Should women have to register for Selective Service?

Great Debates
21

I agree. We are from opposite sides of the political spectrum, but from the same state, and we probably agree with this because we grew up here.

If the draft was reinstated and my son was drafted, I would be very upset, but I would understand that they were doing what their grandfathers before them did. It sucks, but sometimes men are called to serve in war (even though I missed it).

But if they wanted to come and draft my little girl and make her go out and kill? That would probably break one of her nails. Has society gotten that demented that we will sacrifice young girls on the altar of absolute equality to prove some sort of left wing point?

22

No, and neither should men.

23

Has society gotten that demented that we are willing to devalue the lives of young boys on the altar of male disposability?

24

Stop with the appeals to emotion. “Sacrifice young girls…”. Pffft. Are you saying your little girl is not as competent as your son? Are you saying she is incapable of shouldering responsibility? What - exactly - is your son capable of doing that your daughter cannot? Provide a rationale, or just admit that you are perpetuating sexism.

Same goes for senoy. “Women are just more important.” Gag.

25

Yes. We have done that since the dawn of civilization.

Well, I don’t have a son, but if I did, he would probably be of better use to the army as a GI than my daughter, who would cripple the country with debt if they had to buy her clothing.

If it is sexist to want to protect your daughters, then I am sexist. I know the left wing goal is to eliminate every all and distinction between genders, but that’s not how the country sees it.

What is the purpose of this proposal anyways? We haven’t actually drafted anyone in 45 years. It is not like we have a shortage of man er people-power in the military. So why expand draft registration? If we had an active draft and there weren’t enough young men to fill all of the slots, I could see the argument that women are now permitted in combat and we need to expand the draft, but we don’t so we shouldn’t.

I think everyone is already in a thousand different government databases anyways so the Selective Service is a waste of resources. They even have a director: https://www.sss.gov/About/Directors-Biography

I’m sure that guy goes home after a day’s work and just passes out from exhaustion.

26

There’s no reason to do so in modern society.

Protecting your daughters doesn’t mean sacrificing your sons.

27

Not in our modern society with a fully staffed voluntary military. As we have not drafted anyone in 45 years, I don’t see the need for continued selective service registration at all. But we could easily be faced with a situation like we faced on December 7, 1941 where we need to gear up the military might of the U.S.

And if that happens, it will be the duty of young men to step up and face that threat like their ancestors did. To extend that duty to young women makes little sense except for vague statements of equality.

There is a strong rational basis for excluding women from the draft. In those situations, we are looking for grunts in the infantry. The tech and logistics jobs will have already been staffed by volunteers. As a rule, you are going to get more qualified men for these physical positions than you are women.

Sure, I could point to a strong 23 year old girl and show you how she is more physically fit than a particular 23 year old guy, but I could also point to a 50 year old guy that is more fit, but we don’t draft him. The current draft law only looks at men between the ages of 18 and 26; the most likely to be in fighting shape, and even then, we would have to weed out the unfit.

If we add 18 to 26 year old women, or 30 to 40 year old men to the draft, we might find some quality candidates in there, but at that point, you are rejecting more than you find suitable. But if the need is there, you expand it. I believe that during WWII men up to age 45 were drafted.

And I suppose that if the situation were dire enough, you would start drafting older men, and perhaps even start looking at women. But if you put aside the politics of it, the military is doing what it has always done: try to find the right person for the job.

During any dire situation, it is not then the time to start a misguided social experiment. And, yes, I may be accused of being sexist, but you need people at home during times of war as well. Look how the women in WWII stepped up and got factory jobs, for example. It worked, and it worked very well.

Why screw with that just for some blind devotion to an ideal of equality in all circumstances. Almost nobody in this day and time thinks that women should be denied opportunities solely because of their gender. It does not follow that we should then use them for cannon fodder.

28

Our female ancestors were barely considered people. That’s hardly a compelling argument. Equal rights means equal responsibilities. If you want to go back to the era where women were treated as property, just say so.

As the infantry grows in size, the need for support and technical roles increases proportionally.

So put the physically tough women in the infantry and the rest in other jobs. Amazing how that works. And since all combat roles are now open to women, clearly physical strength is not as big a problem as you assume.

And yet in your very next paragraph you mention the radical social upheaval for gender roles as if it is a good thing. If a dire situation is not the time for misguided social experiments, I suppose Rosie the Riveter should have stayed in her kitchen, right?

I can’t even. This makes no sense. You realize that the draft doesn’t just scoop up everybody, right? Yes. Of course people will be left behind. If the draft requires X number of soldiers, it means they stop when they reach X. It doesn’t mean they need X men AND X women.

So you don’t believe that women should be denied opportunities, but you DO believe they should be exempt from responsibility.

So you are willing to use men as cannon fodder but not women?

29

No, we couldn’t. The modern US military doesn’t rely on massed infantry, or even large numbers of untrained troops. The current US military wasn’t designed to use large numbers of troops and has no way to effectively deploy them. We rely on sophisticated technology to be our force multiplier. We have all the numbers we need at this point, and untrained draftees would be a hindrance, not a help.

There are times we need additional troops, but the military prefers to have motivated volunteers rather than unmotivated draftees. You could come up with a scenario that would require a vast number of untrained soldiers but it’s extremely unlikely to occur in this day and age. What would all those soldiers do?

30

Sorry to cause you to vomit, but it is what it is. In species with a single child per reproductive cycle, men are disposable. Women are the reproductive bottleneck and so more valuable. Sure, we’ve put a lot of culture and socialization over top of that one pure biological fact, but culture and society are themselves constructs of biology. Regardless though, I don’t need to come up with a rational argument why my sons are able to be sacrificed on the altar of violence while my daughter shouldn’t be. It’s how I feel and I’m not sure that reason is going to enter into it. If a man comes up and punches my son, I’m going to tell him to punch him back. If a man comes up and punches my wife or daughter, I’m gonna ask him his measurements for his casket. Now, maybe that’s sexist (no maybe about it, it certainly is sexist.), but it’s the sexist hill that I’m willing to die on.

Women get crapped on enough by patriarchal society. If the one benefit they get is that they don’t have to march off to war to die when men do if they’d rather not, then they deserve that one, tiny benefit and you’re gonna have a hard time convincing me otherwise. If you tell me that me and my sons have to die so that my daughter and wife don’t have to, then that’s a high price, but maybe it’s one I’m willing to pay. If you come for my wife and daughter too, then why exactly am I part of this social contract? Who exactly is left behind that my family is shedding their blood for? The people rich enough to dodge the draft? They can send their own sons. If I’m fighting for the ones back home and there is no one back home, then I’m not too sure I’m keen on being part of that society. The family and I will head up to the high mountains and you’ll have to draft another army of poor stooges to get us out.

31

While your position is based on nothing but sexism, irrationality, and emotion, at least you are honest about it.

(And BTW, a planet with seven billion people on it hardly needs to worry about reproduction.)

32

ISTM this debate shows that there is a big difference between equal rights and equal perception, and many people conflate the two.

Men and women should have equal rights, but you will never get society to perceive the two genders the same any more than you can get people to see a turtle and rabbit as being the same thing. People will talk about gender equality out of one corner of their mouths while demanding “Don’t you dare send my daughters off to die in a war (but my sons? sure, take them)” with the other.

It’s like this in threads where MRAs and feminists take turns saying, “Now reverse the roles: What if a man/woman had said/done this or that?” You just can’t get society to perceive two different things as being the same.

33

I’m not sure if I am agreeing or disagreeing with your point, but equal rights is not the same as equal perception, nor should it be. I can say, for example, that my daughter should have every right to be a doctor or an engineer or a pilot and be paid the same wage a man is paid for similar work. That does not mean that there are no differences in gender.

For example, recently here a 28 year old female teacher was arrested and charged with sending pictures of her breasts to a 15 year old male student of hers. She is a former Miss Kentucky.

If that was my son, I would agree that the teacher should be fired, but I don’t believe I would have to send my boy to counseling. In fact, he has probably already gone blind to tossing several off to that picture so I would have to take him to the eye doctor if anything. I would probably have a talk with him about how such a relationship is inappropriate and so forth, but it would pass.

Now, imagine it was a 28 year old male teacher who sent a picture of his penis to my 15 year old daughter. As senoy said in a different context, I would be measuring that dude for his coffin. Anyone who does not see these gender differences is simply attempting to deny reality.

34

I think we’re in total agreement. The teacher-having-sex-with-students scandals these days I think is one of the best illustrations of the disparity. When an adult male teacher has sex with a teenaged female student, society is ready to measure him for his coffin, as you put it. Whereas when an adult female teacher has sex with a teenaged male student, society often thinks, “Wow, lucky guy!” Then you have a segment of MRAs and feminists who protest against that perception, saying, “Why aren’t you perceiving the two situations as the same? In both cases it’s an adult having sex with a teenaged minor.” Yes, in the technical sense of the law, but there are vast differences in the situation because of the gender difference. You’ll never convince society to ignore the significant physical and psychological differences between men and women; they are too stark and relevant to be ignored.

(For clarification I am not saying that adult women can’t victimize underaged male high school students, but just saying that there are still big psychological and physical differences at work.)

35

Israel conscripts women and includes them in combat infantry roles. They seem to be doing OK.

Obviously our situation is very different in the US. But we shouldn’t have conscription at all, for the reasons Lord Feldon mentions above.

36

This doesn’t sound like an accurate representation of reality. Perhaps some cheer on male students who have sex with their teacher (certainly more so than when the student is female), broader society’s reaction still seems to be anger and disgust, and such teachers usually face criminal prosecution regardless of gender.

37

Of course. No court would allow different penalties based upon the gender of the perpetrator. That is a consequence of modern law.

But I guarantee that if there was a free vote on it and no shaming done by anyone, that an overwhelming majority would give this female teacher no criminal penalties and an administrative firing while the male teacher in a similar circumstance would go to prison.

And to clarify, nobody is “cheer[ing] on” a male student who has sex with his teacher. (I suppose some are, but not the responsible people). It is a simple realization that the harm done to the male student is drastically smaller than the harm done to the female student.

38

What does any of this have to do with the draft?

39

There are innate differences between men and women. Simply because we as a society have agreed that women should be given the same opportunities as men does not mean that men and women are identical in all respects and that different treatment in the law, such as the draft, is sometimes appropriate.

40

OK, but again, Israel conscripts women and their society has not fallen apart. Their military seems to be quite effective.