Women Find Combat on the Soil of Their Homeland

I am not surprised by the number and anger of the letters I have received denouncing my belief that women should not be used in combat.

Though most of them accuse me of sexism (which I admitted), most of them are outrageously sexist themselves.

They scorn my notion that most men have deep-seated feelings of chivalry and tenderness toward women, and could not bear to see them mangled, stripped and bloodied on the battlefield.

They argue that men habitually rape and batter women, noting that the National Organization for Women says that one out of three women is raped or battered. I despise rapists, but I find it hard to believe that one out of every three women is destined to be raped or battered.

“The tragic irony of it,” writes Barbara L. Gallen, “is that we face an epidemic of male-perpetrated violence against women in this country. . . . This is hardly the time to rationalize an archaic double standard that prohibits qualified women from assuming responsibility for defending their own, and their country’s well-being.”

(I should think a country that permits assaults on one-third of its women has no well-being to defend.)

“Jack Smith . . . excuses his sexist attitude because ‘it has to do with men’s chivalry,’ ” writes Fran Ferguson of Palm Desert. “How does this chivalry hold up in the light of the violence and abuse suffered by women at the hands of men worldwide? The number of women who are brutalized and raped grows each year and a sexist attitude, whether perceived as benevolent chivalry or open discrimination, plays a part in its perpetuation. No one wants more mangled bodies as a result of combat duty--male or female. Smith’s postion restricting women from combat is not the answer.”

What is the answer?

“I, too, like you, oppose women being used in combat,” writes Linda Alkana of Seal Beach, “but I think your argument is weak. Men’s ‘deep-seated tenderness and chivalry toward women’ do not preclude them from killing women with the bombs they drop, nor raping them nor using them as prostitutes.”

“Chivalry, shmivalry, Mr. Smith,” writes S. Marlene Head of Oxnard. ‘ “Deep-seated tenderness’ toward women, my ---.” She goes on to assert that men who might be unhinged by the sight of women combat victims would have no trouble “raping, killing and maiming unarmed civilian women.”

“No,” writes Kim Foreman of San Bernardino, “I don’t think you’re sexist for feeling that women shouldn’t be used in combat (a very good choice of words, by the way), but I do think you are very naive. . . . Quite the opposite is true. Out of the hundreds of thousands of men facing combat, surely a good deal of them have seen and enjoyed pornography, which shows women being beaten, tied up, whipped, tortured and degraded in any number of ways. Surely many of them have maimed or injured a girlfriend and spouse, knocking them around in a fit of anger or drunkenness.

“I think that seeing women as a comrade-in-arms, fighting and even dying alongside the men, would bring about a profound change in attitude in those men who witnessed it. I think they would learn to see women as having courage, dignity and worth in their own right. . . . Facing death together, facing a common threat, creates a bond, a closeness and trust that even years of marriage can’t duplicate. . . . “

Believe me, seeing a comrade mangled by a mortar shell does not invest him with courage, dignity and worth. Death on the battlefield is obscene.

At least Foreman admits that she is not volunteering. “Personally, I’m a coward and would only put my life on the line for my family or myself, but I know many women are just as willing as men to put themselves in the line of fire for a cause they believe in.”

“That combat is somehow alien to the supposedly nurturant, life-preserving tendencies of women insidiously reinforces biologically determined constructs of gender,” writes Sikivu Hutchinson in prose that sounds like a doctoral dissertation. “To deny women combat roles more firmly enshrines oppressive boundaries between ‘masculine and feminine,’ marking women as part of the substrata (i.e., women and children) of those least powerful and most needy of protection.”

It seems to me that persons who are routinely raped and beaten by men are needy of protection.

Except for Kim Foreman, who admitted she is not keen about combat, none of my correspondents indicates whether she is eager to engage in combat, should the armed forces open it to women. As someone has pointed out, “War hath no fury like a non-combatant.”

I have not quoted from any letters supporting my view. My view is personal and emotional, and is based on experience. I doubt that it can be reinforced by logic or rational argument.

Battle stations, everyone.