Radicals on the Road, by Judy Tzu-Chu Wu, connects well to our class as we try to create an exhibit of not only perspectives of the war, but the narratives we're trying to compile as well. In her works, Judy focuses largely on the feminist movements and its connection to the war. Tzu-Chu Wu examines the juxtaposition of the West's traditional brand of white-girl feminism, and the West's savior complex that seems to be embedded in most of America's citizens. The feminist movement seeking to oppose the war, to back antiwar movements, and even to unite women across the globe is a poster child representation of the women in that era of feminism. However the critics of that movement rightly label those women as merely seeking to save someone else, from what they have deemed immoral or wrong or unacceptable. You cannot look to liberate someone from a situation you do not understand, or further, you cannot save someone from a culture or way of life just because it is not your own.
Whether these women were looking for the glory of being a savior, or simply wanted to do better for humanity, is hard to decide. There are arguments and evidence for both, just as there are always justifications in both sides of a war. However, I can hope that these women truly meant to save someone else, to acknowledge that people were dying, and starting, and suffering, and there was no reason for it. Wars are started by men in locked rooms who stare at a map and decide that what they have is not enough, or by people who stare at a screen and believe that they have been wronged, and yet it is almost never the ones who start the wars who have to answer for it. It is the citizens of humanity across the globe, the children who are not old enough to fathom what is happening, that die and suffer for wars. But it is our job as humans in society, to fight for others who cannot do so themselves, not to desecrate countries we've planted flags upon.
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