insideMAN

How the local media shamed male readers into fighting in WW1

by 8 Comments

Reporting what happened in World War One won’t make a difference unless we also take time to reflect, writes Glen Poole.

I spotted a fascinating article in my local newspaper this week, revealing how the paper had done it’s bit for the war effort in 1914 by shaming its male readers into signing up.

The article interested me for two reasons. Firstly it added to my understanding of the great web of social pressure that pushed men into the “protect and provide” mode of masculinity a century ago. In particular, it highlighted the role that employers played in pressurising their young male staff to die for king and country, a factor I hadn’t previously considered.

Secondly, it provided evidence of the way local newspapers shamed their male readers into sacrificing their lives and it did so with no sense of guilt, regret or reflection. In a section dedicated to showing today’s readers what the local media was talking about 100 years ago, the paper proudly declared:

“Sussex men were being castigated for any unwillingness to sign up……The Argus reported an appeal for the Sussex battalion of Lord Kitchener’s expeditionary force of 100,000 men was short of soldiers. Our reporter said the response from the county had not been sufficient, that our men were “lagging behind” and were in danger of reflecting badly on the honour of Sussex.”

Taking pride in shaming men

That’s right, the newspaper told its young male readers that they were bringing shame on their county by failing to join the slaughter of the First World War and appealed to all local men under 30 to enlist.

Furthermore, the paper gave its backing to local companies who were openly dismissing young male workers who failed to put themselves in line to kill and be killed, describing the businesses who sacked these young men as “patriotic employers”.

The paper gave the example of a local tailor who responded to the initial article “by questioning why shop assistants and clerks with “no outlook” were hanging around the streets after hours rather than enlisting”. Taking the matter into his own hands, the tailor told the paper that he “approached two assistants in his employment who were under 30 and left them under no illusions that he would have no need for their service unless they attempted to enlist”.

And that was it. No reflection, no regret, no shame (or justification even) for the newspaper’s role in shaming its young male readers into overcoming the most base, individual, human instinct—to survive—and to sacrifice their potential futures to the horrors of industrial warfare in the name of the greater good.

The silence is deafening 

Unwritten, between the casual lines of nostalgia that mark the violent deaths of young men in their millions one hundred years ago, is a huge, collective, silent shrug that whispers “what else could we do?”

It’s understandable. How can any individual make sense of the mass killing of global war? But this little question, the simple, childlike question “Why?” is so overwhelmingly ponderous, there is a danger we will avoid it altogether and simply report the centenary of World War One without reflection.

I don’t pretend to have the answer to this question. When I reflect on World War One, I simply count my blessings that I wasn’t born a man at a time when I would be required to either fight for my country or face the consequences of objection. I don’t have an answer to the question “Why?” but I will keep asking this question throughout the centenary of World War One.

Maybe the conscientious objectors in my local area didn’t dare to go to war, but they did dare to question it and when they asked themselves “Why?” they should enlist for the Sussex Battalion, they could come up with no acceptable answer.

As we look back on 1914 and consider the experiences of the men and boys who faced the fears of fighting (and the men and boys who faced the shame of not fighting), we owe it to each and every one of them to keep asking the question: “Why? Why? Why?”

—Photo credit: Flickr/Jenny Downing

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

Also on insideMAN:

10 Ways the State divided men and women in World War One

by Leave a Comment

Does the state play a part in conditioning men and women into gendered roles? 100 years  ago it was certainly the case that millions of British men were sent to war because they were men, often being pressured into fighting by Kitchener’s omnipresent finger.

We’ve published numerous articles on men and war during the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, but we haven’t looked at the impact of war on men AND women. Then on International Men’s Day, I stumbled across a collection of World War I propaganda posters that made me think about the way the State ensured men were men,and women were women.

I’ve captured 10 of the posters below which show some of the ways the State divided men’s and women’s roles one hundred years ago.

1. Firstly, all fit men should rally around the flag

2. Young men should definitely be wearing a military uniform

3. Real men should follow their sporting heroes 

Don’t be a soft lad, be a real man and die hard, just like your favourite football players.

4. A good woman should get a good job

Meanwhile with the domestic workforce depleted by the recruitment of men into the armed forces, women were told to do their moral duty and serve the nation in the workplace.

5. Let women do women’s work

Try reading this one out loud and imagine the kind of clipped, stoical voice you’d need to say: “Keep the flag flying! Let women do women’s work and Essex Men join the Essex regiment.” Yes, fighting is definitely men’s work and anything else is unmanly and should be left for women to do.

6. Why should women join the army? 

From 1914, women’s organisations began to be structured along quasi-military lines, such as the Women’s Emergency Corp and the Women’s Volunteer Reserve. One of the primary aims was for women to do tasks previously viewed as “men’s work” in order to make those men available for the “real man’s work” of fighting the Germans. As this poster for the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps says, “every fit woman can release a fit man”.

7. There are only three types of men, which one are you

For those men who weren’t first in line to sign up, there were constant reminders to think about what type of man they were—-do you obey, do you delay or are you a coward, Sir?

8. This one brought a tear to my eye

While the thought of being conscripted is terrifying, there is something brutally honest and straight forward about the finger-jabbing “you country needs you” approach to military recruitment. But this next approach really messes with the emotional bond between men and women and calls on couples to put their country (and the man’s life) before their love for each other. The thought of the state trying to persuade my partner to set aside her love for me and send me off to war to die in the trenches, touched me deeply…….

9. Women against the U-boats 

During World War 1 the Germans made a concerted effort to blockade Britain to prevent food imports such as wheat and flour entering the country. With the menfolk out of the country fighting the war, it became the patriotic duty of housewives as controllers of the nation’s domestic economy to make food stocks go a long way.

10. Get back in the kitchen! 

Cooking was definitely women’s work in World War I, when making food go a long way elevated women on the home front to an equal footing with men on the fighting front.

—Union Flag Image: Nicolas Raymond

—Posters: Methodist Central Hall

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

Do men start wars?

by 13 Comments

As we mark the centenary of the start of World War I, Glen Poole considers the question: “Do men start wars?”

Asking if men start wars may seem like a stupid question. Whoever heard of a warmongering leader called Adele Hitler, Wilma the Conqueror or Matilda the Hun? Nobody!

It only takes a cursory glance at the history books to reveal that the major players in the history of warfare have always been men. But then again, how many of us actually know a man who has started a war? I certainly don’t and the last time I looked, I was still a man and I still haven’t launched any major armed conflicts.

And yet somehow, as men, we are expected to share collective responsibility for the horrors of war (in a way that women aren’t). In February, for example, the then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, told us the use of rape as weapon of war “should shame all men” and that to avoid confronting this issue “is in itself unmanly”.

Do “men as a class” start wars? 

And therein lies the true meaning in the question “Do men start wars?” It is not a question of whether men like Adolph, William and Attila start wars, because we know they surely do. The actual question I want you to consider is this: “Do all men— men as a class—start wars?”

It’s certainly a belief that many people hold. As the anti-war MP, George Galloway, righteously observed on BBC Question Time this year:

“[We were told]…for years in the Labour Party, if only we could get more women into parliament there’d be fewer wars, less aggression and all of that. There was 101 ‘Blair babes’ elected in 1997 and all but three of them voted for every war that Tony Blair took us into.”

So where does this idea come from, this notion that men as a group collectively start wars? Is it a post-modern invention of what the right-wing media might call the trendy, liberal left?

The ancient Greeks linked voting and fighting

It may sound like a feminist-inspired belief, but you could argue that the idea that “all men” start wars is at least as old as the ancient Greeks, whose democratic city states were founded on the principle that citizens were given the privilege of voting, only by accepting the responsibility of fighting.

Fast forward to 1914 and in Britain, millions of men bore the responsibility of fighting, without enjoying the privilege of voting. These brave men fought for King and country, not because they were male and liked to have a bit of a war every now and then, but because of the social expectation that it is “men’s work” to protect women and children, even if that means putting your own life at risk.

Some experts, like Dr Amanda Robinson at Cardiff University claim that “masculinity is associated with violence in most cultures”. If this is true, then we should ask ourselves if masculinity is a cause of violence or a consequence of violence?

Is masculinity a cause of violence?

When war kicks off, do we want the men around us to be more or less masculine? As conscientious objectors have learnt at times of war, we all (men and women) seem to carry an expectation that men will live up to the primordial masculine directive to protect the weak.

If men as a group are responsible for starting wars, then we should also remember that men and boys die disproportionately in wars accounting for 83% of violent deaths in global conflicts each year. And more importantly, men should be given credit for ending wars too.

In reality, war is far too complex to dismiss as a manmade problem. It wasn’t a man who took us to war in The Falklands, it was Margaret Thatcher; it wasn’t a man who took India to war with Pakistan, it was Indira Ghandi; it wasn’t a man who was Secretary of State when U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, it was Hilary Clinton.

And it was Hilary Clinton who famously said in 1998 that “women have always been the primary victims of war”; the same Hilary Clinton who complained last year that the media failed to highlight the fact that when bin Laden was killed, they moved wives and children “to a safe location so they wouldn’t be hurt”.

Notice how politicians like Clinton and Hague tell a story of war where women and children are the victims and all men should be ashamed. This demonstrates just how deeply ingrained our beliefs that “men should protect women” are. For as long as women and men believe this, there will always be an expectation that men should be “real men” and fight our wars if needed.

So what does this tell us about the question “Do men start wars”?

War is simply and brutally the use of force to get others to do what you want them to do. It’s a tendency that is inherent in all human beings, as a trip to any pre-school nursery at playtime will show you.

To war is human and it is not men, but the people in power who ultimately make the choices that take us to war. If the last Labour government is any guide, more women in power does not mean fewer wars, it just means more women have the opportunity to vote for men to fight and die.

From Boudica to Bloody Mary to the Iron Lady, British women in power have been sending British men to war for centuries and as we have written elsewhere this week, women who are not in “power” can also play a huge role in applying social pressure on men to fight.

What’s changed in the last 50-100 years is that there are now more women than ever before with the political power to vote for or against war. The “masculine” role of political leadership is no longer reserved exclusively for men of  the political classes.

It’s still men who are dying in war 

At the same time, the “masculine” role of warrior, as defined by the people we send to kill and be killed, has remained almost entirely male, for example, 99% of the 453 British military personnel who have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2001 are men.

Our belief that women and children’s lives are more valuable than men’s lives has also not changed. If we want to approach war as a gendered problem, it’s not the proportion of women in power we need to focus on, it’s the proportion of women in the military and our unequal concern for the death of men and boys in conflict.

Men don’t start wars, humans do and most humans still have the expectation that if a war comes our way, then it’s men who should protect us with their lives. For as long as we hold onto that expectation, men and women will continue to send men and boys to their deaths.

As we continue to mark the centenary of the start of World War I, it’s time to question the sexist use of men’s lives as the primary human resource in the wars that men and women start. It’s time to ask the question “Why do we send men and only men to die in war?”

—Photo credit: Flickr/Jayel Aheram

If you liked this article and want to read more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

Also on insideMAN:

100 years after WWI the UK still sends teenage boys to fight its wars

by 6 Comments

In 1914 the official age for joining the army was 18, though boys as young as 12 were sent to war. Today the UK is the only country in the EU that recruits boys aged 16, writes Glen Poole.

Today marks the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. It was an horrific conflict that saw a quarter of million British boys and young men aged under 19 fight for King and country. According to the BBC’s coverage of the centenary, half of these boy soldiers were wounded, killed or taken prisoner.

The youngest of these boys is thought to have been Sidney Lewis who signed up to fight at just 12 years old and saw service in the Somme.

The official age for signing up in 1914 was 18 years old, but as most people didn’t have birth certificates, boys who were bold enough to lie about their age and fit enough to pass the medical, marched off to war as the country turned a collective blind eye.

Everyone knew underage lads were signing up

“The whole of society seemed to be complicit in sending these boys abroad to fight,” says the BBC website. “Parents, headmasters, even MPs helped get underage lads into the army. There was collusion on all sides to get these boys and young men into the armed forces.”

Around 20% of these boy soldiers were discharged from the army within a month and in 1916 the War Office agreed that if parents could prove their sons were underage, they could ask for them back. This was how Sidney Lewis’s wartime service thanks to a letter from his mother asking for him to be sent home.

Boy soldiers still being recruited 

Sadly, boy soldiers are not a thing of the past. According to Emma Wigley of Christian Aid, there are an estimated 300,000 children currently involved in armed forces or militias around the world. “Children between the ages of 10 and 14 years old, in particular boys, are most vulnerable to abduction and recruitment and are deemed to be strong enough to carry weapons,” she says. “Children are considered to be particularly malleable, both physically and mentally, and easier to manage and control.”

To this day, the British Army still considers applications from boys aged 16 and 17 as long as they have formal written consent from their parent or guardian. The UK is the only country in the EU to recruit 16 year olds and enlists more than two thousand minors a year.

Young men in the military are three times more likely to have alcohol problems than their civilian peers and 82% more likely to commit suicide. The techniques used to recruit teenager boys including using online video games to test their fighting skills without them ever stepping foot inside a recruitment office.

Teenage boys killed in Afghanistan 

Teenage boys who are recruited into the British army face death, injury and a trauma.  A total of 35 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan were under the age of 20 and the group Forces Watch claims that: “recruiting 16-year-olds into the infantry puts the most vulnerable group into the roles most exposed to trauma in war.”

Groups like Forces Watch, Veterans for Peace and No Glory In War campaign on issues like the recruitment of teenagers into the army. Today, the No Glory in War campaign will hold an event in Parliament Square to commemorate the 15 million killed in the “war to end all wars”, including nearly one million British soldiers, many of them teenage boys. Their aim is to send a message that the best way be commemorate their deaths is to create a world in which there is no more war.

What do you think? Is war a gender issue for men? Should the UK recruit 16 year old boys? What is the best way to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I? 

If you liked this post and want to see more, follow us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook

—Photo Credit: flickr/The Hills Are Alive

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

Also on insideMAN: