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.
“Zero chance”? From where are you pulling this figure? Is the U.S. not involved in enough volatile conflicts around the world for you to perceive the potential for escalation to large-scale war?
While I don’t support what the MRAs quoted in this article say about women, I do take issue with the implication in this article that it is unreasonable, even comically unreasonable, for young men in the U.S. to worry about being conscripted into military service in the future. I think the reasonableness of this concern is supported by the history of the draft in the U.S., the nation’s current involvement in military adventures with highly unpredictable outcomes, and the fact of mandatory Selective Service registration. I think that young men in a nation that has conscripted men in the past, currently engages in numerous military adventures in volatile regions of the world, and has a working system in place to make a draft easy to institute can always be reasonably concerned about the possibility of forced military service.
During the 20th Century, U.S. men were forced into soldier service against their will in the 1910s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The number of men in the last century who were directly drafted or coerced by the draft into “volunteering” (to get a better deal) is measured in the tens of millions. Widespread male conscription has happened in the U.S. both often enough and recently enough to make the draft a reasonable concern for men 18-45 based on history alone. But conscription becomes an even more reasonable concern when you look at why the public has supported a draft in the past and view that motivation in the light of current events and their reasonably possible outcomes.
Conscription laws were generally supported by the public during times of perceived threats to the United States: World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. We currently live during a time when the appearance of perceived threats, and the American public’s emotional reaction to them, is highly unpredictable. The 2001 terrorist attacks, which lasted one day and had a death toll in the low thousands, caused the U.S. government immediately to enact laws that severely compromised individual civil liberties. While a military draft wasn’t among the new laws, it surely would have been under consideration if troop strength were not considered more than adequate for the anticipated fighting — against relatively small gangs in the mountains of Afghanistan and a weak army in impoverished Iraq. But what if the conflicts we’re involved in grow, as conflicts have been known to do?
Right now the U.S. military is proudly an “all-volunteer” force, and the military establishment wants to keep it that way because drafts make the industry of war unpopular. That’s the current reality our military leaders have to deal with, but military belligerence can create new realities. Military adventure can cause problems on a massive, global scale that become so big that the public is forced to support conscription as the only solution. Iraq didn’t happen to scale that high, but things change, and in fact things are changing right now. There’s no reasonable guarantee that the present conflicts in the Middle East won’t become a proxy war for the strongest nations on Earth, as happened in Vietnam. Historically, small wars regularly become big wars with no conceivable escape for those involved.
Should the current Middle East conflicts — and/or other conflicts on the globe — spiral out of control into a massive war requiring many hundreds of thousands of actively fighting U.S. troops, conscription in the United States would almost certainly be instituted, and it would not face any significant administrative obstacles. By design, the Selective Service registration system makes it easy for the government to institute a draft quickly and efficiently; young men can be identified, notified and forced into boot camp within weeks if the government deems it necessary. The only obstacle now standing between young men and forced military service is the government’s current nonbelief that a draft is in the best interests of the security of the nation. The moment that one single nonbelief becomes a belief, unwilling men will be forced to become soldiers. The system to do that to them is already in place, ready to be used instantly, as soon as a law authorizes it. This article says that Selective Service registration is a “meaningless exercise,” but it gains meaning with the stroke of a pen.
Is it really so unrealistic for an 18-year-old man to imagine that world events in roughly the next three decades (between now and the time that he turns 45) might cause the U.S. government to believe that a military draft is in the best interests of the security of the nation? There’s nothing in the history of 20th Century conscription or the recent history of U.S. military aggression or the present state of armed conflicts in the world to ground this concern in reality?
They’d need one of the FeMRAs to file, I think. If the government decided to defend the status quo, one of the first issues would be ‘standing’–does the plaintiff have a legitimate reason to be complaining about this? While I’d disagree, standing sometimes gets interpreted very tightly, and the court might decide that some dude suffers no harm by whether or not women are also forced to register. (If there was an actual draft on, then they could argue that an arbitrarily diminished draft pool would make it more likely that those who are registered are more likely to be drafted, which would be an actual harm.)
Women, OTOH, might be able to claim that not being permitted to register would cause them some sort of vague harm in terms of respect, etc. Of course, that would be the feminist argument NOW made back in the day, but it’d be fun to see JB or her ilk trying to make the case now.
Magnesium:
Indeed, if they had the courage of their convictions on this matter, they’d have done what I did and refused to register.
Yeah, but that means they’ll have to do something and they’ll lose something to complain about and hold over feminists’ head.
MRAs don’t want things to be equal, they just want things better for them.
Additional female warriors: it was once common for samurai women to fight. Now, the MRAs like to talk about women being on average smaller and not as strong. This is in fact statistically true, so their weapon of choice was the naginata, a polearm that gave them superior reach and leverage compared to a sword. And they could use bows perfectly fine. Both are popular sport martial arts for women in the modern era.
@dhag85
Haha! You were a little shit and I love it!
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/seal-of-approval2.gif
Due (I assume) to a relatively androgynous first name, I received a letter informing me that I had to register for the draft, though I was and remain a female person. I promptly ignored it. I rather wish now that I had saved it. I almost kind of wish that I had gone ahead and registered.
@Hambeast
Same height, size 6-8, range from 155-160lbs since high school: guess it’s a good thing I never wanted to be in the military? (i.e. BMI is bullcock). On the bright side, I clean up on carnival guess-your-weight games.
@Ledasmom
First question they ask is sex. If you answer “female” it tells you not to bother filling out anything else.
@Josh Strong
I don’t buy it. A lot of Americans are supportive of these military campaigns only as long as they have no impact on us or anyone we care about. Any politicians stupid enough to institute a draft would quickly find themselves out on their asses.
Three decades? *scoff* Puh-leaze. If there was a draft, it would focus on younger people first. Anyone over 22 is probably safe.
sbel — while I agree that the odds of a draft are well into single digits, they didn’t start at the youngest and work up. It was 20 I think, then a couple years older, then 19, 18, in that order. Nobody wants a cocky ass teenager with either a smart mouth or a warrior complex fighting — Rambo would get everyone around him killed.
As for the draft in general, we “backdoor” drafted reservists well into their 30s, maybe even older, rather than drafting 20 year olds — it would take one massive event for anyone to decide that reinstating the draft was a good idea.
I am extremely doubtful we’ll see the draft back short of WWIII. The US military is increasingly focused on using technology in preference to raw numbers and there’s strong social opposition to the draft. Unless the US feels like tripling its military budget, we’re not going to have much use for a draft.
My iPad is acting up, so editing to say that this is from wiki — https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System#Lottery_procedures
@Rabid Rabbit
Hell, if Boudicca was even remotely involved in anything where I was I’d be peeing my pants like a terrified three year old. As I damn well should, because Boudicca.
This seems like a timely factoid to add to the military timeline.
The US Department of Defense will lift all gender-based restrictions on military service starting January.
2016.
The Armed Services Committee issued a statement on December 3, 2015, saying, “Congress has a 30-day period to review the implications of today’s decision. … and receiving the Department’s views on any changes to the Selective Service Act that may be required as a result of this decision.”
So far there is NO decision to require all adults to register with Selective Service; still only men that register.
Source: https://www.sss.gov/Registration/Women-And-Draft
Selective Service is a law, so the Defense Department can’t unilaterally change it. That will take either a court case or an act of Congress. A court case would probably be faster given the current congress’s track record of getting… anything… done. The change in allowing women in combat positions is certainly grounds for reconsidering the precedent established when they weren’t, so a case would have good odds of making it to the Supreme Court.
@Alan Robertshaw
Speaking of Sikhs, the story of Mai Bhago and the twenty-one warrior saints has stuck with me, an American heathen of uncertain history knowledge beyond the US (shock, really). And she’s probably just one of the lengthy list of woman Sikh badasses I know nothing of.
@Pandapool
What happened to me? I used to be like that, and now I’m like this. My 20s were a long decline. :p
@Argenti Aertheri,
Oh, hmm. I was just going by what my Dad has said, since he was the right age for the draft near the end of the Vietnam war.
Well, my point is still reasonably valid. “Three decades” is absurd. The oldest age they list is 25. It’s pretty unlikely that they’d ever draft anyone over that, and certainly not people who are 40+ years old.
I wonder if the genus of sage & wormwood plants were named Artemisia for the warrior woman Artemisia of Caria? It must have been very bitter to lose a battle to a woman and wormwood is synonymous with bitter.
This genus includes A. absinthium that is used in making absinthe, or the green fairy, that Toulouse-Lautrec, van Gogh and other painters in France were known to favor for its supposedly psychoactive nature. It isn’t actually, but I had to try some just for its artistic history.
No, the etymology gives Artemis as the derivation source, rats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_absinthium#Etymology
@dhag85
Maturity and slowly dying inside kinda does that to people.
There’s all kinds of evidence to suggest that the draft won’t return and Josh’s arguments that it will are extremely weak (the fact that we have so many military operations going on at once right now without a draft is evidence that we won’t need one in the future, not that we will).
But the even more basic point is that, if the biggest problem you face is the possibility of a harmful policy being enacted sometime in the future, your life is pretty damn easy.
– Lots of men arent even aware that women can, have, and do serve as soldiers.
– Let’s not forget a soldier is a position of power.
– A significant percent of Vietnam draftees were poor young black men who didnt even have the vote, many of who are still really struggling w both poverty & PTSD. The draft has been used to force oppressed men to be cannon fodder for the oppressor while oppressing someone else.
– even if not one single woman was fit for combat, that would never invalidate feminism; women deserve basic protections (ie from rape) and rights (voting) regardless of how good they are at killing. Its pretty backwards to suggest that only soldiers should have safety and a vote. MRAs are a lot like Creationists who think a single (incorrect) gotcha will destroy Evolution as if there isnt a shitton of evidence. There’s likewise just too many injustices feminism addresses. Even if women really were the stereotypical weaklings, they would still deserve protection from abuse, & they could still be valued for their brains.
Mmm. That’s one reason I was kinda annoyed at Fallout 4. If you’re a male character you’re a veteran. If you’re a female character you’re a… lawyer.
Of course, that’s unfair of me, since I know Fallout is in an alternate timeline and they have more 1950s era gender roles in their timeline. But it would have nice if there was at least some explanation as to how a civilian lawyer learned to use power armor, etc.
The following is the URL of an article entitled: “Feminism and National Defense” which appears in the online men’s rights site, “The American Gentleman”:
I served as an Infantryman with the U.S. Army; 4th I.D.; 2/8th Inf.; Republic of Vietnam 1969-1970
This article addresses many of the premises and conclusions of the original article.
As women are the electoral majority in the USA and many other nations, they hold political authority. However, it is men, not women who are subject to political responsibility to the state through mandatory military service. This makes men a servile class to women who, through their aforementioned political authority, determine when a nation is to go to war, how the war is to be fought, and how the returning veterans is to be treated.