“Unnerved by immensities” (21), Billy desperately needs
something ‘normal’ to keep him grounded. Women are usually that ‘something’ for
all of the soldiers, but Billy is actually able to put a name and a face to his
fantasies by the end of the novel. As soldiers, these men in Bravo do not have
any contact with women for months on end, which gives them no experience with
women outside of their heads and their attitude towards women becomes degrading
and somewhat explicit. When Mango and Billy talk about the strip club in Texas,
Mango refers to the women as “stripper hos” (25) and Billy is “struck by a
broader notion about young lively bodies and the human meat market and
supposedly inexorable laws of supply and demand. Society may not need you,
strictly speaking, but some sort of use can usually be found” (26), which
completely objectifies the women and presents them as things to be used for the
pleasure of others. Later, after the press conference, Billy refers to the
cheerleaders as “creatures” (141), which make them less human. Then, when Billy
has met Faison, Mango tells him, “Dude, gotta be some way you can get with her”
(263), which is not an innocent statement. Overall, all of the Bravos are
obsessed with sex and ‘getting women’ and ultimately their mentality is very
degrading towards women.
Although all of the men, including Billy are mentally very
sexually active and explicit, I do not think that it is completely their fault.
Genetically, this is how the brain of a young male works if he does not work to
control his thoughts. In Iraq, sexuality is the least of their worries and no
one is there to teach them lessons about how to treat women. Many of these men
have tough family backgrounds as well that were not conducive for learning
about the respectful treatment of women. Billy’s own father had an affair for
years that everyone just accepted as okay. I do not think that the way these
men think and behave when they get the chance is moral or ethical, but I also
think that most of them are not mature enough to realize the error in their
ways.
However, I think that Billy is mentally one step ahead of
the rest of the guys. While he has very sexual, inappropriate thoughts in which
he completely objectifies women, he also has moments of deep respect. Like
everything else in the war, sometimes it is better or easier to
“compartmentalize “ (83). When he gets a blowjob after the night at the strip
club, thoughts of it later make him want to shoot himself. He knows that it did
not mean anything, that it was just a ‘transaction’ to satisfy his sexual
desires, but he is mature enough to recognize that he needs something deeper
and that actions like that are disrespectful towards everyone involved. Then,
when the halftime show contains raunchy dancing he says, “It creeps on him…the
utter weirdness of the halftime show and the fact that everybody seems okay
with it” (234). He recognizes that people in America “love to talk up God and
country but it’s the devil they propose, all those busy little biochemical
devils of sex and death and war that simmer at the base of the skull” (235).
This shows that Billy recognizes that even the things that he thinks about or
even does are not right; humans are not meant to kill each other or use each
other. Human beings were created to love.
When Billy meets Faison, his mental confliction is put to
the test. He is very physical with her very quickly, which leads me to define
their short relationship as mostly lustful, but I know that Billy did not
intend it to be this way. He desperately wanted to fall in love and he did not
have time to actually do so. When they first kiss and it is a short, pure kiss,
“he pulls back and discovers the pleasure in the restraint” (153). Then, when
he daydreams about their first intense encounter, he recognizes that
fantasizing about her and what they did together and classifying it as real
love could make him a “shallow bastard” (179).
“He wants both, he wants the entire body-soul connect because anything
less is just demeaning” (72).
Overall, I think that, while the soldiers are demeaning
towards women, Billy is beginning to realize that there is more than just
‘sexual needs.’ He is still a hormonal teenage boy who wants the physical
contact, so he still has more to learn, but he is on the right track. Do you
think that his behavior towards Faison shows his mature or his immature way of
thinking about women? Was what they did right?
I agree that the soldiers hyper-sexualize and dehumanize women in the novel. Their rude and demeaning comments towards the women they encounter show how immature they still are. I believe the war has an impact on their thoughts towards women, but I also think it is a part of their human nature, as you stated. Being a 19-year-old woman who sits by a lot of 19-year-old boys in class, unfortunately, most comments made about women in the novel did not surprise me. In fact, just the other day in my macroeconomic class, I heard a guy say to one of his friends: “You could easily fuck the shit out of her.” Unfortunately, American society has raised young men to believe the way to gain power and masculinity is to dominate women. Therefore, I believe most of the comments made by the soldiers are due to the pressure young men feel to exert power amongst their peers. Therefore, one could argue that, in the battle of nature versus nurture, the way the soldiers talk about women attributes more to their nature.
ReplyDeleteHowever, one could also argue that the hyper-sexualization of women points to the soldiers’ nature. The loss of masculinity once returning home from war attributes to their perspective towards women. While at war, Billy has a tremendous amount of power in his hands. He has the ability to kill others upon his own discretion. Being a soldier automatically gives one a sense of masculinity and power. Since returning home though, Billy and the rest of the soldiers feel they have lost a part of their masculinity. For the two weeks they have been home, there has been no time to “work out and stay in shape,” and as Billy describes it: “the pussification of Bravo.” (22) While everyone is proud of the troops, they also pity them for what they had to go through. For example, when the soldiers are in the limo and the girls in another car notice they are soldiers, Billy and his friends automatically become a “lame support-the-troops charity case.” (9) Billy feels as though a part of his masculinity is taken once he returns, therefore in order to gain it back, him and his fellow soldiers try to gain power back in the only American-way they know: women. Degrading women is a coping mechanism for a lot of the soldiers upon returning home. And while Billy wants a deeper and meaningful connection, (72) he finds himself questioning his desires towards women.
Therefore, it is important to recognize that both nature and nurture have an impact on the way these soldiers view American women upon returning home.
I agree with you that Billy seems rather conflicted in how to act and think about women. It is true he has been in Iraq for a long time with no contact from women. Billy has had only the high testosterone of his fellow soldiers to help guide him in his masculinity. I think because women were not physically around for him to get to know as individuals, they existed only in his imagination, allowing him to separate the female gender into just bodies with no feelings or personality. This is not truly to Billy’s nature which is why he struggles so much when he is brought back into contact with females.
ReplyDeleteHe fails to listen to Faisen when she is telling him about her feelings on religion, preferring instead to create a “word salad” in his own mind. He fantasizes about her body, often with encouragement from his fellow soldiers, especially Mango, who wishes Billy to get with Faisen before they leave for Iraq. Billy is torn by this representation of masculinity and his own true desires. He fantasizes about running away from the army to be with Faisen. Billy imagines them falling in love and living together on a ranch far away from where the army can find them and separate the two. Sex is of course included in his fantasy, as he is a boy and Faisen is attractive, but it is not the kind of detached sex only for pleasure that he wants, rather the sort that comes with love and commitment. Billy struggles between the army’s definition of masculinity and his own deep inside and how each type calls him to treat women.