| Bible Research > Womanhood > Women in Combat > Phyllis Schlafly |
The simultaneous news coverage of our war in Iraq and the Air Force Academy rape scandal exposes again the double standards and hypocrisies of the feminists. They loudly complain about sexual harassment by American men, but if it's done by ruthless enemy men the feminists applaud progress toward their goal of a gender-neutral military.
Most Americans are shocked to learn that at least one American woman is a Prisoner of War in the clutches of Saddam Hussein (and a couple of other servicewomen are missing), but the feminists see this as proof that women are advancing toward equality with men on the battlefield. In point of fact, women under Saddam Hussein are not equal, whether they are Iraqi women or U.S. POWs.
Shoshana Johnson, age 30, of El Paso, Texas, the single mother of a two-year-old daughter, was part of a U.S. Army maintenance unit ambushed and captured after the convoy made a wrong turn. She had signed up to be an Army cook and never dreamed she would be sent into a situation where she could be captured by an evil regime.
This is not only a tragedy for Shoshana, it's a humiliation for America and a step backward for civilization. No crisis or threat requires our government to send mothers of two-year-old babies across the seas to fight the most brutal terrorists in the world.
Army regulations have always exempted women from direct ground combat, but the Clinton feminists opened up more "career opportunities" for women in 1994 by getting the Pentagon to eliminate the then-existing "Risk Rule," a regulation that had exempted women in non-combat positions from assignment where they faced the "inherent risk of capture." I wonder if the recruiting officer explained this to Shoshana Johnson when she enlisted to be a cook, or if the salestalk was confined to Army job opportunities and daycare benefits.
A New York Times editorial brags that Shoshana's capture shows how the American military has "evolved" and "the case for equal footing is gaining ground." But, the Times bemoans, the military is "a laggard on the topic of women in combat" and still retains "glass ceilings" that bar women from direct combat.
The editorial writer must have been a fan of one of the feminists' favorite fantasy flicks, "G.I. Jane," in which Demi Moore proves she can take it like a man by getting herself savagely beaten and almost raped. Her fellow servicemen are required to watch this travesty as part of sensitivity training to accustom them to abuse of women by the enemy.
This is the kind of equality the feminist movement has always sought and why they remain far outside of the mainstream (although they do control the Democrat Party). The feminists' legal oracle in the years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg emerged, Yale Law School Professor Thomas I. Emerson, described the goal of gender equality in the Yale Law Journal in 1971: "As between brutalizing our young men and brutalizing our young women, there is little to choose."
This callous attitude toward women in the military (contrasted with the warm-and-fuzzy silence about Bill Clinton's treatment of women) proves that the feminists' goal is not to protect women from sexual assault, but to force America, including our military, into a gender-neutral society. The feminists' goal is not about achievement for women, or else they would be lauding Condoleezza Rice and Elizabeth Dole as role models, which they do not.
Those who seek to understand the peculiar ideology and goals of the feminists would find it instructive to ponder their current favorite award-winning movie, "The Hours." It's a dreary and depressing tale that makes heroines out of three women who cynically put their own self-fulfillment above every other goal — by betraying marital promises, abandoning a loving husband, flouting moral standards, walking out on the duties of motherhood, and trampling on everyone who was unfortunate enough to come into contact with them.
It's amazing how the feminists don't learn the lessons of their own choices and don't even see how their propaganda movies actually prove the reverse of what was intended. The movie "G.I. Jane" proves that Jane is ridiculous in trying to be a Navy SEAL, and "The Hours" proves that the narcissistic pursuit of personal happiness by Virginia Woolf, Laura and Clarissa produces only loneliness and suicide.
The tragic capture of Shoshana shows Americans that the feminist agenda is an attack on the family, marriage, motherhood, and even common sense. Where are the male politicians and military commanders who will stand up and say out loud that the feminist ideology, like G.I. Jane standing naked in the shower, is an empress who has no clothes?
Phyllis Schlafly has been a national leader of the conservative movement since the publication of her best-selling 1964 book, A Choice Not An Echo. She has been a leader of the pro-family movement since 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization now called Eagle Forum. In a ten-year battle, Mrs. Schlafly led the pro-family movement to victory over the principal legislative goal of the radical feminists, called the Equal Rights Amendment. An articulate and successful opponent of the radical feminist movement, she appears in debate on college campuses more frequently than any other conservative. She was recently named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies' Home Journal.
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