U.S. militarism and the sexual colonization of women

The occupation and exploitation of land is inherently tied to the occupation and exploitation of women’s bodies. The U.S. empire, built off the back of colonization–an invasion and assault on the resources, wealth, and sovereignty of other nations–is nothing less than a macrocosm of the same gross entitlement that guides men to rape and assault women. Land, the natural symbol of the feminine spirit, faces the same eco-destruction and debasing at the hands of the U.S. empire. We see these forces come together, reflecting and reinforcing each other, in the name of violence and power-seeking.

The U.S. military is an appendage of the imperial core, siphoning resources and abusing nations and people with less power–those who have been “othered” and deemed less worthy under the doctrine of white American exceptionalism. Even those the U.S. now calls “allies” are still expected to maintain the same genuflecting spirit, adhering to the wishes of the U.S. government while subserviently opening their borders, turning over their land, and offering women up to the destructive desires of foreign soldiers.

There is no separation between the colonization of land and women’s bodies. History shows us where they merge, where cigarette burns and bruises litter the skin of women and the pure waterways and life-giving land. It is more than physical. It is a ravaging of the soul of the people, a slow dismembering of wholeness, and a forced capitulation to the blood-soaked mechanisms of a world system built on dehumanization and the maximization of profit.

In 1882, Navy officer Robert Wilson Shufeldt referred to the Pacific region as the “ocean bride of America.” In line with the overarching ideology of manifest destiny, he wrote that the “wealth of the Orient” will be brought back to the U.S.–not through fair trade, but through coercion and colonization. That ideology never changed, though it was morphed into different shapes and disguised by justifying arguments of pan-securtism and moral superiority. In the post WW2 period, U.S. conquest of the Pacific was part of a large power rivalry with the Soviet Union and fears over the spread of communism. Now, as we head into a new cold war era with China, the U.S. continues its hyper-militarization of the region, with nearly 400 military bases and half a million deployed U.S. soldiers. The only difference is who we are calling the enemy. Threat inflation and the demonization of an “other” is rarely rooted in truth, but operates as a story created to reinforce political and economic domination. In order to continue propagating the system of exploitation and extraction, if an enemy is not found, one will be made.

Local communities in the Asia Pacific always face the brunt of the violence–South Korea, Japan, the Philippines–as they have over the last two centuries. And it is the women, who live under the forceful hand of the colonizers with the intersectional inequalities of being considered both racially and sexually inferior, who are often the most disproportionately affected.

Sexual Conquest in the Asia Pacific

In 1871, the United States first attacked the Kingdom of Korea as part of its wider expansionist goals. The U.S.’s brutal military demonstrations were meant to accomplish what U.S. Navy Officer Charles Rockwell called the “moral effect of making our citizens more secure” while simultaneously restoring impressions of Western superiority and countering anti-foreignism in Japan and China. This initial encounter set the tone for future relations between the U.S. and Korea.

The Kingdom of Korea fell to Japanese invasion in 1910, becoming a de facto colony until the end of World War II in 1945. Leading up to the war, the Imperial Japanese Armed forces had established a system of sex slavery in Korea, where hundreds of thousands of women were forced into institutionalized gang rape by Japanese soldiers. They were commonly referred to as “comfort women” and faced conditions so brutal that a higher percentage of women in these roles died than men at the front lines of the war. It was a conscription of death—less than 1 in 4 women survived.

After the war ended, the United States set up a military occupation of Korea. Imperial powers divided the peninsula in two, creating the 38th parallel and separating friends and family. This split would then lead to the 1950 attempt to reunify the country, a conflict that would last three years and lead to massive death and destruction. During these years, the U.S. continued its military occupation of South Korea, which included taking over the same systems of sex slavery that Japan had put into place.

The U.S. would not go on to dismantle the horrific system of institutionalized sexual violence. Instead, they would revamp it, working with the South Korean government to create secret “camp towns” of women to pleasure U.S. servicemen in the name of strengthening U.S.-SK relations and boosting troop morale. Widows, orphans, and impoverished women and girls were recruited into the system, deemed “class five military supplies”, and made to adhere to the brutal sexual entitlement of the U.S. military.

During this time, about 20% of South Korea’s foreign revenue was brought in through prostitution–from over one million women that worked in the camp towns. Data estimates that out of all the women between ages 16 and 29, about 1 in 5 women were involved.

Often referred to as “cheap yellow fuck machines,” the women were treated as disposable objects and systematically dehumanized. They were licensed and registered, regulated, routinely inspected, and punished for refusing. They were indoctrinated and trained in sexual pleasure. And they were repeatedly beaten, mistreated, and murdered in violent, horrific manners–for one woman, it was a coke bottle forced into her uterus and an umbrella through her rectum that killed her.

Along with the subjugative systems of military prostitution, the U.S. continued its domination and exploitation of land and resources. The South Korean government was nothing less than a puppet government turning over backward to please the whims of U.S. leaders, which included an expansion of U.S. military power on the peninsula. South Korea now holds over 70 U.S. military bases, and thousands of U.S. soldiers. Many of these bases, as well as annual U.S.-ROK war exercises, have been widely criticized for their pollutive and harmful effects on the natural environment.

It is not just South Korea who felt the barbs of U.S. militarism and sexual conquest. Japan, which boasts 120 active U.S. military bases–more than any other country–has had countless sexual assault and rape cases committed by U.S. service members. In December 2024, the Okinawa Times replaced its TV listing with a timeline of all the assaults since the Battle of Okinawa, including the gang rape of a 9-month old child and a 58-year old woman.

One of the most publicized assault cases occurred in 1995, when a three U.S. servicemen kidnapped and raped a 12-year old girl. They beat her, bound her hands, duct-taped her eyes and mouth shut, and took turns raping her. U.S. Navy Admiral Richard C. Macke, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command at the time, commented on the attack:

I think it was absolutely stupid. I have said several times: for the price they paid to rent the car, they could have had a prostitute.

Last year, when a 16 year old girl was raped by a U.S. serviceman, Okinawa governor Denny Tamaki called this “a violation of the girl’s dignity”–small words for a barbaric life-altering event. The U.S. serviceman was sentenced to 5 years.

A Military Base Agreement between the U.S. and the Philippines after WWII gave the U.S. permission to occupy military bases on the island nation for 44 years. Similar to South Korea, a military prostitution system was set up, providing a path for institutionalized sexual abuse of local women. From 1981 to 1988, over 82 cases of sexual violence were reported. Every single complaint was dismissed, and all of the accused went unpunished.

These cases are, in essence, the imperial male fantasy exposed in the cold, hard light of day: an entitlement and conquest of land and bodies. An accumulation of wealth and sex. A willingness to violently subdue and destroy in the act of taking. Where the U.S. military goes, violent sexual conquest and ecological destruction follow. It is the eternal pattern of militaristic imperialism. And it’s had far-reaching consequences for women in the global south.

Globalization of the Sex Trade

The military prostitution systems championed by the U.S. aided in the development of a massive sex industry both through normalization and integration into the economy. It is common for the number of prostitutes to increase with the number of U.S. servicemen–when demand is high, supply follows. So when U.S. troops were sent to Zamboanga to fight “Islamic terrorism” a mere handful of prostitutes grew to over 2,000 women and girls–many of whom were underage. These new sex economies brought to life through military prostitution systems set the stage for industry growth and the eventual trafficking of women across Asia.

Karl Marx wrote, “Prostitution is only a specific example of the general prostitution of the laborer.” Just as imperial powers outsource cheap labor to maximize profit, they also outsource cheap sexual labor. Rich men have excessive opportunities to visit poor countries where women offer their bodies up for a fraction of what they may be considered worth in the imperial core. The system thrives on poverty, exploitation, and the use and abuse of women as “raw materials.” Thus, through imperialist domination, a new sexual proletariat of women and children were created to be exploited by rich western nations–mined like minerals and exported to those with the wealth it takes to purchase skin and bones.

It is the violent amalgamation of the brutalistic world systems that have made the institutional subjugation of women possible. The imperialist goals of western nations, expanded by the capitalist agenda and militaristic tendencies of such nations, have led to the colonization and exploitation of land and people. Women have faced immense suffering at the hands of these systems, led by patriarchal and dehumanizing frameworks. This suffering continues in the ongoing domination of global powers bent on razing human rights in order to maintain political and economic control.

The U.S. military, in its imperial efforts, has repeatedly poisoned the earth and hurt innocent women and girls. The colonization of land and bodies, innately tied together, does one thing only: it destroys. To protect women from the violence that walks hand in hand with U.S. militarism requires a stark de-militarization of the world, a restructuring of the systems that guide us, a balancing of an unequal world order, and a new framework of humanization and oneness.