User:LogansPop22/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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women under arms and in female battalions, for example, took part in the defense of Madrid in November of 1936 (Coleman 48).</blockquote>

But once the crises of the first six months or so had passed and the militias were increasingly professionalized as the Popular Front army (this so-called militarization a micro-version of the historical professionalization of armies in the nineteenth century), the Republican leadership moved quickly to discourage women from functioning at the front lines as soldiers—notably, not so much for their own comfort or safety, but that of the male soldiers: ~~“Re- publican~~ soldiers were uncomfortable with the miliciana. For the most part, men expected milicianas to do kitchen and laundry duties and to act as nurses” (Coleman 49). One International Brigade soldier, for example, was “infuriated” by a women’s battalion that was fighting before the Segovia Bridge, for “women at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republican side” (Thomas 322, n. l). Because such responses testified to male embarrassment and threatened the destruction of male morale, Republican officials launched a propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Men to the front / Women to the home front” (quoted by Coleman 49).

But once the crises of the first six months or so had passed and the militias were increasingly professionalized as the Popular Front army (this so-called militarization a micro-version of the historical professionalization of armies in the nineteenth century), the Republican leadership moved quickly to discourage women from functioning at the front lines as soldiers—notably, not so much for their own comfort or safety, but that of the male soldiers: “Republican soldiers were uncomfortable with the ''miliciana''. For the most part, men expected ''milicianas'' to do kitchen and laundry duties and to act as nurses” (Coleman 49). One International Brigade soldier, for example, was “infuriated” by a women’s battalion that was fighting before the Segovia Bridge, for “women at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republican side” (Thomas 322, n. l). Because such responses testified to male embarrassment and threatened the destruction of male morale, Republican officials launched a propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Men to the front / Women to the home front” (quoted by Coleman 49).

The Republican propaganda effort had a harsher side as well, the ''milicianas'' soon publicly redefined as prostitutes who endangered the army by transmitting sexual diseases. Allen Guttmann notes that the contemporary British and American publics were “fascinated by the females who fought {{pg|378|379}} with the Spanish militia in the early days of the war” (11), and he notes the pornographic combination of sex and violence in the overheated press descriptions of the ''milicianas'' as “Red Amazons, many of them actually stripped to the waist, carrying modern rifles, and with blood in their eye,” and as “supple-hipped Carmens of the Revolution, [who] for want of roses, toss bombs as they whirl”(quoted by Guttmann 11, 12). Hemingway offers a variation on this perspective in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': “The twenty-three-year-old mistress [of the Republican officer] was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as ''milicianas'' in the July of the year before” (399).

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 women under arms and in female battalions, for example, took part in the defense of Madrid in November of 1936 (Coleman 48).</blockquote>
-But once the crises of the first six months or so had passed and the militias were increasingly professionalized as the Popular Front army (this so-called militarization a micro-version of the historical professionalization of armies in the nineteenth century), the Republican leadership moved quickly to discourage women from functioning at the front lines as soldiers—notably, not so much for their own comfort or safety, but that of the male soldiers: “Re- publican soldiers were uncomfortable with the miliciana. For the most part, men expected milicianas to do kitchen and laundry duties and to act as nurses” (Coleman 49). One International Brigade soldier, for example, was “infuriated” by a women’s battalion that was fighting before the Segovia Bridge, for “women at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republican side” (Thomas 322, n. l). Because such responses testified to male embarrassment and threatened the destruction of male morale, Republican officials launched a propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Men to the front / Women to the home front” (quoted by Coleman 49).
+But once the crises of the first six months or so had passed and the militias were increasingly professionalized as the Popular Front army (this so-called militarization a micro-version of the historical professionalization of armies in the nineteenth century), the Republican leadership moved quickly to discourage women from functioning at the front lines as soldiers—notably, not so much for their own comfort or safety, but that of the male soldiers: “Republican soldiers were uncomfortable with the ''miliciana''. For the most part, men expected ''milicianas'' to do kitchen and laundry duties and to act as nurses” (Coleman 49). One International Brigade soldier, for example, was “infuriated” by a women’s battalion that was fighting before the Segovia Bridge, for “women at the battle seemed to him the final degradation of the Republican side” (Thomas 322, n. l). Because such responses testified to male embarrassment and threatened the destruction of male morale, Republican officials launched a propaganda campaign whose slogan was “Men to the front / Women to the home front” (quoted by Coleman 49).
 The Republican propaganda effort had a harsher side as well, the ''milicianas'' soon publicly redefined as prostitutes who endangered the army by transmitting sexual diseases. Allen Guttmann notes that the contemporary British and American publics were “fascinated by the females who fought {{pg|378|379}} with the Spanish militia in the early days of the war” (11), and he notes the pornographic combination of sex and violence in the overheated press descriptions of the ''milicianas'' as “Red Amazons, many of them actually stripped to the waist, carrying modern rifles, and with blood in their eye,” and as “supple-hipped Carmens of the Revolution, [who] for want of roses, toss bombs as they whirl”(quoted by Guttmann 11, 12). Hemingway offers a variation on this perspective in ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'': “The twenty-three-year-old mistress [of the Republican officer] was having a baby, as were nearly all the other girls who had started out as ''milicianas'' in the July of the year before” (399).