Sir, - Kevin Myers wrote a thought-provoking Irishman's Diary on masculinity, "manliness" and the use of force (September 21st). He identified certain behaviours and traits as being inherently "masculine". These include notions of duty and sacrifice in terms of the use of force to underpin societal values. The idea that the use of force in general and combat in particular is sex-specific to the male holds great currency. It shapes our perception of conflict as a male preserve. Phrases such as "the men of 1916", "our boys in the trenches" and more recently "the men of violence" permeate the language.
Reality, however, stubbornly refuses to conform to culturally constructed notions of masculinity and femininity. Women have fought in every armed conflict, both conventional and non-conventional, since records began. Despite the constructed "masculinity" that the military embodies, military planners have been recruiting women in ever-greater numbers in recent times. This is not some liberal feminist experiment, but a strategically determined necessity.
For example, 43,000 women fought in the Gulf War. It is ironic to note that the characteristics necessary for military service - obedience, conformity, passivity and pro-social aggression - are those very characteristics that are constructed as "feminine". In other words, women make perfect soldiers.
Kevin Myers asks: "For what woman, what women would have done what Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Thomas Burnett and Louis Nacke did on Flight 93 last week?" I would venture to answer: Any of the 195,000 women in the US military, any of the 400 women in the Irish Defence Forces, any of the women who fought for Irish independence or any of the many thousands of women who killed and maimed in bitter close combat during the second World War.
The military recognise that women will "unhesitatingly sacrifice their lives" and indeed a standard operating procedure for special forces in encountering enemy combatants is to "shoot the women first". It may be true to say that "the female of the species is deadlier than the male".
The point of this letter is to emphasise the bias that would label certain human characteristics as either exclusively masculine or feminine. To do so is to deny women their fullest participation in a society which is deemed to function according to "male values". To do so also denies men their fullest participation in society. To suggest that men are exclusively programmed to kill and to socialise them to be expendable devalues the full reality of what it means to be a "real man" or a "real woman". The sad truth for all of us is that men and women share an equal propensity for violence, however tempered by cultural and social processes.
Perhaps a suitable epitaph for those murdered in the World Trade Centre would be a critical examination of those values in society, either "masculine" or "feminine", that lead us to resolve conflict in such a destructive and tragic manner. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Tom Clonan, (Captain, retd.,), Booterstown, Co Dublin.