Women's Role in the Military

For this blog post, I examined recent reports by the US Department of Defense on the current administration's goal to further integrate women into the armed forces. These two articles largely focused on ways the DoD hopes to increase female participation in the military, in addition to reasons why women belong there; they contend that diversity is necessary for the future of the US military, saying:

"She said supervisors — including males and females — should look to find the best talent available and they need to embrace diversity, including age, experience, race and gender as absolutely key to developing the workforce we need to face the challenges of tomorrow." (Vergun, 2022)

These articles encapsulate the things that frustrates me the most about feminism: how vague and malleable the term is. The word "feminist" represents a myriad of different, and completely disparate schools of philosophy; for instance, materialist feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir prioritize a Marxist and/or economic analysis of gender and patriarchy that rejects the capitalist mode of production, whereas liberal feminists emphasize on bourgeois notions of human rights and focus on inclusion and representation of women in the capitalist mode of production. How are these philosophies even remotely related, other than the fact that they involve women? 

French Feminist Simone de Beauvoir meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro, 1960.

These articles by the DoD epitomize this latter school of feminist thought; equality means women are able to do the same things as men, ergo women should be members of the military. How exactly is an American woman's ability to commit war crimes a liberatory act? What does a woman dropping bomb on a village do for mother in that village that will lose her baby in the explosion? What does a female army officer do for the young woman living in poverty because she makes the federal minimum wage and can't afford groceries because tax dollars are going towards defense rather than food stamps?

The most obvious assumption this article makes is that the military is a socially necessary structure, and that the violence it inflicts is also necessary; however, it implicitly draws a distinction between between violence against "enemies" (good and justifiable) and violence against women in the form of discrimination within the armed forces (an example was given of pregnant women in the air force being immediately removed from flight status). The feminist line, according to Flint and Taylor, is that "Violence is a social relation that is embedded in, and runs through, multiple spaces in a myriad of directions" (2018); by that logic, how can the participation of women, or anyone for that matter, possibly be justified? Obviously Flint and Taylor are not the arbiters of feminism, and many feminists agree with my critique of the military, but here I am just trying to demonstrate the frankly preposterous hypocrisy of this type of liberal feminism.

Though I use "violence as a social relation" as a way to criticize the ideology of these articles, it must also be remarked that they are also the perfect example of what Flint and Taylor mean by "violence as a social relation." The military has a violent relationship to nearly every non-state entity inherently, at nearly every geographic scale; on the local scale, military officers stationed in other countries rape women that are residents of neighboring communities at an astounding rate (Brodzinsky, 2015); on a national scale, the armed forces terrorizes domestic protesters via the National Guard (Lippman, 2020); and on a global scale, the US military acts as a brutal police force that cracks down on any sign of international dissent (ie. the Vietnam War and the policy of containment). 

"Map of every country that the USA has invaded, bombed, aided dictators, aided terrorists, covertly manipulated politics and more since 1900"

References

Brodzinsky, S. (2015, April 7). US Army investigates reports that soldiers raped dozens in Colombia. The Guardian. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/07/us-army-colombia-rapes-investigation

Flint, C., & Taylor, P.J. (2018). Political geography: World-economy, nation-state and locality (7th ed.). Routledge.

Garamone, J. (n.d.). Groups work to eliminate, diminish barriers to women. U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2908233/groups-work-to-eliminate-diminish-barriers-to-womens-military-service/

Korda, A. (1960). French feminist Simone de Beauvoir meeting with Jean-Paul Sartre, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro, 1960. photograph, Havana, Cuba.

Lippman, D. (2020, June 10). 'what I saw was just absolutely wrong': National Guardsmen struggle with their role in controlling protests. POLITICO. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/09/national-guard-protests-309932

Map of every country that the Usa has invaded, bombed, aided dictators, aided terrorists, covertly manipulated politics and more since 1900. (n.d.). Reddit. Retrieved from https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/j3rq7h/map_of_every_country_that_the_usa_has_invaded/.

Cartographer's sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/j3rq7h/comment/g7dxay2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Vergun, D. (n.d.). Official says DOD is seeking pathways to better integrate women into workforce. U.S. Department of Defense. Retrieved March 29, 2022, from https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2923968/official-says-dod-is-seeking-pathways-to-better-integrate-women-into-workforce/

Woman Drone Pilots. (n.d.). Know Your Meme. Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1353985-hire-more-women-guards.