anyone feel uncomfortable about Military Wives Choir?

[Bennifer]

That?s it really. Although I like the idea that the wives are raising money for charity ~(and that we won't have an X factor number 1), there?s something a little unsettling about the military wives angle I can?t quite put my finger on. Am I overthinking this?

Oh - and I am a feminist

all of that brave and courageous bollocks is applied externally though.

just like mother of preemies or kids with sn are deemed 'special'.

i am neither brave nor special, but that wouldn't alter a pr team deciding to label me as such to achieve an objective.

all ordinary women raising their families in a slightly different context (be that sn or whatever) and people not in that position judging and applying labels. nothing to do with self-identification at all.

i assume the 'wives' thing was merely a descriptor in this instance. it isn't one i would choose, but it's hard to shake this stuff off when it's being applied everywhere you go.

and yy, wives are an absolute irrelevance to the military. until they need someone to run a coffee morning or provide an informal support network to keep families afloat so that they don't have to bring anyone back early from ops.

Too right madwoman.

And I absolutely agree. DH has recently been in a job that was protected from posting to sandy places, but I know he will be in a very hot place later next year, for a couple of months at least.

I will not be being brave, or courageous. Just getting on with the daily shit that life throws at you (and drinking more than the average amount of gin in my case). I don't know of anyone who describes themselves as such because of their partner's job.

People may not describe themselves as brave and courageous but the view is that they are and many of the public hold the families that are left behind in high esteem - what is so wrong with that ?

There is nothing wrong with recognising the extra difficulties. It is nice if people do. But there are other groups of people who also work in difficult and dangerous jobs (as others have pointed out, to say that there is nothing special about military "wives").

What we have to live with is a different set of circumstances. I just wanted to clarify that we do not expect those labels from others :)

Gordon Bennett: this is a load of navel gazing. I am a feminist - was one years before the women of the 1970s thought they were the ones to discover feminism - but, listen up, it's a bloody telly programme, the women chose to take part, they wanted the name it was given and for those pinned down on bases with kids it brought them together as a community and they enjoyed it. Feminism is about choices, yes? Even if they are sometimes ones not everyone approves of?

BTW, did anyone see the final episode where Gareth got a load of soldiers to give the women an impromptu sing-song as a lighter moment. On the front row with the blokes was one female soldier. Perhaps it would have been nice to have had a single male 'wife' in the women's choir . Unlikely at Chivenor being a marine base but it would have been nice to have found one at the Plymouth base.

quite.

and actually, it can make it even more difficult to seek help if you do need it. the last thing you need when you are feeling completely shit and alone and terrified is for some chump to say 'oooooh, but you're so brave'.

there's nothing wrong with people recognising the circumstance. and recognising that military families have a fair amount of shit to deal with (as do a lot of other families) or that sn families have a lot of shit to deal with. and i'm glad that the funds from this thing (as far as i understand) will be going to ssafa to perhaps alleviate some of the shit. so i guess the use of the term 'military wives' to play into the whole pr driven genre will have a beneficial outcome. even if it does reinforce some of the stereotype.

don't get me wrong, i'm all for smashing steretypes.

x-post. dear god, my mn is slooooooooow today.

There are not many groups of people who are sent off to a war zone for 6 months with the possibility that they may not come back besides the military - what other groups do a dangerous job - fireman , policeman .

I think you underestimated yourself as a 'military wife '.

Well I take my prompt from how the military view me.

I could not get much lower than their view of our value

And that is why I don't like the choir's name. I have my own life, career and value. But it reminds me of how we are treated by the powers that be. An add on/inconvenience most of the time

i served prior to being demoted to 'wife' status, avantia.

and like norma, i know exactly what my value was in the commodity known as 'wife of'. whatever it says in the dm.

Yes that may be what the Military establishment may think of you - but not the general public .

The Miltary Wives Choir would not have got half as much publicity I believe if it was called something else ' The Chinevor Choir' etc . It has given the families a better profile and raising money for a worthy cause .

quite. which is why in this instance i can see why at least seeming to embrace the stereotype was the sensible option from a pr pov.

Pizza - are you on the same email address as when you were mwita?

yes.

and mwita shows in my nickname list.

i think they did some techy gibberish to link mwita to my 'new' registration. logged out and tried to log in again. it only lets me log in as pizza, and although it shows mwita as the name i changed from, it won't let me namechange back.

i've posted in site stuff and reported it. hopefully they can de-bug it.

'new' registration, as in, the one i re-registered with after i flounced last time when they introduced fb buttons. and then i had to beg for my old username back again. but apparently i've now misplaced it again, and all i did was namechange for thirty seconds to test it because of all the renewed fb hoo ha.

"Wives" is a bit more palatable than "dependants" , which is the correct military term for wife/family.

Military wives are extremely proud to be called as such, I should know, I was one for 12 years, I'm sure (non) military husbands are proud of their serving wives too .

I think the interest in and gratitude given to military wives is well deserved, there was nothing like this 21 years ago when I had a six month old baby and was facing her first Christmas alone in Germany with a husband gone to war, nobody gave a stuff then.

1. If a couple where one of them is a serving soldier/sailor/air(wo)man live in a quarter provided by the MoD, then the rules are that they have to be married or the wedding ceremony is imminent (within 6 months).

2 Military wives/civil partners/fiancées/girlfriends choir doesn't QUITE sound so catchy, to be fair.

Don't forget, in this respect, the military community is still very conservative because the rules are so rigid with regard to couples living together. On some camps, where the CO is a little more modern of attitude, couples that are engaged and have children might be allowed to live together if there are no married couples that need a quarter, but that's still quite rare.

Stop looking for a feminist issue where there isn't one. As someone else said, where there is a lady soldier/sailor/airwoman, they are - in my experience - in at least 95% of cases, married to a serving or former s/s/a, so there isn't an issue of being a "Military Husband"

and this absolutely is a feminist issue.

not the choir per se. but the labelling and discussion of the role of a group of people known purely by their status in relation to someone else (a man or group of men)

the last time feminism and mil spouses was researched was about 40 years ago.