Cynthia Enloe’s chapter, “All the Men are the Militias, All the Women are Victims” explores the roles of masculinity and femininity in Nationalist Wars, she also seeks to explain what drives certain men to perform horrific war crimes. She starts off by bringing up Borislav Herak, a seemingly normal Serbian man who later on went on to commit mass rape and murder. Enloe seems confused on how a man like that decided to kill and rape these women. He was never violent and he “fell” into the company of Serbian militiamen, he did not seek them out, he joined because they offered him food and shelter. Cynthia Enloe asks the question, “How had such an apparently unpoliticized individual come to take risks in the name of Serbian nationalism (Enloe 101)?” The answer to this question is a complex one but it starts off with the fact that he was a man and grew up in a time that demanded masculinity from its male population. Another point Enloe brings up is how little has been written about women and their experiences of ethnicity and nationalism. Cynthia Enloe gives three assumptions for why women are mentioned in investigations of politicized ethnicity or of nationalist movements: one is that men had the ideas and actions that lead to processes and women are just spectators. Another is that men and women have roughly the same experience and since men are easier to research, they chose men. And lastly uneven task distribution between and men and women had little impact on individuals’ sense of belonging or on the strategies selected for collective mobilization. These assumptions are really faulty and don’t really understand how ethnic and nationalist processes actually operate. They are based on trivial decisions, because decisions involve power and that’s what constructs nationalism. Cynthia Enloe then says that he being a militia fighter or a male can’t explain Borislav Herak’s actions of nationalism. After he joined the militia is when he decided that his Serb nationality justified military action, not before. When he first joined he was taught that it was the Muslims fault for why he was oppressed, and why he had no success in life. He was socialized to think that military action was necessary if want to call yourself a Serb man. This is also done with women, but in a different way, instead of telling the to fight, they glorified women by calling them the mother’s of soldiers, and elevating their status because of this fact. Masculinity was becoming linked with performing as a soldier. This is seen in a lot of places, like South Africa where the Zulu men were taught that their manhood was rooted in their performance as a warrior. Cynthia Enloe then goes on to describe work done by Christopher Browning and his research on Nazi officers. He had a similar dilemma as Enloe because he wanted to know what would make an ordinary German man with a family kill defenseless Jews. He found that most of the officers before the war were not actively involved in politics and they were actually not deeply embedded with the anti-Semitic feeling. What the superior officers did was try to lower the psychological stress involved with killing someone. Things like, “Dignity as fathers, reassurance as boyfriends, pride as sons, comradeship as fictive brothers-in arms, satisfaction as masculinized heterosexuals,” were said to lesson the blow of killing someone. Enloe then gives an excerpt of a conversation with Borislav Herak and a reporter. He fully confessed to murder and rape and said he only did it because he was ordered to, and that he felt regret for it. To me he said like a weak man that did what he was told instead of standing up and doing what his right. Sometimes it’s hard to do the right the things, but if more people stood up for what it is right then maybe this whole incident wouldn’t of happened. I understand he was scared for his life, but what about the lives of the innocent women he was killing and raping. He was put in a difficult situation and it’s horrible that anyone is put into situations like that, but he seems like a follower to me with no backbone.
“The Spoils of War,” is another chapter in Cynthia Enloe’s book “A Curious Feminist.” It describes how U.S. soldiers in Japan are allowed to hire prostitutes. This was in response to how three soldiers raped a twelve-year-old girl. Many think that the prostitution is ok because it’s prostitution not rape. This is ridiculous, if prostitution is illegal in the U.S. then why is it okay to do it in Japan, totally disgraceful and really puts a bad name on the soldiers in Japan.
Steven Lee Myers wrote two articles in the New York Times about women in the military. The first, “A peril in War Zones: Sexual Abuse by Fellow G.I.’s” is about sexual harassment and sexual assault faced by women in the military. With the introduction of a lot more women entering the war in Iraq, new problems that the military hasn’t real seen are coming up. Mainly sexual Assault and harassment which can be the result of the strains of combat, close quarters in remote locations, tension and even boredom. The military has a zero tolerance when it comes to sexual abuse, but the fact is that most women don’t report it because women are afraid they won’t be believed or it might jeopardize their rank in the military. Another thing is that women feel that their problem of being abused is so small compared to the actual war going. Sgt. Tracey R. Phillips actually came forward and told of the harassment that happened to her. She ended up being discharged. With this as an example of what happens to sexual harassment victims in the war, no wonder only 10 percent of abuse is reported. Myers explains that even though abuse is still around, the respect for women in uniform is more common then it used to be and that this a result of the change of culture that happened to the military when women entered. The number of complaints though of abuse is on the rise, but this may be do to the fact that more women are coming forward and are not afraid of what will happen to them. This abuse is an even bigger problem if the soldiers are in a combat zone because your suppose to have your fellow soldiers back, but how can you do that if that person has harassed you. This is dangerous because this not only puts people in danger, but also buts the mission at hand in danger of failing. The military is now offering rape kits so that evidence can be collected, they have also set up nurses who can examine a woman, and a person they can talk to after the incident happens. However some of the military’s efforts are being undermined by commanders who are in charged and afraid of reporting the attack because they fear it’s a bad reflection on them. They need to realize that, that is not the case and it’s even worse if they don’t say something. The main problem is that when attacked in the army, you can’t even get away from the person because each place is so small, its like a “fishbowl”, you can’t escape the person. Hopefully people in the army see how especially dangerous this is and how degrading it is.
In Myer’s second, lighter article, “Living and Fighting Alongside Men, and Fitting In,” he looks into the lives of men and women in the army. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first wars where women have worked for prolong periods of time. With this introduction of women, comes the introduction of sex. On the military base a lot of the men and women have sex and with the availability of contraceptives it makes the sex a lot safer. Pregnancy is pretty rare so there is really no problem with that, only three women were sent home in ten months in one of the bases. He explains how sexual abuse is still a problem but not any more of problem of how it is in regular society. The fact now is that some women have high ranking jobs and it’s a direct result of their actions not their genetic make-up. Col. Burt K Thompson, commander at Warhorse, said “I’ve relieved males form command, I’ve never relieved a female commander in two and half years as commander (Myers 5).” This shows how actions speak louder then words, women proved themselves component when it comes to war while maintaining their femininity through out war. The women in war today are confident and intelligent and know what they are doing; they have to be in order to protect this country.
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