Honestly, I don't think the problem with war is that not enough women die in it. It makes more sense to argue against forcing anyone against their will to fight in a war.
Well women are the rate limiting factor in having more men produced for war fodder.
It probably makes more sense to ban birth control at the same time men are required to die for the war machine as both would then be playing out their slavery-induced biological role in ensuring survival of the nation. That is if you're down with the whole slavery for war thing.
That’s essentially what the commenter is proposing when talking about banning birth control. This would be equivalent to compelling women to reproduce (or forego sexual relations, which in reality most people won’t do).
Most actively wars are over long before the replacement rate starts to matter, and women that get pregnant or raise children will in all likelihood get an excemption from frontline duty.
How so? Why isn't the question 'Why is anyone being forced at all?' Their question assumes that someone has to be forced, which I fundamentally disagree with, so they should justify that assumption first.
> And the answer is that women are equal to men in all things, except when things get serious, and then all of a sudden biology matters again
Correct. They are equal, so I don't think either men or women should be forced.
Not only violence. There are plenty of concerning situations in which you all of a sudden stop putting middle-manager women in email jobs or HR/DEI finger-wagging jobs.
When things get existential, the jobs favored by men multiply and the jobs favored by women decrease. And nowhere more than in countries and societies which are highly feminist and supportive of women, which seems counterintuitive but isn't.
That was also true of much of the feudal or monarchist European wars in the centuries before WWI. In the near term before the "democratic" era around WWI wars war largely seen as wars of the aristocracy and armed forces. Merchants could usually ~freely come and go between countries at war and you could generally pass to a country you were at war with without common people seeing you as an enemy. Wars also tended to be less "all or nothing" where the other side was evil and had to be destroyed and were seen more as property and rights disputes of the elite where armed force was a negotiating tactic or strategic use to assert some particular right.
It wasn't until the scam of 'democracy' fooled people into thinking war was against the actual people of the other country that they not only scammed everyone into having such buy-in and stakes for the war but also to view the other countrymen themselves as the enemy. People started viewing the nation of themselves because their laughable miniscule influence of their vote somehow means the government is of them. (Note this was a resurface of course, there were times in history where war was seen as against a peoples rather than of the elite).
Stop reading Curtis Yarvin's pseudo-history. Like 8 million people died in the Thirty Years War before modern democratic states, and there's plenty of other examples.
Figures I’ve seen say over 700,000 casualties in the British Army alone.
3.7 million served in the Army, which is a fairly high proportion when compared to the age range suitable for military service. Add in the Navy and RAF and you get to nearly six million. Those that didn’t serve were generally needed at home - roles like doctors, miners, police, or were too young or too old to fight.
The British, unlike many European countries, had time to mobilise those forces. Had they lost the Battle of Britain and had Germany commenced a land invasion of Britain then it’s likely the numbers would have been a lot lower.
In the case of a typical war of conquest, fighting pretty much stops as soon as one nation surrenders. However, no nation state in the world asks, 'How can we save the most lives?', instead asking, 'Do we have enough people to send to their deaths to potentially preserve our monopoly of power?'
Of course, at the beginning of every war, some people genuinely believe that joining and defending the nation they live in is in their best interests, but these numbers quickly drop over time. As history and current events show, states start to use forced conscription in every prolonged war at some point.
