Let me guess, you take young men with high testosterone levels and loose moralities, separate them from women, load them up with adrenaline and stimulants, and then release them on civilians during a period of intense chaos and confusion and what do you get?
Rape. You get rape. As it’s been with literally every army in the history of humanity.
Take the nicest dude and train him for a few years to view the enemy as inhumane and there’s a good chance they’ll view the enemy as subhuman.
One of the most chilling quotes about war that I’ve ever read was from Kurt Vonnegut. (I’m paraphrasing but this was his general quote … I don’t remember if I read it or saw it in a documentary)
“During the war, there were two types of women. Women that had been raped. And women that were going to be raped”
I was thinking while reading, yes this is awful, but is this news? Kind of a water is wet statement.
It’s always worth talking about though because there’s a lot of disinterest and downplaying of it.
The charities for women raped in wars deal with a lot of problems like operations for incontinence, and women who have had a hole punched through from their rectum into the vagina and have constant infections and fecal matter dribbling out through it, etc etc.
It’s often extremely violent and can cause permanent physical damage. But because it mainly happens to women and children, it’s sort of hand-waved.
Does anyone really think rape in war is a bigger problem than what is done to the soldiers? You are sending young men to be scared of dying at any point for months until they hopefully finally die. Or they get permanent injuries that prevent them from fighting. In any case, they will have severe psychological trauma at that point, so even if they survive the war otherwise unharmed, they will carry the ultimate punishment in their heads.
A soldier is basically dehumanised. Fighting to death is not a job. It’s severe abuse. And what happens to people that get abused? They likely become abusers too. Sad for women that they are physically weaker and hence make a good target for a male soldier. But rape is not the root of the problem, it’s a symptom.
Want wars without rape? Why not just vouch to end wars instead?
Of course war crimes against civilians are a problem in war. And yes all decent people think rape is a problem.
Sure. But first and foremost the problem is that innocent people get sent to death. Their reactions to that are just symptoms, and not the cause. And the cause is the real problem.
I’m anti-war.
But I don’t accept the idea that we can’t try to define and stop war crimes. It’s not a binary between no war at all, versus “anything goes” raping women and children etc, committing genocide etc.
Abuse is okay if the abuser is also a victim? Wtf is this argument?
No. It’s a double standard. You can’t send people to death and then complain if they lose their moral compass on the way.
Sure you can, especially if they choose to be there.
He’s not saying that and you should improve your reading comprehension.
It’s not a competition of who has it worse.
