Mothers carrying children over borders is only part of the story. Credit: Maciej Luczniewski/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Suddenly, images of Ukrainian women are all over the internet. Most of them are mothers, fleeing Russian convoys, carrying their children across borders. Many of them are leaving husbands and brothers behind to fight. But these heart-wrenching photographs, published by the mainstream media, are only part of the story. Ukrainian women will suffer in myriad ways before this war is over.
Pornhub has a new category: “Ukrainian girls and war rape videos”; it is dominated by Russian soldiers documenting disgustingly brutal crimes. Domestic violence and street harassment have already spiked. Female refugees are falling victim to pimps and traffickers; official channels — the police, hospitals, legal systems — won’t help them.
Where women are concerned, “the foreign coverage of the war is concentrated mostly on women fleeing with children”, Maria Dmytrieva tells me. The Ukrainian feminist activist — a key member of the Global Network of Women Peacekeepers — believes this coverage misrepresents the reality of war for women, and the ways in which women specifically become targets for attack.
We speak via Zoom, and as night falls, she sits in darkness, so as not to be spotted by saboteurs. Although the Russians had not yet arrived in her small town, a few miles outside Kyiv, like everybody else in Ukraine she is in a perilous position.
Maria has been involved in the campaign to end male violence in Ukraine for more than two decades. I have visited her in Ukraine on several occasions and have seen her make powerful men in senior government positions quake when she rails against injustices towards women and girls.
One study from 2019 found that 75% of women in Ukraine reported experiencing some form of violence since the age of 15, and one in three reported experiencing physical or sexual violence. According to a recent statement by the United Nations, crisis and displacement has recently put women in Ukraine at increased risk of sexual and physical violence and abuse. There are no figures as of yet to show the levels of violence experienced by women and girls since the Russian invasion, but plenty of evidence is being amassed by women’s NGOs.
“Human nature, if it changes at all, changes not much faster than the geological face of the earth” – Solzhenitsyn. In a conflict a country requires weapons but also needs individuals to bear them. They have to be prepared to risk their own lives to protect others. For time immemorial, in times of war, those that have done this have been, er, men. In terrible times, men come to the fore.
Modern genetics suggests human nature changes much faster than that. Every society is selecting for something (in an evolutionary sense).
The Ten Thousand Year Explosion by Cochran & Harpending 2009 will give you an idea.
Well, some populations have evolved to become more tolerant to drinking milk as adults, and things like that. And if traits are strongly selected, then, yes evolution can be fast. Short sightedness, which can be exacerbated by reading a lot in poor light, is much more common in literate societies. The condition has no benefit in traditional tribal societies, and obviously puts those affected much more at risk. This is offset in complex state societies, where reading has significant benefits and the readers themselves may not be expected to fight wild animals or other people.
Despite these examples, some major aspects of our nature don’t seem to have changed much if at all. One of these is the kind of people we fancy. There is a limit to cultural relativism in assessing beauty. Modern culture says – who has a kind soul? – our genes often (unconsciously) say, go for the fit, lean, good-looking. (And we all tend to know what ‘good-looking’ means).
The human propensity, particularly in young men, for rage and violence, also does not seem to have changed for tens of thousands of years. Tribal societies constantly waged war, with a higher death rate than modern conflicts. (And, the men fought, not women).
This is also of course very counter-cultural in the modern West, which is obsessed with the virtues of being empathetic and caring. We therefore delude ourselves about such an ingrained part of our nature; people on the Left in particular are very keen to deny it. Of course we can be very cooperative ‘within group’ while being hostile to outsiders; there is no contradiction there and the norm for millennia.
Solzhenitsyn’s view of human nature barely changing is supported by the renowned scientist E.O. Wilson. “I would call our species dysfunctional,” said Wilson in 2019. “Because we have Palaeolithic emotions, we have medieval institutions that we still depend on and we have god-like power. Now that is a very dangerous and unstable combination.” The Paleolithic era began 2.5 million years ago.
Mankind is sinful, born that way. Only a belief in God can change it. Atheists, start your engines! Your deep study and the mirror have equipped you for deep insights in this matter..
Porn hub has a new category?? At 60 years of age I thought I’d seen or heard most things, but this truly appalled me. It seems the depth of human depravity has no bottom.
It is horrid. Unfortunately, the 1990s breakdown of Yugoslavia was a gold mine for the pimps and pornography profiteers–they had rape camps and set up cameras to capture and sell tens of thousands of images of sexual abuse around the world. No doubt they’re still circulating today.
I really struggle to believe that any web site could have a “Ukrainian girls and war rape videos” category.that is “dominated by Russian soldiers documenting disgustingly brutal crimes”.
Surely this kind of exploitation should be illegal. If Pornhub does have any category for rape then is there not a way to prosecute the company directly?
I am not usually pro-censorship, but this kind of thing is surely completely unacceptable for any right thinkng person.
Someone please tell me it is an urban myth and not real.
I honestly don’t believe that porn hub or any other porn peddling website should be allowed in a civilised society. Anyone accessing porn of any sort should be ashamed of themselves. Porn makes people “sick” and “sick” people destroy themselves and society.
Think of it as urban rot.
The notion of ‘rights’, female or otherwise, is being eroded, save when it serves as a convenient tool to bludgeon others into moral submission. The only person who can uphold your rights is you. To rely on others is folly.
Human beings are social animals above everything else, and this helps to explain our unique attributes, including our moral sense. The libertarian Right always get this wrong; they delude themselves that ‘every man can be an island’. Perhaps somewhere in Alaska, this might be an option, it is hardly likely to be relevant for the vast majority.
Women in particular are simply physically weaker than men, which always puts them more at risk, and explains the particular social and legal taboos protecting them (of course incompletely) in most societies. So of course there needs to be state, societal and collective responses as well as whatever individual precautions we can take.
Any idea of timescale on this one?
Timely and necessary article (somewhat to my surprise). Still, I would modify one of her concluding sentences: “Local, national and international women’s organisations must confront the horrors faced by Ukrainian women; only then can they work out how best to respond to the Russian invasion.” I would have removed the italicised half.
So there’s child trafficking going on as well!
Comment deleted.
I think men should have had a choice, protect their country or protect their women from these creeps. Forcing them to stay by martial law and splitting families putting women into this position I’m not sure was the right move. If all the men of Ukraine are sent into the Russian meat grinder what good is that for the women and country if the don’t have enough arms anyway?
“It is really terrifying how capitalism and imperialism are going hand in hand to exploit those who cannot defend themselves right now.” Placing the abhorrent money-making activities described in this article under the banner of capitalism is simply ridiculous.
Exactly what I thought. When opinion, aka emotion, enters a would be factual text, it weakens its argument. Which is unhelpful as the subject matter is clearly of the utmost concern.
Ghastly, but not unexpected.
When our righteous escalations lead to nuclear holocaust and the eradication of the species, who will be around to point out that even in annihilation, the women suffered more? Perhaps we should launch a probe with a plaque into space now, just to make sure the aliens draw the correct conclusions?
The plight of Ukrainian women is certainly a concern for all civilised people. Helping them and protecting them from predatory practices is of utmost concern for us all.
In this, the article does well. I also appreciate the fact that the men who have been forced into conscription and may well die in this war at least get a mention (albeit brief) – that is progress for many radical feminists.
Overall, the discussion strikes home the folly of allowing this conflict to drag on. The folly is of course first and foremost on the doorstep of the Kremlin. But the role played by the UA government and their Western allies should also, I believe, come under greater scrutiny.
As for the author’s willingness to embrace sending weapons into a war zone, I can’t help but wonder if she would be quite so eager to make the conflict bloodier and more brutal if, as it were, the high heel were on the other foot – that is, the men and children were allowed to flee, and the women forced to stay and fight.
In the 1980s leading radical feminist scholar Catharine McKinnon wrote of how profoundly unfair drafts are to men, that every man has a 1/2 chance better chance of not going if women were conscripted too. Any country with any real kind of gender equality, she said, would entail conscripting women.
The U.S. military has data on the objective performance of mixed gender military units in combat. There’s no need to discuss the results – because we all know what they are. We just don’t want it to be true.
Only armies that don’t propose to do any fighting accept women as a substitute for men.
The Ukrainians want to fight, even this radical feminist author wants to fight. So the West, deciding that they should not be given weapons to do so, would be utterly perverse.
The failure of western countries to support in any way the Republican government in Spain was a cynical and stupid policy which emboldened Italy and Germany, as well as giving their army and air force plenty of practice. It is just as well Hitler didn’t get on with Franco, otherwise the Straits of Gibraltar would have been closed to the Royal Navy and the war hugely prolonged.
Really horrible story and the depravity of some men.
How strange must the world look through the feminist prism! How bizarre to focus on the issues above amidst the chaos and misery that we see unfolding in Ukraine.
Nowhere have I seen feminist outrage expressed that women are being discriminated against by NOT being forced to remain in the country to fight and die. After all, why does it take a Y-chromosome to pull the trigger on a Kalashnikov or launch an anti-tank missile? Surely, equality of opportunity by total integration of women into the military forces of most progressive western nations is self-evidently a good thing, so why should they not be fully integrated into the defence of Ukraine?
Imagine the treatment of a chap who turns up at Ukrainian border control and claims the right to flee: “Because I am transgender and identify as a woman.’
It takes only a small degradation in the fabric of society for ‘toxic masculinity’ to be urgently rehabilitated into ‘courageous manliness’.
Most forms of wokeism can only survive and prosper in the abnormally oxygen-rich atmosphere of 21st century liberal democracy. The tiniest fracture in the bell jar sees a rapid return of oxygen levels to normal, when most of the ‘….isms’ rapidly become irrelevant
I think most Ukranian women would say win the war first and then turn to the ancillary issues.
Thank you Julie for your indefatigable advocacy and courage on behalf of women’s and children’s rights. Naturally, transactivists refuse to debate you. They’re terrified.
“The situation is exacerbated, though, by the fact that Ukraine is being invaded by a country which effectively decriminalised domestic violence in 2017. “
Not exactly the ticket for a quick admission into the EU where women also die by the hundreds ….in France anyway…..every year !!
Thanks for this, JB. I hope this great article won’t attract the trolls who too often plague your work.
It has attracted this one, Douglas. Bindel draws attention to what war can mean for women and girls (which is a good point of view on both moral and practical grounds), but she does so by deflecting attention away from what war can mean for men and boys (which is not a good point of view on either moral or practical grounds).
She mentions the latter only twice. On the first occasion, she notes that “when traumatised men return home, levels of violence against women increase.” Of interest to her is not the fact that war has traumatized these men in the first place, however, but the fact that they traumatize women in turn. In effect, therefore, she trivializes (and perhaps even condones) what war does to men.
On the other occasion, she offers a token acknowledgment of the obvious. “Of course, men are in danger too. Ukraine does not allow men between 18 and 60 to leave the country.” But then she immediately mitigates the effect of that acknowledgment by quoting her female (and somehow “pacifist” informant. “This rule is, Dmytrieva told me, ‘reasonable.’” Bindel clearly agrees that it’s “reasonable” to force men but not women into combat. That argument is tendentious not only on moral grounds (which is my main concern here) but also on those of evolutionary psychology. If men in general are so brutal by nature, after all, there would surely be no “need” for military conscription at all. (In this comment, I won’t go into the question of how useful women can be in combat unless someone asks me to do so.)
Bindel clearly agrees with what Dmytrieva says next: “But the women suffer a different and ongoing kind of violence.” They do indeed, because there are so many ways to suffer. The effect of combat, too, is “ongoing” and not only for those who lose limbs or suffer from exposure to toxic chemicals. Until recently, men who broke down in combat or refused even to enter combat were called “cowards” or “malingerers” and punished accordingly either informally (shaming them) or formally (executing them for “desertion”). During World War I, some physicians began to acknowledge a condition called “shell shock,” which they tried to cure before sending their patients right back into combat. We now call this condition “post-traumatic-stress disorder” and know that it can lead to a lifetime of pathological behavior whether directed inward (as suicide) or outward (as uncontrolled aggression)–or both. Moreover, we know that combat is not the only cause of PTSD. Rape is another. This afflicts mainly (but by no means only) women.
Generally speaking, it might be be unfair to criticize journalists for what they don’t say. No comment on the news can say everything, after all, and some selective comments might require more emphasis than others (although feminists have been doing that for decades and thus brought about changes in international law). But I do criticize Bindel in this case. She has chosen (probably on political grounds) to focus on what war does to women and to trivialize or ignore what it does to men–that is, in effect, to indulge in comparative suffering.
It has attracted this one, Douglas. Bindel draws attention to what war can mean for women and girls (which is a good point of view on both moral and practical grounds), but she does so by deflecting attention away from what war can mean for men and boys (which is not a good point of view on either moral or practical grounds).
She mentions the latter only twice. On the first occasion, she notes that “when traumatised men return home, levels of violence against women increase.” Of interest to her is not the fact that war has traumatized these men in the first place, however, but the fact that they traumatize women in turn. In effect, therefore, she trivializes (and perhaps even condones) what war does to men.
On the other occasion, she offers a token acknowledgment of the obvious. “Of course, men are in danger too. Ukraine does not allow men between 18 and 60 to leave the country.” But then she immediately mitigates the effect of that acknowledgment by quoting her female (and somehow “pacifist” informant. “This rule is, Dmytrieva told me, ‘reasonable.’” Bindel clearly agrees that it’s “reasonable” to force men but not women into combat. That argument is tendentious not only on moral grounds (which is my main concern here) but also on those of evolutionary psychology. If men in general are so brutal by nature, after all, there would surely be no “need” for military conscription at all. (In this comment, I won’t go into the question of how useful women can be in combat unless someone asks me to do so.)
Bindel clearly agrees with what Dmytrieva says next: “But the women suffer a different and ongoing kind of violence.” They do indeed, because there are so many ways to suffer. The effect of combat, too, is “ongoing” and not only for those who lose limbs or suffer from exposure to toxic chemicals. Until recently, men who broke down in combat or refused even to enter combat were called “cowards” or “malingerers” and punished accordingly either informally (shaming them) or formally (executing them for “desertion”). During World War I, some physicians began to acknowledge a condition called “shell shock,” which they tried to cure before sending their patients right back into combat. We now call this condition “post-traumatic-stress disorder” and know that it can lead to a lifetime of pathological behavior whether directed inward (as suicide) or outward (as uncontrolled aggression)–or both. Moreover, we know that combat is not the only cause of PTSD. Rape is another. This afflicts mainly (but by no means only) women.
Generally speaking, it might be unfair to criticize journalists for what they don’t say. No comment on the news can say everything, after all, and some selective comments might require more emphasis than others (although feminists have been doing that for decades and thus brought about changes in international law). But I do criticize Bindel in this case. She has chosen (probably on political grounds) to focus on what war does to women and to trivialize or ignore what it does to men–that is, in effect, to indulge in comparative suffering.
Why are the 80000 female prostitutes in Ukraine before the war the result of high tech industries being repatriated back to Russia? When did this happen, 1992?