Another thing I want to talk about in addition to Band of Brothers more specifically and I will dabble into a little bit of the Vietnam war in this rant as well is something that never settled right with me when watching the band of Brothers series was the moment when they were shaving the French women's hair for being collaborators and I really want to talk about this.
When we think of the female collaborators or collaborators in general a lot of people think about people who help the Nazis identify Jews or Romani individuals gay individuals the list goes on. But in fact a lot of the female collaborators who were punished publicly for collaborating didn't do any of these crimes a lot of them slept with German men yes because they had no other way of obtaining necessities. I didn't really think about this or why it upsetted me up until the point that it became I believe a war crime for a man in the military of an occupying force to sleep with a woman, or vice versa female occupier male civilian, even consensually like 100% consensually in the country that he is occupying. It's considered rape or sexual assault because a woman cannot fully 100% consent to somebody if she is using sex that she doesn't necessarily want to have in exchange for goods or necessities to live. So basically you are using sex as a commodity in order to obtain food or medicine or shelter. Let me put it into perspective you are a 25-year-old French woman your husband is in the French army you have three children and France just surrendered to Nazi Germany. And because France just surrendered to Nazi Germany You have to live by the German rules and the German laws maybe your money isn't accepted your husband is a prisoner of war because he was in the French army and he fought against the Germans or maybe he's even dead you still have three kids to take care of You have to close them feed them give them medicine when they're sick and that is a very hard thing to accomplish when your country is under Nazi occupation or even occupation in general. Sure you could trade things with German soldiers in exchange for medicine or food but eventually you're going to run out of those goods to exchange so let's say you have a Ruby necklace and you exchange that for medicine for one of your children because they have the flu well you've used up all of that medicine which is something you've traded your ruby necklace for and now you don't have anything else to trade So what else do you give in order to obtain what you need? The answer is sex, because it is a commodity in which you possess that cannot necessarily be taken from you Yes you can still be raped but it cannot be stolen from you because it is attached to your person. It is a commodity that you can continuously trade in exchange for goods or necessities. It is something that you can always possess and have on you at any given point in time, unlike other goods that are difficult to carry especially if you're having to leave your house because it's been bombed out or you need to flee the country to be safe somewhere else it's lightweight you will always have it with you and you can continuously trade it. I'm not always are you trading sex in order to get necessities but possibly good favor so this way maybe You can continue to hide Jewish people or help the resistance in some way so this way they'll overlook you because oh this woman is having sex with me that means I trust her or maybe you're trading sex for information I know all of us have seen the propaganda of loose lips sink ships well when are a man's lips more loose than when he's getting his dick sucked? Because men want to look impressive to women because they want to get her attention and one of the ways they will do that is oh well I'm an officer in the German army I know all of this I know where our men are here's all this information hoping to get women. And that can be valuable.
Also if you look at a lot of the photos where there are shaving these women's heads to humiliate them and to basically say to the world hey these are collaborators look at how happy the men in those photos are You know why? Because they found somebody to blame for the exact same crimes they themselves were committing but because we place such heavier penalties on women who are sexually active or even victim blame women who are raped. we are more likely to punish women more severely for the same crimes that men who commit those same crimes are less likely to be punished for or be less severely be punished for. Also during times of war prostitution goes up it just skyrockets especially in countries that are being occupied. A prime example of this that comes straight off the top of my head is during the Vietnam war The United States for lack of a better term kidnapped a lot of women particularly Vietnamese women and women from the surrounding areas / countries and forced them to basically become comfort women for US soldiers. They took them under the guise of oh well we need models or we need nurses or any kind of job that would get them to leave their homes so this way they could take advantage of them. And then once they were raped and abused they tried to go home and they were allowed to but because of how the world views virginity and sex and everything these women were treated like criminals and like the scum of the earth their families and villages no longer wanted them so they had nowhere else to go. So what did they do? A lot of them became comfort women and prostitutes out of necessity because they no longer had a society or a country or a community that wanted them So out of necessity these women became prostitutes and did sex work because they had no other choice in order to keep themselves fed clothed and have access to health care.
Another thing too is any woman who had sex whether consensual or not with German soldier was tried as a collaborator or humiliated at the collaborator and that's just not fair to the women who were raped. I think a prime example of this was a video I was watching on YouTube several years back I can find the video if anybody is interested in it but it was on the focus of sex during world war II. One of the prime things that it focused on was Jewish women who were forced to become comfort women or prostitutes for German soldiers. Some of these women were actually tried after the war as collaborators and when they returned home a lot of people knew who they were and what had been done to them and treated them horribly as a result even though they had no choice what happened to them they had no more choice than the people who are going to concentration camps and being worked to death. In fact they were boarded in the same areas as other Jewish women who were forced laborers because they were prostitutes they were fed better and treated better because men want to look at something a little bit healthier than near death looking when they're raping them I guess. And as a result of them getting better treatment then these other women these other women would just go and physically assault them or try to kill them hurt them bully them exclude them and just treat them like shit even though these women had again no more choice than they had. It's the us versus you. You're angry and you can't lash out against the people who are forcing you to do this but you can lash out at the people that are getting better treatment than you especially when you think that they chose this job because they Believe in the ideals of the country of the men that they are forced to be with sexually. War is horrible for men having to kill people seeing people be killed everything that goes along with it but to be a woman in times of war is more deadly and more dangerous and a lot worse in my opinion than what happens to men. Women aren't really allowed to join their militaries or defend themselves women can be subject to the same torture and whores that men can be subjected to with the added fear of being raped or even being raped and the fear that comes with it after. The fear of people around you finding out and accusing you of being a collaborator or being a traitor a turncoat even though you didn't have a choice.
