Manh(a)ttan

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I've been watching the show Manh(a)ttan since it started.  I know anyone who knows me wouldn't be too surprised as clearly it's the sort of thing I will watch. It also has some of my favorite actors in it (Olivia Williams, Harry Lloyd, and Daniel Stern!) and it's set in New Mexico.  Which, duh!  But still.

And I do enjoy the show.  I'm not ranking it top ten of all time but it's a nice cap to Sunday night, but . . . 

Okay, I'm not saying you have to be 100% accurate when you make this sort of thing.  It's a drama and if you play things out as they actually were no one would believe it or it might just be kind of boring.  But I do think you need to fall in the realm of what actually happened.  There were real people that worked on this project.  Some who still live.  And some of the liberties being taken aren't very respectful.

Now it just so happens I'm reading a book about women in the U. S. military and I'm smack dab in the section on World War II.  There's even a part about WAAC/WACs who were stationed at Los Alamos.  I've read a lot on this subject and I have infinite respect and admiration for all these women went through just so they could serve their country.

The book I am reading right now, A Few Good Women,  takes a few pages to describe the experiences of WAAC/WACs who worked in the Manhattan Project in New Mexico.  These women were told they would be going overseas so when they arrived in the middle of the New Mexico desert it was a shock.  It was considered a security risk to inform the women before their arrival.  The women themselves could not tell family where they were or what they were working on.  They couldn't even talk to their roommates about it if they didn't happen to work in the same area.  Many had degrees - even doctorates.  They were a vital part of helping win the war.  These women were and are heroes who worked hard and made sacrifices for their country.

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So, you know this is show is a huge opportunity to educate and pay tribute to these women.  Except the only real plot line to involve a WAAC/WAC at this point involves her charging for sex.  In fact, it's implied that all WAAC/WACs on site are prostitutes. Wait, what?

The irony here is there was a campaign by men in the army and their families to smear the WAAC/WAC organization so badly that women wouldn't join.  The U. S. Government thought it was probably Nazi's spreading rumors so imagine their surprise when they found out it was their own men.  You see the campaign for the WAAC was "Free a man to fight" - women could take over military jobs that didn't involve direct combat so the men who used to do those jobs could be on the front.  Not every man or man's family was happy with that idea.

So what was the smear campaign?  Well the usual stuff: women who joined were lesbians, loose morally, would end up pregnant ( according to the statistics in the book women in the military were actually much less likely to become pregnant than civilian women at that time) and, of course, the real job of the WAAC was to keep the men happy by having sex with them.  It was actually pretty clever - it played on the fears that women, away from their families and left to their own devices, would suddenly behave in ways that went completely counter to how they had been raised.  Yes the smear campaign is a pretty nasty bit of history, but to me it's almost more upsetting that so many people believed it.  That so many people just accepted the idea that the only thing a woman could offer to the military would be her body and not her brain.

Of course none of it was true.  Sure, there were a few lesbians, some women did get pregnant, and maybe there was the odd WAAC/WAC who did trade sex for money.  But it certainly wasn't common.  The fact is most women were too busy with important war work and fending off rude remarks from those who bought into the smear campaign to have time for much else besides a little sleep  and maybe a beer every now and then.  For most WAAC/WACs what they were doing for their country was far more important than risking getting in trouble of any kind.  And you can bet that trading sex for money would definitely have got them in a world of trouble.

So, it's 2014 and we still believe the WAAC/WACs were prostitutes?  Who is researching this thing?  Why would you make that choice?  Couldn't you think of a better way of including a WAAC/WAC in your storyline?

There isn't anything inherently wrong with sex work in my eyes.  It's the circumstances surrounding it that are the problem (abuse, not having a choice in the matter, unsafe - among others) and not the work itself.  But WAAC/WACs weren't prostitutes.  Portraying them as such is not only a lie but it totally ignores the important contributions these women really made to help end the war. 

These women are heroes.  They served their country bravely and well.  They gave up a lot so they could do their patriotic duty.  They also had to put up with a lot of crap male soldiers never had to deal with as part of their service.  And, apparently, they are still having to put up with it.