The problem is, feminism has never just been about equality. Many feminists have written about the need for women to have the same opportunities as men. But many have also written about the need to criticize male patriarchal values and ideals. And one of the male patriarchal values and ideals that has been consistently criticized and questioned by feminists is war.

One famous works of pacifist feminism is Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas. In that book, she argues that:

though many instincts are held more or less in common by both sexes, to fight has always been the man's habit, not the woman's. Law and practice have developed that difference, whether innate or accidental. Scarcely a human being in the course of history has fallen to a woman's rifle; the vast majority of birds and beasts have been killed by you, not by us; and it is difficult to judge what we do not share. How then are we to understand your problem, and if we cannot, how can we answer your question, how to prevent war? The answer based upon our experience and our psychology—Why fight?—is not an answer of any value. Obviously there is for you some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting which we have never felt or enjoyed. Complete understanding could only be achieved by blood transfusion and memory transfusion—a miracle still beyond the reach of science.

Woolf is, of course, mistaken. As many women soldiers, not to mention women politicians, have shown, women can be every bit as attracted to war as men. The glory, necessity, and satisfaction of fighting is not by any means restricted to one gender.

But Woolf is also right. The history of combat may not be entirely male, but it is overwhelmingly male. And that fact is not merely an inequality; it is a resource. Yes, you can look at the exclusion of women from combat and say, "This is unfair; women should be allowed to fight." But you can also look at that exclusion and say, "You know, half of humanity has been excluded from going to war. If that many people weren't fighting, maybe that means that fighting is an aberration rather than a necessity."

Woolf is also correct, I think, to suggest that the glory and necessity of war is often linked to masculinity—to the need to prove one's moral worth as a man. From one perspective, that is also the reason why it's so important that women be allowed in the military and in combat. War is in many ways our standard for moral action. America's status as an ethical nation is linked to its people's willingness to fight and die in righteous wars, as Stanley Hauerwas has argued recently in War and the American Difference.

If that's the case, if morality is tied to battle, then women too must fight if they are to be valued and honored as moral actors. When war is so central to our moral experience, those who are not warriors cannot be equal. This is why feminist cultural icons like Buffy Summers or Katniss Everdeen are so often warriors. And it's also why equality in the military has been such a vital goal for so many marginalized groups. Black units fighting in the Civil War were a tremendous boost for anti-racism and equality. Similarly, it will be increasingly difficult to justify discrimination against gay people now that they are openly fighting and dying for our country.