Female Privilege

Here's a rather nasty example of female privilege, though really what it is is an example of why it often sucks the world over (though thankfully not here) to be a man.

My wife is originally from Russia. Her family still lives there, including her mother, grandmother, and brother. She just called me today and told me that she talked to her mother and found out that her 21 year old brother was just conscripted into the Russian military. He has to report in November. Odds are good he'll be sent off to Chenchnya, where many thousands of poorly trained and equiped Russian soldiers have already been killed, some in rather horrible ways. My wife's mother is so upset she can barely talk about it. She is mad at him for even going to the station when he got the notice - I guess some just ignore it and don't show up, though apparently it is a felony not to go. So now they have his paperwork, they took his passport, and he must quit his rather decent job (as they go there) and surrender his body to possible death in the Russian military - where it is not a pleasant place to be even not under war conditions.

I think back now to the life expectancy of a Russian conscript in WWII - it wasn't pretty. Thankfully, things are better now, but dead is still dead. The conscription lasts at least two years. I hope he makes it without dying, being maimed, or being otherwise permanently scarred, though that is probably unlikely. Nobody goes through war as a soldier without getting scars, even if never physically wounded.

Right now, my impulse is, if I hear one more person talk about how men are all so "privileged" over women, to rip off that persons head and throw it into a garbage disposal. Or better yet, conscript them into the Russian military. Grrrr.