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The Collapse of Gender Sanity

Written by Rachel Lu

Men were built for fighting. Women were built for childbearing. It’s interesting to note how stubbornly true—even obvious—these statements remain, despite aggressive efforts to bury them.

Modern people have a penchant for denying obvious things. Dysfunctional politics and political correctness have brought us to the point of potentially approving women’s inclusion in a military draft. The Senate Armed Services Committee recently entertained arguments in favor of requiring women to register for the selective service, and three candidates endorsed the plan in New Hampshire’s Republican debate. The trickle is turning into a stampede. Suddenly political correctness requires that we all agree that girls can fight just as well as boys.

The problem is that it’s just not true. We need to return to some basic Aristotelian principles in order to explain why drafting women would be both imprudent and unjust.

Playing Politics

From a political standpoint, it’s easy to understand why Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie were all prepared to agree that women should register for the selective service. (U.S. Senator Mike Lee is pushing legislation to block the drafting of women, which has won support from Rubio and from Ted Cruz.) Somewhat farcically, all three candidates treated selective service registration as a wonderful new “opportunity” for women. That’s silly; the system exists to enable conscription in a time of extreme need. Women already have the opportunity to enlist in the military if they meet the relevant requirements.

Rubio specified that most likely a draft would apply only to women who met the physical requirements. But this would be a foolish policy in an emergency scenario. If you desperately need a large number of soldiers in a hurry, is it sensible to start screening populations of people that will mostly be unfit for the job? Should children and retirees also be included, in case a few turn out to be suitable for active service? This is nonsense. Every society in history has built its armies primarily of young men, for an excellent reason: They are overwhelmingly the most fit for the job.

If the Republican candidates were thinking clearly, they would be racing to specify that they support drafting women only to non-combat roles. This is a more sane position, modeled on the example of other nations (such as Israel) that use female conscripts primarily in supporting roles (as medics, logistical support, etc.). Considering that a draft would only be implemented in a time of extreme need, asking unattached young women to serve their country in these capacities could be reasonable. Demanding that they serve as infantry would not be.

The Collapse of Gender Sanity

It’s disconcerting to see even Republicans sanctioning this kind of foolishness, but there may be a silver lining here. There is value to discussing this issue at a moment when we desperately need a starting point for a more reasonable conversation about sex and gender. Sending thousands of young women to die in battle would be morally monstrous, but luckily, we are not currently threatened with a draft. Instead we are facing a near-total collapse of gender sanity.

With schools banning the concepts of “boyhood” and “girlhood,” single-sex restrooms being treated as an affront, and even the Olympics allowing anatomical males to compete in women’s events, American gender politics has reached freakish levels of absurdity. If there is any chance of returning to sanity, our understanding of gender will need to be rooted in reflections on something objective and measurable: the body.

Americans have been suspicious of stark gender claims for a long time, and in some cases this is actually reasonable. Do boys really excel in math and science? Are girls really more nurturing or “emotionally intelligent”? These stereotypes are not groundless, but it may not be appropriate or necessary to assert them too forcefully. Boys and girls are indeed different in certain respects, including in how their brains develop. Nevertheless some boys are well attuned to emotion, while some girls may be assertive, independent, or analytical. Gender skeptics may reasonably ask: Isn’t it time we stopped defining people by dated stereotypes and allowed them to prove for themselves what they can do?

Much of the public finds these arguments persuasive, which is why politicians are happy to echo them—even on the political right. Most of us don’t mind when increased gender-role flexibility means a girl can become a sportswriter or an electrical engineer. In our time, however, the lines of reasonableness clearly have been crossed. Given that so many of our compatriots have rejected tradition as offensive and anachronistic, what other grounds are there to restore some sort of natural order?

The case of women in the draft may fit this purpose, because the objections are so obvious and so rooted in physiology. One can understandably argue that stereotypes play a role in holding women back from, say, achievements in the STEM fields. But military service is an entirely different animal. By significant margins, women are physically weaker and slower and have poorer reflexes than men. On the battlefield, these shortcomings make a literally life-or-death difference.

The Marine Corps commissioned a study that found that their strongest female recruits (top 25%) were about on par with the weakest male recruits (bottom 25%). Women undergoing entry-level marine training were an appalling six times more likely to suffer injury, including especially high rates of musculoskeletal injuries due to movement with heavy loads. (Even women who seem spectacularly fit may still sustain pelvic fractures from long marches with a standard military pack.) Mixed-gender units were slower and less lethal, and sustained more casualties.

In short, women don’t make very good soldiers. The exceptions are few and don’t stand out much by elite military standards. Women can certainly be courageous, patriotic, and self-sacrificing, but the female body was not built for combat.

From Biological Determinism To Biological Escapism

Suppose you consider chivalry outdated or even sexist. Perhaps you scoff at the idea that all-male units will have a stronger sense of fraternity, and you’re unworried about the possibility of romantic entanglement. But have you considered the strong evidence that female conscripts would be less effective in achieving military objectives, but far more likely to die trying? Are you moved by the consideration that under-qualified soldiers are a danger to everyone in their unit? Drafting women to combat roles just doesn’t make sense.

You may reply, won’t girls feel bad if we tell them they are weak, slow, and generally unimposing in combat? Isn’t this tantamount to saying that women are physically inferior?

Not at all, if you put the claims in a larger context. Women have bodies of amazing power: Nothing can compare to holding a newborn and realizing with awe, “My body built that.” It’s a remarkable feat that men can never simulate.

Women are physiologically awe-inspiring, but not in a way suited for soldiering. Their energies go towards something else; indeed, the female reproductive system is far more “expensive” in terms of invested energy, whether or not a woman ever bears a child.

Might these physiological differences tell us anything about what a flourishing life should look like, for men or women? Modern feminists would say “no”; that kind of reasoning is angrily rejected as “biological determinism.” Gloria Steinem famously declared, “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.”

Steinem’s comment is a good illustration of how far feminist thinking is removed from reality. Singing opera is a highly rarified use of a part of the anatomy that most of us use all the time, whereas wombs are useful for gestating babies and really nothing else. Still, feminists are right to object against any claim that a person who is physically suited to X must be restrictively mandated against doing anything besides X. But does anyone make this claim? It is possible to find moral significance in the body without engaging in hackneyed reductionism.

Women should not be commodified as baby-builders, any more than men should be commodified as body-builders. It turns out, though, that a flight from “biological determinism” sometimes ends in a kind of biological escapism. If we insist that our physiology has no moral significance, we may find ourselves desperately trying to hide from the obvious consequences of refusing to be what, in fact, we are.

Being Corporeal

We see manifold evidence of this escapism in modern life. Schools tie themselves into knots trying to prevent boys from doing what boys of virtually every culture like to do: wrestle, compete, and play warlike games. Boys are not suited to sitting in chairs all day long: The lack of movement in school is a huge problem for them that seems to be undercutting their scholastic achievement. Later in life, if they enlist in the military, the physical standards they are expected to meet will probably have been lowered to make it more possible for women to compete. Let’s have no overt expressions of masculinity in the military, please! It makes the ladies feel bad.

In a different way, girls are taught to suppress their most uniquely feminine characteristics. Progressive liberals have poured enormous energy into ensuring that girls can suppress their reproductive potentialities without cost, without judgment, and preferably as early as possible. Obsessed with lifting the “burden” of reproduction, these liberals lose any sense of healthy respect for motherhood or new life. They regularly reveal their disdain for pregnancy, children, and families, as we saw when NARAL activists threw themselves into a frenzy of indignation over a Super Bowl commercial that presented unborn children as humans.

Virtually no one would argue that either men or women should be enslaved to their physiology. But should we see it as an awkward physiological accident that men have (larger) biceps, and women the power to bring forth new life? Surely it’s more reasonable to incorporate these features into a complete and fully humane understanding of manhood and womanhood, in a way that gives meaning and social purpose to both.

What this means is that both boys and girls should be raised to embrace the unique potentialities of their bodies. Not every boy will grow up to be a soldier, but every boy can be taught to channel his natural competitiveness and aggression towards good. Young men should view themselves as protectors,ready to do what is needed to prevent the wicked from victimizing the innocent.

In a similar vein, not every girl will become a mother. Most will, but a woman who is unafraid of her physiology will find a healthy outlet for her life-giving impulses whether or not she literally bears a child. That doesn’t mean she can’t also (if she wants) learn to write software, but it does mean that she should expect her contribution to society to take the form of giving life, not taking it.

Again and again, the progressive left has proven that prudent living, once neglected, is soon spurned. Drafting women would be a particularly tragic illustration of this point: Even women who don’t want to serve could be forced to throw their lives away in a desperate effort to act like men. Might we use this moment to walk the conversation back in the other direction? Our military needs at the moment are happily not so dire, but in the war against nature and common sense, the enemy seems to be winning. Let’s step up our recruitment efforts.


Rachel Lu teaches philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota where she lives with her husband and three boys. Dr. Lu earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell University.


This article was originally posted on ThePublicDiscourse.com.




Republican Party Elites Abandon Traditional Marriage

Only six of 54 Republican members of the U.S. Senate signed a pro-traditional marriage legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that was submitted on Friday. USA Today noted, “By contrast, 44 Democratic senators and 167 Democratic House members filed a brief last month urging the court to approve same-sex marriage. The brief included the full House and Senate [Democratic] leadership teams.”

These developments strongly suggest that while the homosexual movement remains solidly in control of the Democratic Party, the tactics of harassment and intimidation that we saw wielded against the religious freedom bill in Indiana last week are taking their toll on the Republican Party as a whole.

In the Indiana case, a conservative Republican governor, Mike Pence, abandoned the fight for religious freedom in the face of homosexual and corporate pressure.

It appears that more and more elite or establishment Republicans are simply deciding to give up on the fight for traditional values and marriage.

While this may seem politically expedient, this dramatic move to the left by the GOP could result in millions of pro-family conservatives deciding to abandon the Republican Party in 2016, a critical election year.

USA Today also noted that “…while some members of the 2012 Republican National Convention platform committee filed a brief against gay marriage Friday, it notably did not include GOP Chairman Reince Priebus.”

The Republican senators signing the brief included:

  • U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
  • U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana
  • U.S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma
  • U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
  • U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
  • U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

Fifty-one members of the House of Representatives signed the brief. But U.S. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) name was not on it.

Taking the lead for traditional marriage in the House was U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who not only signed the pro-marriage brief but has also introduced U.S. House Joint Resolution 32, the Marriage Protection Amendment, to amend the United States Constitution to protect marriage, family and children by defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The resolution has 33 co-sponsors and has been referred for action to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.

Huelskamp is the only Member of Congress who has authored one of the 30 state constitutional amendments that prohibits homosexual marriage and polygamous marriage. In 2005, when he was a state senator, 71 percent of Kansans voted for the state constitutional amendment that he authored.

In reintroducing the federal marriage amendment, Huelskamp said, “In June 2013 the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, but upheld the right and responsibility of states to define marriage. Since then, though, numerous unelected lower court judges have construed the U.S. Constitution as suddenly demanding recognition of same sex ‘marriages,’ and they struck down state Marriage Amendments—including the Kansas Marriage Amendment—approved by tens of millions of voters and their elected representatives.”

However, on April 28 the U.S. Supreme Court will review the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds marriage laws in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. A ruling is expected in June.

USA Today noted that scores of prominent Republicans last month joined a brief on the homosexual side filed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a former lieutenant to Karl Rove who came out of the closet and announced in August of 2010 that he was a homosexual. He has since launched a “Project Right Side” to make the “conservative” case for gay marriage.

Big money Republican donors such as Paul Singer, David Koch, and Peter Thiel have either endorsed homosexual rights and same-sex marriage or funded the homosexual movement. Thiel is an open homosexual.

A libertarian group funded by the Koch brothers, the Cato Institute has been in the gay rights camp for many years and its chairman, Robert A. Levywrote a “moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage.”

Other signatories to the Mehlman brief included Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, U.S. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois, and former presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Jon Huntsman.

The signers of this brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage were described as “300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants.” Some two dozen or so had worked for Mitt Romney for president.

One of the signatories, Mason Fink, who was the finance director of the Mitt Romney for president campaign, has signed on with a super PAC promoting former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush for president. In another move signaling his alignment with the homosexual movement, Bush has reportedly picked Tim Miller, “one of the most prominent gay Republicans in Washington politics,” as his communications director.

A far-left media outlet known as Buzzfeed has described Bush as “2016’s Gay-Friendly Republican,” and says he has “stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights.”

But some conservative Christians are fighting back against the homosexual movement.

A brief to the court filed by Liberty Counsel notes that, in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld marriage as “a foundational social institution that is necessarily defined as the union of one man and one woman.” It cites the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma, in which marriage was declared to be “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race,” and Maynard v. Hill, in which marriage was declared “the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”

Liberty Counsel said the court is being asked to affirm a false notion of marriage based upon fraudulent data about homosexual activity in society. It said, “For the past 67 years, scholars, lawyers and judges have undertaken fundamental societal transformation by embracing Alfred Kinsey’s statistically and scientifically fraudulent ‘data’ derived from serial child rapists, sex offenders, prisoners, prostitutes, pedophiles and pederasts. Now these same change agents, still covering up the fraudulent nature of the Kinsey ‘data,’ want this Court to utilize it to demolish the cornerstone of society, natural marriage.”

The homosexual movement has long maintained that Kinsey validated changes in sexual behavior that were already taking place in society. In fact, however, the evidence uncovered by Dr. Judith Reisman shows that Kinsey deliberately exaggerated those changes in a fraudulent manner by using data from pedophiles and prisoners.

Commenting on the impact of the acceptance of the fraudulent Kinsey data, Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine noted, “Gradually over the years, acceptance of the Kinsey morality has grown to the point where premarital and extramarital sex raise no eyebrows, where, in some communities, out-of-wedlock births are in the majority, homosexuality is glorified and aggressively promoted in our schools and the last taboo—adults having sex with young children—is now under attack in some of our institutions of higher learning.”

The Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by communist Harry Hay in 1950, cited the flawed Kinsey data in an effort to convince the public that homosexual behavior was widespread in American society.

The book, Take Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action, said the Kinsey Report on male sexuality “paved the way for the first truly positive discussion of homosexuality in the mainstream media.”

Today, this same Kinsey data is being used to convince the Supreme Court to approve homosexual “marriage” as a constitutional right.


This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.