A Female Draft?

I noticed some news about women being entered into the draft as part of this year’s Defense budget.  I hope that such foolishness would die out before the final draft of the bill, but given politicians’ proclivity for being “inclusive” to the point of utter tragedy, I don’t count on it.

Modernity’s denial of sex differences has been with us for quite some time, but this really takes it to the next level of absurdity.  In hopes that I can foster a robust discussion on the topic of mandating women sign up for the draft, I offer a list of reasons they shouldn’t be required.  Please read through this list and, if you so choose, offer suggested additions or reasons why my list is chauvinistic, biased, and bigoted.  If you do so according to the criteria of the Freedom’s Discourse contest, you could even win some money!

Rape – While men can be raped when captured by enemy forces (or even by fellow military personnel) the chances of a women being raped or abused is drastically higher.

Society’s well being – If women can be drafted when a draft is needed, that is the worst possible time to drag women out of their homes since that is exactly when you need to protect women from things like the aforementioned rape.  In addition, mandating women go off to die in war will greatly weaken the structure of society since 1) there are less women than men already, and 2) you just sent a bunch of them to die.  This will likely decrease the ability for the nation to recover from the death toll occurring from the war and the impact that has on the economy, social institutions, etc.

“Because we’re not going to actually need to draft anyone.” – This is a common response, “We’ll never actually use the draft.”  Just because you don’t think we’ll ever need a draft isn’t a good reason to mandate women be drafted since the whole purpose of the draft is in case you need it!

Pregnancy – Women get pregnant; men don’t.  How does this get factored in?  Will women be required to be sterilized against there will?  (Is it really a good idea to follow in the footsteps of India and China?)

Physical differences – Women are smaller, weaker, and more prone to injury than men especially from the type of conditions combat creates.  This is unquestionably so when comparing the two sexes as a whole.  A draft specifically doesn’t pick out more suited candidates (though the medical examinations might eventually); it draws from the populace at random and objectively.

Reduced combat effectiveness – this has at least two parts: 1) women are not as apt for combat and therefore units will be slower, less effective, and more prone to casualties; 2) men respond differently around women.  There will be in-fighting among units, promiscuity, sexually transmitted disease, and men will likely seek to protect the women to the detriment of achieving necessary military objectives.

That is my quick list; I welcome you to tear them apart.

As a final note, the agenda to mandate women be involved in the draft stems from the new policy allowing women in combat roles of the armed forces.  Much could be said about that, but I think that this whole situations is brought on by the belief that there is no such thing as men and women, that is, that gender is a “spectrum” and not “binary”.  This ridiculousness is in part a result of nominalism which is the belief that “one word can be applied to distinct individuals that appear to be similar, but have no ontological similarity in reality.”(Elements of Philosophy, Wallace, p.25)  Modernity has swallowed the lie that there is not nature, that there is not something that is common betwixt all men, and mandating women to enter the draft is at least one small result.