“We went to Kineshma, that’s in Ivanovo region, to visit his parents. I went as a heroine and I never expected someone to welcome me, a front-line girl, like that. We’ve gone through so much, we’ve saved lives, lifes of mothers, wives. And then… I heard accusations, I was bad-mouthed. Before that I’ve only ever been “dear sister”… We had tea and my husband’s mother took him aside and started crying: “Who did you marry? A front-line girl… You have two younger sisters. Who’s going to marry them now?” When I think back to that moment I feel tears welling up. Imagine: I had a record, I loved it a lot. There was a song, it said: you have the right to wear the best shoes. That was about a front-line girl. I had it playing, and [his?] elder sister came up and broke it apart, saying: you have no rights. They destroyed all my photos from the war… We, front-line girls, went through so much during hte war… and then we had another war. Another terrible war. The men left us, they didn’t cover our backs. Not like at the front.” from С.Алексеевич “У войны не женское лицо”
In Soviet Union women participating in WWII were erased from history, remaining as the occasional anecdote of a female sniper or simply as medical staff or, at best, radio specialists. The word “front-line girl” (frontovichka) became a terrible insult, synonimous to “whore”. Hundreds thousand of girls who went to war to protect their homeland with their very lives, who came back injured or disabled, with medals for valor, had to hide it to protect themselves from public scorn.
This has always happened in history: Women do something important. Then they get shamed for it (so nobody will talk about it) and it gets erased from history.
And then certain men will say: “Women suck, they’ve never done anything important.”
Look into history and learn that women have played a far greater role then douches (present and past) wanted you to know.
This reminds me of how Egyptian women, who participated in Arab Spring protests in great numbers and were critical to the revolution that ousted Mubarak’s regime, have only been treated with great disdain and violence for their passion and work.
http://www.impowr.org/forum/current-events/after-arab-spring-womens-rights-egypt
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ida-lichter-md/womens-rights-arab-spring_b_1169821.html
Remember that time I made a post reminding people that okaying women for front-line combat is not the beginning of women fighting in wars, but only the beginning of men finally realizing we weren’t going to shut up about it? Remember after I posted that some dudebro came into my inbox and tried to claim I was wrong and that only a few “rogue women” were fighters?
Again, we have fought in every conflict and every war since the beginning of time. We’re the ones most likely to be victims of war crimes so you better fucking believe we fight for our homes, our people, our lives.
We fight alongside men and help them, save them, die for them as battle buddies and they turn around and write us out of their histories. They erase our efforts, our sacrifices, our deaths.
(via khalrhaego)
