[Gendergap] More Dangerous to be a Woman Than a Soldier

[Chris Keating]

On the whole I think our military history articles aren't great at dealing
with sexual violence, on a number of dimensions.

For instance, there was a large amount of well-documented rape and sexual
mutiliation of Vietnamese women by U.S. forces in Vietnam, but the Vietnam
War article doesn't cover this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Women_in_Vietnam

You will be relieved to know that is has more paragraphs devoted to the
American nurses who served in Vietnam than to anything about Vietnamese
women. Apparently this is because, on the American side at least, "many men
reported that having women in the field with them boosted their
morale. Although
this was not the women’s purpose, it was one positive result of the their
service."

I'm sure you'll agree that a bit of morale-boosting is far more worthy of
comment than other services provided by nurses, e.g. medical care.

Sexual violence by Americans in Vietnam is also missing from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_rape - though of course that article does
adequately cover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women - evidently rape
is better-covered when it is Asians doing the raping rather than being
raped. One wonders why.

;-)
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