a small monster in his cave

It’s not about what happened then, it’s about what is going on now. A minor clarification on the point however. There draft hasn’t been actively used since then, it’s still here and with us to this day.

The Selective Service System is “The Draft”. It is alive and well. It’s currently sits idle absorbing the names of all men in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 25 inclusive. It can be activated by congress if they see fit. It’s in the MSSA, most recently amended in 2003.

It’s a real thing that hangs over the head of every man in the U.S. But that’s not the entirety of the point.

Legal prosecution for not signing up is rare, there have been about two people charged for not signing up since 1980, and only because they were making a huge public stink about not signing up. So hey, no big deal right? Just don’t register and keep your mouth shut, all clear yeah? Not at all.

Because now we have incentive laws, created to increase the ratio of men complying with the law. What do they do? They make men second class citizens without full rights and privileges until they comply.

Any male in the U.S. who has not registered cannot get federal student loans, scholarships, or grants. They will not be qualified for student work programs or federal employment. No stretching of truth, no ambiguity. Look what it says on the letter you get as proof of registration.

I didn’t get to states yet, but there it is in black and white from the U.S. government, your rights to these things are dependent on registering for the draft. There are laws linking your driver’s license to registering for the SSS(remember that IS the draft) in 44 states and territories. Most you cannot renew your license at 18 without registering, some automatically register you when you renew at 18, and very very few of them have a law requiring a check box to register be included on the form to renew.

But the License thing isn’t the only part. Many states have followed suit and you are barred student loans, grants, scholarships, everything mentioned at the federal level, except now at the state level as well. Hell a couple of states will flat out bar you from even attending a state funded school if you aren’t registered.

You want to go deeper? Ok. What happens if you somehow make it to your 26th birthday without ever registering? Do you now get access? Nope. Not even a little.In fact you are now permanently locked out of all of it, the rest of your life. Which can be a fun thing for immigrants seeking citizenship. If they are over 26, they then have to prove they weren’t trying to become citizens before their 26th birthday. Otherwise permanently barred from citizenship.

The real fun one, actually the saddest in my opinion. Sad because many won’t know, and the only people talking about it usually are MRAs. How this affects transmen. Even though they will likely never qualify to actually go into service as men, once they change their gender to male legally, they are bound by the same laws. They can lose loans, scholarships, be kicked out of schools, even have their license revoked. If they are over 26 they have a hard fight ahead of them, they have to prove they weren’t required to sign up for the SSS.

On top of potentially getting a huge fine or going to jail (and thus losing the right to vote), men will also have severe restrictions on government servoces if they do not sign up for the selective service.

Women get all of these just for being born, but they are conditional on men signing their lives away if the government asks.

That would be a gender inequality. Instatutionalized sexism. Something you would consider oppression if the target were women or black people or jews instead.

This is where you do some gymnastics.

“ Yes, it’s true that no woman in America has ever been subject to conscription in times of war; …”

Not all of us are Americans.

This does not address whether or not it is discriminatory. They are saying that selective service is discriminatory, not that they are likely to be conscripted.

This also fails to address that selective service is still in place despite recent efforts. And feminists suddenly saying how crucial an issue it was when they faced it being extended to include women. I haven’t heard anything from them since.

“….  ; however, being that the most recent draft was in 1973, most likely neither have you. “

That is my parent’s generation. My dad missed out on the draft by less than a year, my uncle got lucky and his date didn’t come up, and my sister-in-law’s father is a Vietnam vet.

Not that I’d face conscription anyway, because as you are avoiding admitting it is discriminatory on the basis of sex…

“ If you get to drag up stuff that happened before you were born, …”

The laws are still in place in the US. Conscription is still in effect in a number of countries.

Conversely, it isn’t really talked about here except by those that faced it. Because we abolished it in 1972.

“…. so does everybody else - and I’m pretty sure the ladies are going to win that particular game of misery poker. “

Fallacy of relative privation.

That women are starving children in Africa does not address it being a policy that is not only still in effect, not some distant past, but is actually sex-discrimination. Again, feminists cared a lot about it being extended to women, but have been rather silent since.

I really don’t get how we ladies would win that game of misery poker?

I can’t remember a time in history in which women by the tens of thousands were forced to go to war, conscription of women is very much the exception. There were millions of men dead in twentieth century wars…

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