As many of you may know, I haven't exactly held my tongue when it comes to speaking out against the sexism and homophobia of the US military. In fact, for doing so, I've been pulled off the air for "re-training" or been asked to just play music many times when I was a younger journalist. Here, without the constraints of someone telling me what I can and cannot say, I'd like to explore the topic of the US military as a form of patriarchy toward other nations, and specifically, their women.
Imagine yourself a young, conventionally attractive woman from a war-torn, economically depressed country the US current occupies. Although traditions dictate that you belong in the private sphere, as a young woman, you are also the one responsibility for well-being of your family, to include making sure everyone has enough to eat, and that there is a roof over your heads.
To accomplish these tasks you have a few choices: you can either work at one of the many American factories, standing in long assembly lines all day, producing clothing and other products to be sold in America, being paid only enough for food, and most certainly, less than the minimum wage mandated in America (the reason many jobs get shipped overseas.).
To make more money, you can also be a part of the sex trade industry - becoming prostitutes to local men and visitors, or if you're especially attractive, sex mongers from other nations - often European - will readily snatch you up to work in red light districts, catering to men with more economic powers than you do. This work, too, does not yield economic power, and it becomes especially hard to get out of such work, even when you've paid off their debts. In some cases, when you're subjected to sexual violence, there is nothing you can do.
There is always a third choice if you do not think working for an American clothing company, spending all day doing mundane tasks is appealing, or you do not like the idea of being paid for having sex. If your country happens to be occupied by the US military, you can always hope of marrying an American military man and upon being taken to America, work your butt off to send money to your family.
After all, what's not to like about being the wife of an American servicemember? Being an American is the greatest blessing God can bestow upon a person - as John Winthrop so eloquently put, and by extension, if you are a wife of an American, it's also a blessing. Upon marriage, you'll be taken on base, where a variety of Army Community Service organizations will be there to help you out. You'll learn to cook the American way, take care of your husband, minimal English as to understand when he's asking for a blowjob, how to clean to American standards, and the do's and don'ts of being a military spouse. You'll also be indoctrinated into the mindset that being a military wife is the toughest job in the world, and that you're all better for choosing to do this, even if it means you'll sometimes be rejected by your own family and community - you know, the one you're trying to help, while the US occupies your village and country.
Should the marriage fall apart and you're already in America, there isn't much you can do. But does it matter? You're in America! With the skills you've acquired, you can always be a waitress, work at the local thrift store, or, if you change your mind, still be a sex worker! Your greatest asset as a woman is your vagina!
For all the faults I see with the 2nd-Wave feminist movement, we do owe to them feminist theory and the idea that patriarchy not only means the subjugation of men over women, but Western men over women of developing nations. In short, within patriarchy, at the top of the list is Western men, and at the bottom is women from other nations.
Apply this theory to the military and we clearly see the patriarchal aspects of power, sex and economics being played out everyday. Western men, with more economic power, and the perceived power of simply being an American, have at their disposals the lives of women from developing nation. If they so choose to, and many often do, American men can marry women of these nations, who clearly have very few opportunities. Rather than a lifetime of partnership, these relationships are based on a lifetime of master-slave relationships.
I am not one to question other people's relationships, but one has to wonder why a man would marry someone who does not share the cultural, beliefs, dreams and ambitions he does. The answer is obvious: for some of these men, marriage isn't about equality and love - it's about gaining access to a life of ease, physical happiness and someone to be there.
For these women, marriage then becomes a stepping stone, whereas their own bodies and selves become commodities. After all, if you've got no other ways out, and short of prostitution, the best way to get out of an economically depressing situation is to marry someone with power - preferably Western power. It's not enough that they are exploited by men in their own countries, they are also exploited by more powerful men from Western nations.
Clearly, while we cannot regulate who marries whom, I think we can work toward giving such women better opportunities. Rather than simplying teaching gendered skills aimed at making them "good wives," the US military ought to have more classes that aim at empowering women, so they can gain the skills neccesary to be dependent of the men they married. But I am not holding my breath, because national security and military might have little to do with social justice, and unless dictated by feminist military generals and feminist members of the Department of Defense, it's unlikely to happen.
On a last note: many anti-feminists and so-called Men's Rights Advocates will claim that since women exploit men for money, why can't men do the same in regards to a woman's body? The answer is because women aren't exploiting men. It is not exploitation when, at the end of such arrangements and marriages, women gain nothing; it isn't exploitation when women enter a relationship knowing that she will rely on the man for everything, yet the man can break such relationships at anytime, and she'd be without economic stability; it isn't exploitation when the men who enter these relationships clearly did so out of choice, but given the choices women had, such relationships weren't much of a choice.
To be clear - these marriages aren't "relationships" and aren't based on love - they're merely a long-lasting form of prostitution - and sadly, like many sex workers, foreign wives of American military men lack the rights and protections they need, in case the client-prostitute relationship turns sour.
By this, if the United States takes a stand against prostitution based on morality, it should then also take the same stand against these so-called 'marriages.' But, of course, this is unlikely to happen, as such relationships add to mission readiness, and at the same time, serves as a bond between the US and its host countries. Once again, we see the commodification and objectification of women's bodies played out - this time in forms of military readiness and foreign diplomacy. Sadly, though, while women's lives and bodies clearly have so much values to the US military, in its various patriarchal forms, falls disappointingly short at treating them with the human dignity and support they deserve.
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There's a joke at my unit that us single people should go find a illegal immegrant to form a contract marriage with. We all laugh, because the economic incentive in the army is to get married period. Many people get married to people they barely know, just to get out of the barracks. This, needless to say, doesn't ussually work out in the long run. Exactly who is using whom in these relationships is not always clear.
That said there are a lot of hardwoking millitary spouces out there with their own jobs and careers despite their servicemember's job. The army does have several programs to encourage spouce employment and train job skills. The only one I know much about is one that provides training, materials, and insurance to set up a professional childcare service in the home.
As a military spouse I find your entry very offensive.
First off let me say I'm not a mindless maid who gives sex to her master. I have a masters degree and I'm working on my PhD. I have a career and you better believe there is an equal division of labor in or household. Gasp I didn't even take my husband's last name when I got married.
While I don't consider being a military spouse a "job" it is by far the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. My husband is 3 months into a 12 month deployment and never in my life have I experienced anything this painful (and I've been through a lot of shit). Your degrading attitude is insulting and demeaning to all the spouses (both men and women) who have silently carried the burden of this bloody war.
As for servicemen marrying foreign women, I have friends and neighbors who have such marriages and none of them are master/slave, prostitute, maid service relationship that you seem to think categorize all military marriages. They all married for love. Some of the women have careers, some are stay at home moms, all by choice.
You asked why would you want to marry someone from a different culture. My question is why wouldn't you? What a shallow and narrow view to assume that you can only have a meaningful relationship with someone from your own culture. To that end you insulted every mixed culture/race marriage out there!
While I don't deny that marriages like that do happen you have no right to judge and assume by default that they are all that way.
Perhaps you missed all those places where he said that the marriages he was talking about are the ones entered into out of necessity rather than love. Something that I'm sure doesn't apply to you. He didn't caegorize all military marriages - that was YOU. In fact, he started out heis post by specifying the circumstances under which the marriages he's talking about come about.
And honey, just because your marriage is the toughest work you've ever done in your life, doesn't justify the clique thing with army wives all claiming they have the hardest job of all.
When your husband is at home he ain't in danger, he's only in danger when he's on active duty in a war zone. How about being married to a fire fighter? That one is ALWAYS on active duty. At anytime during your romantic dinner, your daughter's recital, you son's ball game that spouse can be called out with 5 minutes notice and you don't know if the next you'll see of him is his remains mangled by a collapsing burning building. Trust me, I know.
Sure soldiers can be called in at moments notice, too. But it's not that often the nation enters into military crisis that demands calling in all available troops. With fire fighters that statistic is significantly different.
I can't find the place where he's asking why you'd marry someone from a different culture. Maybe I'm just blind, or maybe it's once again you putting words in his mouth...
That fact that you know people who do not fit the bill Marc has an issue with does not make his arguments or his reality wrong or flawed. It merely means you haven'y seen, heard and exerenced the same things. Surely that is possible, or does your immediate surroundings represent everyone and his dog? And remember, Marc isn't the one generalizing, that's just you not reading half his post.
You seem like quite the martyr. Acting all antagonized when apparently nothing about you, your situation, nor the situation of your friends and acquaintances is the target of this post. Marc targets those whose marriages are not for love but for necessity/exploitation. If that doesn't apply why be so bitchy about it? Perhaps it does apply a little bit and you don't want to see it?
Nyeh, it's not my place to guess about your situation, and frankly I don't give a fuck, but your attack on Marc was completely ridiculous. You won't deny that the situation he describes does exist, you write, but at the same time you completely ignore that he also wrote it doesn't apply to all marriages. Did you just need someone random to vent some undefined anger at, and his post came by at a bad time?
Sad, sad, sad. Read before you attack, deary.
what I like about 3d wave feminism, then, is the way in which it has made us aware how 1st world women, feminists, too, are part and parcel of global systems of exploitation and symbolic violence. What we see as the degradation of 'their' women serves to prove our progressive feminist points. Global patriarchy is not perpetuated by western men alone - it is western women buying cheap clothing from china and condemning the Other woman for her own choices who are contributing to it's survival, too.
Becca - I don't apologize for you being offended. What I wrote and the picture I painted applied to a specific demographic, which the slave-master relationship is true. Remember - feminism isn't always about you.
I've seen good marriages and bad marriages in the military - and in the end, the ones where women come out with the raw end of the deal is when such marriages are based on convenience. If you're in love, then knock yourself out with being a military spouse - but do check your privilege, because while you may be enjoying your marriage by work, going to family readiness group meetings, having the autonomy as an American-educated women to do the things you do, other spouses may not be getting the chance to do the same.
As for the difference in culture - why marry someone with whom you have nothing in common? Perhaps it's just me, but I wouldn't want to marry someone who doesn't even speak my own language. Marriage is about sharing the same dreams and desires, and if you can't so much as communicate, it becomes kind of hard, huh? Marriage is about an exchange of many things, to include culture, and it becomes a one-way power play when the women of third-world nations are forced to learn our culture and ways of doing things, while at the same time, have to almost abadone their own cultures to fit in. Unless you're blind, you cannot deny how ethnocentric spouse support groups are on any military base.
Mix marriages? Again, don't read into things. I've never said anything about that.
Jemima - thanks for your defense - I much appreciate your viewing of the post from an unbiased viewpoint.
Ziggy - that's why I enjoy about third-wave feminism as well. Often, the criticism of our movement is that we do not have a focus, but given the injustices that take place around the world, it would be almost unfair to focus just on one issue. For me, the threats of Roe v. Wade being overturned is just as important as the Global Gag Rule.
Marc
Hello Marc,
I am a U.S. soldier married to a woman in Vietnam. I am 28 and my wife is 23. I had been married for 3 years. You do make some good points. My life is a life of ease, physical happiness, and the comfort of having somebody else around. I also want to have partnership with my wife as well, but not exactly sure of what you meant so I looked in the dictionary for the definition of partnership, and it says: A relationship between individuals or groups that is characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility, as for the achievement of a specified goal.
So I guess a partnership is a ‘shared goal’ that two people have in common. The only thing I can think of is that me and my wife wants to have a happy family, and a have comfortable life in the future and that we both are responsible for that in order for that to happen. However, the only way we are going to achieve this is through an interdependent relationship. I depend on her, she depend on me for our ‘shared goal’ of living happily in the U.S. Our emotional and psychological well beings are dependent upon each other. I do not know about other men, but I am not happy if my wife is not happy. My happiness depends on hers. Even though me and my wife have shared goals, not all of our goals are not the same, but even though my goals is not the same as her goals I am still willing to support hers goals, and she is willing to support mine’s.
You did asked a very interesting question: “Why a man would marry someone who does not share the cultural, beliefs, dreams and ambitions he does?” I cannot answer for everybody, but I can answer for myself. I became a different person in college when I was exposed to different kinds of people. I began to value what makes people different. I am interested in learning about other cultures and traditions. I am interested in learning different languages as well as visiting foreign lands. I like Vietnamese food, traditions, and culture. In addition, I find Asian women to be very attractive and exotic. Also, I was horny and decided that if I was going start having sex it is about time that I get married. Yes, sex is one of the reasons why I got married. Those are the various reasons why I married my wife.
My wife does not speak English. Before I married her I had to learn how to speak and write Vietnamese. It was a fun experience for me. I am fluent now, and was fluent before I married her. Me and my wife grew closer as my skills in Vietnamese improved. The experiences of her family, friends, young children, and strangers helping me learn how to speak the Vietnamese language is priceless. The experiences I had when I was exposed to the people, culture, and food in Vietnam is priceless. Me being interested in a woman completely different than me had taught me so many different things, and have expanded my horizons, my knowledge, my understanding beyond compare. I had read so much about Vietnamese culture, history, etc… but it was nothing compared to the actual experience of being married to a Vietnamese woman, traveling the country, living there, and making lifelong friends there. My wife is everything that I value and desire all at once: diversity. I love her. She has enriched my life beyond what words can say.