Feminism and the Military

A Congressional candidate from Washington State, Ernest Huber, has made the claim that feminism "feminizes" and "weakens" American men and reduces the pool of suitable warriors to defend the country. There are many ways in which his claim is wrong.

The first and most obvious one is that America's military strength is based, not on the size of its military, but on its technological superiority. There are militaries around the world that are larger than that of United States, but none that are more powerful. Even if America were to draft every able-bodied person into the army, it would not be able to match the size of militaries that China or India could assemble. And yet if there was a full-scale war now between America and either one of these countries, these counties would be vaporized. The reason for that is that hydrogen bombs and Star Wars technology do the work of any number of men.

Secondly, America is not at a shortage of potential military recruits. There are in fact large populations in America that would provide vast numbers of excellent military recruits, but they are not being presently tapped on a large enough scale. One such population is inner city, which is full of young men who know how to fight and aspire toward toughness and courage but, lacking a proper guidance for such propensities, turn into gangsters rather than soldiers. Setting up military recruitment in inner city would provide American military with a large number of highly suitable warriors who know quite a lot about how to fight and how to be tough and courageous, while providing the people in inner city a ticket to education, job training, useful skills and a better life. If the military were to tap into this obvious resource, it would have more than enough excellent recruits and would not need to be bothering metrosexual city cultures.

Finally, in feminist cultures themselves, there are plenty of feisty tomboyish women who make as good soldiers as any men. So if there are some men in feminist cultures who are not suitable warrior material, there are enough tomboyish women in feminist cultures to replace them.

So Mr. Huber's statement is simply wrong. Feminism does nothing to reduce America's military strength, and there are obvious ways to maintain and enhance this strength. And it is time that the military strategy planners demonstrate strategic intelligence that is required to win wars and apply it, not toward bullying civilian populations, but toward tapping into real and obvious pools of potentially excellent military recruits to maintain the size of its military and increase it if the need to do so were ever to arise.