From: cortese@skid.ps.UCI.EDU (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Women warriors and male myths (WAS: Military Quote)
Date: 9 Oct 92 15:41:55 GMT


In article <1ad7drINNjj5@agate.berkeley.edu> blchapma@eos.ncsu.edu (BEKKI LYN) writes:
>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*.

Ridiculous.  If I had a kid and someone threatened it, I'd slit their
throat wide open and drink their blood with a smile in my face.  In the
wild, as you say, women are the protectors and providers for their
children.  This requires that they have a greater capacity for general
nastiness than any male.

Second, to be "feminine" is decided by those who ARE feminine.

>|>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.

Frequently, the male's "fierceness" is directed toward his own young --
witness Ardrey and Morris's pet primate the baboon, and the polar bear
as a nonprimate.

To be masculine under the primate system has nothing to do with
protecting ANYTHING.  The female is the one who is responsible for
raising the next generation.  SHE is the protector, and she can get
really bloodthirsty about it.  Male aggressiveness is frequently
directed toward other males in dominance displays; it is not always
channelled toward prey or outsiders who threaten.  Females don't care
about dominance battles because they are on top of the totem pole as
soon as they have newborns; unlike the males, they are assured of
spending SOME time on the top of the social structure.  Hence, the
whole dominance thang doesn't interest them.  Males are interested in
dominance displays and aggressiveness in baboons DIRECTED TOWARD
OTHER MALES only because baboons are not pair-bonded and hence must
establish mating structure otherwise.

>|> 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).

Please, let me remind you!  I am VERY good at quantum mechanics and
math; I passed my qual exam at UCI finishing first in my class in the
QM qualifier -- first over many, many men students.  Evidently, you
would assume that understanding quantum mechanics is a female attribute,
since one out of a mere four women students in a class of about twenty
men did the best.  (Another woman did the second best -- Zilan.)

I have news for you -- math and quantum mechanics, as much as being able
to build a bookcase, run a big fiberglass vacuum chamber pumped down to
the low 6's, control a 250,000 volt capacitor bank with confidence, AND
play the piano well, sell artwork, and write poetry are ALL female
attributes due to the fact that they are all lodged within my VERY
female brain.  MY flannel shirts are (homage to ailsa, Bekki) women's
clothing since *I* own them, regardless of the rack the store put them
on.  I have only female traits.

My boyfriend is a physicist; his math and physics skills are masculine.
He has perfect pitch and a wonderful singing voice.  He plays the violin
and guitar.  His music skills are masculine.

If you have a hard time conceiving how a talent at physics or a talent
at music can be simultaneously masculine and feminine, that is your
problem.  Please do not take a cleaver to my psyche to reduce it to a
digital number of pieces on which you can then arbitrarily slap polarized
labels.

I may be flaming too hard, but this particular subject really torques
me.  When I am at the piano, I am being "feminine," at the computer
"masculine."  If you call math skills masculine and find them in a
woman, then the woman is not masculine; that's not possible.  Your
labelling paradigm is simply wrong.  I have been targeted as not
"feminine" for these skills I have; I've also bee targeted
as "too feminine" for other skills I have.  If this paradigm is
incapable of classifying a typical member of the species, the
paradigm is flawed, plain and simple.  I've experienced firsthand the
oppression that comes from people trying to fit you into one of two
little cubbyholes based on what THEY think you are, and not on what
you ARE, and I have no sympathy for that sentiment.

>|>  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.

We can when it's wrong.  If the dichotomy is being strained at by
numerous women in the society, then the dichotomy -- a mere model for
the physical world after all -- must give way and acknowledge that it's
wrong.  If a physicist were to develop a model for a class of elementary
particles, and label attributes as belonging to one kind of particle or
another, and then found that attributes of one particle were exhibited
by the other, the physicist could not simply say that the particles were
just displaying their feminine side.  The physical theory would have to
give way.

>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.

Like I said, if so many women are complaining about the "dichotomy," and
calling it repressive of their minds, then the dichotomy is simply
wrong.  If it were accurate, it would not be strained against.

>|> 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.

In other words, just shut up and act like I say you're supposed to,
honey, and we'll all be happier for it.  Well, YOU might not be so
happy, but since I don't use you in my definition of society anyway,
then society will still benefit.

Your myths are a load of crap.  *I* say what I am, and NOT you, or your
goddamned myths, not Bly, whatever he said, and not Sigmund Freud.  *I*
determine what my essential nature is.  Your myth is being used as an
excuse for you to try and tell me what my characteristics are based only
on the name at the end of my post -- when you haven't even met me.  If
women aren't supposed to be aggressive, then I guess I'm a man in
disguise posting here and flaming you.

I will be better served by finding out on my own what my essential
mature is.  I'm not going to listen to some stupid myth as a source for
what I'm supposed to be.

Again, they are a mere excuse for someone to tell you what you are, and
then punish you for being what you REALLY are.

>|> 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'm not able to sit back and wait for them to come to their senses
and discover how unmanly it is for men to rape.  I can't afford to.
I will welcome the day when they DO realize it, but until then, I've
got to walk through some dark parking lots and walk back to my apt
late at night.  What do I do then?

>|> 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 want a world where men are encouraged to be brutal toward
ANYONE, even other men.  Are you saying that killing other men is part
of being a man?  That you DO want a world where men are brutal toward
other men?  Brutality hurts, period.  Men bleed red.

>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.

Too damned bad.  What you're saying is that women should not be brutal
in the slightest, but men can be -- to other men.  What the hell kind of
a world are you promoting anyway?

>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.

>|>  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?

And thus easy marks and targets for violence from the other half?

You sound like a Victorian philosopher.  Why not go whole hog?  Why not
ask for the ENTIRE human race to be devoid of violence?

What is wrong with your eyes?  Are you incapable of seeing that if one
side is encouraged to be violent and the other passive, that it will
take the merest whisper of an idea before the first side starts beating
up on the second?  Passivity makes for nothing so much as easy
victims.  The passivity that women are encouraged nowadays to develop
has gone hand in hand with women having more mental illnesses and
depressions than men.  This fainting passivity is damaging us.  We
are NOT naturally passive; we dare not be.

Repeat this until it sinks through your skull.  The WOMAN in nature --
the female animal of any stripe -- is responsible for protecting and
and providing for her young.  If women were passive little lambs, there
would be nothing on this Earth but plants.

>|> There are some (like myself) who really do want to protect women.

By asking us to go around acting like frail little Milquetoasts who
can't even keep care of ourselves?  Why does your desire to "protect"
us hinge on our inability to protect ourselves?

>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.

YES!!!!!!

>|> >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.

Why do you then deny women the opportunity to make this sacrifice?

>|> 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.

You call the total inability to protect oneself from assault a "perk?"
Puh-LEEEEEZE.

>Bekki Lyn

Well, you said the guys here always wanted women to "express" themselves,
hon . . .

Regards,
Janis C.
----------------

--
Post articles to soc.feminism, or send email to feminism@ncar.ucar.edu.
Questions and comments should be sent to feminism-request@ncar.ucar.edu.  This
news group is moderated by several people, so please use the mail aliases. Your
article should be posted within several days.  Rejections notified by email.