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On, Veteran’s Day, we Americans pause for moments of silence, listen to bells tolling and guns firing and remember the deaths of thousands of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan (let alone wars of the more distant past). It’s a day of meditation and sadness–but it must also be a day for feminism and activism.
For too many women veterans, homecoming represents a whole new battlefield–one strewn with warriors suffering from homelessness, mental disorders and a still-rankling sexism.
Sometimes the sexism is as simple as a lack of tampons in the bathrooms at the VA hospitals–a small yet definitive reminder that women remain on the fringes of the care the Veterans Affairs department provides. Other times it takes the form of a discriminating policy for diagnosing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a scarcity of VA homeless shelters that offer separate housing for women, and the devastating rate of sexual assault within military ranks.
BLOG FROM Ms MAGAZINE November 11, 2010 By Laura Gottesdiener
Photo from Flickr user Jeffrey Beall under Creative Commons 2.0.
