"Why Having a Vagina Did Not and Should Not Keep Women from Kicking Ass"
I spend too much time on eboards and forums arguing why women should be drafted and allowed to serve in offensive military missions - typically dealing with one very pervasive lie that my opponents all cling to: in general, women have never been warriors.
The "in general" clause allows my opponents to recognise rare exceptions while still enforcing that combat is a male thing. I always reply, and happily so because I never tire of this, "Joan of Arc is not the only female to ever lead military campaigns."
Now, Reader, hopefully you know as well as I do that Joan of Arc absolutely wiped the floor with a good number of British forces. She fought alongside her men, continued to successfully command their movements even after being impaled by an arrow (at the time when shallow cuts killed men from infections), and remains one of the only French heroes that is globally celebrated. Yes, sadly she was French, but the fact that she was a fifteen year old peasant prior to outsmarting military men three times her age, I will forgive her this one blight.
Bad ass. We all acknowledge it. Except, get this, some people remain so fascinated with the fact a girl could lead the French to victory, that they've actually attempted to gather "evidence" that she was indeed a man. Yes. That's actually a thing. Kind of like how some people think Hitler was a cat.
I laugh when people say that only women who are really men, or who desire to be men, get involved in battle. I probably should not laugh at them, because it's wrong to make fun of stupid people or something - but to think my opponents have this idea that they are knowledgeable historians and that only US history is relevant to the US military... it's just funny.
Margaret Corbin and Deborah Samson were just pretend women who actually had male chromosomes, like dear little John of Arc! For crying out loud, Margaret smoked and Deborah wore men's clothing! Men.
Or here's another popular argument: women cannot fight reliably because they bleed everywhere all the time and, like, get pregnant. But it's actually cheaper to provide birth control than it is to get corrective eye surgery for a soldier (which the army does cover). There's also the swell point that male birth control is being developed and near commercial release.
Not that pregnancy kept women from fighting in the past. For instance, when Vietnam rebelled against the Han dynasty (of China, yes) in the first century, it was two female queens (about fifteen and thirteen) who rode into battle on elephants and triumphantly led an army primarily consisting of women. One of the generals, the noblewoman Phung Thi Chinh, gave birth during battle and promptly continued fighting. Bad ass.
But women are too weak for the modern army! That was two thousand years ago, when times were easier! There's no way a woman could survive in the conditions of modern battle. A female soldier is too weak, does not have endurance, and is always physically inferior to a man!
I will respectfully acknowledge a few points made by my opponents: Women do not produce muscle as readily as men, trends show they have different hormonal reactions to stress, they are more sensitive to pain and have higher reported instances of mental health complications. But these are general trends in the population, where other studies say women deal with sleep deprivation better than men, and that men are more negatively affected by competency issues and relationships.
Everything should be taken with a grain of salt.
For the women attending West Point, or for those in ROTC, or flat out enlisting, there should be an opportunity for official, active combat duty. For all those average women who could not be great soldiers (just like all the average men who do not make great soldiers), there will always be women who are exceptional. It is only economical to let them fully serve their country.
Well, once men take it upon themselves to stop assaulting their fellow soldiers. Army higher ups protest women in the service because it causes trouble for COs who then have to deal with sexual harassment and assault instances. Meaning, simply for being women, female soldiers are the ones being held back even though the trouble comes from sexism and violence on behalf of the men.
OK. I understand it costs money and involves a lot of legal work to prove a man guilty of assaulting a woman, but make a big, public deal out of a select number of clear-cut cases and dishonourably discharge the offenders. Guess what, assaults will decrease. Men who assault women in the army do it because they can get away with it. Well, make it so they know they can not. BIG DEAL.
As for separate training facilities needed for women and how costly that would be -another opposing argument - how about reopening one of the United States' many closed bases and using some of the already built and functioning facilities for women? I repeat, BFD. Having the base reopened will also help the economy of towns around it,
Any how, the facts are thus: women are serving their country on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those in combat support encounter all of the daily war grind the men do - except do not have the chance to fight, and subsequently get promoted, because of their official status. Doing the same work but without equal ability to ascend in ranking. Sound familiar, post WWII United States?
If only Fu Hao and her one hundred, expertly trained female soldiers could travel through time and space to slap some sense into my
