The Draft – including women - will Start in June 2005 From Here Be Hippogriffs
I don’t know how I feel about this. I’ve always been a bit rabid on the issue that if boys are required to register for the draft then girls should be too. Wherever men go, women should be there to - evenunto the trenches of the front lines. And vice versa. I’d always planned, if there ever was a draft called to try to register myself as a matter of principle. I had just as much of a right to fight & die for my country as my brother, I thought. Not that I’d want to, of course - and especially not in a war whose justification was morally suspect. Though – in the event of a morally just war (only being the defense of one's friends & family, such as an invasion by aliens or Cuba – that’s about it) I’d have volunteered anyway so the draft wouldn’t have been necessary. So I guess I was arguing for my right to become cannon fodder for rich, old fatcats in Washington in an unjust war, just like young men have been for millenia. Sounds ridiculous, I know. But I so strongly believed in the equality of the sexes that it made perfect sense. If I wanted full equality with my brother that meant I had to accept both the privelege and the sacrifice. Though ideally, I don’t want either one of us to be fed to the Gods of blood and money.
But now that I'm 32 and well past the age of having to register, and it looks like younger women *will* have to take my place on the front lines, I don't know how I feel. Do I have the right to insist they be sent off to die on my behalf? Especially given the high rate of sexual assault in the military? Ideally? I want a world where there's no need for a military at all. Short of that, I want a military where men accept women as equals, and honor them as comrades in arms - not interlopers. But that can't be accomplished if there aren't any women there in the first place.
I’m sure I’ll be writing my representatives about this but right now I’m damned if I know what to say.
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