"80% of Afghan Refugees Fleeing Taliban Are Women and Children". So it turns out that the narrative that Afghan men are fleeing while women and children are being "left behind" is completely wrong.

Sydnaktik · 2021-08-19T10:59:28+00:00

And the narrative is now completely flipped on it's head

The UNHCR is particularly concerned the about the impact the conflict is having on women and girls, who make up 80% of those roughly 250,000 who had fled the country since the end of May.

“This is a staggering statistic,” Mantoo told journalists, before adding “the situation needs attention, these people need support”.

It's not "selfish women leaving men behind to fend for themselves". It's "these people need support".

LacklustreFriend · 2021-08-19T17:56:53+00:00

The way the situation in Afghanistan has been gendered by the media and the public infuriates me. It is the perfect storm of everything wrong with how we view the relationship between the sexes. Things I've seen that make my blood boil:

1) The failure to acknowledge men are just as much victims in this situation. Men being shamed and called cowards, that it is all the male Afghan army's fault for the situation the state finds itself is in, the constant calls for men to sacrifice and get themselves killed. The portrayal of men as completely self interested and not caring about the women and children in their lives when this couldn't be further from the truth.

2) The complete inversion of reality and the complete lionization of women. I've seen people unironically believing that women will be massacred in the streets of Kabul and those that survive the while be literally enslaved. That women have no way to flee when that's not true. There is zero acknowledgement that it is military-aged men that will be the ones massacred as occurs time and time again in military conflicts. You see cheering on the 'brave women' standing up to the Taliban, with zero acknowledgement that when shit hits the fan it will be the men who act as shields and take the bullet (in fact, these same people are hypocritically calling for men to do just that). I've also seen people say that if the Afghan army was full of women it would have been more successful. What world are these people living on. The men aren't going to be drinking champagne and partying and thanking the Taliban. Those girls aren't getting an education/only getting a religious education? Guess fucking what, boys aren't going to be getting a liberal western education either.

3) The extreme level of "armchair" saviour that people seems to have. No you fucking wouldn't be the one to sacrifice yourself to the Taliban. Stop pretending you're somehow above it all and would act any differently. There is absolutely no awareness on what the political, social and security situation in Afghanistan. They just think if people (PARTICULARLY MEN) acted in the way the armchair saviour thinks they should then Afghanistan would be a utopia by now.

4) The complete gendering of fundamentalist Islam as something only supported by men. This mistake belief may well be at the core of the anti-male sentiment. Here's something most people really don't want to hear - there are many women who support fundamentalist Islam movements. It's not just men imposing their will on all women, and the media and public would have you believe not a single women has even supported fundamentalist Islam.

There are two responses to this. The first is to deny any such women exist. You can find many many stories of people from fundamentalist or traditionalist households where the mother was the forcing strict compliance to gender roles and otherwise. When you point out clear cases of women supporting fundamental and radical Islamic sects, such as the women who joined ISIS, they move onto the second response - women who support fundamentalist Islam don't really support it, they're just all brainwashed and oppressed and internalised misogyny to think that they support fundamentalist Islam. How convenient! Women have no agency and ability to think for themselves! Those ISIS brides, who started crying foul when ISIS started losing, about how badly they were treated by ISIS! They were tricked into thinking they were tricked into supporting ISIS, and were abused. They didn't really support them, and even if they did, they had no real agency so it doesn't matter anyway! The female ISIS member who regrets joining ISIS is worthy of our sympathy, by the male ISIS member made his bed.

This goes for all radical, fundamentalist or traditionalist politics too. The woman who wants to stay at home is never heard from the media. The women who abhors the female gender role is going to heard everywhere. Occasionally, you do see traditionalist women rear their head now and again when their position is directly challenged, like Phyllis Schlafly. But the rest of the time, the current narrative around gender is to pretend such women don't and can't exist. After all, why would an Afghan women like the fact she's stuck and restricted from going outside in a country full of landmines, gunfire, poverty and backbreaking menial labour?

5) Remember, it's not cultural imperialism if you are doing it for a good cause! Giving the savages an education and changing their barbaric cultural practices is cultural imperialism and is bad. Giving the women an education and changing their barbaric cultural practices towards women is morally justified!

Rant over. Some of the stuff I said was probably phrased poorly but what ever. I'm just so infuriated.

problem_redditor · 2021-08-19T10:25:33+00:00

So this was brought to my attention by a friend.

The UNHCR is particularly concerned the about the impact the conflict is having on women and girls, who make up 80% of those roughly 250,000 who had fled the country since the end of May.

(Minor nitpick of this quote - the UN spokesperson in the video they linked said 80% of those fleeing were women and children, not women and girls specifically.)

It's just so interesting how women and children making up 80% of those fleeing the country is being used as justification for extra concern for them (I suppose because they think this makes them "vulnerable"), whereas when people falsely think men are the ones who are primarily fleeing the country based on cherry-picked images it's "women being left behind" and "men abandoning their duty" and also justification for extra concern for women and children (and demonisation of men).

The immeasurable amount of stupid that has been exhibited in the public reaction to the crisis is unparalleled. Whichever way the situation goes, the only appropriate answer is apparently that we must have extra concern for women and children.

A joint UN human rights office (OHCHR) and the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) report published in July found more women and children were killed in the first half of this year than in any year since records began.

Interesting how they provide this information without also providing the % of deaths which adult men, adult women, boys, and girls represent. Because that would likely shatter the narrative.

2021-08-19T10:39:32+00:00

now people are okay with the afghan men evacuating, since they are off the set up a safe place in advance for women and children so that living abroad will be comfortable. It seems people are not angry anymore since the men are of utility to women and children. This is the same view you would have towards tools of any kind, its simply misandrist.

DanteLivra · 2021-08-19T12:25:46+00:00

Wow, so maybe all the medias protaying men fleeing was because men have to resolve themselves to illegal or unpractical ways while women and children as usual have the luxury of getting cared for.

Must be nice to be able to juggle between being an adult and being a kid whenever it's advantageous to you.

twice_punished_janny · 2021-08-19T16:32:26+00:00

Afghan men are apparently patriarchal and evil for fleeing the country but the women who flee need help. Ridiculous.

Rockbottom503 · 2021-08-19T21:17:56+00:00

I always liken this shit to being a fly on the wall in the final moments of the titanic sinking; all the women and children, that could be, are already safely aboard the lifeboats floating away and what you're seeing now is the desperation playing out of 'every man for himself' as the men left behind on that sinking ship scramble for any scraps of a hope for survival to cling onto. The lack of empathy is just astounding.

Mahameghabahana · 2021-08-19T15:27:13+00:00

Hell when Soviets were attacking it was the Afghan men who put up the fight forming the Mujahideen or peshawar 7. These braves not only fought Soviets but also fought one of their rogue memeber group hezb-e-islami (Gulburddin hekmatyar). Then after that some Mujahideen formed Northern Allience (Ahmad Shah Massoud) and fought Taliban. Even now the vice president and Ahmad Shah Massoud's son Ahmad Massoud has United in panjshir and re-created the northern Allience and vowed to fight Taliban. Even general dostum is against Taliban. I am disgusted at many comment on YouTube calling Afghan men cowards. How many women showed up in panjshir at the call of Ahmad Massoud? Zero. By that I am saying that women rather then calling men cowards for not dying for them should join men in the fight against Taliban. It's easy calling someone's coward in your AC room but hard when it's matter of live and death. I have not only have sympathy for those brave fighters who are going to fight Taliban against all odds in panjshir but when I saw a video of Taliban memebers playing in an amusement park I thought well they were just taught how to fire ak 47s,rocket launcher and probably only seen bloodshed throughout their childhood and probably enjoying their lost childhood now.

Stephen_Morgan · 2021-08-19T15:33:34+00:00

This was also the case pre-9/11, and the same focus was in the media then. The reason was that men were being forcibly conscripted, which makes it hard to flee to a refugee camp.

Now, I'm wondering how many of these are women and how many are children. The population of Afghanistan has almost doubled in the last twenty years, meaning almost half of the population must now be children.

whosthatcreep · 2021-08-20T02:03:17+00:00

Selfish cowardly women should stay home and cook for soldiers and tend to the wounded, I guess?

BloomingBrains · 2021-08-20T06:10:03+00:00

Expecting misandrists to change their stance as new information emerges instead of endlessly shifting the goalpost is like expecting a pigeon to play chess instead of knocking over all the pieces and flying away. Except I'd actually put more faith in pigeon at this point.

There is a pretty low bar for rationality but they can't even meet it.

DeepFriedWine · 2021-08-19T16:45:06+00:00

"Oh, it's really women and children fleeing, not men? We need to do something about this! Now it's a tragedy!"

peanutbutterjams · 2021-08-20T03:38:31+00:00

This is a solid example of how misandrist our society has become.

problem_redditor · 2021-08-19T12:27:25+00:00

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a-man-from-earth · 2021-08-19T14:42:33+00:00

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