ABSTRACT
In the discourse of the American "War on Terror," the idea of "freedom" does not simply mean freedom of thought and expression, education, faith, movement, choice, and lifestyle. It also specifically refers to women's rights to these freedoms, and to a freedom that encompasses sexuality and sexual or romantic choice, as well. In the War on Terror, love, sex, and liberty are intimately bound up with democracy, liberal feminism, and the championing of women's rights. By the early twentieth century, the discourses of race and Orientalism were conflated by white women to show the degradation of nonwhite, non-Western women, who were associated with "zenanas and harems; the seraglio and the bagnio, female infanticide and suttee, concubinage and polygamy; bride sale; foot-binding and ear and nose boring, consecrated prostitution and sacrifice; bastinado; child marriage and slavery."
