This is a great step forward for equality
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Real equality is the state demanding you get in that fucking trench
I'm not sure if Denmark is one of those but for some states there's unfortunately little choice. Not like we in Finland want to be next to Russia. But only men having to serve is an obvious equality issue.
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This is a barbaric practice.
But its nice that women are now included.
I mean at least they're not sexist ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But it's* nice
ur brbaric
That’s not uncommon in countries with universal military service. Israel does this, and I think Finland and Singapore might as well. Sweden’s limited conscription (it’s a lottery, and you get to decline, though unless you have a strongly held conviction to do so, it’s a breach of jantelagen to do so) is also unisex, IIRC, which I suspect is more what the Danish model will look like than the IDF.
At least in Finland you can voluntarily join the army as a woman, but the military service is only mandatory for men, so it's not equal.
Same for Denmark, at least back when I last checked in 2018.
In Denmark all women are invited to join the “Forces Day”. All men are required to go.
They recruited 4,700 last year, of which 100% were volunteers. They have the power to force you to join but if enough volunteers join they don’t use it. These conscripts then enter for a short 4 month stint, basically “basic training”. The aim is solely to create a recruitment pool for which they can recruit professional soldiers.
Now the government is proposing changing the number to 5,000 and the service length to 11+ months, enough to give you your “specialist training”, ie turn you into infantry, engineers, artillery gunner or whatever.
As the service length will go up dramatically they expect the volunteering rate to fall somewhat, which means they expect somewhere between 500-1000 will be forced to join, whether they want to or not.
You can always become a conscientious objector, which means you still have to carry out the same service length (11 months) but you go do it in a nursing home, library, kindergarten or similar.
Previously the objector rate was very low and I’d imagine it will continue to be so.
My platoon had about 10-15 who had been forced to join (this was back in the late 90s). All bar 1 (one) loved or at the very least accepted their time in there and couldn’t understand what they so rejected. The last one became a conscientious objector within the first month. My best soldier had been forced to join and he personally shook my hand when I sent him home on his last day.
As the service length will go up dramatically they expect the volunteering rate to fall somewhat, which means they expect somewhere between 500-1000 will be forced to join, whether they want to or not.
That's fucked up. It's one thing to talk about actual conscription if you actually need to enlist a lot of relunctant people, but if you can get 4000 voluntarily getting to 5000 should be easy by increasing the benefits (higher pay might work , or scholarships or ...).
You're depriving a thousand people of their freedom for a year to save maybe a hundred million kronor. That's roughly the cost of a single modern tank.
I strongly disagree. This isn't about "depriving people of their freedom" this is about the fact that everyone who lives in a free country, which will support them and give them benefits for life, has a responsibility and a duty to answer when called upon.
Nobody can expect others to defend them if they won't do the same. An integral part of the social contract in countries with conscription is that everyone accepts that duty to answer when called upon, and to defend their countrymen when necessary.
Anyone who doesn't like it is free to start a political movement to abolish it. I have yet to see such a movement in any of the Nordic countries.
This isn’t about “depriving people of their freedom”
No, but depriving people of their freedom is what conscription does. It can be necessary, just as depriving people of their money via taxation is necessary, but you should be honest about what you're doing.
Nobody can expect others to defend them if they won’t do the same. An integral part of the social contract in countries with conscription is that everyone accepts that duty to answer when called upon, and to defend their countrymen when necessary.
Yeah, but you're using the opposite of the solidarity principle here. As I said, it's reasonable to use conscription if you actually need a lot of people. I very much see the point in what South Korea or Israel are doing with conscription (albeit that they're a bit sexist with it). But if 98% of the birth year cohort (and 99.98% of the entire population) get to enjoy their freedom while a tiny minority is forced to join the army, then that's a serious injustice. Imagine doing taxation that way. Next time the state needs more income: Don't raise income tax by 1% for everyone, just you could pick 1% of the population and raise it by 100% for them.
As long as the army doesn't need (almost) everyone to have served, incentives paid for by everyone should be used to get enough volunteers.
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Finland
Norway, not Finland. Women have a duty to serve but so few are called up that it's kind of voluntary in practice.
Nope it is uncommon. Equal conscription only has been a thing for a few years in exactly two countries: Sweden and Norway. Neither Finland nor Singapore conscript women. Israel has conscription for women but it's shorter.
A (de facto) lottery was what made Germany suspend conscription because only pulling in a fraction of each cohort was considered a breach of equality.
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Singapore does not conscript women, it's a matter of much debate. 80% of military work is administrative and logistic work which women are definitely physically qualified to do (without even considering the plenty of women who are more physically fit than some men, who would also do well in other physical roles).
What is jangelan?
It's the typical phrasing of social pressures to not stand out in Scandinavia, drawing from a book where the author phrases the "rules" somewhat as a legal code. Tall poppy syndrome is an overlapping idea that might be more familiar to English speakers.
Googling tall poppy syndrome brings up that it's mostly a nz/aus thing. I've never heard of that in the states. In the wiki article it mentions there's a Japanese saying that goes "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down," which I have heard.
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Good, if service is a duty of citizenship all should be called to partake and where some may not be able to contribute the same for any number of reasons they should have a way they can as well.
I don’t like conscription, though as a citizen of a country looking at a civil war in the future I do see some benefits to all citizens being trained soldiers, but the duties of citizenship should be spread to all who can bear them. It ensures that none feel that they are more entitled to the rights and benefits of citizenship than others and is an act of a fair and just society.
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