Thus, Stephanie Gutman is to be admired for the nerve to write The Kinder, Gentler Military. One of the book s strengths is that Gutman does not carry ideological baggage, though she concludes that the virus of sexual politics is ravaging the armed forces. Young men challenge each other. That s the way they are. What she calls fem fear now is pervasive in the armed forces, the constant shadow that almost any word or gesture can be and often is interpreted as sexual harassment and there goes the old career.
Accusation is tantamount to guilt.
Gen. Claudia Kennedy s belated complaint is a vivid recent instance. Women have served honorably and well and will continue to do so. To dictate, as we are doing, however, that one sociological size fits all is grotesque. In an era devoted to examining, criticizing, and rebuking masculinity, the armed forces were the last preserve where the species ran free, Gutman writes. The gates of that preserve have been widely breached.