Saturday's New York Times print edition prominently featured an op-ed by Lindsey O'Rourke titled, "Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb." It caught my eye for two reasons. First, the graphic was huge (6.5 inches high and 6 inches wide, which is a lot of space to take up on the op-ed page) and an interesting portrayal of what I construed to be a dangerous vamp.

Second, the pull quote read, "Female suicide bombers aren't any different from male ones." The pull quote, combined with the contradictory image (would the Times run such a large cartoon of a sexy male suicide bomber?), sent my brain down two different tracks of thought.

The normal track pursued the information presented in the article. If one can ignore the stupid illustration and focus on O'Rourke's research findings, the article is fascinating. She notes that:

Women, we are told, become suicide bombers out of despair, mental illness, religiously mandated subordination to men, frustration with sexual inequality and a host of other factors related specifically to their gender. Indeed, the only thing everyone can agree on is that there is something fundamentally different motivating men and women to become suicide attackers.

The only problem: There is precious little evidence of uniquely feminine motivations driving women’s attacks... [R]esearch led to a clear conclusion: the main motives and circumstances that drive female suicide attackers are quite similar to those that drive men.

Thus I was intrigued to see that, once again when we push aside the headlines that scream about the differences between men and women, evidence shows that we are all human, and all respond to the same motivation, whether this leads us to good behavior or evil actions. Of course, there are some differences between male and female suicide bombers, just as there are differences in other areas of life. O'Rourke reports that women who participate in suicide bombings tend to be older than males who do so, and they kill others and themselves on behalf of secular rather than religious organizations. (This is in part due to discrimination against women by fundamentalist organizations, although frighteningly, many are overcoming their objections to female "martyrs" as "problematic." While I hate that women are considered inferior by many religions, it is most unfortunate that the areas in which we gain equality are those in which lives are taken.) Her statistics shocked me: "76 percent of attackers from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey have been women, as have 66 percent of those from Chechen separatist groups, 45 percent of the Syrian Socialist National Party’s and a quarter of those from the Tamil Tigers." Lastly, women tend to be used as suicide bombers in targeted attacks like political assassinations because females arouse less suspicion than men.

O'Rourke also cites the reason many women agree to become suicide bombers:

Yes, many female suicide terrorists are motivated by revenge for close family members or friends killed by occupation forces. But so too are males. Indeed, there are so many known instances of personal revenge driving both sexes to strike, and so much missing data about the friendship and extended family circles of suicide attackers, that it is simply impossible to say one sex cares more about others.

The point is that oppression and personal tragedy affect men and women in similar ways. This can be channeled in many ways, and killing others is sadly a gender-neutral activity.

The article, which was drafted in response to a recent suicide bombing in Iraq by four Iraqi women, concludes with a proposal to decrease female suicide bomber attacks in Iraq by minimizing "the presence of United States troops in what Iraqis consider their private sphere, while simultaneously providing material support that will improve the quality of life for all Iraqis." Given all the evidence of female participation in terrorist activities around the world, I would go one step further and say that women's equality in all aspects of life - not just in suicide bombing - are critically important to promote. If women kill for the same reasons as men, it strikes me that we need the same normal, positive channels for productive lives as men do.

On another train of thought, when I noticed the pull quote in the article and compared it to the cartoon, my cynical mode kicked in, and I thought about how prevalent gender marketing is in the US. Thankfully, Americans do not live in a country where suicide bombing is promoted as a heroic activity, but if we did, I have no doubt that marketers would be promoting cute pink bomb toys for our daughters to remind us that we should be feminine while we kill others and ourselves. This already done through the production of pink tool sets, pink toy cars, and the like. Making things pink is the color coded cue that females and males may like the same things sometimes, but we must make a social distinction between the two. This depresses me as much as the reality that one of the few ways many women are presented opportunities to rise above second-class citizenship is to engage in suicide bombings.

Either way, women and men are separated from our common traits as human beings in order to stress how different we are from one another. Clearly, the better alternative is to emphasize our shared humanity, and hopefully provide individuals with the opportunities to achieve what we are each capable of, rather than use our common power to destroy.

What other women are saying about the article and the graphic:

• Current Event 3 by Kristen Hiller
• Breaking: Female suicide bombers operate on same logic as male ones by cantabridget
• For the weekend by SoE

Suzanne also blogs about life at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants. Her first book is Off the Beaten (Subway) Track: New York City's Best Unusual Attractions.