The same claim could be made for quite a few other wrongheaded assumptions.
Thing is, the thought of half of the body-bags coming home belonging to women doesn’t disturb me in the least (I’m not really concerned about the breeding window, and I’m sure we can work out the details on ensuring at least one parent is exempt, whichever gender they are is up to the couple); I’m actually more concerned about the POW aspect. 50,000 female soldiers getting raped would be worse for morale, I think. Didn’t Israel run into this, at least with respect to women serving as front-line soldiers?
Of course, I know that my own sensitivities shouldn’t hold sway where equal treatment is concerned, as much as I dislike it. In fact, I think that a lot of chauvinism stems from the axiom that men should hold all the power because we bleed for it. The vision of the man that has everything is a myth- men have made trade-offs, and the biggest problem I’ve seen with recent feminist thought, aside from the man-hating, is the idea that women can ‘have it all.’
I never said they did. If you’re concerned about children growing up without a parent, though, shouldn’t you also be concerned about the children who only have a male parent? Just exempt parents from the draft and leave sex out of it.
I’m entirely serious, and a little amused that you think it could be otherwise.
I don’t want to see anyone drafted if possible, but if the situation is dire enough that we need to force our own citizens into military service, we shouldn’t overlook 50% of the able-bodied potential soldiers just because they’re female.
Yes, females tend to be caregivers to children more often, but so do minivan owners. That logic is faulty. You can actually find out whether or not someone is a parent (or whether they can have children in the future); you don’t have to guess based on their gender.
I only want to convince you that 50,000 dead men would be equally bad.
That, sir, is the kind of disgusting remark that can only be properly responded to in the Pit.
Then make your mind up what point you’re addressing. It’s irrelevant how long women are fertile for; they are viable breeders for more than long enough to meet the replacement rate. I don’t see how you get from “A woman can procreate for maybe twenty-five years of her life, a man for more than fifty” to “therefore, women must be protected, but men need not be”. If I’m mis-stating your position, please correct me. State why it’s relevant, and how, if you’re going to call objections simpleminded and worthless. Indeed we are not in a population crisis; nor would even 50,000 female fatalities trigger one.
Playing devil’s advocate is not necessarily done for shits and giggles, but to see where the logic breaks. In this case I’m curious to push the bounds of what you might call selective equality. Rights are equal, or they are not. I’m all in favour of women not being drafted; what I mostly want is to get away from a mindset that military service is compulsory for one sex, optional for the other - especially if the sex for which it’s optional is the one that’s been screaming about how it’s just as fit for the military as the sex for which it’s compulsory.
Well…
Perhaps describing this as a “tantrum” is excessively flippant, but I think it might as well be one for all the demonstrable effect on hastening women’s suffrage. I might be wrong, but given that post hoc ergo propter hoc is a well-known fallacy, I’d like to know where the evidence is for this kind of behaviour actually bringing about votes for women; or whether it was more the case that it became accepted that allowing women to vote was an idea whose time has come, and it had better be done, and in fact it was men who voted to approve the measure. Saying “But women fought for these rights! And then we got them!” doesn’t prove that A caused B.
I thought that by “upper limit on offspring”, he meant the number of offspring a person can have. Men are arguably more “disposable” in the sense that one man and 150 million women could repopulate the country a lot faster than one woman and 150 million men.
I am not a feminist, and I do not support equal rights. Here is a sampling of inequalities I endorse:
Ladies Night in bars and clubs.
“Women and children first” on a sinking ship.
Women should not be drafted into combat duty. A draft for non-combat positions would be fine by me, but not active combat. I have no desire to think through the atrocities that could only be inflicted upon women in POW camps. (It begins with rape room pregnancies…)
Giving up my seat to a woman on a crowded train or bus.
I endorse women’s sports being segregated from men. (LPGA, WNBA, Olympics, etc…)
I believe women should be preferred (though not guaranteed) in child custody cases.
Men and women are different. The fact that this fundamental truth is politically incorrect makes me sick.
Ladies nights in bars and “women and children first” are hardly examples of inequal rights. When we talk about rights we’re generally speaking of loftier topics such as voting, education, housing, inequality of payment, etc. Though you do at least include some meatier topics such as custody and military service.
But seriously, regarding the former, you are sadly mistaken. Now if feminism were truly about being equal, you’d think it would have been feminists who championed the eradication of “Ladies Night.” But somehow, that seemed to have slipped their notice.
It seems that all inequalities that favor women somehow slip past the feminist agenda. Perhaps that is a partial answer to the OP.
Untrue. Feel welcome to provide a cite if you want to continue to argue this.
I’ve known very few feminists to get riled up about “ladies’ night” in the bars — but a few, yes (alleging that it sets up the women present, insofar as their drinking is subsidized, into being part of the entertainment; toss in a couple of parallels to prostitution and voíla, feminist argument against ladies’ night).
More common is the feminist opposition to the single-sex draft. NOW is on record against it. Read your theorists. Those who don’t subsume the issue into the larger issues of “wars should not exist, nations should not exist, coercion in any form should not exist” — and speak at all to wartime service and the draft — generally condemn the practice of drafting only men and/or of only having men serve in combat. Many point out that it keeps women from advancing in the military and/or politics.
Yeah, but I wasn’t talking about the draft when I referenced inequalities that favor women. That one favors men, in that combat experience is the quickest ticket up the chain of command. But you did a nice job refuting that which I was not arguing.
Show me a feminist getting riled up by the grade deficit of boys, or the child custody policies of family court.
“Tantrums?” Yeah, sure, non-violence resistance during a protest is a “tantrum”. Demonstrations and protest marches are “tantrums.” Uh huh.
And oh, so because these men ever so generously granted rights to women that they should have had in the beginning, we should ignore the people who fought on the front lines? What next-because it was largely whites in office who signed the civil rights legislations, that Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks were largely irrelevant?
To be sure, feminist response to the child custody issue is pretty mixed. Many feminists have said that there’s a huge risk that men who don’t actually want custody can use custody as a lever in court to strip the dissolving marriage of material assets. And admittedly, regardless of what feminist theory may say about the ideal egalitarian world, the first priorities of most feminist activity is going to be skewed towards helping women. Would anyone expect otherwise? Nevertheless, the link above goes to an explication of a feminist rewriting of child custody laws, a rewriting that does not favor the female parent, a rewriting that has in part been actually adopted into actual practice. Mmkay?
I used to tweak the noses of some feminist in my class by pointing out the movement owes a great debt to male philosophers. I will say this, male policy makers and judges didn’t “grant” rights to women they simply recognized that they have certain rights as human beings.
By the way, I’m not saying that it was soully the result of women demonstrating that suffrage was achieved. Nor am I saying that we don’t owe those in Congress who voted to pass the Amendment.
What I AM saying is that you cannot dismiss the work of those who fought to make it an issue, those who were out there, working, writing to their congressmen, educating others about the issue, getting the word out, etc. These things don’t happen in a vacume. Did Congress just wake up one day and say, “I say, let’s give the ladies the right to vote!”
And yes, men worked with the women. I said it was FEMINISTS. I happen to be one of those feminists who believe that men can be feminists too.
As for the draft-I believe if there HAS to be a draft, then yes, women should have to sign up too. Morale, please! I always forget her name, but during WWI there was a female sergent in the Serbian army. Not only was she decorated by the Crown Prince Regent for her bravery, but her men said that she inspired them even more than a male officer would have, because here was a WOMAN, being so brave, and for them to do any less than their best would be cowardice. How could they shed tears, when a woman did not? They had to live up to her.
That being said, I am absolutely against the draft unless there’s a dire need.
Perhaps a better word than feminist would be “equalist”, because I believe feminism is not necessarily about advancing things for women only, but making sure than gender stereotypes are not hurting others. Until someone comes along to change it, we’re stuck with the term “feminist”, and there’s not much we can do about it.
Is that really the only way combat experience favors men? Really? I was unaware that the casualty rate in the military was 100%. Consider my ignorance fought.
I’ve gone terribly off track here. I only posted to say that I’m leery of equal rights because I don’t want to see large numbers of drafted women come home in bodybags. I’m not sure why so many of you want to argue my opinion. Noble ideals are not always right or moral. (The noble ideal of democracy is neither right nor moral if it’s a lynchmob voting to “string up the darkie”, for example.)
I prefer the idea of dead men. You guys would rather cut those numbers with the bodies of dead women. Don’t worry; I think you’re all as insane as you think I am.
Risk and reward go together. You seem to be under the assumption that risk negates reward. Let’s substitute your clarification on what you meant as your actual response:
Does your response make sense even to you? Are you saying that if there’s any risk at all to something, it is by definition a bad thing? Let’s reimagine this exchange in a different context, one in which women are not currently allowed to play the stock market:
Hey, that makes exactly as much sense: None at all.
You’ll have to explain what you mean by “women”, “profit”, and “moral” in this sentence, because as it stands it fails to address both my remark and reality.
Your entire post is as ridiculously out of touch with reality as anything Ann Coulter ever said.
A more accurate scenario would be one where men are required to bet on the stock market, and must invest all their money in it. They don’t even get to choose what stocks they buy; the government does. If they lose it all, people like you make speeches about how it’s a privilege.
The men go off to war and risk death; the women stay back and rake in the loot/oil/ego gratification of conquest. That’s unfair, therefore it’s immoral. What’s there to explain about “women” ? You do know what a woman is, don’t you ?
You’re the one who seems surprised if people are offended when you deem men’s lives worthless; it’s hard to get more out of touch with reality.
I’m saying that those who keep trotting out ‘you can thank feminists for your rights’ are being completely dishonest by blatantly ignoring the fact that most of those rights were either voted for by men or enforced by a Supreme Court that had a majority of justices on the bench being men.
To imply, as they are, that feminists did it alone is extremely misleading. Why are they ignoring the men in the equation who voted for these rights in Congress and who authored these Supreme Court decisions?
Nope. Which is exactly why I won’t get on that sexist bandwagon.
And labeling other people who support equal rights as feminists so that you can claim them as your own while they would never self-apply such a label is wrong.
[/Homestar Runner]Let’s contrast two news reports. One concerns the death of ten ground troops, all female. (An Israel news report, in America?) The other concerns the death of ten ground troops, all female. If photos from childhood and names of the soldiers are broadcast, which group do you think would get the most emotional response from society, as a whole? Hell, even as two sentences, no pictures, just names. I believe that while it would be nice for both groups to be morned in the same amount, the actual reply would show us that"Women are valuable, men are expendable"in some limited ways.