Check for web archive captures
Military Image Making and Cultural Values
By lindamuralidharan on 2010-09-25 18:22:00
A long time ago, I decided that people who unquestioningly accept a religion, any religion, that depends on an all powerful
male authoritarian head, has implications for how women are treated in society and in the family. If the only model you
know is that males are supreme, it easy for you, male or female to fall in line with the dictum that the male is the head of the
family and both adult wife and minor children must be obedient. I was raised with that line of thinking and that oft
repeatedphrase, "who wears the pants in that family?". If it was perceived that a woman made more decisions than the man
did, that was a pejorative term. If my dad used it for himself and claimed he wore the pants, it was a compliment. Note:
actual, literal "pants" or trousers were worn much less frequently by women in my dad's era than is the case today. Many
women, including my mother and I suffered to one degree or another, form this type of role model presentation. For one
thing, it meant that as women we were automatically "less than", less capable in a worldly sense, and less entitled to have a
say in domestic or public affairs. Let me hasten to add here, that my parents had a dysfunctional relationship but also one
that was based on love and openness (pretty much) despite the fact that the love was often expressed in misguided and
confusing ways. There was no major physical violence (the kids were spanked but not beaten and the adults never, ever hit
each other.) There were however serious emotional consequences. As in my family, boys have often been raised with extra
privileges, girls often have had to struggle harder for self-esteem, equal rights, and a variety of opportunities. Boys grew up
thinking might makes right and with a sense of extra burden that they would have to be not only good bread winners but also
the total strength of the family. Both men and women were too often denied the benefits of the sharing of the load, the
sharing of decisions, the sharing of opportunities. Somewhere along the line I concluded that influences flow in the opposite
direction also. Ifa young child only knows an authoritarian, punishing parent, that child may perceive his or her divine
"father" in a similar light. It leads to children feeling more comfortable in religions where the main divinity is wrathful and
punishing if you are not "good" all the time. Of course, nobody is good all the time so this experience produces a lot of
guilt, shame and anxiety that the psychiatric and psychological professions profit from greatly. Thus, there is a perpetuating
circle of one result back to the other and back again to the other or original causation. We have read a lot about young men
who join the military because they were looking for that external authority. Perhaps, this person did not have an engaged
father figure of any kind and sought the simplest solution, the authority and structure of the military as a surrogate
father....especially since society encourages that kind of authoritarian, rigid, punishing kind of value...the society that has so
many authoritarian families and authoritarian religions. Many Christian sects still preach that the man must be head of the
household and the woman must obey. Jewish groups have put up much resistance to women having clerical roles. Perhaps
some young people joining the military in search of structure and external authority did have engaged, authoritarian parents
(and, yes, of course in many cases women exercise the controlling power in the home whether admitted or not) and have
never learned to depend on their own consciences and internal controls. Sometimes people only feel comfortable with more
of the same. We know that many abused children want desperately to return to the abusing parent even after being
temporarily removed from such a home. I just stumbled on a book by an author who extends some of these thoughts a little
further. Itis The Wars We Inherit, Military Life, Gender Violence and Memory, by Lori Amy. She is looking at it from the
generation to generation childhood trajectory that leads to forms of adult violence, an inflated view of military experience,
and back again to the next generation's children. We know already that issues we don't even remember consciously from
childhood can influence our need to seek dysfunctional adult relationships or to act out in various ways. Sometimes we
become unwitting victims of further abuse, sometimes we become unwitting perpetrators. Using research within the military,
her own memory of living on military bases (both her husband and her father were career military people), current
neuroscience research and well known and effective behavioral theories, she puts out the idea that there is a connection
between unhealed childhood wounds and our build up of the military (to overwhelming proportions) in our own country. Of
course it seems the more we glorify and build the more we seem to think we ought to use it. It is now even common for
people to speak of "perpetual" war. Unfortunately, I can't do this theory or the book justice here. One more time, the reader
of this blog is urged to check out the book for her or himself. Amy states that her father claimed his happiest times were
when he was away from the family, away from mundane life and fighting in either Korea or Vietnam. He even re-enlisted at
one point after being in civilian life for a couple of years and running into some family difficulties that apparently involved
law enforcement. He found refuge in the military at that point and later, after retirement, he often claimed he wished he
were back fighting in Vietnam. The actual abuse he perpetuated on various family members when he did live with them on
a base or after her took them during retirement on a namadic existence around Florida, ran the gamut from forms of
physical abuse to emotional abuse. The book examines Amy's and her father's respective dysfunctional childhoods. She
shows his lack of ability to access any therapeutic healing for his own traumas and how they continued to affect many
people in his adult life. The ultimate theme of the book is to explore "the relationship between violence in the home and the
way we organize our culture." Poverty, racism, homophobia, educational inequality...these are among the institutional or
structural forms of violence and may be more subtle, may fly beneath the radar by contrast to the overt violence of wars or
riots or work place shootings or the high incidence of violent felonies committed against family members. Amy also points
out that domestic violence cases are three times the rate in the military than are found in civilian life. She uses her
experience and documentation to pose the theory that the trauama a child receives in a home maybe be bottled up, may be
"forgotten", except in the unconscius. The eventual adult may have no idea later why he or she repeats a pattern of
exploitive relationships (whether with an employer like the military...you do recall stop loss and lack of body armor, I
presume...or in personal relationships). Or it may be the grown child dosne't understand why he strikes out and exploits or
abuses others in his or her environment. Amy cites many examples of gratuitous violence committed by military
personnel...customs of hazing with sexual overtones din some units, the pictures her father kept from his war years of Asian
women being tortured and raped, Abu Ghraib..to explain how the military may provide a "safe" place for childhood traumas
to be replayed over and over again. She emphasizes also that the hypermasculinization of the American male...boys don't
cry, must not show your soft side, and so forth...encourages men to suppress some of the feelings they need to deal with to
get to a mentally healthier place and encourages the media and the public to idolize the "hero", the strong silent type, the
buff...at least insofar as "image" goes. It becomes thus harder and harder to speak out in public and say that there are other
ways to approach conflict, other ways to seek identity, other ways to develop a demanding career than by joining a killing
machine. Well, Amy posits no villains. I agree with her that it is up to all of us to look at the issues of authoritarian
religions, or social customs. To look at the ways we harm female and male children. It is certainly intuitively resonant for
me when she talks about how armies of all kinds use rape as a means of solidifying gains and touting superiority. Our
culture is pretty ambivalent...we know rapes are committed by American military personnel on various victims and in
various settings but we don't allow the kind of acknowledgement that goes on in places like the Congo. And, in truth, the
incidence is smaller among Americans than among some other groups around the world. However, it also resonates with
me when Amy says that shooting a gun can have the same emotional release as rape (the latter being an aggressive, not a
sexual, act). Where do we start, then? Everywhere. Some of us will continue to point out the unnecessarily large size of
our military in practical terms. Some will speak up for the peace activists and the diplomats. Some will point to the
counterproductive features of our current military adventures and ask for an analysis of how these mistakes were made and
can be avoided in the future. Some of us will question our parenting styles and messages sent to kids via TV that may
encourage stereotyping of self or others (including the stereotyping of gender roles). Some of us will do more to be sure
there is adequate treatment for PTSD whether it began in childhood or began during exposure to war time violence. A few
will look inward and begin our own process of healing.
