From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
Subject: Re: Value of Womens' Lives (was: _Backlash_)
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 17:24:21 GMT

In article <1992Sep25.014229.26936@leland.Stanford.EDU> farthing@leland.Stanford.EDU (ljf) writes:
)In article <1992Sep24.162104.690@mahendo.jpl.nasa.gov> julie@eddie.jpl.nasa.gov (Julie Kangas) writes:

)>This is a most dangerous attitude IMO.  Women should not be placed on
)>any sort of pedestal.  No person should be.  By saying 'women are
)>special', or 'women are more valuable', or 'women are more 
)>delicate', etc., you are allowing injustices to be done in the
)>name of "protecting" women.  This is like "in order to save
)>the village we had to destroy it."

)But it is saying that women's lives are more valuable than men's?  One
)of the things that can be hardest to understand is why men in the
)military don't want women in combat.  The reasonable (imo) response of
)men in the military is to say, "For every woman in combat, this
)lessens my chances of having to go into combat."  And yet men aren't
)saying this.

Chivalry has a lot to do with this (IMO).  A man who spouted off like this
would find that his social life would suffer.  So he learns not to do it.

That's part of the problem.  The other part of the problem is that it seems
more logical (IMO) to fight against the draft entirely, which reduces ones
chance to *zero*, rather than to argue that 'women should be drafted too'.
It's really not so logical to argue that expanding the evils of the draft
to include women is the logical thing to do, given that it only
half-solves the problem (and has lots of negative social consequences as
I mentioned before).

The third point is that there are some men who really like the traditional
male role of 'protector'.  They do (IMO) deeply resent anything that
challenges this viewpoint.  To argue that women are capable of protecting
themselves and/or are not inherently worth protecting strikes at the core
of their identity and social conditioning.

)During the Tailhook convention last year, one speaker received
)thunderous applause from the navy fighter pilots (all male) when he
)said that there would never be female fighter pilots.  Why is that?

Hard to say, though I could speculate some :-)

)If a woman can be as good (or better) a fighter pilot than a man, does
)that lower the value and status of being a fighter pilot?  That's what
)male fighter pilots seem to be saying.

Fighter pilots are most likely *not* draftees.  So, presumably they find
the job worth the risk, so we aren't talking about the draft argument
anymore.

Personally, I think that this shows that chivalry cuts both ways.  However,
I'm not all that convinced personally that women throughout history have just
been itching to get into war and combat as some seem to argue.  I also think
that there are a fair number of men, esp the more macho types, who really
'get off' on the role of being the protector/provider.  There are also some
financial angles (which probably don't take a direct conscious role IMO, but
may be important anyway) which argue that restricting the pool of applicants
does increase the salary and other associated rewards.

Anyway, I expect women to continue to pressure the military to get into the
few high-status high-paying jobs there.  I don't really expect anyone to
be that interested in actually making the armed forces gender-neutral 
as a whole (by 'affirmitive action'), or a lot of interest by the majority
of women in doing the 'grunt work' in the trenches.

I'm not sure how the average 'grunt' views women in the military.  I'd
suspect there is more support there (IMO) than in the higher-status areas,
or the top-level brass (which I think is mostly against women in the
military, much more so than the lower levels) but it's probably a mixed bag,
and I'm really not sure how it all sorts out.
Newsgroups: soc.men,alt.feminism