gender

By Katherine Marrone - Alternet

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

The military in the United States portrays itself as endowed with the highest virtues—honor, duty, self-sacrifice, courage and patriotism. Politicians, entertainers, sports stars, the media, clerics and academics slavishly bow before the military machine, ignoring its colossal pillaging of state resources, the egregious war crimes it has normalized across the globe, its abject service not to democracy or freedom but corporate profit, and the blind, mind-numbing obedience it inculcates among its members. A lone soldier or Marine who rises up inside the system to denounce the hypermasculinity that glorifies violence and war, who exposes the false morality of the military, who refuses to kill in the service of imperial power, unmasks the military for what it is. And he or she, as Chelsea Manning has learned, swiftly pays a very, very heavy price.

In this article from The Telegraph, Matthew Holehouse quotes John Nash (the British government's Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools) as saying "The great thing that the cadet force can bring to schools is men. Of course women forces personnel are extremely good role models, particularly for girls in schools, but sadly a large proportion of young people today are brought up in what we politely call ‘single parent households’, which almost certainly normally means a single mother.”

He claims that  teenage girls from single-parent families who had “never experienced the love of a man” could be deterred from forming “unsuitable relationships” if they enrolled in a cadet unit".

What Every Girl Should Know About the U.S. Military: Consider This – Before You Enlist Co-published by the Women of Color Resource Center and the War Resisters League. Written for young women and featuring the voices of women veterans, this full color pamphlet is perfect for distributing at schools and community centers. Copies are available for $0.15 each plus 20% shipping from War Resisters League.

Download here