Burmese Boys Impressed into Military Service

You can now read the full report at:

http://hrw.org/reports/2007/burma1007/6.htm#_Toc180812723

It rewards a good read, for two main reasons: firstly simply for its documentation of human rights abuses and maltreatment of boys; and secondly as another example of a familiar phenomenon in such reports: the gender eradication of males. Make no mistake here: the illegal policy of forced "recruitment" of under-age soldiers into the Myanmar military is exclusively aimed at boys. That's BOYS, i.e. young persons of the MALE sex; NOT GIRLS. Got it? Good.

To give it its due, there are one or two isolated parts of the report that do specify clearly that it is boys (the b-word) that are being targeted. For example the Summary and the section headed "Children as Commodities" (although note that it does not allow the b-word into the title). But throughout most of the report, there is a clear attempt to avoid mentioning the gender of the victims. As you read deeper into the report, you will find that references to the b-word quickly dry up; they are substituted by "children", "child soldiers" "child recruits" "adolescents" and similar variations on gender-neutral terminology. in some passages it is quite extraordinary to see the lengths the writers will go to simply to avoid the b-word. I have not done a word count but over the document as a whole, I would bet there are dozens of references to "child" or "children" for every one reference to "boys". Read it for yourself and see if you don't agree.

It is as if the report has been written by different hands; certain sections by those who are aware of the difference between boys and girls, and who want you to know which of the two they are writing about; and other sections written by people who definitely don't. And the latter have written the great majority of the report; so that by the time you get to the end, there is every chance you will have been inculcated with the concept that this is an abuse of children's rights in general. But it isn't. Only the rights of that half of the child population with a Y chromosome. To quote from the report:

"The Conscription Act of 1959 states that conscription to the Burma army for a period of six months to two years is allowable for men ages 18 to 35 and women ages 18 to 27. In practice, neither women nor girls are recruited into the armed forces."

That's right. The vagina pass works just as well in Myanmar as it does elsewhere. So to repeat: it is BOYS, and only BOYS, who are being victimised in this brutal way. Are you listening Hillary? Or are you going to tell us that it is these boys' mothers and sisters that are the real victims?

We should all be aware of this insidious bias. It is excellently exposed and documented by Adam Jones here:

http://adamjones.freeservers.com/effacing.htm

Now I am not saying that the effacing of males is the most important aspect of the report; it isn't. Exposing the abuse is the most vital part, whoever the victims are. But it is another example of how sex bias is virtually routine in these cases.

I won't apologise for going on so much on this issue. It is very important. If we let these sh**s get away with effacing us as men and boys, they will be half way to effacing us as human beings.

Our fight is on more than one front.

Civilisation: man's greatest, and most unappreciated, gift to women