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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11583 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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Women in the military

I'm watching Avatar: The Last Airbender: that kid show from 2005 featuring the bald boy with a Reddit downvote on his face. I'm sure you've seen the memes.

It's a mostly tolerable show from a culture war perspective, the early 00s being a more innocent time, except for extreme girlboss feminism. Every few episodes, the writers repeat the trope where a male warrior says it's inappropriate and against the precepts to train women to fight — always in the most sniveling, dismissive, chauvinistic way possible — then he proceeds to get his butt kicked by a girl. Said male warrior, embarrassed, learns his lesson that gender roles are bad, m'kay.

Am I the only one who finds this line of thinking incredibly dumb?

And no, I'm not talking about women strength or endurance or bone fragility or whatever. Let's ignore that. That's not the issue here.

Let's concede, for the purposes of argument, that women and men have equal potential for different tasks, such as soldiering. Or, to steelman progressives, that a meaningful fraction of women are equal to men, and so those ones should be trained. (This is probably more plausible in a universe where 1% of the population has magical combat powers, like Avatar-land, but whatever.) I don't think it's true even in the real world, with firearms, but let's concede it.

The main reason to direct men to become soldiers, not women, does not lie there.

Soldiers, like every other job, work for the health of society. Soldiering does not exist for the self-actualization of the soldier. Neither is soldiering an end in itself. We have armies for the security and continuation of the country.

But the career of a soldier coincides with the fertility window of a female. If she is getting married, becoming pregnant, and having kids — things that are necessary for both the health of society and the self-actualization of the woman — her soldiering and child-rearing will come into conflict, even in peacetime. In wartime, however, her dying in battle will prevent a new generation from being born, and leave her orphaned children psychologically crippled.

The reality is that men are fairly expendable. Society can afford for 30% of young men to die in the trenches and recover fairly quickly; their widows receive help from the community to raise children, and later they marry older widowers. Meanwhile, if 30% of young women die, the population pyramid of the next generation will crater, and society will be burdened by orphans with lifelong mental problems due to attachment disorders, triggered by loss of mothers during infancy.

The only reason, I think, our society doesn't see this is that we haven't had a war with existential stakes since women joined the military in any appreciable numbers. Even during the most rigorous war in recent memory, Vietnam, the US army was <1% female, and most of them nurses.

Then again, a lot of my arguments could also apply against training women to be medical doctors and other all-consuming vocations. We do that. So maybe our society really is insane enough to send millions of 20yo women to get mowed down by drones in WW3.

I think it was CovfefeAnon who stated "The most radical position you can hold in modern politics is believing people before the 1960s were sane and had rational motivations for doing what they did." Well, I think armies throughout history were perfectly sane for not sending women to combat, even in roles where women could have been effective.

I've only seen a few episodes of Avatar and it's been a long time, but if I recall, being a "warrior" in the world of Avatar is more like being a DnD Adventurer or a Knight of the Round Table than it is like being an actual soldier in a real-world war. Warriors rarely die, when they do they die heroic and meaningful deaths, everyone's fighting for a meaningful cause, etc. In a world like that, where war is fun, it feels unfair to exclude girls from the fun so they are obliged to include them. Even Tolkien had a few badass girlboss warriors in LoTR. In the real world, and in more realistic or gimdark fictional settings, it makes more sense to exclude women from combat.

I don't believe that Tolkien generally has female characters campaigning with men. My impression is that outside of a few extreme outliers such as Galadriel, women in Tolkien's works are mainly apt to fight only when left undefended, such as when their men are away at war, or perhaps in a situation where defeat means annihilation of their people anyway.

Definitely don't get the impression that Tolkien's works are full of girlboss fighters who run around being warriors most of the time. Rather, like reality, they contain a few outlier women who are somewhat capable of standing their ground in desperate moments, but would really prefer not to unless absolutely necessary.

It helps to remember that the movies changed this up a bit; a lot of Arwen's badassery in the movie was actually Glorfindel in the books.

Luthien's an odd case to be sure, and I've never been quite sure what to make of her as a character. In any case she's definitely an extreme outlier.

Eowyn is the character on point here.

With Eowyn, entering the battlefield isn't really celebrated or glamorized by Tolkien. It's sad. It's an expression of Eowyn's hopelessness. She thinks her options are to die fighting or to die cowering, and so she picks to die fighting. After the battle, she has to turn away from this kind of thinking and instead garden for the future.

Yep. In the book, when Merry first sees 'Dernhelm', this is his view:

But when they had come almost to the end of the line one looked up glancing keenly at the hobbit. A young man, Merry thought as he returned the glance, less in height and girth than most. He caught the glint of clear grey eyes; and then he shivered, for it came suddenly to him that it was the face of one without hope who goes in search of death.

Given that Eowyn is the female character given the most "screen time" in the entire trilogy, inherently her role is glamorized and elevated over that of the other women in the series. Galadriel and Arwyn are distinctly side characters (in the book rather than the film, where Arwen got a lot more girlboss prominence and we see more of Galadriel), Eowyn is only a step below the fellowship in character importance to the story.

I'm not sure that's true.

What do you fear, lady?' he [Aragorn] asked. 'A cage,' she [Eowyn] said. 'To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire

Seems like she was interested in the glory of battle, not fighting because she was forced to by circumstance.

I always thought Eowyn was Tolkein's weakest character. Iron age aristocrat women didn't sit around demanding the right to kill and die like their menfolk. And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.

And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.

An unfortunate side effect of the adaptation. Merry stabs the Witch-king with a barrow-blade, which inflicts such a wound that Eowyn's strike actually destroys him. The "no man can kill [the Witch-king]" is a prophecy of Glorfindel that "not by the hand of man shall he fall", not a loophole. Yes, it was a woman and a hobbit that did it, but it's a description of the circumstances, you know how prophecies go. Aragorn giving the hobbits the barrow-blades instead of the hobbits receiving them from Tom after their experience in the Barrow-downs strips out the context of the hobbits' weapons as powerful artifacts in their own right.

So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs, work of Westernesse. But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.

I will forever lament the way Jackson adapted that scene. Eowyn's speech in LOTR is so beautifully written; it is one of the best bits of prose in the book imo:

"'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!'

"Then Merry heard in all sounds of the hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn am I, Eomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.'"

I realize that the movie adaptation isn't written with the voice of an epic the way that Tolkien wrote the book, but to go from that beautiful exchange to a generic action movie "I am no man!" as she removes her helmet... it's just such a shame. They really fell short with that scene.

And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.

No? I think it's both funny and clever, and in the traditional vein of "devilish contracts are foiled by word-play" stories. There's always a catch to the genie's gifts, and the gifts of Sauron are no exception. The Witch-king, by this view, may in part have surrendered to the lure of his ring through "I will be truly immortal and no-one will be able to kill me", and then the loophole smacks him in the face.

That he is taken down by a woman and a hobbit is completely in harmony with how the demons are foiled in Hindu mythology. They perform penances to gain boons from the Supreme Trinity, immortality is not possible, so they ask for elaborate conditions ("nobody can kill me except...") and think they have gained because this particular set will never come to pass.

See, for example, Ravana: he asks for immunity to all except from men, because in his arrogance and pride he doesn't think those creatures are ever going to be strong enough to fight him, and he ends up killed by Rama, the human avatar of Vishnu, with the assistance of Hanuman, the monkey-avatar of Shiva.

The most elaborate probably has to do with the avatar of Vishnu as Narasimha, the man-lion, to kill the demon-king who had received a boon with a list of accompanying conditions:

According to Hindu texts, Hiranyakashipu, the elder brother of Hiranyaksha—who was killed earlier by Vishnu's Varaha avatar—received a boon from the creator god Brahma that made him nearly invulnerable. The conditions of the boon prevented his death by man or beast, indoors or outdoors, during day or night, on earth or in the sky, and not by any weapon. Empowered by this, Hiranyakashipu persecuted Vishnu’s devotees, including his own son Prahlada. To circumvent the boon, Vishnu incarnated as Narasimha—neither man nor animal—and killed Hiranyakashipu at twilight, on a palace threshold, placing him on his lap and tearing him apart with his claws.

Eowyn being "No living man am I" is in response to Shakespeare's "Macbeth", where the condition there is 'Macbeth thinks he can be killed by no man born of woman; Macduff is born of a woman who died in childbirth/born via Caesarean section so that technically fulfils the condition'.

The full quote is more helpful, I think:

‘Your duty is with your people,’ he answered.
‘Too often have I heard of duty,’ she cried. ‘But am I not of the House of Eorl, a shieldmaiden and not a dry-nurse? I have waited on faltering feet long enough. Since they falter no longer, it seems, may I not now spend my life as I will?’
‘Few may do that with honour,’ he answered. ‘But as for you, lady: did you not accept the charge to govern the people until their lord’s return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no.’
‘Shall I always be chosen?’ she said bitterly. ‘Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?’
‘A time may come soon,’ said he, ‘when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.’
And she answered: ‘All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more. But I am of the House of Eorl and not a serving-woman. I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death.’
‘What do you fear, lady?’ he asked. ‘A cage,’ she said. ‘To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’

Eowyn is trapped by a sense of futility, and her culture valorises 'death in battle' as the most fitting, and perhaps only fitting, end to a life. So she sees no way out for her but death, and the best death she can get is death in battle, and that to her seems the only thing she can control: the manner of her death - to go out in a blaze of glory rather than remain trapped in that cage for years more.

It wasn't common for the women of the Rohirrim to go to war:

Then the prince went from his horse, and knelt by the bier in honour of the king and his great onset; and he wept. And rising he looked then on Éowyn and was amazed. ‘Surely, here is a woman?’ he said. ‘Have even the women of the Rohirrim come to war in our need?’
‘Nay! One only,’ they answered. ‘The Lady Éowyn is she, sister of Éomer; and we knew naught of her riding until this hour, and greatly we rue it.’

Gandalf explains her situation - trapped in what seems hopeless, in a world where the domestic work and work of service is not regarded, and with intelligence, strength, and ambition that is relegated to 'stay in the background and stay quiet':

[Aragorn says] '...When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die? Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not, Éomer?’

‘I marvel that you should ask me, lord,’ he answered. ‘For I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else; yet I knew not that Éowyn, my sister, was touched by any frost, until she first looked on you. Care and dread she had, and shared with me, in the days of Wormtongue and the king’s bewitchment; and she tended the king in growing fear. But that did not bring her to this pass!’

‘My friend,’ said Gandalf, ‘you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on.

‘Think you that Wormtongue had poison only for Théoden’s ears? Dotard! What is the house of Eorl but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek, and their brats roll on the floor among their dogs? Have you not heard those words before? Saruman spoke them, the teacher of Wormtongue. Though I do not doubt that Wormtongue at home wrapped their meaning in terms more cunning. My lord, if your sister’s love for you, and her will still bent to her duty, had not restrained her lips, you might have heard even such things as these escape them. But who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?’

Eowyn's motivations are really most explicated in The Return of the King, where it seems that everyone knew she was depressed and hopeless before the battle:

Alas! For she was pitted against a foe beyond the strength of her mind or body. And those who will take a weapon to such an enemy must be sterner than steel, if the very shock shall not destroy them. It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily, and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel. Or was it, maybe, a frost that had turned its sap to ice, and so it stood, bitter-sweet, still fair to see, but stricken, soon to fall and die? Her malady begins far back before this day, does it not, Éomer?’

‘I marvel that you should ask me, lord,’ he answered. ‘For I hold you blameless in this matter, as in all else; yet I knew not that Éowyn, my sister, was touched by any frost, until she first looked on you. Care and dread she had, and shared with me, in the days of Wormtongue and the king’s bewitchment; and she tended the king in growing fear. But that did not bring her to this pass!’

As you say, she had a right to join battle as an Iron age aristocrat woman, but her uncle had her stay back to defend the people instead. Everyone expected that they would fail, and she would die defending her people as well, just from the rear. She abandoned her people, her duty, and went to the front to die anonymously. This isn't really glorified in Tolkien's writing.

"Did you not accept the charge to govern the people until their lord's return? If you had not been chosen, then some marshal or captain would have been set in the same place, and he could not ride away from his charge, were he weary of it or no."

'Shall I always be chosen?' she said bitterly. 'Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?'

'A time may come soon,' said he, 'when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.'

The point is that Tolkien was doing something much more complicated with Eowyn than a simple Mulan girlboss story.

I always thought Eowyn was Tolkein's weakest character. Iron age aristocrat women didn't sit around demanding the right to kill and die like their menfolk.

Do we really know that? I mean, undoubtedly very few did. But Eowyn is an exceptional character. I'd be willing to bet that a tiny percentage of women throughout history did indeed wish they could go out and fight and do glorious deeds. Probably a very tiny percentage - but it's not so silly to make one such woman a character in a fantasy novel.

It's funny, Tolkien gets a lot of flack from leftists for being "too white" and his problematic depictions of brown people (the usual accusation being that orcs are meant to represent POC), and also for being "too male" (not enough Strong Female Characters).

Yet when you point out that in fact he did have a handful of Strong Female Characters, and that he even admitted that one shouldn't assume that orcs are all born evil - rightists will scoff and say it's totally unrealistic to have a woman who ever wants to take up arms, or orcs who aren't mindless spear-fodder.

She didn't, or at least she only killed the witchking in the same sense that aragorn threw down the black gate or Frodo threw the ring into orodruin.

And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.

English majors gonna English major; how could Tolkein resist the Macbeth callout?

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