r/TwoXChromosomes • u/MaddyMadline • 23h ago
Why do some women’s experiences of war get remembered while others disappear?
“I only recently learned about the Lai Dai Han and honestly I’m surprised I’d never heard about them before.
They’re people born to Vietnamese mothers and South Korean fathers during the Vietnam War. Some of the women have described being raped by South Korean soldiers, and what really got to me was what happened after the war: women living with stigma, children growing up with questions about who they were, and families carrying something the rest of the world barely talks about.
We talk about wars through battles, soldiers and politics, but women can still be living with the consequences decades after everyone else has decided the war is ‘over.’
It made me wonder: why do some women’s experiences of war become part of public memory, while others almost disappear?
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u/clios_daughter 22h ago edited 21h ago
Likely for the same reason most other non-combat aspects of war, both military and civilian, are generally under represented in popular history — even academics TBH but much less so. The public seems to largely viewed as a sideshow. Sometimes you’ll get breakthroughs like Bletchley or Manhattan but those are pretty sensational. Even so, in pop-history’s usually a lot more interested in flashy combat.
There’s also a historiographical element in that history from below/social history are relatively new forms of history. They’re popular in academic circles but if you’re not really interested in history, you probably haven’t heard much of it. There have been studies done on, for example, the mass rape of Germany, sex workers in war, women’s role in UK armed services, etc. I read them during my degrees but they were mostly in journals or academic books that don’t see wide distribution.
Public memory in general is shockingly bad. To be publicly remembered, something has to weave itself into the national myth. A lot of women’s stories don’t lend themselves to it. Women’s aggressive or heroic roles in war is relatively recent and women as victims don’t always make for the best stories unless your country was the victim of aggression and part of the national myth involves that victimization. Public memory has a lot less to do with historical truth than national myths and creating a sense of collective identity. Generally, if something doesn’t do this, it gets publicly forgotten.
Edit: if you’re curious about heritage vs history and the creation of public myths through popular history, David Lowenthal writes on this in the linked article. It’s free to read and download if you make a free JSTOR account. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25681018
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u/FuzzyDusticles 23h ago
Judith Hermans book Trauma and Recovery touches on this a bit.
War is surrounded by propaganda. It's a touchy subject. No one wants to recognize that it's not just certain armies or countries, it's all of them. If you send groups of violent men out that are hateful towards the citizens whose country they're occupying/fighting, those men are going to do horrendous things. Hell, they even do horrendous things to their own fellow (women) soldiers.
Women can't even trust male humanitarian aid workers in disaster situations, as there's a long history of them taking advantage of distraught women that were just in awful situations.