World War 1 Gender Identity Essay

In 1914, the world was set upon a path that would change it forever. World War I was a cataclysmic event that set forth into motion several movements that would change the entire human race. One of these movements was the increasing of the rights of women, and how they needed a catalyst to break into the public there in a way that had never been seen before. Throughout this paper, readers will look the growing issue of gender identity leading up to and during the war, and how World War I turned the fears of men into the progress of women. While women’s rights were made quite public on the home front as a result of their men being gone, it was not a new or even revolutionary rights they were fighting for. In the era right before World
We see this growth leading all the way up to the 1900s, where the War takes these feelings from both sides of the issue and amplifies them. Once World War I started, the continent of Europe changed drastically, with the men all gone off in service to their nation. As seen in Sandra Gilbert’s Soldiers Heart, Women were often used as the reason the men had to go off and fight, as seen in one of the wartime slogans, “The Women are Watching,” “Women of Britton Say Go!” (Gilbert 433) However, women were still left without the right to vote, many sending off husbands and sons with no say in the matter while husbands and sons felt guilted by women into going off to war to protect women. All of these things, plus a large physical separation from men who were already worry about the growing “issue” of gender identity, meant many men grew bitter and resentful. As seen in a quote from John Kipling in a letter back home, he expresses that the people, “Don’t realize how spoilt you are” (Gilbert 430). According to Ellen Key in “War and the Sexes,” found in Word War I and the Homefront, in a time where there was darkness and insurmountable odds