The following is a slightly abridged extract from Warren Farrell’s recently published (and brilliant) book - ‘Does feminism discriminate against men?’ Farrell here discusses ‘male obligation’ and ‘female entitlement’ in relation to violence and to rights over one’s own body:
‘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); and encouraged by socialization, scholarship, incentive, and the education system (telling men who are best at bashing their heads against eleven 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, etc.) 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.
“Every society rests on the death of men”. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
ITEM: Almost 1 out of 4 American men is a veteran.
ITEM: In one World War I battle alone (the battle of the Somme), over 1 million men were killed or maimed.
If a boy refuses to register for the draft when he turns eighteen, he can be barred from all federal jobs – from the U.S. Post Office to the FBI. He faces a fine of $250,000 and up to 5 years in prison. Once in prison, a 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.
Only women receive the privileges of freedom without a single obligation. …I say “male obligation” versus “female entitlement” because, even if one believes that women should not be in combat (for whatever reason) there are dozens of other obligations women could be required to register for at age eighteen – administrative roles, technical support, medical support, factory support. But nothing is required of women. And everyone takes that for granted. That’s entitlement.
..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.
..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 that the nation needs more soldiers is as sexist as registering all of our 18 year old females for child-bearing by force in the event that the nation needs more children.’
