With election day here in the US less than two months away, Andrea Hardie has decided that maybe it would be ok if some women were allowed to vote after all.
Hardie — the oft-suspended antifeminist Twitter activist known online as Janet Bloomfield and/or JudgyBitch — has long been a vocal opponent of women’s suffrage, on the grounds that women tend to vote for politicians who support things she thinks are bad, like economic stimulus packages and other manifestations of “Big Daddy government.”
But she’s been making some concessions on this front. Some months back, evidently taking her inspiration from Starship Troopers, she decided it would be ok for women to vote if they were to join the military — or get themselves elected to public office.
Now she’s decided that maybe it would be ok if women like her were allowed to vote too.
In a post on her terrible blog, she declares that
I have already argued that women should be allowed to earn the right to vote, either by joining the military or by being voted into leadership positions by male voters. I think I will now expand my exemptions to some other women with ‘skin in the game’.
Wives of men and mothers of sons.
Perhaps not coincidentally, Hardie falls into both of those categories, as she has regularly reminded her readers.
But ladies like her are still ladies. Why should we let them vote?
Women who are legally married to a man, who by definition is subject to the draft, have skin the game. They have a right to make leadership decisions that could result in their husband’s death. Needless to say, the right to vote is surrendered upon divorce. It can only be regained by remarriage, to a man.
Huh. Never mind that, in the US and Canada at least, there is no draft, and the chances of a draft being reinstated in the forseeable future can be rounded down to zero percent.
And never mind that all women living in a country have “skin in the game” by virtue of, you know, living in that country.
Let’s just accept her premise for a moment and work out the technicalities. Like, for example: would these women be stripped of the vote once their husbands are no longer of draft age? NOPE!
The ages of the men involved don’t really matter. In the US, the draft currently sits at 18-25 years of age, but in war time, draft ages can and do change. Men up to the age of 45 were drafted in WWII, and all men up to age 65 had to register. Men in Ukraine are currently subject to the draft up to age 50. All societies will prefer to draft men of all ages before they will draft women.
That’s quite an assumption, given that there are a lot more young women serving in the military than there are old men.
The second group is mothers of sons. They, too, have skin in the game. Once a woman has given birth to a son, she earns the right to vote on the grounds that her son can be drafted and she has a right to participate in leadership decisions that could lead to his death. The only circumstance under which this right can be revoked is if she surrenders legal custody of the boy. His adoptive mother, if there is one, earns the vote.
What if … oh never mind, it’s pointless to try to discuss this as if actual logic is involved in anything that Hardie argues.
Or facts, as her next “argument” shows:
The truly sobering thought is that even if women’s suffrage were repealed, I doubt many women would care, beyond the initial shock of ‘Muh rights! Muh rights!’ If the 19th were repealed, I sincerely doubt very many women would take any of the paths listed above for the purpose of gaining the right to vote. Women will do all of the above, but based on their personal feelings and preferences, and not because they are vitally, deeply, profoundly invested in the idea of suffrage.
It’s always seemed to me just a teensy bit strange how invested Hardie is in the whole anti-suffrage thing, because all the (admittedly halfassed) arguments she musters against women voting would seem also to apply equally to women trying to influence politics in ways other than voting. Like, for example, writing blogs and tweeting tweets and putting up videos on YouTube in order to push your political agenda — all of which Hardie herself does, of course.
And even if we accept her bizarre notion that the only women who have “skin in the game” are women in the military, elected officials, wives of men and mothers of boys, wouldn’t this exemption only apply to those women trying to influence politics in the countries in which they live?
Following Hardie’s logic to its conclusion, Canadian women like her shouldn’t have the right to publicly campaign for political candidates in the US. No skin in the game!
But who is this dude staring out from the header on her Facebook page?
He looks vaguely familiar. He doesn’t look very Canadian.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
“JB is trying to subvert the argument of ‘if I serve in the military, I should get a voice in democracy’” into ‘the only voices that should be heard in a democracy are the voices of the military.’ That’s nonsense, and it’s insulting to service members to use the military as a fig leaf for subverting democracy and oppressing women.”
Yes, I think that is an excellent way to sum it up and explains quite elegantly just what Hardie appears to be trying to do.
“I think we’re on the same page here, but always good to clarify!”
We are…agreed on the clarification issue, with good cheer.
So let me get this straight:
War is a man’s issue that is meant to be handled by men, so women shouldn’t be able to vote to affect wars unless they are closely related to a man (brothers and fathers don’t count, lol.)
So…
Since caring for children, the elderly, and the infirm and preparing food have traditionally been women’s domain, it seems only fair that men shouldn’t have a vote regarding education, childcare, healthcare, agriculture, food safety laws and elder care.. After all, you know how men get when they’re handed a baby! Flailing around like some comical sitcom husband! Why, a man is naturally incapable of caring about such lady things until he marries a lady or has a baby himself, at which point he has skin in the game. Give a man control of these things, and he’ll try to serve the baby for dinner and put the casserole in the bassinet! Such is the comical domestic ineptitude of men. Hilarious!
Perhaps we should have “lady votes” and “gentleman votes” about the issues as they correspond to gender stereotypes. That would surely make things more…
Oh wait, this whole concept is face-meltingly stupid. Sorry, don’t know what I was thinking there.
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
“Googled BDU, saw it stood for Battle Dress Uniform, expected something …..[etc.]
As someone who wore BDU’s — sorry, but the alternative in the cartoon doesn’t have enough pockets. Anyone familiar with ’em (BDU’s that is) that cargo pocket was just the perfect size for one MRE.
Otherwise the alternative you cite does look pretty cool.
But back to the real deal for a moment…in my opinion the ACU pattern is *horrible* but I LOVE the pockets on the ACU’s. Pockets, pockets everywhere….and the velcro is better than the buttons on BDU’s.
As for the ACU pattern, when I got to my Reserve unit (after having been out for TWENTY years…yes, twenty…) some of the older NCO’s told me “yeah, ACU’s are terrible…they don’t hide you, everybody can see everything.” So we’re out on exercises in, well, a heavily wooded training area running battle drills (basic movement-to-contact etc. ) and, yeah, sure enough you can pretty much see everybody. Terrible camouflauge pattern.
The new OCP pattern looks like the old Woodland pattern BDU’s….
[forget that the BDU pattern was not designed for anything anywhere near the Middle East or Central Asia, but for fighting the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe, a war this Russophile is eternally grateful never happened, not the least because in those long-ago days the now-Ms.-Pavlov’s House was literally a nurse in the army of the other side!]
@Ktoryx
Aaand there’s a short story idea!
I see that Paradoxical Intention – Resident Cheeseburger Slut left a note to any lurking MRA or MRA-Adjacent types. I would like to add my own note to any lurking MRA or MRA-Adjacent types.
I don’t like you either, and even though I challenge some of the commenters here when they make comments and suggest arguments about military affairs that just don’t hold up based on historical scholarship, that doesn’t mean you all know any more because you usually don’t. The people here are more or track that any of you MRA-types about the history of warfare, armed conflict, and military art and science.
Unlike Paradoxical Intention – Resident Cheeseburger Slut, I don’t think Pocket Nerd’s response was “awesome” mainly because, well, it was overstated and, in the face of some pretty strong evidence, just plain wrong. But MRA’s talking about military history and military affairs are almost always even more wrong than anyone I’ve ever seen on this blog, whether David Futrelle (who usually isn’t so much wrong as unclear) or any commenters.
And plus, I’m a clear admirer of a bunch of *socialist* soldiers who succeeded in destroying fascists. I mean, I post under “Pavlov’s House” after all. That ought to suggest where my sympathies lie – not with any pro-Trump fascists of today. And certainly not with Angela Hardie.
[Disclaimer – yes, I know that there’s lots of evidence to show that the RKKA wasn’t anywhere near all full of actual ideological communists, and I know their record isn’t unstained, but overall it was a great army full of brave men and women who fought on the ride side of history.]
@PocketNerd
You said:
“On the practical side, current US military doctrine flatly states that volunteers are better than conscripts.”
OK, so then it must be easy to find such a clear doctrinal statement published somewhere. Could you point me to a source, please? I am not being smart-allecky. I am sure it is possible to find something that states current DOD policy and thinking on the viability of the AVF (All-Volunteer Force) concept and why it is preferable. I just want to know what makes you say this, because, again I think it’s more complicated than the way you represent it with this kind of absolute declaration that you make.
For example, simply because the All-Volunteer Force concept is what many senior leaders in the current administration say they want it does not necessarily follow that the chance of a draft is “rounded down to zero”. A draft might be unlikely, but not because of current thinking on the part of senior leaders that the volunteers are better than draftees when facing the current world situation.
If this was so, why would recent Secretaries of Defense over these last few years of the current presidential administration have clearly stated that even though a draft is unlikely, the apparatus of the Selective Service System is still a valuable strategic asset?
If they were all so against the viability of large force manned by conscripts, wouldn’t they advocate for eliminating the Selective Service System? Perhaps Hegel, like Panetta before him, etc. made all those statements about the importance of the Selective Service System (which the Selective Service System has proudly emblazoned on its website, https://www.sss.gov/About/What-does-the-Agency-provide-for-the-Nation, make of that what you will) just as pro-administration political posturing? I’m willing to consider that.
But major powers don’t keep “deep” strategic assets only because they think they’re the most important and the most immediately useful. Mobilization *potential* means a lot in national strategy. For example, just because the United States keeps that big Naval Inactive Ship Facility in the Philadelphia area, that doesn’t mean that somewhere in the Pentagon people think, “Oh, Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates are superior to those we have today!” Conversely, just because USN leadership believes that Perry class frigates are old, outdated and not preferable to modern classes (which I’m sure they do) that one can necessarily say, oh, they’ll never be used again, it’s just not viable. It’s likely they’ll never be used again, sure, but we keep then anyway because they’re a *potential* strategic asset.
The thing about *strategic*-level assets is that the chance that they’ll be used doesn’t have to be very high at all for their maintenance to be justified. That’s a reality of modern strategy that’s concomitant to the big conventional wars of the twentieth century, whether real (World War II) or anticipated and prepared for (World War III, which thank goodness never happened).
Now, if you or someone wants to argue that the draft in the U.S. is extremely unlikely because it’s extremely unlikely the U.S. will fight any war requiring raising a large conventional army, *that* would be a much more viable argument.
But the way you state things is over-reaching, extreme, and therefore not really defensible.
Again, I really do not mean to pick on you, but I think my response is fair given the tenor of yours.
Lastly, what, pray tell, is “warfighter”? How is that different from a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine or coast guardsman? Just curious.
Thank you.
@YoullNeverGuess
No, no, no.
You seem to be — probably maliciously — ignoring the fact that Andrea Hardie absolutely must get attention from the more unsavory corners of the Worldwide Interwebz. If she proposes to limit the vote for women to those who have fathers, then (as I’m sure you know — I think you have some sort of ill will toward Hardie) all women could vote. Even those whose mothers went to a sperm bank.
Won’t someone think of Andrea Hardie’s need for validation from haters? (She’s been flirting with neo-Nazis for some time now — maybe they’ll get married!)
Apparently “warfighter” is an actual term used in some US military something-or-anothers to refer to those who actually see combat, as opposed to military personnel in other roles? But I’m very far from an expert, so, you know, don’t use me as your primary source.
Anyhoo, if we’re talking rounding down to zero… I’unno, do you think the chances of conscription being employed are greater than a fraction under 1%? What percentage would you think makes better odds?
I’m all for that. And grandfathers! Mine were both conscripted by the German armed forces during WWII…dad’s side by the Kriegsmarine (which he went with purely to save his ass from being sent to the Eastern Front, from which almost no one returned, plus he could drive horse-drawn supply wagons, which is what they had him do), mom’s side the Waffen-SS. The latter, I suspect, because he was a refugee after the Russian invasion of ’44, spoke Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian in addition to German, and they needed tall, multilingual guys to guard the POW camps. He never fired a shot. Dealt with mostly Hungarian prisoners; if any were Jews, it was a sheer coincidence. And because he didn’t know where to report for demobilization at war’s end, he wound up in a POW camp himself. In Scotland. (My dad’s father was smarter; he deserted as soon as he heard that the British front had gone over, and walked home.)
Need I say that as a result of my family’s experiences with conscription on the wrong side of both world wars, I’ve become a staunch socialist and pacifist, and tend to vote accordingly? And that, lack of husband or sons notwithstanding, I’ll fight to the death to keep my franchise, if I have to?
Skin in the fucking GAME, MRAsshat motherfuckers.
@Pavlov’s House:
I’m sorry, I’m not really interested in a nuts-and-bolts debate, and certainly not here and now, in the comments section of a blog dedicated to a different subject. The level of detail I offered was about the full extent of the effort I’m willing to invest in it… and your cherry-picking of data, coupled with a demand that I somehow mathematically prove it “rounds down to zero percent” (a deliberately hyper-literal reading of David’s words) suggests you aren’t really interested in a discussion. Frankly it whiffs of the same “Patriarchy doesn’t exist until you prove it to whatever arbitrarily exacting level of detail I specify! REELZ NOT FEELZ!” sealioning most readers of this blog have seen. I’m not interested in playing; thanks anyway.
And I was particularly puzzled by this comment:
Admittedly I’ve been out of the service for a good long while, but when I was in the Army, “warfighter” was a very common term to articulate “soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and uniformed service members in general” (except with far fewer syllables). I’m surprised you weren’t familiar with the term, since your posts above include explicit claims of having been in the US military.
I know “warfighter” used in late 1990 through mid-2000’s Army, USAF and to some extent USMC jargon not with any specific meaning beyond a synonym for military personnel – the attractiveness of its use seemed more for connotation and for images it evoked rather than anything definable — which is precisely why some scholars of military history and other professionals objected to it and still do. But Pocket Nerd might thought things out better and used it with some kind of better-thought-out meaning so I was asking.
As for the idea that it signifies military personal in front-line combat-arms positions, perhaps some might have used it that way. That’s what the Wikipedia article on “Soldier” seems to suggest. I have seen people in Army and Air Force professional circles use “warfighter”, though to describe all personnel in all positions. I remember seeing it slathered all over, for instance, 1990s issues of the Air Force Journal of Logistics. I object to “warfighter” because it seems evasive and more about connotation and emotive appeal than anything else. But, again, somebody might have an actual definition and be using it more reasonably. So it’s right to ask.
Here’s an essayist who expounds on what he thinks about it; I tend to agree with this approach: http://taskandpurpose.com/warfighter-wrong-way-define-american-service-member/
But the commenter to whom I was replying may have thought it out better.
As for the “rounding down to zero”….I can’t give a percentage. I honestly don’t know. I was educated as an academic historian in a specialty that deals more in subjectively-defined categories rather than calculating or even estimating percentages. (Maybe political scientists do that). So I would just say a draft in the U.S. in the near future is “highly unlikely”. The only circumstance I think would make it anywhere near less than “highly” unlikely is a major, protracted, conventional conflict with a Eurasian land power. And I don’t think the U.S. will fight Russia or China or a major, protracted, conventional war anytime soon. If someone IS going to put percentages on it, well, then maybe it is less than half of one percent or something. So, if you’re doing that way, sure round it down to zero. I was asking David (and, yes, implicitly anyone else in this community) what made them say that. Pocket Nerd answered, but the reasons offered don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Even if the chance of a draft being imposed or even justified are very very low, I still hold to the position that says that doesn’t me an the Selective Service System apparatus is not strategically justified in continuing. That’s a different but related issue of course.
@PocketNerd
“I’m sorry, I’m not really interested in a nuts-and-bolts debate, and certainly not here and now, in the comments section of a blog dedicated to a different subject. The level of detail I offered was about the full extent of the effort I’m willing to invest in it…”
Your choice. Fair enough.
“….and your cherry-picking of data, coupled with a demand that I somehow mathematically prove it “rounds down to zero percent” (a deliberately hyper-literal reading of David’s words) suggests you aren’t really interested in a discussion.”
I think that part is a stretch. I didn’t demand anything. If I were cherry-picking data I wouldn’t have said your contention was probably. better applied to another period, which I did. One might contend that someone who makes an generalization that is too broad to stand up to evidence is the one not really interested in a discussion, but, again, it’s your choice.
“Frankly it whiffs of the same “Patriarchy doesn’t exist until you prove it to whatever arbitrarily exacting level of detail I specify! REELZ NOT FEELZ!” sealioning most readers of this blog have seen.”
This is the comment that mystifies me. It’s fairly easy to argue, I think, from historical evidence that our society is patriarchal and that women suffer systematic abuse and marginalization.
Objecting to sweeping generalizations in any discussion about historical or socio-cultural issues isn’t the same “REELZ NOT FEELS sealioning” as you call it.
“I’m not interested in playing; thanks anyway.”
OK. You’re welcome.
MRAs are not interested in the military. They don’t believe they’re going to be drafted and don’t truly fear it. If they cared about the issue, they would be doing activism around the issue. They don’t. It’s merely an excuse to whinge at feminists, derail conversations about the oppression of women, and justify the position that women should be denied citizenship rights.
There’s really no need to engage the MRM on this issue or any other. We’re here to mock them because it’s amusing. There’s certainly no need to nitpick David or other commentators when we rightly dismiss the MRA’s “concern” about the draft as the disingenuous bullshit that it is.
@weirwoodtreehugger: communist bonobo
“There’s really no need to engage the MRM on this issue or any other. We’re here to mock them because it’s amusing. There’s certainly no need to nitpick David or other commentators when we rightly dismiss the MRA’s “concern” about the draft as the disingenuous bullshit that it is.”
That seems reasonable. Your blog, your community. You have reminded me that although David and commenters may sometimes raise historical issues and issues related to military affairs, etc. this isn’t a scholarly history blog. Fair enough. I’ll save this level of detail for other more appropriate venues then. David does good work and I do not mean to muck up the process nor the fun.
Have a good day/night everyone.
Re: casual use of language and the semantics of likelihood
I mean, it’s not my blog and I’m not saying this can’t be discussed. I guess I just don’t see the point of this whole exchange?
Whatever. If others want to have the conversation, carry on. I was just putting in my two cents.
Yes, but you’re a regular commenter here and seem reasonable enough. If I got to deep into the details of a debate about history and policy for this blog…sure, I get that. So, yeah, I can let it go too.
@Pavlov’s House
English author Christopher Isherwood (author of Goodbye to Berlin, which was adapted for the screen as Cabaret) was a gay man who lived in Berlin in the 1930s. He became a pacifist because his German lover was drafted by the Nazis. His lover had a choice: serve under the Nazis or die. Isherwood couldn’t face the thought of maybe having to kill his lover.
de.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientious_objector#Germany
http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v18n4p11.htm
@ Kat
The problem with Isherwood’s stance (understandable as it is) is that he left it up to others to fight and die in liberating the other gay men from the concentration camps and Nazi rule.
Pacisfism is superficially attractive but I’m not convinced it’s always the moral position. Whether you walk past a woman being attacked because you’re a pacifist or because you’re a MGTOW; you’re still walking past her.
In that example, pacifism isn’t there to protect the woman who is genuinely in danger. It’s there to protect the people who, due to your own limited information and cognitive biases, you perceive as being threats but are not.
If you go out intending to find and beat up criminals, you’re not Bruce Wayne; you’re George Zimmerman. Chances are that the people you hurt will be entirely innocent.
To what extent does this bother you?
@Alan
I agree.
And I learned from the War Resisters League that you don’t have to be nonviolent 100 percent of the time to be a pacifist.
I found Isherwood’s stance and the way he arrived at it interesting. But I do believe that sometimes violence is very necessary.
That said, conscientious objectors sometimes do important work for their country. During World War II, for example, some conscientious objectors took part in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which studied the best ways to re-feed people who were starving due to the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment
@ EJ & Kat
Sometimes it’s obvious that someone is being harmed. Remember our MGTOW friend who claimed to have ignored a woman being beaten up. I do think that walking by in that situation is morally repugnant.
Of course you could call the police but, ignoring the practicalities about time considerations, all you’re doing there is passing the buck to someone else whilst keeping your own hands ‘clean’.
“Never get involved in a domestic” is a commonly held view, but it’s not one I subscribe to.
Remember the Saachi incident when he was strangling his wife and people just took pictures?
As to conciencious objectors I certainly admire the bravery of those who still acted as stretcher bearers or in other non-combat roles. I’m not suggesting it’s a cowardice thing, but I do think that pacifism can often be indistinguishable from “choosing the side of the oppressor” or being the proverbial good man who does nothing in the face of evil.
Hello.
> Scildfreja Unnýðnes (related to the comic page 3).
That explains a lot about Golden David Aurini…
Hmm, if Madam Hardy is so interested in fostering her “ideas”, why does not she try to get elected in some kind of political instance ? (according to her own paradigm, it would allow her a third time the right to vote. Fantabulous !) I mean, remaking the world, a lot of people do it with friends, around some alcohol and/or food. It is generally ok. But putting it on the public place that is the Web, with “arguments” so capillotracted that you may loose all your hair on them, is just a bother, or even an annoyance. That does not promote your ideas, that just make you look unpleasant (feel the power of this euphemism).
Side note : here is a picture of a current campaign for security policies in the public transportations of Paris.
http://www.ratp.fr/en/upload/docs/image/jpeg/2016-08/consigne_ratp_n6.jpg
Mysandry + White Genocide ! Horror ! (and sarcasm)
Have a nice day.
@Occasional Reader
A tragedy in three acts!
Here in San Francisco, we don’t bother with the romance or the drama.
It’s just 10 letters: “Mind the Gap.”
@ Kat
I don’t know about ‘mind the gap’ but from personal experience I think the warning should be “Don’t lean over to look at the mice”.