DURING THE AMERICAN MILITARY ACTIVITY IN CENTRAL AMERICA, U.S. Army Captain Linda Bray commanded a 30-man platoon in an attack on a Panamanian Defense Forces guard dog kennel.
West Point, that bastion of the U.S. army, recently chose a female student as first captain of its Corps of Cadets.
Female soldiers have been placed in potential combat positions in the armies of Canada, Israel, and other countries.
These and other such occurrences have once again focused public attention on the question of women in the military.
Why is it that we commonly have this deeply embedded “sexist” idea that women are to be spared military duty? That “women and children” have first priority in the lifeboats? Why place women on a pedestal in this way? Why not make the military an “equal opportunity employer,” as far as men and women are concerned?
In the widely popular “feminist” analysis, this is because men regard women as little better than children in terms of intelligence, physical strength, and maturity: if children should be saved first from a sinking ship, or protected during war, because of their relative weakness, then so should women.
The sociobiological explanation of this event provides a sharp contrast. In this view, the women-and-children-first rule came about because this philosophy ensured the survival of our species. Women are biologically far more precious than men, and any species that does not base its actions on this rule is thus far less likely to survive than one that does. This is why chivalrous notions are so deeply embedded in our psyches: the human race has been acting on these principles for eons.
Suppose that there were two races of apes, otherwise equally fit to survive, which had different customs regarding warfare. One group of apes (call them the human apes) did not allow their females to fight. Instead, they tried to protect them as much as possible. When fighting took place, it was with the expendable males in the front lines. The other group of apes (call them extinct) either pushed the women forward to the front lines of battle or were egalitarian—no “spurious” distinctions were made between the males and the females: they all went out and fought on an equal basis.
Which group would more likely survive? Obviously, the first, the “human” apes, because women are far more important—when it comes to survival of the species. A dramatic illustration of this is that one male and 25 females can leave as many progeny as 25 males and 25 females. That is, 24 of the males are biologically extraneous to the process. It may be nice to have them around—at the very least they can furnish added protection, but, biologically speaking, their roles are as necessary for the survival of the human species as are drones for the survival of bees.
That is why farmers commonly keep one bull for 25 cows, and not the other way around. However incompatible with the “feminist” view of the world, this biological fact simply cannot be denied.
Consider Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union after the Second World War; an entire generation of men in these countries was decimated; the lives of the women were by and large spared, at least relatively speaking. How noticeable is this in the modern day, in terms of demographic implications?
Compare that scenario to the following hypothetical case. Suppose that a high proportion of the women of the Soviet Union of childbearing age were killed, but hardly any of the men, roughly the reverse of what actually occurred. What would be the demographic results in such a case? They would be no less than catastrophic. Not only would there be great danger for the next generation in these countries, the real question is whether there would be any next generation.
When women enter in the military in any great numbers, it will be a threat to the entire human race.
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The Vancouver Sun, February 16, 1990.