Essay on If I Die in a Combat Zone

The role of race and gender in the United States have been a constant social and cultural struggle, but for male and female service members in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War of author Heather Marie Stur’s book "Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era" when she focused more on the Cold War era policies. While her emphasis is primarily on Americans in Vietnam, the framing chapter on Madame Nhu as Orientalist dragon lady. Similarly, she considers the image of the "girl next door" in need of protection in relation to the actual positions of donut dollies nurses and WACs in

The importance of gender equality is not thoroughly acknowledged in a battlefield containing harsh conditions and may lead to death, as the male gender is seen as a better fit in warfare than the female gender. This has been a repertory opinion of the genders throughout history. War is particularly critical of women for supposedly being weaker and less intelligent than men as if women lack the ability to cope with war. Women may generally be seen on the sidelines of war, helping out the injured, but never caught up in the midst of combat. It is thought to be rare to find women interested in warfare. These are the opinions from the medics, who are men, in the short story, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” by Tim O’Brien. The short story begins

Chisholm shows that the women where depended on a lot by most medical students as they told many of their patients,' go to the ladies and they'll attend..' its like the women knew more about things that others, or else the medical students believed that they had more serious cases to deal with as they had sent the soldiers who had 'boils' and 'sore feet' to the women. But the women's days were packed full of stuff, they had a surgery to run, they could never go to bed thinking that they could go to sleep, they had to sleep with their 'clothes on' just to prepared for what would happened during the night, because at any moment you could hear the bombs, or the shoots which would be usually followed by an injured soldier. She felt pity towards these men, as their wounds where 'pathetic' and emasculating, she felt attached to the soldiers

The main source is a book called Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era, written by Heather Marie Stur, and was published in September of 2011. Heather Marie Stur is a director of University of Southern Mississippi’s Vietnam Studies program and is an author of several articles, including some about the Vietnam War. This source is valuable to answering the thesis question and revealing the past of the Vietnam War because it was written by an assistant professor whose research interests are gender and conflict, the U.S. in a global context, and the Vietnam War. Stur gathers information from her research and writes about it in

If I Die in a Combat Zone, author Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was not as honorable as it was seen to most citizens through his depictions of his experiences throughout the war, by how the surroundings around him played a role in his mindset of the war, and the examples of soldiers mistreatment to civilians and misconduct in vietnam.

Throughout chapters 2 and 3 of Beyond Combat, the role of women having a pivotal role in the Vietnam War has mostly been characterized as what the American media called women as either “donut dollies” or “girl next door” within the Red Cross Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas (SROA) program in comparison to Vietnamese women as sexualized and sometimes dangerous. To me the content in chapter 2 represented a domestic ideal that was rejected by American women when they made the decision to escape from both marriage and being dutiful to the family as well as potential crossing racial boundaries; whereas in chapter 3 it revealed and reinforced how the concept of American military women was challenged in regards to basic assumption about

In the New York Times article, Female POW is Abused, Kindling Debate, by Ellaine Sciolino, Army Major Rhonda Cornum was interviewed regarding her captivity during the Persian Gulf War. She said "Everyone's made such a big deal about this indecent assault," she said, in her first interview since the war. "But the only thing that makes it indecent is that it was nonconsensual. I asked myself, 'Is it going to prevent me from getting out of here? Is there a risk of death attached to it? Is it permanently disabling? Is it permanently disfiguring? Lastly, is it excruciating?' If it doesn't fit one of those five categories, then it isn't important." But the male soldier that was with her had a different opinion. The 22-year-old specialist from Fort Rucker whom Iraqis slapped and beat during interrogations said he had not changed his opinion that women should not be in combat, despite what he described as Major Cornum's stoicism. "I worried about her all the time," he said, "and being a P.O.W. and going through the torture, the pain, you shouldn't also have to worry about what's happening to the female soldier all the time." While the women may be able to endure such atrocities that come with war, the men are not psychologically prepared to deal with listening to the screams of their women being raped, sodomized, and tortured by the enemy.

This is best seen by means of the illustration of ladies' encounters of war as a rule, war escalates monetary imbalances in the middle of men and ladies and frequently drives ladies into unpaid work, for example; administering to the harmed or debilitated when clinics are over-swarmed or annihilated (Chew, 2008,). Ladies are constrained into the sex-exchange for subsistence, once in a while being contracted casually by military pioneers around bases with a specific end goal to maintain the assurance of warriors. Non-warriors, importance ladies and youngsters, make up 90% of passings in contemporary wars, and efficient assault has been utilized as a weapon in the course of wartime, as the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or right now in the Democratic

To explore the legacy of rape as a tool in war Nancy Toping Bazin’s and Jane Harmovit Lauter’s philosophy of domination is important to know. The philosophy of domination is the underpinning of all patriarchal institutions from domestic institutions, to government, and the military. Another usefully theory is one succinctly described by Katrina Lee Koo in “Confronting a Disciplinary Blindness: Women, War and Rape in the International Politics of Security”. Koo says, “the nation, the state, allies, and enemies intersect with gendered identities…sexual enslavement is politicized violence against women’s bodies that is both state-sanctioned and premeditated” in effect, during war time there is an intersection of gender with religion, ethnicity, nationality and anything else that represents the opposing side as an “other”. In this sense an assault on the women of a nation is a direct assault on their state, their culture, their religion, their ethnic group as well as the men in it. In her essay “Revisiting the Issue of Korean ‘Military Comfort Women’: The Question of Truth and Positionality” Hyunah Yang says, “by invading women’s bodies, rape attempts to possess the enemy’s property and leaves a rift in the most fundamental ground of the symbolic system that sustains the enemies group identity…belief that the woman’s body is a field underpinning the family, ethnic group, and/or nation” (61). During the comfort system the Japanese army was not only in control of the Korean

How have you and the other two been doing since I last wrote? I certainly feel like I could have a better day, but it is not the worse. How have you been taking care of William and Elizabeth well ever since father and I left for Europe? I know it has been difficult taking care of those two without a large source of income. You can not just leave both William and Elizabeth alone to work a job. I promise the war will end soon and we will come back safe. How are Elizabeth and William doing in school? I promised both I would take them to the park as soon as I came back, since I promised the day before I left, but the weather had other plans. Speaking of the weather how has it been over there? It is absolutely absurd how much it rains in France. I am certainly tired of the rain pouring into our trenches

In “Deuce Out,” gender roles are prevalent in the sense that women’s roles in society, and in the military are often behind male filled positions. “Combat support would be as close to infantry work I could get - women weren’t allowed in full combat” (Schultz 584). As a government, not allowing women in true combat situations denies them a personal choice and risk. The presumed outcome in this instance is that women would get hurt, and therefore need to be protected. This is not, and should not be a general mindset. If a woman wants a chance to fight on the front lines, a male majority government should not make that decision for her. In general, this strains the women and men social dynamic because one is derogating the other. In Things Fall Apart, gender roles are strictly

Have you ever looked at war as though women mattered? You often hear about the bravery of the soldiers who go to fight but what about the women at home, or even in war torn areas who are effected? Women are often victims of what the so called man created conflict and women are expected to stand back and let the fighting advance. War is more than a combat, its burden that increasingly falls on the shoulders of women. In some wars today it’s more dangerous to be a women than to be a soldier. A few women aimed back and changed the face of justice. Some of which are the texts I have analysed which present this issue of women being the victims of war these are, Tears of the Desert, I am Malala, I Came to testify and The Diary of Anne Frank. Even

War, a stereotypically masculine aspect of human society is harped on by the author of “Women and War,” a document that delves deep into the relation between females and the institution of war. Carolyn Cohn, the woman author, reaches and finds a number of key points in which she utilizes to craft her claim into an argument regarding the topic. Within her literature she claims that masculinity is valued far more than femininity, and through the symbolism between aspects of war and women the claim she previously stated is qualified. In her writing she begs the question whether women will ever ascertain the symbolic or literal importance equal to that of the male. According to her claims, she believes that based upon historical context, this will

Acknowledging the interconnectedness of gender and warfare is unavoidable in contemporary literature on the subject. War’s ability to enhance men’s authority and magnify the distance between femininity and masculinity (Cockburn 2010, pg. 144) has lead to the prominence of the subject in contemporary feminist studies. Understandably the majority of recent literature has been directed towards war’s impact on women and ‘the feminine’. This limitation, however, fails to take into account the way in which “men and their interests, their notions of manliness, and masculine micro and macro cultures” (Nagel 2006, pg. 243) impacts on politics and war. If we accept that nations and

Women from all over the world, in various geographic spaces, social and cultural contexts, who play roles of mothers, daughters, wives, mourners and victims experience war (Riley, 2008 p. 1192). Which then has had a huge impact on how women are seen and represented in relations to war, aiming towards what they are expected to be and do, and the strength of the repercussions suffered for acting outside the gender boundaries within particular spaces (Riley, 2008 p. 1192). Which comes to the idealistic understandings of gender normality i.e. masculinity and femininity and how they have been used in relations to military and war (Riley, 2008 p. 1193). Because when thinking of war, one can automatically come to the natural assumption that war and military can be viewed as the quintessential masculine activity (McLaughlin, 1990 p.