Raping and Pillaging: Different Levels of IMF Exploitation

The rapid news cycle that we experience daily means that Dominique Strauss-Kahn (apparently aka DSK) and his alleged sexual attack on a hotel attendant in New York is no longer in the headlines. But the power that Strauss-Kahn represents and the enduring injustice of rape are still present in the world and are intrinsically connected.

DSK embodies power in a variety of ways: He is a white, heteronormative man from the Global North (France). He is university educated, and has held arguably (debatably?) respectable professional titles such as politician, economist and lawyer. Despite being part of the French Socialist Party, he has enjoyed the wealth and privileges that accompany these identities (presumably he was paid well by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)).

His identity carries so much social capital because of the complex relationships between entrenched hierarchies of race, class, gender, sex, sexual orientation, citizenship status, etc. And the power inequalities that favour men over women contribute to our global culture of rape. Many other power relations are implicated in this violent sexual interaction: he was European and she was African, he was rich and she was working for him in a service job.

At the international level, DSK has been a representative of the IMF, which has arguably used the power of the Global North to its advantage.

by Ted Rall, via AAEC

I just started reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man," a biographical account of modern American empire by John Perkins. The comic above points to the figurative "raping and pillaging" of the world's resources by the elite of the world. In the Preface (I said I only just started...), Perkins describes some of the world's current predicaments, such as inequality, war and poverty. He offers an explanation for these issues:

Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled [sic] by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.

The concept is, of course, erroneous.

Exploitation, of course, takes many forms: economic, labour, and sexual, to name a few.

P.S. While editing this, I was listening to KPFA free speech radio (online) and unexpectedly heard a discussion about the DSK scandal. I encourage you to listen to their analysis. They also mention a change.org petition demanding justice in this case. You can access it here.

Women's Magazine: Memorial Day with Empathy
May 30, 2011 at 1:00pm

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