8 January, 2007

Are Men Oppressed? Part 2 – Systematic Mistreatment

Posted in Feminist Criticism, Feminist Issues, Gender Issues, Male Disposability, War at 3:36 am by HughRistik

In Part 1 of this series, I observed the tendency of feminists to throw around the term “oppression” without defining it, or explaining why only women are “oppressed,” but never men. Yet I have encountered a few feminists who do believe that men can suffer gender oppression. In this post, I will discuss a differing feminist view.
Read the rest of this entry »

30 December, 2006

Evidence of Male Dispensability Part 1 – the News Media

Posted in Male Disposability, Media, Reposts, War at 11:11 am by Gled

(Originally posted at Creative Destruction. I still haven’t got around to writing part 2.)

In preparing my response to Jeff’s comment to my recent post on Women and the Draft, I seem to have wondered rather far from the topic.
Read the rest of this entry »

29 December, 2006

Feminism and Media Representation of Gender-Selective Atrocities

Posted in Gender Issues, Iraq, Male Disposability, Reposts, War at 11:06 pm by Gled

(Originally posted at Creative Destruction. Here slightly edited.)

Look at this headline on Boston.com

Men in Iraqi police grab kidnap scores in raid

Notice how the perpetrators are gendered, but the victims are not. In fact there’s no mention of the victims’ sex anywhere on the first page. It’s not until you get to the second that you find out what happened:

The gunmen speedily weeded out the men from the women. The women were taken to a room and locked up, witnesses said. The men were pushed into the trucks and driven away. The kidnapped included employees and visitors to the agency, janitors, and PhDs, even a deputy general director of the agency. Some were blindfolded and tossed into the backs of pickup trucks, said witnesses.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Women and Children of Haditha

Posted in Gender Issues, Iraq, Male Disposability, Reposts, War at 10:48 pm by Gled

(Originally posted at Creative Destruction. Here slightly edited.)

In the headline of his Sunday Herald story, Neil Mackay characterised the atrocity as follows:

Haditha: the worst US atrocity since Vietnam … Iraqi women and children massacred by American marines.

After giving a little background, including a comparison with the My Lai massacre during the Viet Nam war, (“mainly women, children, and the elderly”), he gives the following summary of the events in Haditha:

Minutes after Terrazas died, the remaining 13-strong unit of marines went on a bloody rampage, wiping out whole families, killing women, children and an elderly man in a wheelchair, and hurling grenades into homes. In all, 24 Iraqi civilians were murdered by American troops.

Let’s parse the entire story, to see how many of these women and children were actually men.
Read the rest of this entry »