Women In Combat: The New Conservative Case Against Female Autonomy

Women in combat? Sorry ladies Gona get somebody killed

— #smelltherosis (@RosinskiJesse) January 24, 2013

To hear these men tell it, women like Amanda Trombley—a female lance corporal in the Marine Corps who, in 2010, was nearly killed when a series of roadside bombs in Afghanistan tore into her patrol vehicle—don't exist. Or at least they don't count.

You see, what the complaining about women in combat does is diminishes the fact that there are thousands of women in the military suffering from combat difficulties already. If Carlson is worried about the end of this ban meaning American women will die in battle, that's too bad, because, as Secretary Panetta said in his press conference today, 152 American women have already been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hundreds of others have been injured (here is a list of 146 of the killed women). Female soldiers like Amanda Trombley have been firing at enemies and risking their lives for years in the name of America's pursuits, they've just been doing so under the combat exclusion policy, which prevented them from obtaining access to some of the honors and promotions that so frequently go along with male combat duty.

As for Frum's complaint that women fighting in wars puts them in too much danger of being raped, well, the sad fact is that even the simple act of joining the U.S. military greatly increases a woman's chances of being raped, and not by any foreign enemy. Thousands and thousands of American servicewomen (and some men) are raped by their fellow soldiers every year, and only a small fraction of those rapes are ever investigated, allowing the offenders to go forth and rape more. In October of last year, Frum asked his fellow Republicans, who have lately made equivocating about rape somewhat of a pastime, to not make the GOP "the party of rape." But for decades the military has been a place where rape has run free, and with very little complaints from either of America's leading political parties. Now, all of a sudden, we must protect our female soldiers from the filthy Pakistani and Iranian rapist hordes. Where were these concerned pundits when it was American boys assaulting their own sisters in arms, not once, but over and over and over again?

Not a single voice helping to make up the conservative outcry over women in battle is out of the ordinary, of course. As we've learned quite well in the past several months especially, a major bullet point of the Republican agenda has been coming up with new and inventive ways to prevent women from doing what they will with their own bodies. Mostly that's meant trying to force ladies into having babies they'd rather not, but that impulse can extend to scolding women off the battlefield, too. Nobody wants to see any American—any human—ripped apart by bullets in a desert somewhere, or assaulted in a filthy prison thousands of miles from home, but far be it from me to tell anyone they shouldn't risk those torments because it offends my sensibilities. I support our troops, after all.

Update: This post was updated to reflect that female soldiers do receive combat pay.

Photo: Getty.