[rayiner]

It’s not “dated.” The mechanics of why you try to preserve the lives of women and children in war haven’t changed at all.

I can’t imagine the thought process that says “humans have had a visceral reaction to the killing of women and children specifically in war, across millennia and across cultures, but surely such thinking is obsolete in our generation.”

[stanfordkid]

It's a biological reality that's gotten lost in our modern world. It's kind of funny no one seems to blink an eye that women and children are allowed to leave Ukraine but men have to stay and fight. The idpol segments seem to think that trans men shouldn't have to stay and fight and that is the true outrage. Personally I think men (or any human being that chooses) should be allowed to flee. Honor shouldn't be enforced by the state.

[gunfighthacksaw]

Honour in this case is being imposed by the state, but Slavic cultures and national pride are 100% driving this too.

Some nations just won’t tolerate their men fleeing a crisis leaving women and kids behind, state or no state. Western Anglo/EU culture skews towards this, but not as hard.

Hence the broad support for them.

[jimmaswell]

> “humans have had a visceral reaction to the killing of women and children specifically in war, across millennia and across cultures, but surely such thinking is obsolete in our generation.”

This sounds pretty much right at least as far as men vs women, though. If you truly want equal rights then that should come with equal privileges. Historically or evolutionarily, women were valued more in such a situation because they make babies - now, so what, we're clearly not running out of babies if you look at population trends. Either everyone fit to serve should have to stay or nobody should have to stay, not based on the circumstances of their birth.

[xyzzyz]

Ukrainians are very much running out of babies, desperately so in fact. Average Ukrainian woman has just 1.2 babies on average. You cannot make up for that shortage with Nigerian babies (of which the supply is high) any more than you can make up Ukrainian war casualties with Russian settlers moving in — or, I guess, you can, if you don’t care about Ukraine as a nation in the slightest.

[dionidium]

I think you can imagine it :) Our culture conceives of a universal egalitarianism across all domains of human interest, but it hasn't really thought through all the implications of that, which is why a phrase like "woman and children" can still be used in an era where it's supposedly abhorrent to make those kinds of distinctions.

All that's being pointed out here is that it can't both be the case that there are no relevant differences between men and women and also that a phrase like "women and children" is useful. You have to pick one.

[rayiner]

> Our culture conceives of a universal egalitarianism across all domains of human interest, but it hasn't really thought through all the implications of that, which is why a phrase like "woman and children" can still be used in an era where it's supposedly abhorrent to make those kinds of distinctions.

I think most people even in America embrace a pragmatic egalitarianism where they think it's okay for women or men to be lawyers or politicians, but men continue to have a unique role when it comes to fighting wars or fixing power lines in the middle of a storm, while women continue to have a unique role when it comes to reproducing the species.

I think it's a small minority who think the difference between 1930 and today is solely due to us being more enlightened about gender roles, and nothing to do with the fact that the primary achievements of that age had to do with things like building thousands of miles of highways, while the primary achievements of this age are quite different.

[Larrikin]

People have owned people for generations, people discriminated against people based on how much melanin their skin had for generations, people have went to war with each other because they believed their person living in the sky was more correct for generations.

Doing things for a long time is never justification for thinking about them uncritically.

[dahfizz]

> Doing things for a long time is never justification for thinking about them uncritically.

In the same vein, something being old does not mean you can dismiss it out of hand. There is wisdom in thousands of years of human existence, and plenty of people have the hubris to dismiss it all.

[woodruffw]

That’s a remarkable misinterpretation. What I meant by “dated” was that it’s no longer the case that women don’t serve in militaries. “Women and children” in a military context is historically a term to distinguish men (who can fight, or are expected to know skills that can help in a war effort) from everyone else.