{"id":2950,"date":"2005-06-22T14:24:37","date_gmt":"2005-06-22T18:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/06\/22\/2950.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:50:07","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:50:07","slug":"grace-under-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/06\/22\/grace-under-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace under pressure?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Your Humble Blogger was listening to a portion of the local NPR call-in show<\/a> yesterday afternoon, on which they were talking about the controversial subject of women in combat situations in the military. You know, like that. And one of the men who called in pointed out that as long as a female soldier knew that she could never be put into the front line, and as long as everyone around her knew that she couldn’t be put in the front line, she would be a second-class citizen, and would be treated that way. I have heard this argument before, and I’ve heard it enough times from veterans and active military men (and women) that I think it has some force.\n

Now, the reason I bring this up is that it came together in my mind with some stuff I’ve been reading about the turn of the nineteenth century, on or around the year 1805, and the place of military combat in culture. The writer (Adam Nicolson, in Seize the Fire<\/a>, about which more in a few days) says that it was generally held to be true, not to say self-evident, that a man’s true identity was discovered in times of crisis, particularly in battle. I had heard that before, and although I don’t know how common it was at the time, it’s a pretty plausible idea. That is, that battle is where you find out what you’re really made of, that if you can keep your head when all around you are getting theirs shot the fuck off and so on, that men in England now abed aren’t real men, after all. And it occurred to me that if a person’s true identity is discovered only in the heat of battle, and women don’t engage in combat, then—Q. E. D.—women don’t have true identities.\n

Now, it’s probably more accurate to say that under this schema women’s identity is a completely different thing than men’s. I suspect that in 1805 or so, it was considered that a woman’s true identity was in her home, that is, the test of a woman was not in a moment of extreme danger but in a lifetime of regular persistent work. Myself, I’m inclined to the latter idea; I suspect that what counts is the career value, not the peak. But of course either idea is reductive and absurd. If we really are<\/I> anything, then what we really are has to include what we are at any time, because we can’t ever be what we really aren’t. But that’s beside the point; the accuracy of the cultural truism has little effect on its, um, effect. And to the extent that the women’s identity, forged in the home existed in the culture, it was clearly inferior to the men’s identity, forged in battle.\n

All of which is undoubtedly in introductory RedFemLitCrit at the sixth grade level; the question I have is to what extent the idea that one’s true identity is discovered under fire is still informing us. More specifically, is there an awfully big minority of Americans who would agree with that idea without ambivalence? A majority? A small number? And, whatever its potency in the civilian culture, is it a dominant idea in the military? Because it seems obvious to me that a person who does believe in the Forge of Battle would be likely to join the military. A person who believes in the Slow Steady Proof of Daily Responsibility might join up as well, since the Slow Steady Paycheck of Daily Responsibility is to be taken into consideration, as (of course) is the Daily Responsibility to Home and Country. On the other hand, such a person may well find other areas to prove their identity, as (according to this view) whatever one does is ultimately what one is. So it’s perfectly plausible to me that if, say, 25% of the population thinks that somebody who hasn’t been shot at isn’t Real, that 75% of the people serving in the military think so.\n

Of course, this does not take into account indoctrination once in the military; I assume that they do not deliberately attempt to inculcate a battle-centric view in recruits, as that would scarcely be conducive to good peacetime morale, but mingling amongst servicemen, particularly fraternization with people who have been in combat themselves, may well have its own indoctrinating force. Or not; I haven’t enough experience to know. And, of course, I’m assuming from my own view that such a philosophy is not ideal, and that having a disconnect between the philosophy outside and inside the military is not ideal. Quite likely there’s substantial benefit in it, and gauging the cost against that benefit is trickier than I think. Still.\n

These things are frames, in the current parlance, although I think tints<\/I> might be a better word, or filters<\/I>. It’s not just that they control what is seen and what is cropped out, although that is part of what they do, it’s that what you do see takes on the color of the tint, to the point that it’s very hard to tell what was originally that color and what just looks that way. Is the country, in some sense, what it was in mid-December 1941, and in mid-September 2001, or is it what it was in late November 1940 or in June 2005? Is your marriage what it is when y’all are grumpy, or when y’all are setting the table? Are you who you are, or who you are ... now? And the thing about these frames or tints or whatever is that they are actually harder to see than a person would think when looking through them...\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your Humble Blogger was listening to a portion of the local NPR call-in show yesterday afternoon, on which they were talking about the controversial subject of women in combat situations in the military. You know, like that. And one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17453,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2950\/revisions\/17453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}