Interesting feedback on the comments thread to the thought-provoking article “Sorry, Women in Combat Units is Still a Bad Idea” which I skimmed but did not read. I’m sure you had some good points, and I’ll go back and re-read after venting. After skimming the leading sentence of every paragraph, none of the points that evaluate this particular topic seem to digress very far from the premise that war is exclusively about “winning”, and that formal provisions for allowing women into combat roles will mess with the whole thing. Without exception, this premise is asserted as the a priori foundation for all debate. I disagree.
War is not something I understand, having never been in combat. But I do realize that war is more than just one thing or another, and most discussions seem to sidestep that fact because it is a broad, political, metaphysical, social, philosophical conversation, and we as a human race, “don’t have time for that”, or at least, don’t do it very well. We tend to prefer short headlines and clubs to resolve complicated arguments.
As much as we would like to sidestep the complexities in order to reach the point more quickly, the fact remains that the military is an expression of our social and cultural ideals and values. People in the military are continually and needlessly sacrificed due to this fact – plans, training, unit complexion, and actual combat decisions all have a wide variety of ways in which they could be executed. However, the final makeup and execution on a broad and fine-tooth level is ultimately determined by far too many factors to list here.
As societies and cultures, we have determined that we will impose certain moral and ethical limits on ourselves in the name of war, and we impose certain standards as well. In this day and age, we have the technology and might to blow up any other society a thousand times over – hence the “war is exclusively about military might” is simply not a sustainable assertion. We make make military decisions around the world and at home based on issues like diplomacy, and in order to strive for ideals that are less absolute, and certainly less than transparent.
The one point of your article that intrigued me was the ant-colony/007 contrast. It gave a glimmer that you are receptive to the role that social and behavioral conditioning play in this conversation. What seem likely, based on your headline, is that as usual, you unquestioningly resort to the stereotypes and conditioning methods that are currently employed. The reality is, the training methods that are used in and by the military are all a by-product, and work in concert with social and behavioral programs that we control and influence on a much larger basis than biology. Women are deemed inferior in this macrocosm for many legacy reasons that are subject to debate and change, but it will take eons for them to reach the surface of our social consciousness, far behind the more rapidly evolving environmental changes that are redefining the social roles. In a world that was largely physical, a male had a natural social leadership role outside the home. As we have become more technological, it remains customary for men to be more aggressive and dominant socially, but this is not necessarily a biological function that is engraved in our DNA. Many women are aggressive and bellicose and strategic by temperament and other factors. They are currently discouraged by society for openly expressing those qualities because of our legacy constraints of convenience, because society as a collective – just like the military, though less precise – moves in grand, powerful, cumbersome steps. Gender norms and dynamics are changing, and the social dynamics will continue to evolve, as will the factors that define war and appropriate military behavior on the macrocosmic and microcosmic level.
Personally, I will be long dead before we see our current gender-norms totally cast aside as ridiculous and obsolete. But until then, they will change gradually, and the shackles of our current power dymanic will continue to be based on convenient fallacies for the purpose of entrenching existing power constructs. This is not a situation of which women are an exclusive victim, this is how it has always been – the many weak are preyed upon for the success of the few. Social rules of convenience are constructed and engraved to erect and preserve the power paradigm until a different set of rules topples the paradigm. Power is all about entrenching false rules of morality and convenience for the purpose of entrenching itself, until new rules can be implemented, and the status quo is disrupted and replaced by a new, equally false status quo with the exact same agenda of preserving power. It’s not all bad, it’s highly purposeful, and the alternative seems to be anarchy. It just doesn’t happen to represent infallible truths that underlie our rules governing violence and dignity and right and wrong. These rules are convenient illusions we impose and accept to avoid having to rethink the universe every morning when we wake up.
Get on board, rage with angry fists against the passage of obsolete systems, or sit around and watch. The changes being discussed are going to happen whether you agree or not. There is no putting the genie back in the bottle, it is just a matter of how long we can contain it.