4 ms·

As a geniune curiosity, what is the distinction between your son and your daughter that makes you prefer sending one over the other? (assuming you have both a s

by snek 8y ago

As a geniune curiosity, what is the distinction between your son and your daughter that makes you prefer sending one over the other? (assuming you have both a son and a daughter) I'm not a parent but if I had kids I can imagine not wanting any of them to go to war.

m0zg 8y ago
I can think of two things: 1. Women are on average physically weaker (I hope this is not controversial) and therefore are much more likely to die in hand-to-hand combat or just plain not be able to carry the gear soldiers have to carry today, let alone another soldier. 2. After a war of attrition women are crucial to population replacement, due to biological limits on procreation frequency, whereas men have much greater "fanout", and you don't need that many of them, even if you're concerned about inbreeding. That said, I do think women should be draft-able, for two reasons: 1. Women too can be "strong enough" for combat 2. There are lots of non-combat roles And to anyone who says there can't be another WW2-style war, I bet people said the same in the aftermath of WW1. And yet, here we are.
- eesmith 8y ago
  1. Set the criteria based on abilities, not gender. 2. WTF? When has that ever been important? What sort of situation will we get into where scores of millions of women will die, where they wouldn't die if there wasn't conscription or volunteering, and where we don't have nuclear Armageddon? WWII wasn't simply a do-over of WWI.
  - remarkEon 8y ago
    >WTF? When has that ever been important? People who don't understand why this is important have a view of history that doesn't go back beyond the 20th century.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      Rather than accuse me of ignorance - falsely, I might add - wouldn't it have been easier to just list one example?
  - m0zg 8y ago
    >> When has that ever been important? Most recently, after WW2. 20+ million Soviet people died in the war, mostly able bodied men. If it were mostly women, that'd permanently decimate their population. I imagine any kind of mass casualty-WW3 scenario would be only worse. Weapons are a lot more deadly now than they've ever been. For the time being the most devastating varieties are constrained by peace-time treaties and such, but if a war of attrition were to break out, it'd all be back on the table in no time at all. And there's no such thing as "volunteering" when dealing with meat grinders like WW1 or WW2. Easily 90% of people who go to war do so very much against their will. A good number of soldiers are executed at the front lines for "cowardice". Imagine yourself having to get out of the trench during a Verdun or Stalingrad style slaughter. You (and I) would need some _serious_ motivation to do so, and definitely wouldn't "volunteer" for any such thing.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      Several objections come quickly to mind. 1) We know that Russian women volunteered for the military, and fought, and died fighting. ("There were 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war,[1] which is roughly 3 percent of total military personnel." says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II ) If women can't be drafted, because it's better to preserve their wombs for population replenishment, then why should women be allowed to volunteer? 2) Since Soviet women did volunteer to fight on the front lines, and even as partisans in German held territory, your statement "there's no such thing as "volunteering" ..." is wrong. 3) People can be conscripted without being ordered to the front for direct combat.
      - m0zg 8y ago
        They worked pretty much exclusively in non-combat roles. Medics, cooks, various other service personnel. There was an occasional sniper here and there, but there were hardly any women fighting on the front lines otherwise. I grew up in the Soviet Union. To this day in Russia war is not perceived as something women should participate in. It is perceived that way _by women_, as well. In Russia, war is not something abstract, people still remember.

by snek 8y ago

m0zg 8y ago

I can think of two things: 1. Women are on average physically weaker (I hope this is not controversial) and therefore are much more likely to die in hand-to-hand combat or just plain not be able to carry the gear soldiers have to carry today, let alone another soldier. 2. After a war of attrition women are crucial to population replacement, due to biological limits on procreation frequency, whereas men have much greater "fanout", and you don't need that many of them, even if you're concerned about inbreeding. That said, I do think women should be draft-able, for two reasons: 1. Women too can be "strong enough" for combat 2. There are lots of non-combat roles And to anyone who says there can't be another WW2-style war, I bet people said the same in the aftermath of WW1. And yet, here we are.

eesmith 8y ago
1. Set the criteria based on abilities, not gender. 2. WTF? When has that ever been important? What sort of situation will we get into where scores of millions of women will die, where they wouldn't die if there wasn't conscription or volunteering, and where we don't have nuclear Armageddon? WWII wasn't simply a do-over of WWI.
- remarkEon 8y ago
  >WTF? When has that ever been important? People who don't understand why this is important have a view of history that doesn't go back beyond the 20th century.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    Rather than accuse me of ignorance - falsely, I might add - wouldn't it have been easier to just list one example?
- m0zg 8y ago
  >> When has that ever been important? Most recently, after WW2. 20+ million Soviet people died in the war, mostly able bodied men. If it were mostly women, that'd permanently decimate their population. I imagine any kind of mass casualty-WW3 scenario would be only worse. Weapons are a lot more deadly now than they've ever been. For the time being the most devastating varieties are constrained by peace-time treaties and such, but if a war of attrition were to break out, it'd all be back on the table in no time at all. And there's no such thing as "volunteering" when dealing with meat grinders like WW1 or WW2. Easily 90% of people who go to war do so very much against their will. A good number of soldiers are executed at the front lines for "cowardice". Imagine yourself having to get out of the trench during a Verdun or Stalingrad style slaughter. You (and I) would need some _serious_ motivation to do so, and definitely wouldn't "volunteer" for any such thing.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    Several objections come quickly to mind. 1) We know that Russian women volunteered for the military, and fought, and died fighting. ("There were 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war,[1] which is roughly 3 percent of total military personnel." says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II ) If women can't be drafted, because it's better to preserve their wombs for population replenishment, then why should women be allowed to volunteer? 2) Since Soviet women did volunteer to fight on the front lines, and even as partisans in German held territory, your statement "there's no such thing as "volunteering" ..." is wrong. 3) People can be conscripted without being ordered to the front for direct combat.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      They worked pretty much exclusively in non-combat roles. Medics, cooks, various other service personnel. There was an occasional sniper here and there, but there were hardly any women fighting on the front lines otherwise. I grew up in the Soviet Union. To this day in Russia war is not perceived as something women should participate in. It is perceived that way _by women_, as well. In Russia, war is not something abstract, people still remember.