From: beaver@castor.cs.psu.EDU (Don Beaver)
Subject: Re: men's issues vs. women's issues
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Date: 27 Aug 92 19:08:17 GMT

In article <CINDY.92Aug7105058@meshugge.media.mit.edu> uunet!mailrus!gatech!mit-eddie!meshugge.media.mit.edu!cindy@ncar.ucar.EDU (Cindy Blank-Edelman) writes:
>Robert C. writes [about the draft]:
>
>>         I think the "concern" that men have over this issue is that
>> signing that registration brings home the fact that, by gender, men
>> are second-class citizens whose lives are considered to be worth less
>> than women's lives, and whose inviolable freedoms are less so than
>> women's (in this area).
>
>This being said, I think that we are both right, Robert on a deeper
>level, and me on a more obvious/practical level.  Robert suggests that
>men are deeply conflicted about draft registration and the possibility
>of being soldiers, that they consider themselves to be "second-class
>citizens" because their country would put their lives in jeopardy.  (I
>have never heard this before from men, but perhaps they are not eager
>to talk about it.)

I was upset, afraid, and angered eleven years ago when, on the
30th day after my 18th birthday, I decided finally that I was going
to have to risk draftability and death rather than go to jail
and lose any hopes of a "decent" future.  Whenever the US did things
like bomb Libya or invade Iraq, these fears and war-movie-inspired
images of mutilations always came to mind.

I rarely mentioned my feelings after a couple of responses like,
"So what, you can always go to Canada," "The chances of war are small,"
and "Do you really mean to suggest that women should go into combat???"

My best analogy, for what it's worth, was to compare a woman
faced with an anti-abortion law:  "So what, you can always go to Canada,"
"The chances of birth control failure are small," "Do you really mean
to suggest that the natural purpose of women is not childbearing???"

I mention this neither for the "men's issues" aspect nor to be
"another victim coming out."  I mention it because it is often precisely
this analogy that comes to mind, in the reverse direction, when I try
to imagine feminist motivations regarding abortion.


>This would explain how things developed into what
>*I* see, where women are excluded from the registration for the draft
>because men felt the need to elevate it into some kind of macho thing
         ^^^
>so they could deal with it.  Saying "this is man's work, women can't
>do it" puts them on top in the hierarchy again after the country has
>told them their lives are on the bottom.

>This also, by the way, could explain the attitude towards gay men and
>lesbians in the military -- men's determination to keep the hierarchy in
                             ^^^
>place so that they don't have to question what they are doing.
>
>It makes me sad that men have to go through all of this
                      ^^^
>self-manipulation, and sad that women, gay men and lesbians have to
 ^^^^
>suffer for it.  Just confirms my pacifist leanings.

I would agree with your analysis in the following sense:
leaders, army recruiters, and all those persons immune from being
drafted have a vested interest in seeing to it that the military
is self-sustaining and well populated by strongly motivated soldiers
(replete with deception about the nature of war, feelings of
superiority and exclusivity, macho as one way of dealing with
the obvious contradictions, and so on).

But you seem to equate "men" with this power group (note emphases above).
Do you really believe that

. "men" form a self-deceiving conspiracy with the goal of
  oppressing women, gay men, and lesbians?
. the "power elite" is not supported by (and does not include) women?
. this system was instituted solely by "men"?
. all "men" benefit from this system and willingly accept it?
. only "women, gay men, and lesbians have to suffer for it"?

I hope my two sons, who are still too young to speak, don't get
blamed for this system, and I hope that seventeen years from now,
they will face neither a draft nor a sexist draft.  If/when I have
daughters, I hope they'll face neither a draft nor career obstacles
based on irrelevant factors.

Your pacifism is laudable, but if you are indeed grouping all "men"
together, you're going after the wrong group.

Don
--
beaver@cs.psu.edu                       Opinions from the PC-challenged

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