Few subjects cause Men’s Rights Activists to become as irrationally angry as the requirement that young American men register for selective service.
MRAs regularly declare this obligation to be a form of “slavery,” a sign that society views men not as human beings but as “mere beasts of burden designed for the expendable whims of a gynocentric system.” If you’re a man in the United States, A Voice for Men’s “Janet Bloomfield” indignantly announces, “you must agree to die.”
Well, not so much. There is no draft, and there is approximately zero chance it will be resurrected any time in the forseeable future. But that doesn’t stop MRAs from complaining endlessly that women are allowed to vote, and own property, and do all sorts of other citizeny things without having to undergo the meaningless exercise of signing their names on a selective service registration card.
But it looks like that’s going to change. Now that women are being allowed into combat positions in the armed forces, it seems all but inevitable that women will be required to register alongside men.
You might expect MRAs to be jumping for joy at the very prospect. Nope. Because, it turns out, many MRAs don’t think women belong in combat positions — or even in the armed forces at all. Women, they say, just aren’t up to the job.
In a post on AVFM yesterday, for example, Michael Conzachi derides the notion of women in combat as a “monstrously stupid social engineering” experiment, claiming that anyone who knows anything about combat knows
that women simply do not have the physical strength nor the warrior, “Sheep Dog” mind set to do this dangerous arduous job, and to voluntarily and willingly place themselves in harm’s way; to protect the Sheep from the Wolf.
Adjusting his metaphors slightly, he goes on to declare that
You don’t hook up a covered wagon to a sheep, not even if you put a Rambo mask on it, you hook it up to a horse. Is that not clear? …
This is not an issue of equality, it’s an issue of ability.
Weirdly, Conzachi also waxes indignant at what he thinks will be the reaction of feminists to the possibility that women will have to register for the (still nonexistent) draft:
The shrill lobby who jumped up and down like circus monkeys screaming and demanding that all military combat jobs are open to women, will now start jumping up and down like circus monkeys complaining that they didn’t really mean that women will now have to actually register for the draft, and if they don’t, they will be subject to the same penalties and possible prosecution as men if they fail to do so.
The typical delusional uber-feminist speak, “we demand, we demand, we demand, combat jobs.” “Oops; well, we didn’t really mean that we would have to register for the draft, and be subject to the same penalties as men if we fail to do so, we just want equality, equality, equality.”
It’s a revealing complaint. I’ve seen precisely zero feminist opposition to the idea that women should be required to register for the (nonexistent) draft alongside men. Sure, I know plenty of feminists who would prefer that neither men nor women have to register; indeed, I’m one of them.
But the feminists who have been pushing to open the armed forces fully to women have done so knowing that equality would almost certainly result in women being required to register.
Indeed, when selective service registration was restarted back in 1980, the National Organization for Women and the League of Women Voters were two of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that would have made women as well as men subject to the registration requirement.
Yes, that’s right: they wanted women to be subject to the same requirements as men — even though at the time women didn’t have the same opportunities as men in the armed forces. As the New York Times summarized their views, NOW and the other plaintiffs felt that “women [would be] relegated to second-class citizenship by exclusion from a fundamental obligation of citizenship.”
The Supreme Court ruled against them, and male-only registration continues to this day.
Feminists don’t have a problem with equality in the armed forces; MRAs do. It will be interesting to see their reaction as they lose this favorite talking point of theirs.
Because, let’s be honest, that’s pretty much all it is. Registration is essentially meaningless. Not only has no one been drafted since selective service registration was reinstituted in 1980, but no one has been prosecuted for failure to register since 1986. (There were only a tiny handful of cases from 1980-86, mostly brought on by plaintiffs challenging the law.)
MRAs complain that — as they see it — women have been given the right to vote without taking on the obligation to serve (or at least the obligation to sign a meaningless piece of paper that in some alternate world might lead to them being required to serve). But MRAs, or certainly a good portion of them, also think that women are psychologically and physically incapable of taking on this obligation.
It seems abundantly clear that MRAs don’t really want gender equality, in the military or anywhere else; they want women to be relegated forever to second-class status.
Horses can pull covered wagons, but oxen would be better. MRAs think it’s possible to escape bears by climbing trees, though . . .
It’s easy to think of them as being weirdly hypocritical, but I’ve always seen manosphere arguments as “whatever argument I can make to get her back in the kitchen and under my thumb.” Each one’s isolated from the others, and each one has an invisible conclusion of “Therefore, women should respect me and do what I say.”
It’s a weird space to be in, trying to think in a way where these contradictory arguments make sense. Each argument is in its own little self-contained bubble, and all of the bubbles have the same conclusion – that’s how (I think) they convince themselves. “Look at all the arguments I have, this has to be right!” I guess that would mean that the work will involve popping those bubbles to show those contradictions, but I have no idea how to do that.
(Sorry about being all over-analytical! I’m sure this is all stuff you all know. I’m just processing it for myself)
I’ve always thought this was one of the most obvious MRA contradictions. And there are many.
It’s like, “You shouldn’t be considered equal to us, because you don’t have to fight and die in war! And you shouldn’t fight and die in war because you’re weak! Just acknowledge that you’re a weak weakling who should accept her place!” I imagine that’s how they logic it together in their heads. You can logick anything together if you start with a tautology, dummies.
I did this video a few years ago (and a number of others but this one recently as well) that turned into a back and forth between myself and Karen Straughan (GirlWritesWhat).
She has now been shown to be wrong on almost every point she made in her responses. She was proven wrong by the march of time.
Within a few years feminists will resolve the male only draft issue, and Men’s Activists will have done nothing to aid in that endeavor but whine, bitch and complain.
The one thing I am sure of in all this?
That her and the Men’s Activists will never acknowledge that feminists brought this about, they will never acknowledge that anti-feminists like them played a significant part in making it take so long, and that I was 100% right about everything I said to her, and she was 100% wrong.
Now excuse me while I go sip some scotch and smile the sweet smile of complete victory.
Philip Rose A.K.A. TheTruePooka
I live in one of the few remaining countries on Earth that still has universal draft of all men between the ages of 18-29 (and you remain as a part of the army reserves until age 40). I spent a quite boring five hours in the army selection ceremony almost exactly 15 years ago and I wouldn’t wish it for even my worst enemy. I wish we here in Finland would just abandon our doctrine of “believable defense” (it has never really been believable, at least not in a world where the country immediately to our east has nuclear weapons) and stopped the draft. I’m all for equality in all things and since women have had the option to volunteer for military service since 1994 I hope we can make it voluntary for us menfolk too.
In any case, I think the misogyny of the MRAs in this case really is closer to misandry. If a nation expects men to to volunteer for military service and then picks the ones who are physically and mentally fit yo serve in the military, why not do the same for women? Indeed, why not allow women to serve in all the branches that men serve in, provided that they can meet a reasonable standard of physical and mental ability?
And just as an aside, when I went to that draft ceremony all those years ago, that was the extent of my military service for this country. Sometimes being handicapped can be a positive thing, as I didn’t have to spend 9 months playing war in the woods, or alternatively 13 months doing some non-combat related task for very little pay. Or as the third option, spending a year in prison as a conscientous objector.
Men can do all those things without registering for selective service too. They’re barred from federal employment and certain kinds of federal loans, though.
They’ll just move on to another reason women shouldn’t vote and have citizenship rights. Such as “females are beneficiaries of welfare money at a much higher rate than men, therefore men have taxation without representation.” This will in their minds put feminists in the position of either being for dismantling the social safety net or for denying citizenship rights to women because we take without paying. Checkmate feminists!
My ride is powered by reindeer, no masks necessary.
Has anyone ever seen an MRA in real life? Like, sometimes I wonder if there’s some leak in an alternate reality where the MRA position actually makes any sort of sense, that sort of spills out into our internet. Their fundamental wrongness seems to suggest a difference in their fundamental reality. At times that seems easier to swallow than the idea that these people have a worldview that is so incompatible with reality.
Even if you don’t think women can serve in combat, there are a lot of non-combat roles in the military. There are plenty of men who aren’t fit for combat and they still have to register. I think the point is just that you know how many and who you can call up if needed and then you sort out the details later, if and when needed. Vaginas don’t change that.
I’m a feminist and I’ve always thought it was stupid that women didn’t have to sign up for the draft. It’s not like I’m a big fan of the draft, but if we have one, then it should be all of us (obviously with reasonable exceptions, by which I do not mean “but I’m in college!”).
In part I thought that because I knew that women have fought in every war. Women have always been there, they* just never got credit for it.
But also, if you have an army and you are turning away willing and able people, maybe you shouldn’t be drafting unwilling people just yet? Maybe it’s just a good idea to get the people who want to be there on board first, regardless of gender?
* I am female, but I say “they” here because I don’t count myself among the numbers of women who have fought in combat. It felt disingenuous to say “we” like I was in combat or something.
lolwhut?
Have these guys ever even met a woman? Is their sample-size for the human female population so tiny that they could actually believe this?
And of course, feminists like me who agree that women should be eligible for the draft (that no politician who wants to be elected again would ever enact, especially after the last time it happened), but would rather just do away with the entire useless system entirely don’t exist to these guys.
Because I’m not made of straw, I suppose.
I…no. That actually does make more sense. Ok, that’s really weird dlouwe.
Particularly considering that the revert sort of exists — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_(networking) — bits of internet that appear to go into the aether, when that kinda shouldn’t really be possible.
You know, the funniest thing about this whole
feeemales are incapable of protecting others line is that it contradicts the biotruths they usually love so much. It’s pretty well known among anyone who knows even the most rudimentary facts about animals that you do not mess with a mother and her young. This is true across a variety of unrelated species. Including humans. I think we’ve all seen this example
http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view2/1686458/bjork-attacks-o.gif
Not only is Bjork a woman. She’s a petite woman. Still fiercely protective.
Yes, sadly. I don’t know if he explicitly identifies as an MRA but he calls feminists feminazis unless they are “reasonable” (he never clarified what he considered reasonable nor who he thought was reasonable), bashed Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency, insisted there is no pay gap, and called marriage a scam. No surprise that he’s also a libertarian with a gun obsession.
Talking to the leaders of a local feminist club, they’ve had several encounters with these types, even getting real life trolls who claim they’re just asking questions.
“you must agree to die”
Actually, JB/AH, that’s the rule if you happen to be any creature born at any time, anywhere. And the agreeing part isn’t necessary – death is the only true guarantee in life.
I tend to get philosophical when people talk like there’s ever an option for a particular being not to eventually die.
@Rabukurafuto
That’s sad news, though I wasn’t holding out a ton of hope for my theory, just being optimistic.
Yutolia,
To continue the horror movie talk from the other thread, have you seen It Follows? In my opinion (well, not just mine) the monster represents the inevitability of death. Although some red pillers think it’s a red pill movie for some reason that’s too inane for me to even remember.
@WWTH no, I hadn’t seen that. Holy crap, Bjork!
Never thought of soldiers having a ‘sheep dog’ mindset. That seems an odd comparison to me.
Here’s just one example of a fee-male not having what it takes to be in combat:
Yeah, totally no ‘warrior’ mindset there. Nope. Because wimminz.
The idea that women are unsuited for combat will come as news to Dr. Ruth. Trained as a scout and as sniper, Dr. Ruth was wounded in action during the Israeli War for Independence. Israel is one of the few countries in the world with a mandatory military service requirement for women; 33% of IDF soldiers and 51% of IDF officers are women. Currently 88 – 92 percent of military roles are open to women. Female combat soldier serve terms of service identical to their male counterparts.
@dlouwe
Yes. I live in Edmonton.
They live among us.
Might be an unusually highbrow MRA? In “The Republic,” Socrates says your soldiers should be like sheepdogs. Though he may be trolling. You never can tell with Socrates.
@wwth
It Follows shows a woman being punished for having sex with a Chad instead of the Nice Guy that’s pined for her for years.
@wwth
I mean, that’s the Redpill interpretation. My own is pretty much the same as yours. (No edit window on mobile ?)
(Edit: and now there is an edit window. Grrrr…)