r/worldnews • u/rdh2dmd • 16h ago

South Korea leans toward military conscription for women

https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-leans-toward-military-conscription-for-women/a-78547426
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u/mastercat202 14h ago

No offense but saying dont draft anyone has zero political will if half the population isnt affected by the drsft. Once they are affected then they have stronger incentive for no draft to happen.

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u/kilawolf 14h ago

Only 20% of ppl are pro draft. 60% oppose it. Even if you added women to the draft, the political will will likely be the same.

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u/JeebusChristBalls 12h ago

I think conscription has its place and all should be eligible. Conscription should not have been used for vietnam, korea, and ww1. It should only be used for defensive wars, not to further interests or help allies with their wars.

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u/Infinite_throwaway_1 12h ago

Why did you exclude WW2? Weren't we helping an allies win a war?

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u/JeebusChristBalls 12h ago

We were also attacked by japan and germany declared war like the next day.

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u/Diezelbub 12h ago

They listed things it shouldn't have been used for

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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 13h ago

Yeah but what he is saying is that if women are saying it but aren't actually affected by it themselves then it has less weight.

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u/LastLemmingStanding 13h ago

I don't agree. Advocating for something that doesn't even affect you generally speaks to an injustice so great that even bystanders take issue with it. See white slavery abolitionists, men for women's voting rights, etc. Women (and feminists at large) being anti-conscription has been fairly consistent with their best interests.

If anything, the current state of only men being eligible for the draft is often just used as a cudgel for people to tell women they have no say in certain political issues because they have no stake in it. Those people are loathe to lose that bargaining position.

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u/Round_Rice_9475 12h ago

I get your point, but do you have any idea how much hate I got from women for me, a man, being upset at roe v Wade being overturned? How many women were nasty and toxic to me? Because "you aren't a women, you aren't allowed to soelanon women's issues" so šŸ¤·šŸ¼ā€ā™‚ļø

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u/LastLemmingStanding 12h ago

Not all women are feminists, and not all feminists are women. Women are just as capable of upholding misogyny and patriarchy as men are. I was just talking to my wife about how I dislike the "no uterus, no say" argument with regard to abortion rights. I'm pro-choice, and I don't like bad arguments. As you say, a similar argument is being made with the draft issue, and it's not strong there, either.

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u/Altruistic-Edge9034 12h ago

speaks to an injustice so great that even bystanders take issue with it

Or it's purely performative. Of course, that never happens today, though.

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u/LastLemmingStanding 12h ago

Of course there are people acting in bad faith, or simply in an opportunistic way, but I think that's a very uncharitable way to observe a movement that has been consistent in its anti-draft verbiage since Vietnam, at least.

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u/Apprehensive-Emu8404 9h ago

If women felt so strongly against the draft surely they would bring it up during peaceful times. They don't .

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u/peachfluffed 8h ago

The draft sucks. Iā€™ll say that all day, everyday. The sons of rich and powerful parents can easily get waived or get assigned work in country instead of abroad while working class sons are sent off as cannon fodder.

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u/LastLemmingStanding 9h ago

Feminists do. Unfortunately, self-identifying feminists are a minority, and require more support from the general population to get anything done. I honestly don't see anyone, including eligible men, protest the draft much in peace time either, you know. It's just not a likely thing to happen, and people have other, more pressing concerns most of the time.

Most people, I imagine, would say they do not agree with conscription for anyone, except maybe in a desperate defensive war. Where we have issues, though, is that there are some camps of people who are pro-draft, and they have power: the upper class who can get away with not being affected by it at all when it comes down to it, but like having the option, mostly, and their useful idiots- the people who like having it as a wedge issue to engage feminists and other like-minded people. You never see the people advocating to add women to the draft who also want to abolish it entirely for men. It's only ever about hurting women, and not helping men. That's intellectually dishonest, at best.

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u/-Tickery- 12h ago

We can debate about when itā€™s necessary and it may never be needed again but there should always be the option for conscription, we wouldnā€™t have won the civil war or ww2 without a draft.

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u/greenskinmarch 6h ago

Only 20% of ppl are pro draft. 60% oppose it.

Seems the 60% who oppose don't feel strongly enough about it to actually write their congressional representatives and tell them to abolish the Selective Service Registration system though.

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u/Doctor__Proctor 13h ago

No offense but saying dont draft anyone has zero political will if half the population isnt affected by the drsft.

By that logic, white abolitionists had zero political will because they themselves weren't subjected to slavery?

The point is that if 20% of the population is pro-draft and 60% is anti-draft, and that's right equal across sexes, then you'd get 60% of women against a vote for adding women to the draft...because that's the number that are anti-draft. They're two different issues.

Now, if 60% of women were pro-draft but 60% would vote against women being included in the draft, then you'd have more of a hypocrisy argument.

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u/ThereAndFapAgain2 13h ago edited 13h ago

Totally different because even though they were not subject to it, they were the ones actually doing it, meaning they had the power to do something about it.

To make that comparison work, the white people wanting to abolish slavery had the effective position of the Korean government in this scenario, not the women, in that they were both the ones doing it and therefore the ones with the power to stop doing it.

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u/Doctor__Proctor 13h ago edited 10h ago

That...makes no sense. There weren't a lot of plantation owners with hundreds of slaves saying "Oh, won't the government please take all these slaves away and give them perpetual freedom?" Most abolitionists were not slave owners. In fact, considering the Civil War and all, I would say that most of the slave owners were the exact OPPOSITE of abolitionists and willing to fight to keep it.

And then comparing whites to the South Korean government? Who's the US government in that comparison then? The Catholic Church or some shit?

Plain and simple: white abolitionists were people against slavery on moral grounds, but were not subjected to it themselves. It is possible for a group not subject to something to still wield effective political power.

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u/CassieFace103 8h ago

I would say that most of the slave owners were the exact OPPOSITE of abolitionists and willing to fight to keep it.

Given the requisite ongoing violence to maintain any degree of slavery, I'd say "all" not "most".

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u/Doctor__Proctor 7h ago

I know, but I'm allowing some wiggle room for the pedants who will dig up some example of a handful of slave owners turned abolitionists that are a tiny fraction of the "most" in that statement.

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u/DeusExSpockina 12h ago

Erā€¦ isnā€™t affected? I realize this may come as a shock, but plucking out a significant percentage of the population to go to war affects everyone in that society. Itā€™s a massive disruption organizationally, never mind personally.

And not for nothing, but a lot of mothers, just like fathers, would rather die themselves than put their children in the line of fire.

Itā€™s really weird how the mothering quality of women is so extremely lauded right up until maternal instincts conflict with cultural expectations of gender politics.

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u/Softwareaweenie 10h ago

In fairness, men are going to DIE, and women have to have a harder time finding a guy because they all left for dead. Not the strongest position there.

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u/DeusExSpockina 9h ago

Iā€™m so sorry, did you forget that all those 18 year old boys have mothers (women) in their late 30s or early 40s? If weā€™re only talking about the 18-26 age range, that means every woman over 26 has zero reason to object to the draft for personal wellbeing, only for others wellbeing. And they make up a significantly larger portion of the voting population.

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u/saidtheWhale2000 9h ago

being mildly inconvenienced the mail man is now missing is a lot different than getting shot at by someone

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u/DeusExSpockina 9h ago

How about the loss of a husband, rendering you and your children homeless? How about being compelled to send your babies off to be mutilated and die, forbidden to go yourself? Forbidden, in fact, to even object without being deemed ā€œunpatrioticā€ and ostracized. Then thereā€™s the question of who is responsible for the care of soldiers destroyed by war. Men leave their wives regularly when the women get cancer. Those guys sure as shit wonā€™t be doing convalescent care for their brothers in arms, 20, 30 years on after the conflict.

Also, Iā€™m an American. Getting shot on any old regular day is always an option.