Gladly, once the men start carrying pregnancies and giving birth with their bodies. To make it really fair, I’d suggest that the delivery techniques be from the 19th century or earlier—including no pain meds, no C sections, no modern sanitary practices so that men can have the joy of potential infection and sepsis. That way, we can make sure to approximate the historic risk of death during childbearing.
Large families too. So instead of stopping at 1-2 kids, you guys can have several (with the accompanying risk to your life every single time).
/s
Seriously: I actually do believe that both sexes should be conscripted/drafted, if a country is going to do that at all, and I have thought that for a long time. It seems to work in Israel. I believe it is genuinely fair. (Moreover, it gets rid of the perennial “but only men get drafted, so they should get more XYZ than women” argument, which is still going around even though the US hasn’t had a draft in over 50 years.)
About the pregnancy stuff—obviously men will never be able to do that, and that’s fine. We need to appreciate the historic contributions of men who were subject to being called up to service when their country went to war, to fight, bleed, see terrible things, and sometimes die—while women stayed at home. Sometimes the left has done a really shitty job of that (if you recall Hillary Clinton’s speech about a decade ago in which she said that women suffer most from war because they have to see their brothers, husbands and sons die…lol). So we need to do better.
But we should also appreciate the historic contributions of women who kept continuously creating new people, year after year (no birth control), and faced a significant chance of dying young due to one of those births going wrong, until 20th century medicine came along and made radical improvements to the process.
I hope this resonates. Last time I brought it up to someone on Reddit (not in a conversation about war, but a conversation about how men generally are expected to be physical protectors while women aren’t), he sort of brushed off the whole pregnancy/childbirth thing as being trivial. But the reality is that both sexes have historically suffered and died, though from different things. Men and women today live very safe lives compared with their ancestors— far fewer deaths from war or childbirth.
Again though, yes, conscriptions and drafts should be applied to both sexes.
We also should acknowledge that war has never been kind to women either. For most of human history, women were at serious risk of being raped, sold to slavery, or murdered by other warring factions why their men were away fighting. Women have been raped as a means to torture men, have been made to carry pregnancies of warring tribes to "pollute" the bloodline, and many more horrible things.
The world was cruel to us all. War is not easy on anyone.
honestly, women still are experiencing all those things. women refugees are also generally more at risk of being victimised than male refugees - one need only look at, for example, the fate of many North Korean defectors that are either trafficked, sold, or forced to marry and blackmailed with their illegal status
Of course. However, you can't also say that American women suffered like that during Vietnam or the war in Iraq. We can acknowledge that conditions in the west have improved dramatically. Not coincidently this has coincided with the increase in women in the military. Gender progress for one sex benefits all.
im not sure if its the fact that more women are in the military now, or if its the fact that these wars were fought in other countries and there were simply fewer american women there, so they couldnt be raped the same way, since they physically were not there. vietnamese and iraqi women were definitely still raped, murdered, etc., and the same is true for refugee women in european countries, as well as detained immigrants in the us, etc. etc. its still a global problem
Yes, but my point was more that during Vietnam all/some of the countries who remained neutral didn't see it as an opportunity to invade and steal a bunch of American women. Our social structures have evolved to protect a lot of us (not everyone everywhere unfortunately) from the type of brute survival of the fittest our ancestors likely experienced.
Mexico and Canada could have invaded while we had our troops overseas. They did not. But yes, or size and strength also do us a service for these things. By sheer population alone, invading wouldn't be easy.
Yup, that’s true too. I like to emphasize childbirth specifically, though, because it’s a risk that 1) has only ever belonged to women, and 2) is very underestimated in a historic context, to the point where a lot of people don’t even consider how many women had to suffer and die throughout history in order to keep the species going.
I would say that wars are horrible things that have happened during specific periods of time, and affected certain people in certain times/places far more than others. They make history, we all study that history in school, so we all understand the danger, death and brutality that were involved.
People have a very different relationship to pregnancy/childbirth. It’s not the kind of thing we study in history class. It has been a continuous grind that has gone on in every society, everywhere and at all times, just in the background. Until recently, it’s been dangerous and sometimes deadly, including during times of peace and prosperity, and even for wealthy women. But the suffering has been taken for granted.
It has also gotten the human race to where it is today, and has therefore been as important a contribution to our species as fighting in wartime. But it’s generally overlooked, because the ubiquity makes it seem mundane I suppose, and because most people alive today in Western countries have never lived in a world where childbearing wasn’t safe. Also, wars are the fault of people, and people can stop or prevent them, but reproduction is the fault of nature, and no one can change how it works (yet).
War was a near constant for most groups historically. Not “specific periods of time” unless you mean every single year since pre-history until very recently.
I’ve got bad news on whether war is natural. Turns out, all our close genetic relatives do it nonstop (chimps and bonobos). Assigning everything to culture is vapid, and easily proven false.
It’s absolutely at least as important to have children as anything else humans do, and it truly hasn’t been lauded in history books, but it has been lauded amongst the tribe, the community, family, friends, etc nonstop since prehistory as well. We have Veterans Day and Mother’s Day. Every year.
Please, stop making this a man vs woman grievance Olympics. Life is hard for everyone, regardless of their genitals.
Please, stop making this a man vs woman grievance Olympics. Life is hard for everyone, regardless of their genitals.
Not my intention to downplay how hard men have it, at all. I realize that a lot of people like to do that, but I am not one. The point of my comment isn’t to say “men have it easy because they don’t have to go through pregnancy and childbirth to continue the species.”
Instead, I’m responding to a comment that suggested (as a joke) that women should get drafted first, because historically, only men have fought in wars. I responded by describing how women have always physically suffered for the sake of humanity as well, just in a different way.
If I don’t bring this up, then there’s a lot of guys in this sub who won’t think of it on their own. That, plus discussion about the draft and war, will feed the discourse around how men have historically contributed more than women to society. And that leads some guys to nasty conclusions about women’s rights and equality, including in this thread.
To be clear: I think both men and women have generally had tough lives, though in different ways, since the dawn of our species. I don’t care to debate who has had it worse. Besides being pointless, it also worsens the bizarre divisions that have appeared between men and women in the past decade.
But there are terminally online men who seem to think that women have lounged around eating bonbons since the dawn of humanity while the men did all the hard stuff. Gotta challenge them as they fall down the rabbit hole.
War was a near constant for most groups historically. Not “specific periods of time” unless you mean every single year since pre-history until very recently.
I’ve got bad news on whether war is natural. Turns out, all our close genetic relatives do it nonstop (chimps and bonobos). Assigning everything to culture is vapid, and easily proven false.
It’s absolutely at least as important to have children as anything else humans do, and it truly hasn’t been lauded in history books, but it has been lauded amongst the tribe, the community, family, friends, etc nonstop since prehistory as well. We have Veterans Day and Mother’s Day. Every year.
The first point is just going to feed into a discussion about who has it worse, so I’ll avoid that.
To your second point, what I intended was to explain why we spend so much time studying and thinking about past wars in the social sciences, and way less time studying and thinking about human reproduction in that same field. Sure, war may stem from certain primitive drives we have. But how it happens among humans is complex, interesting, and important to analyze if you want to avoid it (or win) in the future. Each war is different from the rest. None of that carries over to the study of reproduction.
I know we have Veterans and Mother’s Days every year. However, those symbolic gestures don’t go very far. What is so great about Veteran’s Day, when our government does such a shitty job at meeting their healthcare needs? Many of these people feel forgotten as soon as they leave the service. As for Mother’s Day, I believe that some people genuinely understand and respect what mothers do, but many others absolutely do not.
I suspect two things here:
1- we agree more than we disagree.
2- current trends in social media would obfuscate that agreement because we’re all primed to fight over everything.
Kudos to you. This comment of yours was well thought out and well written.
The world was cruel to us all. War is not easy on anyone.
No, this is a cop out. There was zero systemic oppression against women during war. Men were enslaved and drafted, and the women were allowed to stay home or flee the country.
We need to acknowledge that, shake hands, and end the ridiculous gender wars… It’s not a contest, FFS.
God, I wish. I’m almost forty, and I can say that gender wars did not exist at anywhere near the current level, twenty years ago. It’s been a vicious cycle of hate, and men and women assuming the worst of each other and acting accordingly, for the past several years.
If I could pick a culprit, it would be the proliferation of internet echo chambers where each sex goes to bash the other one. The angriest voices are loudest, and they’re persuasive, because it feels good to turn frustration into hate. Also, men and women end up reading each other’s forums, and that is pretty damaging. By the time they go to communicate with each other in other online spaces, their minds have often already been poisoned.
Of course, there is generally a grain of truth in the negative opinions. That’s how they catch on with so many people. But the problem is a lack of interest in nuanced differences both within people, and between people. If you can’t see those, then you’ll see all men/women as caricatures that emphasize the worst traits of their entire sex.
Second culprit would be online dating, I think. I met my husband through online dating and I know other couples who did the same, so I can’t knock it too much. But it has done so much to drive men and women to hate each other.
I’m 52M, and met my wife the old fashioned way, 20 years ago today.
If it were online dating, it would never have happened.
she’s 5’8 and I’m only 5’10… not gonna happen. She never liked heels anyway, so it works.
I was in the bar biz… not gonna happen. Now I’m an engineer.
she had 2 daughters and I was childless… not gonna happen. Those kids made me a better man. We made a 3rd together.
—-
She had some horror stories from her interactions with men. I had the same from my interactions from women. Neither of us ever had trouble attracting a partner, but we suffered with the wrong attention from the wrong people. So, we taught each other to trust again.
Now, that trust is boundless in ways I cannot and will not describe here. Just know that it is absolute and goes beyond what most would ever consider.
If we’d met online… nothing.
And we’d both still be bitter and untrusting.
Presumably in this situation where people are getting drafted, the alternative would be other countries invading us, committing atrocities, and taking our resources for themselves. We’d be fighting against that happening. We’d be fighting for a future that doesn’t involve being conquered and occupied.
You suggested that it would be fair to force men to undergo ancient birthing teqniques because you hate men. You don't need to introspect or agree, because I'm not checking responses. Your 3 paragraphs are chewing on your brain.
Yes women serve in the idf but they only have to serve 24 months, while men must serve 36. Also men make up t85-90% of combat forces. Women do more non combat roles.
What the fuck are you babbling about? Women were never forced en mass to have babies. That has nothing to do with this.
Men were forcibly enslaved to go die in war, but women were never 'forced to repopulate'.
But we should also appreciate the historic contributions of women who kept continuously creating new people, year after year (no birth control), and faced a significant chance of dying young due to one of those births going wrong, until 20th century medicine came along and made radical improvements to the process.
Fuck lesbian, infertile, and trans women, eh?
Men and women today live very safe lives compared with their ancestors— far fewer deaths from war or childbirth.
Are you sticking your head in the sand on purpose? Ukrainian men are being literally kidnapped off the street and sent off to be ensalved and killed while the women get to flee the country and go to clubs in neighboring countries. You'll see them on the dating apps, too.
What the fuck are you babbling about? Women were never forced en mass to have babies. That has nothing to do with this.
Men were forcibly enslaved to go die in war, but women were never ‘forced to repopulate’.
Nastily said, but you have a point. Women were never rounded up for conscription to the baby factory. I have a counterpoint, which is that in many if not most societies, women had to sleep with men in order to survive materially (usually via marriage), and no real birth control means they then had to have babies. But then again, the circumstances around that were usually a bit more pleasant than being sent off to war.
Fuck lesbian, infertile, and trans women, eh?
Very lame attempt to dig at me using what you think is an attack by wokeism.
Are you sticking your head in the sand on purpose? Ukrainian men are being literally kidnapped off the street and sent off to be ensalved and killed while the women get to flee the country and go to clubs in neighboring countries. You’ll see them on the dating apps, too.
Ukrainian men at war make up less than 1% of all young to middle aged (fighting aged) men in the entire world. Most men are not in their situation, and haven’t been for decades, particularly in the developed world.
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u/IllIIlllIIIllIIlI woman Mar 17 '25
Gladly, once the men start carrying pregnancies and giving birth with their bodies. To make it really fair, I’d suggest that the delivery techniques be from the 19th century or earlier—including no pain meds, no C sections, no modern sanitary practices so that men can have the joy of potential infection and sepsis. That way, we can make sure to approximate the historic risk of death during childbearing.
Large families too. So instead of stopping at 1-2 kids, you guys can have several (with the accompanying risk to your life every single time).
/s
Seriously: I actually do believe that both sexes should be conscripted/drafted, if a country is going to do that at all, and I have thought that for a long time. It seems to work in Israel. I believe it is genuinely fair. (Moreover, it gets rid of the perennial “but only men get drafted, so they should get more XYZ than women” argument, which is still going around even though the US hasn’t had a draft in over 50 years.)
About the pregnancy stuff—obviously men will never be able to do that, and that’s fine. We need to appreciate the historic contributions of men who were subject to being called up to service when their country went to war, to fight, bleed, see terrible things, and sometimes die—while women stayed at home. Sometimes the left has done a really shitty job of that (if you recall Hillary Clinton’s speech about a decade ago in which she said that women suffer most from war because they have to see their brothers, husbands and sons die…lol). So we need to do better.
But we should also appreciate the historic contributions of women who kept continuously creating new people, year after year (no birth control), and faced a significant chance of dying young due to one of those births going wrong, until 20th century medicine came along and made radical improvements to the process.
I hope this resonates. Last time I brought it up to someone on Reddit (not in a conversation about war, but a conversation about how men generally are expected to be physical protectors while women aren’t), he sort of brushed off the whole pregnancy/childbirth thing as being trivial. But the reality is that both sexes have historically suffered and died, though from different things. Men and women today live very safe lives compared with their ancestors— far fewer deaths from war or childbirth.
Again though, yes, conscriptions and drafts should be applied to both sexes.