I don't think all men 18-60 should be forced to fight and not allowed to leave Ukraine. It should be the choice of individual men and women.

[Jjjayfee]

I just saw a young father in tears as he said goodbye to his wife and baby. He is not allowed to leave Ukraine, but has to stay and fight. I think it should be a choice of individual men and women.

If only children were sent away during a war, how could they hope to return to their homeland when the war is over and their parents and adult family are dead?

Surely, they need at least one parent left to look after them and take them home in the future, otherwise what was the point of the war? The whole population should have just left as soon as they were invaded if they weren't planning to go back.

That makes no sense and isn't what the Ukrainians have done.

@vickyc90

Honestly I would make it all men and woman who do not have children. I would also make it so those of limited benefit to society go to the front line firsts. So prisoners etc are used first, over a father with a good education and professional job as that who you need left to rebuild.

Interestingly both me and DH come from military families and none of them support national service

OMG! Are you serious?! You're dabbling dangerously with eugenics there. Next you'd suggest the disabled should go clear minefields with their bodies since they are 'of limited benefit to society' Surely this is parody?!

@PlanetNormal it’s IWD, shouldn’t you be off with the rest of your ilk on Twitter complaining that there’s no IMD? Which there is obviously, but you’re clearly a bit hard up when it comes to brain cells.

@CheshireChat

There's already human traffickers trying to lure Ukrainian women as well.

I have read reports in first few days from Poland that traffickers show up at the boarder offering transport. They now register who every person leaves with.

@PlanetNormal

It’s appalling sexism. Women are allowed to flee to safety but men have to stay and fight. As feminists we should call out such backward, patriarchal nonsense.

Surely as a feminist you mean that women should be allowed to defend their country too?

Oh fgs. If you’re being attacked by armies of men with tanks and heavy machinery and weapons, you’re hardly going to send women to deal with that are you?

To put it this way for you OP - if you thought you were being burgled in the night, who would go down first - you or your husband?

It’s all very well to pretend biological and gender differences don’t exist in the safe bubble of a privileged society. But when it’s about survival, men will inevitably take on certain roles and women others. You don’t even need to be in a war - if you grow up basically living hand to mouth off the land, there are physical tasks that it’s just more efficient for men to do, so other tasks fall to women. You don’t have the luxury of standing around, pontificating in MN fashion - “ooh but is this sexist - are things 50/50?” You’re too busy surviving and keeping your children alive.

@vickyc90 hell yeah. Actually we should send toddlers first to soak up some bullets, can always produce more. Then maybe people with disabilities and anyone with a swarthy complexion

Back in the real world and away from your Fourth Reich fantasy, the best soldiers are generally made by those with the most to lose. I think you might find your prisoners and other undesirables are pretty hard to convince that it's a cause worth dying for.

@ChangeNameagain2

I have to be honest, I'm in awe of the bravery of these people. But if this happened here, there isn't a hope in hell my husband or oldest son would be staying behind. I don't care how I would get them out. We were talking about it the other night and honestly I'd push them down the stairs, break a leg on each on them, anything, I just couldn't imagine fleeing with 3 kids, our foster daughter and leaving them behind. I had been wondering if some people are exempt eg my husband is a surgeon, so would he be allowed/needed to keep on working? Aware of how much of selfish coward this makes me!

So your DH and son wouldn’t get any choice in the matter? Perhaps they would want to stay and defend their country.

@vickyc90

Honestly I would make it all men and woman who do not have children. I would also make it so those of limited benefit to society go to the front line firsts. So prisoners etc are used first, over a father with a good education and professional job as that who you need left to rebuild.

Interestingly both me and DH come from military families and none of them support national service

Well, if that’s the level of intelligence and morals in the military, God help us all.

@Jjjayfee

If it happened here would it not be fairer if men and women had to stay behind then?

No.

If you keep both behind then then what happened to children? Elderly people?

Even in the UK the vast majority of care is done by women, it's a crude measure but it works.

In WWII women who were not married (or possible ones who were not parents, I'm not sure) were conscripted into things like the land army as well as the forces.

I have to be honest, I'm in awe of the bravery of these people. But if this happened here, there isn't a hope in hell my husband or oldest son would be staying behind. I don't care how I would get them out. We were talking about it the other night and honestly I'd push them down the stairs, break a leg on each on them, anything, I just couldn't imagine fleeing with 3 kids, our foster daughter and leaving them behind. I had been wondering if some people are exempt eg my husband is a surgeon, so would he be allowed/needed to keep on working? Aware of how much of selfish coward this makes me!

You want to be careful THEY don't shove YOU down the stairs to get rid of the hysterical element so the rest of them can get on with the business of escaping/staying to fight as required.

I suspect in a war situation your surgeon husband would have his hands a bit too full to contemplate high tailing it for the nearest border.

What choice do they have?? They have to defend their country or what’s the alternative? War is awful. Disgusting, brutal, cruel. The Ukrainians are in an impossible position and being extraordinarily brave in order to protect their Country.

Soviet occupation is a living memory in many parts of the world including Ukraine. People know what Russian soldiers do. They remember.

Do you really think the men want the women and children to stay to be "fair". Grow up.

It’s not like the elderly, women & children are off for a five star holiday resorts leaving the men to fight! Those women aren’t carrying a gun but they carrying the weight of ensuring their child is safe, without knowing where they will sleep - those little children have gone from a safe warm bed to a mat on the floor in a old supermarket with hundreds of other people. No idea when the next meal may come from. One day you were going to give birth in a clean hospital the next day a dirty floor.

Neither should be happening. It’s not as simple as saying men are fighting send the women and children away - look further into those mothers and children eyes and see the war they are fighting.

[quote BigOlDingleSlinger69]@godmum56

That’s an easy justification for modern times - the much simpler and more obvious explanation is that men are both much better at fighting (on the whole) and women are inclined to avoid it.

It’s not like there have been meetings in olden times where sending women to battle has been discussed and decided against because they bear children - it’s much simpler than that, it’s just natural gender instincts playing out.[/quote]
I didn't post it as a justification at all.....as others have said its the way that gender differences played out....you might call it an aspect of evolution.....the societies who put their women in the front line of battle didn't survive because they had no women to repopulate in peace time.

As an able-bodied person who isn’t responsible for any children, I would expect to be involved somehow in defending my country and protecting people who needed it if we were invaded. I don’t think conscientious objection is an option when war has been landed on your doorstep like that. It’s not a choice, it’s survival. You’d do whatever you could.

Men should get in touch with their feminine side, hasn't that been the feminist viewpoint, for decades now, however, now there's a war on.....

Plus, I can't speak for the Ukraine but at least here the majority of caring responsibilities are with women. Children and the elderly.

Yes and I can imagine a lot of men in this country suddenly deciding they were equal carers if there was conscription…

I find it odd that you feel entitled to have a view on this with regard to Ukraine, @Jjjayfee. What are you basing it on?

@PlanetNormal you should read this unherd.com/2022/03/how-ukrainian-women-will-suffer/
So far, 11 women raped by Russian soldiers, only 5 of these survived.

Pornhub has a new category- Ukrainian girls and war rape videos.
So maybe the women aren’t being shot at- but they’re being raped- and filmed being raped. Possibly so forcibly that it kills them.

@Jjjayfee

I would want to fight in any way I could so think that if men have to stay women should too unless they have children who can be moved to safety. I know the roles for men and women would be different.

But most women do have children. It's not like 20-50 year old women with children under 16 are only a tiny proportion of the population, they are the majority. So what are they supposed to do, just take their babies to Poland and hand them over to random strangers then come back?

I suppose the fairest solution would be to say that one parent of either sex can accompany a child/children under 16 but the other parent has to stay but there's no way of practically administrating that.

Er, only when it suits us, thanks. Definitely not when it might involve getting shot at, which sounds horrid. So we’ll leave that to the men.

This is such a back to front comment!

The pandemic has shown that whenever childcare is the harder option, eg homeschooling whilst working at the same time, the men happily pass it to women. It’s men who are more likely to change their tune when it comes to war - women will be sticking with the same tune which tends to be doing all the childcare (whether they like it or not most of the time).

Men in general make more successful soldiers so it makes sense to choose the man where there are two parents to fight. Plus it’s interesting to see there’s evidence that women are better at keeping children safe. As above, fleeing with children would hardly be a picnic.

Conscripting women who don’t have children or elderly to care for would be a possibility, as would be exempting lone fathers, but I can see how Ukraine didn’t have time for distinctions like this.

I suppose the fairest solution would be to say that one parent of either sex can accompany a child/children under 16 but the other parent has to stay but there's no way of practically administrating that.

This wouldn’t be fair though, as an abusive husband could force his way into the carer role when he wouldn’t be suitable. Also see men in general will make better soldiers as they at bigger and stronger and less likely to be raped etc

@FloraPostePosts

If men and women all stayed behind then child refugees would be on their own. It happened with evacuees in ww2 but it is a bit of pot luck; some were lucky with the families they stayed with and some weren’t. I imagine it would be scary from the children to be separated from both parents unless they absolutely had to.

This is true, but even more pertinent is the fact that the evacuation of children was only possible because we hadn’t yet been invaded, so had control of our own transport system. This isn’t the case in Ukraine, where the Russians are already in the country, disrupting transport and posing danger to civilians. There’s no way it would be remotely safe to send unaccompanied children anywhere there at the moment.

Also most evacuees were still sent within their own country, where their foster families spoke the same language as them, and (because we hadn't been invaded) could return at any point if their parents wanted them to come back.

Not sent to a completely random country with different languages and customs and no way of returning home.

@vickyc90 I think you need to defect to Russia. You would do well over there with your Nazi ideas on how some lives are more important than others. How dare you be so cavalier with other people lives! What makes you so special. Disgusting comment