Vietnam Generation Volume 1 Number 3 Gender and the War: Men, Women and Article 1 Vietnam 10-1989 Gender and the War: Men, Women and Vietnam Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation (1989) "Gender and the War: Men, Women and Vietnam," Vietnam Generation: Vol. 1 : No. 3 , Article 1. Available at: http://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/vietnamgeneration/vol1/iss3/1 This Complete Volume is brought to you for free and open access by La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vietnam Generation by an authorized editor of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Gender and The War: Men, Women and Vietnam Vietnam Generation V oIume 1 S u m m e r -Fa II 1989 NuivibERS 5-4 G t vrfrR A \ d rh e Wa r : M en, Wo m e n a n <I Vie t n a m SpEciAl EdiTOR, JacqueUne Lawson 4 P reIace 6 iNTROduCTiON Jacqueline Lawson 12 PARAMiliTARy F a n t a s y C uLtu re ANd t Ne CosivioqoNic MyTholoqy of P r Im e v a L CH ao s ANd ORdER J. William Gibson U "I N ever R eaIIy B e c a m e a W o m a n V eteran UNTil...l S a w t Ae W a LL": A R e v Ie w o f O r a I H istories ANd P ersonal Nar r a tiv es by W o m en V eterans o f t Ne W ar Renny Christopher 4 6 Interview s wlTh T w o V ietnam V eteran s: W e Ic o m e H o m e David Berman 59 ISlAkiNq S ense o f V ietnam ANd TElliNq t He R eaL S t o r y : MIllTARy W o m en iN ThE CoivibAT Z one Cheryl A. Shell 6 8 TNe T eLevIs Ion W a r : T r ea tm en t o f GENdER ANd t Lie V ietnam E xperien ce iN N e t w o r K T e Le v Is Ion D r a m a iN ThE 1988-89 S eason M. Elaine Dolan Brown 74 VisioNs of Vietnam iN Women's SHort FicTioN Susarme Carter 9 0 "GoiNq TowARd War" in tHe WRiTiNqs of MAxiNE HoNq KiNqsTON Jam es R. Aubrey 102 As SoldiER LAds MarcN By Alan Farrell 109 S exist SubscRipT in V ietn am Na r r a t iv e s Nancy Anisfield 115 BAck AqAiNST tHe WaU: A ntI-Fem InIst BACklASh iN VIETNAM WAR LITERATURE Lorrie Smith 127 HAppiNESs is a W a r m G un: MiliTARizEd MoURNiNq ANd CEREMONIAL VENqEANCE Chaim F. Shatan 152 PoiNT BlANk: ShooTiNq V ietnamese Women Susan Jeffords 168 ViolENCE, D eatH ANd MASCUliNiTy Eric J. Leed 190 FEMiNiST CRiTiciSM ANd t He LITERATURE o f t He VIETNAM COMbAT VETERAN Kali Tal 202 M oon LANdiNq: A MEMORy Rebecca Blevins Faeiy 206 iNViTATiON TO THE BURI a I of TRAdiTIONAl W O M A N h o o d 208 THe D ay They Burned "TRAdiTioNAl WoMANhood": Women ANd tHe PoliTics of P eace P rotest Ruth Rosen 255 TAkiNq iN t He Iimaqes: A REcoRd iN GRAphics of j Ue ViETNAM E ra S o il foR F e m In'ism Kathie Sarachild 246 Women foR P eace or Women's LibERATioN? SiqNposTs fROM tHe FEMiNisT A rcHIves Jenny Brown for Redstockings 261 NucIear D iscourse A N d Its D iscontents, or, ApocAlypsE Now or Never Jean Bethke Elshtain 274 BiblioqRAphy of UnusuaI S ources on Women ANd tHe V ietnam War 278 Notes on tHe A utBors PRtfACE On November 12, 1989, hundreds of thousands of women converged on Washington, DC to show their support for the idea that women have a right to safe and legal abortions. The rally, sponsored by the National Organization of Women, was not ignored by anti-abortion forces, who, though vastly outnumbered, attempted to carry out the mission of “Operation Rescue”—the closing of clinics and health centers which perform abortions—in the D.C area on the days immediately preceding and following the rally. Among those anti-abortion forces were the members of a peculiar movement which styles itself “Veterans for Life.” In a strategic decision, the NOW organizers had decided to hold the rally on the Sunday of a three-day holiday weekend. The holiday, quite coincidentally, happened to be Veterans’ Day. The rally was held in front of the Lincoln Memorial which, also coincidentally, happens to be in the immediate vicinity of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. Veteran presence at the wall is always strong—nearby there are small tents set up by those who promote the “cause” of the POW-MLAs, and even a wooden tiger cage (on the plaza opening onto the Lincoln Memorial) occupied by a veteran, a symbol of his determination “never to forget his brothers still in Vietnam.” On and around Veterans’ Day, veteran presence at the wall sharply escalates as thousands of World War II, Korean war and Vietnam veterans pour into the city for reunions, get-togethers, commemorations, and they all make their pilgrimages to the Wall. Vets in full combat regalia gather in groups to talk to each other, and to talk to civilian visitors, mourners, and passers-by. Though the gathering of abortion-rights activists, anti-abortion advocates, and veterans at the same place and at the same time was entirely accidental, it proved the catalyst for a bizarre discourse. Attempting to take advantage of the newly rediscovered American fondness for veterans, the anti-abortionists urged anti-choice veterans to join them in their protest against female reproductive rights. This resulted in the creation of “Veterans for Life,” an organization which believes that abortion is “anti-American.” Veterans for Life gathered to hold candlelight services on the Friday and Saturday before the march, and conflated their public mourning for the Vietnam war dead with their mourning for all the “murdered children.” On the anti-abortion side, it was a strategically significant move, placing pro-choice ralliers in the position of appearing anti-veteran if they picketed the event or disrupted it in any way. On the Sunday of the pro-choice rally, women streamed onto the mall, carrying banners and signs, wearing purple and white, singing and P reface 5 chanting. Many came in from the northwest side of the city, and thus passed by the Vietnam Memorial and its attendant veteran host on their way to the gathering. Veterans were everywhere in evidence along the path to the Memorial, most of them dressed in fatigues (new fatigues, upon which they had painstakingly resewn their badges and patches), boonie hats, and heavy blackcombat boots. The Memorial was cordoned off, and a veteran stood at each end of the walkway, effectively preventing marchers with signs from walking beside the Wall. Veterans for Life mingled with those veterans and tourists who had simply come to see the wall, but the rallying women were barred from the Memorial proper. Women flooded the plaza in front of the Lincoln Memorial, enveloping the POW-MIA booths and pro-Flag Amendment booths manned by veterans. They leaned up against the tiger cage and sat on the tables of literature and bumper stickers which read “I’m not Fonda Hanoi Jane.” Those of us who stood in front could turn around to face the Washington Monument and see the crowd stretching the length of the Reflecting Pool and beyond. “Wow,” said one woman behind me, “I haven’t seen anything like this since we marched on Washington to stop the war in ‘68.” And above all the signs which read, “Keep Your Laws Off My Body,” “Republican Women for Choice,” “Bush, Stay Out of Mine!” “Every Sperm Does Not Have a Name,” and “U.S. Out of My Uterus” you could see, higher than any other banner, the black POW flag waving in the wind. As a literary critic and cultural therapist, my impulse was to “read” the event. Texts, after all, can be interpreted; symbols can be deciphered, understood. But the contradictions and anomalies inherent in any interpretation I could manufacture served to drive home the complexity of the problem. What, after all, was I to make of four Vietnam vets in combat gear eanying a banner that read, “Women Who Have Abortions Shed Innocent Blood”? Vietnam veterans calling American women baby-killers? We have a lot more thinking to do on the subject of gender and war. This collection of essays represents a step in that direction. Kali Tal Washington, DC , 1989. iNTROdlJCTiON Ja c q u e Une L aw so n War may not be “a biological necessity,” as General Friedrich von Bernhardt once claimed,1 but if history is a reliable indicator, it does seem to have been a necessity more often for one gender than for the other. More than any other endeavor, war seems to ‘take the measure of a man,* and perhaps this is why men have been so singularly fascinated by it. This, at least, is the conviction of a number of commentators on men in battle, among them former Marine William Broyles, Jr., who in an oft-cited Esquire essay, “Why Men Love War,” emphatically declares, “War is the enduring condition of man, period.”2 It is this canard—that war is the exclusive province of men, a closed and gendered activity inscribed by myth, informed by ritual, and enacted solely through the power relations of patriarchy—that I would hope to dispel in this introduction.