From: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Women warriors and male myths (WAS: Military Quote)
Date: 30 Sep 1992 21:49:47 GMT
Organization: North Carolina State University, Project Eos
Distribution: world
Reply-To: blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN)
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Sep28.230941.18930@access.usask.ca>, bickis@skmath3.pa.dec.COM ("M. Bickis") writes:
|> I believe that women should not be soldiers.

[stuff deleted]

||> Why do I cling to this belief?  Because I believe that gender is an
|> essential aspect of society, and gender is associated with more than
|> just sex and pregnancy.  If I strip the concept of gender down to its
|> essentials, I find a nurture vs. protection dichotomy.  To be feminine
|> is to be nurturing, nourishing and *non-threatening*.  To be masculine
|> is to be protective and agressive.  (This is the attribute that I
|> believe Bly calls "fierceness".)  These attributes are naturally
|> linked to one's biology, and are found throughout the animal kingdom,
|> almost universally among mammals.

This is the same type of argument that we women have heard for years
and years and years.  This is what is "feminine".  It is biologically
this way; therefore, you women must accept it because you cannot
change biology.  I'm sorry, but I don't buy this.  What is "feminine"
and "masculine" is what we have been socially pressured to think,
not a fact of nature.  In fact, this comment is insulting to men
as well.  I.E. Men are masculine, and therefore must be aggressive.
All you passive men out there must have something wrong with
your biology, I suppose.
 
|> This is not to say that women cannot possess "masculine"
|> characteristics or that men cannot possess "feminine" ones.

If a person has "masculine" characteristics, yet is biologically
a woman, then would they not be *her* characteristics?  If she
is a woman, then whatever characteristics she has must be
feminine.  Vice versa for men.  (I seem to remember a similar
discussion here from another newsgroup I read).

|>  Just as
|> we all have hormones of both sexes, so we also have the mental
|> attributes of both genders.  But if gender is to have any significance
|> at all in society (and I know there are some who think it shouldn't)
|> then we cannot deny the dichotomy.

I agree that there are differences between men and women; however, I
disagree that one must force any particular individual into a gender
role based on whatever characteristics one is "supposed" to have in
her/his society.  It would be one thing if one woman out of 40 million
people or so showed characteristics that deviated from gender "norm",
but there are many many many more, of both men and women, that show
such deviating characteristics.

Perhaps some people believe gender to certain significances only because
they want it to, but that doesn't mean that their philosophy must be
correct.  I know of many women who have been harmed, including myself,
by these forced gender dichotomies.
 
|> This essence of what it is to be masculine or feminine is of course an
|> ideal (or 'myth' if you prefer).

What may be one persons ideal may be another persons torture or even
death.

|>  Real women can be threatening, and
|> real men can be anything but protective.  But I maintain that society,
|> and consequently all of us, will be better served if these myths are
|> *promoted* rather than derided. 

Tell that to all those women who died in the witch persecutions for
4 centuries.  They died for some other person's ideal (or myth if
you prefer).  Tell that to all women who now are living with such
low self-esteem, or get beaten, battered, and broken for not living
up to someone else's ideal.

>From my experience, the more these ideals/myths/whatever are promoted,
the more pain they cause people.  It may be one thing if women made
up those things that are women, but we've hardly had that chance.
We've always had these ideal myths made up for us.

|> Women feel in danger from men (and
|> therfore talk about having to protect themselves) not because the myth
|> of masculinity is too strong, but because it is too weak.  An ideal
|> man would never hurt a woman because it would me unmanly to do so.
|> Only men who no longer take the masculine myth seriously would beat or
|> rape a woman.

I would love to see men trying to reevaluate what it is that is
"manly", but at the same time I, as a woman, do not want them to
reevaluate what it is to be "womanly".  Perhaps if we all looked
at each other as individual persons, rather than "manly" or
"womanly", we could see each other as being unique males and females.

|> Being brutal is part of being a soldier.  I don't want a world in
|> which men are encouraged to be brutal towards women.

I don't either, but that's the world in which we're now living.

|>  It is bad enough
|> for men to be brutal to other men.  I don't want a world in which
|> women are brutal at all.

You may not want that world, but you must understand that we women
are not consistently loving, pure, nurturing, understanding,
passive, etc. ad nauseum.  We are *humans* with all the thoughts
and feelings that go with that.  Just because someone wants it
another way doesn't make it so.

Personally, I don't want either women *or* men to be hateful of one
another.  That includes men to men.

|>  Even if we accept that violence is
|> unavoidable, would it not be commendable if at least half of the human
|> race were exempt from it?

First, I don't accept that violence is unavoidable.  But since it
seems to be at present, I do not believe is very commendable for
the human race if only half are exempt.  First, the half (the female
half in this case) are exempt because they are forced to be so.
Second, such passivity creates victims.  It happens every day.  The
more people make passive victims out of themselves, the more they
get abused.  Therefore with such violence, we will see a continuation
of the males being the dominators and the women being the victims.
 
|> There are some (like myself) who really do want to protect women.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to protect anyone.  However, 
women must also learn and be able to protect ourselves instead of
waiting around passively for someone to come to our rescue.  
 
|> >Personally, I would like to see more men thinking about why they feel
|> >they must die at all costs just for a tad bit of heroism.  I guess
|> >they are afraid of being called a "coward" or worse yet, a "wimp".
|> 
|> Many men *have* thought about this, and written about it.  Making a
|> sacrifice for the common good has been considered a virtue, and only a
|> society that promotes self-absorption would denigrate that.  Courage
|> has been promoted as a "masculine" virtue--not in that automatically
|> appears in all men, nor in that it is unbecoming in women--but in that
|> it is *expected* of men.  Lack of courage can be forgiven in a woman
|> because she has other burdens to bear.  This is one of the few perks
|> that women have traditionally had.  Don't knock it.

I'm not knocking.  I'm kicking and punching.  Don't men have any
other burdens?  And I am personally capable of commending men
for such "lack of courage" as lack of stupidity in most cases.
Perhaps we need to reevaluate just what is courage and why it is
forced to be so different with women and men.  Yes, I will knock it.
I will knock it with all my might.
 
|> In article <1a33smINNqpa@agate.berkeley.edu> Julie Wright
|> <julie@cucbs.chem.columbia.edu> writes in reply to:
|> >>[...]  I'm sorry, I just think that there isn't any male drive to
|> >>protect women.
|> >you meant you didn't think men had any kind of built-in drive to
|> >protect women any more than they'd protect men, and I agree with
|> >that.)
|> 
|> Well, I *don't* agree.  I think most men *would* would protect a woman
|> in preference to another man.  I certainly would.  And if both I and a
|> woman were in danger, and someone came to save us, I would expect that
|> the woman would be helped first.

Even if the woman looked like Arnold Schwarzeneggar?  Even if you were
hurt very seriously while she had nary a scratch?  
What if she was keeping cool and calm while you were in hysterics?
Be real here.  Personally, I would first help the one who needed it
most, and that person is not always the woman.

-- 

Bekki Lyn

************************************************************
"All's well at the midnight hour; you're ready to fly
 Don't think about the darkness, or the rumbling in the sky.
 Somewhere on the morning road just waiting for you
 Some things that just could never be are calling up a
   spell so you can see..
 Dream Evil, the dark that you find in the back of your mind
 Dream Evil Dream Evil -- DIO --
************************************************************


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