Maria

Here’s an excerpt of her book if you’re interested….

Maneuvers takes readers on a global tour of the sprawling process called “militarization.” With her incisive verve and moxie, eminent feminist Cynthia Enloe shows that the people who become militarized are not just the obvious ones–executives and factory floor workers who make fighter planes, land mines, and intercontinental missiles. They are also the employees of food companies, toy companies, clothing companies, film studios, stock brokerages, and advertising agencies. Militarization is never gender-neutral, Enloe claims: It is a personal and political transformation that relies on ideas about femininity and masculinity. Films that equate action with war, condoms that are designed with a camouflage pattern, fashions that celebrate brass buttons and epaulettes, tomato soup that contains pasta shaped like Star Wars weapons–all of these contribute to militaristic values that mold our culture in both war and peace.Presenting new and groundbreaking material that builds on Enloe’s acclaimed work in Does Khaki Become You? and Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, Maneuvers takes an international look at the politics of masculinity, nationalism, and globalization. Enloe ranges widely from Japan to Korea, Serbia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Britain, Israel, the United States, and many points in between. She covers a broad variety of subjects: gays in the military, the history of “camp followers,” the politics of women who have sexually serviced male soldiers, married life in the military, military nurses, and the recruitment of women into the military. One chapter titled “When Soldiers Rape” explores the many facets of the issue in countries such as Chile, the Philippines, Okinawa, Rwanda, and the United States.Enloe outlines the dilemmas feminists around the globe face in trying to craft theories and strategies that support militarized women, locally and internationally, without unwittingly being militarized themselves. She explores the complicated militarized experiences of women as prostitutes, as rape victims, as mothers, as wives, as nurses, and as feminist activists, and she uncovers the “maneuvers” that military officials and their civilian supporters have made in order to ensure that each of these groups of women feel special and separate.

Question: what do you mean by “militarized prostitution at the border”? I know TJ was a hot spot for soldiers stationed at Camp Pendleton to party, but is there more to the story?

By the way, the Cuarta Feria Tijuana en la Historia started today at CECUT.

Regards,
Aaron

Specifically in times of war, Tijuana and other Mexican border towns such as Ciudad Juarez also experienced great booms, as a direct result of their proximity to U.S. military bases. We have examples of this during WWII, Vietnam with militarized prostitution at the border…

Why is this important? Because it illustrates the importance of physical space that allows for these activities to occur…

Although prostitution occurs all over the country and all over the world, its important to understand the historical connection between Tijuana and the U.S. Precisely because of Tijuana’s proximity to the U.S. and the possibility of earning dollars without having to migrate to the United States, the red-light district functions as a vacuum that continues to attract young women from Mexico’s interior and from other parts of Latin America….

Its a very complex issue, with many ways to analyze it…

@peter fox sullivan: I think you missed the point of the article. This isn’t a how-to guide.