4 -~ Friday, February 27, 1987 - N } orth Shore News Bob Hunter @ strictly personal @ 1 AM totally in favor of women being allowed to assume combat roles in the Canadian military. It’s about time. No, I’m not saying this tongue-in-cheek. I’m saying this as a frustrated pro-feminist who has been disppointed by the pace of women’s emancipation in this supposedly-liberated land. The fact is that sexual equality in Canada is a fraud. Sure, there are more female executives now than ever, but women were star- ting from zero a decade ago and the numbers don’t add up to much. Women's wages are still telow the average for males, and Parliament and the provincial legislatures remain overwhelm- ingly male-dominated. Ironically, I think this has nothing to do with the old liberal belief that women wouldn’t let wars happen, which is supposed to be a wonderful thing, but at a gut level suggests that in a crunch Library lending remains high in West Vancouver WEST VANCOUVER Memorial Library reports its second highest statistics ever for the numbet of items borrowed and questions ask- ed from the public. A library spokesman said the library came in slightly under its 1985 statistics. In 1985 there were 700,000 loans and 80,000 queries. The spokesman said 1986 statistics could have been lower from the previous year because of Expo or because a4 lot of North .Yancouver people went back to us- ing their Capilano branch follow- ing its expansion. But he said the number of West Vancouver library users continues to rise. ' GOOD USED CARS from $1800 & up 1986 Subaru Liftback auto 1985 Subaru 4wd Wagon 1984 Volvo GL Sedan 1984 Subaru Wagon 1980 Volvo Wagon 1976 Volvo 242 1971 Volvo 142 plus several other excellent buys. Call us at 980-2484 1235 MARINE DRIVE, NORTH VANCOUVER they’d be useless. That notion existed back, of course, before Maggie Thatcher was a gleam in military history’s eye. The Iron Lady’s hormones, when it came to bloodthirstiness, proved to be positively Chur- chillian. Women wouldn't fight wars, ch? With the Falklands, there went a beautiful myth down the tubes, fallopian or otherwise. And now we have a female brigadier-general in Canada, Shiela Hellstrom. If she was a member of the military brass in Australia, she’d take a ribbing over her first name, all right. But who is going to argue with ‘Hellstrom’? as a warrior’s moniker? . Under Brig.-Gen. Hellstrom, tests are being conducted to see if Canadian women will be able to handle the physical demands of combat roles in the military. Despite Doug Collins’ famous remark that they’d only wind up being raped by the Russians, there are quite a few Canuck ct K femmes who are keen to acquire the skills needed for gloriously killing an enemy in battle. This is progress of a pitiless, realistic kind. Maybe the whole fantasy about women being inherently nicer, kinder, more gentle and luvvy- duvvy than men — that is, less eager to rush out and Jay waste to the world — is overdue for a debunking. Maybe, in fact, the route to power for women truly lies in acquiring the reflexes of a mad butcher rather than a “‘nourisher.’’ If the next generation of Ca- nadian women is really hot on tasting power, it is in the women’s best interests, I begin to suspect, that they start thinking of themselves as being at least as bad-assed, mean, dangerous, steely-eyed and trigger-happy as men. Men just becoming wimps doesn’t solve any problems at all. In the past, the only women who came to power were those who were called upon to fill the gap when their husband was off- ed or when a dynastic heirarchy failed to come up with a male heir. The tradition goes back to Boadicea, who drove the Romans out of the British Isles. Along those well-worn lines, such modern female leaders as Indira Gandhi, Isabel Peron and Cory Aquino gained their posi- tions thanks to dead husbands or fathers, and once in power did not noticeably act much dif- North shore Location L NowOQpen For Your Convenience! Save this eyecare card and enjoy special discounts. all year ’round! 746 Granville St. Vancouver 685-1031 FAMILY EYEWEAR STORE #3 - 6340 No. 3 Road Richmond 276-2432 ferently than a man would. Sweet housewife Cory, we note, has squashed a coupiz of coup attempts and looks ready to throw the full weight of her army at the Commie insurgents. Good on her, of course. But she is sur- rounded by male advisors. Male dominance in politics and the resulting ‘‘depoliticializa- tion’? of women, it is easy to argue, goes back a long way to the state when hunters, bored by how easy it had become to kill animals, changed themselves into warriors. Inter-tribal warfare became serious business, and since only men were fit for those coveted combat roles, they cornered the market on political power too. In Switzerland, until just a few years agc, women were actually prevented from voting in some villages because they didn’t own swords, ancient Swiss ideals about balloting being tied to the ability and willingness to do bat- tle. Shoot first, vote later. {f even a handful of women in Canada took up arms and show- ed they could stay the course at boot camp, and remained willing | to go out and kill on command like the best around, they just might gain for women at large an ill- defined but singularly important psychological, social and political territory. Fix bayonets, I say. Over the top! Charge! 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