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Just to follow-up, the Charen article refers to an organization called the Center for Military Readiness, organized by Elaine Donnelly, who is a former member (1984-86) of the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS). The URL is: http://www.cmrlink.org/ If anyone is looking for an organization that supports the notion that having women in combat roles weakens the military, you might take a look.
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I realize there will be much disagreement on this subject, but my personal philosophy on women in combat is this: if a woman can stand the same physical tests and strains as a man--if she can show the same strength and be held to the same standards--then let her fight. Otherwise, get her the hell out of the military.
In other words, my problem is not women in the military or women in combat. My problem is that they've caused the military to lower its standards to fit their (general) physical limits.
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday July 24, @02:49PM EST (#7)
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Personally, I think the subject of women in combat, and particularly the draft, is the most difficult "gender issue" to discuss--IMHO, even worse than abortion. I put "gender issue" in quotes because I see this as a human rights issue, not a gender issue, but I realize most other people (unfortunately) don't see it this way. There have been a lot of good points and topics of discussion brought up on this thread, but they are hard to discuss from a detached, logical POV:
- The debate around survival instinct. It seems to me that most of the arguments don't stem from a desire for equality, but survival instinct. In times of war, any protectiveness towards others, whether your parents, your spouse or even your children, tends to go out the window in the face of the instinct to save ourselves. This is true for men and women. Human history is full of adults sacrificing adult loved ones, and even children, to save their own lives. Even today, we have nations drafting children. This is done by their own parents to save their own lives, driven by natural survival instincts. This sounds horrible, but lots of things in nature are horrible. Watch one of those Discovery Channel programs where a lion tears out the throat of a zebra. It's not very nice, but it's necessary. Survival instinct in humans is also necessary, or we'd all kill ourselves.
- Why should men be killed while women sit at home? See above. It is totally natural for men to feel this way, due to the human instinct for individual survival at all costs.
- Women allegedly not wanting to serve in combat. I don't know where this argument is coming from. The very op-ed piece you people are discussing says, very clearly, that the feminist movement is fighting to include women in combat, not to excuse them from it. This is not a defense of the feminist movement, but a simple statement of fact. Go re-read the column. In plain English, that's just what it says.
- The military not adequately preparing women for combat. It is another simple fact that any male soldier must first pass the minimum standards of basic training before being sent into battle. If he doesn't pass, he isn't sent. It is also a fact that female soldiers are not held to the same level of standards as the males. If you want to send females into combat, there can be no lowering of the standards. They must be forced to do the same things as the males, to the same level, or you don't have equality. You just have unprepared soldiers being sent into situations that they weren't trained to handle.
- Men are sent to war because they are seen as expendable. I'll be flamed for this one, but I don't think this is true at all. Otherwise (as was mentioned on this thread) criminals would be sent into battle. No one is more expendable than a serial killer or a pedophile. While the logic behind this is arguable, the reason why women historically weren't drafted isn't because they were seen as less expendable. Like old men and children (who also aren't drafted) they were seen as not able to handle the rigors of combat. And IMHO, with the training the military currently gives them, this is completely true. They can't handle it the way they're being trained right now. They must be trained far more rigorously. They must be forced to lift weights as heavy as the guys, run just as fast as the guys, and do everything else just as well as the guys.
- The subject of how an unlimited draft would effect children should be ignored because it's nothing but a smokescreen. No, it's not a smokescreen. Like it or not, this is a very important issue, and it would have to be addressed before an unlimited draft could take place. We can't just leave these kids to run loose on the streets. We'd have to figure out what we're going to do with them. Personally, I think that the government should be responsible for them, since it's the government that caused them to be orphaned in the first place. But if the decision is made to put them in military orphanages, we have to figure out who's going to run them, how they're going to be paid for, etc.
There's something else that wasn't brought up, namely the socialization of females in our society. Little boys are given toy guns and GI Joes and told to play rough-and-tumble games like football. Little girls are given Barbies and make-up kits and told to be sweet and frilly. The latter is not condusive to preparation for future combat. You can't tell a girl as she's growing up, "You need to keep your hair long, near leave the house without wearing make-up, never get your nails dirty, never spit or do anything 'unladylike' or 'unfeminine,'" then, when she's 18, tell her she now has to do a total 360, go into a jungle and kill as many foreigners as she can get her hands on, using the worst methods of death she can devise. If you want little girls to be little soldiers, you must stop teaching them to be soft and feminine. They have to be taught to be strong and masculine. They must be given the exact same socialization as boys. Otherwise, you're literally condemning the girls to death.
Personally, after writing that last paragraph, I feel nauseous. Socializing children to be little soldiers? It reminds me of a documentary I saw about the Hitler Youth. The Nazis convinced Germany's children that war was glamorous, and that being killed in war was glorious. They also convinced their parents that to have a child killed in war is an honor that every family should aspire to. Modern Americans condemn the Third Reich. Is this condemnation the ultimate in hypocrisy? Sometimes I wonder about that.
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I'm of two minds on this one.
On the one hand, I agree with Nightmist: women shouldn't be able to join the military unless they can do the job, and changing the definition of "the job" so that women can pass is foul.
On the other hand, why should women sit at home while men go out to do battle and have their brains blown out? Feminists are hot for "equality" until "equality" means "danger" and then they're not so keen. Why give feminists the opportunity to say, "Oh, yeah. We're not up to that challenge!" so that they can then sit back laughing while men die?
One possible solution is segregated units: men's combat units and women's combat units. Let them each make their own contribution, and survive on their own.
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by Anonymous User on Monday July 23, @06:43PM EST (#4)
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Well, doesn't the fact that women aren't lining up to be drafted make sense? It's called survival instinct. Of course women don't want to die. They especially don't want to be forced to commit suicide (which is what the draft is, involuntary suicide). Do you? Of course not.
I don't think many women "sit back laughing" while their male loved ones are brutally slaughtered. I very seriously doubt that, upon receipt of a body bad, a wife or mother or sister's only thought is, "Thank god it was him and not me."
I am staunchly against the draft. It is unnecessary, it is unconstitutional, and it is nothing more than cold-blooded, callous murder. And if the draft is expanded to include women, what will happen to children once both their parents are drafted, and once both are killed in war? Do you really think the U.S. will pay for military-run orphanages very long? Not just no, but hell no!!! It would cost WAY too much money. Those children will be drafted too, and killed in the same brutal way their parents were.
If we're going to draft anyone, we should draft convicted criminals, especially inmates, especially those who have committed capital crimes. If you want to talk about lives being spared, why on Earth are convicts spared the draft while innocent people die? While I wouldn't take joy in Charles Ng and Andrea Yates being sent to battle, captured and brutally tortured to death--I don't take joy in anyone's death--I wouldn't shed any tears either. Far better them than a devoted mother and father of four, neither of whom have so much as stomped on a spider their entire lives.
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First, I purposely didn't say that "women" sit back laughing while men go off to war, I said "feminists." In particular, I had in mind those defenders of "equality" who have office in Women's Studies departments all over the nation, who bark at the slightest whiff of lost opportunity for women. I think that they would be chuckling to themselves if there were ever again an active draft and they managed to make the argument that women shouldn't be affected. Of course, that's only my (cynical) opinion.
Being a peacenik and against the draft is all very well, and you're in good company. The only problem with that argument is that it side-steps the issue of what will happen if there is ever another ground-combat war that directly affects your nation. Almost all women I talk to about this are dead-set against the draft, and "don't believe that anyone should go to war." This is a perfectly reasonable point of view when dealing with such far-flung conflicts as Vietnam, the Gulf War, etc. What will happen, however, if some nation (say, for example, China) decides that they're going to make war, and physically invades the United States (or, in my case, Canada)? When armies are heading for major cities, are these "peace-loving" women (and men) going to stick by their values and let themselves be beaten / raped / shot? I think not. The question is not, "Should there be a draft in peacetime?" The question is, "What do we do when threatened? Who do we send in our defense?" This is precisely when women bring up the argument that they would love to go and have their brains blown out, but they have to stay (safe) at home "for the sake of the children," which brings up my next point....
As for children being affected, you've raised a perfect example of an argument of which I'm very, very weary. Whenever something awful is happening to men (for example, being sent to war, or being kicked out of the family home, or being disenfranchised from their families by "family" court), women (and not just feminists) always say that these things should never happen to them because of the effect it would have on the children. This is 20% truth and 80% using chidlren as a convenient excuse / shield against mistreatment. Many women do the metaphorical equivalent of getting into a firefight and then, when it looks as though they might get hurt, holding up their babies and shouting, "Don't shoot the kid! Don't shoot the kid!" This is, metaphorically speaking, exactly what goes on in divorce court, and it is how the conversation turns when the subject of the draft comes up.
So long as we cling to this notion that "a child needs its mother" and "fathers are expendable," we will continue to abuse men with such things as disenfranchisement and military service, and we will continue to provide women with a convenient excuse for escaping any of the unpleasant jobs in society. Whenever their number comes up, women can simply claim that they would love to... but couldn't possibly... because of the children, of course.
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday July 24, @01:22PM EST (#6)
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>When armies are heading for major cities, are these "peace-loving" women (and men)
>going to stick by their values and let themselves be beaten / raped / shot? I think not.
I don't think so either--and this is exactly why the draft is not needed. Everyone would pick up a gun, or whatever weapon they could find, and defend themselves. That old survival instinct again. No one, unless they have a death wish, is just going to stand there and let themselves get shot.
I didn't say that fathers are expendable. Notice that I said we shouldn't have a draft at all, not that the draft should be male-only. I did bring up the idea of a criminal-only draft, but I also mentioned that this draft would include Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, as well as Charles Ng and Mumia Abu-Jamal. I have no desire to exclude female criminals from such a draft. In fact, if the idea of the draft is to kill the most expendable in our society, who falls into that category more than criminals? Why do THEY get to sit safely behind bars while innocent people are slaughtered?
>women (and not just feminists) always say that these things should never happen
>to them because of the effect it would have on the children.
So, because *you* don't want to talk about the very ugly prospect of what happens to children in the effect that both their parents are drafted and murdered, that means we shouldn't? You think that if we don't address this issue, that means it will just go away? Do you really think that the gov't should not only have the power to murder both a child's parents, but also that gov't should not address what happens to the kid afterwards? We should just not do anything, just don't talk about it, because it's too ugly?
Anyway, if you are hellbent on drafting women in the name of "equality," you can't do it under the current military system. Currently, women soldiers are not forced to live up to the same standards as are the males. They are not forced to run as fast, carry as much equipment, scale walls as high, and a myriad of other things. And from what I'm told, if a man can't pass the minimum standards in basic training, he's not sent into combat. They continue training him until he can pass.
If you want "equality," you must force the females to live up to the same standards as the males. Otherwise, you may as well just shoot the females in the head before they ever see a battlefield. That would be far, far kinder than the death they would face as the result of substandard training by their own military.
However, this still doesn't change the fact that society must decide what to do with the kids left behind. You can't just pretend they're not there, and hope they'll just disappear so that you don't have to address this.
BTW, I'm not against women in combat (though I'm against the current policy of substandard training for female soldiers). I'm against the DRAFT. I'm against people having no choice as to whether they want to end their own lives or keep living. I'll never hold up a child and say, "Don't shoot him!" I have chosen not to have children. One of the biggest reasons why I have chosen this is because of THE DRAFT. I absolutely refuse to manufacture a human cog that is doomed to be fed into a gov't war machine 18 (or less) years down the road.
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