Enloe's Feminist Conspiracy Does Not Apply to the Military

Enloe’s “Conclusion” hurts the feminist theoretical argument more than it helps it. Enloe’s criticism made me a little angry, and I am not a feminist hater. Enloe makes some point that I believe are frankly not true and reflect more paranoia than constructive criticism on the part of Enloe. Enloe talks about women’s relationship with the military being one in which they offer their sexual services to convince soldiers that they are manly. I am an ROTC cadet and my father was in the Air Force for 17 years and I have never felt in anyway that women were being used to convince me or anyone that I know in the military that they are manly. In fact during training and deployment officers usually do the opposite and tell their soldiers not to think about home and their wives or girlfriends because they need to focus on what they are doing. Actually I have been told by manly soldier who have gone to Iraq for 15-18 month deployments that their wives had it tougher then they did during the deployment. While the husband is in Iraq his wife has to manage all of her personal affairs and now all of the affairs of the household as a whole since her husband cannot do his share because he is away. Furthermore she has to do all this while constantly being worried about the fact that someone she loves is in a war. Soldiers are the ones in combat so they know when to be worried for their lives and when they can relax because they are back on base and not out on patrol. Their wives do not know what their husbands are doing at all times while they are on deployment so they do not know when they can relax their fears and worries. They take a huge emotional toll and a lot of strength to overcome, it is no easy task that should be shrugged off as offering sex to make soldiers feel manly.

Enloe also goes too far when she says that, “They (Male Officials) have acted as though their government’s place in world affairs has hinged on how women behaved (Enloe 199).” Enloe sites immigration, labor, civil service, propaganda and military base policies to support this claim. I cannot speak for her other example (for which she offers no examples or evidence) but I can speak for the use of military base policies to control women. On military bases men and women sleep in different barracks and do not live together not because women are a cancer but because the military is a professional environment and there is not room for any kind of sexual tension that may arise from having men and women share the same showers,, bathrooms, and sleep spaces. Women also have to say “Woman on the floor!” before they enter a male floor of a barracks and need to wait for an “All clear!” before they can enter. This is more to protect women than men because it lets and men who are changing on the floor know that a woman is coming so they can cover-up. This policy keeps women from seeing anything that they do not want to. The only other base policy that I can think of that Enloe might take offense with is the policy that women cannot serve in combat arms units. The reason for this is very simple, the strongest woman will never be as strong of the strongest man. A perfect example I know of is a female ROTC cadet at Bucknell University. She can get a better score on the men’s scale of the Army Physical Fitness Test then me but she only weighs 120 pounds. Now if the Army let her, probably the most physically fit girl you can find, serve in an infantry unit what happens when she needs to throw on a 130 pound rucksack for a week-long mission, or when one of her fellow soldiers who weighs 230 pounds gets wounded. There is no way that she can drag that person to safety. In that situation when bullets are flying and people are being killed what is important to the Army is not a victory for women’s rights because a woman is serving in combat, what is important to the Army is how is that wounded soldier going to get to safety. It is about life and death not equality. If all the soldiers in combat units are men then the Army does not have to worry about this issue and that makes it a lot easier for the Army to conduct combat operations.

I understand that Enloe feels that women have been marginalize in world politics but I feel that she leans a little too close to conspiracy theory in her criticism of the system. There is certainly some marginalization of women in world politics and domestic policies but there is not a vast self-conscious effort to carry out that marginalization. I know this because I know that the military (which Enloe sites as being part of this effort) does not use and abuse women. Any such activity is illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and should be stopped. The military has practical reasons for any policy that it has which may be perceived as sexist by an outsider but that military is not sexist and these policies are not sexist, but practical. I feel that Enloe is hurting the feminist cause more then helping it because she is making the issue more divisive in a effort to reconcile it which does nothing but make it worse.