CSotD: Gender issues
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I saw Greg Kearney’s cartoon before I heard the news that someone is petitioning the Supreme Court to declare draft registration unconstitutional.
Which it is, but the Biden administration is asking the Court not to take a second look until Congress has had a chance to review the matter.
Apparently, they’re waiting for Joe Manchin to vote in favor of drafting women.
I’m waiting for him to sprout feathers and start laying golden eggs.
I’d remind Kearney that the women are already in those bunkers. As that Washington Post article reports
In 1981, the court ruled 6 to 3 in Rostker v. Goldberg that because the primary function of the draft was to form combat-ready forces, Congress was justified in treating men and women differently. At the time, women were excluded from combat roles.
Not only is the ruling outdated, but not every man who was drafted in the Old Days was destined for combat, though, granted, my friend Danny wasn’t drafted.
He enlisted in the Marines, and most of my buddies who did that ended up in the mud.
Danny’d grown up with a deer rifle in his hand and not only could he pick off a buck at 200 yards but he didn’t have to because he had learned to move in the brush like a ghost.
So they made him a cook, and, in case you didn’t know it, women were able to cook back then, and many of them still can.
The idea that the military is totally made up of combat soldiers is nonsense, to which I would add that many of the bravest, boldest, most vociferous rah-rah veterans of Vietnam never saw the place and couldn’t find it on a map.
I don’t know how much it ever occurred to radicals back in those days that women should also be drafted, because we were mostly focused on the idea that nobody should be.
So when the Baez sisters — Joan, Mimi and Pauline — posed for this iconic poster, they did so with a decidedly sexist attitude, which I’m sure inspired more guys to turn out for protests than to actually resist the draft, though Joanie by-gawd did say yes to a fellow who by-gawd said no.
Then Esquire tried to ramp it up a bit by reporting that demonstrators were putting women in the front of their ranks because cops wouldn’t beat them up.
Nonsense. Women took an active role in the demonstrations, but the cops beat the shit out of them, too, on the rare occasions that demonstrations became violent.
And let’s also reveal that, regardless of how many clean-cut frat boys thought they’d picked the wrong era in which to go to college, it wasn’t a matter of the girls saying yes to boys who say no.
They weren’t saying yes to dorks of any political persuasion.
Anyway, there was no reason to be conscripting boys that didn’t apply equally to conscripting girls, because, even before they were allowed into combat, there were plenty of jobs in the military that women could do.
There were also jobs that the sons of Senators and attorneys and doctors could do, and there wasn’t much excuse for not drafting them, either, except that they all seemed to have asthma or ulcers or something dire and disqualifying.
But getting back to the case at hand, or the case that will be at hand if SCOTUS takes it up, I’m not in favor of a military draft but I wouldn’t mind seeing a gender-neutral, incentivized national service program that would include the military.
What if people who served in the Peace Corps or Vista or who pledged to teach in underserved communities or whatnot were given the same educational benefits as if they chose to serve in the military?
Purely voluntary. Those who chose not to serve could pile up all the student loan debt they wanted.
While we all enjoyed universal health care, because we were living in a civilized nation.
I like the idea, but I’m not holding my breath.
Biden’s going to wait for Congress to act on the subject, and the new White Supremacy Caucus would vote against a bathroom break if it were a Democrat who made the motion.
And if you doubt that the Selective Service runs on testosterone, here’s the Hans-und-Franz anti-girly-man public service announcement they’re running.
Keep washing those dishes, Mommy. You’re good at that!
Now here’s an even more toxic
Juxtaposition of Sex-Related Hatemongering
That defiantly racist caucus is hardly the only place where conservative lawmakers have stopped pretending not to be bigots and bullies.
They’re also staring into our bedrooms, our bathrooms and our pants, obsessed with other people’s genitals.
These bigots are no longer simply praying pridefully on street corners, or writing incoherent letters to the editor. They were elected to Congress by people who are apparently just as hateful, arrogant and ignorant.
Currently, it’s the war on transgender children that attracts these Christian Taliban, mostly in state legislatures, as Berge notes, but throughout our country, as Luckovich points out.
Nor does Luckovich pretend not to know which party is whipping them up rather than censuring them.
It’s the party of Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump and other people who pay for sex, or for the silence of their sexual partners, and who brag of “grabbing them by the pussy” and defend their own vulgar boasting as manly locker room talk.
And who think — or legislate as if they believe — that people choose whether to be attracted to men or women the way they choose whether to play soccer or football, and that they choose to accept or reject their own sexual identity the same way.
And who are not simply content to foster this ignorance in their own dark burrows but feel compelled to make their bigotry into law, to hurt, control and victimize little kids.
And who keep getting voted into office as we slide past the gains of the past century and into the mouth of Hell.
Speaking of which, slaves loved the story of Samson, who — betrayed, blinded and chained by his tormentors — asked the Lord for one final burst of strength.
Amen.
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