THE PLANK OCTOBER 3, 2009
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Is it a sign of naivete that one can still experience a bit of shock when reading things like this in one of our two most "serious" conservative magazines? It's 2009! The words of wisdom below are courtesy of someone named James Bowman, and can be found in a new Weekly Standard essay. Bowman starts off poorly by arguing as follows:
There are all kinds of people--the very young and the very old, the sick or disabled, violent criminals or, in combat roles, women--whom we regard as unfit to be soldiers. The fact that open homosexuals are also excluded cannot by itself be considered an injustice.
But don't worry, because Bowman quickly moves on to the real issue: Manliness.
Yet if reason were to be readmitted to the debate, we might find something in the history of military honor to justify the principle now enshrined in the law decreeing that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service." We know that soldiering--I mean not training or support or peacekeeping or any of the myriad other things soldiers do, but facing enemy bullets--is inextricably bound up with ideas of masculinity. We also know that most heterosexual males' ideas of masculinity are inextricably bound up with what we now call sexual orientation. In other words, "being a man" typically does mean for soldiers both being brave, stoic, etc.--and being heterosexual. Another way to put this is to say that honor, which is by the testimony of soldiers throughout the ages of the essence of military service, includes the honor of being known for heterosexuality, and that, for most heterosexual males, shame attends a reputation as much for homosexuality as for weakness or cowardice.
As if this were not bad enough, Bowman adds:
This is not, of course, to say that homosexuals are weak or cowardly--only that the reputation of manliness, which we know to be an important component of military honor, is in practice incompatible with the imputation either of homosexuality or of weakness and cowardice. Now presumably an argument for the armed forces' being required to accept gay recruits is that it doesn't have to mean this, and that this simple reality is merely the product of custom and convention and no essential part of the moral and emotional equipment of men capable of nerving themselves to face combat. Possibly they are right. But what if they are wrong? Is there any way to find out without taking a real risk with national security? Are the advocates of gays in the military prepared to say, fiat justitia, ruat caelum?
One wants to ask, about the sentence in bold above: What wing of society has decided that "the reputation of manliness" is incompatible with homosexuality? In other words, why is this true "in practice"? Well, because of people of like Bowman, that's why!
Meanwhile, the Latin at the end of the passage is, I'd imagine, supposed to subtly remind the reader that society is going to the dogs. Don't you remember the days when real men walked the earth? No? Well at least you can study ancient times. Bowman, unsurprisingly, has written a book called Honor: A History. (Do conservatives ever get tired of this stuff?) He also works for an outfit called The Ethics and Public Policy Center, which, according to its website, "was established in 1976 to clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition and the public debate over domestic and foreign policy issues." Yeah yeah. Can't the Standard move beyond this nonsense? Apparently not, because the piece comes on the heels of the magazine's decision to print Sam Schulman's atrocious case against gay marriage. Readers are invited to debate which article is worse.
17 comments
I have a particularly difficult time reading to their conclusion essays such as Bowman's here, because I know damn well it is not a conclusion that has been reached, merely and adjournment. People like Bowman can, once granted the opportunity to continue, hold forth all day and all night for weeks on end (without tiring a bit) on such subjects. So much there there, and I am exhausted already by paragraph three. Not that I really wanted to, I googled Bowman and got right to the horse's mouth at JamesBowman.net, where I found he is the "Movie critic, The American Spectator (1990 to date) and The New York Sun (2002 to date) ; American editor, The Times Literary Supplement of London (1991 to 2002) media critic, The New Criterion (1993 to date); Washington correspondent, The Spectator of London (1989-1991); teacher of English and Head of General Studies, Portsmouth Grammar School, Portsmouth, England (1980-1989); assistant master Westminster School, London (1980). Education B.A. Lebanon Valley College, Annville, Pennsylvania; B.A., M.A. Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, England." "Movie critic??" You betcha. He's reviewed a fair number of films, from "Ten things I hate about you" in 1999 to "Julie and Julia." I couldn't resist reading a sample of reviews from his corpus. One that jumped out at me (sic) was Alien Resurrection, a particular favorite of mine. Bowman begins: "The movies of the Alien series have always had as subtext the feminist view of abortion, but never more so than the latest, called Alien Resurrection, which comes to us from Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Jeunet was co-director of the very weird French films Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, and this looks a lot like both of them. Yet for all its French ambiance, its mythic force derives from its imagery of women forced into subjugation by the things growing inside them—things which take over their lives completely and will ultimately kill them. The dragon-slaying hero is the new, omnicompetent woman invented by Hollywood—in this case Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) who has triumphed even over death through the miracle of cloning—and the dragon is her baby. Ripley not only kills dragon-babies, she also effortlessly beats back the menacing male sexuality of Ron Perlman and Michael Wincott. She stronger and quicker than they are, and she's better at basketball too. Talk about hitting a guy where it hurts! Even her blood is an offensive weapon, since it boils like sulphuric acid whenever she cuts herself and a drop spill anywhere but on her. In the film's climactic scene she makes especially effective use of this quality to dispose of a giant, toothy alien fetus who regards her as its mother. After nuzzling with the horrible thing and showing apparently maternal feelings toward it (on this point she is always ambiguous, identifying herself as “its mother” at one moment and shooting it at the next), she flings a drop of her blood at the tiny window (a window?) of the spaceship, puncturing a small hole in it. The monster is then sucked through the hole in disgusting ribbons of flesh and blood. The imagery of abortion is unmistakable. As the creature is cut to pieces and evacuated into space, Ripley whispers “I'm sorry” to it. Obviously not sorry enough to sacrifice not only her own life but also that of her lesbian love interest, a robot played by Winona Ryder. The robot has already taken a bullet in the chest without ill effect, so it is not clear what Ripley thinks will happen to her as she grapples with the monster-fetus. But presumably even robots must be saved from the nightmare of motherhood. As the film ends, she and her beloved droid can breathe the free air of earth as we see the spaceship re-entering the atmosphere just at sunset amid pastel clouds. What a brave new world there is here to enjoy, unencumbered by the burden of nature. The robot, programmed to save humanity, is the good guy and shows delicate feelings about Ripley—though obviously not her spawn. When Ripley finds out that it is a robot (because, unlike the fetuses, when blasted with futuristic weapons it doesn't die), she says: “I should have known. No human could be that humane.” Later, as they fight the monster-fetuses, Ripley asks the robot: “Why do you care?” “I was programmed to.”" Made my day it did.
- Tgossard
October 3, 2009 at 9:55am
"Another way to put this is to say that honor, which is by the testimony of soldiers throughout the ages of the essence of military service, includes the honor of being known for heterosexuality, and that, for most heterosexual males, shame attends a reputation as much for homosexuality as for weakness or cowardice." Um, wasn't Alexander the Great gay? How far back to the "ages" go, anyway?
- csmiller
October 3, 2009 at 1:57pm
Last night, before I went to go see Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women in my town, I went to go soften the tissues with a frosty margarita. I read Rich Benjamin's fascinating article on Whitopia in the American Prospect, referencing his book Searching for Whitopia. Seems to me that this tortured, head up the a-s argument by Bowman - which seems to be the placement of his head whenever he sits down to his keyboard - is part of that whole Whitopia retrenchment: this argument reflects the lost White Straight majority's to bring back the ethos of their cultural hegemony, embroidered in this instance with a common- wink wink - understanding of the term "manly", and at the same time, preemptively denying the bigotry that is and will be associating with those bygone terms and bygone values. These people are seriously messed up. I pity them.
- MrCookie1
October 3, 2009 at 2:06pm
Once I got into a discussion with a pleasant-enough conservative guy who was spouting much the same nonsense as Bowman (but not specifically related to the military). He was lamenting the death of good solid masculine virtues not haunted by self-doubt or PC supervision or what he called "bureaucrats telling you how to behave." I said I agreed. He brightened. I went on to say that I thought the history of the labor movement, especially in its glory days from 1890 to 1960, was one of our great examples of good solid masculine virtues, as these tough and courageous guys faced down employer intimidation, paid thugs, and poverty to fight for a fairer slice of the pie for themselves, their families, and their community. I said I thought we needed more of that now on the left. His look of confusion spiced with unease was a treat to see.
- ironyroad
October 3, 2009 at 2:43pm
irony, pretty funny. I gotta tell you, this guy has a point, after a typical day of nagging from my wife I have an overwhelming urge to jump in a foxhole with a bunch of other guys and blow up a village.
- blackton
October 3, 2009 at 4:30pm
I find it impossible to believe that a comfortably straight man would bother with such an embarrassing treastise on manliness. Straight guys read the newspaper, play golf or run or swim, BBQ with the wife, nap, work, think about food and sex and occasionally enjoy their friends. They do not make the effort to write 1000 straight-faced words worrying about the demise of manliness. Ever. How many more of these closet cases will the right present for my entertainment? Its been what - a week, two weeks - since we've had one dragged out? It's a pathology I used to enjoy, in a cold blodded way. But it's gotten so reliable that it has become boring. I demand a new pathology. PS I always wonder who these nameless bureacrats are that keep telling these harrassed white men what to do. Maybe only they can see them?
- WandreyCer
October 3, 2009 at 5:38pm
Still, you can't say that Weekly Standard doesn't walk the walk. The following are now banned from the office: * pink grenades * gay chickenhawks * raised pinkies * hair dressers * masculine women and Rich Lowry * conseratives with crushes on Todd * Rudy Giuliani in drag * log cabins * IDF soldiers * teletubbies gw
- iambiguous
October 3, 2009 at 6:17pm
Tgossard, No. Fucking. Way.
- dylanposer
October 3, 2009 at 6:21pm
Great question Wandrey! My impression is that anything that looks like it constrains some white male prerogative is seen as an unconstitutional imposition of authority, and that could be concrete things like no-smoking rules in bars, sexual harassment laws, school prayer, gun restrictions, or child support orders, or more distant phenomena like black presidents, Hispanic supreme court judges, and San Francisco. Incidentally, there are plenty of non-white males who share some of these feelings (esp. in relation to women) but they usually don't have a whole conspiracy theory built up around it. Curiously some of these people are bureaucrats themselves. I once met the father of a friend of mine in grad school, and this guy was a walking textbook for hair-trigger white male resentment and sexual paranoia. I was surprised when the friend told me his dad worked in an office for the State of California.
- ironyroad
October 3, 2009 at 6:33pm
dylanposer: "Tgossard, No. Fucking. Way." huh?? I don't get your intended meaning. Would you please explain? Thx. /Tg
- Tgossard
October 4, 2009 at 10:11am
dylanposer, it occurred to me you might have misread or misunderstood my comment; it was lengthy. It was ironic, not approving of Bowen. I hated the slant of the review, and that it was Alien Resurrection he reviewed (have you seen it? don't bother, it's ludicrously awful, while the first Alien movie was great - a sci-fi hall of famer, imo.
- Tgossard
October 4, 2009 at 10:25am
--whoops I left a sentence dangling. should have read "I hated the review, and that it was of Alien Resurrection he reviewed, rendered it absurd on top of being repulsive."
- Tgossard
October 4, 2009 at 10:29am
Well, the Spartans, the ancient warriors with the best rep for bravery, were the product of a society that we're told had institutionalized man-on-boy action. (They also had an education curriculum mandated by the state, by the way.) If we really want manly courage on the battlefield, why aren't we looking at models like this?
- frippo
October 4, 2009 at 11:03am
It's really too bad we don't any longer have Channy in the 'hood to defend the fort for traditional manly values. I (mostly) used to love the jousts and set-tos we all had.
- Tgossard
October 4, 2009 at 11:46am
Tgossard, Ha, don't worry, I followed your comment by your intention: the first part was your thoughts and research and the latter part was Bowen's. I shrugged off his masculinity/military-workproduct thesis in the recent Weekly Standard op-ed without much humor (seriously, if we are going to start determining efficacy by subjective associations and not scientifically-proven correlations, can we also say that masturbating too much is associated with weakness in combat, and so we should filter recruits for symptoms like too much acne or awkwardness with women? Can we say that people who chose not to eat red meat are associated with people who don't like guns, and so those with dietary restrictions should be flagged when we are recruiting for what is very much an undermanned army?). However, when I read the Alien Resurrection review, I nearly lost control of my bladder. That blew my mind. And also made my day.
- dylanposer
October 4, 2009 at 1:35pm
I've heard even stupider arguments: If openly gay people were allowed, it would never work to have them sleep in the same barracks with straights because it would lead to sexual tension. Right, we all know that same sex environments are models of sexual propriety.
- lauraone111
October 5, 2009 at 12:16am
"The left has nothing better to offer than riding roughshod over the opinions of the majority of servicemen--58 percent in the latest Military Times poll--and repealing the law. The same poll found that 10 percent of respondents would leave the service if gays were allowed openly to serve and another 14 percent would consider leaving. We have at least to take seriously the possibility that this would be the price of treating military service as a human right." Does anyone have any idea if a poll was done when Pres. Truman integrated the armed forces back in 1948? Whoopsie...did I mean to imply these folks were bigoted? Stupid me, Bowman says specifically that he and his arguments are not. I am so sorry.
- rlgordonma
October 5, 2009 at 2:24pm