Tuesday, January 14, 1997
EQUALITY:
Men, women should be able to work together without conflictBy
Garrick Ruiz
On Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1997 columnist Jennifer Nelson wrote about
how separating the sexes in the military would allow both sexes to
"realize their full potential." Thinking like this really scares
me. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t want to come off as though
I’m writing this because I think the military would benefit from
continued integration, I could really care less what happens to the
military. I’m all for no women in the military, period. No gays in
the military. No men, for that matter.
Nelson advocates placing the sexes in a "separate but equal
context." Separate but equal? I could be wrong, but wasn’t this
tried already for more than 50 years in this country with regards
to black and white education? Did it work then? There is no such
thing as "separate but equal." Placing one group into an entirely
different system will always lead to differences in those
systems.
In the early parts of this century, black schools received less
funding, worse texts and less trained teachers than white schools.
We could also look at men’s and women’s sports; which of the two is
seen as more exciting, more popular and more entertaining than the
other? You can bet that anytime men’s and women’s branches of
anything are separated like this the men’s branch will be dominant.
Tradition states that’s the way it should be. But is that what we
want?
Besides, if men and women can’t possibly overcome their
supposedly "natural attraction" and work together in matters
military, wouldn’t it follow that we should have separate schools?
(Come on, I mean students might not learn as much of what the
school is telling them if they have to deal with these horrible
members of the opposite sex.) How about separate workplaces
(obviously no one can possibly get any work done if they are
constantly just fantasizing about how they can sleep with their
co-workers), and every place where men and women come into
contact?
Nelson attributes such events as the Tailhook scandal and recent
events at the Army Ordinance Center in Aberdeen, Md. (for the
record, I have no idea what happened at this place, don’t really
follow the news very much, but I’m going to assume it was some
equally egregious, misogynistic crap from members of the army) to
the mere fact that women and men have to work together in the armed
forces. I don’t suppose it could have anything to do with the fact
that members of the armed forces are taught not to think for
themselves, to always follow orders and more importantly to devalue
other forms of human life. After all, the goal of those
institutions is to end human life, it’s kind of hard to do that if
you look upon that other life as your equal. Nelson speaks to this
fact when she says "Commanders are also distracted from their goal
of preparing soldiers for war when they must make time to deal with
claims of sexual harassment and the problems and relationships that
are attached to consensual sex among personnel." We wouldn’t want
our boys to be any less efficient killers because their personal
life interfered, now would we? Men and women working together might
actually lead some to the conclusion that (gasp) people in general
may be able to live together without fighting and that’s an idea we
would never want to spread in this country.
Nelson uses the argument that men and women in the Gulf War
claimed to have had more sex while they were overseas than at home.
First of all, what is wrong with more sex? I don’t really see this
as a bad thing at anytime. Think about it though. These people
could die at any moment. The result of war is death and part of a
soldier’s job is to die if necessary. I think the whole idea is
ludicrous, but if we are going to send people off to possibly die,
why wouldn’t we want them to be as happy as possible before they
did?
Nelson also said that regulations have often imposed upon
consensual sexual relationships in the armed forces. That’s great.
Yet another way the U.S. can tell people when, how and who they can
have sex with. I don’t know about you, but I can decide for myself,
thank you.
One of the worst things about this article is that nowhere did
Nelson condemn the actions of the men who had perpetrated the
harassment and rape she was speaking of. The implication was that
it was not the fault of these men, but that obviously, when placed
together with females this is bound to happen. People make their
own choices  including men. I do not believe we can just
blame this on the system, separate men and women, and then say that
everything is OK. For some reason these men see their behavior as
OK, and that needs to change. We cannot simply separate all groups
in society who don’t get along perfectly. We’d all eventually end
up in our own little cell with no contact with anyone else because
it might cause conflict.