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Judy Lattas
Institute for Women's Studies, Macquarie University, Sydney
'Armed Affirmative Action'
In this paper I consider the pro-gun compositions of a number of authors writing on behalf of social groups 'othered' by the ideal (white, Christian, heterosexual, male adult) subject of politics or religion in the West. These social groups include Jews, blacks, gay men and lesbians, kids and more (I do not include women here as I am writing on women and guns separately). Pro-gun websites appearing on the internet such as Pink Pistols and gundyke, Black Man With A Gun and Geeks for Guns, and on-line articles such as 'Jews and Guns', 'The Racist Roots of Gun Control', 'The Horrible Logic of (Youth) Victim Disarmament', and 'The Tao of Gun' (rallying New Age followers for guns), all offer arguments for gun ownership in terms of minority group claims of a special need for self-defense, self reliance, and an end to the politics of victimhood. I found the term 'Armed Affirmative Action' circulating in this context
<http://www.free-market.net/spotlight/minguns/>.
It is the discourse being articulated under the banner of 'Armed Affirmative Action' that I want to explore in my contribution to this conference.
Bio: Dr Judy Lattas is Director of the Institute for Women's Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She has been teaching there since 1989. The courses she offers teach feminist and critical theory through explorations of popular culture and sexual difference in Australia. In the early 1980s she worked as one of the coordinators of Ruth's women's shelter in Cairns, and helped establish a Rape Crisis Centre there in 1979. In 1998 she was awarded her PhD for a thesis entitled 'Politics in Labour', a deconstructivist reading of Hannah Arendt on the philosophical conditions of totalitarianism. She is interested in the extreme right in Australia, and has published recently on Pauline Hanson. She is currently writing a book on guns, focussing on the philosophical, political and sexual foundations of the gun lobby's claims as they circulate in Australian and North American popular culture.
<judy.lattas@scmp.mq.edu.au>