Action at intersections

Abstract

Military veterans are popularly imagined to be men, but recent decades have seen an increase in the number of women in the military, including women of color and queer-identified people. This diversification of the military is increasingly reflected in veterans’ peace organizations like Veterans For Peace and About Face. This younger, diverse generation of veterans brings their multiple experiences of race, social class, and gender oppression—before, during, and after their military service—to their anti-war activism. Their collective intersectional knowledge in turn shapes their activism, as veterans. The chapter reviews the literature on women and LGBTQ people in the military; intersectionality as an academic field; and intersectional praxis as an emergent connective tissue in the broader field of progressive activism. The chapter poses a question grounded in the tensions and possibilities of the present historical moment: How will veterans’ peace organizations respond to the challenges introduced by a younger and far more diverse cohort of activist veterans?