ABSTRACT
More so than any other events in the twentieth century, the experiences of war—articulated as the foundation myths of nation—have influenced the discourses of masculinity and femininity in Australian society. 1 War is a gendered and gendering activity, separating the roles of male combatants and female civilians, and spatially dividing the sexes between the military and home fronts. The impact of militarization ‘ritually marks the gender of all members of a society’ in ideological, political, and economic terms, 2 while simultaneously it reformulates the relationship between the individual and the state at a historical moment of crisis. In Australia during the Second World War, the distinction between the public and private spheres, and the actions of the individual as opposed to those of the citizen, were increasingly blurred by a state rhetoric of patriotism dictating, above all, loyalty to the nation. Such allegiance was enforced by the emergence of a ‘politics of remembrance’ which derived its power from the symbolic mobilization of national and gendered memories, and manipulated these in attempts to control the social and sexualized behaviours of men and women.
