Just when I was starting to think that 2013 had begun
relatively quietly for feminist bloggers looking for something to get riled about, this op-ed by Ryan Smith landed in my Twitter feed, on the back of the
recent decision by the Pentagon to allow the USA’s women soldiers to serve in
combat. Now, I am all for critical commentary, and I acknowledge that the
writer of the piece has served in recent combat, which it’s fair to say that I
have not (leaving aside my agonised kneejerk liberal reaction to warfare, the
closest I get to violence is on a badminton court), but as other commentators
have pointed out, the actual argument of the piece is perplexing at best and
thoroughly ludicrous at worst.
What the author seems to be implying is that women do not,
or cannot, understand what ‘real’ war is about, that it is ugly, revolting, and
brutal, with unsanitary and debilitating conditions for the troops. There is
much mention in his piece of the horrors of diarrhea and urination (I wonder
whether he has ever changed a nappy?), not to mention filth and dried blood.
Yes dear reader, it does somewhat segue into precious bodily fluids
territory. I also find it really curious that his main argument about combat
centres not on the psychological difficulties which might arise from, you know,
violently killing other humans, but essentially from the harshness of camp
conditions. Miss the point much? But I digress. Basically, I just found the
whole piece extraordinary and ludicrous, for several reasons.
Firstly, the idea that women simply by dint of the fact that they are women would baulk at
severe physical debilitation isn’t just common or garden sexism but also so
divorced from reality as to be worthy of ridicule. There are many, many
different women in the world and many different ways to be a woman; I am sure
it is fair to say that there are some of us who are delicate flowers much given
to swooning at the merest whiff of gore; that is undoubtedly true because
spectrum of humanity yadda yadda. But for every Tinkerbell there is a Boudicca –
how many female doctors and nurses faint away at a compound fracture on a
trauma ward, for example? How many women and girls walk for days in 45 degree
heat to bring back a pail of water for their village? Or for 20 hour days in a
sweatshop? How many are broken by abuse and disease in the sex trafficking
trade? The idea that women cannot cope with or are not used to physical trauma,
either the experience of it or the observation of it is, were it not so fucking
tragic, laughable.
Secondly, and this is such a big rhetorical miss that the words
banjo and barn door come to mind, does the writer really think that women do
not already experience war? What
would he say to the hundreds of thousands of women raped in combat? To
those displaced and made destitute? To those massacred because
they belong to the ‘wrong’ side? This is a very simple point that I would not
have thought needed making, but it is not just enlisted soldiers who experience
war. Smith's point, that war would be all too much for the lil’ ladies, utterly
betrays the enforced experience of hugely traumatic conflict for thousands upon
thousands of women (and children, and men, since the dawn of fucking time. Well
done, humanity).
Lastly, he says that relieving yourself in front of your fellow troops
is “humiliating enough”, and that we can “really only imagine the humiliation of being forced to relieve
yourself in front of the opposite sex”. Er, I don’t know about you, gentle
reader, but for those of us who have ever been in a long term relationship, had
children, met children, grown up with siblings, gone to school, played with
other kids, or just gotten really, really into watersports, this is beyond
parody. Like, really? That’s what would traumatise you? He goes on to say that it
would be “distracting and potentially traumatizing to be forced to be naked in front
of the opposite sex”. As Lauren Wolfe has pointed out with far less sarcasm than
I am able to, surely it is the fucking WAR
which is traumatic – the idea that weeing in front of your colleagues when you
haven’t washed in a month is the problem is FUCKING RIDICULOUS. I’ve been to
festivals more traumatic.
This entire
piece just plays into the tired (holy fuck am I tired of it) and ignorant stereotype of the innocent, unblemished
woman, who must be protected from the real muck of the world at all costs. How
risible. If only we fucking were. As
for the idea that women might be traumatised by combat, I would argue that this
has nothing to do with being a woman, and everything to do with being human –
with as much capability and resilience as the next soldier.
Very eloquent.
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