I've read some essays by Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to U.S. Congress, and the only member of Congress to vote against entry into World War II. She was more a dedicated pacifist than a feminist, and some of her writings on both women and peace strike me as problematic.
The peace problem is a woman's problem. Disarmament will not be won without their aid. So long as they shirk, and so long as the High Commissions exclude them, something will be radically wanting in the peace activities of the public and the state. I would like to suggest to those offering peace awards that they appoint an investigating commission, composed of experts on human conduct, and send this commission out to explore the history of a people which already has a practical working program of peace, namely, the people known as women.
Half of the human race does not fight, and has never fought. We know a little, though not nearly enough, about why men fight, but we know nothing at all about why women do not fight. No, I am not forgetting about the Amazons and the Battalion of Death and Joan of Arc and all the rest. In fact, I see in them a ray of hope. If women could take on so thoroughly the behavior of the fighting male, why should not men learn something in their turn from the non-fighting female. I am aware that men are disposed to look down on the temperamental pacifism of women (which in spite of all the exceptions is a psychological fact) as something which the manly man would scorn to imitate. However, there is no other way that I can see in which peace can be realized except through forbearance from fighting on the part of men as well as women.
--"Peace and the Disarmament Conference," Jeanette Rankin
What strikes me about her argument, in this essay and others, is that the source of war is a desire to fight (on the part of men). She speaks eloquently about "war habits" and "peace habits" and how to instill "peace habits" in children through education, all of which I think is admirable.
(Lysistrata made a similar point; the women dismiss the war that the men are fighting as born of masculine bluster and desire for money. Again, there's the idea that men are predisposed to want to go to war simply because they like war, but women are devoid of such martial desires.)
Rankin had plenty of extremely powerful arguments against war and justifying voting against entering WWII, some of which seem quite before her time. (She had a more sophisticated understanding of the subtleties of the conflict between Japan and the US in 1958 than the average American has today, I would wager.) I think most of her arguments against war hold even today. But she never even addressed what to me is the central question: how can you refrain from war when the consequence of your pacifism is murder of innocents on an unthinkable scale and the destruction of an entire people?
I'm disappointed and also slightly baffled. How could she be so involved in global politics and so passionate about her pacifist cause while seemingly not even considering what to me is the obvious concern of militarism vs. pacifism? Part of me can't help but think that perhaps the reason she didn't seem concerned about the victims of WWII in the European and Asian theatres is that the people being gassed and raped were Jews and Koreans. I can't tell if I'm not giving her enough credit, but I just can't think of an explanation for this gaping hole in her logic.
