These days we have a senate committee approving a bill that would register women for the draught… it’s getting closer. Men aren’t enough, for this machine, apparently.
Eh. Historically, the rationale for excluding women from the draft was that they weren't eligible to serve in combat roles, voluntarily or otherwise. (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostker_v._Goldberg)
That policy changed by 2016, so the rationale no longer holds.
With that said, we also haven't had mandatory conscription since the Vietnam War, and I think it's unlikely that we would any time in the near future, short of WW3 landing on our front doorstep (either directly or as a result of NATO's collective defense clause) -- recall that we didn't formally enter WW2 until after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
I recall that the only reason I signed up for selective service was because it was a requirement to receive federal financial aid for college, although it seems that requirement was removed in 2023.
>Historically, the rationale for excluding women from the draft was that they weren't eligible to serve in combat roles, voluntarily or otherwise
Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses its women then it takes significantly longer to repopulate, because one woman can't have multiple babies at the same time so the birthrate will necessarily be reduced.
> Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out. If a country loses a double-digit percent of its men it can still repopulate just as quickly, because one man can make multiple women pregnant, while if it loses its women then it takes significantly longer to repopulate, because one woman can't have multiple babies at the same time so the birthrate will necessarily be reduced.
People keep repeating this, but nobody has so far answered my follow-up question: do you have any example where that actually happened? Even in heavily impacted countries (like Serbia in WWI, which lost around 50% of its prewar male population), there were no laws or campaigns to allow harems or one man - multiple women combinations.
And the research seems to disprove the core premise of the person I responded to ("only men are drafted because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country, because 1 men can get multiple women pregnant"). From the abstract:
> Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility
You probably should look at single mothers' statistics.
Edit: To provide more context: It was not exactly "official policy", but single mothers became much more common in Britain after WWI due to the fathers either dying in the war or, well, being already in another marriage. To the point the women started organizing and campaigning for their rights https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/about-us/gingerbread-history/
Naively, it seems like there'd be a lot more of the "dead fathers" case than the "out of wedlock because women want to have kids but there aren't enough husbands to go around" case.
Because in practically every country there are laws on marriage, and it's usually (Muslim world being the exception) 1:1 in partners. It adds legal and financial protections for both parts of the couple. Unless there's a law change, how do you see this working? A married man going around spreading seed and women getting pregnant and going at it alone?
> It adds legal and financial protections for both parts of the couple. Unless there's a law change, how do you see this working?
I see it working without the luxury of extra legal and financial protection.
> A married man going around spreading seed and women getting pregnant and going at it alone?
Well that and more. It's a combination of all available options:
* Men having kids outside of marriage
* Men having kids from 2-3 marriages
* Women marrying older men who normally are out of the reproduction race
None of that is unheard of even in peace times, and just becomes more frequent.
> women getting pregnant and going at it alone
Women going at it alone is a very modern phenomenon. It takes a village to raise a child, not just your partner. And conversely if you do have a village to support you then you don't need your partner that much.
So all of it certainly can work and did work in the past. How it will pan out in the 21st century no one knows yet. I hope we'll never have to learn.
Infidelity exists. Serial monogamy exists. No-strings liaisons exist. Polyamory exists. Etc. Single mothers exist even with an equal number of men and women. The exact legal nature of marriage is not going to stop any of these. Enormous numbers of people have lived and reproduced without any legal or financial protections at all, including the majority of your ancestors.
And the core premise I'm disagreeing is that countries on purpose draft only men, because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country in case of military disaster.
IF that were the case, governments would do something, anything, to encourage such behaviour (one man getting multiple women pregnant) after the war is over. Nobody is able to come up with any examples of anything like that happening, which again leads me to believe that the premise is bullshit and the real reasons why only men are drafted are somewhere between biology and misogyny.
> and the real reasons why only men are drafted are somewhere between biology and misogyny.
Sounds about right. Historically, the military culture is obviously deeply rooted in patriarchy. Men are to defend their countries, in the same way that 'women and children' have been supposed to go first into lifeboats.
There are some arguments to be found in the above mentioned Rostker v. Goldberg, and in the legal debate that followed:
Once the combat issue is put in proper perspective and the evidence of women's recognized ability to perform military functions is assessed, it becomes apparent that an exclusion of women from a draft registration requirement would be the product of the archaic notion that women must remain 'as the center of home and family.'
and
Congress followed the teachings of history that if a nation is to survive, men must provide the first line of defense while women keep the home fires burning.
>And the core premise I'm disagreeing is that countries on purpose draft only men, because women are kept to be bred to repopulate the country in case of military disaster.
It's one of the concerns, not necessarily the primary. Somebody had to keep the household going, raise and feed the existing children, and so on (which, at the day, and even today in most parts, was the role of women).
>IF that were the case, governments would do something, anything, to encourage such behaviour (one man getting multiple women pregnant) after the war is over.
That doesn't follow. Governments would only need to "do something, anything" if the thing didn't just happen by itself - which generally, it did.
And of course the morals of the day wouldn't have them explicitly promote anything of the sort.
I am not even in Russia, but that war pulled so much out of every region, including mine (which did not see fighting directly, but provided many conscripts and resources), that after the war there simply wasn't much to eat or too many people to work the fields. My grandparents first ate caramel candy in 1952, IIRC. Good luck increasing your fertility rates in these conditions.
Back in the day we're talking about (up to WWI, WII) there was not much in "legal and financial protections" for either part, and the little that were were not really enforced that widely. Men having and abandoning children with multiple women was common, especially in lower and working classes.
Yeah, in fact such laws would make it less tempting (they'd mean those men would have to take financial responsibility and cater to the kids they spread, etc.). Whereas the sheer choice and ability to f... around more is way more tempting and naturally sustainable.
>there were no laws or campaigns to allow harems or one man - multiple women combinations.
You don't need laws or campaigns, it happens naturally, due to the increased sexual selection availability. And of course, given that, why would men opt of harems (especially where they aren't even historically relevant to their culture)? They'd just have relationships on the side, jump ship and marry again, etc.
> You don't need laws or campaigns, it happens naturally, due to the increased sexual selection availability
Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world? It naturally happens that men become more desirable because there's less of them, but is there any actual case where it became widespread for men to get multiple different women pregnant to repopulate the country?
Not to mention, even if it did happen (and again, nobody has come up with any examples in the tens of times I've asked this question, and Google hasn't been helpful either), unless there was a concentrated government policy to that effect, you'd be mistaking correlation with causation - less men than women, so men are more desirable and can pull off multiple kids from multiple women doesn't mean that's the reasoning why only men were drafted.
>Again, do you have any examples of this actually happening in the real world?
You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths"
You can read about similar post-war periods with similar problems and outcomes in history books too.
>unless there was a concentrated government policy to that effect you'd be mistaking correlation with causation - less men than women, so men are more desirable and can pull off multiple kids from multiple women doesn't mean that's the reasoning why only men were drafted.
Women were needed to raise the present kids, and to be able to raise future kids. People didn't need to have this spelt out in law, or to have subsidies for sex with more different partners post war.
Even so, the very link you continue to ignore mentions such legal changes too in the case of post-WWII USSR:
"The impact of sex ratio imbalance on marriage and family persisted for years after the war's end and was likely magnified by
> You were given examples already: "Using unique archival data, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower rates of marriage and fertility, higher nonmarital births, and reduced bargaining power within marriage for women most affected by war deaths"
The fertility rate (amount of kids per woman) dropped, so no.
> policies that promoted nonmarital births
Nonmarital births does not mean that men were getting multiple different women pregnant at the same time.
>The fertility rate (amount of kids per woman) dropped, so no.
Of course it did, since tens of millions men still died and tons were left with severe impairements. It's not about it remaining stable or raising after the most horrible war casualties in history it's about it not dropping as much. It's about it being elevated to where it would be if what we describe wasn't the case.
"The magnitude of the effect on completed fertility is relatively small in light of the scale of male losses, perhaps due to the pronatalist policy that promoted out of wedlock births"
>Nonmarital births does not mean that men were getting multiple different women pregnant at the same time.
Who said anything about "same time"? Men had more choice and thus more affairs/women and reduced being tied to marriage. This translates to more women pregnant by fewer men over the previous period - doesn't mean men got 2-3 women pregnant at a time.
In any case, I think this is more of a "hands on the ears" mode, than a discussion mode, so I'll stop here.
Post-WW2 Soviet Union, or maybe Paraguay post-War of Triple Alliance
In no cases were there laws, government doesn't need to pass laws to make it happen, just just because there weren't laws doesn't mean it didn't happen a lot
> Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out.
No, women have been excluded from front-line combat because they are physically weaker than men and would be killed quickly without accomplishing much. Men are just much more aggressive, have higher stamina etc. It's never been about repopulation. Nothing biologically stops a woman having 10 children with a single man, it's just rare.
Israel tried it some time ago. I don't agree women are weak per se, yes their peak in strength and stamina are lower as proven by literally any professional athletic sport, but this doesn't matter that much as before in current combat.
What went wrong - in fubar situations, men instinctively lunged for protecting women, instead of rationally estimating situation and acting accordingly. We men are simply still too much gentlemen to have women around when bullets are flying, despite feminists trying hard erasing this. Give it 2 more generations and western society will be there.
FYI eastern Europe countries like Ukraine have women in the military, including combat positions. Not surprisingly they keep getting injured and dying just like rest of them.
The only requirement of a resistance movement is knowing to aim a gun and pull a trigger because you are desperate for a force at all. History is littered with such groups enlisting children who meet that criteria.
Lots of militaries have looked at this. There is enormous ideological pressure on militaries to treat women the same as men, but unbiased studies always conclude that it would be a bad idea to do so. And no it's not the fault of the men's gallantry. Women are just physically weaker in ways that matter a lot for fighting. The idea strength in soldiers doesn't matter isn't believed by the military itself and the strange justifications in this thread don't have much basis in actual military doctrine (militaries aren't generally concerned with family planning...)
This report might be useful. It summarizes a large scale study done in 2002 by the British army. The tests were heavily rigged in favour of the women but even so the conclusion was to keep them out of combat roles. Note the part where they say that fewer than 2% of women were as fit as the average male soldier:
A panel of subject matter experts conducted the study. They issued a report, A Study of Combat Effectiveness and Gender, to British ministers in 2001.[24] The study's tests were designed to examine the feasibility of mixed-gender tank crews, all-women crews, mixed infantry units, and all-women infantry units. They also were designed to examine how men would react to the presence of women on the battlefield and how each gender coped with the physical demands of combat.
According to news articles, some reports maintain that the exercises found that women were as capable as men for service in combat units, but the results were mired in controversy [56]. Senior military officers, including Brig Seymour Monro (the Army's director of the infantry), stated that the Army field tests were so diluted that they “amounted to little more than aggressive camping.” Brig Monro also said that tasks that women were not physically capable of doing were simply dropped from the trials [56]. According to the final Ministry of Defence report, the study showed that fewer than 2 percent of female soldiers were as fit as the average male soldier [57].
Specifically, news reports stated that the trials stalled early on when women were not able to complete a number of tasks under battlefield conditions:
• When asked to carry 90 pounds of artillery shells over measured distances, women failed 70 percent of the time (compared with a male failure rate of 20 percent).
• When asked to march 12.5 miles carrying 60 pounds of equipment followed by target practice in simulated wartime conditions, women failed 48 percent of the time (compared with a male failure rate of 17 percent).
• Women were generally incapable of digging themselves into hard ground under fire.
• Women were generally slower in simulated combat exercises involving "fire and move" drills.
• Women suffered much higher injury rates in close-quarter battle tests, such as hand-to-hand combat.
Well, supposing this is true, the situation has changed dramatically - women just don't want to have babies in general, globally. And I doubt a war or some patriotic duty would change their minds.
They still want to have sex with sexy people, and many people, when they're in the mood to have sex with sexy people, don't want to use protection. And some of those people who were not in the mood for protection also don't have access to abortions, and some others actually want to raise children by themselves for some reason.
This is the actual process of human natural selection, and it's not much influenced by laws and things like that, no matter how hard the law tries.
> and many people, when they're in the mood to have sex with sexy people, don't want to use protection.
I don't believe not using a condom with a Tinder date is an option, at least in the West. No matter how attractive and insisting the male is, a woman knows she is the one to bear the consequences. Even if they're on a pill, STDs are still a thing, so why take the risk.
The problem is that a person's "lizard brain" is set to override rational thoughts. Although this effect can be decreased with training (something we do to all humans as they grow up) it's hardly an effective thing to rely on them following. Try telling a hungry person they can't eat without a napkin tucked under their collar (the nearest napkin store is 10 minutes away) or telling a person with a very full bladder they can't cut the queue for the toilet. It just isn't reliably going to work. They're probably going to ignore you.
(Although having sex isn't something that you need to survive (like eating), or something that will happen embarrassingly for physics reasons if you don't choose a voluntary place to do it (like peeing), it is controlled by similar mechanisms thanks to evolution being evolution.)
See, that was my point. They still do, because it's sexy and that is the only thing they want to matter in that moment. With penalties you are trying to make the signal from the person's rational brain strong enough to override their lizard brain, in a moment when the lizard brain is emitting very strong signals already.
It works somewhat, but to a much lesser extent than, say, penalties for driving without carrying a warning triangle, which is a rational-brain activity. At some point the penalties are creating a cost that is bigger than the cost of dealing with the thing they are trying to prevent, while still not working all that well.
Anyway, that's extremely off topic. I think the point is that there's no shortage of babies wanting to get made, and if you want the population to make more babies, you should reduce the things that are preventing them from doing so, not add positive incentives (unless they cancel out negative ones).
You're right but this isn't a conscious calculation - its deeply rooted, evolved behavior. It evolved because of the dynamic you described. Its the same reason women left the Titanic first, men are more likely to task risks, the Y chromosome has a higher mutation load and a million other things.
> Historically countries didn't let women fight in wars because they didn't want their civilisation to die out.
Really? Might is also have something to do with women having trouble moving 80-100 lbs of gear like in WW2? It was 50 lbs in the Civil War. Do you think the leaders at the time had the foresight to keep women out of the war for future breeding purposes?
That's thinking 15-20 years into the future while they are fighting wars now.
Ask anyone with half a brain who sincerely believes in gender equality if men should take a pay cut and they’ll say no, women deserve what the men are paid.
i thought the "gender pay gap" was due to different jobs and amount of time worked - otherwise companies would hire only women and have to pay out way less in wages.
Market forces, spread over long enough time, are usually a strong force of rationality. So on average, across long time, yes. At least according to the level of contemporary wisdom.
That assumes that there aren't strong psychological/cultural forces acting against rationality.
Like not wanting to hire non-white people.
Like not wanting to hire people who are "too old"/"too young" for the field.
Like not wanting to punish men who harass women.
Like not wanting to make sure that your employees are well-treated, satisfied with their jobs, and healthy enough mentally and physically to concentrate on the job regularly.
The idea that The Almighty Market will solve all problems and be perfectly rational is notably unsupported by evidence.
Huh. It's almost like these bigotries are structural, embedded throughout the system and making it much harder for anyone subject to them to get into the "owner class"...
Begging you to stop holding onto your thought experiment and look at the actual data. There’s a lot of it. There’s literally an academic consensus on the question. They’re not all wrong because it never occurred to them to apply an arbitrage argument.
It doesn't "only take one person" to try something like that. It takes one person who is already part of the capital class—ie, someone who is already wealthy, a category correlated, if somewhat loosely, with the exact bigotries listed here. It takes someone who has, statistically speaking, made their money by being ruthless about it deciding they want to take a huge risk with it rather than do the sure thing (hire from the privileged classes). It also takes them having an idea for an actual business that's not merely viable, but highly lucrative. It also takes enough people in the marginalized classes who are within the target industry, who actually hear about the business, who are looking for a job, who are qualified, who can prove to the hirers' satisfaction that they are qualified.
This is not an exhaustive list.
You are oversimplifying in service of justifying an irrational ideology.
> It also takes enough people in the marginalized classes who are within the target industry, who actually hear about the business, who are looking for a job, who are qualified, who can prove to the hirers' satisfaction that they are qualified.
I thought the assumption was that they were already present in order to get a lower wage. if they are just not present, then I don't understand the argument. your belief that there is absolutely nobody greedy enough to make it happen seems unrealistic.
* Women can be hired for a discount relative to hiring men
* Women are just as good at those jobs as men are, i.e. the lower wages are not due to worse job performance
Then it follows that some company or other would be going out of its way to hire women in preference to men. Yes, not everyone is a rational actor - but even if many companies are run by raging misogynists, not all are. And the companies who are willing to get a cheaper (but just as effective) workforce will have a significant advantage, and over time outcompete the other firms.
The fact that this hasn't happened is very strong evidence that one of those two premises is false.
I think people underestimate how powerful market forces are. Bear in mind that they do not apply within a firm, except in fairly extreme circumstances. Instead most things are done on the basis of perception, which is where racism and patriarchy thrive.
but firms live and die based on how profitable they are. if employing all women teams to do the hard work would cost less, firms who did so would thrive at the expense of the sexist ones who value penises. the lack of such firms suggests a conspiracy on a society scale, where not only will women be penalised within companies by getting paid less, but companies that employ all women and therefore cost much less to run would have to be shunned by every customer out there to make sure they don't succeed and take over the business of the more expensive ones!
Take a look at the gender pay gap reports large companies produce. It’s very much a problem even with people sat next to one another doing the same job.
As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, people take it as axiomatic that markets would react to this, but the evidence is strong that they don’t.
It could be, but is that really an excuse? I mean, one couldn't really justify the pay gap in slavery by saying the slaves were working different jobs to the free people, either.
Yes, of course it is. If people choose different careers, it is perfectly reasonable that their pay will be different. Paying a woman less for the same job is wrong, but there's no problem if women in aggregate are making career choices that mean they have lower average income as a group.
I hear you. But women can continue the line —society. Men can’t bear children —society dies. Men get sent to war, women stay in the homeland, many of the men may not return and the women may have to persevere, with sacrifice but society can push on. If it were reversed, that society may well collapse.
The Spartans didn’t send their women off and let the men stay back in the homeland.
How many people do you think are in the military? It’s way below one percent in the USA. In the last war we fought, we lost barely any soldiers compared to the number deployed. It’s bad that we lost any, but your argument is logically null. Women aren’t just baby machines, in any case. Nothing is being “reversed” it’s just more equal if everyone is registered for selective service.
In WW1, so many French young men died in the battles that the average height of the French soldier declined by over an inch in WW2. It became popular for French and German women to marry old men and foreigners after both wars.
By preserving the women, society can bounce back from a catastrophic loss of young men.
Luckily here in America we have hundreds of millions of men and women to give up to the altar of democracy, right? We’re not France in 1915 or 1939. Not only that, but maybe you want to consider more modern war’s attrition rates.
Ukraine doesn’t have 350 million citizens and the world’s 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 7th largest air forces, ten times more aircraft carriers than the next country, the worlds most effective military training, and a total military budget of more than the next 15 or 20 countries. If we sent troops to Ukraine, Russia would be out within weeks, and we’d have less casualties than Iraq and Afghanistan, assuming Putin didn’t start nuking.
"If we sent troops to Ukraine, Russia would be out within weeks, and we’d have less casualties than Iraq and Afghanistan, assuming Putin didn’t start nuking."
Big assumption. Other options are also North Korea sending troops. Or Iran. Or while the US engages there, China uses the opportunity to take Taiwan. Geopolitics is complicated. No one wants a nuclear war, but at some point there is no more rationality, when a side feels pushed over the limit.
I really do not want to see how all of this plays out, but I believe China has also quite some manpower and their military capabilities are not exactly known. The outcome will likely depend, how the rest of the world reacts. And if there are nukes.
That's never been doctorine for the simple reason US hasn't had (near) peer rivals until PRC in last 30 years. Peak hyperpower US 90s doctorine was calibrated for 2 "major" wars, when major is with adversaries who were frankly all medium powers (IRAQ tier). Then in 00s-10s it shifted to 1 "major" war, 1 holding war, i.e. actively fight 1 major war, fix another major war in place so resources can shift to second war after active war. Now half the think tank writing is questioning if US can win in PRC backyard, where PRC is characterized either as near peer, pacing power, or peer. US doctorine right now is maybe can deter PRC until post 2030s "decade of concern" but right now US IndoPac posture in PRC backyard a tossup.
I think they now have 3 carrier groups out in the world at the same time. each of these is basically enough to best a foreign military excluding nukes.
Gulf war against 90s Iraq with 20m people and ~800 1960s missiles (scud Bs) required 5 carrier groups + regional air basing for air campaign, completely compromised Anti Air (by french who designed Iraq IADS and gave schematics to US). Relative to modern Iran with 80m people and 4x more missiles with 2000s rocketry tech, much more favourable geography (facing water), 1990s Iraq/Gulf War would not even measure up as a medium power / major war. One (1) carrier with 150/270 (short term surge) sorties per day is not remotely enough against a medium power. Can US surge 6-7 carriers + forward deploy air force with advanced notice to tackle Iran, yeah, but it wouldn't leave much left for anything else. CVN69 isn't exactly defeating the houthis right now. That's the numbers behind why US doctorine downgraded to 1 major war + 1 holding war (with medium/small adverary), while near/peer war with PRC is currently a toss up.
If Ukraine needs to draft people at all, they should just surrender. If they can't maintain the manpower they need just with volounteers, then clearly the population has "voted" that they'd rather not fight.
Historically the rich and powerful would keep harems and mistresses, have scores of children, and send poor young men off to be killed (and possibly rape women on the losing side). And most of the wars were to preserve the wealth and power of the rich.
To everyone’s surprise, we still are engaging in trench warfare. Maybe the USA isn’t currently involved in a war where they’re digging and in the trenches, but Eastern Europe right now is proving that trenches aren’t going anywhere.
I'm being a bit unfair in that I'm counting hesco as a kind of trench warfare, but you're right in that that doesn't exactly apply on 'patrol'
Still, I believe earthen barriers are still used to solidify the 'frontlines' if you squint a bit
Afaik the Iraq Iran war was still doing straight up trench warfare (at points) and the Syrian civil war + Afghan theater were using caves (in some areas). Same with Korea and Vietnam.
Then again you're right in that I don't think sudan etc have used trench warfare (in the first civil war, apparently the second one has on a post edit search: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65962771 )
You're completely right on the second Iraq war, I don't see any sources for trenches, minus hesco.
I think what I comes down to is trench warfare is popular for the same reason earthworks are popular in civil engineering. Cheap, locally sourced, and effective in its purpose.
> the Iraq Iran war was still doing straight up trench warfare (at points) and the Syrian civil war + Afghan theater were using caves (in some areas)Same with Korea and Vietnam
Static versus combined arms. The U.S. military is deadly not only because it is big, but also because it practically invented and then mastered modern combined-arms warfare. (It’s why we put so much emphasis on air superiority over e.g. armour.)
Are you defining trench warfare as "has a trench"? Because I meant the system of long lines under fire for weeks/months and high-attrition infantry attacks across the narrow no man's land to take slivers of territory.
Ukraine is running low on conscripts because they're not drafting 18-20 year olds.
their national birthrates, just like in the rest of Europe, are low, and losing 20-40% of the 18-25 year old cohort means population collapse.
Russia is in a similar place, and is generally only drafting from ethnic minorities, far eastern locales, and prisoners, plus a hearty dose of mercenaries. that said, they have 3x the population and can just pull way more people.
in both countries the average of a trooper is like 38-45.
They aren't running low on conscripts. They ran low on people they could conscript using the previous set of conscription laws that were extremely "leaky". Then they changed the law, and now they're not really low on manpower anymore.
No, but the Spartans did send their slaves, who outnumbered Spartan warriors 7:1. Spartan women were also somewhat more independent than the women of other Greek city states. Considering Sparta was not a particularly large city-state, and if they didn't control so many other city-states and have such a large cache of slaves, they might have needed to send their women after all. (bot that it matters as we're comparing a 2,500 year old society to a modern day one...)
Would you be ok with mandatory draft registration for women if conscription began with only women aged 36 and above? National fertility would be unaffected, since women of that age rarely have children anyways. Then the draft would be gender-balanced and the war hawks would get more bodies for their machine. Everybody wins.
Fertility only happens if women can find a partner. They are not baby making machines. If you have a catastrophic loss of men, you can still experience a demographic disaster.
Not really, a society that sends women to war is more or less a cowardly society dressing it up as equality.
What sort of male sends the female to check on the noises that sound like an intruder in the wee hours of the night? Do they set turns and when it's her turn she's gotta check out the noises? Any gal married or shacked up with a guy like that should kick him out before night is over.
Can you imagine Paul asking Nancy to check out the basement noises in SF?
Also, those war hawks should see duty in the front lines. None of this sitting behind "green zones" directing grunts. Get out there, get in the line of fire. Imagine Washington, Nimitz, Yamamoto, Zhukov, etc., let's just phone it in.
I mean, when things go bump on our farm my wife won’t hesitate to grab the rifle and haze a black bear or coyote. I’ll lay down my life for my wife and kids but I assure you she can be as dangerous as the next guy; in general much more.
This blatant mysogyny is shocking so out in the open. There's nothing "cowardly" about asking a woman to protect her country, or her husband.
Not that I support the idea of drafting civilian populations as soldiers in general: it's mostly a way to get innocent people killed and not much more.
> Not that I support the idea of drafting civilian populations as soldiers in general: it's mostly a way to get innocent people killed and not much more.
Not if you train them before sending them to the front. Check Ukraine, they would have been defeated without the massive influx of conscripts due to the massive Russian influx of poorly trained conscripts.
I think you mean misandry. Perhaps it is. Men bear the burden of conflict. Women bear the aftermath. But that’s how things shake out due to biology. Same as we frown upon sending children to war. Yes, they are easier to indoctrinate and can pull a trigger just as well as adults (see today’s conflict ridden areas of Africa). Yet, we know better than to send “future us-es” into the grinder guaranteeing societal collapse.
No, I do mean misogyny. Women are just as capable and willing as men to fight and defend. With modern weapons especially, there is no real difference between the fighting capacity of a woman and that of a man. And women are people in their own right, not things to be protected to perpetuate society.
Also, women are not children. Children deserve protection because they don't know any better, their minds are not fully equipped to understand what going to war means. Additionally, children make very poor soldiers, as their motor skills and reasoning skills and emotional control are just not developed enough to function as well as an adult, particularly in times of extreme stress such as war.
So again, children require and deserve protection from the rest of society. Women neither require it, nor deserve it, not any more than any other civilian.
If going to war front as an infantryman were a privilege, we'd see the likes of Hollywood actors and actresses volunteer for the front as well as any wealthy folks and any other privileged folks --but they rarely do --this indicates it is not a privilege, but rather something the poor and of lesser means, those whose lives are worth less are sent to the front. It's violence, it's abuse. Sometimes someone has to endure it. I don't see how not sending one is either misogyny or misandry. Sending someone however, is both of the above; however, if we must, then I think it's the duty of men to do the fighting. Women, can of course be in support of the front lines.
Of course it's not a privilege. But if you're saying women aren't good at it, that women need to be protected, that's misogyny. It's like saying women can't receive the death penalty because they are not mentally sound to be held responsible for their actions, which was a real misogynistic argument at one point.
Misandry would be saying men must be sent to war instead of women because they are inferior, or because they deserve a worse life, or something like that.
Misogyny is believing women are less capable than men for certain important things (there are other ways of being misogynistic, but this is one of the most common). Warfare is a very good example.
Besides Sparta the starkest example of a slaveholding society and the brutality needed to enforce that, they weren't even all that great militarily. They had a run of one to two centuries where they dominated militarily and then they tended to be mediocre at best. Sparta ended up as a tourist spot for romans to see people in funny costumes and hats.
Which raises the question of why they thought they'd approve this bill in committee? It's still very odd, weird, ungentlemanly and somewhat uncivilized.
To follow the analogy, the reason they did it is because the "DEI outrage machine" needs fuel, and this was the next low-hanging fruit. To the machine, women aren't as important as perpetuating itself, so hence we now are starting to get women drafted into traditionally (and oddly, actually gender appropriate) male-roles that are actually dangerous.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. I am aghast with the press-ganging going on in Ukraine. I think if Ukraine can’t motivate volunteers to fight then they must surrender. I get that we (the west) wouldn’t like that but they’re taking volunteers so anyone who wants to fight that war is free to do so. Too many people wanting other people to fight their wars for them. I don’t even like my country, the thought of being press ganged by them would make me like the country even less.
It's literally a question of life or death. If Ukraine surrenders, that could very well be the end of the country and ethnic/cultural identity. Look up what happens to Ukrainians captured by the Russian army - rape (irrespective of gender), torture, starvation, daily beatings, etc. Russia has kidnapped hundreds of thousands of kids too.
Surrender is not an option. Unfortunately, everyone (men and women included) must do their duty to stop a genocide.
They could pretend to surrender (ethically speaking, surrender can never be a valid contract because it's always performed under threat of violence, so feigned surrender is always a valid military tactic), pretend to integrate into society, and then continue fighting as guerillas.
Slavery is always evil, including military slavery ("conscription").
There are degrees of evil though. I'd prefer to be conscripted to an army that's fighting the Russians, than to become russian slave and die in a concentration camp somewhere in the Siberia over the next couple of years (a common scenario during the Stalin reign). The first kind of slavery is designed to give me with an ok life, provided my side wins. The other kind (the Stalin kind) is about exploiting me and tossing me onto the body pile, there's no good outcome there ever.
Also, the guerilla scenario is not that realistic. Russians are experts at fighting guerillas and insurections, they have accumulated centuries of experience in it. That's because they've been a multi-ethic empire consisting of a lot of conquered unhappy minorities for a long time now, so they had to learn how to keep them in check. They have world-class spy network and surveilance state, so that any dissidents will be quickly found (torture enough people and someone will give up the location of their guerilla relative etc.). Moreover, they begin the occupation of a given region with mass-murdering people who have leadership capabilities ( see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre ), so that there's literally no one left who could organize the guerillas into anything meaningful.
For context - in the part of Poland occupied by Germans during WW2, there was a vast Polish underground state (there were 200k guerillas soldiers alone, but there were also underground schools, universities giving diplomas, underground theaters etc.). That was all operating under Gestapo's nose, and in spite of heavy military commitment to occupy Poland. Meanwhile, in the Soviet-occupied part of Poland, there was practically nothng. Russians were that much better than Germans at squashing dissidents.
That's why suicide vests should be standard issue equipment for all soldiers. The suicide vests should be equipped with heart rate sensors to automatically turn them into land mines if the wearer dies without triggering them (with a short delay to avoid collateral damage). Cyanide pills embedded in false teeth should also be standard equipment as a backup in case the vest fails.
Are you in Ukraine doing your duty? If you are not Ukrainian they do take volunteers.
Surrender is an option, none of those things is worse than death. I would not make that trade. If the Ukrainian men want to stop it they can still volunteer, so can anyone else. And it looks like they will lose the war anyway, so they’ll have to surrender anyway except now after a huge amount of death and destruction. Ukraine is heavily indebted and the belief that some Marshal plan reconstruction would enable them to pay that off is unrealistic.
Your kind of thinking leads to societal decay like the kind seen at Uvalde. Each of the 374 cops chose to prioritize their own wellbeing over collective interests, ultimately leading to 19 kids and 2 teachers getting killed despite overwhelming odds against the perpertrator.
And there are many things worse than death. Do you know how Russian combat medics are trained? Instructors pick a prisoner, cut off their palm, then instruct the medic on how to stop the bleeding. Then they cut the arm off up to elbow, teach how to stop the bleeding, and repeat it until the prisoner has no limbs left. Stories like these are a common occurrence. The number of documented war crimes has exceeded 100 000, and investigators don't even have access to most of occupied land.
It is natural that no-one wants to take the risk of ending up in the situation I described, but at the same time, someone has to take the risk, otherwise Russians will simply exterminate Ukraine and Ukrainians as they exist today. Like at Uvalde, more people will die as a result.
Wow. That second paragraph sounds like _blatant_ war propaganda.
Unless there’s plentiful evidence for the above (it’s possible one-off, I suppose), I think you’ve gone full fruit-loop territory.
I humbly suggest you look in the mirror and ask what’s actually going on in your head, and why. This sort of distorted extreme thinking is what creates monsters.
I dont agree with your framing but doubt I could change your mind. Instead I will ask what is your excuse, unless you’re posting on HN from some battlefield you must have some sort of excuse as to why you are not acting on your supposedly strongly held beliefs.
I am a reservist in a country that has such a high risk of Russian invasion that defense leaders have stopped all non-essential spending in favor of hoarding as much artillery and rockets as they can for when the time comes. I do not have a suitcase packed and I do not intend to flee anywhere.
And people here are taught since childhood that this not about being an useful little soldier for the government, but an essential duty to your friends and family, because when the situation gets tough, there won't be anyone else to protect them. A huge professional military that can come to your rescue - like the US Army - is a luxury that most people in the world don't have.
So because you don’t need the freedom to not volunteer others shouldn’t have it either? The issue pertains to pressganging which of course does not apply to volunteers.
I don’t agree with the framing again, but again I don’t think I’ll be changing anyone’s mind here.
As with Uvalde, I believe that the choice to maximize own wellbeing at the expense of others will often lead to worse outcome for all.
Vaccines are a good example of this. Everyone is better off when they take a personal risk to eradicate polio from the entire group. In the process, some people will suffer side-effects ranging from allergic reaction to even death in the worst case, but that is the sacrifice that needs to be made. Unfortunately, modern imbalance towards individualism has produced a generation of parents who cannot tolerate any risk, choose the selfish option and leave their children unvaccinated, leading to re-emergence of old infectious diseases that kill and maim more children than the universal vaccination would.
Individual and collective interests need to be fairly balanced, and Ukraine has done that by preferring older conscripts over younger ones, but you will never find enough volunteers for any truly shitty situation that requires more people than the tiny fraction of natural-born risk-takers who fill the ranks of firefighters and other dangerous professions.
> Surrender is an option, none of those things is worse than death
Being tortured, raped and beaten until you die is not worse than death? Beg to disagree.
> And it looks like they will lose the war anyway
Highly unlikely. Russia is bleeding men they can afford to lose for now, but don't in the long term. Russia has absolutely no way of achieving victory, so by definition Ukraine can't lose. It can't really win either, because Russia as it is today cannot accept defeat.
Russia has been trying to conquer Ukraine for 2 years now, and has had very limited success. Things are looking so good for them they're importing North Korean troops and artillery shells.
They have shown no serious improvement in military tactics or armaments.
Meanwhile Ukraine is being armed by half the world, and has shown crazy advancements in unmanned tech (like hitting Russian ships with underwater unmanned vehicles hundreds of km from Ukrainian ports).
Russia cannot win. Even if they somehow manage to conquer the whole of Ukraine which will not happen easily or soon, it will still be at best a Pyrrhic conquest at the expense of guerilla warfare.
Schrodinger's Russia, the Upper Volta with missiles simultaneously can't take Ukraine yet also at risk of taking half of Europe.
Ignoring the details of your statement I will instead focus on the inherent contradiction of using the slow pace of advancement as evidence of lack of prowess at the same time as confidently stating that gorilla warfare would render such actions a Pyrrhic victory.
I would suggest that maybe Russia knows that, they dealt with a serious insurgency in Chechnya. I would also suggest that the slow progress is in part intentional in order to maintain defined battlefield lines and avoid such insurgencies. They know it costs more in Russian lives but that is price they are willing to pay. People who want to fight them can go out and meet them on the battlefield.
> I would suggest that maybe Russia knows that, they dealt with a serious insurgency in Chechnya. I would also suggest that the slow progress is in part intentional in order to maintain defined battlefield lines and avoid such insurgencies. They know it costs more in Russian lives but that is price they are willing to pay. People who want to fight them can go out and meet them on the battlefield.
Oh, you're either very naive, very stupid, or Russian. You mean to tell me that when Putin announced a 3 day special military operation, it was on purpose that it's taking 2 years of a meatgrinder with hundreds of thousands of Russian casualties to take barely any land? Cool, makes sense if you're braindead.
They also said they would not invade and then they did. You don't tell people what you're actually going to do for a whole raft of reasons and it would be foolish to do so. Also, did they say they would take it in 3 days? That was General Milley (US) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39155605. That's the problem with trusting Western media. The West ascribes these metrics and then judges the Russian results by the same metrics using it as an opportunity to call them fools.
Russia has been planning for this war since before 2008 it is ridiculous to think that they thought it would only take 3 days, if they did they would have started the war much sooner. They knew there were in for the long haul and had already made steps to prepare their economy for long term sanctions. There were not completely prepared but prepared enough.
Additionally, this conflict sits within a broader US/China conflict and a long drawn out conflict with Russia benefits China to which Russia is largely a vassal state, now more so than ever. China is prepping for a great powers war and understandably would like to undermine the west substantially before that happens. Bogging the west down in a series of regional conflicts is an effective way to do that. China would much rather their adversaries economically implode than to fight a massively destructive WWIII.
> Russia has been planning for this war since before 2008 it is ridiculous to think that they thought it would only take 3 days, if they did they would have started the war much sooner. They knew there were in for the long haul and had already made steps to prepare their economy for long term sanctions. There were not completely prepared but prepared enough.
I know you're probably Russsian or identify strongly with Russia, so it doesn't matter what I say, but think about it...
Why would Russia get themselves involved into a protracted multi-year war meatgrinder? They know what happened in Afghanistan.
Also, if they were planning a long war, why would they throw paratroopers at Hostomel airport right outside of Kyiv? Why would they throw multiple brigades attacking Kyiv and getting stuck in a traffic jam? Look at a map, Kyiv is not far from the Belarus border, and the capital, but any such attack would be extremely isolated and risk being cut off. Also, the Ukrainian government could just run away to Lviv and coordinate the fight from there, so Kyiv would be little more than a symbolic victory if they managed to capture it.
It's obvious they were hoping to capture Kyiv quickly and have Ukraine fall apart. They weren't ready for a prolonged fight.
> They also said they would not invade and then they did
> That's the problem with trusting Western media
The same western media that called it that Russia will invade?
Not a Russian, don’t particularly like Russia, my criticism focuses on the West because that’s my home and I want to clean house. That ad-hominin attack on my intention does not make sense. This tautological notion that because I disagree with your framing I must be Russian and therefore wrong.
Russia is worried they will be Balkanized by the west and that is clearly against the interest of the Russian leadership. To not understand that Russian are willing to pay an enormous cost to do so is to not understand Russian history, beyond Afghanistan where they really didn’t want to be there in the first place.
As a policy I would rather see Russian tanks turned around and go into China. The West courted China in order to undermine Russia but underestimated China and overestimated Russia. Russia was successfully turned against Germany in WWII and if the west was smarter we would swallow our pride and do that again for WWIII. Having your enemies engaged in destructive conflicts is a big part of realpolitik and an essential part of remaining a dominant hegemon.
I’m repeatedly bemused by those who emphatically declare that Russia will fail because it is corrupt as if they have discovered something that the Russians themselves are not aware of. Russia has taken a learn-by-doing approach which is the only way of improving war-fighting capability in such an endemically corrupt country. This externalizes the negative signal for bad ideas, those failed excursions having died are no longer able to make future decisions. The average intelligence of those who remain has gone up. To paraphrase Napoleon; we mustn’t teach our enemies to fight by fighting them too often.
The media is telling the truth when it’s in their interest to do so. I’m not sure how you are trying to generalize this to them always being right when clearly they contradict themselves on so many matters. In the weeks before the invasion I was telling right wingers that they are about to look like fools when Russia really does invade. US intel provided proof by noting the movement of blood supplies to Western Russia which would only be done in preparation for a war as opposed to the exercises that was claimed.
