THE IDEA that men and women react differently to war has been around almost as long as war itself. In her lecture, "Sexuality, War and Literature in Lebanon" delivered in the Kaleidoscope Center for Cultural Fluency last Wednesday, Evelyn Accad looked at exactly how these differences play out in Lebanese war fictions.
Coming from Lebanon, Accad has always had a strong interest in the effects war has on its survivors. In studying how women and men are portrayed differently in war in works of fiction Accad compared six different Lebanese war fiction stories. Three of the books were written by men, three by females, and all authors, Accad said, agreed in their portrayal of women and men almost exactly.
Though seeing the exact way these differences play out in literature is fascinating, it would have been much more interesting if Accad had managed to take the talk to the next level and address one question: How does all this translate into real life?
For example, the typical literary model of men and women in war plays out like this. Male soldiers are portrayed as able to exhibit traits traditionally associated with masculinity; violence, heroism and revenge. Women, on the other hand, use war as a means to challenge these traditional boundaries and were almost always featured in the stories as doing something taboo. Essentially, men are compelled to act as society dictates during war, whereas women, left at home without the men, are free to wage societal battles. At the end of a war, however, both men and women snap back into an even more rigid and traditional system than the one that existed before the war.
In real life though, while the model seems to hold true most of the time, there are certain areas where it runs into trouble. How, for example, would it play out in Israel, where both men and women are required to put two years of service into the army? What happens when warfare shifts from the battlefield to guerilla warfare, or sporadic suicide bombings? Most importantly, what does this model say about women leaders who have to handle a war situation? Will they react differently or handle it differently from men? If women can challenge the boundaries of society so much during war, could there actually be a shift in attitude toward war if enough women were in a position to make wartime decisions?
I asked Accad how she thought the model played out with female leaders, especially given that the United States was looking at potentially having a woman president dealing with a war situation. Accad responded that females in leadership positions generally tend to follow more of the male model. "In fact," she added. "They probably wouldn't be there if they didn't."
To date, close to 50 women have served in some capacity as a head of state. This group shows no more trend for being timid about war, or about using force, than their male counterparts do.
For example, during the Iranian Embassy siege, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher authorized the British Armed Forces to use lethal force in Great Britain for the first time in 70 years. Golda Meir was Prime Minister in Israel through the Six Days War, and in during her tenure as Prime Minister also authorized the Mossad -- Israel's intelligence agency -- to kill any members of Palestinian resistance groups.
This shouldn't be that surprising though. After all, societal differences between the sexes in war are well defined, either in fictions or in real life, in a way that allows women to challenge boundaries. Since society still views leadership as a mostly male trait though, women who step into leadership positions are still confined to the acting out the same traits men do -- and that most definitely excludes challenging societal boundaries when it comes to war.
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer. She is a fourth-year English and Spanish major.
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