The feminist assault on the military

National Review, Oct 5, 1992 by David Horowitz

There are many purposes behind the feminists' efforts to restructure the military, but you can be sure that greater national security is not one of them.

FOR NEARLY two decades after the Sixties, the military remained the one institution to withstand the baleful influences of the radical Left. Now that the cold war is over, this immunity appears to have ended. A series of relatively trivial incidents (a joke about women's sexual excuses, a skit mocking a female member of Congress) and a drunken party at which crotches were grabbed in a gantlet ritual have fueled a national hysteria about "sexual harassment" and a political witchhunt that is threatening to deconstruct the military in the way other institutions have been deconstructed before.

Fanning the fires are feminist legislators on the Armed Services Committee, led by Democrat Pat Schroeder, who want women assigned to combat roles. In a July 9 letter to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, Representative Schroeder put the Pentagon on notice that Tailhook was only "a symptom" and that the resignation of Navy Secretary Garrett does not begin "to address the problem." Mrs. Schroeder called for investigations and prosecutions to purge the Navy of sexual miscreants and bad attitudes.

Mrs. Schroeder herself was the center of the second Navy "scandal," over the Tom Cat Follies at the Miramar Naval Station. The Follies, which were held in a private officers' club and which traditionally include off-color jibes at Navy brass, featured lampoons of George Bush and Dan Quayle. But it was the two skits about Representative Schroeder that caused heads to roll. The first was an altered nursery rhyme: "Hickory, dickory dock, Pat Schroeder s---ed my c---." The second was a skit in which Mrs. Schroeder went to Europe for a sex-change operation and came back incarnated as Dick Cheney. Not far off the mark, considering that Mrs. Schroeder has been mentioned as a possible Secretary of Defense in a Clinton Administration and that Mr. Cheney has been timid on the issue of women in combat.

When the Navy brass was alerted to the contents of the show by a female officer who had been present, the reaction was swift. Five career officers present at the Follies had their commands terminated. (Subsequently, two were reinstated.) The Navy has also apologized to Mrs. Schroeder. Such appeasement, however, has only whetted the appetite of the feminist vanguard, which has stepped up its campaign to pass the Schroeder Amendment, allowing women to fly combat missions. It is seen by advocates as a "wedge" measure that would lead to expanded combat roles and true "institutional equality" for women. A Presidential Commission appointed to review the issue is scheduled to make a recommendation in November.

Militantly Anti-Military

IT SHOULD come as no surprise that many advocates of the change have previously shown little interest in maintaining an effective defense. Representative Schroeder, for example, was an antiwar activist before entering the House. She has been a determined adversary of military preparedness on the Armed Services Committee, where she now serves as a ranking member along with Beverly Byron (who has demanded that every officer merely present at Tailhook be thrown out of the service) and radical Congressman Ron Dellums, who denounced Jimmy Carter as "evil" for opposing Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.

When New Left radicals, like myself, launched the movement against the war in Vietnam, we did not say we wanted the Communists to win--which we did. We said we wanted to bring the troops home, which accomplished our objective: the Communists won. With disastrous consequences for Vietnam and the world.

Examples of this kind of double agenda abound in the current feminist campaign and can be found in testimony before the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. Maria Lepowsky, a professor of Women's Studies, provided the commissioners with data to support a combat role for women. Then Professor Lepowsky asked herself: "What would be some possible consequences .... if women were put in combat-on American cultural values and American society ... ?" She answered her own question: "I think there might be increased concern about committing troops to combat, also perhaps a good thing."

In other words, Professor Lepowsky was advocating that women be put in combat roles because to do so would make it more difficult to commit troops to combat. Now this is a kind of candor that is unusual for the Left.

Reform, Soviet Style

MODERATE feminists generally want modest reforms in American society. Technological advances, like birth control, have dramatically changed women's social roles, requiring adjustments in the culture. The most constructive way for these changes to take place is deliberately, and with due respect for consequences that may be unforeseen. As the inhabitants of the former Soviet empire discovered, at great human cost, revolutionary cures can often be worse than the disease.