Events such as the 1991 Tailhook debacle have been seized upon and used by feminists to attack the military culture and bring about major concessions.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There comes a point in nearly every book event I've done when a little feminist revolt stirs inside the crowd.
In Afghanistan, we have had a history of very strong women, and we need to reclaim that history and talk about it.
Feminists are in an untenable position, defending something they no longer believe in, and which history will force them to recognize was destructive of most of the central pillars of civilization. I'm just the first one to point it out publicly.
Putting women in military combat is the cutting edge of the feminist goal to force us into an androgynous society.
The fact that the movement was carried on by women who, for the most part, had no money of their own and were totally inexperienced in organization, and that they won their fight in about two generations, makes a story often dramatic and always worth preserving.
We are so used to seeing women as victims of war to be pitied rather than survivors of war to be respected.
Like their personal lives, women's history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.
There are these moments in the military where you're present at these enormous intersections of history and humanity. I came out of the end of that, and I just wanted to write. If you do it well, you know it will last. It can't get blown away like everything else.
I can see quite clearly that if there was a single event that launched me on the road to ultimate involvement at the heart of South African politics, it was an assault on an African woman by her white employer in a kitchen in Fort Hare.
In the business of war, the role of women is really to maintain normalcy and ensure that there is cultural continuity.