The No-Women-in-Combat Argument
for no women in leadership
The Argument: “Look, you wouldn’t want to have women in the military, would you? Terrible things might happen to women when they’re in the military. It’s better if women, whose bodies represent the life-making gender, stay out of warfare where men kill men. Not only that, but men are obviously better built for combat. Since leadership is a sort of combative role in confronting threats, disciplining, and protecting those who are less capable of protecting themselves, it’s best suited for men. By taking the leadership roles, men protect women.”
Counterargument 1: While it is true that women’s bodies serve as life-givers in the formation of babies, the rest of the above argument does not follow. It assumes that leadership is primarily about “warfare” or “cutting out” and not also about “giving life.” Both the family and the church seem to be a mixture of both “warfare” and the “giving of life.” Family and church are both places where leaders cut off and combat certain things while giving life and nurturing other things. Jesus put these two tasks side by side in the gospels: binding and loosing (Matt 16:19), cutting off body parts and yet never dividing what God joined together (Matt 5:27-32), hating one master and loving the other (Matt 6:24), welcoming the child and throwing out those who cause children to stumble (Matt 18:2-9), etc. This argument would need to prove how those who “kill” and “cut off” ought to rule over those who “nurture” and “give life.” In other words, those who say “Keep danger out” ought to have a ruling position over those who say “Children, welcome.”
Counterargument 2: This argument seems to assume that more terrible things happen to women who are in the military than to women who are out of the military. If “terrible things” means being maimed or killed, then yes. Being in a combative military role does increase the chances of being maimed or killed. However, the military has many jobs that don’t require hand-to-hand combat, especially in our day and age. To say women shouldn’t be side-by-side with men in a gun fight or in hand-to-hand combat is different than saying women shouldn’t be in the military altogether.
Counterargument 3: If this argument is referring to rape as “terrible things”, it would need to prove that women in the military are more likely to be raped than those outside the military. I’m not so sure there is a case for this.
Counterargument 4: While government leaders must have power over those who engage in hand-to-hand combat, leaders are not usually the same people who do the hand-to-hand combat. Usually, the governing leaders send the military to do the combative, protective work.
Counterargument 5: If this argument were valid, then it follows that the takers-of-life, that is, men, ought to be excluded or in submission to women in the places where life is given, that is, the birthing room, within the home where nurturing occurs, and in the places in church where spiritual formation is taking place.
For more arguments and counterarguments like this, click on the links below: