Sex selection is a problem. But a national security threat?
Posted by Marcy Darnovsky January 17, 2007
Biopolitical Times
Feminist scholar and activist Betsy Hartmann has long cautioned that fears of “over-population” are being used to introduce coercive family planning practices. She is now flagging a new worrisome trend: conservatives who are pushing the view that sex selection in South Asia, which is causing what they term a “surplus” of unmarried young men, constitutes a threat to global and national security.
This argument is elaborated in a 2004 book titled Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population. Hartmann writes that the book “has circulated widely in academic and policy circles and its arguments have attracted the attention of media pundits as well as the CIA.” The term “bare branches,” she explains, is
This argument is elaborated in a 2004 book titled Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population. Hartmann writes that the book “has circulated widely in academic and policy circles and its arguments have attracted the attention of media pundits as well as the CIA.” The term “bare branches,” she explains, is
a Chinese expression for males who lack a spouse and offspring, are more likely to be poor, transient, uneducated and most importantly, prone to violent crime, substance abuse and collective aggression.From Hartmann’s article, The Testosterone Threat: Sociobiology, National Security and Population:
Though conservative, [Bare Branches] plays to liberal interests concerned about the very real problem of distorted sex ratios in Asia. Therein lies the danger. In the name of women's rights, it could make more palatable the continuing stereotyping and scapegoating of young men in the global south and migrants in the global north.