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Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era
Beyond Combat investigates how the Vietnam War both reinforced and challenged the gender roles that were key components of American Cold War ideology. While popular memory of the Vietnam War centers on the “combat moment,” refocusing attention onto women and gender paints a more complex and accurate picture of the war's far-reaching impact beyond the battlefields. Encounters between Americans and Vietnamese were shaped by a cluster of intertwined images used to make sense of and justify American intervention and use of force in Vietnam. These images included the girl next door, a wholesome reminder of why the United States was committed to defeating Communism; the treacherous and mysterious “dragon lady,” who served as a metaphor for Vietnamese women and South Vietnam; the John Wayne figure, entrusted with the duty of protecting civilization from savagery; and the gentle warrior, whose humanitarian efforts were intended to win the favor of the South Vietnamese. Heather Stur also examines the ways in which ideas about masculinity shaped the American GI experience in Vietnam and, ultimately, how some American men and women returned from Vietnam to challenge homefront gender norms.
278 pages, Hardcover
First published September 30, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 24, 2025
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research
May 19, 2021⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I'm going to be labelling the books I'm using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.
November 9, 2017
Started out from a dissertation defense, Stur transformed the project into Beyond Combat, a well-researched book that investigates how American perception of the gendered images during the Cold War period explains and justifies American intervention in the Vietnam. The theme throughout this book aims at illuminating the different ways the ideology of manhood and womanhood permeated the decisions and policies made for Vietnam and shaped how the events of and in the war turned out.
Beyond Combat is extensively researched and curated from various types of resources: archive in universities, government publications, newspaper and periodicals, personal interviews, authored books, and many other accounts of memoirs. As a collection of essays, Beyond Combat introduces a cluster of stereotyped gender images that the U.S. imposed or entitled to both men and women during the period so as to make sense of the reason for Vietnam War. These images, however, did not reflect the reality of the war in Vietnam and the home front in the U.S. As a consequence, the people involved in the war during the time faced and witnessed the irreconcilable tension of the war that could not be masked by gendered images.
The images discussed in the book are the girl next door and John Wayne, the reminder of the American power and civilization that the soldiers had to fight for; the dragon lady, the metaphor implying the mysterious and treacherous Vietnamese women and South Vietnam; and the gentle warriors, the image of American men in an effort to gain support from the South Vietnam. The structure of the book went from the U.S. effort to understand and construct a persona image of Vietnamese women to the U.S. attempt to reinforce the feminine American image into both donut dollies and the nurses and WACs. The book then turns to explain the images of the soldiers framed by the media and the government that would deeply impact the military culture and the conducts of the GIs towards the women around them in Vietnam. Each of these chapter focuses on identifying the projected images of one group and reflected them on the realities in Vietnam, which reveals the detrimental problems and social pressure that these images had inflicted to the lives of the people who were caught up in the conflicting tensions between the images and their incongruous truth. The last chapters describe the realization of these conflict within the veterans and the women in the war and provide readers with insights on how they challenge and raise their voices against the gender ideology that had negatively impact all aspects of the experience in Vietnam.
Overall, the book is highly well-researched and should be recommended to anyone who is interested in women’s history or women in Vietnam War in particular. The content gives great anecdotes and draws information from various types of sources that can back each other’s ideas and stories from different aspects. The chapters on donut dollies, American nurses, and WACs are informative and based on both personal interviews and reliable resources. About the Vietnamese women, however, even though the insight on the American attitudes towards them is helpful in understanding their conducts, the reality of Vietnamese women is not adequately described as there is a lack of personal accounts to interview, the document resources on Vietnamese women’s lives in the other areas outside of the American bases, and the stories of the women on the North Vietnamese side. Due to these factors, the reality of Vietnamese women might have been quite biased as the content tends to pay attention to the prostitution issues while there could have been issues with the old women, the mothers of the Vietnamese soldiers, the young little girls, the North Vietnamese women who spent most of their time fighting alongside with the VC. Despite the lack of resources on the Vietnamese side, the book still succeeded in sticking to its thesis on the theme of gender ideology of the U.S. The anecdotes were well-selected in every chapter to introduce the problems of the images and the argument was consistently carried throughout the book. Since the gender ideology itself was an unspoken and abstract force that dictated the decisions and the events in the period, it is certainly challenging to raise awareness and earn attention from the public. But this book had curated the stories and the events tremendously well together that it can give readers a vivid look on what the gender ideology had caused to the generation of the Cold War period, bringing the deep an unspeakable issue into the surface.
Beyond Combat is extensively researched and curated from various types of resources: archive in universities, government publications, newspaper and periodicals, personal interviews, authored books, and many other accounts of memoirs. As a collection of essays, Beyond Combat introduces a cluster of stereotyped gender images that the U.S. imposed or entitled to both men and women during the period so as to make sense of the reason for Vietnam War. These images, however, did not reflect the reality of the war in Vietnam and the home front in the U.S. As a consequence, the people involved in the war during the time faced and witnessed the irreconcilable tension of the war that could not be masked by gendered images.
The images discussed in the book are the girl next door and John Wayne, the reminder of the American power and civilization that the soldiers had to fight for; the dragon lady, the metaphor implying the mysterious and treacherous Vietnamese women and South Vietnam; and the gentle warriors, the image of American men in an effort to gain support from the South Vietnam. The structure of the book went from the U.S. effort to understand and construct a persona image of Vietnamese women to the U.S. attempt to reinforce the feminine American image into both donut dollies and the nurses and WACs. The book then turns to explain the images of the soldiers framed by the media and the government that would deeply impact the military culture and the conducts of the GIs towards the women around them in Vietnam. Each of these chapter focuses on identifying the projected images of one group and reflected them on the realities in Vietnam, which reveals the detrimental problems and social pressure that these images had inflicted to the lives of the people who were caught up in the conflicting tensions between the images and their incongruous truth. The last chapters describe the realization of these conflict within the veterans and the women in the war and provide readers with insights on how they challenge and raise their voices against the gender ideology that had negatively impact all aspects of the experience in Vietnam.
Overall, the book is highly well-researched and should be recommended to anyone who is interested in women’s history or women in Vietnam War in particular. The content gives great anecdotes and draws information from various types of sources that can back each other’s ideas and stories from different aspects. The chapters on donut dollies, American nurses, and WACs are informative and based on both personal interviews and reliable resources. About the Vietnamese women, however, even though the insight on the American attitudes towards them is helpful in understanding their conducts, the reality of Vietnamese women is not adequately described as there is a lack of personal accounts to interview, the document resources on Vietnamese women’s lives in the other areas outside of the American bases, and the stories of the women on the North Vietnamese side. Due to these factors, the reality of Vietnamese women might have been quite biased as the content tends to pay attention to the prostitution issues while there could have been issues with the old women, the mothers of the Vietnamese soldiers, the young little girls, the North Vietnamese women who spent most of their time fighting alongside with the VC. Despite the lack of resources on the Vietnamese side, the book still succeeded in sticking to its thesis on the theme of gender ideology of the U.S. The anecdotes were well-selected in every chapter to introduce the problems of the images and the argument was consistently carried throughout the book. Since the gender ideology itself was an unspoken and abstract force that dictated the decisions and the events in the period, it is certainly challenging to raise awareness and earn attention from the public. But this book had curated the stories and the events tremendously well together that it can give readers a vivid look on what the gender ideology had caused to the generation of the Cold War period, bringing the deep an unspeakable issue into the surface.
May 6, 2013
This is a well written and researched book on the issues of gender and patriarchy that infused much of the cultural and military propaganda surrounding the Vietnam war. The main thesis of the text is that the John Wayne, Cold War, patriarchal and masculine attitudes that were a part of the American military action in Vietnam were fraught with sexualized and gendered narratives that were detrimental to both women and men in Vietnam.
The author divides the chapters by the different perspectives of women during the war: Vietnamese women, "donut dollies", and nurses/women working for the army. Vietnamese women were demonized or prostituted, while American women were required to maintain the aura of the girl next door. The author provides many first hand accounts through interviews that add an emotional value to the researched material.
My only complaint is that the final chapter that seeks to intertwine the research with narratives on the civil rights movement is disjointed and does not flow as well as the other chapters.
All in all, a very interesting read.
The author divides the chapters by the different perspectives of women during the war: Vietnamese women, "donut dollies", and nurses/women working for the army. Vietnamese women were demonized or prostituted, while American women were required to maintain the aura of the girl next door. The author provides many first hand accounts through interviews that add an emotional value to the researched material.
My only complaint is that the final chapter that seeks to intertwine the research with narratives on the civil rights movement is disjointed and does not flow as well as the other chapters.
All in all, a very interesting read.
March 4, 2012
Beyond Combat is the definitive book on women and gender in Vietnam. Based on extensive interviews and archival research, the book demonstrates the ways Cold War notions of gender contributed to the policy decisions that put American military personal in utterly untenable positions. The book balances personal testimony with analysis of the enveloping social and cultural contexts which effected individual experience. While her emphasis is primarily on Americans in Vietnam, the framing chapter on Madame Nhu as Orientalist dragon lady. Similarly, she considers the image of the "girl next door" in need of protection in relation to the actual positions of donut dollies nurses and WACs in Vietnam. Turning her attention to gender in relation to male troops, she focuses on the inexorable collapse of the John Wayne image of heroic manhood. It's a beautifully written book which places narrative in the foreground without neglecting the significance of the stories she tells.
December 15, 2015
This book really opened my eyes to things I was never taught about Vietnam. It was well researched and interesting; definitely a great perspective on the gender ideals of the military and how that contributed to Vietnam. Definitely worth a read.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews