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 Peg's
Polemic
Every
month, philosopher Peg Tittle casts off the calm, measured and qualified
style of her profession to deliver her opinionated and impassioned
column, exclusively for the TPM philosophy café...
Number
23. The
Way to End War
At
one time, bank tellers and secretaries had a certain prestige--the
time when such positions were held by men. Schoolteachers used to
be schoolmasters--before women entered the classroom. People who
boast that many doctors in Russia are women fail to mention that
doctoring in Russia, well, someone's gotta do it.
The
thing is this: whenever women enter an occupation, it becomes devalued.
It loses its glory. It loses funding. It loses media coverage. It
becomes unpopular, even invisible. So if we (read 'men') were serious,
really serious, about ending war, we'd (read 'they'd') fill the
military ranks with women. (And I mean fill the ranks, let
them pour in - don't just grudgingly accept a token woman here and
there, giving her a very hard time every step of the way.) Because
when becoming a soldier has about as much appeal as becoming a waitress...
An
added bonus would be that if the enemy army were (still) male, they'd
start killing themselves. Because better that than be killed by
a woman. It would certainly save on ammunition.
And
if the enemy army were (also) female, well, more often than not,
the wars would probably just sort of fizzle out into some sort of
stalemate. We just don't have the equipment for pissing contests.
But since no one would really care, or even know, because it would
be a woman thing, well, that'd be okay.
We
could live with that.
.
Peg's
Polemic will next be updated early-December 2002
Previous
polemics
22.
21.
20.
19.
18.
17.
16.
15.
14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
8.
7.
6.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
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