Opinion A Rape-Free Army? By DOUGLAS LUMMIS	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
暴行のない軍隊とは？ 米メリーランド州にある米軍訓練所では、数百人の女性新入兵が教官によって暴行または性的いやがらせを受けており、その件数は増え続けている。しかし、軍当局は、性差別をなくす努力をしているのだと言う。そんなことは実際、可能なのだろうか…。

There is a scandal in the U.S. Army. At the army training center in Aberdeen, Maryland hundreds of women recruits say they have been raped or sexually harassed by their trainers. And the numbers keep growing.

Everywhere men are saying, "What did they expect?" This is a shocking thing to say, but also ― interesting. Maybe these men know something. Not about sexual ethics, of course, but about the military. U.S. military authorities say they are going to get rid of sexism in the Army and the Navy. The Aberdeen scandal raises the question once again: Is this feasible?

Some feminists have argued that any job men can do, women can do as well, including soldiering. My question is, how are women going to handle the "rape and pillage" part? I mean, maybe they can handle pillage, but. . . .

The question seems unfair, but is it really? Rape and pillage are not accepted as legitimate tactics in modern warfare, but can a tradition with the weight of millennia behind it be put aside so easily? From ancient times war has been carried out by groups of men cut off from the authority of women and obsessed with the violent domination of women. From the Rape of the Sabine Women through the Rape of Nanking down to the Rape of Bosnia, the word "rape" has had both sexual and military meanings mixed within it.

In the 1950s when I went through U.S. Marine Corps basic training, rape and pillage were not part of the formal curriculum. Informally, however, in the military culture that the drill instructors passed on to us with great skill, contempt for women was an integral part. Any doubts or hesitations we had about the military profession were given a gender identification and marked for suppression. "All right you GIRLS," the drill instructors would scream at laggards, "Get MOVING!"

To transform an ordinary boy into a soldier capable of killing, the drill instructors understood that the authority of the mother had to be destroyed and replaced by the authority of the military. They shouted, "You wanna be a Marine or you wanna go back to your mama?!" I remember an officer jokingly ending a physical fitness lecture by proposing as a model of good health "to be hanged for rape at age 90."

The question is not whether all male soldiers are sexists. The question is, what is this activity called "War"? Why has there never in history been a case of a group of women organizing themselves into an army, leaving their homes and families behind, and invading another country? Is it not possible that war, particularly the war of invasion, is an inherently sexist activity?

If so, then the current attempt in the U.S. to promote a gender-blind military will be fascinating to watch. Either military culture will be the ultimate test of gender equality, or gender equality will be the ultimate test of military culture.

Shukan ST: Jan. 3, 1997

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