The presupposition of much of our public discourse is that radical and absolute equality between the sexes is not only possible but, in fact, desirable. These assumptions lead to interesting positions, such as arguing that women want to and should be encouraged to take on combat positions on the frontlines of military engagements.
Such is the subtext of a review in the Wall Street Journal of a recent book about military history, specifically the often over looked role of women on the battlefield. The review states:
In “Forgotten Warriors: The Long History of Women in Combat,” Sarah Percy tells us that, from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century, women were to be found in considerable numbers on battlefields the world over. True, they often provided food, drink and medical care, but when necessary they dressed themselves as men and fought alongside them.
There is no distinction made: when one’s homeland is invaded, men already lie dead and bloodied on the field of combat and hope is in short supply, women and children will pick up arms in a desperate attempt to defend what is theirs, sometimes under coercion. No, it is presented as though women in combat has been a normal occurrence throughout history which only our misogynistic history has chosen to suppress and ignore. There’s not a big emphasis on women in military, because throughout history there haven’t been many of them. Sure, there have been some, but noticeably uncommon.
Like the claim that we must reengineer society to have more female miners, we are ignoring obvious biological facts—most noticeably maternity—that still play a significant role in the decisions of individual women.
But enough of this talk of blood on the battlefield. One of the key arguments continually put forth in trying to lure women to remote mining locations and the front lines of combat is that technology has changed the game. You won’t, we are told, be dealing with dirty heavy machines or, heaven forbid, actually killing people; you just push some buttons on a computer now. That may well be possible in mining to an extent, but war disrupts the status quo. It is a time when the enemy does not play by the rules, supplies are derailed, and the ordinary means rupture.
As current world events unfold horrifically, there are calls to recognize that the slaughter of women and children is an especially vicious offense. If all women are merely combatants waiting in the wings, held back only by our narrow gender roles, what is the crime? Either women are worthy of special treatment in military engagement, or they are not.
Phyllis Schlafly, arguably the most successful grassroots activist of 20th-century American politics, convinced state after state not to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment by pointing out such basic realities as the fact that the ERA would allow women to be drafted. Well, why not? If the claim is that there are no meaningful differences between men and women, what would stop us from actually treating men and women the same?
That was an argument that could still convince 50 years ago. Now, not only are we undisturbed by the prospect of equal opportunity draft but we actually have people arguing that it would be rude not to include women in the bloodbath of combat.
It’s a painful state of equality we find ourselves in. Some women are realizing that what they mistook for oppression was a recognition of difference and, in certain respects, superiority. In one of her final interviews, Catholic philosopher Alice von Hildebrand observed that in the possibility of woman sustaining a human life within her womb, the mysterious life force, God, makes immediate contact with the female body. There is nothing analogous in the male’s biological experience. That is not to say that every woman can or will have children (Hildebrand herself did not), but every woman is defined as a woman by that capacity.
This discussion has been muddied by the introduction of mainstream in-vitro fertilization and now surrogacy. And yet, as I cannot help but restate, even if the factory of artificial wombs can mimic in cruel mechanical mockery the warmth and nurturing of a mother’s womb, will not the child still cry out for sustenance that is more than just material—the nurturing of a mother—upon birth?
There has never been a perfect time, and individual people are always imperfect. We should not seek to return to some past perfect era when women were treated differently. We should seek to rediscover difference as it is and make decisions based on reality.
Maternity is not one option on the menu among many for women but is rather an essential quality of all women, whether or not they bear children. Von Hildebrand recounts her “despair” when she learned that women were becoming soldiers, a role so contrary to their life-giving nature.
If a woman wants to be a philosophy professor, a profession notoriously lacking in the female sex, no one will stop her, as evidenced by von Hildebrand’s own career, begun many decades ago. If a woman wants to be part of the military, taking on the roles that women have often held—feeding soldiers, tending to the wounded, carrying supplies—no one will stop her.
Should we discourage women from taking on combat roles? Not necessarily. If your daughter wants to be a fighter pilot, encouraging realism and long-term perspective untainted by our personal fears seems a wise course. But we should all stop pretending, in line with fevered feminist fantasies, that it is an unequivocal good and desirable development to put women on the front lines.
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