That was the headline on my Sunday paper 11/28/2010. A more accurate and Politically Incorrect view would be to notice that male and female vets deal with sexism at home and overseas but to notice, really notice, the sexism men live with shows a certain lack of chivalry and we just don’t go there.
“Women have always been the primary victims of war” said Hillary Clinton, while at a conference on Domestic Violence in San Salvador.
If 58,000 women had been killed in Viet Nam and 8 men would Hillary suggest that “men were the primary victims of war?” She says women were the primary victims because they lost husbands, fathers, and sons in combat. Dear Hillary, trust me, my mother could care less that I have a 100% disability from military duty. Life isn’t as black and white as your feminist lens shows you it is. Some women grieve, some don’t, but living with a 100 percent disability or losing your life is a bigger price than you can begin to understand because of your protected status as a woman.
Pat Schroeder, D- Colo, served in the House Armed Services Committee from 1973 to 1979. To emphasize the risk to women she said of Iraq “The whole place is literally a front line. She wants you to believe that the women face the same risks as men. If that’s true than why is it that last week, and the weeks before, and this week, and for weeks after we can count on males being killed and are surprised (and dismayed) when a woman is killed?
Mark Brunswick of the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote “Back home, women veterans battle sexism,” in a spirit befitting Shroeder and Clinton. And most who read such commentary regarding sexism towards women just shake their heads in despair noticing that one more time women pay a price for sexism that selfish men are spared in our “patriarchal society.”
“721 women have been wounded and 132 killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan more than in all U.S. conflicts since World War II.” You can find this message in Brunswick’s article and if you Goggle “Number of women killed in Iraq.” You will find similar articles.
I do know that if you doubled the number of men killed in Viet Nam it would be 116,000 and tripling the number of women would be 24 but without exact numbers for comparison with men readers would assume females are going all Rambo in Iraq, carrying huge packs and tracking down the enemy. One woman wrote these two lines in an online article.
First the title: “Why are Women Still Considered Second-Class soldiers?” followed by, “More women have died in Iran and Iraq that all the wars since WWII.”
She, like Brunswick and Schroeder and Clinton want you to believe that in civilian life and war that women run similar risks and pay an equal price as men. Facts don’t matter. What was left out is that many of those deaths are typical deaths related to what you would find in any population of 250,000 in a year.
A death from a car wreck is more likely to happen to a female soldier than death from a sniper and most likely Clinton and Shroeder would call those car accidents “war deaths,” “on the front lines,” if they happen in a war zone.
Feminists like to inflate their numbers any way they can. Inflating military deaths to heroic proportions is no different than how they look at a man shoving his wife and calling it “battery” to inflate Domestic Violence numbers. The intent is to make women look heroic when they are not. Likewise, they ignore a woman slapping a man and suggest that “he had it coming.” They are silent about male pain because it is based on chivalry and makes women look more angelic- when many women are not.
Compared to male deaths few women are dying in our wars, period.
Deal with it.
Men are 93% more likely to die in American work places than women are and 99.999 percent more likely to die in war, Men are 4 times more likely to commit suicide as woman and much more likely to end up on the streets or in jail.
Young males, black males especially, are much less likely to graduate from college. Men are much more likely to die early because of pollutants and stress from decades in dirty and dangerous work places while supporting children and women. Men are much more likely to be victims of robberies, beatings and homicides. Men in prison, innocent or guilty, are at exceedingly high risk of rape, and few people, very few, care.
We rarely hear about the price men pay in work or war or civilian life in general because of gender. We are “bombarded” with MSinformation regarding gender and always the assumption is, sexism is a one way street – something men do and women pay for. Male victims rarely count, female victims always do.
Any man who protests sexism towards men or the outrageous indoctrination of our children by such lies and myths in such PC times will be accused of misogyny, hatred of women, by those who can’t even define the word misandry; hatred of men.
We like men to shut up, not whine, not complain, strong and silent equals a good man. Brunswick is doing what many modern male authors do, kiss feminist ass to get front page coverage in the press. He gets a paycheck and praise while another generation of children grow up hearing such stories about how the male gender is sexist.
Brunswick wrote about a female soldier: “Sgt. Bieber was part of the combat mission, except officially she wasn’t. How can a solider simultaneously be part of a combat unit and not part of the unit.?”
Well, it depends on if they are going to intentionally put you in harms way, or not. We intentionally put males in harms way, we do the best we can to reduce the risk to women, it doesn’t always work out. I have as much respect for Sgt. Breena Bieber as any male soldier. She is leaving the military after seven years, and said “There is nothing I would change about my military career.”
But respecting her doesn’t mean I have to disregard the truth.
Any sexism she faces because of her gender, related to war, pales compared to the number of injuries and deaths of men and boys because of their gender.
Some individual men and women face sexism, some don’t, but Politically Correct journalists like Brunswick assume sexism only harms women. He mentions how a male left at home to care for children had support, unlike women who are expected to do such things alone.
Reading his article I would guess that he was neither a stay at home dad or in the military. As a veteran with a 100 percent disability I took care of two children while their mother worked on her masters and worked-full time. It wasn’t easy for either of us but harder for her. There are some real perks caring for a child that many men don’t know about and that women seem to hide from men while claiming “men just don’t know how hard it is.”
For the record, many professional women who left kids in day care wish they could go back and do it over while supported partially or fully by a man. There is a good reason or two for this.
While caring for the children some women overdid the patronizing comments about what a great and unusual man I must be. Others said “men shouldn’t care for children” and others treated me as equal to women in that role. It’s not only women caring for children who face sexism but such sexism is easy to deal with compared to military life, 24/7, for soldiers, male or female.
When we hear how the current wars are claiming more female lives than all the wars since WWII many will think it must be in the thousands. It’s not. Mark Brunswick informs us that 250,000 women have served and that 5% of homeless vets are women and that a higher percentage of women vets are unemployed.
Last one first. Are they unemployed because a spouse is supporting them, something male vets are less likely to find? Are they searching for flexible, easy and meaningful work as women tend to do if a man is supporting them? Did Brunswick even consider that? And if 5% of vets who are homeless are women, what percentage are men? Isn’t that more worthy of note and indicative of sexism?
He said female vets are less likely to seek help? Based on what study? It took me 25 years to go for help because my disability was from police work and not war. When I went for help I ended up with a 100% disability the first time through.
In vet groups we did some outreach and found men from WWII who had been living with PTSD for decades. Brunswick’s article doesn’t even deal with the higher rates of male suicide in battle areas and at home. Is he unaware that men are more likely than women to kill themselves, or use drugs and booze to get by or to have one car or one motorcycle accidents? Driver error?
Hillary and all the women alive in America today have had the vote. It’s been about a hundred years since women, the largest voting block there is, have been voting and none protested when only males were drafted, many too young to vote, during the Viet Nam era. Few noticed the “sexism” of 58,000 males and 8 females dying in Viet Nam for our country. Boys might have avoided the war because they thought it wrong but not because of the sexism while some females protested the sexism of not taking shop class.
My son and daughter didn’t go into the military. I had children late in life, age 40 plus. They are college students. If both were in the military the odds that my son would be blown apart are so much higher that it’s obscene to pretend that women face equal risks.
In civilian life it’s the same; it’s much safer to be born a female in America. Pop Quiz. In America women outlived men by a year in 1920 and now it’s seven years, so which gender had five national health centers and now finds the Obama crew making it ten while the other gender has none?
It’s not women who face the worst discrimination in America; it’s men. We teach boys to hide their pain, suck it up, “man up” or shoot yourself. Girls tears are kissed away. It’s always been that way.
Clinton’s sexist idea of war was expressed to the First Ladies’ Conference on Domestic Violence in San Salvador: “Women have always been the primary victims of war” she said. Does anyone really believe that if women were coming home in body bags every week, or suffering brain injuries from road side bombs at the rate men are, or killed by snipers at the rates men are that she would not still claim it was women who were and are the primary victims of war? In wars overseas and in the gender war at home it’s men who pay the highest price.
It’s time to stop pretending otherwise.
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Steven DeLuca, US Army retired.
PO BOX 1234 Mendocino CA 95460
