why do MRAs bring up the draft? - GirlWritesWhat

DavidByron · 2012-09-28T05:18:08+00:00

I have a different take on this issue from GWW.

First of all I do agree with her statement that I have never heard of any MRA or anti-feminist blame men for the draft which obviously long preceded any form of feminism. In fact many will acknowledge at least a half-hearted effort by NOW to support an end to the sexism of the draft back in the 70s I think. Something like that.

The reason I mention the draft is to do with abortion issues. Specifically because I take issue with the feminist phrase, "my body my choice". The phrase is supposed to suggest that women are oppressed because they are denied what feminists sort of hint is a well recognised right normally (or for men). In fact society has no such right. Governments have always reserved the right to fuck with people and their bodies in any manner that they think is fair and works for the general good. Throughout history criminal sentences were often corporal punishments. And even ignoring crime and the past, even today governments will demand citizens time for jury service. There is no right to have the integrity of your own body when it comes to refusing. Of course jury service doesn't involve physical damage. The government does feel it has the right to deny people who want to inflict (or risk inflicting) damage on themselves with laws covering anything from safety belts to consensual sadomasochism. But the really obvious example of the government mandating that a person risk gross physical damage (or even death) to their person and against their will is the draft. And conveniently it happens to only happen to one sex, and that sex is male.

So when feminists go on about the "War on Women" so called because they already have the right to bodily integrity but like to pretend it is under threat and use slogans like "My body, my choice", I would say (as Warren Farrell did 30 or 40 years ago), "His body, no choice".

I don't particularly see the draft as linked to the right to vote. My response to feminists who bring up the vote (which happens an awful lot because 1920 was the last time feminists had any legitimate issue apparently) is four-fold:

(1) men got the vote only slightly before women if not simultaneously

(2) giving women the vote made no sense prior to the Australian ballot

(3) Women opposed women's right tot eh vote

(4) Today it is men who lack the right to vote

To go over those in a little more detail:

It's easy to find dates for when countries had the vote for women, but it is a lot harder to find the same date for men. In fact feminists often have the attitude that men have somehow always had the right to vote. I've even seen feminists bitch about how sexist it is that women have no vote in countries that are not democracies. That's how ingrained it is. But in reality most men didn't have a vote in most early democracies until quite late, and in some cases the gap between when 50% of adult men could first vote and the same for women is just a year or two, or maybe ten or twenty years. In the case of the UK it's is zero years as both happened in the same act of parliament. Apart from Switzerland and France, the USA might be about the worst for the size of the gap. 50% of American men could probably first vote in federal elections as early as the 1830s, although by other estimates it had to wait until after the civil war when black men could (in theory) vote. In most countries that are democracies today I think women and men both got the vote at the same time when the country started off, usually after gaining independence around the middle of last century.

One of the reasons that all men were not given the vote until around the late 19th / early twentieth century is the same reason the vote was not given to women. The idea of the vote itself changed drastically with the introduction of the secret (or "Australian" ballot) around the end of the 19th century. As early as the founding fathers debates the idea of women voting had been raised but the problem was that at that time a vote was not secret. A vote was made publicly in much the same way that eg Congress votes today. It was expected that a voter would make deals with their peers in order to come to compromises just as legislators make vote deals today. A person who had no economic independence could easily be bullied into voting a certain way by eg. their landlord. In fact in those areas where economically dependent men were given a vote it was not unusual for their boss or landlord to print up a ballot and hand it to them ordering them to cast it as written out. It was argued that to give women the vote would achieve nothing more than to give married men two votes, since (and this part really doesn't say much for what jurists thought of men) it was assumed that the husband would bully the wife into voting as he decided. With the introduction of the secret ballot all that changed (although at the expense of people being able to bargain with their vote).

Most people are not aware that women mostly opposed the right of women to vote up until just before Congress gave women the vote. In fact Congress basically just did whatever women wanted. When women said the vote was bad for women, that was the law. When women changed their mind, Congress complied. The early feminists often complained that women were the hardest to persuade to their cause. Why? Women saw the vote as more of an obligation than a right and saw politics as something dirty which they would have to be drawn into if they were given the vote. They saw women losing their special status as the purer sex if they too had the obligation to involve themselves in politics. ironically many got quite political about remaining non-political and the first big group of women to lobby Congress were anti-suffragettes.

Today in the USA millions of men lack the right to vote, mostly due to laws saying felons and former felons cannot vote which effects far more men just as the sexist injustice system locks away far more men than women.

nlakes · 2012-09-28T02:14:38+00:00

The best way to silence feminists on the "why do you bring up the draft/have you been drafted" issue is to ask them why they bring up rape and if they've been raped.

Just because something hasn't happened to you personally doesn't mean it isn't pervasive for either you or your gender.

2012-09-28T04:56:27+00:00

The reason that feminists assume men are "blaming" them for the draft whenever it gets brought up is just projection.

feminists blame men for all the problems in their lives, so they naturally assume that men do the same thing.

TracyMorganFreeman · 2012-09-28T05:03:00+00:00

I like the cut of her ~~jib~~ gib.

bikemaul · 2012-09-28T05:43:49+00:00

The people in power are not going to change this because it helps them. They couldn't care less if it's sexist or exploitative of men who have no better options. I don't like it for me and I don't want to make it fair by creating more victims. In the event of actually needing a lot of military manpower, we should start a egalitarian draft, but I think a voluntary selective service does have it's place.

With regard to requiring only males to register for student aide; the Feds could drop the requirement and incentivise participation by further subsidizing student loan interest rates. There could also be a grant lottery built in too. With this system they could capture student loan bodies without "mandatory" registration for males.

The system we have already over-samples the poor because they don't have the ability to pay for school outright or get private loans. This would compensate for the risk of deployment and could allow more people to go to school that can not afford it now.

Also requiring selective service registration for female government employees might be the best option. Would they call it a war on women? I like an institution needing to haul some of their own weight.

Liberhat · 2012-09-28T10:27:29+00:00

Not GWW again. Who cares what that schill thinks? Why do men allow women to speak for their rights? If you're reading this GWW (and you probably aren't) my rights, and the struggles around them, are NONE of your business. So butt out.

Title	why do MRAs bring up the draft? - GirlWritesWhat
Author	galenwolf
Upvotes	71
Comments	37
Date	September 27, 2012 11:19 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/10l8vr/why_do_mras_bring_up_the_draft_girlwriteswhat/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-do-mras-bring-up-the-draft-girlwriteswhat.1012575 https://theredarchive.com/post/1012575

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