Men’s Rights Activists regularly complain that it is mostly men who serve in the armed forces, and that it is mostly male soldiers who are killed and injured in service to their country in wartime. MRAs also complain that, in the United States, only men have to sign up for the draft – though this is more of a formality than anything else, as the draft has been dead for decades and there is virtually no chance of it being resurrected any time soon.
MRAs love to cite the dominance of men in the armed forces as a prime example of what they call “male disposability,” and somehow manage to blame feminists for it all.
But it’s not feminists who are trying to keep women from becoming soldiers, or serving in combat. While some MRAs support the idea of women serving in the army, and having to register for the draft the same as men do, many others scoff at the very notion of women as soldiers, mocking their alleged female “weakness” and in some cases denigrating the service of women now in the armed forces as being equivalent to attending “day care camp.” (Not exactly.) These MRAs may complain that men bear the brunt of the costs of war. But they don’t actually want women to serve.
Not that it makes much of a difference, because the MRAs who do supposedly want women to share the same responsibilities as men aren’t doing shit about it. You know who is? Feminists. The National Organization for Women, while opposing the draft, has long argued that if registration is required of men, it should also be required of women. NOW has also opposed the ban on female soliders serving in combat. (Not that it’s easy to draw a clear line between combat and non-combat positions on the contemporary battlefields.)
Meanwhile, a group called the Molly Pitcher Project, made up of University of Virginia law students and headed by feminist law professor Anne Coughlin, is assisting two female soldiers who are now suing the Pentagon in an attempt to lift the combat ban.
Do you want to know who is opposing them – aside from the Pentagon’s lawyers? Take a look at some of the comments posted in response to a Los Angeles Times article on the lawsuit. Note: The quotes below are pretty egregious; some deal with military rape in a really offensive way. (Thanks to Pecunium for pointing me to them.)
These aren’t “cherry-picked” from hundreds of comments; these are the bulk of the comments that were left on the article.
Are any of these commenters MRAs? Maybe, maybe not, but certainly their misogynistic “logic” is virtually identical to that I’ve seen from misogynist MRAs opposed to women serving in combat. One thing they are clearly not is feminist.
If MRAs, or at least some of them, truly want a world in which men and women share equally in the responsibilities of military service (and both have equal opportunties for military leadership), they need to challenge the misogynists — within their movement and without — who argue that women simply aren’t fit for the battlefield. And they need to support the feminists who are actually trying to make a difference — instead of standing on the sidelines crying foul.
I don’t hold out much hope that this will ever happen. MRAs are much too enamored with their fantasies of male martyrhood.
I have long believed that if MRA’s were serious about Freedom!(tm), that feminists would be their staunchest allies. Who better to fight against gender norms than fellow gender-norm warriors?
The diatribes I read all seem to be from men who feel they have lost something. So much bitterness diredted at people in just as weak (or weaker) a position. Isn’t that the way though? Bullying flows downhill.
See, that makes sense using normal human logic. But MRAs don’t use normal human logic. They don’t think, “male disposability is bad, and men shouldn’t have to be the only ones fighting in combat zones, so women should share the responsibility.” They think, “male disposability is bad, but women are weak and incompetent, so men should do all the fighting but get unending gratitude for it, and by ‘unending gratitude’ I mean ‘pussy on demand,’ and also whatever else I want at any given moment.”
Isn’t it funny that the things MRAs complain about, feminists do more work to make more equitable than anyone else? Yes, funny is the word /rollseyes
So. Much. Badness.
I particularly love LA Times- color me red’s “argument” for a no white men army, because that wouldn’t just result in people screaming reverse discrimination. How would that even work? Probably the same way MRAs think affirmative action does — “I’m sorry sir but we aren’t hiring qualified white men at this time”?
I think it sarcasm if not for the nym >.<
Of course they don’t want women to serve; On some level, they recognize it is a class advantage to do so. The fact that men can serve is proof of men’s superiority, and it is quite far from the worst job available for the poor in most countries and situations. They made a nice little theory, but assuming they’re serious when they espouse it, they already know it doesn’t work in reality on some level.
You know, I have known for years that the military would likely be the second worst job I could possibly have. (First would be sex work.) Worse than customer service, worse than food service, worse than being blasted with cow shit and scrubbing toilets (all of which I have done, though not at the same time).
But I’m STILL pissed that I can’t sign for the goddamn draft. (They won’t have me. Trans folk still aren’t allowed to serve.) Not because I WANT to serve, but goddammit, it’s the principle of the thing! If cis men have to sign it, then dammit, I should have to as well.
…also, that guy realizes black folk couldn’t serve due to MASSIVE RACISM, right? Jesus.
–Rogan
I am mystified by Color Me Red’s comment. Is he saying that from 1776-2012 ONLY white men served in the US military, so now it’s everyone else’s turn? Here is one example where history does not support that argument. LA Times comments are a swamp, though. I remember thinking they would get better once people were forced to log in using FB accounts, but (a) it is very easy to set up fake FB accounts and (b) people are surprisingly willing to spew racist, sexist, violent crap under their real, FB-linked names. Color me naive.
Also, people might be interested in RAND’s recently issued report documenting military occupations that were closed to female service members as of 2011.
Crap. Here’s the link to the RAND report: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2012/RAND_MG1175.pdf
Ugh, I think the line about women not being able to defend themselves against sexual assault pretty much says it all. Yeah, clearly the fact that women just don’t fight back hard enough is the real problem here, not, you know, the fact that they’re being fucking raped by their comrades.
*headdesk to infinity*
Surprise, surprise…people with a martyr complex don’t actually want the conditions for it to be removed.
If anything was actually solved, the MRAs and the like would have to find new things to complain and feel oppressed about. Change and social improvement is a terrible thing to people like this. It’s not unlike trying to get some of our trolls to define what is “modest” clothing. If they define what is truly modest clothing and there are examples of people being raped while wearing it, then it is pretty obvious that it isn’t the friggin’ clothing. So, they call for women to “not dress like sluts,” but don’t define it so that every rape victim is automatically a slut who does not need to be treated like a real person or evoke any kind of empathy.
Aw, hell, just last night I was talking to Morrie Turner, who was in the friggin’ Tuskegee Airmen, and is also one of the sweetest and most generous people I’ve ever met. I’ve got no time for this crap. Don’t people have better things to do than sit around being racists?
If it is unlikely the draft will return, then let’s just do away with Selective Service registration altogether. Either that or require women to sign up for it as well. Problem solved.
I’m so sick of this MRA talking point. Make up your minds, fellas, because you can’t have it both ways. If you’re angry that women don’t die in combat alongside the men, then support legislation that allows women to serve in combat positions. If you truly don’t want women in combat, then stop screaming about women not dying in combat. Also, you might want to reexamine why women aren’t permitted in combat positions in the first place. Hint – it’s because men set it up that way in the first place.
But I’m with Rutee. MRAs have no real interest in any of this because if the military was made fully equal, they’d lose their (non-existent) most-oppressed-class-of-humanity-evah “distinction.”
As also evidenced by some of those comments, they aren’t interested in true gender equality because they hate women, plain and simple. Why would you want to be equal to a group of people you believe are inferior to you?
I am an airforce spouse and the vast majority of service members I know through that (male and female) do not spend very much of their time in warzone areas. But women get deployed as much as men do and it isn’t fair to keep them from performing their job at the same level as male co-workers. For those that deploy combat can be a huge boost in honors and promotion, more so for marines and army.
And while I think it is a bit shitty that our economy system is such that someone poor and no ability to go to college is then lucky if they can make it into the military so they can earn a living wage and receive training and medical care.
I am a bit surprised there are no comments about how unfair it is that women have lower physical fitness standards, I hear about that one A LOT.
argh deleted the second half of my second paragraph:
I think that despite the problems of the unbalanced system (basically giving us a “warrior” class) being what it is it should be open to everyone who can meet the standards. Many people I know back home wish they could join the military but are disqualified for one reason or another. Those reasons shouldn’t include gender (or trans* status for that matter ffs). At least sexual orientation is open now.
It’s not generally about military service making you ‘oppressed’ (It is to MRA crackpots, and a non-zero number of people in other cultures who are actually correct in saying this). It’s that being able to serve is an honor. And dudes are treated as being able to serve by default (And most are, in fact, able to do so though some might need a bit of exercise to pass the entrance exam). Since we’re not in Rome, you get part of that benefit even without serving. Further, military service isn’t exactly that bad a job for a lot of folks; not just in the USA Either, but for a huge chunk of history.
I think the headline can safely be shortened to “MRAs Would Rather Complain.”
If MRAs actually altered the social conditions they hate so much, they would have no one left to blame for their personal failures.
MRAs are logically consistent if you understand that they don’t want women to be equal to men. They want women to admit that they’re inferior to men and completely useless in every way, apologize profusely for existing, and devote themselves to serving men as apology for sucking so badly.
On the military issue, for instance, they don’t want women to serve, and they don’t want women included in the draft. They want women to stay out of the military and be properly grateful to men for serving (or potentially serving, as none of these guys seems to be a military man himself).
Shaenon is correct: MRAs don’t want equality. The want inequality to once again be enshrined in law and tradition. The want male privilege to reign, completely unchallenged. What they fail to appreciate is that even if these things came to pass, they, personally, would still suck.
Before I even got to those goddamn comments I knew what they would be. RAPE RAPE WEAK SHIT RAPE RAPE FUCKING DYKES RAPE RAPE RAPE WOMEN SHOULD DIE OVERSEAS NO WOMEN ARE WEAK THEY SHOULD DIE ON PRINCIPLE RAPE RAPE RAPE
Because god knows, male soldiers who get captured by the opposing forces NEVER get raped or sexually tortured. Oh wait.
I was a high school student when a local vet came in to talk to my class about his experiences in war; at the end he took questions. I asked him if he thought women who enlisted would be allowed into combat soon — I didn’t even get to finish and he was standing right in front of me, lecturing me sternly about how women don’t belong in combat because they get raped and need protecting. A good deal of his sudden shouting, and the length of his lecture was, I’m sure, on account of because I was female, and expressing genuine interest in signing up for a career as a soldier in a few weeks, when I’d be old enough.
(I suppose I should thank that crusty old fart. Thanks to him, I didn’t pursue a military career right away, and in the meantime matured a bit and realized that while I enjoy destroying the fuck out of acceptable targets for aggression, I’m much more of a diplomat when it comes to dealing with living beings. Soldierin’ was not for me after all.)
What I mean to say is that I was, at the time, interested in the military for all the wrong reasons: I was a young and immature teenager with anger issues, going through a very rough stretch, and wanted to fight “the bad guys” and maybe stab a couple in the face.
WIthin about a year and a half, i managed to work through most of my problems, and as a result, had worked through my anger and frustration, and my feelings of utter powerlessness. By then, I had realized that what I had wanted before was appalling, had learned that that’s not what military life is like anyway, and also become more interested in pursuing a degree instead.
This was my experience; it shouldn’t be taken as the norm. I personally know several women who went into the military– for sane reasons — who have done well and enjoy their work. Obviously, a good career fit should be more about a persons’ character, interests, and abilities than their sex.
But if women can serve in combat, how will I know that I’m better than they are (when I haven’t even joined the military).
I was rather taken with S Bulls argument that only the brainless are captured or killed in a combat zone and so only very smart people should be allowed in combat.
The facts are biased against him.
What not many people seem to realize is that fitness standards are more markers of overall good health than they are a checklist of particular tasks that need to be performed in order to do the job. You don’t require male recruits to do X number of pushups because the job literally requires that much upper-body strength–you do it because the job requires a certain state of health, which in an adult man translates to that much upper-body strength. Obviously it’s going to be different for women.