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From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Sexism vs. Men's Oppression
Message-ID: <MUFFY.91May24155156@remarque.berkeley.edu>
Date: 28 May 91 23:47:52 GMT
References: <1991May13.194337.3494@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
	<282f3194.17a3@petunia.CalPoly.EDU>
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In article <282f3194.17a3@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross) writes:
>  According to obermark@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Jon Obermark):
>   <overall a good summary of arguments about sexism & oppression>
>>        But if you investigate men's oppression you note that seldom are
>>women its source.  And though individual women can use it to their
>>advantage, so can individual men.  So that women *as a class* gain nothing
>>from its existence. The oppression creates "handles" that allow men to
>>be used as efficient, dispassionate, expendable tools without any
>>obligation of actual human contact on the users part.  But these handles
>>are open to male hands as easily as to female hands, and men tend to
>>abuse them more often than women do.

> Here I start to disagree with you.  If you take, for example,
> the use of men as military pawns, often (in the case of the
> draft) against their will, I would argue that women *as a
> class* do benefit from having men be the only ones on the
> front lines.  In an egalitarian society, a good chunk of
> the infantry would be women, so in this non-egalitarian
> society, their places on the front lines and therefore in
> Arlington National Cemetary are being taken by men.  A woman,
> because she is a woman, knows that she has no risk under our
> current system of being drafted, and furthermore she knows
> that should she decide to join the military she will not be
> assigned to a combat position (this may change soon)

Why do you assume that this it is a benefit to women to be
discriminated against by the military?  I know of at least two women
of my acquaintance who were upset that they were not *allowed* to be
involved in the combat in the Gulf.  The women who do choose a career
in the military are not given the same opportunities, rights, etc. as
men.  This certainly isn't a benefit to them.

In addition, I and my female friends do not sit around and gloat/feel
secure/whatever because we cannot be drafted, any more than I suppose
most men sit around and gloat over how they ("as a class") get paid so
much more, on average, than women.

Discrimination against women, even to "protect" them, is not of benefit
to them.  The point is not that women are in a "privileged" position
because so many fewer of them die in combat, but that they are not
allowed to make that choice for themselves, so they are kept in a
subordinate/"child"/protected position.  We don't benefit from the
government making decisions "for our own good."

I don't want to see anyone drafted, or anyone serving in the military or
in combat, but if people are/do, I think that women should be treated
equally with men.

Muffy