Save the males: the Citadel case; in the looking-glass world of equal opportunity, free choice for one means no choice for everyone else - first woman allowed to enter male-only military university

National Review, August 1, 1994 by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

WOULD Scarlett O'Hara have wanted to attend The Citadel? Anyone who remembers Scarlett sitting amidst a throng of adoring young men at the barbecue at Twelve Oaks knows the answer to that question. How could she not have delighted in the idea of being the only woman among two thousand cadets--provided she did not have to shave her head, do pushups, and run two miles in 15 minutes? But then Scarlett's interest would have depended precisely upon The Citadel's remaining--except for herself--a single-sex school. For Scarlett, you will recall, did not much like other women.

The reader may wonder, as others none too politely have done, how a feminist was drawn into supporting the Virginia Military Institute and The Citadel against those attempting to use the courts to force them to admit women. Having attended a women's college, I had no principled difficulty with supporting single-sex education. I believe in it, and I believe it should remain an option for those who choose to benefit from it. As a result, my initial support for VMI derived as much from my conviction that I was defending an option for women as from any special predisposition to defend a military-style, single-sex education for men. During the months I have worked on these cases, I have become converted to the value of such an education for some men, but that strong commitment does not conflict with my fundamental concern for the way in which women's issues will be played out during the coming years, and especially the way in which they will be understood in the Republican Party.

As it stands, the Democrats, especially the radicals among them, have secured a virtual monopoly of this discussion, which Republicans, to their cost, tend to ignore. Make no mistake: the cost will be high. For the issues will not go away, and if the radicals sustain their claim to define them, the damage to our institutions and political culture may prove irreversible.

Bastions of Privilege?

IF YOU credit the opposition, conservatives defend The Citadel and VMI because they are men (or brainwashed, male-dominated women) who believe that the biological differences between women and men justify the exclusion of women from male enclaves, including the professional and economic elite. Doubtless, too many conservatives do. After all, will not the defense of sexual differences help to restore a world in which women are women and men are men and both accept their ordained roles? Other conservatives believe that, being naturally suited for the nurture of the young and vulnerable, women should not participate in warfare lest the experience of killing and the risk of being killed harden them against their own natural gifts. This line of argument extends to such contentions as that women should not lead men, especially in combat; that women should stay at home where they belong; and so forth. Those opposed to The Citadel and VMI quote these arguments to show that the schools are illegitimately preserving bastions of male power and prestige on selfish grounds.

During the Citadel trial, in which I have been involved as an advisor, I prodded the members of our legal team, just for the record, to ask the key expert witnesses for the opposition which they hated more, men or the South? Although the question was never asked, we agreed it captured the mood of the opposition. And some of the liberal reporters covering the trial scornfully noted m their accounts the appearance of buttons sporting the message, "Save the males." For the liberal media, these buttons confirmed the benighted and reactionary attitudes of those who sympathized with The Citadel.

To destroy this alleged bastion of male privilege, the opposition advanced the purportedly moving claims of poor Shannon Faulkner, the young woman who had been "stigmatized" by her exclusion from The Citadel's corps of cadets. Miss Faulkner, you will recall, had applied to The Citadel, having first persuaded her guidance counselor to remove all indications of her sex from her application and transcript. She received a provisional acceptance, which The Citadel, when it discovered she was female, withdrew. What a blow to her self-esteem! All this was widely reported. What was less widely reported, if at all, is that Miss Faulkner applied to The Citadel only because she accidentally discovered that it did not admit women, that she plans to become a teacher of young children, and that she has secured a Hollywood agent. She now claims that she was attracted by The Citadel's military discipline, but her admitted lack of interest in any other military schools, and her emphatic insistence that she would have no interest whatsoever in an all-female equivalent of The Citadel, permit one to doubt her candor. In contrast, there were no grounds to doubt her sincerity when she spoke of her desire to wear the Citadel ring. To be a Citadel man! Now there is an aspiration worthy of any modem and progressive woman.

Miss Faulkner comes from South Carolina, and there are grounds to believe that she may understand something of The Citadel's local prestige. Most of those who are representing her, however, may well never have heard of The Citadel before being drawn into her case. The only member of her legal team who had previous contact with the college had been denied tenure in English there and was waiting for an opportunity to get even. Most of the rest of the team came from Washington or New York, and most were highly accomplished women who harbored a passionate ideological opposition to anything that appeared to validate any differences between women and men.