In WAR (2005), Wayne Dyer explicates the role of the soldier: "You offer yourself to be slain: This is the essence of being a soldier. By becoming soldiers, men agree to die when we tell them to."

In DISMEMBERING THE MALE (1996), Joanna Bourke states that the most important point to be made about the male body during the Great War is that it was "intended to be mutilated." She notes, "There was no limit to the danger to which the male body could be subjected. Gunfire cut bodies in half."

In war, men's bodies are turned over to the state and its leaders to be used as seen fit. Yet to overcome out guilt and shame about the fact that we have slain, dismembered, and mutilated tens-of-millions of young men, we developed the concept of "male aggression."

A moment's reflection will lead us to the conclusion that the most oppressed human beings in human history are young men. Yet we are not supposed to say this. We don't want to say this. We shy away from the truth.

Instead, in our guilt and shame, we blame the abject young men--"male aggression." This makes it easier for us to kill them.

Richard Koenigsberg