Female Suicide Bombers

Suicide bombers, in general, are an interesting topic.  I think that it is a difficult concept for us to grasp.  My first thought when I read this article was why would anyone do such an awful thing?  Then I started thinking about it, and I realized that it is challenging to understand another culture.  Too often we criticize the things that we do not understand.  We don’t live where they live.  We didn’t grow up with the beliefs they grew up with.  We don’t understand the mentality behind this.  So we call it crazy.  But how can we call something crazy when we don’t actually understand? 

Perhaps these women are willing to be female suicide bombers because they have already lost their husbands, or maybe they want to do it in honor of their country.  Another reason is that they are doing it as a statement in the name of their gender.  It is funny though how we try to analyze the reason behind a woman’s motive for becoming a female suicide bomber, but we never question a male’s motive.  We are able to accept a man dying for his country more than we can accept a woman doing the same.  Because of our socially constructed views of gender, men are viewed as the violent ones, and women are supposed to be the peacekeepers.  We love to try to explain people’s behavior when we are not in the situation to do that. 

While I certainly do not support suicide bombing, I think that it is unfortunate that we view something like this is a gendered way.  It’s suicide bombing.  Does it matter whether it is a female or a male that commits the act?  I imagine that many of the reasons that men or women are willing to sacrifice their lives have overlapping motives.  In most species the mother is the protector of her children so it makes sense for the female to be aggressive.  In my biopsychology class, Dr. Widman told us that when two male rats are fighting if one surrenders, the other would back off.  However if a female is fighting and the other rat surrenders, the female will strike to kill.  To reiterate, we need to stop associating a gender to certain acts and trying to explain behavior purely because of gender.