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How the local media shamed male readers into fighting in WW1

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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

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Five reasons feminism should deal with women who abuse children

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Feminism is failing children by refusing to acknowledge that the majority of perpetrators of child abuse are women, according to one writer at the online magazine Everyday Feminism.

Men’s rights activists have long pointed to numerous examples of international research which show that mothers perpetrate more child abuse than fathers. Rather than acknowledge this inconvenient truth, women’s organisations tend to deny and minimize the child abuse committed by women and seek to place the blame for the majority of child abuse on men’s shoulders.

The sexist belief that “women HAVE problems and men ARE problems” is so pervasive that the last UK government formed a taskforce to address “violence against women and children,” ignoring female perpetrators and male victims in the process.

In his book The Myth of Male Power, Dr Warren Farrell claimed that feminism articulates the shadow side of men and the light side of women, but neglects the shadow side of women and the light side of men. The unwillingness of feminism to acknowledge women’s dark side, as demonstrated by women’s abuse of children, is one of the reasons anti-feminists believe the movement is sexist against men and boys.

Speaking as a feminist herself, the writer Shannon Ridgway suggests five reasons why feminism needs to address the fact that women commit the majority of child abuse. Whatever you think of Ridgway’s “five reasons” (listed below), she deserves credit for daring to wash one of feminism’s dirtiest pieces of laundry in public.

5 Reasons why feminism needs to address child abuse:  

1. Feminism should tackle all “-isms” not just sex-ism against women—and ignoring child abuse is a form of ageism

2. Women are not “natural caretakers” and our unwillingness to admit women abuse children is based on this sexist stereotype

3. Women who sexually abuse children are not “seductresses” they are “sex offenders”

4. Matriarchy is no better than patriarchy

5. Child abuse victims should not be made to feel that feminism has failed them, they should feel that they can embrace feminism

You can see Shannon Ridgway’s full article at Everyday Feminism today.

—Photo credit: NSPCC 

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Do men start wars?

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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

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Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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Gaza: why does it concern us more when women and children die?

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When 80% of people killed in the Gaza airstrikes are male, why is no-one talking about gender asks Glen Poole?

A total of 172 men, children and women were killed in Gaza over a seven-day period by Israeli airstrikes last week and the death toll continues to rise. It’s a shocking figure and the scenes of death and destruction that have been broadcast around the world will be a concern to anyone with an empathetic heart.

But the question for those concerned about the wellbeing of men and boys to ask is this –why do we care more when women die? More than we care about the children and more than we care about the men? Women account for just one in eight of the deaths (each one of them tragic), but they are in the minority when compared to the men and the children.

According to the German press agency DPA:

  • 119 of those killed are men (69% of the death toll)
  • 31 are children (18%)
  • 22 are women (13%)

Women and children first 

When you look at the number of men, children and women killed in Gaza it is clear that women are the smallest group. And yet the media make women the number one victim group in its reports from Gaza. Here’s Russia Today, for example, with an article headlined “30 percent of Israeli airstrikes victims in Gaza are women and children“:

“Of the 172 Palestinians killed around 30 percent are women and children. The dead include 29 women, of whom seven are under the age of 18. They also include 24 men under 18. About half are small boys aged 10 or under, the youngest an 18-month-old baby.”

Can you see who’s missing after first women, second girls and third boys (referred to here as men under 18)… that’s right it’s adult men. Here comes their mention:

“It is not immediately possible to independently verify how many of the 119 men killed are civilians.”

Presumably this is mentioned because the death of a civilian is somehow more tragic than the death of a male soldier? We live in an era where nation states still rely on men to put their lives at risk in order to protect national security and yet those men’s lives are deemed to have a different value to the lives of the female and male civilians who are killed in conflict.

Men’s injuries ignored by media 

Meanwhile, The Independent newspaper played a similar trick with reports that 1361 Palestinians were injured in the strikes, 53% of whom were men; 29% children and 18% women. The newspaper chose not to mention the 700 plus men who were injured,  focussing instead on the fact that “out of wounded Palestinians, almost 390 were children and 250 were women”.

The Independent, at least, put children first, but was blind to the fact that the majority of  those injured are men — more than women and children combined — with men three times more likely to suffer injury than women.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, Baroness Tonge, an independent Liberal Democrat in the House of Lords, managed to overlook the fact that seven out of 10 victims were men and 80% were male as she declared in parliament that nearly half of those killed were women and children — a statement which stretched the definition of “nearly half” beyond statistical credibility.

These figures are not extraordinary. The World Health Organisation estimates that there are around half a million violent deaths in the world every year and more than eight out of 10 victims are men and boys. The horrific killings in Gaza are consistent with this trend, with 80% of the victims being male an 20% being girls.

The invisibility of the disposable male

When it comes to gender equality, both the the socially conservative and the progressive liberal mindset works on the principle of women and children first. According to this logic, if the only people killed were male then we would have less cause to be concerned, because the male of the species is a disposable resource not worthy of note as a victim of gendered violence.

This has certainly been the case in other conflicts. There was no mention of the gender of the victims when the BBC and others reported that extensive photographic evidence revealed 11,000 “detainees” had been tortured and executed by Syrian forces.

According to one blogger: “The vast majority of the images were of young men most likely between the ages of twenty and forty. There were no children. Within the images seen, there was only one female body.”

There was no outcry about the gender of the victims when ISIS slaughtered 190 male prisoners in Northern Iraq, or when the Iraqi forces murdered 250 sunni men and boys in suspected revenge attacks. 

When the kidnapping of 200 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram caused international outcry earlier this year, the few lone voices that pointed out that Boko Haram had been slaughtering boys for months were drowned out by a noisy global conscience that deems the mass kidnapping of girls to be more worthy of concern than the mass killing of boys.

And when the Syrian government was attacking the city of Homs, the United Nations was successful in negotiating the release of women and children, but the men were left behind. This is the same UN that has an international strategy to End Violence Against Women and Girls by doesn’t deem men and boys—who account for more than 80% of victims of violent death—worthy of such strategic concern.

When it comes to violent death it seems, we all, men and women, remain collectively more tolerant of the harm that happens to men and boys—and that includes the men and boys who are the majority of people currently dying and being injured in the Israeli strikes on Gaza.

—Photograph: flickr/msdonalee

Written by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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