It seems that drafting women has come up among the GOP candidates for some reason. So, I’ll give my take on it.
First, women are far too valuable to waste on military activity, with the possible exception of a truly existential threat (such as both the Russians and Germans each faced from the other in WW2). Doug Wilson gets the right of it:
Once you have signed off on the nation/state conscripting your daughters to go serve in combat roles, whatever it was you thought you were conserving — thus allowing you to call yourself a conservative — has had a fork stuck in it and is done. Nothing really to conserve any more.
A nation that conscripts its daughters for its defense is a nation that no longer deserves a defense. We may have to fight later as a practical matter, but this is a matter of rudimentary allegiance.
In a civilized society, anybody proposing sending women to war would be sent to a penal battalion himself to die honourably for the motherland.
On the other hand though, Wilson is right. Our society is no longer civilized and no longer worth defending or supporting. There is nothing to conserve and we should stop acting like there’s anything left.
Most “military age” women voluntarily render themselves infertile, so it’s not like we’re taking them away child creation and rearing. They’ve willingly and enthusiastically removed their own civilizational value and made themselves as expendable as men. There’s no civilizational reason to protect expendable self-sterilized young women.
Rationally we should be drafting women. Women claim to be men’s equals, and equals don’t get defended. Equals have to carry their own weight, and in this case carrying their own weight means being drafted and sent to die in case of war. If we’re going to do this liberalism, we should do it right. Allowing women into the military but not drafting them is one of those unprincipled exceptions that Zippy likes to talk about. If women are allowed in the military like men, then they should drafted like men.
(And no, to unseeing tradcons, this is not men cowering behind women, women enthusiastically pursue equality).
On Wilson’s biblical argument, the case Wilson makes does not support the idea that women at war is objectively sinful, just imprudent. So, I will talk in practical terms, not moral ones.
As for the combat effectiveness, it is obvious to anybody who’s not ideologically blinded that women will lower the military’s combat effectiveness and that’s a positive thing (I hesitate to use the word good). America’s hard military effectiveness doesn’t matter. America has had few just wars, hasn’t had a truly defensive war in a long time, possibly ever (the Pacific front of WW2 and the confederate defence in the War of the States may have been defensive, although, the US did provoke Japan and the CSA was not the USA) and has never fought a necessary war at all as far as I can recall at the moment. There’s certainly not going to be a defensive foreign war any time soon, and definitely not an existential one.
As for foreign conquests, America also has the gear and numbers to utterly destroy any possible foreign enemy that it gets serious on. The only reason America loses wars is because America (purposely?) tries to fail. A loss of combat effectiveness simply doesn’t matter against foreign enemies.
On the other hand, the happening could occur in the next couple of decades, and where the military falls during this times will matter a lot. The red tribe (ie. the tribe I support and the one not wholly given to degeneracy) has the absolute advantage when it comes to capacity for violence, but if the military falls on the side of the blue tribe, things could get rough. So, a less effective military helps neutralize a potential threat to the red tribe.
As for the purpose of women in the military being to destroy masculine virtue and manly pride, that’s also a positive. The military is the enemy. It is a part of USG and is controlled at the top by the same people destroying the rest of our civilization. Even worse, it is an enemy filled with good people who should be the allies of us and civilization. Because of its association with masculine virtue and red tribe values, the red tribe disproportionately volunteers to support the institution controlled by those who hate them. As well, it is the most trusted institution in the US, acting as a bulwark of trust for the otherwise (rightfully) mistrusted fedgov.
We need to disillusion young white men of their allegiance to the military. White men shouldn’t be fighting the wars of those who hate them. The more we can destroy the (undeserved) trust the military has among young white men and the less we white men think they can get manly pride from joining up, the fewer white men will volunteer to die in a on the other side of the world while forcing liberalism, sodomy, corporate rape, and democracy upon foreigners.
The same argument holds for lowering military standards. It is a foregone conclusion that military standards will be lowered so that women look equal on paper. This is not something to fear, it is a positive as it will further lower combat effectiveness and eat at trust in the military.
Finally, and more morbidly, having CNN and the NYT showing hundreds of body bags from whatever foreign sandpit we’ll lodge ourselves in next beside the pictures of formerly cute (now dead) young women may end up being a wake-up call for the country (or not, it’s hard to tell where our depravity ends). A little bit of accelerationism in this area could lead to awakening.
So, it’s horrific (but not objectively sinful) that we’re wasting valuable women in the military, but those women were wasting their value themselves, so corporately and civilizationally we’re not really losing anything. If we’re going to let them into the military, we should follow through on the base principles and draft them. The practical effects of this will be positive for those concerned with eventual restoration.