Can chivalry be allowed to thrive in the modern military?
Annie Scudder, Editor at TrèsSugar, reports what Rick Santorum believes about women in combat: that men on the front lines will be too focused on the women to do their job.
Ask GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum why women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in combat roles, and he will give you various reasons. First off, a man’s emotions. Santorum believes men will try to save their fellow female soldiers, explaining this weekend: “instead of focused on the mission, they may be more concerned about protecting someone who may be in a vulnerable position, a woman in a vulnerable position.” In addition to chivalry, Rick says “You throw on top of that just simply physical strength and capabilities,” and women simply can’t handle the job. Fortunately, the military, which recently opened 14,000 combat jobs up to women including tank mechanic and front-line intelligence, doesn’t completely agree with Rick, and experts say “sexist” attitudes are responsible for a policy against trained female soldiers serving in combat positions.
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Sociologist Ryan Kelty, who specializes in studying the military, tells LiveScience that the old-fashioned belief that women must be protected is not a good enough reason to exclude women who want to and are capable of serving their country. In other words, chivalry is not a legitimate basis to deny a woman employment, especially when there is no evidence that professional and highly trained male and female soldiers are incapable of carrying out their missions. Kelty explains the military should employ gender-neutral, objective requirements. For example, a soldier should be able to carry 100 pounds for eight hours, regardless of gender.
There may be back and forth, but the truth is that women already serve in these combat roles. In Iraq and Afghanistan, 144 women have lost their lives, 60 of them in combat, while 865 have been wounded. And countries including Canada, Israel, and Australia already allow women in close-combat roles. Despite the slow evolution of American rules on women serving, it can be said that the US military doesn’t have the most retro policy. In China, women recruits must display a talent like singing or dancing and Russia holds a Miss Russian Army beauty pageant.
More TrèsSugar Links:
Santorum vs. Romney: How They Compare on Women’s Issues
11 Quotes From Rick Santorum That Are Worrisome For Women
Then and Now: Mitt Romney’s Positions on Reproductive Rights
10 Relationship Dos and Don’ts From “Friends With Kids”
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Yeah Typhon I’m aware of the sexual abuse of the male detainees too, but adding female detainees into that mix would take a brutal inhuman situation and exponentially magnify the level of psychological torture. They’d be using the torture of the female detainess as an added means to break down the solidarity that forms among POWs in that scenario. Its cultural to them and they’d use our cultural norms of defending the child bearing half of the country against us.
Generally, I’m all for equality of opportunity, I just question if this particular situation passes the whole risk/benefit analysis. I don’t think America is ready for hundreds of female occupied body bags to arrive or for the uploading of Youtube videos of our female POWs being tortured and sexually assaulted.
Which is exactly why it needs to happen. American has gotten too comfortable with seeing disposable men shipped home in body bags… what would happen if it started happening to women in large numbers too? Women, the gender we’re supposed to “protect” and “shelter.” Just imagine.
Maybe we’d become just a tiny bit less eager to ship soldiers all around the freakin’ world to “protect and police” everybody else’s problems, hmm? And if we grew indifferent to the sacrifice and loss of women as readily as we have with men, then at least we’d be a step closer to true equality and squelching that stupid chivalrous “protect the women” impulse. I’m not really seeing a downside here.
Precisely, men and women will attain equality when we can count the bodies, when we can see who has all their fingers and who doesn’t, when we can determine who stays at home and who returns home in a bag, and not find any difference between the sexes. That is the ugly truth the supporters of Patriarchy Theory do not want us to acknowledge, because it falsifies their theory.
Okay if we have all the women in combat and in military, can we get rid of domestic violence laws? If women are strong enough to fight al qaeda, then they can fend off their husbands boyfriends. Also, no need to assume that the male is the aggressor in a domestic dispute. Or is male violence against women ok only when women are paid? Just food for thought.
In reality, out of the world of PC, it really makes more sense to have the average pubescent teen male in combat than a woman.
Last I checked the military was about winning wars. I don’t think it should be a job op program. There are already problems with so many women in the military already, now we have to make it worse?
Don’t rule your military like you rule your kingdom- Sun Tzu
Yes, Alice, soldiers and civilians are exactly the same thing, so the existence of state-sanctioned professional fighters means what civilian violence is all perfectly OK. (rolling eyes) Come on, that argument doesn’t even TRY to be sane.
“Also, no need to assume that the male is the aggressor in a domestic dispute.”
Actually, that’s right. There IS no reason to assume that the male is always the aggressor in domestic disputes.
The age of men protecting women is over, Alice. It ended when equality and feminism won popular acceptance–perhaps you heard about it?
won popular acceptance–perhaps you heard about it?
Well, not with me. I dont quite get the feminist thing esp 3rd wave (I think that’s what it’s called). *shrug*
Yes, Alice it makes more sense to have the average pubescent teen male in combat rather than women, because women’s lives and health are more valuable than that of men’s, particularly that of of young men.
Do you believe this? Do you believe that a woman’s life and her health is more valuable than a man’s?
Keep in mind it’s a package deal, you don’t get to claim that that men’s and women’s lives and health are of equal value if you agree that it is men and not women who are the appropriate objects to placed in a situation where a large number of them are guaranteed to be or see their comrades be shot, stabbed, burned or blown to pieces and sent home in bags.
I’m honestly curious.
I don’t like the title “11 Rick Santorum quotes that are worrisome for women,” because it somehow implies those are not worrisome for men. They most certainly are, as they should be.
The good news is, this does not really matter. War is becoming a computer game, played by people in air-conditioned rooms 30 miles North of Denver. Remote-controlled combat operations are the new reality.
Nobody is going to know the gender of the sooters in the “arcade shooting gallery.”
What will matter is the gender of the people getting shot at.
Notice the amazing amount of press around the “blue bra girl”, who was beaten (along with dozens of men) in Egypt. Here is what Clinton had to say about it:
“.. systematic degradation of Egyptian women [which] dishonors the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform, and is not worthy of a great people.”
Watch the actual video and count the baton blows suffered by the blue bra girl, and by the male protector who comes to her aid:
1) Blue bra girl is hit 4 times with a wooden baton (in addition to kicks and stomps)
2) Male protector is hit 29 times with a wooden baton (in addition to kicks and stomps)
Why are we not talking about the “blue jeans boy”