Van Badham

…is my new hero.

You will recall my response to Clive Hamilton’s sexist bigotry about women in combat roles.

Well, a journalist from The Drum has just published this hilarious response to him and to another knob of similar ilk, Greg Sheridan (whose asshattery I did not read). This is the best thing I’ve read in the malestream news for ages.

Written with the anti-war earnestness of a campside rendition of Kum-ba-yah and dripping with the kind of “why can’t we all be nice to one another?” idealism unfashionable even at undergraduate level, Hamilton’s chief objection to women in combat roles in the military seems to be that it threatens his sugar-and-spice notions of what little girls are made of.

Badham nails some of the underlying fears that men have about this issue, namely, what I said the other day about women being given the resources and training to perpetrate violence.

If women who refuse to conform to the stereotypes they wish to force on us are frightening, the prospect of us trained, skilled and wielding a gun must genuinely terrify.

But she also gets to something a bit more subtle than that. In a lot of the commentary, both from so-called journalists and the commenters on various news sites and blogs, men have raised the “problem” of male soldiers being motivated for chivalrous reasons to protect female soldiers on the battle field.

He similarly claims, without evidence, there are “inevitable romantic liaisons” when women enter mixed gender units, and that a “law of nature” as yet undiscovered by science forces a situation in which “male soldiers will try to protect female soldiers” in a combat situation.

Badham points out that male soldiers have been doing this for each other since forever. This kind of bravery is recognised, rewarded and glorified by the dominant class. Could we imagine male journalists complaining about men saving their male mates on the battle field? Fuck no!

But when there is the possibility that men might go to the same lengths to save women, then suddenly it’s problematic. Here lies the dirty rotten core of the argument. Women are not worth saving. Not only that, but if thrown together in a battle situation, away from the pressure to conform to the norms of “civil” society, men and women might become friends. They might bond. There it is. Men and women working cooperatively is a Problem. Hell, it might even lead to more respect for women and that could lead to a reduction in male privilege.