Friday News: On Women
Publishing Newscooking / gender / literary awards / Nobel Prize / non-fiction / quarantine / sex / sexism / shame / social media / STDs / stereotypes / war / women9 Comments
Awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich is a bold decision – I like this piece by Arifa Akbar because it focuses on the way Alexievich’s win “recalibrates the status of ‘non-fiction’ in the literary canon. I agree that there remains a perception that non-fiction is somehow less artistic than fiction, and that whatever it takes to write a beautifully written and researched book of non-fiction is substantively different from what it takes to write a work of fiction, even if it’s not beautifully written and researched. And that Alexievich’s win challenges that perspective:
The New Yorker writer, Philip Gourevitch, wrote an article on Alexievich last year entitled “Non fiction deserves a Nobel” in which he criticised the fact that it had been more than 50 years since a non-fiction writer had been distinguished by the academy.
He argued that this was due to an elitist and artificial separation between fiction and non-fiction. “There is a kind of lingering snobbery in the literary world that wants to exclude non-fiction from the classification of literature – to suggest that somehow it lacks artistry, or imagination, or invention by comparison to fiction.” – The Independent
During World War II, Sex Was a National-Security Threat – It’s probably no surprise to learn that during World War II, female sex workers (and let’s face it: all women) were seen as “polluted” and “polluting” to men, so much so that women could be quarantined against their will and basically forced to undergo treatment for, among other things, syphilis. Despite habeas corpus petitions arguing that the detention was unlawful, these quarantine were upheld by the courts and the U.S. government actually created an entire agency — the Social Protection Division — to focus on “prostitutes” and the “danger” they posed to male U.S. soldiers during the war.
Technically speaking, the “it” referred to sexually transmitted diseases, which the government had recently declared to be “military saboteur number one.” In practice, though, the real saboteurs were considered to be the women who carried them. Over the course of the United States’ involvement in World War II, federal authorities detained hundreds of women in quarantine centers across the country, determined to protect the country’s fighting men from sex workers and other women who flocked to the towns that housed army bases, known as “Khaki Wackies,” “good-time Charlottes,” “camp followers,” and—in a portmanteau coined by a the U.S. Public Health Service—“patriotutes.” – The Atlantic
The Public Shaming of Chrissie Hynde – I generally avoid using the same publication twice in a news post, but I’m making an exception today because the previous piece on women, sex, and shame resonates through Sophie Gilbert’s article on the backlash against Chrissie Hynde’s comments on sexual assault and the general resistance to nuanced discussion of any issue that tends to catalyze anger online. First to Hynde’s remarks, I was shocked and pretty horrified by them myself (she even refused to classify her own sexual assault as rape), although I’m reading her book (actually listening to Rosanna Arquette’s narration of it), and it’s a complicated narrative, one that resists easy judgments about both Hynde’s actions and her perspective.
However, Gilbert raises some good questions around where we draw the line between “advocacy” and “self-gratification.” At what point do our judgments, especially about other women, becoming their own kind of morality policing? Especially when a woman who does not fit easily into a certain “Box” is at issue. Although I wish people would stop invoking Jon Ronson, especially when he makes a comment like the one below about democracy. Because he’s dead wrong – democracy is the often clumsy, even brutal domination of the majority. Which is why some legal scholars are quick to point out that the U.S. is a “constitutional democracy,” a system that is supposed to protect the political rights of the minority. Whether or not that’s always been achieved. On social media, it can go either way – boosting the volume of a particularly vocal minority or claiming the all-powerful will of the majority.
Wayne cites a study conducted at Beihang University in 2013, which found that anger spreads more easily than any other emotion on social media, and considerably more rapidly than joy, the next most viral emotion. The study also mentions homophily, or the social phenomenon wherein groups of like-minded people band together, validating each other’s ideas and supporting each other’s reactions and feelings. On social media, this encourages ferocity and discourages nuance, particularly when thoughts are limited to 140 characters. “Twitter is basically a mutual approval machine,” Ronson said in a TED Talk in June. “We surround ourselves with people who feel the same way we do, and we approve each other, and that’s a really good feeling. And if somebody gets in the way, we screen them out. And do you know what that’s the opposite of? It’s the opposite of democracy.” – The Atlantic
Interview: Ruth Reichl on identity, Twitter and her new book, “My Kitchen Year” – I’ve always been a big fan of Ruth Reichl’s memoirs, in large part because I think she does a good job of translating what is intensely personal into something much bigger. And her comments about having to re-establish her own identity after the folding of Gourmet Magazine are very interesting. But reading this interview in the context of the piece on Hynde also got me thinking about different patterns of interaction we see on social media, especially Twitter. You can get people to bond in a heartbeat over recipes and restaurants and their favorite dishes. It’s like the anti-outrage machine. Not quite as good as puppies and other cute animals, but close. And given the fact that it’s often women having these discussions, it’s kind of an interesting phenomenon.
Twitter has played a big role in your life, and you chose to weave many of your tweets into this story. How did having that audience make working on this book different from your others?
I didn’t realize how important Twitter was to me until the day the magazine closed. I got this outpouring of support from the community. And I realized, I’m not alone in this. And then later, there we are in rural New York, half the time snowed in, the electricity would go out and the only thing working was my iPhone. It was like, ‘Oh my god, I can still ask a question about cooking.’ One time when the power went out I had just made bread dough, and the oven went out. I would have thrown it away, but instead I posted the question on twitter and everyone wrote back, ‘No! Just keep punching it down!’ It’s amazing, no matter where you are, you’re not alone. – Indie Scoop SF
IIRC, a big part of why the government quarantined the women was simply to keep the men away from them. The government wanted the army ‘on their feet,’ not fighting STDs which kept them out of the war, especially closer to the end as new recruits/draftees were much harder to come by. The government thought if they kept the men away, they would remain healthier and in better fighting shape. I’M NOT SAYING I CONDONE THIS! This is just a very brief explanation to a very complicated issue they were faced with. It wasn’t just the war overseas. Over 10,000 men were discharged during WWII due to debilitating STDs. Was it the ideal solution? Where there’s a will, there’s a way and people will always find a way around things, but probably at the time, they felt it was the best solution.
For a slightly different view of the aforementioned WWII situation: My dad was fresh off a Pennsylvania farm in 1940 and wanting to be a pilot. He joined the Army Air Corps and was stationed at Chanute Field in Illinois. One medical exam later and he finds that he is colorblind, a condition he did not know he had. To him, certain shades of gray were called red by other people; other shades were green. That said, the service gave him two choices: go back to the farm or stay six weeks until a mechanic school began.
In no way was he going home, so he opted to train as an airplane mechanic. But they had to do something with him for 6 weeks and he was assigned to the camp doctor as his driver. They toured through the countryside and the doc would visit farmhouses. A few weeks into this, he asked my dad if he, my dad, knew what the doc was doing. Daddy claims he did not. The doc was making, to quote my dad, “whore house rounds” to make sure the women were healthy. Then he took Daddy in and Daddy never would tell me what he saw.
Just another view of it.
And some of the folk giving these orders probably remembered the problems from WWI. For British soldiers during that war, they received a message from Lord Kitchener: “You are sure to meet a welcome and to be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust.
“Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound, so keep constantly on your guard against any excesses.
“In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women.
“You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.”
According to one article I found, about 5% of British forces in WWI were admitted for treatment of VD, a fact which probably wasn’t lost on American officials. Absolutely not condoning this treatment, but they probably remembered those facts, looked at the women converging on the camps and reacted in the way they thought fastest, easiest and most efficient without a thought to the women. Didn’t always work — the infamous Chicken Ranch in LaGrange, TX was apparently quite profitable during WWII, and there were military bases in reasonable distance.
Thanks for the piece on the Nobel Prize. Some of the best, most moving, most artful books I’ve read in recent years have been non-fiction, and not just memoirs or personal essays but works of history too. I want to track down that Philip Gourevitch article now. And get ahold of Alexievich’s book on nostalgia for the Soviet Union when it comes out–that sounds fascinating. But “Sveltana”? The Independent should be embarrassed (they spelled it correctly some of the time).
Both the Atlantic articles really annoyed me. I thought the WWII one sacrificed any nuanced historical understanding to a chance to call out slut-shaming (and to be clear, I think you can do both–this piece didn’t, though).
And about the Chrissie Hynde one, can’t we distinguish between criticizing her general comments on sexual assault and thinking we know better than she does how to define a personal experience she’s had four decades to think about? When will I be too old to determine my own understandings of my life, and have to defer to a younger, better-informed generation (I’m sure my kids think I’m already there)? Or does my use of social media spare me this fate and keep me up to date? Obviously I’m already old and cranky enough to read that piece as condescending and ageist.
@Liz Mc2: I was way more aggravated by the piece on Hynde, in part because for the other article I honed right in on the legalities around how women were detained and forced to submit to medical treatment. Could an analysis comparing some of these cases to Hamdi or Padilla be possible? What kind of detention are we talking here? I knew, of course, about the STD issues, but did not know about the detentions. Although I agree with you that the piece was not particularly substantive.
Re. Hynde, I am so glad I’m actually reading her book, because I do think a lot of her experience is generationally shaped, and when you read about her upbringing, and the fact that she actually waited to write the book until her parents were dead (she was afraid of disappointing them – a persistent theme in the book, in fact), I had such a better understanding of where she was coming from.
Also, someone messaged me that the Independent has fixed the spelling in the title – maybe they saw your comment, lol.
@theo: Heh, it’s said that during WWI, more British men were in hospital for VD than for battle wounds! By the time the US went “over there,” the handbooks given to recruits had discreet chapters about not catching VD.
“Although Trench Foot has come to symbolise the squalor of the conflict in the popular imagination, a man was more than five times as likely to end up in hospital suffering from Syphilis or Gonorrhoea.
While almost never fatal, venereal cases required on average a month of intensive hospital treatment. The greatest number of venereal patients in hospital at any one time in 1918 was estimated to be 11,000 (ibid.: 75) – enough men to supply the effectives of a division. VD caused a huge and preventable drain on the army’s resources, but all too often, military counter-measures were poorly conceived or hampered by moral objections from home.” – http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/body-and-mind/the-british-army%E2%80%99s-fight-against-venereal-disease-in-the-%E2%80%98heroic-age-of-prostitution%E2%80%99/
Before penicillin, syphilis was very difficult to cure. I think what the Gov’t didn’t really, really didn’t want was soldiers returning home with VD and their wives having children with birth defects, or becoming infertile, or otherwise affecting normal home life.
The problem with Hynde is reach and propagation and as a consequence propaganda.
If Jane Doe says something that silly and reactionary to her neighbours at the local coffee party. all that happens are potentially negatively impacted neighbours and Jane might never get an invitation again. Especially if one or more of the neighbours are survivors themselves.
If Chrissie Hynde does it, she impacts several generations of young women *and* men who’re already heavily steeped in the rape culture of the current reactionary backswing in our societies. She influences and supports (victimizers) not just some 8 or 10 people, she does so to millions.
I firmly believe in there being a responsibility attached to making such statements to such a wide audience. She may and clearly does dislike being held to that responsibility, but she can’t sell me she’s too dumb to be aware of it.
Then you had that “don’t talk to pretty women” poster series during WW2: https://intimesgoneby.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/misogynistic-sexist-1940s-ww2-poster-british.jpg