article (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1110/p01s04-usmi.html)
As America recognizes its veterans Saturday, a small but steadily growing number are women - some 28,000 of the 274,000 service members currently deployed. While still officially relegated to support positions and barred from infantry or armored divisions, such distinctions mean little when even the enemy isn't clear and any position can be a target.
[...]
"People tell me, 'You're not a veteran. You're young, you're a girl," laughs Specialist Jennet Posey, who served in Iraq as a mechanic for nine months before coming home and eventually moving to the inactive ready reserves while studying journalism in Chicago. "We're out there too, and we're risking our lives, but people don't see it. Women veterans do not get the recognition they deserve."
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Replies to this thread should be about how the role of women in the military and even in civilian life continues to change and shift as societal roles are examined and boundaries pushed, if not breached. Also a fine example of how gender is indeed a psychosociological element with perhaps some biosocial elements within it.
I applaud every advance of women's liberation and equality. The article states that, in ebbing towards that equality, many male soldiers still have societally-created expectations: One expectation is that a dead woman soldier in a body bag is incomprehensible. Women weigh this when they join, however, and many want ALL the barriers to go down because, only when that happens, will they be able to achieve economic parity with males. Also some women, like some men, may even LIKE the thrill of being tested in a life and death situation.
The big test will come if and when the "compulsory draft" is re-activated. For some, the "putting women on a pedestal" effect will be a hard thing to overcome. It would seemingly be "unmasculine" for a congressman to even suggest such a thing...any male who does not protect females is not a TRUE male.
In a book called "The Myth of Male Power," I once read how society feels men are DISPOSABLE in war: It is a truly sad thing for a man to die -- I mean, think of his poor family!
When men get "male liberation," perhaps society will realize that is is JUST AS MUCH a tragedy for a man to die in battle. A man is a thinking human being deserving of respect...
That would include HIS right to have life -- even if it's just for his own enjoyment.
Teri Anne