed and unnoticeable. How else to explain the
public indifference to the violence waged by the state against nonviolent youthful protesters, who are rebelling against a
society in which they have been excluded from any claim on hope, prosperity and democracy. As an increasing volume of
violence is pumped into the culture, yesterday's spine-chilling and nerve-wrenching violence loses its shock value. As
the
need for more intense images of violence accumulates, the moral indifference and
desensitization to violence grows while matters of cruelty and suffering are offered up
as fodder for sports, entertainment, news media, and other outlets for seeking pleasure .
2
The aff is controlled by walking dildos and approaches the public sphere with
male privilege by assuming a gender - neutral political subject. This renders the
female body invisible
Fraser 90 (Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of
Actually Existing Democracy”, Social Text, No 25/26 (1990), pp. 60-61, Duke University Press,
jstor.org/stable/466240 // candle)
Now, let me juxtapose to this sketch of Habermas's account an alternative account that I shall piece together from some recent
revisionist historiography. Briefly, scholars like Joan Landes, Mary Ryan, and Geoff Eley contend that Habermas's account idealizes
the liberal public sphere. They argue that, despite
the rhetoric of publicity and accessibility, that official
public sphere rested on, indeed was importantly constituted by, a number of significant exclusions. For
Landes, the key axis of exclusion is gender; she argues that the ethos of the new republican public sphere in
France was constructed in deliberate opposition to that of a more woman- friendly salon culture
that the republicans stigmatized as "artificial," "effeminate," and "aristocratic." Consequently,
a new, austere style of public speech and behavior was promoted, a style deemed "rational,"
"virtuous," and "manly." In this way, masculinist gender constructs were built into the very
conception of the republican public sphere, as was a logic that led, at the height of Jacobin rule, to the formal
exclusion from political life of women.4 Here the republicans drew on classical traditions that cast femininity and
publicity as oxymorons; the depth of such tradi- tions can be gauged in the etymological connection between "public" and "pubic," a
graphic trace of the fact that in the ancient world possession of a penis was a requirement for
speaking in public. (A similar link is preserved, incidentally, in the etymological connection between "testi- mony" and
"testicle.")5 Extending Landes's argument, Geoff Eley contends that exclusionary operations were essential to liberal public spheres
not only in France but also in England and Germany, and that in all these countries gender
exclusions were linked to
other exclusions rooted in processes of class formation. In all these countries, he claims, the soil that
nourished the liberal public sphere was "civil society," the emerging new congeries of voluntary associations
that sprung up in what came to be known as "the age of societies." But this network of clubs and associations-philan- thropic,
civic, professional, and cultural-was anything but accessible to everyone. On the contrary, it was the arena,
the training ground, and eventually the power base of a stratum of bourgeois men, who were coming to
see themselves as a "universal class" and preparing to assert their fitness to govern. Thus, the
elaboration of a distinctive culture of civil society and of an associated public sphere was implicated in the
process of bourgeois class formation; its practices and ethos were markers of "distinction" in
Pierre Bourdieu's sense,6 ways of defining an emergent elite, setting it off from the older aristocratic elites it was intent on
displacing, on the one hand, and from the various popular and plebeian strata it aspired to rule, on the other. This process
of
distinction, more- over, helps explain the exacerbation of sexism characteristic of the liberal
public sphere; new gender norms enjoining feminine domesticity and a sharp separation of
public and private spheres functioned as key signifiers of bourgeois difference from both higher and
lower social strata. It is a measure of the eventual success of this bourgeois project that these norms
later became hegemonic, sometimes imposed on, sometimes embraced by, broader segments of society.7 Now,
there is a remarkable irony here, one that Habermas's account of the rise of the public sphere fails fully to appreciate.8 A
discourse of publicity touting accessibility, rationality, and the suspension of status hierarchies
is itself deployed as a strategy of distinction. Of course, in and of itself, this irony does not fatally
compromise the discourse of publicity; that discourse can be, indeed has been, differently deployed
in different circumstances and contexts. Nevertheless, it does suggest that the relationship
between publicity and status is more complex than Habermas intimates, that declaring a deliberative
arena to be a space where extant status distinctions are bracketed and neutralized is not
sufficient to make it so.
Science claims are inherently a patriarchal system – Science is solely based in
current views that has empirically excluded and undervalued feminist views.
Nhanenge 7 – Master of Arts at the development studies @ the University of South Africa (Jytte
“Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the concerns of women,, poor people and nature into
development”
http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/570/dissertation.pdf?sequence=1)//AA
One of the most interesting directions ecofemimst analyses has proceeded concerns science, technology,
economy and the scientific understandings of nature. When science is historically examined from a
feministic point of view, it becomes clear that the scientific epistemology is far from universal,
value-neutral and objective. Rather, science is an ideological and an aggressive patriarchal way of
perceiving the world founded on power and control. The analysis and critique of science has
therefore been helpful to understand the patriarchal domination of women, Others and nature. The
purpose of this chapter is consequently to show how science in general and the discipline of economics in particular, together
with their manifestations in technology, have dominated and exploited women Others-nature. (Des
.lardins 200l: 255). Science is based on a dualised world-view, which has undervalued and excluded
from its system of knowledge everything that is perceived as being "the dualised other". Thus,
man is seen as being superior to women, reason to emotion, mind to matter, culture to nature,
humans to animals, quantity to quality, etc. It can be difficult clearly to perceive this dualism in science. One
reason is that most people are socialised into seeing science as a universal and objective
knowledge system. This is because all social, educational, political, economic and cultural
institutions in most societies are scientifically based. People therefore have no alternatives to
compare with and therefore cannot clearly perceive the dualised nature of science. It is similar
with fish. They also do not know that they live in water. Since they never lived on land, they
cannot compare. Another reason is the complex interconnections of the various dualised pairs. Some
of them contribute directly to domination of women-Others-nature, while others contribute only
indirectly by being pan of a web, which ends up in dominating women, Others and nature. Thus,
each dualised pair may not be perceived as being dominant in itself. It is similar to a bird in a cage. It is not
the individual steel bar that retains the bird, but when all bars are connected as a network then the bird remains his imprisoned in
the cage. For example, early
scientists decided to exclude all non-quantifiable elements from science
in order to overcome methodological problems. This has ever since meant that all issues relating
to quality was considered irrelevant to a pure, mathematical epistemology. The result of such
exclusion may not altogether be obvious on the surface. However, searching deeper and wider, as will be done below, such
omission has had grave consequences for the quality of life of people and nature. The main point,
however, is that the scientific ideology consistently prioritizes rational, quantitative and masculine
elemenss, which are yang forces, over emotional, qualitative and feminine issues, which are yin
forces. Due to their similarity, those in the latter category are perceived as the dualised other. It is this
scientific choice, which has created disharmony, and lead to subordination of women, Others and
nature, all of which are feminine or yin forces. Therefore, this dualism is the essence of this chapter.
disease is a securitized construct used to fill the lack of threats in the post-Cold
War era
Periera, 08 [Ricardo - PhD candidate in International Politics and Conflict Resolution at the Centre for Social Studies, University
of Coimbra, Portugal, “Processes of Securitization of Infectious Diseases and Western Hegemonic Power: A Historical-Political
Analysis”] PDF
The end of the Cold War and the global expansion of the neo-liberal model brought about
changes more in terms of nature of threat than subject of threat. States as sovereign units are
not bound to cause so much preoccupation from a security viewpoint as “non-traditional
threats” do: environmental imbalances, religious fanaticism and terrorism, ethnic wars, refugees
and other ‘irregular’ migrations, urban insecurities, reductions in energy resources, etc. Often
these “new threats” were regarded as risks Western societies had to take for the sake of their
own middle-class lifestyle, which one would describe as Western “ontological security.”11 They
are described by Anthony Giddens as “dark side” of globalization, drawing from what Ulrich
Beck has called “risk society.”12 One such risk turned out as actual hazard in September 11,
2001 was global terrorism. With regard to epidemics, risks and effective hazards have
pronouncedly been associated with the deterioration of many populations’ living standards in
developing countries, particularly in Africa. Phenomena such as “new wars,”13 i.e. post-Cold
War civil wars, and “failed states,”14 that is, states “unable or unwilling” to offer the residents
basic public goods such as food, access to health or public security, have strongly potentiated
that negative trend. These phenomena appear as both cause and effect of the threats
mentioned above. The human security paradigm emerged in the early 1990s as a political and
instrumental response to the problems that “new wars” and “failed states” have posed
throughout the post-Cold War era. It embodies the early 1980s ambition of several authors in Security Studies (HomerDixon, Ullman, etc.) of enlarging the concept of security in which threat builds less in function of states and more of populations and
their well-being. Informing the nascent European defense and foreign security policies and the Middle Powers Initiative, human
security has been embedded since the early 1990s in the United Nation’s conflict prevention, peacekeeping and post-conflict
reconstruction missions. It was so defined by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP): “human security can be said to
have two main aspects. It means, first, safety from such chronic diseases as hunger, disease and repression. And second, it means
protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the patterns of daily life – whether in homes, in jobs or in communities.”15
According to this definition, the concept of human security presents itself as an eminently emancipating, pacifist and human rightscentered doctrine. It is in that vein that I believe that it is widely promoted by the activist community, as, for instance, the panel
“Human Security and HIV,” coordinated by Alex de Waal, at the 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City confirmed. Yet,
Mark Duffield warns us on human security’s two interconnected problems.16 One
problem with the human security
paradigm is its ambivalence, since, as one suggested above, it incorporates two rather
conflicting agendas, i.e. human rights and security. Duffield argues that “in a single concept the
idea of human security […] contains the optimism of sustainable development while, at the
same time, it draws attention to the conditions that menace international stability.”17 Writing
about HIV/AIDS, human rights and security, Laurie Garret expresses such tension in these terms:
“As vital as the human rights agenda is in the HIV pandemic, however, it ought not to be
permitted to befuddle attention to security.”18 The second problem meets the ethical issue
emerging from the induction of a state of exception for a non- military issue.19 Following 1930s
scholarship by Carl Schmitt on the establishment of a state of exception,20 securitization may
jeopardize civil liberties, democratic order and therefore the emancipating horizon of human
security. It is relevant to clarify that pathogenic agents only appear as menacing human beings
when they, first, infiltrate human ecology and afterwards penetrate and develop themselves
within the human body. Thus, those agents as such do not pose any threat. What is actually
convertible to a threat status are peoples, societies and, in the last analysis, states. If one
perceives detection, prevention, care and eventual cure of populations as the major measures
against disease, one defines as security objective the contention, if not the abolition, of the
multiplication of the number of people carrying the agent. It also accounts for the social impact
that such multiplication feeds and probably provokes. The securitized people are depicted as
those “at risk,” “vulnerable,” if not making up “dangerous classes.”21 In Southern and Eastern
Africa they are, among the general population, “orphans and vulnerable children.” In China,
India, Russia, and the West, they are drug injectors, migrants, homosexuals and the general
mass of “marginalized ones.” Conversely, the securitizing agents tend to be most influent groups
in society, where power, according to Williams, is more “‘sedimented’ (rhetorically and
discursively, culturally, and institutionally) and structured in ways that make securitizations
somewhat predictable and thus subject to probabilistic analysis.”
Their use of security is articulated through gendered binaries—that requires
domination and elimination of those who threaten the dominant masculine
body politic
Wilcox 3 [Lauren, PhD in IR @ University of Minnesota, BA @ Macalester College, MA @ London School
of Economics, “Security Masculinity: The Gender-Security Nexus”, RCB]
Post-structuralists emphasize not only the discursive process of securitization, but the ways
in which issues of identity factor into this process. ”Practicing security‘ entails specific state actions not just in
external policies, but in internal politics as well. By labeling external threats, the state constructs a regime of
identity by demarcating who and what is to be feared by ”us.‘ ”Security‘ implies not only specific actions,
but specific implications for the identity of what is being ”secured‘. David Campbell argues in Writing Security: American Foreign
Policy and the Politics of Identity, that security is the raison d‘être of the state. He further notes hat—the state requires
discourses of ”danger‘ to provide a new theology about who and what ”we‘ are by highlighting who or what ”we‘ are not, and
of ”securitizing‘ can also be a process to define a nation‘s
identity by drawing boundaries between who and what is acceptable (on the ”inside‘) and what is
unacceptable (on the ”outside‘). ”Security‘ is implicated in the production of dichotomies that
structure the discipline and the way we think about international relations, such as inside/outside,
self/other, us/them and sovereignty/anarchy. Much of this type of language was used in
reference to terrorist and immigration, including the creation of a hierarchy between ”us‘ and
”them,‘ the criminalization and militarized responses, fears of internal subversion, and the discursive location of
threats being outside the territory of the US.My understanding of ”security‘ and ”gender‘ is rooted in feminist
what ”we‘ have to fear.“10 Thus, the process
contributions to international relations and security studies as well. Feminist scholarship informs my work in many ways, as
feminist theorists, like critical theorists, attempt to, —make strange what has previously appeared familiar [and] to challenge us
to question what has hitherto appeared as ”natural.‘ “11 Of key importance to this specific study are feminist scholars of IR who
take the post-structuralist analysis further, and note how the dichotomies that constitute the field of international relations are
so readily ”mapped onto‘ gender. Feminist scholar Charlotte Hooper‘s analysis of the gendered nature of the field of
dichotomies such as active/passive, war/peace,
and order/anarchy are assigned masculine and feminine traits, with the first being valued over the
international relations is similar to Campbell‘s, noting how
second. This use of the concept of gender is consistent with how ”gender‘ is used in this paper. The insights feminist poststructuralists provide into the gendered nature of the process of drawing borders between ”us‘ and ”them‘ and ”domestic‘ and
”foreign‘ are particularly relevant in the context of my research into the securitization of immigration and terrorism, as the
discourses used in this context have clearly made these distinctions. They are also gendered discourses, as they rely
on
gendered dichotomies. My analysis of the gendered discourses of terrorism and immigration is based on this type of
post-structuralist feminist analysis.Because of the prevalence of gendered dichotomies in IR and their role in constructing
identities and boundaries, the practice of international relations and ”security‘
is inextricably linked to identity
formation. Feminist scholars of international relations have noted the extensive association of
masculinity and war, and have analyzed how war and IR and masculinities have been mutually constructed though
military service, 12 and by several different kinds of ”hegemonic masculinities‘ that serve as the prototypical behavior for men
indifferent contexts.13When
writing of ”gender,‘ I want to make clear I do not equate this term to
”men and women‘ (or just women for that matter) but, as a system of asymmetrical social constructs of masculinity and
femininity.14 While employing a gender analysis of issues such as militarization, war, and terrorism, I will not be
addressing such issues as whether or not men or women are inherently violent or peaceful,
or, in response to Francis Fukuyama, what would happen if women were our political leaders.15 Rather, I use to
concept of gender as a symbolic system organizes many cultural discourses, and is mapped
on to certain dichotomies, such as hard/soft, inside/outside, sovereignty/anarchy,
active/passive, as I briefly explained above. As gender is a normative system in which the concept associated with
masculinity in the dichotomy is considered more desirable, gender in International Relations also serves as a prescriptive
formulation. This is not say that actual men and women are irrelevant to gender, but that
gender as a discursive
system represents men and women differently, and constructs different social spaces and
functions for them. Race, class, and other variables are also part of a gender discourse that
represents a feminine ”other‘ that deviates from the masculine ”norm‘. The concept of
”hegemonic masculinity‘ is also related to the concept of gender. This term, which is discussed at length
in chapter three, indicates the prevailing definition of masculinity, driven by social and political trends and defined against
subordinate masculinities, such as racial minorities and non-heterosexual orientations.
Concepts of statehood and national identity are rooted in exclusion of
women—particularly immigrants
Silvey, Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, 04 (Rachel, “Power, difference and mobility: feminist
advances in migration studies”, Progress in Human Geography 28:4, 2004, Sage Publications)//AS
Take the national scale. Neoclassical
theorists view the nation as an objective scale, and understand
national economic conditions as the key forces prompting and inhibiting international
migration (Massey et al., 1993). Feminists ask additional questions about the nation and migration, most
centrally the question 'Whose nation?' As Yeoh and Huang (1999) argue, the national scale is produced
through Rachel Silvey 493 social and political processes that privilege particular identities and
exclude others as national subjects. They critically examine the ways that the nation is founded on
notions of citizenship that both materially and symbolically exclude specific women, in the
case of their research migrant female domestic workers.Yeoh and Huang (1999: 1164) write: By virtue of
being a woman, a foreigner, a domestic, and a menial, not only is the [migrant] maid in Singapore
significantly excluded from the material spaces in the public sphere but also her physical
invisibility signals the lack of a foothold on the metaphorical spaces opened up in recent
public discourse on potentially more inclusive notions of citizenship and civil society . In focusing
on these issues, they illustrate the ways in which the nation is constructed in conjunction with gendered
migration, as well as the ways in which this particular view of the nation contributes to the marginalization of migrant women
who work as domestics in Singapore. They underscore the socially constructed and exclusionary operation of the concept of the
national scale, both as it applies to migration research and as it operates in the lives of migrants (see also Huang and Yeoh, 1996).
Two further examples illustrate feminist contributions to rethinking the national scale in migration studies. First, Radcliffe (1990)
examines the ways in which national
identity is fortified through specific practices of incorporation
and marginalization directed at migrant women who work as domestic servants in urban Peru.
She details the processes that mark rural-urban migrant women as different from the privileged
norm in terms of ethnicity and degrees of modernity. She explores the ways in which the migrant
women who cook, clean and care for children in homes of wealthier Peruvian urbanites are important to imagining the
nation in that their difference is used to symbolize the class, ethnic and gender relations
central to Peruvian nationhood. Secondly, Ruth Fincher (1997) addresses the ways in which Australian immigration
policy discriminates along the lines of gender, age and ethnicity, and explores the ways that these
crosscutting differences shape migration experiences of different groups. While none of these feminist
contributions to thinking about the nation are primarily aimed at conversations with migration researchers, each of them deals with
migration. Each of them also shows that the
processes of constructing the nation, and the meanings of the
national scale, are connected to the politics of gender and difference as they play out in
migration processes.
The aff’s endorsement of outer space exploration relies on a hypermasculine,
heterosexual notion of colonial conquest of the feminine body
Griffin 9 (Penny, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at UNSW, PhD at University of
Bristol, researches IR, global governance, feminism and gender studies, “The Spaces Between
Us”, found in “Securing Outer Space” by Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan, p. 70)
Much commercial gain already depends on the exploitation of outer space, but there is
undoubtedly more to be made of spaces ‘resources’: ‘asteroidal mining, for example; the extraction of
‘lunar soil oxygen‘; the mining of very rare ‘Helium-3' from lunar soil as fuel for nuclear fusion reactors; or space,
and particularly the Moon, as a ‘tourist venue‘, all kinds of new "sporting opportunities’ (Mombito Z005: 5-7). But the lines
distinguishing the various components of the outer space are vague, and are particularly obscured by the
tacit but pervasive heteronormativity that makes of space (to borrow the language of the then USSPACECONI) a
'medium' to be exploited; the passive receptacle of US terrestrial 'force'. As Goh stares, outer space
‘is an arena of growing economic and technological importance. It is also a developing theatre of military defence and
warfare (2004: 259). US outer space discourse is driven by the belief that outer space exists to be
conquered (and that it rarely fights back), that those at the Cutting edge of its exploitation are the ‘visionaries’ and
‘entrepreneurs’ that will pave the way to tourists, explorers, TV crews and to, as Morabito (‘l:1imS. ‘dubious characters' such us,
‘bounty hunters’ (Z004: IO). Much US
outer space discourse presents a vision of the human
colonization of outer space as both natural and essential to humanity, a ‘psychological and
cultural requirement‘ that is not merely a ‘Western predisposition’, but ‘a human one‘ (Crawford 2005: 260). Regulating
such discourse, however, is the normative assumption that space is a ‘masculine’ environment,
a territory best suited to the performance of colonial conquest, and an arena for warfare and the
display of military and technological prowess. Herein, ‘man’, not woman, is the human model by which to
gauge those adventurous enough to engage in the ‘space medium' (see, e.g. Casper and Moore 1995).
‘Sex’ is only explicitly articulated in US space discourse to signal the category of ‘woman’, and
the physical and psychological constraints that woman's ‘body' brings to spaceflight and exploration .
NASA, for example, in identifying ‘gender related' differences affecting the efficacy and effects of spaceflight and travel,
focus exclusively on the physiological differences between men and women (bone density, blood
flow, hormonal and metabolic differences, etc). As Casper and Moore argue, N ASA's heterosexist framings of these
issues high light sex in space as a social and scientific problem (1995: $13). Female bodies are
thus ‘constructed against a backdrop in which male bodies are accepted as the norm, an
inscription process shaped by the masculine context of space travel ' (ibid.: 516). By identifying only ‘woman’ with
‘sex', and the ‘ostensibly sexualized features’ of women's (Butler I990: 26), a
certain, heretosexist, order and
identity is effectively instituted in US outer space discourse. Fundamentally, the hierarchies of
power, identity and cultural and sexual assumption that infuse outer space politics are no
different to those that structure terrestrial politics. As Morabito, rather worryingly claims, ‘why expect men on
the Moon to behave much better than on Earth?‘ (200-'1: 10).
Violence should be understand as a continuum that affects all women – it has
been constructed as the norm in relationships between men and women. It is
the expectation that there will be violence. There no longer remains a
distinction between abused and non-abused. Violence against women
represents sexual terrorism, a war on women where bodies are the physical
territory upon which war is fought. This turns all impacts.
Ray 97 (Amy E. Ray, “The Shame Of It: Gender-Based Terrorism In The Former Yugoslavia And
The Failure of International Human Rights Law To Comprehend The Injuries,” The American
University Law Review. Vol 46. , pp. 835-838,
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1380&context=aulr, //
candle)
Transforming the human rights concept from a feminist perspective. . . relates women's rights
and human rights, looking first at the violations of women's lives and then asking how the
human rights concept can change to be more responsive to women}50 In order to reach all of the
violence perpetrated against the women of the former Yugoslavia that is not committed by soldiers or other officials of the state,
human rights law must move beyond its artificially constructed barriers between "public" and "private" actions: A
feminist
perspective on human rights would require a rethinking of the notions of imputability and
state responsibility and in this sense would challenge the most basic assumptions of international
law. If violence against women were considered by the international legal system to be as shocking as violence against people for
their political ideas, women would have considerable support in their struggle. . .. The assumption that underlies all law,
including international human rights law, is that the public/private distinction is real: human society, human lives can be
separated into two distinct spheres. This division, however, is an ideological construct rationalizing
the exclusion of women from the sources of power.260 The international community must recognize that
violence against women is always political, regardless of where it occurs, because it affects the
way women view themselves and their role in the world, as well as the lives they lead in the
so-called public sphere.261 When women are silenced within the family, their silence is not
restricted to the private realm, but rather affects their voice in the public realm as well, often
assuring their silence in any environment*63 For women in the former Yugoslavia, as well as for all women,
extension beyond the various public/private barriers is imperative if human rights law "is to have meaning for women brutalized in
less-known theaters of war or in the by-ways of daily life."263 Because, as currently constructed, human rights laws can reach only
individual perpetrators during times of war, one alternative is to reconsider our understanding of what constitutes "war" and what
constitutes "peace."861 When it is universally true that no
matter where in the world a woman lives or with
what culture she identifies, she is at grave risk of being beaten, imprisoned, enslaved, raped,
prostituted, physically tortured, and murdered simply because she is a woman, the term
"peace" does not describe her existence.265 In addition to being persecuted for being a
woman, many women also are persecuted on ethnic, racial, religious, sexual orientation, or
other grounds. Therefore, it is crucial that our re-conceptualization of human rights is not limited to violations based on
gender.266 Rather, our definitions of "war" and "peace" in the context of all of the world's
persecuted groups should be questioned. Nevertheless, in every culture a common risk factor is
being a woman, and to describe the conditions of our lives as "peace" is to deny the effect of
sexual terrorism on all women.267 Because we are socialized to think of times of "war" as
limited to groups of men fighting over physical territory or land, we do not immediately
consider the possibility of "war" outside this narrow definition except in a metaphorical sense,
such as in the expression "the war against poverty." However, the physical violence and sex discrimination
perpetrated against women because we are women is hardly metaphorical. Despite the fact that its
prevalence makes the violence seem natural or inevitable, it is profoundly political in both its
purpose and its effect. Further, its exclusion from international human rights law is no accident, but rather
part of a system politically constructed to exclude and silence women.168 The appropriation
of women's sexuality and women's bodies as representative of men's ownership over women
has been central to this "politically constructed reality."*69 Women's bodies have become the
objects through which dominance and even ownership are communicated, as well as the
objects through which men's honor is attained or taken away in many cultures. Thus, when a
man wants to communicate that he is more powerful than a woman, he may beat her. When a
man wants to communicate that a woman is his to use as he pleases, he may rape her or prostitute her. The
objectification of women is so universal that when one country ruled by men
communicate to another country ruled by men
(Bosnia-Herzegovina or Croatia)
(Serbia)
wants to
that it is superior and
more powerful, it rapes, tortures, and prostitutes the "inferior" country's women. 271 The use of
the possessive is intentional, for communication among men through the abuse of women is effective
only to the extent that the group of men to whom the message is sent believes they have
some right of possession over the bodies of the women used. Unless they have some claim of
right to what is taken, no injury is experienced. Of course, regardless of whether a group of men sexually
terrorizing a group of women is trying to communicate a message to another group of men, the universal sexual
victimization of women clearly communicates to all women a message of dominance and
ownership over women. As Charlotte Bunch explains, "The physical territory of [the] political struggle
[over female subordination] is women's bodies."272
Our Alternative is a castration of the system – separating us from the
phallocentric logic of the polis. A method of radical female revolution through a
lesbian separatist society refuses male presence.
Forefronting the perspectives, needs, and concerns of the feminine, especially
as it concerns the insidious nature of power, uniquely situates the debate space
at the center of our analysis, allowing us to hold up a mirror to ourselves and
acknowledge the lapse in equitable power relations. We must prioritize the
debate space. As debaters we all have the privilege of having a space where we
can share and negotiate viewpoints and opinions. We acknowledge that there
are those who deem our speech act more credible and valuable than others.
However, we find ourselves in a position to operationalize that privilege in a
way that that makes the debate space more accessible.
Case
Phyto
impact empirically denied and only threat inflation
radiation will be small
Rod Adams 12, Former submarine Engineer Officer, Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., “Has Apocalyptic
Portrayal of Climate Change Risk Backfired?”, May 2, http://atomicinsights.com/2012/05/has-apocalyptic-portrayal-ofclimate-change-riskbackfired.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AtomicInsights+%28Atomic+I
nsights%29
Not only was the discussion enlightening about the reasons why different people end up with different opinions about
climate change responses when presented with essentially the same body of information, but it also got me thinking
about a possible way to fight back against the Gundersens, Caldicotts, Riccios, Grossmans and
Wassermans of the world. That group of five tend to use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what will
happen to the world if we do not immediately start turning our collective backs on all of the benefits
that abundant atomic energy can provide. They spin tall tales of deformed children, massive numbers
of cancers as a result of minor radioactive material releases, swaths of land made “uninhabitable”
for thousands of years, countries “cut in half”, and clouds of “hot particles” raining death and
destruction ten thousand miles from the release point. Every one of those clowns have been
repeating similar stories for at least two solid decades, and continue to repeat their stories even
after supposedly catastrophic failures at Fukushima have not resulted in a single radiation related
injury or death. According to eminent scientists – like Dr. Robert Gale – Fukushima is unlikely to EVER
result in any measurable increase in radiation related illness. One important element that we have to
consider to assess cancer risks associated with an accident like Fukushima is our baseline risk for developing cancer. All
of us, unfortunately, have a substantial risk of developing cancer in our lifetime. For example, a 50-year-old male has a
42% risk of developing cancer during his remaining life; it’s almost the same for a 10-year-old. This risk only decreases
when we get much older and only because we are dying of other causes. It’s true that excess radiation exposure can
increase our cancer risk above baseline levels; it’s clear from studies of the survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of people exposed to radiation in medical and occupational settings, and of people exposed to
radon decay products in mines and home basements. When it comes to exposures like that of Fukushima, the question
is: What is the relative magnitude of the increased risk from Fukushima compared to our baseline
cancer risk? Despite our fears, it is quite small. If the nuclear industry – as small and unfocused as it is – really
wanted to take action to isolate the apocalyptic antinuclear activists, it could take a page from the effective campaign
of the fossil fuel lobby. It could start an integrated campaign to help the rest of us to remember that, despite the
dire predictions, the sky never fell, the predicted unnatural deaths never occurred, the
deformations were figments of imagination, and the land is not really irreversibly uninhabitable
for generations. The industry would effectively share the story of Ukraine’s recent decision to begin repopulating
the vast majority of the “dead zone” that was forcibly evacuated after the Chernobyl accident. It would put some
context into the discussion about radiation health effects; even if leaders shy away from directly challenging the Linear
No Threshold (LNT) dose assumption, they can still show that even that pessimistic model says that a tiny dose leads to
a tiny risk. Aside: My personal opinion is that the LNT is scientifically unsupportable and should be replaced with a
much better model. We deserve far less onerous regulations; there is evidence that existing regulations actually cause
harm. I hear a rumor that there is a group of mostly retired, but solidly credentialed professionals who are organizing a
special session at the annual ANS meeting to talk about effective ways to influence policy changes. End Aside. Most of
us recognize that there is no such thing as a zero risk; repeated assertions of “there is no safe
level” should be addressed by accepting “close enough” to zero so that even the most fearful
person can stop worrying. The sky has not fallen, even though we have experienced complete core
meltdowns and secondary explosions that did some visible damage. Nuclear plants are not
perfect, there will be accidents and there will be radioactive material releases . History is telling me
that the risks are acceptable, especially in the context of the real world where there is always some
potential for harm. The benefits of accepting a little nuclear risk are immense and must not be
marginalized by the people who market fear and trembling.
Meltdowns release low levels of radiation, solve disease
Solomon 12 –
Lawrence Solomon, executive director of Energy Probe, “ Lawrence Solomon: Evacuation a worse
killer than radiation,” ENERGY PROBE, 9-21-12. http://ep.probeinternational.org/2012/09/24/lawrence-solomonevacuation-a-worse-killer-than-radiation/. umn-lap
If a terrorist in New York or London exploded a dirty bomb, if a nuclear reactor near Toronto or Chicago suffered a
meltdown, would we know how to deal with the danger of radioactive fallout? Evidence from the evacuation that
followed the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in Japan last year says no. The calamity claimed almost 16,000
lives, with another 3,500 missing and feared lost. This toll from one of the worst natural disasters of all time was
then followed by a tragedy of another kind — the evacuation of 90,000 people in a broad swatch
around nuclear reactors that were leaking radioactivity. According to Japanese government authorities,
“disaster-related deaths” among the nuclear evacuees number more than 700, a number that continues to
rise. Most of those deaths were needless, a man-made disaster born of human ignorance and incompetence. These
people died in a chaotic scramble to escape presumably deadly radiation. One example involved some 340 mostly
elderly patients evacuated by bus from a hospital facility near the nuclear plant. During almost 12 hours on the bus,
eight died. During the following three weeks in an evacuation centre, another 32 patients died, some from the lack of
medical care, some from physical and psychological fatigue — afflictions scarring many of the 90,000 surviving
evacuees. Based on studies of other traumas involving relocations, the number of Fukushima evacuees who
will die from the consequences of severe stress could number in the thousands. According to many
nuclear experts, most of those 90,000 should never have been evacuated — radiation levels not only
didn’t approach what are known as lethal doses, making them immediate threats, the radiation also didn’t
approach levels that should ring alarm bells. A calculation by Richard Wilson, professor of physics
emeritus at Harvard University, in Evacuation Criteria After A Nuclear Accident: A Personal Perspective, soon to
be published by the International Dose-Response Society, finds that releases of Fukushima radioactivity last
year that were presented as scary were anything but. Based on actual measurements, a hypothetical
resident who received a constant dose of radiation for a full year from the crippled nuclear reactor
in one contaminated area — the Ibaraki prefecture — would absorb a dose of 876 mrems. “What does
this mean?” Prof. Wilson asks in his study. “Many actions can give anyone a dose of 876 mrems,” he answers,
including a CAT scan. An astronaut is allowed to absorb 100 times as much radiation as this
hypothetical person would have received. Yet the Japanese authorities decided to evacuate 90,000 people,
placing them in harm’s way when they were relatively safe, or entirely safe. The authorities’ behaviour, Prof. Wilson
believes, stems from an irrational phobia that the public has of radiation, coupled with politicians’
dread of the wrath of voters. “There is no politician who would not prefer a dead body to a frightened voter,” he
writes, quoting a former head of the U.K.’s Health and Safety Executive. As a result, a politically correct standard has
long been in place worldwide that requires exposure levels to radiation to be kept “as low as reasonably achievable.”
This feel-good standard is technical in nature — it asks nuclear operators and government regulators to lower exposure
whenever they’re able to, regardless of whether doing so can be demonstrated to save lives. By blind obeisance to this
standard, the nuclear industry has set ever-tighter standards for itself that limit to ridiculously small levels the radiation
the public can receive. In the case of Fukushima, this standard led to the decision to evacuate an immense number of
people instead of the few who might have been in true peril. Prof. Wilson suggests that a truly precautionary
approach, one which would save lives, would see the allowable emissions increase by a factor of four in
case of emergency. Others, such as Dr. Jerry Cuttler, a Canadian nuclear expert who is also about to release a study
on the Fukushima disaster, would like to see it increase by a factor of 50, and to see the standard of “as low as
reasonably achievable” replaced with “as high as reasonably safe” in the case of evacuations. These changes would
greatly reduce the number of evacuees and thus the complexity of any evacuation that might be needed in
future. The American Nuclear Society in its June annual meeting likewise supported a dramatic increase in permitted
emissions in light of the perverse effects of today’s standards on public health. This society, and these scientists,
are going further, too. They are giving credibility to radiation hormesis, a fast growing body of
science supported by an overwhelming number of studies that find low levels of radiation — unlike
high levels, which are dangerous — to prolong life and health . Studies show, for example, that nuclear
workers, or people who live in naturally radioactive regions of North America, log many fewer cancers and
other diseases than those who work and live in low-radiation environments. Prof. Wilson calls such
lives saved “negative” deaths.
Decentralization
Multiple alt causes undermine federalism—
--Gun control
Kincaid 13—Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service and
director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government, Lafayette College
(Robert, “State-Federal Relations: Back to the Future?”, The Book of the States 2013, Council of
State Governments, dml)
Similarly, debate over federal gun control propos- als following the December 2012 school
shootings in Newtown, Conn., led some state and local officials to urge nullification of new
federal gun laws.“Neither I, nor my deputies, will participate in the enforcement of laws that
violate our precious constitutional rights,” Sheriff Terry Box of Collin County, Texas, said.7 The
Utah Sheriffs’ Association announced in early 2013 that its members are “prepared to trade
(their) lives” to prevent federal officials from enforcing new gun laws. Lawmakers in many
states have introduced anti-federal government bills, including measures to authorize state
nullification of federal laws, exempt guns made in-state from federal regulation, require
federal officials to obtain a county sheriff’s approval to serve a war- rant or make an arrest, and
ban enforcement of Agenda 21, a United Nations agreement promot- ing sustainable
development. Alabama adopted the first state ban on Agenda 21 in 2012.8
--EPA
Bakst 14—Research Fellow in Agricultural Policy at the Heritage Foundation
(Daren, “Reining in the EPA Through the Power of the Purse”,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/08/reining-in-the-epa-through-the-power-ofthe-purse, dml)
In April, the EPA and the Corps published a proposed rule that would define what waters are
covered.[14] The CWA covers “navigable waters.” This term is further defined as “the waters of
the United States, including the territorial seas.”[15]
In defining “waters of the United States,” the EPA is going well beyond the existing regulations.
For example, the new rule would regulate all ditches—including man-made ditches—except in
narrow circumstances and cover tributaries that have ephemeral flow, such as depressions in
land that are dry most of the year except when there is heavy rain.
This water (and land) grab is an attack on property rights. Private property owners would need
to obtain permits from the federal government far more often than they already do now when
seeking to use and enjoy their land. There has been widespread opposition to the rule from
everyone from farmers to counties, which are concerned that the rule will impose costly new
requirements on them.
The proposed rule also undermines the principle of cooperative federalism that is supposed to
govern the CWA.[16] States play a central role in the implementation of the CWA. Through this
proposed rule, the EPA and the Corps would be usurping state and local power. States, local
governments, and private property owners are better positioned to address their unique clean
water needs than the federal government.
There’s no impact or solvency for science diplomacy
Badger, writer, Miller-McCune magazine, 9/9/09(Badger, Emily, "Science diplomacy: Trading Frock Coats for Lab
Coats" http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/science-diplomacy-trading-frock-coats-for-lab-coats-983 [CJL])
The activity's spin-off
benefits for diplomatic relations, he says, are for others to judge. For
that reason, he never usesthe phrase "science diplomacy," preferring instead people-to-people or
scientist-to-scientist exchanges.Berdahl'sdelegation similarly stressed on its trip that it did not
wish to meet with politicians. It was there to talk about science and education, with
scientists and educators . In a country historically suspicious of American motives, it may be best not
to confuse the issue — especially when many of the different forms of "science diplomacy" the AAAS is
advocating don't involve scientists empowered to speak for their government. "I think the
understanding of this term 'science diplomacy' is kind of fuzzy here in the U.S., but it is really fuzzy overseas,"
Schweitzer later said. "'Diplomacy' has this foreign-relations emphasis, and when you say 'science diplomacy' to
someone from a different country, I think that person automatically thinks about the ministry of foreign affairs and not
about the ministry of science. I know that's true in Iran." The
phrase may be necessary, he concedes, for
the State Department to justify funding science overseas.
one of the many potential benefits to such programs. But the
And it does capture in Washington
pitch is different to citizens on both
sides of any exchange: The idea is not that we'll influence each other's behavior, but that
we'll learn something in the process.
Research
Tons of states oppose legalization
South and Midwest won’t do it
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer September 17, 2013 “ Legal marijuana: Will most states head
that way?” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0917/Legal-marijuana-Will-moststates-head-that-way ac 7-23
If the Northeast and West are moving rapidly toward legalization, pot remains scorned in the
South and parts of the Midwest , where legalization advocates have made few inroads ,
largely because of cultural and religious intolerance for intoxication. " I don't think we'll see
legalization in Mississippi, for example, in the next 10 years," says Mr. Smith of the cannabis
association.
Burnout checks disease
Posner 5—Senior Lecturer, U Chicago Law. Judge on the US Court of Appeals 7th Circuit. AB
from Yale and LLB from Harvard. (Richard, Catastrophe,
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-mostsignificant.html)
Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it in the 200,000
years or so of its existence is a source of genuine comfort, at least if the focus is on extinction
events. There have been enormously destructive plagues, such as the Black Death, smallpox,
and now AIDS, but none has come close to destroying the entire human race. There is a
biological reason . Natural selection favors germs of limited lethality; they are fitter in an
evolutionary sense because their genes are more likely to be spread if the germs do not kill
their hosts too quickly. The AIDS virus is an example of a lethal virus, wholly natural, that by
lying dormant yet infectious in its host for years maximizes its spread. Yet there is no danger
that AIDS will destroy the entire human race. The likelihood of a natural pandemic that would
cause the extinction of the human race is probably even less today than in the past (except in
prehistoric times, when people lived in small, scattered bands, which would have limited the
spread of disease), despite wider human contacts that make it more difficult to localize an
infectious disease.
No impact to ABR
Thomas, M.E., et al., 08 ("Risk factors for the introduction of high pathogenicity Avian
Influenza virus into poultry farms during the
epidemic in the Netherlands in 2003." Preventive veterinary medicine 69, (10 June 2005): 1-11.
Agricola. EBSCO. [1 Aug. 2008,
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=agr&AN=IND43716042&site=ehostlive]
With the exception of ciprofloxacin resistance, there is a paucity of scientific evidence to
document the association of antimicrobial agents used in veterinary medicine with increases
in antimicrobial-resistant pathogens (Phillips et al., 2004). For example, it has been suggested
that the increased prevalence of extended-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant strains is in part
related to the use in food animals of ceftiofur, which is an extended-spectrum cephalosporin
approved for use in veterinary medicine (White et al., 2001); however, scientific evidence is
lacking. Antimicrobial agents used for intensive calf rearing in the 1970–1980s have also been
speculated to contribute to the emergence of multiple-antibiotic resistant Salmonella
Typhimurium DT104 strains. Genes included in the antibiotic resistance gene cluster of
Salmonella Typhimurium DT104 confer resistance to four of the five antimicrobials used during
that time to treat veal calves, therefore co-selection of the entire cluster could have arisen from
the use of any one of those drugs (Velge, Cloeckaert, & Barrow, 2005). While there is no
definitive evidence for this scenario, several reviews have been published presenting contrasting
views regarding the role of veterinary usage of antimicrobials in the emergence of antibioticresistant foodborne pathogens. In support of a causal relationship are reviews by Angulo et al.,
2004 and Mølbak, 2004, whereas reviews by Phillips et al., 2004 and Wassenaar, 2005 advocate
that veterinary usage of antimicrobial agents are inaccurately incriminated as being a major
contributor to antibiotic-resistant pathogens in humans. Debate on this topic will continue but
should consider the additional routes which lead to resistant bacterial populations, that
antimicrobial usage in animals is required for animal health and well-being, and that not every
antimicrobial-resistant pathogen has human health consequences. On this latter point, clearly
not all infections caused by resistant pathogens fail to respond to treatment. For example, in a
study of 23 diarrhea cases in Thailand, nearly all were infected with ciprofloxacin-resistant
Campylobacter, yet 58% of patients receiving ciprofloxaxin treatment were cured. This response
implies that treatment with ciprofloxacin could still be effective in many cases (Sanders et al.,
2002). Another consideration is that acquisition of drug resistance could entail a biological cost
to the pathogen resulting in reduced fitness and competitiveness in the absence of antibiotic
selection pressure. For example, most data on E. coli suggest that increased antibiotic resistance
results in decreased fitness (Wassenaar, 2005). Alternatively, for some foodborne pathogens
such as fluoroquinolone-resistant C. jejuni, resistance can be neutral or even beneficial in terms
of fitness (Luo et al., 2005). When coinoculated into chickens, fluoroquinolone-resistant
Campylobacter isolates either outcompeted or were outcompeted by most of the
fluoroquinolone-susceptible strains, with the outcome being dependent on the genetic
background of the recipient strain. These variable results highlight the complex nature of
antibiotic resistance and the large data gaps that exist in making informed scientific decisions
on use of antimicrobials in animals used for food.
No flu risk
Palese 09 – (5/2/09, Peter Palese, chairman of the department of microbiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine
in New York., “Why Swine Flu Isn’t So Scary”, The Wall Street Journal)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124122223484879119.html)
Still, there is more evidence that a serious pandemic is not imminent. In 1976 there was an
outbreak of an H1N1 swine virus in Fort Dix, N.J., which showed human-to-human transmission but did not go on to
become a highly virulent strain. This virus was very similar to regular swine influenza viruses and did not show a high
affinity for the human host.Although the
swine virus currently circulating in humans is different from the
1976 virus, it is most likely not more virulent than the other seasonal strains we have
experienced over the last several years. It lacks an important molecular signature (the
protein PB1-F2) which was present in the 1918 virus and in the highly lethal H5N1 chicken
viruses. If this virulence marker is necessary for an influenza virus to become highly
pathogenic in humans or in chickens -- and some research suggests this is the case -- then
the current swine virus, like the 1976 virus, doesn't have what it takes to become a
major killer. Since people have been exposed to H1N1 viruses over many decades, we likely have some
cross-reactive immunity against the swine virus. While it may not be sufficient to
prevent illness, it may very well dampen the impact of the virus on mortality. I would
postulate that by virtue of this "herd immunity," even a 1918-like H1N1 virus could never have the horrific effect it had
in the past. The
(fourth) strain
most likely outcome is that the current swine virus will become another
of regular seasonal influenza.