The Maverick Conservative

The day of the premier of the final Star Wars movie might be the appropriate time to raise this subject, although it is actually more a feature of the Star Trek universe.

"Women and men are the same."  There are not many people who would make that statement.  It is obviously and objectively false.  It is false physically, and it has been shown scientifically that men and women don't think the same (not that one is worse that the other, but that they think differently).

Yet, it is now an accepted requirement of science fiction books, INCLUDING MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION, that women and men be shown to be exactly the same.  In the Star Trek universe, that is true (once you get past the miniskirt days of the first TV show).  It is further true in the work of the best known military science fiction authors:  David Weber, John Ringo, Chris Bunch, S.M. Stirling, and even David Drake (although perhaps to a lesser degree than most others).  These writers have men and women doing the very same military jobs, including infantry, in the same numbers--doing the same physical tasks as if men and women are the same physically.   Terry Pratchett, the best writer now being published on this Earth, even came a cropper by doing what he NEVER does, which is write a book based on "conventional" wisdom:  In "Monstrous Regiment"  he wrote a book whose ONLY point is that men and women are the same, to the point that they are equally capable of being John Ford non-coms, or John Wayne military types.  It is the ony bad book Terry Pratchett has ever written, being a one-joke, politically correct statement of an Orwellian Big Lie, which is not at all funny in the book's second half as the false premise of the book overwhelms everything else.  "Monstrous Regiment" explicitly asserts what is implicitly asserted every time the Star Trek universe shows men and women equally capable of physical combat--even hand to hand. 

Yes, I know that ordinary, Hollywood action movies do the same thing, but you would think these supposed "realistic" (aside from Pratchett--a satirist) science fiction authors would be embarrassed to parrot this lie.  I think the explanation is the Larry Summers syndrome--the president of Harvard who got in trouble by suggesting that a possible explanation of a lesser number of women than men scientists and mathematicians is a difference in the brains of men and women. My own opinion is that these authors just go along with the conventional wisdom that in the future men and women will be the same as the easier, and less risky, thing to do.  It is actually the more courageous thing these days to assert that women and men are different, even though it has been 100% proven to be true (beyond the sniggering way this point is usually evaded:  "You mean you don't KNOW--wink--the difference").

So why is science fiction in particular, and our society in general, promulgating the Big Lie that women and men are the same--so if you suggest differently you are automatically a sexist pig?  The answer is obvious, and the same reason Summers got in so much trouble.  The radical feminists, who have hijacked what passes for thought on this subject in this country, have a vested interest in the concept that men and women SHOULD be the same. Note I am not talking equal, nor whether they should have equal opportunities, but whether they should be the SAME.  So radical feminists want there to be equal NUMBERS of women scientists, women mathematicians, women soldiers, women firefigters, women cops, women engineers, etc. (and yes, whatever they say, NO women housewives).  But if women and men are NOT the same, then it is certainly hard to swallow that women and men SHOULD be the same.  How can you believe that something SHOULD be so, which is demostrably NOT so?  Well, for radical feminists, this is not that hard.  They want to MAKE IT SO, even if they have to force square pegs into round holes.  It is a sign of how well the radical feminists are succeeding in imposing this Big Lie upon us all that from science fiction to Hollywood to Harvard, you take your career in your hands if you dare even assert the astounding proposition that:  "Women and men are different, and not just in their sexual organs." 

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