Mike Strobel wrote an opinion piece over on Canoe.ca in which he states:
Which leaves us with the thorny question of women serving in armies that are hellbent on slaughtering each other.
To me the answer is simple: Do not send women into combat.
He then proceeds to tell us just how much harder it is to see the pictures of the faces of the women who have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It would be terrible if those faces were of young men.
I'm sorry, but it is even worse that they are of young women.
Either he cares less that young men are dying, or he is a sexist who believes women need to be coddled and protected. I don't buy into that old fashioned thinking.
Why our gut reaction to those photos of Capt. Goddard and her American comrades-in-arms?
This has naught to do with equal pay or equal rights or equal access or equal anything.
It has to do with the female of our species being kinder, gentler. The nurturer. Mom, for crying out loud.
So in his little world, if women are not allowed to be soliders, does that mean men are not allowed to be nuturers? Of course we know that is absurd. In out enlightened times we recognize that not every man is a deadly solider and not every woman is a nuturing mother. Just as we would allow a man to raise a child, we should have no compunctions about a woman raising a gun if she so chooses.
And if people like Mike Strobel have a problem with it, maybe they should talk to the female soldiers before demanding they are removed from duty first.
(Also, I object to him lumping me and the rest of Canada in with his opinion. I assure you no extra-large lump formed in my throat when I heard it was a woman who was killed as opposed to a man. All death in war is a tragedy and making a bigger deal out of one of them regardless of the reason trivializes the rest.)
3 comments:
Go Bill!! I totally agree with you. I read that article today and was quite ticked. Women are not weak creatures. Why do people persist in labeling women as weak and in need of protection. I know women who are tougher than men. But I also know tough men. Being male or female does not define strength. As for death in war...it is all horrible. Whether it is a male, female or on the enemies side. Death is death. Goddard was a soldier..plain and simple, her death and the death of any soldier male or female is equally tragic.
if you don't send everybody (or at least everybody equally) you shouldn't send anybody.
As a female combat soldier in the Canadian military, I'd be quite happy to tell you what I think about the recent reprisal of 'old' arguments.
In Canada, women are free to choose what they want to be (apart from submariners and a couple of other trades that are restricted by the cost it would engender to upgrade the facilities to allow women).
There are no differences in what we have to accomplish. In the BFT (battle fitness test) men will be carrying 75 lbs of gear and will need to complete a march of 13 km in 2 hours 25. So will I. That means the 220 lb man beside me will be carrying 35% of his body weight and I'll be carrying 55% of my body weight. Do I need to? Should I be made to? Of course I should.
My opinion is simple - I choose to do this. No one - family, society, government - has the right to tell me what occupation I can and cannot choose to do as long as I can perform.
I'm not, as people tend to imagine or assume, unfeminine, a 'man-hater', a lesbian or someone with something to prove.
A combat soldier who fights beside me will get the same amount of care, attention, protection and thought - whether man or woman. This may sound harsh but the idea that a woman would get 'more' from a man is, in the end, the man's
problem. And his to deal with. Not mine to suffer for.
I'm an adult. I treat others like adults and I expect to be treated like one.
All this theorizing and opinions by the men in this world that women shouldn't be combat soldiers smacks of only one thing to me....
Abortion rights. All over again.
All it comes down to for the women combat soldiers is choice.
Let us make our own.
(copied from http://www.boundbygravity.com/2006/05/weaker-sex.aspx )
Thank you, Bill.
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