Brenda Barrientos on "Gendered Bodies and U.S. Wars"

Within this brief section of to the intro of Feminism and War, the various authors explore women's experiences within war and the relationship between military views towards their bodies and their utilization in warfare. Riley, Mohanty, and Pratt make a point to explore further how militaries - especially the U.S. military - claim to wage their wars in the defense of foreign women, but often end up becoming the instigators for their tragedies and utilize these women as tools to bolster their warfare, especially in media. 

The framework of war in other countries often takes on this dual perspective: where the U.S's soldiers sweep in as "saviors," and the foreign women of those target countries are victims of the cultures within those countries. It's a familiar justification, not too long ago cried by Bush for the Iraq War. In Western media, the authors remind us, these women are often depicted as helpless individuals, unable to save themselves from their situations at home without U.S intervention, despite evidence to the contrary where bombs have dropped down into towns and villages in Iraq and Syria. This pervasive notion of victimhood, tailored with both racism and colonialism, is meant as a way to motivate (i.e. gain support), to feminize 'terrorist' men (by using femininity synonymously with weakness), and to bolster the masculinity of U.S. male soldiers; and all for the end result of control over the target country once a form of victory is assured.

The authors bring up what we as a country have already seen multiple times in the past: a hero and a damsel in a wartime context, with typically white saviors and foreign victims unable to save themselves. This is the familiar framework of a single story: where when limited perspectives are told to explain a complicated and multifaceted reality, it'll remove the other stories connected to them and can lead up to the dangerous erasure of identities, and in this case, the removal of female agency.

The utilization of women's supposed helplessness or victimhood is a trademark strategy for the U.S. military, not only for organizing sympathy and support, but also for encouraging loyalty from its ranks of soldiers for the reasons mentioned above. While U.S media outlets neglect to actively portray foreign women resisting the conditions in their country - or even resisting U.S. notions of  their victimhood - nowadays, however, people are gradually becoming more outspoken, both inside and outside the country. The information is out there,  with real and native women rallying out against these blatant manipulations and slapping false labels on their persons.

In the act of erasing others voices, it is not always the other countries trying to silence these women; oftentimes, its the U.S - it's us - and shouldn't we talk more about how little often we hear about women's resistance and how the U.S manipulates their genders as weapons for warfare?