There is no misconception on my part. I never claimed that everyone in the military is involved in combat, nor that it is a regular part of daily life in the military. All of that is quite obvious.
The point I am making is that, as a society, we have decided that it is acceptable to force people into military service, and that such service may lead to a disruption of their lives, injury (both mental and physical), and death. That is not to say that everyone drafted will suffer such fates. But it is to say that we are willing to require it of a portion of society.
The story in The Handmaid’s Tale involves a threat potentially worse than any conflict our nation has ever been in. In such times, it is not unreasonable to imagine that society would decide that a small portion of women would need to be forced into service to ensure the survival of the race.
The story is often portrayed as being a tale of the mistreatment of women. I think the threat that their society (and the world as a whole) is facing in that story is minimized and virtually ignored by those who view it in that light.
It talks of cities the size of Boston having had no births in the past six years. Clearly the amount of women capable of having children has become a vanishingly small amount. Facing such a crisis, I would not be surprised that any society would take such drastic action to attempt to survive.
The story is told as if a group took over control and enforced this on women to control them, or to try to improve the genetics of society, or for any other such reason. They did so because humanity was facing extinction. And they did this to a very tiny percentage of women.
“There is no misconception on my part. I never claimed that everyone in the military is involved in combat...obvious.
“...as a society, we have decided that it is acceptable to force people into military service...disruption...injury...death...
“...The Handmaid’s Tale involves a threat potentially worse than any conflict...not unreasonable...a small portion of women would need to be forced into service to ensure the survival of the race...
“...cities the size of Boston having had no births in the past six years. Clearly the amount of women capable of having children has become a vanishingly small amount. Facing such a crisis, I would not be surprised that any society would take such drastic action to attempt to survive.
“...The story is told as if a group took over control and enforced this on women to control them, or to try to improve the genetics of society, or for any other such reason. They did so because humanity was facing extinction. And they did this to a very tiny percentage of women.” [sipow, post 32]
I cannot be surprised at the way modern feminists have taken _The Handmaid’s Tale_ to heart, nor can I fret that they’ve altered the plot arc to suit their notions. The Left behaves that way often. Has anyone heard Margaret Atwood complain that the TV/film treatments haven’t been fair or faithful to her written work?
The other unsurprising aspect is that the feminists, and the Left generally, take it as a statement of dogma that the US and other Western nations already oppress and exploit women in just the way the TV/film treatments depict. Anyone so obsessed with injustice, oppression and exploitation cannot really care what dire situation originally caused it all.
To go back to the top of sipow’s post, I can say that after I spent 29 years in uniform, the only obvious thing to me is that sipow’s understanding of the military is superficial. Let me hasten to add that’s not a specific, isolated criticism; the military establishment is so large, so long-lived, so complex, that everybody - even the most senior uniformed leaders - has made the same mistake at times. Including me. We can never assume we have a firm grasp of what’s going on in each and every situation. Veterans who served one hitch, journalists, and activists of all stripe (pro and anti) know less.
sipow writes as if “the draft” is current policy, that it is superior wisdom before which all arguments, all eventualities, must bow down; that it has ensured success in all prior uses and will inevitably be resorted to in the future.
None of that is true nor self-evident; having lived with the draft as a cadet, and participated in the transformation to the all-volunteer force we now have, I can say that the draft may be nothing more than a wild guess dreamt up in the early Industrial Age: there is no Law of Nature nor Divine Revealed Truth setting its usefulness in concrete, nor gifting success to those who dare use it. “We won WW2 because of our draft” cannot be proven.
Forcing people into the military who do not want to be there may give some people a sense of security, but it is a false sense. The draft was a pain in the neck when it was going on. For good or ill, the United States long ago took the path toward a tech-heavy armed forces: volunteers willing to spend the time and effort required to achieve proficiency are essential. We cannot go back. Draftees are a hindrance, not a help.
The first thing to realize about written works such _The Handmaid’s Tale_ and _Implosion_ is that they are fiction: this immediately weakens any parallels that can be drawn between their speculations and the actual, historical record of the draft. Asserting that “At one time, we drafted men and we won wars, therefore it’s justifiable to force women to bear children against their will if a majority of citizens deem depopulation to be a threat big enough” is flawed.
I can contemplate the depopulation of Boston with great calmness. Same goes for every city I’ve been required to enter.
I have spent my entire life resenting the power that cities hold over rural regions; not even in prior times (before, say, 1940) could it be excused. Today, cities contribute precisely nothing of value. Indeed, they embody an ever-increasing drain on resources, and - considering the way politics is shaping up - we might look on them as a threat.
Just how large a percentage of women must be forced to bear children, before sipow would consider such a policy unacceptable? We conservatives purport to prefer liberty above death; the United States was founded on (among other things) the notion that a majority ought not force its will on a minority, no matter how small nor powerless. “National survival” plays no role in that.