I have a number of issues with feminism. The biggest is that the movement is overwhelmingly pro-censorship, and that tells me there aren’t enough good arguments in its favor. However, I have another significant issue: It seeks to promote female equality when positive or beneficial things are involved with said equality, but it falls loudly silent when equality is not to the benefit of women. Specifically, I have in mind the military. After falling behind many nation’s that allowed women in combat roles, the U.S. recently caught up (or is at least in the processing of implementing its new policies on the matter). That’s fantastic and it’s how it should be. But this benefits women. Female soldiers who wish to have the opportunity to fight for their country and/or who wish to be considered for promotions where combat experience is needed now have that opportunity. Yes, this puts them in harm’s way and that is something to be admired on a certain level, but it’s a choice. More than that, it’s a desired choice. That’s why women fought for this sort of policy, and it’s why feminists are generally supportive of it. But I ask…what of the draft? Why don’t we have a movement, either spear-headed or at least supported by feminists, that would require women to sign up for the draft at 18? As I recall, I forfeited my alleged “right” to vote or some such nonsense if I didn’t fill out some card the military wanted. (I did fill it out.) Why shouldn’t women have the same requirement of them? I thought this was all about equality.
I don’t expect to hear much about this from feminists any time soon.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Feminism, Thought of the day |
For the Sake of Science 
“All the rights but none of the responsibilities” would be a sweet deal for aspiring overclass…. but it should be impossible to achieve. Only brain-dead suckers would put up with such an agenda being imposed on them. It remains to be seen if American men will fall into that category.
While we fight for full equality for women.. there are many things to be fixed that are more important to women… like equal pay for equal work, and equal right to bodily autonomy, etc.. we are STILL fighting these battles – and you are worried about women having to register for selective service?? your priorities are skewed..
1. Pay for women has largely equaled out to men’s when the comparison is pay per hour for the same work. The 77% stat (give or take) you’ve always heard is a comparison between the total pay for men versus the total pay for women. That fails to account for the career choices of each sex: men take far more dangerous jobs (something like 94% of workplace deaths are male), go into more lucrative professions, and work more hours on average. The stats that you’ve always seen (and that no one seems to dare to question because YOU HATE WOMEN IF YOU DO) may as well compare how much a nurse makes to how much a doctor makes.
1a. You’ll probably be immediately antagonistic to the facts I’m laying out, but you should still ask yourself if it makes sense to compare, say, the salaries of day care workers (predominantly female) to the salaries of truck drivers (predominantly male). The fact is, male-dominated professions just pay more than female dominated professions. Now, you can argue that this workplace segregation is a problem, but it’s a different problem than “equal pay for equal work”.
2. Boys are being left behind in grade school because rough-housing and other traditionally boy-oriented playing is being discouraged more and more. Ritalin is overwhelmingly prescribed to boys over girls because the behavior of boys is viewed as somehow inherently negative. Moreover, girls are given more individual attention in school than boys. And even moreover, college enrollment skews decidedly female (I believe it’s over 60% female enrollment at this point). The share of young women with B.A.’s now exceeds the number of young men with such degrees. (Young single women in large cities in the U.S. actually make more than young single men.)
1 and 2 summary: The battle is largely won. Indeed, the playing field has changed from being male-dominated to beginning to lean towards female-domination in certain areas. Gender discrimination in pay is virtually gone (and the government has done all it can because the remaining issues are cultural, such as where women tend to be stay-at-home parents more than men). Women have gained huge ground in education. Things are to the point where not only will competition for jobs be more statistically fair between the sexes, but women are actually poised to be in the better position in a generation or two. What more do you want?
3. I’m concerned with women signing up for the draft because it fits the narrative we’ve been hearing this whole time: Women are just as capable as men, so they should be given all the same opportunities. Except, with feminism, the narrative stops here. In the logical world, however, the story continues to include the risks and responsibilities that come with those opportunities. Between WW1, WW2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, both Iraq conflicts, and Afghanistan, approximately 625,000 Americans died. 99.9% of those deaths were men. Not women. Men. That’s why the feminist narrative stops short. Women dying in conscripted combat sounds horrendous under feminism – more so than men dying under the same circumstances.
So, we have two problems here. First is that one of the arguments you’ve trotted is simply wrong: the gender wage gap is miniscule when the correct comparison is done. Second is that you’ve put forth a red herring in an effort to not answer for the feminist illogic described in my original post. Even with other women’s issues at hand (I agree with you on reproductive rights up to 6 months, which roughly matches with how Roe v Wade stands today), this is still an issue. There’s something like 18 million men eligible to be drafted. Presuming you agree that women are just as capable as men, then we should have a potential pool of 35-40 million people ready to fight. Why wouldn’t you want that? A greater pool means greater talent and ability. So, what? You don’t want the absolute best military possible because there are other battles?
7-10% wage gap for same work.. Forbes Magazine Sept 2013. Look it up. So yeah..
Okay, let’s finish the red herring and say it’s 7%. So women shouldn’t be required to sign up for the draft like men? If not, why?
I’m late to the party but hey, I had a combat specialty in the Army.
I don’t think we should be putting women in combat units.
1. Women are held to a lower physical standard. This is fine, since men and women are biologically different and setting different standards to capture the most physically fit of each sex makes perfect sense. The problem is that in some jobs there is really a minimum physical standard, and those are most recognizable in cases of light infantry. The small number of women capable of meeting the same standards makes it hard to justify the additional support needed in forward units. And if you lower the physical standard enough to get a good supply of female soldiers, why not also allow more men who can meet that standard? (maybe the standards are too high, but that is a separate topic)
2. That doesn’t apply on ships. The Navy has had no issues shipboard with women, but only allows female officers on submarines. Same reason, the small number of women who want to be in subs and the smaller number who physically qualify, is just too small to justify the accommodations needed. With officers, they already are billeted alone so there are no accommodations that need making.
Its not that women are not capable of serving in combat, because they are and do, the problem is simply that with combat units, forward units, we shouldn’t be expending resources solely to make them “diverse” just for the sake of the thing. It helps nothing, in fact, resources = lives.
Now, if you are going to hold everyone to the same physical standard in combat units and there isn’t an increased cost, welcome aboard, but there just simply not enough women in the military to justify the resource expenditure required to open up some jobs to them.
Obviously holding one group of people to a different set of standards than another is only going to weaken us. Literally. That is, it will weaken us where physical standards are particularly relevant. In areas where it really doesn’t matter, I don’t see why women should be given special privileges (excuse my language).
My belief on the draft issue is we should get rid of it. Fuck making women register for the draft… Fuck making men register for the draft. Bam equality. The draft isn’t necessary with modern warfare in the electronic age conscripted soldiers are probably more dangerous they they are worth.
Michael, men and women being physically different creatures does mean that physical standards should be different, they want people that are, in a general sense, in shape, but as you say and as I said, when you come to many of the combat jobs the physical standards actually start to equate to something in the real world, in the practical application of the job…
Erik Peterson, the draft is probably useless now, but not for the reason you seem to think. Army basic training is 9 weeks, for an infantryman it’s about 16 weeks, whether conscripted or not, the material coming out on the other side of those time frames is going to be pretty similar. This modern age actually makes conscription more effective than it has ever been in the past.
My worry is not about the quality of the training the soldiers will receive, it is the fact that a single disgruntled solider forced to serve against their will can do a great deal of harm to their countries military. We live in a very connected world. However you view the actions of Snowden and whatever measures have been taken to prevent future betrayals by military members I personally believe the military would be doing itself a dangerous disservice conscripting the average military aged man. I’m not a large believer in the draft and perhaps I am overly optimistic in this regard but I believe it is not necessary.
But that has always been a concern, for all military’s, in all periods, and seemingly it’s a bigger problem among those who join willingly, with the intent to disrupt. Some particularly sensitive jobs or assignments are limited to a smaller more trustworthy subset of the armed force, and in many cases non-combat or civilian roles are filled by those who might be of suspect reliability.
A draft is merely a tax paid in bodies, rather than in coin, as rationing might be considered a tax paid by a reduction of resources consumed.
I’m more or less against all three in principle, but in practice, there are times where taxes of various incarnations are really the only choice.