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So a Canadian soldier died in Afghanistan the other day, and since then there's been a media furor about it. This is the 17th Canadian to die on military duty in Afghanistan since the beginning of "Operation Clean Up After The Americans Who Are Too Busy Chasing Vendettas In A Totally Unrelated Country That Is Purely Coincidentally Filthy With Oil"
To date -- to my knowledge -- no soldier's death has been marked with multiple news reports, a play-by-play of the base-side funeral, a sonorous "thousands of soldiers stand united in grief as the coffin is loaded onto the chopper" national news bit, and windy speeches in the House of Commons.
The difference between this soldier, and the first 16, is that this soldier was a woman.
I'm trying to work out why this annoys the piss out of me. I find something tooth-gratingly irritating about the fact that soldiers have been getting done in by roadside bombs, etc. for years with a "three soldiers died in Afghanistan today" news bit, here and gone, but the first female soldier to die gets the stop-the-presses treatment.
So far, I've come up with a few things:
(a) I'm offended at the sexism of the fact that a female soldier dying is somehow sensational. She should be treated equally, with an equal amount of fuss, as any other soldier dying in the line of duty, and the "OMG" reaction is somehow as patronizing as telling women they shouldn't or can't be soldiers in the first place;
(b) While I try not to be overtly/consciously sexist, there's a certain amount of upbringing/surroundings/society that I still need to grapple with. So maybe this is just me being sexist, and reacting negatively to a woman getting "special treatment".
I'm leaning towards (a), but mixing a bit of (b) in for colour and texture. It's why I find this sexist that's proving troublesome... it feels like the same sort of annoyance I have when universities call their sports teams, say, the Drywalls, and all the women's teams are called the Lady Drywalls. But I'm not certain if it really is condescending, or if I'm projecting the condescension because I'm personally aggravated that a woman is getting "special treatment." Maybe it's just notable because it's statistically interesting.
Maybe, hey, it's actually a good thing because it highlights the fact that women are soldiers, can take the same risks and face the same consequences. Maybe this will be inspiring for legions of young women.
Mitigating factor, to be fair: there was a contentious vote in Parliament this week about extending the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, so it was higher up in the news cycle in general than it normally would have been. But I can't shake the feeling that this was a "LADY soldier" story, not a "soldier" story.
So I've spent all morning tossing it around in my head, and I still can't work out clearly why it bugs me so much. One thing I like about Barbelith, and one of the reasons I was eager to join, is that there seems to be a lot of consciousness and discussion about gender roles, societal stereotypes, etc. I'm hoping some of you deeper thinkers might have some insight here. |
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