(TW: Rape) After falling down a rabbit hole and reading about the Rape of Nanjing and Unit 731...

[OtterlyAstounding]

It made me think about Nazi human experimentation, the current situation in Afghanistan regarding women having fewer rights than animals, and the consistent use of rape as a weapon of war - American during the Vietnam war, the USSR and other Allied soldiers after Germany was taken, Sudan during the current civil war, and Russian during the current Ukraine war - am I being unreasonable to be hugely depressed by the mass, heinous brutality of men as soon as they're given the excuse, and to think that they must be innately deeply flawed as a sex?

It makes me wonder just how many of the men we encounter in our daily lives, who seem perfectly ordinary and nice, would behave in such ways if put in the same situation. I have to imagine: too many.

Nanjing Massacre
Unit 731

I don't know why you'd need to dwell on the Nanking Massacre this morning.

There are so many examples of heinous war crimes throughout history. We could pick any of them to feel bad about, but what's the point?

I have no idea how we would go about stopping these horrendous things happening again in the future.

I read an article about the Japanese Embassy opposing a statue being erected in a Korean public garden in my nearest city, in remembrance of comfort women, and the comments beneath it sent me down a rather depressing rabbit hole!

I was more thinking about the fact that the vast majority of those war crimes are committed by men who would've probably seemed quite normal at home pre-war, and such war crimes still take place today, in our current world. It made me feel very disheartened about what men in particular are capable of.

Yeah, I know. It's all very depressing.

I'm 57 and I'm genuinely happier since I reached saturation point on global misery. I just don't take it on board anymore.

It's been shown that quite ordinary men are capable of depravity in the extremes of war but I'm not going to judge the men in my life by that.

I think your approach might be the most sensible one!

Yes the rape of nanking stuck in my mind too, I read about the Bangladesh war of liberation, estimates of 200’000 women raped. I couldn’t believe I had never come across it before. it’s why I loathe rape denial. Horrifying.

There was that poor kenyan woman who was probably raped an murdered by a British soldier and his fellow soldiers tried to dob him in, theres that Australia soldier who is up for war crimes because 20 of his own colleagues also dobbed him in, so I do have some hope.

War is awful; killing, maiming, torturing, raping, humiliating & terrifying. It brutalises participants who then behave in inhumane ways and often struggle to return to normal life after participating in war.

@OtterlyAstounding I assume you read the Iris Chang book? I was working in the LMP at the time. It has a huge influence on me at the time of reading. It did bring those events to the world's attention. It was something I was not really really aware of, even though my DF has served right at the end of WW2, but in Europe.

Lamb's recent book from 2020, "Our Bodies, Their Battlefield" is also worth a read as it puts those events in a bigger context. And those things things are well documented even today with Iran, Israel, Russia, Sudan and a myriad of extremist Muslim groups.

It's more than putting people in a "situation". It has to do with dehumanising an enemy, the types of training, the possible punishments and so on. Again, the results are clearly visible with Iran, Israel, Russia, Sudan and a myriad of extremist Muslim groups.

And the story of Iris Chang post that book is also disturbing. Her mother's book "The Woman Who Could Not Forget" covers that.

It's still happening now. Our civilization is only held by a thin veneer and it's crumbling before our eyes