Moammar Gaddafi\u2019s outlandish behavior has long been a gift to comedians. Making fun of the Colonel clearly does not require much effort: all the news channel Al Arabiya had to do for their segment Gharaib Al Gaddafi<\/em> (Gaddafi\u2019s Oddities) was put together a montage of clips of the Brother Leader and his fern fly-swatter.<\/p>\n One of Gaddafi\u2019s eccentricities in particular, his retinue of women bodyguards, has over the years come in for much speculation and endless ridicule. Recently on the Colbert Report<\/a>, they were imagined as \u201cchoreographed waves of six-foot-tall Libyamazons spin-kicking protesters in the jaw\u201d and likened to a Janet Jackson video. This isn\u2019t far from how international media tends to portray them. As Lynn Harris<\/a> wrote, they are seen as \u201ca badass bunch of Lara Croft clones\u2026They\u2019ve been described as \u2018wearing their Kalashnikovs like Gucci fashion accessories.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Rania Ajami\u2019s documentary Shadows of a Leader: Qaddafi\u2019s Female Bodyguards<\/a> hoped to dash such simplistic ideas about the bodyguards, investigating \u201cthe tensions these women embody: tensions between Islam, modernization in a nomadic society, a militarist feminism and an urban dictatorship.\u201d In an interview<\/a> about her documentary (ironically interspersed with many comments on Ajami\u2019s appearance), Ajami\u2019s own opinion was more clearly laid out in stating that the \u201cbodyguards are really a symbol of this new feminism that exists.\u201d<\/p>\n With Libya back on the map following the uprising in the country, the women bodyguards debate and whether they are \u201cLara Croft clones\u201d or \u201cliberated women,\u201d has been revived. Some have again taken issue <\/a>with the way the \u201cthe media has been so insistent over the years on figuring the bodyguards as \u201cBond girls,\u201d \u201cGlamazons,\u201d etc.\u201d pointing out that \u201cthe fact remains that these bodyguards are real soldiers, trained to kill. They are not\u2014and this apparently needs saying\u2014a cute harem.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between. While not a cute harem, these women have been used by Gaddafi to support his claim of having \u201cliberating\u201d Libyan women from backwardness. As his daughter Aisha Gaddafi is once alleged to have said, they are intended as a literalization of the saying \u201cbehind every great man is a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n Rather than debating the extent of their agency, I would argue attention needs to be shifted to the role these women play in the performances put on by that \u201cgreat man.\u201d To that end, I subtitled this interview<\/a> with a Lebanese woman who claims to have been one of Gaddafi\u2019s bodyguards. As she narrates some of her experiences, the woman smiles wryly while quoting from Gaddafi\u2019s Green Book, which states that \u201cthe woman is a female, the man is a male, the woman bears children, the man cannot.\u201d One of the many Gaddafi lines used as a joke by Libyans include a comment when he announced that \u201ca woman has the right to run for parliament, whether she<\/em> is male or female.\u201d This kind of tautological, and nonsensical, rhetoric marks the limits of Gaddafi\u2019s \u201cfeminist\u201d agenda \u2013 as As\u2019ad Abu Khalil points out<\/a>,\u00a0\u201chis regime did not advance women\u2019s rights one bit there.\u201d<\/p>\n The only real action Gaddafi undertook, apart from the privileges given to his wife and daughter, was to promote a select number of women loyalists, including Huda ben Amer, nicknamed \u201cHuda the Executioner\u201d for her role in the public hanging of Sadek Al-Shuwehdy. The title of the Telegraph\u2019s article<\/a> on Ben Amer,\u00a0describing\u00a0her as \u201cthe devil in female form\u201d raises the same questions as Gaddafi\u2019s bodyguards: how to \u201cdeal with\u201d strong women aligned with dictatorships?<\/p>\n Speaking of the bodyguards, Millicent concludes<\/a> we should \u201cregard them as a group that chose to side with and defend a dictator for reasons that to them may have seemed compelling, and with which we\u2019re free to disagree\u201d since \u201cit\u2019s the only sane and respectful choice.\u201d<\/p>\n For me, this raises several questions: would a similar, \u201crespectful\u201d statement have been necessary if the bodyguards were men?\u00a0If Huda Ben Amer were a man, would the title have read \u201cthe devil in male form\u201d?\u00a0If women are exactly as responsible for their actions as men, why go that little bit further to defend or demonize them based on their gender?<\/p>\n What interests me is comparing the attention paid to Gaddafi\u2019s \u201cLibyamazons\u201d with the lack of attention to women involved in this uprising. Gaddafi has tried to manipulate exactly this issue. His conflation of Al Qaeda, Nescaf\u00e9 and hallucinogenic pills might be comical, but in speaking of Islamic emirates being established in the east, he blatantly brandished the scare-mongering tactics western-backed Arab leaders have wielded with more decorum.<\/p>\n Specifically, he singled out Derna, which he claimed had now become an Islamist state where the poor oppressed women were locked in their homes, while Zarqawi-style beheadings became the new local hobby. My mother, born and bred in Derna, didn\u2019t know whether to laugh or cry at his words. But the irony is that it is Gaddafi\u2019s female bodyguards who seem to have disappeared from the scene, while the women of Derna<\/a> responded to his speech by coming out in a large protest. On International Women\u2019s Day, thousands of women<\/a> attended the rally in Benghazi in support of the\u00a0revolution. It\u2019s easy to forget that on the first day of Libya\u2019s uprising, women in Benghazi<\/a> were among those on the streets, many of them relatives<\/a> of the 1200 prisoners killed in the Abu Sleem massacre.<\/p>\n Even as the uprising turned into an armed revolt, women have not been passively hiding at home. They\u2019ve been sending meals to the front<\/a>, and working\u00a0in the hospitals, media centers, and local councils. With the bakeries struggling, my aunt told us of her sons\u00a0learning to bake bread to serve the community while she worked at the hospital. When the Coalition of the February 17 Revolution was set up, among the members were Amal Bugaigis, interviewed here<\/a> about the Transitional Council, and\u00a0attorneys Hanaa Al-Gallal and Salwa Bugaigis<\/a>, who led the first sit-in at Benghazi\u2019s courthouse. These women are driven by their need to do their part for their country, a role more significant than accompanying and standing behind Gaddafi to represent the women behind a \u201cgreat man.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Moammar Gaddafi\u2019s outlandish behavior has long been a gift to comedians. Making fun of the Colonel clearly does not require much effort: all the news channel Al Arabiya had to do for their segment Gharaib Al Gaddafi (Gaddafi\u2019s Oddities) was put together a montage of clips of the Brother Leader and his fern fly-swatter. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[492,762],"class_list":["post-7831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-gaddafi","tag-libya"],"yoast_head":"\n