Women and children vs. Civilians

[steepholm]

I'm used to being irritated, in a petty way, whenever I hear a radio presenter say (reporting the bombing of a wedding party in Afghanistan, perhaps, or an explosion on one side or other of the Gaza/Israel border) that the injured include "women and children" - clearly considering this an exacerbating factor. Why don't they just say "civilians", if that's what they mean? Singling out women and children (or excluding men, if you prefer) seems to imply at least one of the following:

a) Adult male civilians are somehow legitimate targets - or at least more legitimate. Be they 95-year-old wheelchair-bound asthmatics or hale conscientious objectors or simply greengrocers trying to sell sprouts, their Y chromosome means that they are all combatants in potentia. So it's okay(ish) to kill them, on the same principle that it's okay to castrate men because they're all potential rapists - right?

b) Women are incapable of offering any kind of threat. Despite the many thousands of female members of the professional armed forces, and the large number of female suicide bombers for that matter, we know that they can't be real soldiers - it's just not in their feminine natures. Not least because...

c) ... the phrase "women and children", while infantilizing women through its implied apposition, also reminds us that the archetypal - the essential - woman is a nursing mother. This is the condition to which all other women aspire, or of which they fall sadly short. Whereas "men and children" - well, that just sounds a bit odd, doesn't it?

In fact the whole thing seems the product of a rather toxic mess of unexamined sexism. I was reminded of this the other day when half listening to Andrew Marr's Start the Week, which featured the Archbishop of Canterbury and Philip Pullman, amongst others, debating religion and morality. Someone (I can't honestly remember who) suggested that, despite their differences, they could all agree on certain universal moral principles such as that it was wrong to kill women and children. No one demurred, or suggested that this might actually be a pretty culturally-specific principle. Of course, I realise that I would have looked foolish shouting "Kill the women and children too!" or "But what about the menzzzz??" at the radio; and it's hard to object without looking as if one is doing at least one of these things. Also, I agree that it is wrong to kill women and children, so what's my beef? All the same, I suspect that had someone averred as a universal moral principle the equally-true idea that it's wrong to kill white people he would have got some pretty funny looks.

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's archaic, really. In the world of Icelandic saga, for instance, there weren't really such things as civilian men. If you killed someone's uncle, not only were you his legitimate target, so were your brothers, sons and any other male relative he could get his hands on by way of avenging his blood kin. But not your aunts, sisters or daughters, or underage male relatives; this was tacitly agreed by all sides, and I suppose the logic was that women and children didn't carry arms or necessarily know how to use them. By the same token, wouldn't old men, past the age of bearing arms, be a non-legit target, then as now?

I guess one reason it's still hard for some folk to change this mindset is that biologically, females are less expendable if you want to restock the place after a bloodbath. A few men left in a district can repopulate it pdq; a lack of women can soon kill a district off.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I agree it's archaic, which is why I'm surprised it's still being cited as a universal moral principle in a way that, say, the obligations of blood feud are not. After all, as you imply, the two things belong to the same matrix of values and duties. I believe you're right by the way that men past arms-bearing age would have been considered illegitimate targets then - but are they now? Going by the "women and children" formula, one would think not.

Having said it's archaic to believe that all men, and only men, are potential soldiers, though, it's still unfortunately the case that with the exception of Israel every country that has compulsory military service applies it to men only - including such supposedly feminist-friendly states as Sweden, Denmark, Norway and yes, even my beloved Finland. As to why there haven't been more marches by women in those countries demanding the right to be conscripted, one can only speculate!

[hafren.livejournal.com]

As to why there haven't been more marches by women in those countries demanding the right to be conscripted, one can only speculate

Got more sense, I daresay... but I still think the repopulation argument is a logically valid one, though I'm sure more emotional and illogical ones are often to the fore.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The repopulation argument is entirely logical, but I seriously doubt whether it's ever been touted as the basis of a "universal moral principle".

[gair.livejournal.com]

on the same principle that it's okay to castrate men because they're all potential rapists - right?

I don't think anyone ever said that it was okay to castrate men because they're all potential rapists, though (do let me know if I'm wrong) and people do, as you point out, imply that it's okay to kill adult males. Which might be your point, I guess, but I got a bit lost there, probably because I think that the fact that men are all potential rapists still needs to be made, over and over again, until (1) people realize that rape is a symptom of a wider culture of sexualized and gendered violence and oppression, not just Something Individual Bad People Do To Other Individual People; and (2) people get it into their heads that it's men's responsibility not to contribute to/collude with rape culture rather than women's responsibility to carefully sort out the Really Nice Guys Whose Feelings Might Be Hurt from the, well, potential rapists.

Whereas I don't think there's an important political benefit to be gained from reasserting the idea that men are all combatants and women and children are all dependents/non-combatants.

Having said all of which, I totally agree with you about the rest of (a), and about (b) and (c). I was ranting about this 'No-one is allowed to be mean to children'! thing the other day in another context, but I can't remember what it was now...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

There was probably one degree too many of sarcasm in the post! To be clearer: what I meant was that to argue that civilian men are legitimate targets of violence because they are potential combatants is analogous to arguing that men are legitimate targets of castration because they are potential rapists - which, as you say, is not an argument that's generally seen as valid.

In other words, I agree with you - if I've understood you right. I'd only add that, as well as the wider culture of gendered violence and oppression, there's a wider culture of violence and oppression amongst and between men - as witness pretty much every action film and western ever made.

[gair.livejournal.com]

It's Monday morning - two levels of sarcasm is all I can manage! And good, yes, I can now agree with you entirely. (Yes, too, about man-on-man violence: certainly I think statistics show that young men are much more likely to be victims of street violence than women. I wonder if anyone has talked about how this particular culture of violence intersects with the culture of violence-against-women, which is sort of a different... flavour of violence, or something. Men who beat up women are despised by men who are manly enough to beat up men, which is sort of where we came in, actually!)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Men who beat up women are despised by men who are manly enough to beat up men.

Yup. Chivalry is the hinge on which both misogyny and machismo turn, I think. (Eustace Scrubb tries to explain this to King Caspian on the Dawn Treader, but doesn't get very far.)

[(Anonymous)]

And of course there's the rise in girl gangs which somehow merits discussion by the moral arbiters of our broken britain:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-566919/The-Feral-Sex-The-terrifying-rise-violent-girl-gangs.html The unpleasantness of the violence seems to be exacerbated because they are both women AND children. They're made of sugar and spice and all things nice, but boys are all slugs and snails and puppy dog tails so it's fine to just get angry at them. When a boy attacks a boy they're being a bad person but when a girl attacks a girl it's a dreadful shame. No-one suggests sending them off to national service to learn some respect - respect for social institutions and the right way of doing things, and not any idea of morality mind you. When a girl is violent, it's symptomatic of a wider social problem. When a boy is violent, they are the cause of it.
NB

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I came across another example of this today in Labour's Manifesto, which has a line about aiming to reduce the number of women, youth and mentally ill prisoners. I can see that the latter two are different categories, but why is it more desirable to reduce the number of female prisoners versus male?!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good question - especially when there's far fewer of them to begin with. NB makes the point above, I think: for women to step out of line is unnatural and disturbing, while for men it's SNAFU. Which is pretty insulting to everyone, really!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

P.S. I've not seen Labour's manifesto, so I'm not sure if this is what they've got in mind, but I have heard that women who come to court are liable to get more severe sentences than men would get for the same offences. This, however, is a further example of the same phenomenon - that female criminals are a more viscerally frightening group, who must be repressed with the sternest measures.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

There wasn't much detail about many of the proposals, so I don't know what lay behind it. I just looked again and there was just a mention about spare capacity as a result, which obviously doesn't answer the female/male issue. I suspect it's not about the tougher sentencing problem (which I wasn't aware of, but yikes) but rather some sort of women & children sentimentality.