It is almost too difficult to write these thoughts at this moment without a kind of distance on the incredible sadness and destruction…and without more information. Yet…

Hurricanes are now named for men and women in the superficial attempt at gender neutrality-as though this actually could make a difference in men and women's lives in terms of equal treatment. This alteration in nomenclature conceals the real inequities in women's lives. This was truer than ever when Katrina hit with all "her" powerful, destructive, unpredictable, foreboding force. "She" devastated hundreds of thousands of people's lives and there was/is no mention of the particular and disproportionate numbers of women who bore/bare the brunt of "her" fury. This fury hit blacks and poor people hard but it hit black poor women even harder. If usual numbers hold true here, poor black women make up the greatest numbers of people living below sea level without cars.

In the aftermath everyone mentions how the awful reality of racism and class has reared its ugly head, but there is no mention of gender. Why do we name race and class and not also gender as an unfair structure of power when women of color are the poorest of the poor in this country, and in Louisiana and Mississippi. Our T.V. screens were/are filled with the faces of black women, but they are/were described simply by their race and class. The victims were too readily called refugees and I assume the fact that most of the world's refugees are women and children played a part-as much as race and class-in this 'othered' choice of terms.

What do I mean by gender here? I mean that people are born female and become women; and are born male and become men.¹ Male and female are constructed as masculine and feminine, which is the gendered meaning of the sexual difference male/female. It is women that find themselves defined by institutions and structural systems of power that disproportionately make them poor. There is nothing about being female that makes this so. So women become the heads of single parent families. They make ends meet when there are no ends to attach. The front page of the New York Times tells the story of Lakerisha Boyd, a 23 year old black mother of three's grief and resolve to find her missing baby: "'I can't start crying because of the other children. I can't break down. I'm all they've got right now. But I just want to know, where's my baby?'".² They are the people who network in order to see that those they love survive. It is here, as W.E. Dubois writes-with the "mothers and mothers of mothers"--that the resilience of black families is found.³

We have to name something in order to see it; we must name power systems in order that they can be put in view to be democratized. So it is important to name and see women-particularly women of color-- and their gendered lives in this moment. We see the narrative of slavery quietly reproduced here: slaves are said to be blacks defined by a system of racism even though slavery was a sexual AND racial system of oppression. Black women were the breeders for this sexualized racist economy. Slavery was a sexist and racist and class system of oppression. There are continued silences that need to be spoken here.

In the aftermath of Katrina race and class have been put in view, as they should be. We are told that 67 percent of the population of New Orleans was black, and that 34 percent lived below the poverty line, which also means that at least half or more were poor because one can be poor and be above the poverty line. But, where there is race and class there is also always gender. Class always has a gender; class always has a family structure. Race always is gendered, and gender is always racialized. Every person always has a gender.⁴

If we look at pictures of the Superdome or lines waiting for evacuation we can see that disproportionate numbers of the homeless and displaced in Mississippi and Louisiana are women, and `their' children. The poorest of the poor are women-women of all colors, including white as a color. These single headed households led by women, are now with their children but without households. These women struggle and survive. Without seeing them the reconstruction effort will leave them, with their specific needs for day care and education, behind. There is too much to figure out here to not get this right.

This gendering of the storm and its effects do not make headlines. But it should because poverty is tied to family structures in crisis. Poverty is tied to the unavailability of contraceptives and reproductive rights. Poverty is tied to teenage pregnancy. Poverty is tied to women's wages that are always statistically lower than men's. Poverty is tied to the lack of day care for women who must work. Poverty is tied to insufficient health care for women. Poverty is tied to the lack of access to job training and education.

The gendering of Katrina is complex and multiple because gender in this highly militarized and privatized moment is often not what it seems. And the gendering of the hurricane operates on multiple complex planes that are chaotic: on the effects of the victims and survivors, by the media narrators of this moment; with the Bush administration's spin; by those of us watching the horror unfold; on those who live the desperation but are given little voice. These different sites of gendered viewings construct what we see and at the same time deny the presence and resonance of gender.

As the narrative of the storm and floods unfolded we had females standing in where men once only reigned. Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco is continually described by media people as looking drained and being somewhat ineffectual. Yet, she is also said to be `a great comfort to people' throughout the ordeal; as the ever present mother of us all. On the other hand we also have males acting like women, whatever that means. We even have the County Supervisor just outside New Orleans breaking down uncontrollably and crying `like a woman' on national T.V. These males just might keep more females from breaking the glass ceiling. After all, in this instance males are just as good at acting like women as females.

Gender is more about stereotypes and false generalizations than anything real. So New Orleans is described as a city with a feminine sensibility by a Romanian-born poet who lives in Louisiana. "It's a night city. It's ruled by the moon; it's surrounded by water, and water is traditionally a feminine element."⁵ Obviously, gender parades everywhere, and in confused and confusing fashion. Republicans are supposed to be the cowboys; and Dems are said to be "girlie-men". But Bush is looking too ineffectual and bumbling to hold onto his tough guy status; instead he looks silly parading around in his cowboy boots of yesteryear. This man's man is looking a bit womanly. So Condi is called in to help cover up these mis-steps and dons her masculine-removed and detached-side but still holds onto her femininity by shopping for her Ferragamo shoes. Meanwhile Cheney-still a man's man-cuts short his vacation and heads for the floods. At this dire moment of need he still reassures the richest of the rich that there will be no new taxes. And they decide to remove Michael Brown of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) for botching everything. Maybe his emasculation will save them. Forget that Bush told his buddy `Brownie' that he was doing a "heck of a job" just days earlier.⁶

Both Laura and Lynne-the wives of our president and vice president-- escort them to the flood areas to remind the rest of us that husband/wife families still exist. And Barbara (Bush) has a bad moment and mistakenly reveals white rich women's role in empire building. She tells us, those watching our TV's that these "underprivileged people" in the Superdome have it better now than before. Oprah, as a take-charge (manly) woman travels to Mississippi and Louisiana and says the victims deserve an apology from the feds. Sean Penn with the muscles of a manly man drives his boat through the damaged areas. The reporters and anchor-men, who are still disproportionately male, almost seem womanly-they speak passionately and less distantly about the injustice they see. As such, they seem a bit suspect.

Katrina offers us a lens that is both new and very old. Some females publicly act like men and some males act like women. Given all the gender swapping and supposed fluidity who could think that gender still matters, still is oppressive, still means that your chances of being poor are greater if you are born female and black and poor. As such, gender appears much like a decoy while `real' poor black and white women search for food and shelter. A decoy gets you to look at one thing while something more crucial is happening elsewhere. Yet, decoys manipulate `truths'-as in nature and natural--or they wouldn't work.

By now it should be clear that Katrina is as much a political disaster defined by racism, sexism and class privilege, as it is a natural one. Hurricanes are said to be a natural force just like biology is. But the talk of hurricanes as natural disasters parallels the way that women's lives are naturalized because of their biological sex. Then seeing all these displaced women somehow seems natural, and not political, not about power formations that are already gendered and raced.

Leave it to Katrina-- a woman-- to blow the whistle. No safety nets to be seen here. This disaster was man-made-by Bush, and Cheney and Condi. Be careful here not to confuse sex and gender. Condi does the work of empire building for white rich males, while being black and female. She is masculinized for the job; just like hurricane Katrina is naturalized as a female. And meanwhile the country has been militarized and privatized for the past quarter century.

There are trillions of dollars for the Iraq War with little left for health, education, welfare, and so on. Over $71 million was cut from the Army Corp of Engineers for flood protection while billions were diverted to Iraq. There is money for bombs, and so much less for dikes and levees. Privatized governments mean that the public part of life shrinks and private corporate interests are left to seek their highest dollar. The downsizing of the social welfare state which started in the Reagan era has meant the destruction of the safety net, a complete destruction of welfare `as we knew it', the abandonment of our public schools along with public housing and public transportation. AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children) no longer exists. Without a commitment to public life-schools, roads, hospitals, trains, etc.-- individuals are more and more on their own. If you don't own a car you are stuck in the flood-waters. With no safety net those who are barely making it are destroyed. In the lower Ninth Ward neighborhood that was completely engulfed by water, 98 percent of the residents are black, and more than a third live in poverty. There is no mention of how many of these blacks and poor people are also women. When the flood waters poured in everyone-but especially poor black women--were abandoned yet again.

The Bush administration makes more and more war and less of everything else. Tax cuts which are part and parcel of the privatized state have made the rich richer; and the poor poorer. Bush is then forced to ask for $60 billion for clean-up and reparations because government coffers are used up and empty given tax cuts and Afghanistan and Iraq. The deficit grows and non-rich tax payers become the debtors. It is criminal that Halliburton already has a large contract for rebuilding in Louisiana-looking way too much like Iraq than any of us want to know.

Let us recognize that women are unfairly the largest numbers affected in this disaster--its victims so-to-speak AND also its survivors-networking, feeding, re-connecting to make daily life go on. Without recognizing that Katrina has exposed the racist, AND gendered, and class inequities of our country we cannot begin to really address the crisis of poor women and their children in this country. These women and their children make up a huge part of our country. Privatized governments with no public conscience and militarized agendas cannot embrace their needs and therefore ours as well. Our throw-away society must stop throwing away its own people. By making sure we are focused on the needs of poor women of all colors we begin to build an inclusive society. It is from this site we can build democracy for us all. Kofi Annan says that the only way to deal with the AIDS crisis in Africa is to invest in the women in Africa. He says this is our best hope. W.E. B. Dubois knew it was black women's souls that sustained the struggle for racial justice. Ida B. Wells wrote that it is black women who will "uplift the race". She believed it was ordinary women, as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers-not queens-who make the world.⁷ The only way to fully cope with the devastation of Mississippi and Louisiana is to first see and then invest in its "women", whether they are black or white or are male or female. It is by starting here that we can rebuild Louisiana and Mississippi and with them an inclusive-anti-racist, re-sexed and de-gendered, economically just--democratic society.

I want to thank Miriam Brody, Anna Marie Smith, Carla Golden, and Richard Stumbar for discussing many of the points of this article with me.

Notes

1. This statement falsely represents sex as though only two sexes exist biologically. I however think the political construction of sex in this gendered form exists in such a way as to clarify the sex/gender distinction for this discussion.
2. Quoted in Susan Saulny, "`But I just Want to Know, Where's my Baby?'", New York Times, September 10, 2005, p. A1.
3. W.E.B. Dubois, "Damnation of Women", in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (New York: Schocken Books, 1920), p. 168.
4. See my Color of Gender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, and Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized Conflicts of the 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 1996) for a full accounting of this argument.
5. Andrei Codrescu, quoted in Deborah Solomon, "A Refugee Among refugees", New York Times Magazine, September 11, 2005, p. 19.
6. Quoted in Richard Stevenson and Anne Kornblut, "Director of FEMA Stripped of Role As Relief Leader", New York Times, September 10, 2005, p. A1.
7. Ida B. Wells, The Memphis Diary, ed. Miriam De-Costa Willis (Boston: Beacon Press, 995), p. 188.