How are you explaining to your boys about only men being conscripted in Ukraine?

[MiniDaffodils]

I have both girls and boys. We have always brought them up to understand that whilst boys may be physically stronger, girls can undertake the same roles in anything as boys can.
My boys are upset at the thought that only men are being made to fight in Ukraine and not women. They think it’s very unfair.
I think they are imagining themselves in that same situation. Obviously I have explained in this country both men and women would be called up to fight. My boys are gentle souls and the thought of only men having to kill others is disturbing them.
My girls are relieved at the idea that women in Ukraine are not called to fight despite usually them being very vocal about the fact boys and girls are equal in all things.
My main question is how to explain this to my sons, rather than my daughters (who don’t seem as bothered by the issue).
Thanks

One point is that women are vulnerable to rape resulting in pregnancy. Impregnating through rape is often used as a weapon of war.

@mum2bee2022

Perhaps explain that men have a duty to protect the women and children in their lives and in their community.

This I don’t necessarily agree with. A man is his own person, just like we all are. He doesn’t owe his life to someone else.

War is 'unfair'. You could show them this photo from today's Metro. Mum AND Dad staying to fight.

I would encourage both boys and girls to be non violent- if they have no family obligation, then to serve in the medical or fire services.

When a country has a need of people, it is often ‘fair’ to have 1 per family as the family may have dependents (like kids or old people) - like in mulan. It makes most sense for the strongest person (usually male) to be the one that serves. Also, some women may be breast feeding - which makes it hard to be separated from babies.

@ENoeuf

I don’t get the angst really. ‘That’s what they do in Ukraine.’ Oh you don’t like it? Lucky you’re not Ukrainian then.

This.

Sadly, Ukraine has more direct experience of war and occupation than we do in this country and are acting pragmatically. No one not fighting is having an easy time.

@MoirasWigStand

The patriarchy.

this. we do live a patriarchal society in all aspects. Also I doubt a woman would start a war. I have read somewhere in recent days that historically war was always caused by men and I am not surprised. Men and women are different in many ways other than just physicall strength. I am not sure what I am trying to say. Probably just that I (as a woman) hate living in a men's world.

@hotpinkkettle

Sometimes being treated equally means being treated differently, because someone begins with an unfair advantage.

In this context, would the unfair advantage be being physically weaker?

No the able bodied men have the unfair advantage. Women are disadvantaged by this.

To be honest in this context the unfair advantage is that men have penis’ and rape is used as a war time weapon but I certainly wouldn’t be explaining that to my children unless they were old enough to understand.

The above statement also helps to explain regarding the disabled and the elderly too.

Perhaps the explanation is that Ukraine has a very different cultural and historical backround so they do things differently to the UK.

I just shrug and say, “well men start them” (wars, i men)

Yep.

Get them to draw up a list of the way women and girls are fucked over and the ways that boys and men are and compare who comes out best in the end.

Wars are thankfully rare and conscription more so. Yet women are paid unequally, expected to do the lionesses' share of the domestic work, have to endure periods and (if they choose) pregnancy, are most often the victims of domestic violence and rape (by men), fear walking at night, are mainsplained to, do not have the same access to public space and so on...

@HeardleFan

OP, maybe it's because we are constantly told that women can do anything that men can but when the shit hits the fan there's suddenly a very long list of reasons why women can't do the one thing that might save us ... and if you're a male that feels unfair.

The one thing a country needs after a war is more babies to grow up to fight future wars.

So women ARE doing the one thing that the country will eventually needs, get the kids to safety, look after them and have more kids.

Also, if POW are taken, women and girls get raped by the people that took them. I mean, you'd have to be a monster to wish that on them, wouldn't you?

I can't believe people don't know all this. It is what happens when they teach identity politics rather than history, geography and biology.

@Onlywomengivebirth

I just shrug and say, “well men start them” (wars, i men).

Funny enough I was just thinking : 'thank fuck its Old Joe in the White House - and not Hillary !'

“That child rearing is shared equally between men and women (except for the first few months when the women is possibly breast feeding)**“

So once they’ve finished breast feeding they’re ok to join the front line ?

Child rearing is not shared equally is it? Despite what we would all like in an ideal world. Stay at home dads very rare, then there’s the gender pay gap which means men will earn more for doing the same job.Thus women are more likely to go part time or give up their careers for child care.
Inequality is still rife in all of society and I think you need to tell your boys about this also,op.
Teach them the reality and tell them about the ideals which haven’t happened yet.

Who will look after the children if mum and dad are conscripted to fight ?

Imagine fighting on the front line when your period has started and you have no sanitation or pain relief !
Yes periods don’t hold us back in normal day to day living but entering a war zone is not normal life is it ?

Women do help in supportive roles as they did in WW2.

If half a million men are killed there can still be as many babies born to replace them.
If half a million women are killed (probably would be more as they are physically slower and weaker) then fewer babies will be born.
Did you or your sons ever learn biology OP?

I do find this line very distasteful and reductive. If we're talking about livestock on a farm, then of course you only need one or two bulls/rams to 'cover' hundreds of cows/ewes.

Are we really trying to say that we would view human women in basically the same way: happy to 'play their part' and be 'serviced' at will by any of the limited stock of men around, who will then disappear, leaving them to bring up the children and move on to the next woman in the line - just to populate the country, with no sense of relationship, morality, family, society or humanity involved?

Although, biologically-speaking, a man could father hundreds more children than a woman can give birth to, we as a species expect them not to - and to stay focused on parenting their own children. The selfish, deadbeat ones who don't behave this way are rightly criticised - but using this argument, they're actually the good, wise, socially-responsible ones; far more so than the 'irresponsible' ones who do act as proper fathers and don't just flit around impregnating woman after woman and then abandoning the women and kids, in an endless cycle.

Is this really what we would view as an acceptable way to go about things - reducing humanity to the level of animals and women as nothing more than breeding stock? If we don't, I don't think it's an argument that we should be holding to - it just cheapens all of the other very valid arguments that it is placed alongside.

Or show them this. Just because women and children are 'allowed' to leave, doesn't mean they can. They are just as much on the front line as men in this war because Russia are targeting civilians directly and disregarding ceasefires. Sorry to keep spamming you with the details but this 'war' isn't just about men having to stay to fight.

Depends on the age of your boys but I'd have thought the fairly simple explanation is that the women are required to escort them to the border/safety and look after them elsewhere.

Then there is rape as a weapon and women in a war zone are sitting targets for it.

I think you have to simply break the news to them that men and women are not the same.

I think you are incorrect to think that women would be conscripted in an emergency in this country.

@ Nomoreusernames1244
Totally agree with your post.

OP, you may think you’ve raised them a certain way but when it comes down to the real world, your values are just not reflected as a whole. They’re children, they don’t understand that the world is a bigger and more complicated place than what you’ve explained to them

Many many women are staying to fight. Get them to have a Google of ukraine army international women's day. Apparently the ukraine army has a higher percentage of women than the UK. Why are the single females not being made to stay? Maybe the should be?

(I am sparing you the accompanying photos btw. The Metro does not hold back on the graphic images).

@tkwal

Slashlover The pp said parents and carers would be exempt, married but childless people who are not carers for a vulnerable person would still be expected to fight

PP said

I would expect in a war situation that all "single" men and women are conscripted. Those that have parental duties (or carers) would be exempt. Conscription of women doesn't always mean frontline duties.

They didn't say that every single man and woman would be called, but that all "single" men and women.

Men are being conscripted because life isn't fair. It's not fair that women even without war are doing almost all of the domestic and caring chores/responsibilities. It's not fair that women have to be the ones who give birth, breastfeed, have periods. You can say it shouldn't hold women back but it just does. It's not fair that men are being sent away to fight even when they don't want to. This is the way it has to be because of how we as humans procreate and behave and are made.

OP you don't have to tell them it's fair. You don't have to explain it in a logical way. They don't have to be happy with it. It just is what it is.

I'm surprised your sons are upset by this...predominantly men fighting in wars is hardly a new concept. Would they really wish to see their mother and sisters fighting on a frontline...yikes.

They haven't asked but I'd say because men don't really want women in the army and they've only recently accepted women in the UK. While women can participate in the military now there are still few countries that conscript women.

Slightly off topic, but are people really teaching their sons that:

• Women only need to breastfeed for a few months.
• periods are nothing and shouldn't hold women back.
• it doesn't matter that men are stronger than women.

I don't think this is how to raise a feminist and just seems all wrong to me!

Surely you teach your DS's that periods can be painful/ (mentally and physically) exhausting and women may need more help than usual. To be aware that men are much stronger than women and can hurt them easily etc? That men should support women by calling out the unacceptable behaviour of other men, not leaving them to get on with it 'cos equality'.

That's what I'm teaching mine.