What is it with Gemmas and the military? Seems only yesterday I was writing about one (Military Madness Miscellany, 18/7/09), and now this:
"Gemma Tapp might not look like your typical aspiring fighter pilot, but the 15-year-old schoolgirl is certain that's where her destiny lies. And the Grade II student at St Margaret's Anglican Girls School in Brisbane wants to be right in the thick of the action, so the Gillard government's decision to fast-track women into frontline combat roles has delighted her. 'I think if women are prepared to work as hard as men, they should definitely be allowed to serve on the front line', said Ms Tapp, who plans to apply for a place at the Australian Defence Forces Academy when she finishes school. She said that when she first began researching a career in the military, she was stunned that there were jobs from which women were banned. 'I obviously went in knowing that women couldn't be on the frontline in infantry and that was... still quite unbelievable in this day and age', she said... Ms Tapp said her dream was to be a fighter pilot but she was keen to find out more about the GDO and ADG frontline positions. 'My goal in whatever I do is to get where I can make the biggest impact, and if that's on the frontline, then that's where I want to be', she said." (Gemma wants force to be with her, Sarah Elks, The Australian, 13/4/11)
OK, Gemma, you want to be right in the thick of the action, right? Then maybe a frontline infantry position would be the way to go, rather than a fighter pilot, which seems a little WWII, no? Just think, you'd get to blaze away at brown people and they'd get to blaze away at you, unless of course they were unarmed civilians, which they often are, in which case, they wouldn't blaze back, just drop and bleed all over the place instead. Either way it sounds like heaps of fun. What more could a young woman such as yourself possibly want out of life?
But then, you say you want to make the biggest impact, correct? In that case, I'd suggest you fly a bomber. You could drop those daisy cutters all over the place, right. Just imagine their impact on a village full of brown people. Now you see it, now you don't. And, like, you could be back to base in a jiffy in time for a spot of binge-drinking, sexual harrassment or worse with your mates! Coool!
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Is there even one feminist out there who is slapping their forehead, like I am and like you are, MERC, about the farcical proposition, in this day and age, that women will be advanced by allowing them to fight on the front lines?
[Of course there are...but none of them are paid journalists.]
Gender Studies Departments across the land should hang their heads in shame that university life hasn't been brought to a grinding halt in response to the outrageous contention that putting women on the front line, in feminist terms, in this day and age, is anything other than a farce and a travesty - especially when the whole thing is an obvious diversion from the original issue of ingrained sexism in the defence academy.
Peter D
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