Epstein regarding women warriors
Fuchs, Cynthia
In the last days of the Gulf War, a newscast on National Public Radio reported that trucks and other transport flown into the Kuwaiti theater had come from Eastern European countries. That would...
...Clinging to the ideal of a beautiful soul has not helped defenseless women, who often have been the most tragic victims of war, tortured and raped by marauding armies, unable to protect themselves...
...Although many feminists are rightly asking for the restructuring of social institutions along more humanistic lines, other feminists are advocating that women avoid male spheres or radically alter them according to principles defined as "feminine...
...We don't believe that women are specially privileged or situated because they are products of a "woman's culture" or that women have a special "way of knowing" or a special set of personality traits...
...It is ironic...
...Many of them were against the war...
...Who can oppose commitment to caring as against destruction, and life as against death...
...Why should any sphere be labeled male or female...
...They do not regard women's integration into armed conflict as progress...
...Those of us who place ourselves in the tradition of liberal theory, advocating equal access and equal treatment for women, find ourselves pitted awkwardly against those writers who claim women ought to receive special consideration, whether prohibiting them from combat or being given favorable considerations in divorce settlements or pregnancy leave...
...We prefer that divorce settlements be based on need, not sex, and that general rules on disability cover pregnancy...
...This polarization has long provided a legitimation for the aggressive behavior of men, who are supposed to defend and support maidens and children...
...These days we are seeing new advocacy for the idea of women's "beautiful souls" in society, leaving men to be the warriors—at the front in war, and in business and the justice system as well...
...Some feminists no longer advocate the idea that "rights" are the proper emphasis for women, nor that women's entry into roles once exclusively male a proper goal...
...Let defense, assertiveness, and integrity be known not only as male but as female...
...What about an earlier commitment by many mainstream feminists that equal rights are the goal of the women's movement, and that equal rights entail equal responsibilities...
...A positive outcome of this war has been to demonstrate how women have been able to do jobs normally reserved for men...
...The symbolism of women succumbing in battle disturbs their confidence in women's supposed special qualities of pacifism, caring, and nurturance, as well as their view of women as lifegivers, not lifetakers...
...Often, in the aftermath, the men and women in their very own communities regard the victims as tainted by the atrocities they have experienced...
...Has the movement of women outside the accepted cubicles of segregated workplaces created a mutually reinforcing backlash not only among the biased male gatekeepers of the past but also among a subgroup of feminists...
...The evidence collected by such respected scholars as Alice Eagly and Kay Deaux seems to indicate that men's and women's cognitive and emotional attributes are rather basically the same but that sex-segregated training or social controls emphasize some capacities more than others—a remediable condition...
...better still, as human...
...That would be news in itself...
...Give them the training and resources to fight alongside men, IF fighting is what we need to do to defend the values we hold dear...
...We worry that special treatment reinforces the stereotypes of women as incapable of functioning in the public realm and taints the obligations of family and child care as uniquely woman's work...
...Who would have ever thought that "rights" would become a dirty word, or a dirty thought...
...The renewed focus on differences between the sexes has a new political cast...
...Some of my feminist colleagues at Stanford University, where I am spending a semester, are not happy with such news...
...But the further news was that many of the pilots of the large transport planes ferrying these vehicles were women...
...we do not need our women to be Rambos either, but a Joan of Arc or a Boadicea would serve as a fine role model...
...Indeed, one need go no farther than our own society to see how marital abuse thrives in families where the wife's identity has been shaped by images of passivity and the lack of a sense that she has a right to her own integrity...
...From one perspective this is a worthy point of view...
...Why not encourage our women SUMMER • 1991 • 421 Notebook to be aggressive when a situation calls for aggression and our men to be "caring" when that is the appropriate emotion...
...We do not need or want our men to be Rambos but we are happy for them to be Eisenhowers...
...Many women would best be served by the motto "Never Again" on the war front as well as the home front...
...Removal of restrictions would better serve the goals of equality...
...They were upset to learn that three of the soldiers killed were women...
...But should this uniquely be women's mission...
...Equality for women may mean that some women will become warriors, and some will inevitably die in combat...
...These entwined issues are difficult to sort out, and engage the passions of feminist scholars...
...We argue that special protections have always resulted in diminished opportunities for women...
...That is tragic, but it is right so long as men must also die this way...
...Yet in the anticanon canon of a number of "politically correct" feminists on many campuses today, "rights" have been cast as a male concept, characterized by abstracted notions of justice that they claim do not meet the needs or character of women...
...Wendy Kaminer has suggested that the movement toward equality has brought to women a "fearful freedom" (the title of her new book) and sees in the assertion that women need special protections because of their special vulnerabilities, a flight from equality...
...And even the very notion of "rights" has been labeled a "male value," focusing on issues of autonomy and independence of the individual rather than connection and relationships among people...
...Why insist that men and women exhibit different emotions...
...Some time ago Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote in Dissent about the images of male "just warriors" and female "beautiful souls...
...Such roles attached to them are seen as in conflict with the values traditionally associated with women...
Vol. 38 • July 1991 • No. 3
