But generally, it is good for people to read lists like this, and to see them in context (since the contents of a list like this change over time).

The fact is that the military industrial complex of the US is intimately tied to an enormous power structure that has been largely held out of the reach of women. Women are separated from the military structure to protect us and in the process we just happen to be separated from a powerful clique that runs a good chunk of our government and money. And it’s that power structure that negates women’s participation from within the US and ignores the horrific effects it’s wars have on women overseas.

Sorry for the slight rant…i’m really bothered by the idea that women are too precious to risk in a war, mostly because i think that is a convenient myth. Women may be too precious to be given a gun and armor and training, but they certainly aren’t too precious to be on the recieving end of a bomb.

We’ve never been at risk of running out of H sapiens. Throughout our history, though, smaller racial and cultural subsets of H sapiens have been absorbed, displaced, oppressed and destroyed by larger racial and cultural subsets of H sapiens.

Dianne: Few people enjoy jury duty. Most would rather not have to do it. But if a law were passed saying that group X is no longer eligible for jury duty, would you consider group X to be privileged or oppressed by that law?

Oppressed. Exemption from juries means X has no influence in matters of justice.

Still, if that’s the concern, why not draft only post-menopausal women?

What about pre-menopausal women who declare they don’t want children? It’s conceptually possible for a society to separate women from war, but I don’t think a society can split the hair much finer.

The even-handed nature of life seems to guarantee that most of the time, to gain something we want we have to give up something else we want. So we make a decision: do we value the social equality that would have come from five million women lying dead alongside the men at the Somme, Verdun, Ypres and other battlegrounds more than we value the preservation of their lives and the lives of all of their progeny?

I ponder the consequences of both options quite a lot, Dianne, because the implications of both vex me. I don’t know in God’s eyes which is the morally superior path, but a great many Americans and French and English and Italian and Russian et al are alive today who wouldn’t be if their mothers and grandmothers had met their end serving in war, and there are a great many Jews and Gypsies and Roma and of course people of many other nations that would be alive today if their mothers and grandmothers, killed as civilians, had been saved, and that means something to me. I accept it as an axiom that the future is inherited by survivors.

It’s not reasonable for you to expect me to wade through 441 comments, none of them by you, in the hope of gleaning what you meant in your comment above.

Oh, why thank you! Without your assistance, how would I ever have divined what was reasonable?

I have no desire to debate this with you, Daran. You asked what I was referring to; I gave you the links. If I asked you to define all the social effects of the impairment in facial expression recognition associated with Asperger’s syndrome, would I get to complain when you sent me to go off and read the studies on “Reading Emotion in the Eye” and etc. by Baron Cohen?

If you were actually interested in learning about what I’m saying, then you wouldn’t demand I respond to you with my personal attention. You’d actually go do the reading, do the learning, absorb things, inform yourself! It is not my role to play teacher.

You’re being really condescending to me and others (it’s *good* that I confuse you! paternalistic, much?), as well as chocking this thread with noise while failing to supply signal. Since you don’t “do hints”, I won’t hint; I think you’re being unreasonable and silly and unthoughtful toward others on this thread.

You’re usually not like this, and certainly not to this extent. I look forward to chatting with you again on another subject, in another place.

So with all due respect, please don’t post in this thread again.

(I’m sure your readers will be hearing about this on your blog…)

Mandolin:

Note that I’m not endorsing everything anyone ever said on them ever.

Are you endorsing everything any feminist ever said on them, ever?

If you do not wish to be presumed to endorse the view of every member of a group to which you voluntarily affiliate, might I also plea to be freed from the presumed association with various “buddies” that I have no philosophical or political connection to whatsoever?

In respect of the first, I must decline, as far as the comments thread is concerned. At the very least, you will need to point out more specifically what it is that explains what you meant by “power dynamic”. It’s not reasonable for you to expect me to wade through 441 comments, none of them by you, in the hope of gleaning what you meant in your comment above.

I did, however, read both posts, and your own comments from the second thread. The latter in particular was most instructive. I guess by “power dynamic” you mean this:

As to the other discussion here, in re: Daran and BrandonBerg — but not *to* Daran and BrandonBerg:

They’re doing. It. Again.

I am still at a loss as to what it was that I did “again” in that thread, unless it was “Yet again, Daran responded to some of the unkind remarks feminists made about him”. To that I plead guilty. A careful review of my comments on that thread will show that I did nothing else.

Daren, No other blog that I am aware of is this friendly to conflicting ideology. I think it’s a good thing brought on by Amps dislike for angry discourse. But imo there’s really very very little room to argue that Alas is hostile to people that disagree with feminists.

As far as choking off discourse…well I can’t speak for others but i usually don’t check in on threads where there are multiple comments by some of the regulars. Especially if I’m already pretty sure what they’re going to say. Sometimes I’ll skim but usually that about it. Thing is, they (feminists) seem to like arguring with you most of the time. So if there are 4 comments by you, one by amp, one by sailorman, 3 more by you, one by mandolin and one by someone else I’m pretty sure what you’re talking about and that it will be the focus of the conversation.

I agree. This is only place where I still come to discuss politics regularly. Very bullshit-free.

It’s been hard to keep out of this discussion, because I find it so interesting, but I too generally shy away from discussions dominated by the regulars. They tend to be heated, in-depth discussions about gender issues, which I usually don’t have super-strong opinions about, and jumping in and playing food-for-thought, I’m-just-a-fence-sitter guy being a very obnoxious thing to do and all. (And if anyone feels I’ve done just that with this post, I’d like to apologize pre-emptively.)

One point at issue here is that while very few people want to be drafted, being eligible for the draft is a sign of being considered a full adult in this society. Being able to get out of the draft–or able to chose consiously to allow oneself to be drafted– is a sign of privilege (see G Bush and A Gore in the Vietnam era). But not being eligible for the draft is, in some senses, a statement that society considers you “lesser” in some way (i.e. the ban on gays in the military.) One might consider draft registration as analagous to jury duty. Few people enjoy jury duty. Most would rather not have to do it. But if a law were passed saying that group X is no longer eligible for jury duty, would you consider group X to be privileged or oppressed by that law?

Hmm. I don’t know… the draft has been used as legitimizing full citizenship: students’ conscription into Vietnam lowered the voting age to 18, Black men’s conscription into WWII provided part of the impetus for the civil rights movement. So I do think you have a point.

But I also think there are some major differences between jury duty and the draft. People want women off the draft lists because they believe women are incapable of violence and would be a hindrance to the army, and use this absence in a roundabout way to argue against their equality in other areas. People want women off the jury lists because they believe women are incapable of impartial reason. Big difference, in my view.

Ultimately, I don’t buy the feminist argument that the gender-specific demands of violence placed on men always carry with it a “but”, as in “but this just demeans women even more when you think about it”. For instance, the gender-specific physical violence of male bullies, which scars both the bullied and those forced to bully, is a specific male disadvantage, period, in my opinion. But the draft, with its political history, is more of a double-edged sword. I suspect most women would rather be drafted than to hear the draft used to justify the glass ceiling and occupational segregation and the like.

(EDIT: Note to Daran: I’m not implicating you in the last paragraph, I know you don’t support either the glass ceiling or occupational segregation. However, it’s plain fact that the draft has been used in this way by other people.)

Daran, it might help your readability if you let all the petty shit go and just focused on whatever your main point is.

As I said, I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. But not all damnations are equal, so your point is taken.

Setting aside the skewed arguments about custody cases, this sounds an awful like conservative arguments about poverty.

Any similarity between my arguments and those of conservatives are 1. Superficial and 2. Coincidental.

If you’re poor, it must be because you’re too stupid or lack motivation. If you’re better-off, then by golly you must have earned it through all of your hard work.

I suspect that oversimplifies conservatives’ arguments, but I’m not, um, motivated at this point to analyse their positions. I’m having enough difficulty expressing my own.

I’m would certainly not agree that stupidity and demotivation are the reasons for poverty. Poverty is multicausal. On the other hand, I would have thought it self-evident that stupidity and demotivation are two causal factors among many, which contribute to poverty.

Furthermore, I would argue that there are social forces beyond the control of the poor, which operate to demotivate and stupify them. Thus I would argue that “stupid” is the wrong word here. “Punch-drunk” would be better. I speak as someone who is demotivated, stupified, punchdrunk, and consequently poor.

To summarise:

1. I attribute poverty to many social forces, not solely or primarily the personal characteristics of the poor.
2. The personal characteristics of the poor are themselves the products of social forces.

I believe these views put me firmly in the liberal/progressive camp.

This statement makes it sound like single mothers just aren’t as “motivated” to provide for their families, and that’s why there is a gap in household earning. (It couldn’t be the de facto segregation of men and women into certain jobs, and the associated pay scale.) You need to prove that men who have custody are somehow more “motivated” before making any of these inferences. Not to mention the implication that there is a definite correlation between “motivation” and earnings among single parents.

I’m sorry that my argument sounds that way. It really isn’t. Do you understand the concept of a selection effect?

Men sometimes get custody for a lot of the same reasons that women sometimes get custody–the other partner is unwilling and/or unavailable. You do know that in contested custody cases, men are awarded custody about as often as women, right?

I haven’t focussed on custody. (My main research specialisation is war attrocity). There is lot about custody that I don’t know.

Again, selection effects are important.

As for gender and global poverty, you have suggested that the statistics are wrong without providing any reason why this is so, except for an irrelevant claim about war victims. If you have the backing to disprove the claim that women and children do not make up the majority of impoverished people on a global scale, then show us why this fairly well-established claim is false. Don’t just talk about something else trying to “prove” the argument. That’s not an argument.

You claim that this statistic is well-established. What do you mean by that? That it is accepted by many scholars? So what? I gave you examples of facts accepted by many scholars which are demonstrably false, emprirically unfounded, or literally true but misleading.

Show me (and, more importantly, show yourself) that these statistics are empirically well-founded, which is the only kind of “well-established” that matters. Track them back to their sources. If you can show that this statistic has a better foundation than somebody’s best guess, then I will happily donate $100 or its Sterling equivalent to the charity of your choice.

(And both of us will be the better for the deal. You will have learned something, and through you, so will I.)

Re: the Mandolin/Daran thing. I don’t know about everyone else, but even if I (sometimes) agree with Daran, I stop reading the two page long diatribes after awhile. Nothing else is being said that wasn’t said earlier. We got your point long before, and you aren’t really adding anything new. Daran, you said something awhile back about how you have to be told to leave, you don’t take hints. IMHO, those shouldn’t be the two possibilities (leaving or continuing to doggedly argue). There’s also the “I think I got my point across. They don’t agree with me, and that’s OK” point.

Hi, Plunky, thanks for your delurk and you POV.

I realise there is a problem with my two-page long (and longer) diatribes not being read, or being skimmed. That’s a matter of presentation. What I don’t know is what to do about it, given my goal, which is to support the contention that w > m is a better model of reality than m > w.

I don’t know whether “we” got my point, whoever “we” is supposed to be. My guess is that if each of “we” individually posted a comment stating my point, a small number of you will have got it, a much larger number will have kinda, sorta, partly got it, and some won’t have got it at all.

Re: the Mandolin/Daran thing. I don’t know about everyone else, but even if I (sometimes) agree with Daran, I stop reading the two page long diatribes after awhile. Nothing else is being said that wasn’t said earlier. We got your point long before, and you aren’t really adding anything new. Daran, you said something awhile back about how you have to be told to leave, you don’t take hints. IMHO, those shouldn’t be the two possibilities (leaving or continuing to doggedly argue). There’s also the “I think I got my point across. They don’t agree with me, and that’s OK” point.

But well-motivated men in one respect are likely to be well-motivated in others, such as in providing for their families.

Setting aside the skewed arguments about custody cases, this sounds an awful like conservative arguments about poverty. If you’re poor, it must be because you’re too stupid or lack motivation. If you’re better-off, then by golly you must have earned it through all of your hard work. This statement makes it sound like single mothers just aren’t as “motivated” to provide for their families, and that’s why there is a gap in household earning. (It couldn’t be the de facto segregation of men and women into certain jobs, and the associated pay scale.) You need to prove that men who have custody are somehow more “motivated” before making any of these inferences. Not to mention the implication that there is a definite correlation between “motivation” and earnings among single parents.

Men sometimes get custody for a lot of the same reasons that women sometimes get custody–the other partner is unwilling and/or unavailable. You do know that in contested custody cases, men are awarded custody about as often as women, right?

As for gender and global poverty, you have suggested that the statistics are wrong without providing any reason why this is so, except for an irrelevant claim about war victims. If you have the backing to disprove the claim that women and children do not make up the majority of impoverished people on a global scale, then show us why this fairly well-established claim is false. Don’t just talk about something else trying to “prove” the argument. That’s not an argument.

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/12/28/why-alas-needs-radical-feminist-woman-only-threads/

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/04/17/the-moderation-policy/

I don’t think the regulars “enjoy” arguing the same arguments over and over again. There is simply a dislike for letting the anti-feminist bullshit stand — the blog is (or at least was) often read by feminists new to the blogosphere, and they don’t necessarily have the benefit of having seen this argument play over 50 times.

I, however, have vanishingly little interest in it. Which is more or less why I’m not going to argue the like 900,000,000 points of illogic Daran has brought up here. I came in to try to manage social dynamics, not try to argue reason with someone who has a great deal of time to squander on the discussion and also thinks disenfranchisement is no biggie.

I still read a number of feminist blogs where stuff that’s actually interesitng happens. But mostly Alas just makes me tired.

Update: The comments threads, that is.