No Human Resources on the Battlefield

 Your screens and publications are full 
of prescribed smiles and raised glasses.
What is the joy about? 
--Alesandr Solzhenitsyn 

By educating the young along the right lines,
the People's State will have to see that a generation
of mankind is formed which will be adequate to this supreme combat
that will decide the destinies of the world
--Adolf Hitler
 ______________________

[Women in combat arms, cont.]

Aside from the obvious physical disparity between the sexes is the obvious psychological divide.

Yes, the feminists and Marxists will dismiss the concern with a flourish: "It is just a social construct ... smash the confines of the construct!"  How's that working out for you?  Jung's archetypes are in full swing, and even the most liberal among us watch helplessly as their sensitive boys play at death in video games, and their enlightened girls yammer for all the acouterments of the the latest girlie heroines.

WE will address two of the obvious and perhaps more dire psychiological consequences of placing women in combat units on the front line; Ranger voices the first; I, the second

[1] Vulnerability

Men can be weak around other men; they cannot be weak around women.  In order to counter this taboo feeling of vulnerability around females, they will be prone to taking larger risks, exposing them to greater casualties.

Male camaraderie is built around the idea of vulnerability.  When men work in a combat team, one's mates observe and learn each man's weakness, and in response, will come to his aid.  Men assist their fellows in different, sometimes socially not politically-correct, ways. Tough-guy joking may a part of the response, but solidarity follows, and one lends a hand to help the team member compensate for his vulnerability.

Men are raised for much of their early lives by women, and prove their manhood via their individuation and differentiation from women, an often psychically challenging and sometimes even violent process.  The break must occur in order to not be women, themselves. When the chips are down, in combat, and they are trying to hold together the pieces that define their manhood, they do not need the threat of psychic disintegration via the presence of a female.

Combat is not a socially-sanctioned environment.  Military combat requires the limning down of the individual to his most basic self.  There is no place on the field of combat for a Human Resources officer to make sure sexual harassment does not occur, and yet we would not think of denying that most basic civil human consideration in the average general work environment today.  Combat is anything but an average unertaking.

We submit that combat is not just "another job".  The combat arms requires a man to function in a way that is not socially acceptable.  It is bad enough men must do it, but why would we want to complicate and endanger that most fraught task by bringing women into the fray?

When you are wound tighter than the girdle of a baptist minister's wife at an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast, you need your bother in arms.  You might still emerge somewhat effed up or dead, but a woman cannot provide the fuel needed on the battlefield.

 

[2] Brotherhood

An extension of Ranger's idea is the unique brotherhood forged outside of the ordinary social construct.  My simple thought is that the presence of women -- even be she an XXY woman -- is emblematic of all women, and the female essence is one of softness and comfort, things totally at odds with the imminent project at hand.  Killing of people, possibly women and children as well as men, is counter to all normal human impulses, yet is a necessary part of the job of the combat arms.

It is well enough to say a woman may be able to overcome her nurturing instincts, but we are concerned here with the effect of their presence upon men.  I believe that even the most masculine of women will, in a dire environment, remind him of the female presence in his life, and every man possesses this image.  It has long been the sustenance of a fighting man to remember his (mother/sister/girlfriend/daughter/etc.), but absent her actual presence, he may turn that off when the time comes.  Ditto the computer screen or the Skype; it is just shut down.

Every man has his trouble and concerns, and Jim mentions the ability of men to be vulnerable with each other.  So it is even in the civilian world.  If a man gets a "dear John" letter, his buddies are there to console him.  When appropriate (if she's a cheat, let's say), he may even get told what a "c*nt" she is, and that a better version will come along on the next bus.  This is one way we begin to feel better, but that innate response would not be allowable in mixed company.

Jim does not like my reasoning, but I feel it is sound.  If our readers wish to add to the topic, we are willing listeners.