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NOV 4: WOMEN IN THE MILITARY: Trauma Inside and Out
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More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine."
Those words from the leaf of a stunning book, The Lonely Soldier, by Helen Benedict, and describing the still-burning issues that shame our military and civilian attitudes toward women serving in the military - both highlighted in two coming performances of At War with Women, starring and about Chante Wolf, in St. Paul – one on Veterans Day(Nov 11) at Hamline University's Sundin Hall, the other Friday the 13th at Macalester College’s Weyerhaeuser Memorial Chapel - revealing the traumas women soldiers and veterans suffer in and after combat and military service.*
PTSD - combat and otherwise - are often no different from those of the military men we hear about all the time, themselves often forced to suck it up rather than seek assistance for their nightmares and the violence memories trigger with little warning in the middle of the night. Add the dimensions of sexual predation and humiliation by combat comrades and the recipe is disaster.
TTT's ANDY DRISCOLL and LYNNELL MICKELSEN talk with a woman veteran, author Helen Benedict and another advocate in search of deeper and wider understanding of the plight of women in the military.
GUESTS:
• CHANTE WOLF - US Air Force Veteran, Persian Gulf War; Veterans for Peace activist and Photographer
• HELEN BENEDICT - Author, The Lonely Soldier (nonfiction); The Edge of Eden (fiction) - both about military women/families
• ESTHER OURAY - Director, At War with Women; Associate Artist/Puppeteer, Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre; advocate for art working on peace and justice issues.
*No website is available for this beyond the play venues
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