Letters to the Editor

• Another reply to JL

  [Read the article: 40 million horny bachelors]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  "the only way to make the US into a conquerer nation..."

  Aren't we one already?

  Not yet. Not a successful one as far as conquest through armies goes, anyway. (Economic conquest, on the other hand... ) If we were a conqueror nation we would be able to throw a few million men at Iraq to subdue it. But we aren't happy that less than 3,000 of our soldiers are dead. The casualties were much higher in Vietnam before you got the disapproval ratings Iraq does. I believe we actually care more about the lives of our young men (it is mostly young men, although a handful of American women soldiers have also died in Iraq) than we used to, as a culture (though our leaders plainly don't.)

  come on, this is a HUGE generalization. So every man who has ever fought in a war had difficulty getting access to women?

  Not at all. Humans fight for one of two reasons, *generally* -- they fight to protect kin/nation/tribe, or they fight to improve their reproductive chances (not that that consciously factors into it...) There are humans who fight for other reasons (enjoying it, being forced into it) but those are rarer than the people who fight because they think they're defending their country. So our army mostly consists nowadays of people who signed up because they wanted to protect their country, and they were lied to to send them into a war of conquest, and once over there of course they've got to fight in self-defense.

  I believe, however, that a *society* in which young men can't get married or can't enter a sexual relationship with a girlfriend becomes a society which devalues the lives of its young men, and I am looking at the difference in America's attitude toward the Iraq War casualties vs. the Vietnam War casualties. In so many other ways our society has coarsened and become more accepting of violence than it was in the 60's, yet we find 2000+ soldier deaths intolerable as a society, whereas it took tens of thousands of deaths and some serious agitation on the part of the men being forced to go kill and die and the women their own age who were their friends and lovers before they got to that point in Vietnam. I think women respect male lives more when men do not control them and when they are free to become platonic friends with men, and I think young men are less willing to die in an optional war when they can get love from women, and I think that the old men who have always sent the young to war have to answer to the young men and to the women in a democracy (eventually... if only our opposition party had a spine.)

  I agree that access to women's bodies is a compounding (but not ultimate) factor in a nation's war-mongering, but I disagree that China is indefinitely headed in that direction purely because they will have a surplus of men. There are numerous other options. Like if they are such an economic powerhouse, surely they could buy women. If they are importing other things, why not women too?

  I suspect the men who can afford to buy mail order brides will already be able to get Chinese women. Most Chinese are very poor; 1 billion people can generate a huge GNP without most of them getting a significant slice of the pie. It's the guys who are too poor to marry a Chinese woman that are the problem, and they won't be able to afford mail order brides. That being said, if Chinese men were to take up mail-order bride purchasing in large numbers, it would have a positive effect.

  Or, perhaps China's government will do what I believe some places in America's Old West did, and simply sponsor women financially to come live there, on the grounds that if they're around and available nature will take its course and they'll end up marrying Chinese men. Economic incentives to persuade women to emigrate to China would also help.

  I don't think China becoming a conqueror society is inevitable; there may be things they can do to stop it, and I think they are motivated to stop it. I just think it's likely. They've let the problem go on too long. I also think that while there's little we in the West can actively do about the problem, we should be aware that it's not just the fate of women in faraway lands that are at risk (since that has never gotten the US governemtn to do a goddamn thing for anyone), but it is a potential risk to us as well.

  I disagree with the fact that it is only "neocons" who are to blame. Democrats voted for war; and democrats refuse to challenge war. We have enough shit on our shoes already, and boy does it stink. Blaming "neocons" is just another creation of otherness that isn't helping.

  Democrats have no freakin' spine, but that doesn't mean they are the ones who planned and conceived this war, thought it was a good idea in the first place, or are pretty uniformly cheerleading for it. When I speak of the neocons and wars of conquest, I am not talking about the weak people who allow them to enact their dreams of world conquest by not standing up for what's right, I'm talking about the people who planned and conceived these ideas and sincerely think world conquest is a good idea. Those who didn't *stop* it are culpable for letting it happen, but I'm not talking about letting it happen, I'm talking about actively seeking to cause it.

  Permalink Thursday, March 2, 2006 09:10 AM