Saturday, February 16, 2013

At cross purposes: women, combat and violence

The Elusive Wapiti wasn't too impressed with a column on women in combat by Paula Bolyard. But I thought that at least there were some good things in it. She writes, for instance, about raising her boys that:
The goal was always to turn out men. Not some feminized, politically correct, egalitarian version of manhood, but in keeping with their genetically driven impulses and God-given natures, we determined to encourage them to defy current societal pressures and become real, masculine men.
 
And she makes an argument about women in combat that has crossed my mind repeatedly but that I've never publicly made. Are men not being given mixed messages about women and violence? In ordinary civilian life, men are told that women are different and should be shielded from all violence and that our culture is too accepting of violence against women. But men are also being presented with a lot of imagery of violent warrior women, and this imagery is likely to desensitise men when it comes to women and violence.

And the problem will only intensify if men are expected to fight in the military alongside and against women. If a man has to be trained to shoot or bayonet a woman, will he still be able to carry that masculine sense of honour of never directing violence toward women? Paula Bolyard puts it this way:
Through all of this, we clearly taught our boys that they were never, ever to play roughly with girls. We knew a time would come that they would be bigger and stronger than the girls and they needed to know that they were to never lay a hand on a girl.

In this day and age of political correctness and federally mandated gender equity, this may sound “unfair” or antiquated, but the inconvenient truth is that the process of civilizing young men involves taming their aggressive instincts. If we want them to learn to treat a woman with respect, they must be taught that overpowering her with their physical strength is never acceptable.

At the same time, they must learn that their physical size and strength are gifts that can and should be used to protect their families and property in the event of danger. Controlled strength is a sign of maturity and integrity.

As we find ourselves on the cusp of women on the front lines of combat, we must ask some important questions about how we will raise boys in the future in light of this decision.

Back in 1992, when cries for women in combat were sounding on the heels of the Gulf War, John Luddy wrote about the implications of such a decision in the Los Angeles Times:
All killing on the battlefield is not accomplished by precision-guided munitions; men must still drive cold steel into other men’s guts. Parents, picture a platoon of soldiers, your daughter among them, wielding bayonets in what we infantrymen delicately call close combat. Some are doing the sticking; some are being stuck. Therein lies the second problem with placing women in combat units. As a society, do we want to have women doing this? If so, what would be wrong with a man punching a woman under the same circumstances in which he might punch a man? One is no “better” than the other, but we react differently, don’t we?  

If we as a country insist on pushing through this barrier and throwing our women at the enemy by placing them on the front lines in combat, some important cultural and sociological changes will need to occur. We will need to raise a new generation of men who will be willing to stand by and watch women being shot, stabbed, tortured, raped and battered. They will need to be desensitized to the realities of harm befalling women. Additionally, once the United States crosses the barrier of women in combat, other countries will likely follow, so our men will need to learn to stand face to face with a woman, look her in the eye, and kill her in hand-to-hand combat.

Finally, I thought the following comment from a Vietnam veteran worth highlighting, It shows the reality of going on tour in a combat situation:
I was also a Marine grunt and the training we went through was totally brutal. I was glad I had it, because when I got to Vietnam it made me able to cope with what we did there. On operations, especially in the mountains, we walked with flak jackets, helmets, packs, rifles, grenades, machine guns, rocket launchers, sometimes mortars, carried extra rounds for the mortars and the machine guns, and were virtual pack mules.

When we ran into the enemy we could not drop the gear and leave it, because we had to attack and we did not know where the attack would end. We would run forward carrying all this gear and still fight our asses off. This might be after walking from daylight until late in the afternoon. At night we dug our fighting holes and stood watch. One man on for an hour and a half and one man asleep for an hour and a half. Just before day light we went on full alert. That meant we usually got four to five hours sleep a night. This went on day after day after day. Our clothes rotted off of us, grime was so deeply ingrained into our skin that we could pull it off with our finger nails, and we ate two meals a day and drank whatever water we could find. Sometimes we had lots of water. Other times we had four quart sized canteens and they had to last us for two or three days. We lost weight, we became walking zombies who functioned on instinct, but we functioned. Maybe one in one hundred women could do this, but she would not fit in and the men would try to protect her. It is completely stupid and asinine to put women in a situation like this.

16 comments:

  1. One must learn to love that which feminism as wrought on society. For in it lies redemption. In it lies the fuel for breaking the backs of Marxists. In it lies the barren waste of their lies. The populace must feel and wallow in that truth, they must feel that of the path they chose to walk.

    I feel no empathy here, I feel empathy for the men on the battlefield, the men who have to fight against both their enemy infront of them and the one behind. I feel no empathy for any women that puts on X on a piece of paper.

    This is what your vote has brought you...

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  2. Men overpowering women with physical strength is never acceptable?

    Even when you are dealing with a drunk, violent woman who is punching and headbutting people and you're a bouncer trying to get her thrown out of a nightclub so she can get dealt with by the police?

    I saw this exact scenario take place about a month ago. Surely the bouncers weren't wrong to restrain her using their physical strength considering her behaviour?

    ...

    As for the issue of women in the military, I'm in a sense surprised that today's Western politically correct societies still allow armies to exist, given the brutal nature of war. Universal pacifism would be the true hippie thing to do... having a left-wing multicultural society, yet also having a national army, seems a bit of an anachronism, no?

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  3. Anon,

    I think you're right that it's possible to imagine scenarios in which a man might have to use force against a woman.

    But at the same time I think Western men did once as a matter of masculine honour reject the use of violence against women.

    The question is whether this sense of honour can stand if men are forced to accept the presence of women on the battlefield. How can you psychologically accept having to kill a woman, but then retain a masculine sense of honour in renouncing violence against women?

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  4. Parents, picture a platoon of soldiers, your daughter among them, wielding bayonets in what we infantrymen delicately call close combat. Some are doing the sticking; some are being stuck. Therein lies the second problem with placing women in combat units. As a society, do we want to have women doing this?

    I don't want my son to be part of that, either. Forget it. No way, no how, is my son going to join the military. Never, and not even then!

    To fight in unjust, stupid wars... directed by political "elites" (scum) who hate people like my son... led by Leftist officers... using Leftist methods... for Leftist aims.... FSCK THAT. Not for my son or my daughter.

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  5. Yes, what a strange paradox that is indeed, Mark. We are told that violence against women is bad, but women not being allowed to serve in military combat is discrimination and thus also bad, despite the risk of violence against them in doing so.

    But as I was saying, women do sometimes get violent. Maybe not as much as men do, but it certainly happens.

    Feh: wars being fought using leftist methods and with leftist aims? I'd disagree. Wars such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have been widely opposed by leftists. It's neoconservatives who have been pushing for these wars - i.e. those allied with Israel.

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  6. If she's going to act like a man I'm going to treat her like one.

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  7. Feh: wars being fought using leftist methods and with leftist aims? I'd disagree. Wars such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have been widely opposed by leftists.

    No. They were fought for Leftist purposes using Leftist methods. Any opposition from the Left was from the extreme Left that criticized the wars and the methods of fighting them for being not Leftist enough.

    It's neoconservatives who have been pushing for these wars

    They are Leftists too. I will not have my kids in any of their wars either.

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  8. @ Feh
    You are spot on. Young people bleeding to secure profits of a tiny old, international elite that dont give a flying phuck about how many are getting killed and neither have any national affiliation . Except Israel perhaps..

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  9. Walter,

    Hasn't war always been like that?

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  10. I think you are missing an important point Mr. Richardson. When a man goes to war and dies we as a country lose one person. When a woman goes to war and is killed in combat not only dose she die, but her future children die with her as well. so for every one woman killed in combat will equate to an entire future family to be permanently erased forever.

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  11. @Christopher Grieb...

    The same is true of both sexes.

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  12. Gwallan I will have to disagree with that statement. If I were to join the military and go off to war and was killed my girlfriend would morn my death, but would eventually move on and find another man to have a family with. Now lets switch roles and say my girlfriend were to join the military and was killed in combat. Not only did she died but her future children were never born. The main reason men are protectors and providers for the family is because they are the most expendable. (there are other important reasons as well) When it comes to your statement:
    "The same is true of both sexes." That is only the case when an exuberant amount of men die within a generation for example World War One, World War Two, The American Civil War.

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  13. Christopher, if a man dies then all the children he would have had also die too.

    Men are not expendable.

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  14. Feh, Yes you are right and I have misspoken on men being expendable in our society. (In the sense that they our disposable and not really needed) For that I apologizes and retract that statement; However, I must insist that men throughout history and civilization, must expend themselves in order to achieve status and power. In short it is apart of our masculine identity.

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  15. I must insist that men throughout history and civilization, must expend themselves in order to achieve status and power.

    Not quite.

    Throughout history, the way to achieve status and power is for men to expend other men, not themselves. The status and power of an expended corpse is zero.

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  16. Christopher,

    In one sense, you are correct. A man can father multiple children at a time. So, if the supply of men reduces in a time of war, population levels can be kept up through multiple marriage.

    A woman, however, usually bears one child at a time and that takes nine months.

    So, if half the male population was removed, the birthrate could be maintained by doubling up. The same could not be said for a 50% drop in the number of child-bearing age women.

    (This is speaking strictly in biological terms, not cultural or social).

    Luzu

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