Registered: Jul 2000
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Maggie Gallagher (archive)
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March 27, 2003

How does one define honor for women in combat?

Of course, it was bound to happen. Casualties of war are inevitable. And although we have not as a nation reached the point of actually sending women directly into combat, we now send them so close to the front that it is unavoidable that some of those captured or killed by the enemy will be young women.

Women such as 19-year-old Jessica Lynch, missing in action, an Army supply clerk whose convoy made a wrong turn into an ambush, the same ambush that led to the capture of 30-year-old Shoshana Johnson.

Every human being is made in the image of God, male or female. Every casualty of war is a tragedy, and the sacrifice of every American who serves in our military deserves public honor.

And yet the emotions aroused by our national sacrifice, made by those like Jessica and Shoshana, will not fit into a nice, neat box. Is there time, in the midst of war, to take them out and examine them?

"She really loved small kids. That's what makes it so bad," Greg Lynch, Jessica's father, told the New York Post. What makes it really bad for Dad is thinking of the children this warm West Virginia country girl may never have. Future mothers of America marching to war?

Shoshana Johnson is a mother, a single mother of a 2-year-old child. Family members describe Shoshana as a woman who loves cooking and caring for her baby girl. They were shocked to see Shoshana on television, wounded and in enemy hands: "I thought she was cooking," said one of her aunts. In war, of course, even cooks are in danger.

On the eve of the first battle, The New York Times published the photos of 12 marines -- seven of them were women. Nice try. In reality, the images shooting from our television screens affirm that in this, as in every single war known to human history, the bulk of the fighting, the killing and the dying is done by men.

But the majority of women in uniform are either single mothers like Shoshana or married to a fellow soldier. When they go to war, they make a sacrifice of a kind most men in uniform do not: They leave their babies and small children behind, with no parent to care for them. Their children are orphans for the duration; some will be orphans for the rest of their small lives. What do we make of this special feminine sacrifice?

There is the public reaction and the private one. We are all in these women's debt, because they have chosen to serve their country. I pray for their safe return, as for every American soldier. As an American and a citizen, I honor their service.

As a mother and a woman I inwardly recoil. Don't leave your babies, something within me cries, but to whom? Of course these mothers have no choice. They cannot desert their country. Yet if manly honor has always depended on a willingness to die for one's country, a woman's honor has consisted in living for her children. Where in the logic of war is there room for that reality, the deepest truth I know?

I do not know how to reconcile these two levels. A man is more manly because he does a soldier's work, but is a woman more womanly? Do I want a society in which other women admire mothers marching to war?

The battle resumes. There is work to be done. Get back in your box, warring unseemly emotions.

Bring them home, God, every son and daughter of America. Bring them home, victorious, and grant us peace.

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Ooooh boy, I don't even know where to begin on this one. Yes, she is expressing some commonly-held ideals about motherhood and why people flip when women are taken hostage or whatever. And yes, she did give a few nods to men. But how does she think men feel when leaving behind wives and daughters to go overseas and fight, especially since their military service might well involve combat, even in those cases where they know that their wives will be tending to the children? I almost don't see the point of the article.

I suppose what I'd rather have read is something akin to an acquaintence's talk with me today. He knows full well that I'm not a heavy-duty feminist, so he told me why he's against women in combat without protecting his nads first. "It's an issue of morale," he said. "When in a hostage or prisoner situation, and the other side is threatening to beat or rape female fellow officers, men are more likely to respond with a gut instinct, to talk when they shouldn't, in order to protect the women." Interesting...I had never thought of it that way before. Instead, I remember the Iraqi soldiers raping two of our female military during a past foray over there. I think about how, microbiology concerned, menstrual periods are some fucking filthy things. Lots of nasty things breed in that blood, and make infections more likely among both the wounded and unwounded.

Hrm... the war won't stop these perpetual questions about men and women! The terrorists lose again!

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Registered: Nov 2001
Location: St.louis MO.
Posts: 245

Good topic. I think women do as good as men in situations were it is not strength related. There are many female army pilots now, and they are in combat now. They also pilot navy and air force missions, although not in combat yet.
I think a woman can do very well in combat... except in an infantry position. A woman can't carry 60-90 lbs for a long period of time like a man.
Nothing sexist about it. It is reality.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: US
Posts: 3547

well that article pissed me off

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Registered: May 2001
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Posts: 2701

YUp yup yup. Women don't need men. Why do they need to pay for support then.

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Registered: May 2002
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I can't finish articles that make factual claims about God in the first few paragraphs that aren't satirical or written by dying kids with no arms.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: WDM, IA
Posts: 2963

"Why do they need to pay for support then."

- Don't get me started.

Registered: Jan 2003
Location: mediocre apartment
Posts: 2634

you're acquaintence made a point that i remember from the first big to-do about women in combat about a decade ago (i think) and it's totally true. people can say what they want about us, but most dudes aren't too keen on girls being mistreated, it's probably some sort of instinctual or very base conditioned reaction that comes from our primitive days. regardless...

my girlfriend is in the military, the Air Force, and really, at the moment and for the next couple months in ROTC. when we first dated this was a bone of contention, i found it difficult for me to come to terms with that fact, that she was going to go military and i wasn't. i often felt inadequate when i compared myself to her, but over time i've matured and decided that it's just not my calling and it is hers. now the trouble lies in the fact that i won't, well, allow her to be sent off to war. not that i have a choice, but fortunately its unlikely in any case since she's a going to be commissioned as a non-pilot officer.

if she were sent to war, though, i would be full of guilt. war isn't anything that i wish upon anybody, but i wish it less upon her than anyone else in the world. i would rather go than her, and i know that the choice has been made that she go in my stead but i doubt i could bear it. why her instead of me? i'm the male and therefore and traditionally the protector and warrior and strength. such a role reversal would be very difficult to accept, and i imagine that it is the same on the battlefield. if i were a soldier, fighting alongside a woman and she was killed or captured, i doubt i would act rationally afterward, regardless of the training i received and in light of how i feel about the rather mild situation i am in.

i've heard, though, that there are many places where women excel in the military. physiologically, i've been told, they are better suited to piloting high performance aircraft, since their arms and legs are generally shorter in proportion to their torsos than men, which allows them to resist high g-forces by helping to prevent blood from pooling in their extremeties. i've also heard that, for the most part, women are often quite a bit more level headed than men and can think in the abstract better than we can, both very important traits (i would imagine) on the battlefield. so the women that want to fight, go for it, do it more power to you and i respect you as i respect anyone else there.

however, for some reason, archaic maybe, perhaps the best way to go about it would be to segregate the regiments, platoons, whatever i don't know how the army groups the troups. that way women would fight on their own and men wouldn't be hard pressed to protect the women among them, since they wouldn't be fighting side by side. but then, who's to say that general inchargeguy won't keep the female forces back, in reserve, in safety, just to satiate his own instinctive desire to protect them, which was the issue in the start.

i guess i didn't argue any point after all.

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Registered: Aug 2000
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Posts: 3030

Bunkum, I saw that article yesterday and asked the exact question in the title of this thread. Women are not more valuable than men just because they have the ability to give birth. A mother is not more inherrently valuable than a father.

As for the hostages, as soon as I knew there were women involved, I thought, yep, they're going to get raped. Did I feel more sorry for them than the men? No. They went into the army knowing that they could be sent overseas, the same as the men did. They knowingly take the risk.

On the news last week, they interviewed one of the women POW's from the first Gulf War. She's still in uniform. She had a very good attitude about all of it. She said basically the same thing, that women know the risks of getting killed, injured, or captured the same as the men. She did not sacrifice more than anyone else. The reported mentioned that it had come out that she had been sexually assulted, and she basically shrugged it off. She saw it as another form of torture and abuse, different from what the men underwent, but no reason to play the martyr. And, as she said "women aren't the only ones who can be abused in that way".

Don't get me wrong, I think that rape is one of the worse things a person could do. I don't excuse it, but I also think that if that's what you're afraid of, then stay out of combat areas or the military in general.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19584

quote:

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Originally posted by nymbus
Don't get me wrong, I think that rape is one of the worse things a person could do. I don't excuse it, but I also think that if that's what you're afraid of, then stay out of combat areas or the military in general.

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Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:

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Originally posted by willimo


i've heard, though, that there are many places where women excel in the military. physiologically, i've been told, they are better suited to piloting high performance aircraft, since their arms and legs are generally shorter in proportion to their torsos than men, which allows them to resist high g-forces by helping to prevent blood from pooling in their extremeties.

i guess i didn't argue any point after all.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19584

I seem to remember reading somewhere that women actually had faster reaction times, and also the part about withstanding g-forces, and pain as well, better than men, but this is coming from somewhere in the deep recesses of memory. I suppose I could google it, but I'm lazy.

-m

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Registered: Feb 2001
Location: Baba Kueria
Posts: 3146

A female in the navy once told me that women werent allowed on submarines because the extreme pressure at depth screws with their insides and there is a high risk of them being made unable to bear children in the future. Don't know how much truth there is in that, but if it is true, wouldn't you assume that extreme G's would cause much the same effect?

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: WDM, IA
Posts: 2963

Women aren't allowed on submarines because there isn't sufficient space on the boat to provide for separate bathroom and berthing facilities. Also, any place men and women serve together, they will screw. The submarine can't keep surfacing and returning to port to allow the whores to make their OBGYN appointments.

Registered: Jul 2000
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Submarines smell bad enough, from what I hear. Imagine adding the smell of menstruation and the subsequent hormonal sweat to the mix.

Pardon me while I vomit.

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