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http://www.drsusanblock.com
The Great Pretzel Swallower's Guant�namo S&M Porn PR Disaster
by Dr. Susan Block
>From Dr. Strangelove:
Ripper: Were you ever a prisoner of war?
Mandrake: Ah yes I was. Matter of fact, Jack, I was.
Ripper: Did they torture you?
Mandrake: Ah... yes, they did. I was tortured by the Japanese, Jack,
if you must know. Not a pretty story.
Ripper: Well what happened?
Mandrake: Oh... well... I don't know, Jack. Difficult to think of
under these conditions. But, well, what happened was they got me on
the old Rangoon HNRR railway. I was laying train mines for the bloody
Japanese puff puffs.
Ripper: No, I mean when they tortured you, did you talk?
Mandrake: Ah, oh no, I ah... I don't think they wanted me to talk,
really. I don't think they wanted me to say anything. It was just
their way of having... a bit of fun, the swines. Strange thing is
they make such bloody good cameras.
*****
I was beginning to accept The War for what the Great Pretzel
Swallower had proclaimed it to be (in so many malapropisms): a Fight
for my Freedom to Party. A fight for my freedom to fly, shop, drink
champagne, wear miniskirts and, of course, have lots of sex. If any
values were worth defending, these were.
Sure, we seemed to be bombing more out of revenge for our wounds and
lust for a nice friendly place to lay our pipeline than anything the
least bit noble. But at least we gave the impression that we were
trying to conduct a relatively "humane" war. I was impressed with
our government's apparent concern for the Afghan people (unlike
Vietnam). We tried not to kill civilians, though sometimes, of
course, when you're bombing the crap out of a country, it can't be
helped. We dropped food packets; too bad they looked just like
landmines, confusing the now-dead or maimed children who grabbed
them. We helped women get on the road to liberation; who doesn't
want to see what's under that burqa? We encouraged Afghans to play
long-forbidden music, and hey, everybody loves music-except those
Evil-Doer, No-Fun Talibans.
In short, we not only won The War on the Battlefield (though not many
of our guys stepped onto an actual battlefield-too dangerous), but we
were winning the War of World Opinion. That is, we were doing some
topnotch PR.
Then I saw The Picture. You know, the one that appears to have been
taken on the set of a gay male heavy S&M training film or a Robert
Mapplethorpe photograph. About eight or nine submissives are shown
kneeling, their knees grounded into the gravel, their legs crossed
and shackled under them, their arms manacled in front, their hands
bizarrely mittened. They are blindfolded with black, high-tech-
looking goggles, earplugged (or are those earphones?) and practically
gagged with surgical masks and electrical tape, their day-glo orange
outfits blowing in the Cuba Libr� breeze, revealing sections of their
naked flesh. One of the Orange Men appears to be losing his pants.
Obviously, he can't pull them up.
Above this trussed-up, sensory-deprived platoon of bad boys stand two
taut Marines (a third is in the distance), clad in crisp camouflage,
their heads shaved around the sides, a modern spin on the Medieval
bowl-cut. The Marine closest to the camera is leaning over the
Orange Men in a casually menacing posture. And, in what's probably
just an innocent juxtaposition of objects, a long fence pole seems to
be emerging from his pants. And yes, if you squint, it looks like an
elongated erection, slim but stiff, towering like a sword over his
helpless, senseless captives.
Big Stick, indeed.
The shocking part is that this Guant�namo S&M scene was not snapped
by a plucky journalist's lens. The Pentagon officially released it.
This is what they want us to see. Does that mean that this is the
mild stuff? This is where they just plug up their ears, not their
other orifices?
Maybe the Pentagon released The Photo because it's so racy. Maybe
they wanted our hearts to race, our spirits to soar at the image of
our Marines boldly dominating and humiliating The Enemy. Maybe this
is the Revenge of the Raving Castrati after the pain and phallic
humiliation of 9.11.
Maybe the shrinks at the Pentagon think we'll feel better about
ourselves upon seeing a young US Marine with a Big Stick in his pants
lording it over a harem of hapless, hogtied Orange Men made to bow
down before their Masters in utter, abject-and in the case of Orange
Man #2 and possibly #3, even bare-assed--submission.
Is this Pentagon Porn?
Doubtless, for some Americans, it is. I myself haven't been able to
stop staring at The Photo for the last two days, and that's not just
because I'm writing this. Actually, I started writing this because I
was staring at it, even finding it to be, I confess, weirdly erotic
in that perverse way that Hardcore Male-on-Male Sado-Masochistic Porn
often is.
Actually, the original photograph is a voyeur's delight. The
photographer invites the viewer/voyeur to peer through a hole in a
barbed wire fence, to sneak a peak on some state-of-the-art torture,
heavy bondage, a little sense denial, maybe some brainwashing (what
are they listening to on those earphones anyway?), a bit of wretched
mortification.
The Orange Men look like extreme submissives into heavy sensory
deprivation. Except they aren't "into" it. Though, maybe, they
are. After all, we're told that they're suicidal, so heavy
masochistic fetishes would go with that. But the fact is that we
don't know what they're into. We don't really know who they are. We
don't seem to know what to do with them. We don't even know what to
call them.
"Whatever they are, they're not Prisoners of War!" chorused the Great
Pretzel Swallower (GPS) and Ayatollah Asscraft, not eager to give
these Evil-Doers any extra privileges.
So, what are they, Prisoners of Love? In a way. Consensual S&M
(Sadomasochism) and D&S (Dominance and Submission) relationships are
often very loving, because the Masochist actually enjoys enduring the
pain, and the Submissive longs to surrender to the Master or Mistress
whose primary concern is the welfare of their Submissive/Masochist.
Nonconsensual S&M is pretty much the opposite, though sometimes, as
in cases of domestic violence, the partners feel a kind of toxic love
for each other.
It sure looks like a twisted, toxic lovefest going on behind that
fence.
Here's another message this photo sends to the world: American
soldiers are civilized. They're high-tech. They don't storm into
villages and rape the women (too dangerous!) like those funky Serbs
and Northern Alliance guys. No. The American military (perhaps a
bit gayer than most, what with all the homo-erotic recruitment
advertising), prefers to express its testosteronic bloodlust by
kidnapping residents of the offending country, then dressing them up
in garish, creepy little S&M outfits, and making them get down on
their knees and grovel for...? Well, those photos won't be released
by the Pentagon. But I hear that NYPD Officers Volpe and Bruder are
giving a special seminar at Guant�namo Bay Naval Base on how to use a
plunger handle as an interrogation tool (unconfirmed sources). Talk
about Giuliani Time...
But enough about minor players. As I study The Photo, I can't help
but think of our avenging hero, our smirking leader, the Great
Pretzel Swallower, wounded in action while watching TV. I could
never imagine our Commander-in-Chief in battle (too dangerous!), but
I can easily see him in the role of the cocky Marine with the pole in
his pants, as President of Yale's mystical, medievalesque Skull &
Bones Society, subjugating the freshmen initiates in some quasi-
ceremonial parody of the heroic and obscene rites of war.
Then there's the embarrassing fact that we never did catch Osama. So
we got these guys who we're vaguely referring to as higher-ups in the
Taliban and Al Qaeda network. Notice how the fantasies about Bin
Laden and what we were going to do to him have disappeared? I had my
own fantasies of forcing him to have a sex change operation, then
sending him back to the Taliban to live as woman. But no more. Now
Osama appears to have either died quietly of kidney failure or
slipped away to the suburbs of Z�rich. This is not a sexually
satisfying ending. This doesn't make an American feel his dick at
all! So here we are then, putting these Orange Men through their
paces. They are our "Osama Surrogates." Our terrorist punching
bags. Our bitches. Our Thanatos Therapy. Like the woman at home
beaten by her husband when he loses a fight at work.
Another reason for calling them Prisoners of Love: As reported by
Molly Ivins, Retired US Army General Bernard Tranor said "Well, they
like to spend a lot of time on their knees anyway."
Oh, yeah. On your knees. I know you love it. I'm your Mecca now,
baby. Pray to me.
But calling them Prisoners of Love is kind of sappy, and implies some
modicum of consent. So, they're calling them "detainees." Sounds
rather French and not so bad, like being a "guest." Remember when
that other Evil-Doer Saddam Hussein called American
hostages "guests"? That went over real well.
This is not going over well either, this hardcore Pentagon Porn.
After all, one person's porn is another person's outrage. Government
leaders and people around the world are outraged by The Photo,
disgusted by our cocky, international law-breaking display of power
over our virtually kidnapped captives. Aroused or not, they are not
amused. Suddenly, we are losing the PR War.
Quick, Rummy, get re-write! Fire the dude who released The Photo!
What happened to the old Pentagon PR team that brought us food
packets and smart bombs? Did they all go on vacation? Do they think
this War is over? This is just soooo embarrassing. Not for the
stupid Taliban with the bare asses. For us. It's one thing to be
exposed. It's another to expose yourself.
America is choking on this one like a pretzel we chewed too fast.
"Probably unfortunate" was how Rummy dryly described the incident,
then protested that the detainees weren't trussed up in their S&M
outfits all that long, and we shouldn't jump to conclusions from this
one photo. Perhaps, we should see their other outfits. Perhaps, we
should see their cages.
We're told their conditions are not "comfortable" (why should a
terrorist be comfortable?), but they are "humane." They are being
fed bagels and cream cheese (not so culturally sensitive, but never
mind), granola (is that for the Marin County Talib?) and Fruit
Loops. Hey now, some of their starving refugee relatives would give
up their Kalishnakovs to get their lips around a plastic spoonful of
Fruit Loops.
Desperately seeking spin, and having gone a little fruit loopy,
Rummy, Asscraft and the gang have tried calling the Orange
Men "illegal combatants." But illegal according to which law? The
country they were living in was invaded. Maybe they were on the
wrong side, maybe they didn't have uniforms, and maybe war itself
should be illegal, but as long as it isn't, those guys are as much
legal warriors as any. And if they've done something illegal, why
haven't they been charged?
Americans are not exactly storming the Pentagon over this, but some
are pretty appalled. A coalition of lawyers, clergy and professors,
led by LA civil liberties attorney Stephen Yagman (best known for
cases involving police abuse), and including former Attorney General
Ramsey Clark and USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, filed a
petition in a US District Court demanding that the detainees be
identified, taken before a court and told of the charges against
them. What, give them due process? Well, why not? They're not
Prisoners of War.
While we try to figure out what they are and what to do with them, we
are holding them like sheep bound for slaughter or chickens in a
coop. Rummy says all the S&M gear was for safety purposes only. The
warden at Camp X-Ray, Colonel Terry Carrico, was a bit more
forthcoming, saying he was determined at all times to maintain what
he called "positive control" over the prisoners. If that includes
mind control, it explains the earphones.
We hear that they are here to be interrogated. That's when they try
to get the chickens in the coops to lay eggs of information,
rewarding them with extra Fruit Loops and chicken feed if they tell
tales that will, without a doubt, be used against them.
Yes, I know, these are Evil-Doers, terrorists. They're dangerous.
They could hurt somebody. I sure wouldn't want any of them busting
in on my broadcast studio, guns cocked, like about 20 members of the
LAPD did a couple years ago (yes, my lawsuit is still pending. Email
me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] if you want to get involved).
Rummy, ever the avuncular pragmatist, reminds us that these guys are
not just bad, they're frenzied lunatics, every one of them a bomb
waiting to go off, a dickhead ready to explode, a Hannibal plotting
to bite off your face if you loosen his surgical mask, ready to take
you down if you take off his mittens, able to hypnotize you with his
eyes if you remove his blindfold. Maybe so. But don't all violent
prisoners have that potential? Should we treat all violent or
potentially violent prisoners like this? Apparently, some folks at
the Pentagon think we should. And if you've ever been through Men's
Central Jail in LA, you know that that's how it's already done
(though the blindfolds and earphones are illegal).
It's enough to make you toss your cookies. But I have to chuckle
when I think of some of my sex therapy clients, the guys with the
extreme submissive male/male fantasies-and there are a lot of them--
who have been looking at The Photo and going day-glo green with
envy. Some have already called asking for a "Guant�namo Roleplay."
The desire to be a victim-a terrorist martyr--is as at least as
strong as the desire to be a hero, a winner, a tyrant. It's all an
embrace of Thanatos, Death (either killing or dying), as opposed to
Eros, Love, Sex, the Life Force, the Bonobo Way. Far better to
roleplay it with a sex therapist (or your lover) than play it for
real on the World Stage.
Now, don't get me wrong. Legal or not, I don't trust these detainees
for a second. I don't like their philosophies, their religious
fanaticism,their attitudes toward women, or their culture of violence
(their behavior would be at least as sadistic if the positions were
reversed). And I don't like their mangy beards.
But we can't play S&M games with people just because we don't like
them. We can't kidnap them, torture them, and hold them captive
without saying what we're going to do with them. Well, we can, and
we are. And we shouldn't, and we know we shouldn't, but we will. At
least, until somebody figures out what the hell to do with the
bastards. But what about in the meantime? We can't kill them. We
can't really torture them because the whole world is watching. We
can't put most of them on trial. We can't get much evidence on any
of them (unlike the Israelis who collected mounds of evidence on the
Nazis that they "kidnapped" and tried for war crimes). We probably
can't get them to say much of any value in terms of preventing
further terrorist attacks, and in any case, we can't interrogate them
forever. Rummy! Get re-write! We're about to choke on a pretzel we
can't cough up!
It's all about exerting power through Thanatos instead of Eros.
Since the Horror of 9.11, everyone's been praying to someone. Now
it's my turn. I pray to Eros, Aphrodite, Darwin, Gandhi, Margaret
Sanger, my Mom and Josephine Baker: Let us follow the Bonobo Way and
stop acting like baboons. Let us stop eroticizing violence and war,
and try eroticizing sex and peace. It's much safer. At this point
in our evolution, it might even be better, PR-wise.
Amen. And A-women too.
1.26.02
ADDENDUM:
American "Detainee" Kidnapped in Pakistan, Held Illegally, Guant�namo
S&M Style
by Dr. Susan Block
Daniel Pearl playing nonconsensual, and very, very dangerous S&M
Games with Pakistani extremists responding to the American S&M Games
being played with their countrymen in Guant�namo
Apparently, sometime over the weekend, while I was playing Guant�namo
S&M games with Kim and the Bonobo Gang and photographing our fun for
the world, some Pakistani dudes calling themselves "The National
Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty" were doing the
same thing, only their games were real and involved kidnapping Wall
Street Journal South Asian Bureau Chief Daniel Pearl.
Their e-mail to various US media outlets states that they believe
that Mr. Pearl is a "CIA officer...posing as a journalist of the Wall
Street Journal." Spokespeople from both the CIA and the Wall Street
Journal have denied that Mr. Pearl works for the agency. The English-
language text of the e- mail states that Mr. Pearl is being held "in
very inhuman circumstances quite similar infact to the way that
Pakistanis and nationals of other sovereign countries are being kept
in Cuba by the American Army."
The e-mail also threatened the kidnapping of other Americans,
saying, "If the Americans keep our countrymen in better conditions we
will better the conditions of Mr. Pearl and all other Americans that
we capture."
Actually, if you compare the photos, Mr. Pearl looks a lot more
comfortable than his Guant�namo counterparts; though, of course, it
can't be all that comfortable having a gun pressed against your
skull, even if it's just for a photo-op.
Without a doubt, the people behind this kidnapping are dirty, low-
down thugs and ought to be arrested by somebody, and Mr. Pearl should
be freed to go home to his pregnant French wife and job at the Wall
Street Journal (which may as well be the CIA in a few respects).
The situation is, of course, quite dangerous. These S&M games can get
out of hand. That gun could go off and kill Mr. Pearl, accidentally
or on purpose. They--or thugs like them--could go out and pick up a
few more unsuspecting Americans. Of course, this is something that
could happen at any time, and we should never shape American policies
to fit the demands of kidnappers, extremists, hijackers and thugs.
Still, why should we bait them with erotically-charged power plays
like the Pentagon's tasteless, internationally illegal Guant�namo S&M
porn? Just compare: Is our photo so much more ethical and reasonable
than the ones above of poor Mr. Pearl?
The actions of Rummy, Ayatollah Asscraft and the Great Pretzel
Swallower down there in breezy Guant�namo Bay have just put innocent
individual American lives--especially Americans abroad--in more
danger than ever.
Can't we see that Thanatos leads to Thanatos? We are, without a
doubt, still the world's biggest, strongest, richest nation. We are
also the World's Fattest Target.
If only to protect ourselves and our people, we should beware of
throwing our weight around and giving the appearance of being
Obnoxious Bullies (even though we know we're the Good Guys)..
Kim and I play Guant�namo S&M.
At least my gun is just a dildo.
Come, my fellow Americans, let us show ourselves not only to be the
strongest and richest, but also the wisest of nations. Let us respond
to Thanatos with Eros! This is not the "sissy way" (no offensive to
our transgendered friends); this is the smart way.
And no, it is not an easy way. In the immortal words of the great
seventeenth century French courtesan Ninon de l'Enclos: "Much more
genius is needed to make love than to command armies." Considering
the terrifying situation that America finds itself in these days, a
little genius is what we sorely need.
1.28.02
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