Military Edition: Would you rather work with a rapist or a woman?

Canada, Australia, North Korea, France, Germany, Poland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Israel, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand.

If you’re trying to figure out what the relationship between all these countries is, you might find yourself grasping at thin air (particularly when you see North Korea in the group). This is a list of thirteen countries that currently allow women to serve in direct combat roles in the military. So who is missing?

I was recently part of a very interesting conversation in which the role of women in the military came up. As a woman in the Army, this is a topic that I often hear discussed in great detail and the same tired excuses keep popping up. This conversation, however, ventured into uncharted territory and left me feeling some resentment toward the men that I’ve come to identify as friends and whom I should be able to trust with my life.

The most prominent theme of our conversation (surprise, surprise) was the topic of rape, closely related to women being a distraction and men being unable to curtail their own impulses. Please Note: this reasoning is incredibly insulting to men everywhere who manage to make it through the day without dragging women into alleys, drugging them, or threatening them in exchange for intercourse or sexual favors. 

There is a culture of hypermasculinity in the military that must be dealt with. Undoubtedly the military attracts aggressive personalities, and service members need to be mentally and physically tough. However, by hypermasculinity, I am referring to the mindset that disparages any quality associated with femininity; traits typically associated with women are devalued on a consistent basis organizationally and culturally within the military.

I have noticed that a great number of men who come into the military have an unabashedly romanticized view of violence and a misconstrued picture of the military man, many times to the detriment of the female soldiers with whom they work. I would prefer to believe that this stems from a lack of education rather than a hostile view of women. During the uncomfortable conversation, I was told by this friend that he would rather work with “bloodthirsty men who would not function well in society” than work with a woman, because he could not rely on her to be capable of protecting him in a combat situation. The conversation evolved further to include an example of what men could not do if a woman was present in the room: discuss favorite movie rape scenes.

I might be out of the loop here, but I don’t typically associate male bonding with laughing at or trivializing rape — fictionalized or not. This discussion is unacceptable in any environment, and it is very important to note here that male service members are subjected to sexual assault and rape in alarming numbers. The lack of a woman’s presences does not negate the crassness of a conversation like this. Furthermore, it is not legitimate to deny a woman an entire career because a group of men think that they should be permitted to say whatever they want without consequence or disagreement.

Let’s nail down some of the arguments given in opposition to women in the U.S. military serving in direct combat roles. Some of the key points of contention I’ve run into in the past have been women’s lack of physical strength, the lowering of standards for women, men’s inability to control themselves, and the protective instinct of men.

Regarding women’s lack of physical strength in comparison to men, this is an indisputable fact if you simply look at the differences in physical strength that exist between the average man or woman. What this viewpoint does not take into account is that the binary division of men and women in the military eliminates those women who are physically capable of excelling in physically demanding roles while simultaneously welcoming unfit men into the fold — an invitation that, when closely examined, relies heavily on a cultural gender construct rather than physical suitability of the service member.

Arguments concerning the physical abilities of female soldiers bring us to the second argument on our list: lowering the standards for women. This is a tried and true debate point for those in opposition to integration and isn’t without merit. The physical standards for women in the military today are significantly lower than those put in place to assess men’s physical fitness. The issue with this argument is that the problem lies in the standards put in place, not with female service members. The current standards yet again create a binary division between service members that serve to implicate women as universally weaker than men. The answer to this issue is not a constraint on women’s vocational opportunities, but the creation of less arbitrary physical fitness standards.

We’re going to lump the third and fourth arguments together because they are integrally related. In this line of debate, you see two different sides of the same coin. On the one hand, it is argued that women will be placed in bodily danger from their own comrades if they are integrated into combat roles. On the other hand, the logic is that men are naturally protective of women and will react emotionally rather than logically under stress when female service members are in danger. The two arguments rely on the same ideological underpinnings: men are unable to control their behavior with the introduction of women into the environment. Through this line of reasoning, it is argued that women will only serve as a distraction in a combat setting and therefore must be barred from combat arms occupations. Not only does this play into the mindset that men are incapable of controlling themselves, it also places women in a position where they are to be blamed when male service members engage in derogatory, demeaning, or dangerous behavior.

To curtail women’s freedom to fully participate in the U.S. military based on a lack of faith in men’s ability to control themselves is an insult to both genders and runs parallel to an insidious ideology of victim blaming. It is impossible to effectively argue both of these points. Either men are overprotective of women or they are a danger to women; the second argument disproves the first. In response to the first argument, it has been established that there is no proof that this overprotective instinct is demonstrable in a combat environment. As for the second argument, the answer to this is removal of sexual predators from the military, not a prohibition on women serving in combat roles.

With a simple internet search you can find examples of women in the military who have risked their lives in combat during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These women do not have the combat arms military occupation but in today’s wars we have seen that the nominal lack of a combat arms military occupation does not negate the reality that women regularly serve in combat overseas. Army National Guard Sergeant Carolyn Schapper served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 alongside men and experienced IEDs, mortars, and rockets at the same rate as the men in her platoon. Army Sergeant Rebekah Havrilla’s job was to handle IEDs and she experienced multiple firefights during her deployment. Sergeant Leigh Ann Hester was awarded the Silver Star for her actions during an ambush on her deployment.

The conversation that I had was not distasteful because my friend did not know about any women who had risked their lives in combat and simply had no examples toward which to look. The conversation was unsettling because, regardless of these examples, he relied on cultural and ideological stereotypes about gender roles and insisted (possibly without realizing it, because we were speaking more theoretically) that he would rather team up in combat with a criminal than me — not because this hypothetical criminal runs marathons and has perfect aim with his rifle, but simply because I am a woman and therefore inherently not qualified to stand by his side.

Header image credit: U.S. Army/Flickr