Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

by Cat Bohannon

Still, Rehana the sniper tigress is an effective story: one of many countermyths about women’s power—tiny, brutal fairy tales—that stand in opposition to myths about women’s god-sanctioned subjugation. If the women weren’t there fighting, this story wouldn’t have been told, inspiring the troops to fight harder, weakening the enemy’s psychological reserves. It’s a weapon made from the very idea of a woman. And that, in the end, may be part of what ISIS (and certain American military figures) are afraid of. Maybe the debate about women in combat is not about what men’s and women’s bodies can or can’t do—about the strengths and weaknesses of our sexually dimorphic musculoskeletal system, our metabolism, or even our psychological grit. Maybe it comes down to the idea of women’s bodies in the world—what they’re supposed to do, what they aren’t, and how they serve as a counterpoint to the idea of Manhood.