What's a modern guy gonna do? It must be tough for young men these days trying to figure out where they fit in a feminist world.
Those of us who have had women's rights pounded into our thick skulls for years know better than to say women have a tendency to send send mixed signals on the subject. But this doesn't help.
Rick Santorum caught hell recently for an answer he gave to a question about easing rules against front line roles for women in combat. Here's part of his response:
... I do have concerns about women in front line combat. I think that can be a very compromising situation where, where people naturally may do things that may not be in the interest of the mission because of other types of emotions that are involved.
What emotions could he mean? He's not talking about emotional women. He's talking about the tendency of men to want to protect women. Put a damsel in distress and a man's instinct takes over.
However, real women are independent, confident and self sufficient. They don't want that protection. Until they need it. Do we need a reminder of all the hand wringing about how some men on the Costa Concordia didn't observe that old fashioned women-and-children-first thing from the days before feminists rewrote the rules?
We won't call these mixed signals. Let's just say it's nuance.
Perhaps its just getting a little too uncomfortable for politicians to send troops into battle now that a significant percentage of those troops might be women. And perhaps that's a good thing.
War should be, at a bare minimum, uncomfortable for those waging it. Likewise, that's a danger I see in unmanned drones - it's too easy.
Posted by: Rob O. | February 17, 2012 at 09:58 AM
What we need, Rob O, is a peace bomb -- a device that will turn our enemies into pacifists.
Posted by: Geo | February 18, 2012 at 05:42 AM