Feminism and Militarism: the perversion of equal rights

The following article, written by Edith Wynner, is a strong protest against the apparent unanimity of opinion in the U.SA. in favor of the conscription of women for military
service if men are conscripted. Ms. Wynner, author of Searchlight on Peace Plans, writes us that "Dissenting views have either not been sought or have been repressed."

It sounds as though a major breakthrough in bioengineering ad made it possible for men too to enjoy the hazards of pregnancy, of abortions and the side-effects of contraceptive. This is the unisex revolution that at last makes men and women truly equal. Or so it would seem form the strong alliance of militarists, feminists, civil libertarians and trade unions in favor of conscription of eighteen-year-old boys and girls in the name of equal rights.

Thus for the third time in this bloody century, the woman's rights movement is endangered by acceptance of male values of violence. Unlike earlier feminists, today's leaders have managed to divorce equal rights from human rights and demand an equal share for women in the bribery, corruption, violence, crime and mass extermination that today's military-industrial scientific establishments make possible. During the nineteenth and twentieth century campaigns for woman suffrage a similar argument was thrown at women: they were not entitled to vote because they did not serve as soldiers. Fortunately, suffragist and feminist leaders of the time, knowing the history of manhood suffrage, rejected that phony argument. Manhood suffrage had not been a reward for military service but the achievement of hard political campaigns. Woman suffrage was won in the same way.

Today's leaders, however, readily succumb to the specious argument for the conscription of women - so superficially plausible - that "equal rights very much mean equal responsibility." They can see "no reason to exempt women on the basis of sex alone", ignoring the double and even triple jeopardy into which women would be placed. For in addition to their maternal role, women would take part in warfare, then ave their children conscripted in turn and risk their loss at an early age. How is this equality? It would just add the most human exploitation to this most exploited half of the race.

So great is feminist anxiety lest women escape conscription at some of them insist that "a male-only draft would probably unconstitutional." And the American Civil Liberties union {which had strongly opposed inclusion of "sex" in Title VII on equal employment opportunity in the '64 Civil Rights Act) threatens to appeal to the Supreme Court if women are not drafted along with the men! The AFL-CIO - with characteristic union hostility to women - also demands their conscription.

Why can't a woman be more like a man?

Amid all the fervid assertions of equality it is almost indecent to mention that women do become pregnant.This, unfortunately, will leave male conscripts unequal because young women, determined to evade conscription, can do so by becoming pregnant and men, as yet, cannot. How will such inequality be rectified? Will Congress legislate compulsory ·ingestion of contraceptives by all draft-eligible women, or compulsory abortion or sterilization? Or does the solution lie in limiting conscription to females under ten or women past the menopause?

The peacetime army has 150,000 women volunteers and some troubling behaviour patterns have emerged. Pregnancy is high and half the mothers-to-be are unmarried. At any one time 8 percent of military women are pregnant. Although they can no longer be discharged for this "temporary physical disability " , they can be released from service immediately if they wish. In fact, it's a surefire way to get out of the army that's not available to men. This makes the male volunteer very unequal. There are 18,000 single parents among these women volunteers and some bizarre problems have surfaced: army mothers have missed maneuvers because they couldn't find baby-sitters, or actually took their children along to the make believe war! The military worry s that "in a real emergency" soldier-mothers would worry more about their children than about fighting the war.

In other respects, too, equality is less equal than claimed. Military studies show that women have only 55 percent of male muscle strength and only 67 percent of men's endurance; women also tend to be shorter, lighter and slower. Various military standards have had to be relaxed for them, but not for the men, who thus suffer from unequal treatment. Feminists dismiss such discrimination with the comforting thought that it doesn't take much muscle to launch a nuclear INTERCONTINENTAL BALLISTIC MISSILE. Thus we can envision a truly homelike scene: the army mom suckling her baby while she launches a nuclear ICBM to destroy millions of "enemy" mothers some of whom could be nursing their infants!

Brothel fodder as well as cannon fodder

Then, too, despite all the macho training, some army women are still "afraid to walk through their base alone at night" and others have been "coerced into trading sex for favorable treatment " 2. if these oppressive aspects of sexual harassment experienced in civilian life continue in the volunteer army, what's to become of conscript eighteen-year-olds? Moreover, unless male conscripts can also trade sex for favorable treatment, they will sink further into inequality. Surely the American Civil Liberties Union will have to appeal these bio-based inequalities not only to the Supreme Court but all the way to the Almighty!

Feminists and garrison state

Why would a movement dedicated to emancipation support the militarization of women when war in all ages has been most destructive to them? Why are its leaders acting as accessories to the next Holocaust? Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment purchased at such a price will be an empty victory. Women's rights cannot survive the destruction of human rights. Feminist acceptance of the permanence of the war system and reliance on it as a source of one more career option for women reveals the fundamentally reactionary nature of today's movement. Hardly any of the present leadership has experience in peace activities, whether of the pacifist or world government persuasion. Recently a feminist leader related how she wanted to speak out against the Vietnam War but was dissuaded by her associates with the argument that her opposition would hurt the movement. The willingness of this feminist generation to accept the transformation to a garrison state is in complete contrast to the philosophy and actions of earlier feminists.

It were well for today's feminist leaders to withdraw from their Faustian bargain with militarism lest they find their victory for equal rights indistinguishable from defeat.

We are bringing these flowers in remembrance of all the women who died in all the wars that men have fought.

We remember the nurses who died tending the wounded of both sides.

We remember the women who were raped by soldiers of their own country and by the invaders, and who were then rejected by their fathers and their brothers and their sons.

We remember the women who died or were wounded because they lived in cities where bombs fell out of the sky.

We remember Indian women who were killed by European settlers, and settler women carried off by Indian war parties.

We remember all our sisters, non-combatants, whose lives were ended or foreshortened or crippled because their fathers and brothers went to war against the fathers and brothers of their sisters in another land .

We weep for them. We do not forget them. And as we remember them, we dedicate ourselves to making a new world where we and our daughters can live free : a world where our granddaughters and our sisters' granddaughters and great-granddaughters may look back in wonder at some archaic, almost forgotten time when women died because men went to war.

Kate Nonesuch