Yes, everyone poops. But discovering that reality could be even more traumatizing than discovering the reality of the violence of war. Or so Ryan Smith, who authored this piece at the Wall Street Journal (titled “The Reality that Awaits Women in Combat”), seems to imply.
Yes, a woman is as capable as a man of pulling a trigger. But the goal of our nation’s military is to fight and win wars. Before taking the drastic step of allowing women to serve in combat units, has the government considered whether introducing women into the above-described situation would have made my unit more or less combat effective?
Societal norms are a reality, and their maintenance is important to most members of a society. It is humiliating enough to relieve yourself in front of your male comrades; one can only imagine the humiliation of being forced to relieve yourself in front of the opposite sex.
Feminist Philosophers 
Omigod, I totally hadn’t thought of that. I mean, ‘societal norms’ against killing and violence? Taken care of in basic training. But against relieving yourself in front of the opposite sex? That’s just impossible!!
i like the phrase “one can only imagine”. ‘Cos, y’know, it sort of gives the game away about the extra-special awfulness of this being wholly a matter of speculation.
Could someone come up with a piece of javascript that automatically changes the phrase “one can only imagine” to “in the absence of actual evidence, I’m being forced to imagine”? Can’t be that hard.
yeah, seeing men poop, bleed, vomit, urinate and defecate all over themselves is something women can’t cope with. nor can they cope with filth, stench, pus, mopping the crap of others, or seeing pain.
That is why no women can be nurses.
Wait a minute……………….
women can deal with anything en can, and often have way more endurance for pain than men.
[…] Everyone Poops. […]
To be fair, I didn’t take the remark as implying that women can’t handle seeing poop. Rather, I thought it was communicating the fact that people often find it shameful to defecate in front of each other and, especially, in the presence of the opposite gender. So the problem would be that the men wouldn’t want to poo in front of the women and vice-versa, leading to an intolerably backlogged fighting force.
Since that’s one of the shame-inducing tactics employed in modern torture practices, I’m waiting for someone to blur the difference in an effort to keep the scary women away.
Michel, I think I took the comment roughly the same way as you. But, when we’re talking about war, we’re already talking about doing things well outside social norms. I thought it was really striking that he seemed to want to claim that the shame of defeating in front of a member of the opposite sex would be so painful, when we’re talking about people who are so positioned together as a group, basically, in order to kill.
Reminds me of the Bill Hicks routine where he talks about opposition to gays in the military, about the ridiculousness of a person who says his moral sensibilities are offended by gay people while basically serving as a hired gun.
philodaria: No kidding. You’d think you’d have other things to worry about in those situations in which using a separate latrine isn’t possible.
Ryan Smith I’d wager has never been in a serious relationship with a member of the opposite sex that involved a simulacrum of realistic involvement with people as biological beings. Taking something like cordial bathroom etiquette to be significant of the limits of a rather ordinary moral courage is a sign of his shameful ignorance, and that only.