The Collapse of Gender Sanity

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Physiology doesn’t lie: Women are less effective than men at meeting military objectives, and far more likely to be injured in combat. Let’s stop denying reality in a misguided effort toward “equality” and agree that women should not be drafted to combat roles.

Men were built for fighting. Women were built for childbearing. It’s interesting to note how stubbornly true—even obvious—these statements remain, despite aggressive efforts to bury them.

Modern people have a penchant for denying obvious things. Dysfunctional politics and political correctness have brought us to the point of potentially approving women’s inclusion in a military draft. The Senate Armed Services Committee recently entertained arguments in favor of requiring women to register for the selective service, and three candidates endorsed the plan in New Hampshire’s Republican debate. The trickle is turning into a stampede. Suddenly political correctness requires that we all agree that girls can fight just as well as boys.

The problem is that it’s just not true. We need to return to some basic Aristotelian principles in order to explain why drafting women would be both imprudent and unjust.

Playing Politics

From a political standpoint, it’s easy to understand why Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie were all prepared to agree that women should register for the selective service. (Senator Mike Lee is pushing legislation to block the drafting of women, which has won support from Rubio and from Ted Cruz.) Somewhat farcically, all three candidates treated selective service registration as a wonderful new “opportunity” for women. That’s silly; the system exists to enable conscription in a time of extreme need. Women already have the opportunity to enlist in the military if they meet the relevant requirements.

Rubio specified that most likely a draft would apply only to women who met the physical requirements. But this would be a foolish policy in an emergency scenario. If you desperately need a large number of soldiers in a hurry, is it sensible to start screening populations of people that will mostly be unfit for the job? Should children and retirees also be included, in case a few turn out to be suitable for active service? This is nonsense. Every society in history has built its armies primarily of young men, for an excellent reason: They are overwhelmingly the most fit for the job.

If the Republican candidates were thinking clearly, they would be racing to specify that they support drafting women only to non-combat roles. This is a more sane position, modeled on the example of other nations (such as Israel) that use female conscripts primarily in supporting roles (as medics, logistical support, etc.). Considering that a draft would only be implemented in a time of extreme need, asking unattached young women to serve their country in these capacities could be reasonable. Demanding that they serve as infantry would not be.

The Collapse of Gender Sanity

It’s disconcerting to see even Republicans sanctioning this kind of foolishness, but there may be a silver lining here. There is value to discussing this issue at a moment when we desperately need a starting point for a more reasonable conversation about sex and gender. Sending thousands of young women to die in battle would be morally monstrous, but luckily, we are not currently threatened with a draft. Instead we are facing a near-total collapse of gender sanity.

With schools banning the concepts of “boyhood” and “girlhood,” single-sex restrooms being treated as an affront, and even the Olympics allowing anatomical males to compete in women’s events, American gender politics has reached freakish levels of absurdity. If there is any chance of returning to sanity, our understanding of gender will need to be rooted in reflections on something objective and measurable: the body.

Americans have been suspicious of stark gender claims for a long time, and in some cases this is actually reasonable. Do boys really excel in math and science? Are girls really more nurturing or “emotionally intelligent”? These stereotypes are not groundless, but it may not be appropriate or necessary to assert them too forcefully. Boys and girls are indeed different in certain respects, including in how their brains develop. Nevertheless some boys are well attuned to emotion, while some girls may be assertive, independent, or analytical. Gender skeptics may reasonably ask: Isn’t it time we stopped defining people by dated stereotypes and allowed them to prove for themselves what they can do?

Much of the public finds these arguments persuasive, which is why politicians are happy to echo them—even on the political right. Most of us don’t mind when increased gender-role flexibility means a girl can become a sportswriter or an electrical engineer. In our time, however, the lines of reasonableness clearly have been crossed. Given that so many of our compatriots have rejected tradition as offensive and anachronistic, what other grounds are there to restore some sort of natural order?

The case of women in the draft may fit this purpose, because the objections are so obvious and so rooted in physiology. One can understandably argue that stereotypes play a role in holding women back from, say, achievements in the STEM fields. But military service is an entirely different animal. By significant margins, women are physically weaker and slower and have poorer reflexes than men. On the battlefield, these shortcomings make a literally life-or-death difference.

The Marine Corps commissioned a study that found that their strongest female recruits (top 25%) were about on par with the weakest male recruits (bottom 25%). Women undergoing entry-level marine training were an appalling six times more likely to suffer injury, including especially high rates of musculoskeletal injuries due to movement with heavy loads. (Even women who seem spectacularly fit may still sustain pelvic fractures from long marches with a standard military pack.) Mixed-gender units were slower and less lethal, and sustained more casualties.

In short, women don’t make very good soldiers. The exceptions are few and don’t stand out much by elite military standards. Women can certainly be courageous, patriotic, and self-sacrificing, but the female body was not built for combat.

From Biological Determinism To Biological Escapism

Suppose you consider chivalry outdated or even sexist. Perhaps you scoff at the idea that all-male units will have a stronger sense of fraternity, and you’re unworried about the possibility of romantic entanglement. But have you considered the strong evidence that female conscripts would be less effective in achieving military objectives, but far more likely to die trying? Are you moved by the consideration that under-qualified soldiers are a danger to everyone in their unit? Drafting women to combat roles just doesn’t make sense.

You may reply, won’t girls feel bad if we tell them they are weak, slow, and generally unimposing in combat? Isn’t this tantamount to saying that women are physically inferior?

Not at all, if you put the claims in a larger context. Women have bodies of amazing power: Nothing can compare to holding a newborn and realizing with awe, “My body built that.” It’s a remarkable feat that men can never simulate.

Women are physiologically awe-inspiring, but not in a way suited for soldiering. Their energies go towards something else; indeed, the female reproductive system is far more “expensive” in terms of invested energy, whether or not a woman ever bears a child.

Might these physiological differences tell us anything about what a flourishing life should look like, for men or women? Modern feminists would say “no”; that kind of reasoning is angrily rejected as “biological determinism.” Gloria Steinem famously declared, “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.”

Steinem’s comment is a good illustration of how far feminist thinking is removed from reality. Singing opera is a highly rarified use of a part of the anatomy that most of us use all the time, whereas wombs are useful for gestating babies and really nothing else. Still, feminists are right to object against any claim that a person who is physically suited to X must be restrictively mandated against doing anything besides X. But does anyone make this claim? It is possible to find moral significance in the body without engaging in hackneyed reductionism.

Women should not be commodified as baby-builders, any more than men should be commodified as body-builders. It turns out, though, that a flight from “biological determinism” sometimes ends in a kind of biological escapism. If we insist that our physiology has no moral significance, we may find ourselves desperately trying to hide from the obvious consequences of refusing to be what, in fact, we are.

Being Corporeal

We see manifold evidence of this escapism in modern life. Schools tie themselves into knots trying to prevent boys from doing what boys of virtually every culture like to do: wrestle, compete, and play warlike games. Boys are not suited to sitting in chairs all day long: The lack of movement in school is a huge problem for them that seems to be undercutting their scholastic achievement. Later in life, if they enlist in the military, the physical standards they are expected to meet will probably have been lowered to make it more possible for women to compete. Let’s have no overt expressions of masculinity in the military, please! It makes the ladies feel bad.

In a different way, girls are taught to suppress their most uniquely feminine characteristics. Progressive liberals have poured enormous energy into ensuring that girls can suppress their reproductive potentialities without cost, without judgment, and preferably as early as possible. Obsessed with lifting the “burden” of reproduction, these liberals lose any sense of healthy respect for motherhood or new life. They regularly reveal their disdain for pregnancy, children, and families, as we saw when NARAL activists threw themselves into a frenzy of indignation over a Super Bowl commercial that presented unborn children as humans.

Virtually no one would argue that either men or women should be enslaved to their physiology. But should we see it as an awkward physiological accident that men have (larger) biceps, and women the power to bring forth new life? Surely it’s more reasonable to incorporate these features into a complete and fully humane understanding of manhood and womanhood, in a way that gives meaning and social purpose to both.

What this means is that both boys and girls should be raised to embrace the unique potentialities of their bodies. Not every boy will grow up to be a soldier, but every boy can be taught to channel his natural competitiveness and aggression towards good. Young men should view themselves as protectors, ready to do what is needed to prevent the wicked from victimizing the innocent.

In a similar vein, not every girl will become a mother. Most will, but a woman who is unafraid of her physiology will find a healthy outlet for her life-giving impulses whether or not she literally bears a child. That doesn’t mean she can’t also (if she wants) learn to write software, but it does mean that she should expect her contribution to society to take the form of giving life, not taking it.

Again and again, the progressive left has proven that prudent living, once neglected, is soon spurned. Drafting women would be a particularly tragic illustration of this point: Even women who don’t want to serve could be forced to throw their lives away in a desperate effort to act like men. Might we use this moment to walk the conversation back in the other direction? Our military needs at the moment are happily not so dire, but in the war against nature and common sense, the enemy seems to be winning. Let’s step up our recruitment efforts.

Rachel Lu teaches philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota where she lives with her husband and three boys. Dr. Lu earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell University.

 

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Gator
Gator

Why don’t we abolish the draft instead? Im already terrified at the prospect of the government forcing my son into servitude for yet another war based on nonsense. Now they want my daughter too?

Nope.

anarchyst
anarchyst

…at the risk of sounding chauvinist (I don’t care) this is but one example of the negative effects of extending suffrage (voting) (and by inference, “feminism”) to women.
It is no secret that many women vote on “looks” and “style” and not substance. It is but one example of emotions ruling the roost, rather than logic. This is what got “bj clinton” and the “o’bama” elected TWICE…
Women are very good at nurturing children–acting on emotion is a part of child-rearing; to provide stability and make a family “complete”, a male is needed, in order to provide structure and logic.
When it comes to making choices based on logic and substance, many women just don’t have it…

Women and men have NEVER been “equal”…each has unique qualities that compliment each other. This is by design, and no amount of “gender norming” or feminism can change it…

anarchyst
anarchyst

Not only pornography, but feminism and the “popular culture” is also responsible. Look at today’s culture–hollywood sitcoms portray women and blacks as being super-smart and “cool”, children as spoiled, smart-mouthed brats, and their men as bumbling idiots–targets of derision by every other cast member…
Unfortunately, this filters into real-life, many women are skanks, looking only for financial security, while not giving up their “freedom” to be rabid feminists…any man who subscribes to feminism and “hooks up” with one of these harridans has to be insane…
There are good white women out there…it just takes perseverance and a good gentlemanly attitude to find them. Frequenting bars and nightclubs for a “life-partner” is generally not the “ticket”…

po'boy
po'boy

Be the first one on your block, to have your little girl come home in a box.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Gator,

The Draft gives the military a constant turn over of civilians serving in it for a short time and keeps the military tied to the civilian population, civilianized as such, and loyal to the people instead of becoming isolated from them with ties only to themselves and the government that it is a part of.

Get rid of the draft, as we have done for the last several decades, and you create a professional military force that does not see itself as tied to civilian population.

That makes the old “Would the military fire on (civilian) Americans” question something that needs to be considered far more seriously than the dismissive way it usually is.

winter

Women can be powerful only by acting like women. This is what they don’t understand. A woman can move a hundred pound load by batting her eyelashes. But this article seems to be about drafting women to be ground troops. I think that most in the military are in tanks and planes.

rhs jr
rhs jr

A society that loses it’s child bearing women is a society that will die out. They may win a battle but will lose the war.

Lysander
Lysander

I’m all in favor of womyn getting drafted and sent out into combat. That will be the end of feminism, right fucking there.

When those girls start coming home disfigured for life, with missing limbs, burned faces, blind, crippled and crazy, then the women who formally supported all this bullshit will soon be wearing modest little dresses with their hair in cute pigtails while holding a lolly-pop and saying “Me?” I’m just a widdle girlie-girl who wants a big strong man to save her”.

They’ll go from “I am woman- hear me roar” to “I can’t wait to marry a man I can cook and clean for”.

And if bull-dykes want to go fight, then let ’em, but I doubt that’ll happen. It hasn’t happened yet with a volunteer force and it won’t happen with a draft, either.

I’m so sick of the lies.

flash
flash

after reading this misogynic missive, Feminista Stuck will have to retreat to his safe place..

flash
flash

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flash
flash

calm as Hindu cows and just as stupid..Everything has a price..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxpVwBzFAkw

flash
flash

Head of £33,000-a-year girls’ boarding school says boys should wear princess dresses and girls dress up as firemen as she calls for ‘gender neutral’ parenting

Heathfield school headmistress Jo Heywood called for parenting revolution
She believes parents should bring up their children in ‘gender neutral’ way
Ms Heywood said boys should be encouraged to wear a princess dress and little girls a fireman’s outfit if they want to explore doing so
Three out of five parents say gender labels on clothes should be removed

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3457140/Head-33-000-year-girls-boarding-school-calls-parents-bring-children-gender-neutral-way.html#ixzz40pSsSOR6

Roy

The Indian’s had the perfect system, the men hunted and fished all day and the women did all the rest. Then the Indians allowed open immigration and the white Europeans nearly genocided the Indians and put the Squaws in charge and it’s been downhill ever since.

The white man allowed open immigration and allowed the Muslims in. The Muslims will probably exterminate the white man and put the Squaws back in their proper place. This may not quite be full circle but it’s close enough for Government work.

Dis Nigga
Dis Nigga

Roy says:…Europeans nearly genocided the Indians

We genocided a few people

Dis Nigga
Dis Nigga

anarchyst says: There are good […] women out there…it just takes perseverance and a good gentlemanly attitude to find them. Frequenting bars and nightclubs for a “life-partner” is generally not the “ticket”…

Unfortunately, this has become the norm, women drinking and clubbing. When we were young, this type of woman was known as a whore. Today, it simply is a choice. The ideals of women’s lib went by the wayside and women took what they wanted: fun, fun, fun. Dicks galore and child support when the bill came due.

Whenever El Doggy complains about this abuse of men, women call in to his radio program to ask if he’s gay.

TBP may be the last refuge of can-do women and men. May it serve as a beacon of light for the survivors of the collapse.

David
David

Hillary should lead the way into combat, as private as her history shows he to be incompetent at everything but bribe taking.

flash
flash

brilliant….ignore gender when selecting a roommate. #RockThat StupidVote

The pair met through Craigslist when Mitchell responded to Jones’s public ad for a roommate.

He moved in on February 7. Police believe the pair may have struck up a romantic relationship soon after.

‘There are conflicting statements, and it’s up in the air if there was a relationship between the two,’ Miami police spokesman Lt. Freddie Cruz told the Miami Herald.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3457134/Miami-woman-23-beaten-knifed-coma-roommate-CRAIGSLIST-relationship-attacker-police-claim.html#ixzz40ps4TNqI

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flash
flash

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CA
CA

All women deserve to have a turn. Be all they can b, before they take one for the team.

flash
flash

Leftard logic
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ssgconway

Annually, 70% of each year’s crop of 1-year-olds are deemed ineligible for enlistment due to weight, lack of academic ability, drug use, criminal background, medical issues, etc. (I used to be a recruiter; when you have only a handful of kind take and pass the ASVAB at an urban high school, and half of those are obese, you have a problem. That was 20 years ago.) What I am saying is that, unless we commit negligent homicide by relaxing induction standards (see ‘Project 100,000’ from the Vietnam era), we have a small pool to draw from to begin with. Potentially drafting females is not going to do much to solve that, obvious issues with size, strength, mental makeup, romance on the battlefield, etc., aside.
We have become like the latter-day Romans – too effete to fight and forced to turn to ‘alternate sources of manpower.’ Any nation whose manhood is so lacking that it must contemplate compelling women to fight (or enrolling slaves and barbarians into the legions) is not long for this world, and deservedly so. All it will take is something like a Division 1-A opponent to come along and teach us a lesson, a la Manzikert or Adrianople, and the mystique of American power will no longer shield us.
I suspect that senior policymakers already know this. A few years back one of the scribblers at one of the little magazines read by the Establishment floated a trial balloon about ‘solving’ illegal immigration by granting citizenship to those who would first serve in uniform – an American ‘foreign legion,’ if you will. Watch that idea resurface if our needs become acute. It may be a stop-gap, and it might work better to enlist foreign men than to contemplate drafting American girls (that 30% eligible to enlist skews toward the middle and upper classes; don’t bet on those with money standing idly by during a draft) but, eventually, the foreigners will figure out that we’re fat, weak and rich and decide to turn their hired guns on their erstwhile paymasters. Game over.

ssgconway

…That should read, “crop of 18-year-olds.”

anarchyst
anarchyst

The danger in ssgconway’s advocacy for enlistment of foreigners, is that many foreigners are only here to make money, and have no concept of Constitutional government limitations, and would most likely try to gut our amendments, especially the Second Amendment. It seems that many foreigners come here and attempt to force their “old country” ways on us Americans. The old saying: “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” does not apply to today’s crop of immigrants.
Using foreign-born soldiers is a favorite of communist regimes, as they have no allegiance to us ordinary American citizens and would fire on us if ordered to, without questioning their (illegal and unconstitutional) orders.

javelin
javelin

An excerpt from a recent article by Dean Hall I recently read….just the physiological facts for me ( and a personal belief that we are designed beings).

—-In His infinite wisdom God created man and woman complementary to one another. Both man and woman are made in God’s image, but there are differences that underscore the unique roles God intended for each. Those differences destroy the feminist myth that women and men can do the same jobs equally well.

Some of the more significant physical differences are on average: men are 6″ taller, have superior vision that allows them to track moving objects more accurately (a significant skill in combat firearms proficiency), superior night vision, 40% more upper body muscle mass, 33% more lower body muscle mass, better blood clotting ability, 25% thicker skin, more connections between the brain stem and the spinal cord for better sensory motor skills (significant for shooting, defensive tactics and driving proficiency), 50% less nerve receptors to feel less pain, larger heart and more red blood cells for greater endurance, denser bones and stronger ligaments and tendons (Source biblicalgenderroles.com).

Some things about men and women aren’t about simply being superior or inferior to the other – they are just about differences. Key among them is that men are more aggressive and competitive than women. A male’s major sex hormone, testosterone, impacts his behavior. Testosterone is the hormone most associated with male aggressiveness, competitiveness, and assertiveness. Testosterone also helps a man focus on a project, competition, mission or venture. Researchers at Georgia State University found that the “high performers” tested in fields as varied as business, politics, and professional sports, had higher levels of testosterone.

In addition, the brains of men and women are significantly different. On average men have: ten percent larger brains, 6.5 percent more gray matter (thinking matter), superior spacial processing, a systemizing brain wired to construct, analyze and explore, are less likely to suffer from anxiety and depression (Source biblicalgenderroles.com).

There are also significant psychological differences between the sexes. Testing reveals that on average males finish faster and score higher than females on a test that requires the taker to visualize an object’s appearance after it is rotated in three dimensions. The same is true for map-reading tests and for embedded-figures tests that ask subjects to find a component shape hidden within a larger design. Males are over-represented in the top percentiles on college-level math tests and tend to score higher on mechanics tests than females.

According to numerous medical studies, many of them documented by Dr. Walt Larimore, MD in his book “His Brain, Her Brain,” psychological tests indicate that women tend to empathize while men may be biologically wired to be more aggressive, more impulsive, and more assertive.

ssgconway

Re, Anarchyst: I don’t advocate enlisting foreigners, I note that the idea is out there. Personally, I think the idea is an invitation to disaster, coup d’etat, etc.

anarchyst
anarchyst

SSGConway, Sorry for the mistaken assumption. You are correct that allowing foreigners to serve in our armed forces is a bad idea. Sad to say, some foreigners serving today are getting “religious accommodation”, deviations from normal uniform standards, etc.
Best regards,

winter

I brought this up before – the article is about women putting boots on the ground. But the thing is, most of the military action is conducted in planes, tanks, and boats. I am not saying that women will excel at that type of warfare. I am hoping to get opinions.

Chicago999444
Chicago999444

“It is no secret that many women vote on “looks” and “style” and not substance”

I mean, please, just PLEASE already

And men don’t? Please tell me that an incoherent, blustering blowhard like Trump, the current favorite of white men and women everywhere, has anything going for him but his “style”, which says a lot about the condition of our culture.

I guess I’m just a feminazi at heart, but I refuse to acknowledge that the average doltish sport-obsessed male has anything over the typical doltish clothes-obsessed female when it comes to objective judgement and general intelligence. I fucking refuse to relinquish my right to have a voice in the laws that govern me, to the average dumb male,.. just because he is male.

People vote what they perceive to be their interests. And, just as men tend to support government “gimmes” for sports venues, and excessive “defense” spending, women tend to be suckers for anything that purports to help mothers and children. In other words, men and women are all suckers, the only difference being what triggers their dumb sucker response.

Men and women both tend to support things that they perceive to give them an advantage in life. In the case of men, it’s guns they get most passionate about. In the case of women, reproductive freedom and being able to avoid having kids you can’t afford to support.

And I will tell you this for a fact- the Dems would totally lose female support and most women would become Republicans if the Repugs would only just drop their allegiance to the evangelicals and their anti-contraception and anti-abortion stance. Trust me, most women do not affiliate with the Dems for any other reason. We mostly feel that the welfare state has become out of control and is eating the country up alive. We are sick of race politics and political correctness. And we HATE Islam.

Roy

Chicago –
T&A will always overwhelm logic, math and physics.

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