I cannot understand how German men can be expected to fight while women are exempt. It's pure sexism against men and also very insulting to women.

I'm opposed to conscription in general, but I live in Sweden with gender-neutral conscription laws, and I would do my best to defend my country if it became necessary. If I were a man in an alternate version of Sweden with male-only conscription, I would feel so disrespected and devalued by the state that I couldn't imagine myself defending it, so I would either join a non-state-affiliated resistance group or flee the country.

If I lived in Germany right now (even as a woman, but especially as a man), I would seriously consider emigrating to a more egalitarian country as soon as possible.

I think you ask the question wrong. There can be endless debates about whether woman should fight or not. The _real_ question is why only German men are restricted by the law. Even if women do not fight they should be subjected to the same restrictions as they'd have country-bound functions in a war scenario as well - be it fighting or not. And I'd even go a step further and argue that the rule should apply to each and everybody in Germany. It's kind of ridiculous that German men have their movement restricted because of a hypothetical defense situation while Ukrainian men are not just invited by Germany to avoid being drafted and they can come and go as they like.

Having said that. The real problem with that law is not even the law itself but how it came to being, which unveils a completely messed up and incompetent legislative procedure in the German government and parliament.

Women can help the front line fighters but if I was running a country I would not want to put a large number of women on the front, especially young women.

Sure they can fight and kill.

But a country that loses its ability to make more people won't last longer than a generation.

Two things a country needs from which all other needs derive: people and a border that can be defended.

Men historically get sacrificed to protect the border. And women "sacrificed" to make more people.

Food, entertainment, religion, government, taxes, education, etc... it's all to serve those two fundamental requirements.

At the risk of feeding this troll, I'll go for it here.

Men and women are essentially different in real biological ways, as well as emotional and socialization.

For millennia, women and children have been held innocent and protected. This is why Christian societies don't throw them on the frontlines as cannon fodder, but rather, the men go in front and the men fight, as expendables, while the woman and children can be protected far behind the front lines of any conflict.

Women can bear children, feed their infants, and care for families even while men are occupied or absent. Women are much more capable of restarting a civilization even when the men are decimated. It is a very logical and pragmatic decision to protect women and children from warfare and violence.

Conversely, armies of female warriors have enjoyed legendary status as especially fierce and undefeated. How many of us have enjoyed "Wonder Woman", "Calafia", Amazons, and the rest?

Furthermore, a soldier may be victimized by rape. SA of a male has different consequences than SA of a mature woman. You can imagine that a woman who becomes pregnant faces difficult decisions for the rest of her life. Again, the expendable nature of men makes us less susceptible to SA and ransom plots and other manipulation by the enemy.

So the trouble today, is that women are "empowered by equality" and demand every right and privilege that is due to men, and that extends to dirty horrible jobs, and fighting in combat. Women who are empowered by equality are also going to be subjected to responsibilities and duties that they didn't have before. Societies are simply coming up with no other choice but to put women in combat, because the women are doing every other job and it seems absurd to hold back.

Naturally, putting women in harm's way, and even conscripting them, eventually seems necessary if the adversary is doing it too. I am not sure that our Islamic or East Asian adversaries are doing this, but perhaps Westerners believe that we can thus gain the upper hand. I propose that it will disadvantage and disgrace us instead.

It’s a constitutional issue.

Article 12a of the German constitution states:

"(1) Men may be called up for service in the armed forces, the Federal Border Guard, or a civil defence unit upon reaching the age of eighteen."

The current administration has a majority, I think three votes (excuse my inaccuracy), to change the constitution. Women can fight as well, and they do. But there is currently no legal, constitutional way to officially draft them.

Some of the toughest soldiers I trained were women. I got put on my back on international cqc training exchanges by Israeli women more often than by anyone else.

Also, most of the high-profile politicians only have daughters, take the German Chancellor (two daughters) or the Prime Minister of Bavaria (1 1/2 daughters). They don’t have any personal interest that their daughters might get drafted. That’s another dimension to the problem.

Women in general are a great military asset, as they provide a non-male perspective you won’t get only working with testosterone-dominated brains.

It’s not like women don’t want to protect their fellow citizens.

It’s that the German military has huge structural problems to include them into the force properly, and the people in charge also know that, for a lot of men serving, they are still not equal, and a lot of men in the service don’t want to fight alongside a woman and trust them to have their back.

It’s a mix of toxic masculinity bred inside the military and a lack of combat experience alongside women. If you ask any American or Israeli soldier who fought alongside women in actual combat, it will be tough to find anyone to critique their value as soldiers or questioning their equality in the service.

I also appreciate your female perspective on this very much. But Sweden, in terms of gender equality, is miles ahead of Germany in many places. And to be fair, Swedish women live a more independent and less male-reliant model of relationships and live than most people on this planet.

The German defence minister acknowledges this, btw, by often talking about how implementing the "Swedish model" would raise a next generation of soldiers with a more modern view of freedom and responsibility that is more balanced between the genders than the current conservative societal model in Germany that is the man goes to work, the woman stays at home and takes care of the kids and the man fights to protect them if necessary.

> I would do my best to defend my country if it became necessary

I still don't understand this in my 40s and after serving in military (conscription) - why would you defend any country?

I can't imagine scenario when I am defending any country just because some other management wanna take over, I mean, what's the point risking your life for having different politicians maybe speaking different language.

If you fight people are gonna get killed, so unless it is some evil taking over who wanna do genocide, if it's just about gaining area/resources whar's the point in fighting?

I'd sure protect my own family if it would be in danger, but if I don't fight other soldiers why would they care about my family?

Btw. while I agree the conscription should be equal, you need much more women to repopulate the country than you need the men, since men don't give a birth.