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Warren Farrell, Ph.D., is
the author of numerous international best-sellers
on men and women, including Why
Men Are The Way They Are and The
Myth of Male Power. Women
Can't Hear What Men Don't Say was a
Book-of-the-Month Club selection and Father
and Child Reunion has led to Dr. Farrell
doing expert witness work that has encouraged many
judges to keep dads in children’s lives. Dr.
Farrell’s released Why
Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay
Gap and What Women Can Do About It in
2005 and Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate in 2008.
Warren is the only man in the US ever elected
three times to the Board of Directors of the
National Organization for Women (NOW) in New York
City. He has been chosen by The Financial
Times as one of the world’s top 100
thought leaders, is in Who’s Who in America
and in Who’s Who in the World. He has taught
in five disciplines, most recently at the School of
Medicine at the University of California in San
Diego, and is ranked by the International
Biographic Centre of London as one of the
world’s top 2000 scholars of the Twentieth
Century. He has appeared on over 1,000 TV shows
worldwide and lives in Mill Valley, California with
his wife and two daughters. You can visit him at
www.warrenfarrell.com
or E-Mail.
Excerpts from Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate
by Warren Farrell
Introduction
Ch. 1, “Do We Need
Men’s Studies...History Is Men’s Studies,
Right?”
Ch. 2, “Do Men Have the
Power?”
Ch. 3, What the All-Male Draft
and the Combat Exclusion of Women Tell Us About
Men, Women and Feminism
Introduction
Excerpts from Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate by Warren Farrell
Everyone’s life experiences create biases
to which they are usually blind (they see them only
as their life experience). I would like to share
mine up front...
Although I am critiquing the feminist analysis
of men and what I perceive to be feminist
dependency on “victim power,” my
background is as a feminist, and I support the
portions of feminism that strive to create new
options for women. Because I feel the underlying
biology of men and women is to adapt, I see the
future as an opportunity to develop more flexible
roles than the past allowed. I feel that the
male-female roles that were functional for the
species for millions of years have become
dysfunctional in an evolutionary instant. I
feel that traditional men and women are incomplete
psychologically. In these respects, I differ from
most conservatives.
Without feminism, fewer companies would have
experimented with part-time workers, flexible
schedules, childcare options, and improved safety
standards. Without women in police work, few police
forces would have discovered that 95% of conflicts
are not resolved by physical strength; without
women doctors, few hospitals would be cutting back
90-hour work weeks for doctors; without women
therapists, short-term counseling and couple
counseling would be much less available.... The
feminist movement has allowed thousands of
workplace assumptions to be re-examined; feminism
brought into the workplace not only females, but
female energy.
When I see girls playing baseball, my eyes well
up with tears of happiness (Farrell is Irish!) for
what I know they are learning about teamwork.
Without the feminist movement, those girls would be
on the sidelines. Without the feminist movement,
millions of girls would see only one dimension of
their mothers and, therefore, of themselves. They
would have to marry more for money than for love.
They would be even more fearful of aging.
My background as a feminist includes serving
three years on the Board of the National
Organization for Women in New York City, starting
hundreds of men and women’s groups, and
speaking around the world from this perspective
during the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. In
the process, I put tens of thousands of men through
“men’s beauty contests” to give them
an emotional experience of what it was like to be
viewed as a “sex object.”
Let me share with you first some of the personal
reasons I was so receptive to feminism, and then
some of what led me to balancing that with equal
empathy for men.
Growing up (in the fifties and sixties), I had
seen my mother move in and out of depression. Into
depression when she was not working, out of
depression when she was working. The jobs were just
temporary, but, she would tell me, “I
don’t have to ask Dad for every penny when
I’m working.” At forty-eight her
depression and a dizzy spell led to a fall that led
to her death.
My mother died before the current feminist
movement was born, but she would often say, "I'm
your mother, not your slave." I can recall coming
home after being elected seventh-grade class
president, proudly announcing it to her, and
saying, "Our class meetings are on Fridays... could
I have an ironed shirt when I have to preside in
front of the class?" She said "sure" and without
missing a beat, took out the ironing board and
showed me how to iron my shirts.
Whether for these reasons or others, when the
women’s movement surfaced, it made sense to me
in an instant. I found myself at the homes of
emerging feminist friends in Manhattan, plopped in
front of their husbands with instructions to
“tell him what you told me.” Soon I was
involved with the National Organization for Women,
formed men’s groups, gave up my position as an
assistant to the president of NYU, wrote a book
called The Liberated Man on the value of
women’s independence to men, and began
speaking around the world on these issues.
Some years later, though, another family
experience was to open my eyes differently. My
brother Wayne, twelve years my junior, and his
woman friend went cross-country skiing in the Grand
Tetons. They came to a dangerous pass. It was
April, and they both feared the avalanches. Two of
them going forward would put them both in danger,
yet would give each the opportunity to save the
other. Wayne went forward alone. The snow slipped
from the mountain, gathered momentum and tumbled
its thousands of frozen pounds over my brother.
Burying him 40 feet under. He would have been
twenty-one.
Wayne and his woman friend had unconsciously
agreed that it was his life that would be risked
– and in this case sacrificed – as he and
she both played out their roles. I would soon see
much more evidence of how deeply ingrained it is
both for women to unconsciously expect men’s
protection (even when it means the man sacrificing
his life), and for men to compete to give it in
exchange for approval, respect and love.
The experience with Wayne catalyzed my thinking
about male vulnerability. In my presentations,
rather than just having men walk a mile “in
the beauty contest of everyday life” that
women experience, I asked women to experience male
vulnerability by asking men out on a “role
reversal date,” and risking just a few of the
150 or so risks of rejection that men might
experience between eye contact and intercourse.
Risking rejection male-style opened up
women’s eyes to male vulnerability and opened
up men’s mouths about their feelings.
Especially men’s feelings of powerlessness
that evolve from his sexual desire—whether
he’s in college or “single again”
after a divorce. For example, a man who talks about
the compulsive sexual feelings he has is being
vulnerable exactly because he is revealing his
compulsiveness. This makes the woman he’d like
to feel closer to feel less special, and more
distant from him—and therefore makes him
vulnerable to losing her love.
I began to see men’s vulnerability in other
ways. After divorce, a man is ten times as
likely to commit suicide as is the woman. Why?
Women are more likely to have the children --
someone to love them and need them. People who feel
loved and needed rarely commit suicide.
And women develop support systems.
Women’s traditional support systems support
women to be vulnerable; men’s traditional
support systems support men to be invulnerable.
This creates a paradox: the support men get to
be invulnerable makes them more vulnerable; the
support women get to be vulnerable makes them less
vulnerable. It is just one example of how
women’s strength is their façade of
weakness and men’s weakness is their
façade of strength.
Take, for example, the most archetypal of
men’s support systems -- the cheerleader, his
football team, and his family. When a cheerleader
says, “first and ten, do it again!” she
isn’t saying “first get in touch with
your feelings again." Nor is his coach. Nor are his
parents cheering in the stands. All of us are
unwittingly supporting him to “risk a
concussion again.” His motto is, “When
the going gets tough, the tough get going”
(they don’t cry to the school therapist). If,
instead of getting a touchdown, he gets in touch
with his feelings, and quits his position on the
team to avoid the concussion, the cheerleader
doesn’t say, “Next week I’m going to
cheer for you -- I noticed how open and vulnerable
you were when you were playing football." Yes, next
week she does cheer. But she cheers for his
replaceable part.
Expressing feelings of vulnerability brings
women affection and men rejection.
Ch. 1) “Do We Need
Men’s Studies...History Is Men’s Studies,
Right?”
Excerpts from Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate by Warren Farrell
“Feminists call it sexism to refer to God
as He; they don’t call it sexism to refer to
the Devil as He.” Warren Farrell
Women’s studies courses are the seeds from
which the forest of feminism has grown. Over 30,000
courses are offered at American universities,
including about 700 majors or minors. A study at 55
major universities found that every Ivy League
school, with the exception of Princeton, “now
offers more courses in women’s studies than
economics, even though economics majors outnumber
women’s studies majors by roughly
10-to-1.”
In contrast, there are virtually no men’s
studies courses. The few courses labeled
“men’s studies” are rarely genuine
men’s studies, but feminist men’s
studies. Feminist men’s studies’ courses
tell men how they can forfeit power, be less
abusive toward women, share the housework... In
feminist men’s studies, when men have a
disadvantage it is seen as men’s fault.
Whether that disadvantage is dying sooner;
committing suicide more; doing worse in almost
everything in school; being less likely to attend
college; paying for children they can see only as
“visitors” after divorce; being more
likely to be in prison; male-only draft
registration; dying sooner of nine of the ten
leading causes of death; suffering 94% of workplace
deaths; being more of the street homeless than
women and children combined. That is, in feminist
studies, women’s disadvantages are often seen
as men’s fault; and in feminist men’s
studies, men’s disadvantages are seen as
men’s fault.
Many women’s studies departments have
become gender studies’ departments, but also
only in theory. The male perspective is not dealt
with—only the feminist perspective on men.
Feminists teaching the men’s perspective on
men and calling it gender studies is like
Republicans teaching Democrats’ perspective on
Democrats and calling it party politics. Just as it
is true that no has less empathy for Democrats than
Republican activists (or vice versa), so it is also
true that no one has less empathy for men than
feminist activists. Feminists call it sexism to
refer to God as He; they don’t call it sexism
to refer to the Devil as He.
Women’s studies in its current form is not
women’s studies—it is feminist studies. A
genuine women’s studies would involve the
views of not just liberal women, but also of
conservative women (e.g., Independent Women’s
Forum; Eagle Forum). Every study of gender should
include four perspectives: those of both liberal
and conservative women, and those of both liberal
and conservative men. Gender studies now studies
only liberal women’s view of women’s
powerlessness, and liberal women’s perspective
on male power. It doesn’t look at liberal or
conservative men’s view of male powerlessness,
or liberal or conservative men’s view of
female power.
What, pray tell, is female power and male
powerlessness? For starters, from the male
perspective, many women have male-paralyzing beauty
power, sexual power, verbal skills and victim
power, even as he is paralyzed by his biological
instinct to protect women.
As a result of the inattention to male
powerlessness and female power, men are as ignorant
about their own powerlessness and female power as
women in the
1950’s were about their own powerlessness
and male power. And as a result, men today are
psychologically about where women were in the
1950’s. The last half century has not been
a battle of the sexes, but a war in which only one
side has shown up. Men have put their heads in the
sand and hoped the bullets would miss. The less
sense this makes now, the more you need genuine
men’s studies.
The feminist objection to genuine men’s
studies sounds convincing: “history is
men’s studies.” Wrong. History is the
opposite of men’s studies: history books
reinforce the traditional male role of
performer. The function of both women and
men’s studies is to question traditional
roles, not reinforce them. Women had to question
the assumption that they must do the child-raising
and couldn’t do the money raising. Men need to
question the assumption that they must do the money
raising and can’t do the child-raising.
Women’s studies is necessary to help women
see clear alternatives to traditional roles;
men’s studies is necessary to help men see
clear alternatives to traditional roles. Men’s
studies is currently needed more than women’s
studies exactly because men’s role has been
less-questioned.
History books, by celebrating men only when they
perform, trap men into stereotyped roles even more
than they trap women, because when we celebrate and
appreciate someone for playing a role, we are
really bribing them to keep playing that role.
Appreciation keeps the slave a slave..
Men’s studies is not for men only. It would
help both sexes understand dad: why dads are so
often afraid to express feelings; why, when dad
becomes 85, he is more than 13 times as likely to
commit suicide as mom; why he is more likely to
suffer from problems with alcoholism and gambling;
why, after divorce, he often feels the children
have been turned against him and the courts have
turned him into a wallet.
Because half of the children’s genes is
their dad’s genes, as men’s studies helps
students understand their dad, it helps them to
understand the half of themselves that is their
dad. Men’s studies, therefore, does not
merely change the student’s relationship to
her or his dad, but the student’s relationship
to her or himself. The corollary is that when
women’s studies portrays men as the dominant
oppressors, and the abusers, molesters and rapists,
it leaves women and men feeling shamed about the
half of themselves that is their dad-- and, for
men, the 100% that is male.
Men’s studies helps every future mom raise
her son more effectively, and to raise her daughter
to learn empathy toward men. Her daughter’s
empathy is eventually extended toward that
daughter’s sons. In contrast, a women’s
studies-only approach toward men leaves her
daughter with antipathy toward men that can become
antipathy toward her sons.
Men’s studies helps both sexes understand
all the problems men deal with as a result of a
heritage that made men able to be loved and
respected only if they were able to kill animals,
kill in war, or make a killing on Wall Street. It
helps both sexes understand all the problems that I
discuss throughout this book. Without men’s
studies, gender studies misunderstands not just
gender but also women, in the same way that if
party politics studied only one party, it would
misunderstand not just party politics as a whole,
but also the party it favors.
Men’s studies is not the opposite of
women’s studies. It doesn’t say women had
rights and men didn’t. It explains that none
of our grandparents had rights—they had
responsibilities. They had obligations. Making
money was about not about male power and privilege,
but about male obligations and responsibilities.
Men who fulfilled their responsibilities most
effectively received female love. Men who failed
received female contempt.
Men’s studies does not say women have the
power and women oppress men. It helps us understand
that neither sex had the right to play the role of
the other sex, and therefore, if power is control
over our lives, neither sex had power. For example,
most dads prior to the early 20th Century had to
forfeit any fantasy of becoming a writer, artist or
musician to get paid enough to feed a family of
ten. Working as a coal miner was not power. Pay was
about the power dad forfeited to get the power of
pay—the power to have his children live a
better life than his. Men’s studies helps both
sexes understand why, instead of power, both sexes
had roles. And to understand that by definition a
role cannot be power—again, because real power
is control over one’s own life. Instead, a
role implies outside forces have control of
one’s life.
Men’s studies explains why, in the past,
the dominant force was neither men nor women, but
the need to survive. And why the
“oppressor” was neither men nor women,
but the fear of starvation.
If close to a half century of women’s
studies without men’s studies had only given
us an understanding of women while neglecting men,
the problem would be easily solvable: create
balance with a half century of men’s studies
without women’s studies. But after a half
century, feminism is part of our nation’s
consciousness like syrup in a pancake: even if it
we attempted removal, the pancake is forever
reshaped. For example, who doesn’t believe
that men earn more money for the same work, or that
men batter women more than women batter men, or
that women do two jobs while men do one? These
beliefs have created a deep-seated anger toward men
and have resulted in policies like affirmative
action extended to women, and women-only
scholarships. Of course, if these beliefs were
true, anger would be warranted. In this colume,
I’ll explain why none of the above is
true.
Ch. 2, “Do Men Have the
Power?”
Excerpts from Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate by Warren Farrell
"The weakness of men is their facade of
strength; the strength of women is their facade of
weakness."
There are many ways in which a woman experiences
a greater sense of powerlessness than her male
counterpart: the fears of aging, rape, date rape;
less physical strength and therefore the fear of
being physically overpowered; less socialization to
take a career that pays enough to support a husband
and children, and therefore the fear of economic
dependency or poverty; less exposure to team
sports—especially pick-up team sports-- and
its blend of competitiveness and cooperation that
is so helpful to career preparation; greater
parental pressure to marry and interrupt career for
children without regard for her own wishes; not
being part of an "old boys" network; having less
freedom to walk into a bar without being
bothered....
Men have a different experience of
powerlessness. Men who have seen marriage become
alimony payments, their home become their wife's
home, and their children become child support
payments for children who have been turned against
them psychologically, feel like they are spending
their life working for people who hate them. They
feel desperate for someone to love but fear that
another marriage might ultimately leave them with
another mortgage payment, another set of children
turned against them, and a deeper desperation. When
they are called "commitment-phobic" they don't feel
understood.
When men try to keep up with payments by working
overtime and are told they are insensitive, or try
to handle the stress by drinking and are told they
are drunkards, they don't feel powerful, but
powerless. When they fear a cry for help will be
met with "stop whining," or that a plea to be heard
will be met with "yes, buts," they skip past
attempting suicide as a cry for help, and just
commit suicide. Thus men have remained the silent
sex and increasingly become the suicide sex.
Fortunately, almost all industrialized nations
have acknowledged the female experiences.
Unfortunately, they have acknowledged only the
female experiences--and concluded that women have
problems, and men are the problem.
Industrialization did a better job of creating
better homes and gardens for women than it did to
create safer coal-mines and construction sites for
men. How?
Industrialization pulled men away from the farm
and family and into the factory, alienating
millions of men from their source of love.
Simultaneously, it allowed women to have more
conveniences to handle fewer children, and
therefore be increasingly connected to their
sources of love. For women, industrialization meant
more control over whether or not to have children,
less likelihood of dying in childbirth, and less
likelihood of dying from almost all diseases. It
was this combination that led to women living
almost 50% longer in 1990 than in 1920. And it was
this combination that allowed women to go from
living only one year longer than men in 1920 to
living more than five years longer than men in
2005.
What we have come to call male power,
then—men at the helm of industrialization--
actually produced female power. It literally gave
women a longer life than men.
While the male role in industrialization
expanded women’s options, it retained
men’s obligations. For example, men voted for
women to share the option to vote. But when both
sexes could vote, they still obligated only men to
register for the draft.
We are at a unique moment in history -- when a
woman’s body is affected, we say the choice is
hers; but when a boy’s body is affected, we
say the choice is not his -- the law requires only
our 18 year old sons to register for the draft, and
therefore potential death-if-needed.
"A Woman's Body, A Woman's Choice" vs.
“A Man's Gotta Do What A Man's Gotta
Do”
Even as women were touting equality in the
1980’s and 1990’s, in post offices
throughout the United States, Selective Service
posters reminded boys of what is still true
today--that only boys must register for the
draft—that only “A Man’s Gotta Do
What A Man’s Gotta Do.”
If the Post Office had a poster saying "A Jew's
Gotta Do What A Jew's Gotta Do".... Or if "A
Woman's Gotta Do..." were written across the body
of a pregnant woman....
The question is this: How is it that if any
other group were singled out to register for the
draft based merely on its characteristics at
birth--be that group blacks, Jews, women, or
gays--we would immediately recognize it as
genocide, but when men are singled out based on
their sex at birth, men call it power?
The single biggest barrier to getting men to
look within is that what any other group would call
powerlessness, men have been taught to call power.
We don't call "male-killing" sexism; we call it
"glory." We don't call the one million men who were
killed or maimed in one battle in World War I (the
Battle of the Somme) a holocaust, we call it
"serving the country." We don't call those who
selected only men to die "murderers." We call them
"voters."
Our slogan for women is "A Woman's Body, A
Woman's Choice"; our slogan for men is "A Man's
Gotta Do What A Man's Gotta Do."
I am unaware of a single feminist demonstration
protesting this inequality—or any other
inequality that benefits only women at the expense
of men.
The Power Of Life
We acknowledge that blacks dying six years
sooner than whites reflects the powerlessness of
blacks in American society. Yet men dying in excess
of five years sooner than women is rarely seen as a
reflection of the powerlessness of men in American
society.
Is the five-year gap biological? If it is, it
wouldn't have been just a one-year gap in 1920. (In
many pre-industrialized countries there is only a
small male-female life expectancy gap, and in their
more rural areas men sometimes live longer.)
If men lived more than five years longer than
women, feminists would be helping us understand
that life expectancy was the best measure of who
has the power. And they would be right. Power is
the ability to control one's life. Death tends to
reduce control. Life expectancy is the bottom
line--the ratio of our life's stresses to our
life's rewards.
If power means having control over one's own
life, then perhaps there is no better ranking of
the impact of sex roles and racism on power over
our lives than life expectancy. Here is the
ranking:
Life Expectancy
As A Way Of Seeing Who Has The Power
Females (White) 80.5
Females (Black) 76.1
Males (White) 75.3
Males (Black) 69.0
The white female outlives the black male by more
than 11 years. Imagine the support for affirmative
action if a 49-year-old woman was closer to death
than a 60-year-old man.
I am unaware of a single feminist demonstration
protesting this inequality.
Suicide As Powerlessness
Just as life expectancy is one of the best
indicators of power, suicide is one of the best
indicators of powerlessness.
Item.
- From ages 9 to 14, boys' rate of suicide is
three times as high as girls';
- from 15 to 19, four times as high; and
- from 20 to 24, almost six times as
high.
Item. As boys experience the pressures
of the male role, their suicide rate increases
25,000%.
Item. The suicide rate for men over 85 is
1350% higher than for women of the same age
group.
The Clearest Sign Of Powerlessness
Subjection of a group of people to violence
based on their membership in that group is a clear
indicator of that group's powerlessness, be it
Christians to lions or the underclass to war. If a
society supports violence against that group by its
laws, customs or socialization, it oppresses that
group.
In the United States, women are exposed to
greater violence in the form of rape. And therefore
rape is punished by law, and opposed by religion,
custom, socialization and virtually 100% of men and
women.
In contrast, men’s exposure to violence is
required by law (the draft), supported by religion
and custom (circumcision), by socialization,
scholarship incentive, and the education system
(telling men who are best at bashing their heads
against 11 other men that they have "scholarship
potential"), via approval and “love” of
beautiful women (cheerleaders cheering for men to
“do it again”-- to again risk
concussions, spinal chord injuries, etc.), via
parental approval and love (the parents who attend
the Thanksgiving games at which their sons are
battering each other), via taxpayer money (high
school wrestling and football, ROTC, and the
military), and via our entertainment dollar
(boxing, football, ice hockey, rodeos, car racing,
westerns, war movies...). After we subject only our
sons to this violence (before the age of consent),
we blame them for growing into the more violent
sex.
But here's the rub. When other groups are
subjected to violence, we acknowledge their
powerlessness. Men learn to associate violence
against them with love, respect and power. Instead
of helping men who are subjected to violence, we
bribe men to accept it by giving them money to
entertain us by risking death.
This is deeply ingrained. Virtually every
society that has survived has done so via its
ability to prepare its men to be disposable—to
call it “glory” to be disposable in war,
and eligible for marriage to be disposable at
work.
Ch. 3, What the All-Male Draft
and the Combat Exclusion of Women Tell Us About
Men, Women and Feminism
Excerpts from Does
Feminism Discriminate Against
Men? A debate by Warren Farrell
"Every society rests on the death of
men."--Oliver Wendell Holmes
Item. Almost one out of four American men is a
veteran.[i]
Item. In one World War I battle alone (the
Battle of the Somme), over one million men were
killed or maimed.[ii]
Understanding men requires understanding men's
relationship to the Three Ws: Women, Work, and War.
As we just saw in the Section on Power, only
18-year-old boys are legally required to register
for future wars. How realistic is it that the boys
will, in fact, be drafted? We know only that in 24
to 72 hours the first induction orders can be in
the mail.[iii] Should
another 9/11 happen tomorrow, that's how fast your
life or your brother’s or boyfriend’s
life could change. As I write this, National Guard
and Reserve units practice each week setting up the
infrastructure to allow 100,000 men to be trained
for potential death in boot camps in four
weeks.[iv] This
efficiency is made possible by the pre-registration
system.
If a boy refuses to register for the draft when
he turns 18, he can be barred from all federal
jobs--from the US Post Office to the FBI.[v]
He faces a fine of up to $250,000 and five years in
prison.[vi] Once in
prison, a young man's nubile, young body combined
with his reputation for not fighting makes him a
perfect candidate for homosexual rape and,
therefore, AIDS. In brief, he is subject to being
killed. Why? He was too sensitive to kill.
The Multi-Option Woman And The No-Option
Man
In many states, an 18-year-old boy who has not
registered for the draft cannot attend a state
school.[vii] He cannot
receive even a loan for a private school.
Male-only draft registration leaves a woman who
doesn't register for the draft able to:
(1) go to a state school;
(2) go to a private school with federal aid;
or
(3) get married and work; be single and work;
have children...
It leaves a man who doesn't register able
to:
(1) go to jail;
(2) go to jail;
(3) go to jail.
“Male obligation” vs. “Female
entitlement”
Before boys and men can vote, they have the
obligation to protect that right with the risk of
their life; women receive the right to vote without
the obligation to protect that right with the risk
of anything. Only women receive the privileges
of freedom without a single obligation. This
male-female legal gap creates a male-female
psychological gap—a gap between male
obligation and female entitlement.
I say “male obligation” vs.
“female entitlement” because, even if one
believes that women should not be in combat (for
whatever reason), there are dozens of other
obligations that women could be required to
register for at age 18—administrative roles,
technical support, medical support, factory
support. But nothing is required of women. And
everyone takes that for granted. That’s
entitlement.
How the Law Affects Men vs. Women’s
Moral Maturity
More important, when registering to be a
potential killer is a legal requirement for only
boys, that frees a woman from moral dilemmas,
allowing her to see herself and other women as more
innocent and moral than the young man she sits next
to in class. (Hence, we decry “the
innocent women and children” killed in
war.)
The magnitude of the moral dilemma is greatest
at two points in history: when going to war is
likely; when our country is engaged in a war the
boy considers immoral. Then, every boy must face
the moral dilemma of registering to be drafted to
potentially lose his life and kill others for
something he may consider immoral. For many boys,
even if they are in college and think they will
never be drafted, the likelihood that their college
teachers and peers will consider a war like the War
in Iraq immoral and illegal, makes registering for
it an ethical dilemma. No matter what their level
of developmental readiness, only boys are forced to
lose their innocence as a rite of passage to
adulthood.
My Body, My Business?
For women, it's "our bodies, our business"; for
men, it's "our bodies, government business." For
men, G.I. means government issue. A woman’s
body is a woman’s issue; a man’s body is
the government’s issue.
Registering all of our 18-year-old males for the
draft in the event the country needs more soldiers
is as sexist as registering all of our 18-year-old
females for child-bearing by force in the event the
country needs more children.
Why Should Women Fight in the Wars Men
Cause?
Some feminists say that men cause wars, so
it’s only right men should fight. This is like
saying, women raise children, so it’s only
right women should go to prison for the crimes
committed by children. Parents—not women-- are
ultimately responsible for raising children, and
voters of both sexes are ultimately responsible for
their laws and their leaders. And in the U.S.,
seven million more female voters than male voters
elect the politicians who create the policies that
make or prevent war.
Aren’t there more male politicians, though?
Yes. Politicians are like chauffeurs—their
bodies are in the driver’s seat; voters are
like the owners in the back seat telling the
chauffeur where to go. The politician and chauffeur
have some discretion as to how to get there, but
the voters-- or owners in the back seat—are
the ones who must take responsibility for the
chauffeurs and politicians they hire, and where
they tell them to go.
On the deepest levels, wars are not caused by
men, and oppression is not created only by men.
Rent An Officer and a Gentleman. When I saw
An Officer and a Gentleman in a theater when
it first opened, the women cheered wildly when the
female heroine got the officer who had learned how
to kill, not the pacifist who refused to kill. As
long as women choose the killer genes, they will
create children from the genes of killers, not from
the genes of pacifists. And if women did not choose
those genes, there would be no war from which
Europeans would live in America. And if American
women only started choosing pacifist men’s
genes in 1900, they would now be Nazis speaking
German. Similarly, if women cared about Blacks not
being oppressed, no woman would be wearing a
diamond mined by companies supporting Apartheid.
Women who are adult enough to take responsibility
for their choices will acknowledge their role in
both war and oppression.
[i]See US Department of
Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical
Abstract of United States: 2006, 126th edition, p.
346, Table 509; p. 344, Table 505; and p. 13, Table
11.
[ii]See John Laffin,
Brassey's Battles: 3500 Years of Conflict,
Campaigns, and Wars from A-Z (London: A. Wheaton
& Co., 1986), p. 399.
[iii]Air Force Lt. Col.
Ronald Meilstrup, Deputy Director of the Selective
Service System's Regional Headquarters in
Illinois.
[iv]Bob Secter, "The
Draft: If There's a War, There's a Way," Los
Angeles Times, January 3, 1991, p. E-1 &
E-5.
[v]Military Selective
Service Act. See "Privacy Act Statement," SSS Form
1, Registration Form, September, 1987.
[vi]Military Selective
Service Act. See "Privacy Act Statement," SSS Form
1, Registration Form, September, 1987.
[vii]Jim Schwartz,
College Press Service, 1986.
© 2008, Warren
Farrell (with Steven Svoboda) vs. James P.
Sterba
* * *
Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow
victim. - Betty Friedan
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