Times of war

[KeithD]

(I live next to the biggest Muslim-majority country in the world; from what I can tell it's very low in the consciousness of most Americans, because the USA isn't at war there. I would be interested to hear what most Americans would guess as the biggest Muslim-majority country without looking it up; I'd be pleasantly surprised if 10% got it right.)

Indonesia, I presume(?)

 

[Bramblethorn]

Indonesia, I presume(?)

Correct.

 

[Bill_Cosplay]

I would be interested to hear what most Americans would guess as the biggest Muslim-majority country without looking it up; I'd be pleasantly surprised if 10% got it right.)

I bet most Americans would say, "Don't know, don't care." And they'd be right not too. It's like asking, "Outside of France, what country holds the biggest French population?"

Something I'd be curious about is: What percentage of the world's population do you associate with Isis and other Salafi jihadist militant groups. Not just US citizens, but any non Muslim. I'd also be curious to know if during this War on Terror, how many schools have actively sought to educate Muslim and non-Muslim students on who it is that we are at war with?

Indonesia, I presume(?)

Correct.

With a 3 minute time differential between question to answer and about 10 seconds worth of time to look up the list on wiki, we'll never know how correct the first responder was. That (?) is such a nice touch. For the record, my first thought was Turkey, then Iran, and it turns out their world population percentage is the same.

 

[NotWise]

Correct.

It comes up in the press here now and then, so we aren't entirely ignorant. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population. Checking Wikipedia, Indonesia is followed by Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria.

Of that group, I think only Nigeria has been at war for a long time.

 

[NotWise]

Has sexual morality changed in the USA after decades of constant war?

Good question, but none of our recent wars have involved a very large human commitment. I don't think the stress is enough to alter our behavior.

 

[NotWise]

I bet most Americans would say, "Don't know, don't care." And they'd be right not too.

They'd be right not too? What kind of idiot judgement is that? You can embrace ignorance and apathy as some kind of desirable norm if you want, but I won't.

I think it's pretty important to realize that the terrorists we're fighting are a microscopic part of the Muslim world, and do not represent Islam as it is most often practiced.

 

[Bill_Cosplay]

They'd be right not too? What kind of idiot judgement is that? You can embrace ignorance and apathy as some kind of desirable norm if you want, but I won't.

I think it's pretty important to realize that the terrorists we're fighting are a microscopic part of the Muslim world, and do not represent Islam as it is most often practiced.

Knowing which country has the biggest population isn't important.

If you read my entire post, you will see what I believe is important. I will quote it for you, the second part:

Something I'd be curious about is: What percentage of the world's population do you associate with Isis and other Salafi jihadist militant groups. Not just US citizens, but any non Muslim. I'd also be curious to know if during this War on Terror, how many schools have actively sought to educate Muslim and non-Muslim students on who it is that we are at war with?

From that second quote, you will will be able to infer what I believe to be important.


You've called me idiot, and judgmental and accused me of embracing ignorance, when my post was the exact opposite of that. You are .

 

[NotWise]

My original question was more historical. My story is placed in Iberia at ~1000 CE, after the Christian kingdoms in the north expanded south into Al-Andalus and Almanzor fought back to regain lost territory (and possibly to hide the fact that he'd turned the Caliph into a puppet ruler).

It was a time of constant war between Christians and the much more tolerant and educated Umayyad Muslims, and between Christian states, as well.

My female character is Christian by association, but I'm conceptualizing her as a witch and courtesan or prostitute who might play both sides. The laws of the time would have to be suspended or ignored for her to live. Facts might be hard to come by, but does it make sense that the stresses of constant war would be enough to make her acceptable?

Sorry to drag ya'll into so many details, but I'd like to get the thread more on track.

 

[SimonDoom]

My original question was more historical. My story is placed in Iberia at ~1000 CE, after the Christian kingdoms in the north expanded south into Al-Andalus and Almanzor fought back to regain lost territory (and possibly to hide the fact that he'd turned the Caliph into a puppet ruler).

It was a time of constant war between Christians and the much more tolerant and educated Umayyad Muslims, and between Christian states, as well.

My female character is Christian by association, but I'm conceptualizing her as a witch and courtesan or prostitute who might play both sides. The laws of the time would have to be suspended or ignored for her to live. Facts might be hard to come by, but does it make sense that the stresses of constant war would be enough to make her acceptable?

Sorry to drag ya'll into so many details, but I'd like to get the thread more on track.

Your question pertains to a specific time and circumstance. I doubt that in medieval times community standards for acceptable female behavior changed much in time of war, in part because wars were constantly happening in medieval times. But I imagine people did things in time of war that they would not have done in time of piece, just like today, regardless of community standards.

 

[NotWise]

Your question pertains to a specific time and circumstance. I doubt that in medieval times community standards for acceptable female behavior changed much in time of war, in part because wars were constantly happening in medieval times. But I imagine people did things in time of war that they would not have done in time of piece, just like today, regardless of community standards.

Thanks. Since facts are hard to come by, I wasn't really looking for an era-specific answer. My question was more about whether that is consistent with human experience. I think your last sentence gets to my question.

 

[SimonDoom]

Has sexual morality changed in the USA after decades of constant war?

No, but that's because it's not at all like World War 2. For most Americans, the war is just something they see on TV or Internet news. It doesn't affect them directly, as World War 2 did. The percentage of the country that is actively involved in the war is quite small.

 

[TxRad]

No, but that's because it's not at all like World War 2. For most Americans, the war is just something they see on TV or Internet news. It doesn't affect them directly, as World War 2 did. The percentage of the country that is actively involved in the war is quite small.

Given that it is medieval times and news didn't travel all that fast or all that well, even fewer people might be directly effected by a war or wars. Those that are directly effected or have knowledge of the facts like a person at the court of the king, a courtesan, would act as they saw fit. The morals and mores of the time would most likely not come into play until afterwards.

 

[ChloeTzang]

My original question was more historical. My story is placed in Iberia at ~1000 CE, after the Christian kingdoms in the north expanded south into Al-Andalus and Almanzor fought back to regain lost territory (and possibly to hide the fact that he'd turned the Caliph into a puppet ruler).

It was a time of constant war between Christians and the much more tolerant and educated Umayyad Muslims, and between Christian states, as well.

Ohhh, sorry. I didn't click on that, but that's a fascinating era. Right in the middle of the Reconquista. So you'd have the Kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Navarre and Aragon all jockeying for position and fighting the Moors. Right on the cusp of El Cid.

If you're female character is a witch, is she a peasant or from the military aristocracy. Peasant culture would have much stronger roots in the pagan past than the aristocracy would, where the whole feudal hereditary thing meant there were a lot more controls over reproduction and women's sexual activity.

LICIT AND ILLICIT SEXUALITY IN MEDIEVAL IBERIA: A SURVEY
OF LAS SIETE PARTIDAS

Gender and ethnocentrism in borderlands: how southern Spanish girls and boys represent the moroccan "other" - some interesting references here to Moorish "witches" - Our informants believe that the "Moor as witch" uses black magic to enchant the Spanish men who would otherwise never leave their wives and families. "These Moors have to be using some kind of witchcraft". It's more current but that might be a useful plot idea.

Cultural Exchanges in the Medieval World
- Christian Spain took shape as a militarized society, deeply shaped by a devout and militant religious faith.
- These small Christian states constantly fought among themselves
- Throughout the Reconquista, the Catholic Church played a central supportive role

So your character is going to have to deal with a militarized Christian warrior culture

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Reinos_de_Taifas_1080.png

 

[NotWise]

Ohhh, sorry. I didn't click on that, but that's a fascinating era. Right in the middle of the Reconquista. So you'd have the Kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Navarre and Aragon all jockeying for position and fighting the Moors. Right on the cusp of El Cid.

El Cid was a flash in the pan who rose to notoriety after Almanzor died and the Al-Andalus broke into separate city states. I think that as of 1000 CE Leon was the dominant state. Castile was still a borderland. Navarre and Aragon were fighteing the Franks as much as they fought the Muslims. It was a complicated time.

If you're female character is a witch, is she a peasant or from the military aristocracy. Peasant culture would have much stronger roots in the pagan past than the aristocracy would, where the whole feudal hereditary thing meant there were a lot more controls over reproduction and women's sexual activity.

This female character has to transcend culture and politics. That probably wasn't hard at the time, considering that the Muslims were heavily intermarried with Iberian women, and the Christians didn't get along with each other. Her associations may be loose. For the story she has to pick a man and he will be either Muslim or Christian. I'm not sure yet. Whoever he is, he wins.

LICIT AND ILLICIT SEXUALITY IN MEDIEVAL IBERIA: A SURVEY
OF LAS SIETE PARTIDAS

Thanks for this. I'll read it, though it does address a time 200 years later. The significant difference is that at 1000 CE the Christian/Muslim and Christian/Christian wars in Iberia were local and the Muslim Caliphate was powerful. After that, the Pope got involved and crusaders from all over Europe went to the fight. By 1200 the crusaders had pushed the Muslims back into what is now roughly Andalusia and the wars were almost over.

Gender and ethnocentrism in borderlands: how southern Spanish girls and boys represent the moroccan "other" - some interesting references here to Moorish "witches" - Our informants believe that the "Moor as witch" uses black magic to enchant the Spanish men who would otherwise never leave their wives and families. "These Moors have to be using some kind of witchcraft". It's more current but that might be a useful plot idea.

Cultural Exchanges in the Medieval World

I'll look at the first source, though it seems tangential. The link to the second source didn't work for me. It sounds really interesting.

- Christian Spain took shape as a militarized society, deeply shaped by a devout and militant religious faith.
- These small Christian states constantly fought among themselves
- Throughout the Reconquista, the Catholic Church played a central supportive role

So your character is going to have to deal with a militarized Christian warrior culture

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/Reinos_de_Taifas_1080.png

This is the setting as I understand it. It wasn't the staid Visigoth Christian kingdom where they set restrictive laws on sexual conduct and horrible penalties for violating them. There were nations at war. The warrior factions (both Muslim and Christian) were united by common ancestry on the maternal side. Women had no power but all the influence, and morals might be loosened by the demands of war.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I bet most Americans would say, "Don't know, don't care." And they'd be right not too. It's like asking, "Outside of France, what country holds the biggest French population?"

Not really, no. I was responding to a statement about "the Islamic world". The largest Islamic country in the world is pretty obviously relevant to that statement, so I don't accept that parallel.

Something I'd be curious about is: What percentage of the world's population do you associate with Isis and other Salafi jihadist militant groups.

That depends entirely on what you mean by "associate with". Taking it to mean "active fighters": on the order of about a hundred thousand for IS and Al-Qaeda combined. So about 0.002% of the world's population, and about 0.008% of the Muslim world. Feel free to double that or so for other groups of similar bent.

(n.b. that should not be taken as a thoroughly researched answer, just my response to a question about my expectations.)

Not just US citizens, but any non Muslim. I'd also be curious to know if during this War on Terror, how many schools have actively sought to educate Muslim and non-Muslim students on who it is that we are at war with?

That'd be a hard task, because the answer depends on which government you ask and when you ask them, and the situation on the ground can change considerably in less time than it takes to put out an updated textbook.

With a 3 minute time differential between question to answer and about 10 seconds worth of time to look up the list on wiki, we'll never know how correct the first responder was.

From what KeithD has mentioned elsewhere about his background, I'm very comfortable believing that he knew the answer to that question without looking it up.

That (?) is such a nice touch. For the record, my first thought was Turkey, then Iran, and it turns out their world population percentage is the same.

The same as one another, yep. Both significantly smaller than Indonesia though.

Good question, but none of our recent wars have involved a very large human commitment. I don't think the stress is enough to alter our behavior.

USA's overseas deployments are't huge as a percentage of the population, but from my semi-outsider's perspective* the USA's culture is significantly more militarised than Australia. America assigns a lot more weight to a person's military service and treats veterans with a particular brand of deference that seems weird from an Australian perspective.

I'm thinking of stuff like what happened last year when Virgin Australia announced they'd be giving priority boarding to veterans, or comparing how the eulogies for George H.W. Bush and Gough Whitlam treated their military service. It's not that military service is disrespected here, but unless you win a VC or something it's not the big deal that it is in the USA.

Does that influence extend to sexual morality? It's hard to say for sure, there are so many other factors going on there. Religion in the USA is very different to other countries, and obviously that affects things. But I've certainly heard claims that sexuality in the USA has been influenced by military culture - e.g. claims that US swinger culture began in military bases. So I wouldn't hurry to rule it out.

*dual US/Australian national; lived mostly in Australia but have worked in USA and visited frequently.

 

[Bill_Cosplay]

Not really, no. I was responding to a statement about "the Islamic world". The largest Islamic country in the world is pretty obviously relevant to that statement, so I don't accept that parallel.

We'll have remained in disagreement about how important it is to know which country has the largest Muslim population in the world, as opposed to which Muslim contingents are at the heart of the War on Terror and by knowing who they are, learning where they are, their numbers, their crimes, their atrocities, etc.

That depends entirely on what you mean by "associate with". Taking it to mean "active fighters": on the order of about a hundred thousand for IS and Al-Qaeda combined. So about 0.002% of the world's population, and about 0.008% of the Muslim world. Feel free to double that or so for other groups of similar bent.

(n.b. that should not be taken as a thoroughly researched answer, just my response to a question about my expectations.)

I did write you in the question, but I should have written you as a generalization of what any random person believes.

Associates with: Does the average person associate every Muslim they see with the enemy, how suspicious is the average person of, of any and all Muslims, do they know the difference between the Muslim organizations that we are at war with and those we are not?

That'd be a hard task, because the answer depends on which government you ask and when you ask them, and the situation on the ground can change considerably in less time than it takes to put out an updated textbook.

It would be nice to find out if governments think its important to educate people on this, even without updated textbooks, for the sake of harmony between neighbors. I don't imagine it would be too hard for the government to write a pamphlet on why we are at war and who we are at war with.

From what KeithD has mentioned elsewhere about his background, I'm very comfortable believing that he knew the answer to that question without looking it up.

I met this person(s) on the political board, and after being pointed in the right direction as to the many people they are and the claims they have made, and the personality they project, I'll leave you to your trust in them, and I'll reserve the right not to trust them.

The same as one another, yep. Both significantly smaller than Indonesia though.

I think my initial picks were around 6th on the list. But I did learn something new today, how that will help me in the future: I don't know, but it may.

 

[ishtat]

"Women have no morals during times of war." She expanded on it, and it all rang true for me. I've never questioned it.

She was wrong. The decision to have sex or not is not necessarily a moral one at all. As often as not it was an entirely practical decision. It might make the difference as to whether the woman lived or her children were fed. We frequently make the error of applying the moral/societal standards of today to the past and it's a poor fit.

Modern social historians and politicians are particularly guilty of judging past behavior/morals in the context of their own agendas..

Just as an aside, when my wife was researching our family history a few years back she found a will dated 1490 which left "all my farm, implements, goods and chattels including cattle, sheep, pigs and wife to my cousin John."

Attitudes change? I was thinking of Chloe's reference to Moslem women as chattels when I remembered that.

 

[Pocketshaver]

their is no morality in war. to think other is to be a dumb fucker.

camp followers were women and children. the women were cooks, laundry, seamstresses, as well as prostitutes. the children were the bastards running around under foot.

it wasn't until about 1800 that the british army started making the camp followers marry a soldier in order to stay in the wagon train. But did nothing to stop the traditional business of prostitution.

 

[Hypoxia]

their is no morality in war. to think other is to be a dumb fucker.

Heinlein said (human) racial survival is the only morality. Slaughtering other humans is necessarily immoral. But too many humans love war, love slaughter. Do not expect moral actions in war.

 

[Bramblethorn]

We'll have remained in disagreement about how important it is to know which country has the largest Muslim population in the world, as opposed to which Muslim contingents are at the heart of the War on Terror and by knowing who they are, learning where they are, their numbers, their crimes, their atrocities, etc.

I don't believe I made any statement about whether the former was more important than the latter. Can you point me at where you think I said that?

I feel like you're replying to a different discussion than the one I've actually been involved in.

It would be nice to find out if governments think its important to educate people on this, even without updated textbooks, for the sake of harmony between neighbors. I don't imagine it would be too hard for the government to write a pamphlet on why we are at war and who we are at war with.

FWIW, I think this would be a good thing, not only as a matter of education, but as part of political accountability. I'd even like to see it extended to requiring a statement of the expected outcome of that war.

But I don't see it ever happening, because it would be a massive political liability. If you put out a pamphlet that says "we're invading Freedonia to put an end to their H-bomb program, we're expecting less than 500 casualties, and the troops will be home by Christmas"... and then it turns out Freedonia never had an H-bomb program, the troops have been there five years, and casualties are ten times what you said they'd be... then that might be kind of inconvenient.

Likewise, if you write down that you're going to war because of the enemy's horrible human rights abuses, that can get awkward when it turns out that your business partner has a penchant for dismembering his opponents.

But if you avoid pinning yourself down like that, if you leave yourself room to revise the "why" after the fact, then it's impossible to "fail" because you can just define success to look like wherever you ended up.

 

[Bill_Cosplay]

(I live next to the biggest Muslim-majority country in the world; from what I can tell it's very low in the consciousness of most Americans, because the USA isn't at war there. I would be interested to hear what most Americans would guess as the biggest Muslim-majority country without looking it up; I'd be pleasantly surprised if 10% got it right.)

I took this to mean: If American's didn't know who had the biggest Muslim population, then what do they really know about Muslims? So I offered "better" questions to really gauge the strength of what Americans should know about Muslims: mainly, the ability to distinguish friend from foe without bias, which means having to have some real knowledge of the Muslim cultures.

I don't believe I made any statement about whether the former was more important than the latter. Can you point me at where you think I said that?

I feel like you're replying to a different discussion than the one I've actually been involved in.

The entire "I would be interested to hear what most Americans...." question seemed arbitrary to the point that you had made before that, especially since complete statement implies that if we aren't at war with them, then we don't care about them, so I addressed something that wasn't your main focus of conversation. (It's what I took interest in).

You never said 'better,' I said 'better.' As in the information on Muslims that I brought up would be 'better' to know than knowing which country had highest population of Muslims if you really wanted to know about them and understand them. And, what would be "better" goes beyond my question of: how do you distinguish who we are at war at, but I prefer simplicity that people can build off so that I don't have to type so much.

FWIW, I think this would be a good thing, not only as a matter of education, but as part of political accountability. I'd even like to see it extended to requiring a statement of the expected outcome of that war.

But I don't see it ever happening, because it would be a massive political liability. If you put out a pamphlet that says "we're invading Freedonia to put an end to their H-bomb program, we're expecting less than 500 casualties, and the troops will be home by Christmas"... and then it turns out Freedonia never had an H-bomb program, the troops have been there five years, and casualties are ten times what you said they'd be... then that might be kind of inconvenient.

Likewise, if you write down that you're going to war because of the enemy's horrible human rights abuses, that can get awkward when it turns out that your business partner has a penchant for dismembering his opponents.

But if you avoid pinning yourself down like that, if you leave yourself room to revise the "why" after the fact, then it's impossible to "fail" because you can just define success to look like wherever you ended up.

On this I agree 100%. My wishful thinking is never how it is.

 

[ChloeTzang]

El Cid was a flash in the pan who rose to notoriety after Almanzor died and the Al-Andalus broke into separate city states. I think that as of 1000 CE Leon was the dominant state. Castile was still a borderland. Navarre and Aragon were fighting the Franks as much as they fought the Muslims. It was a complicated time.

Sure was when you read about it. As much infighting as anything else, but the story of El Cid is a good indicator that it was perfectly acceptable for a Christian to fight for the Muslims and move backwards and forwards. The religious animosity wasn't as great then as it was 200 years later.

This female character has to transcend culture and politics. That probably wasn't hard at the time, considering that the Muslims were heavily intermarried with Iberian women, and the Christians didn't get along with each other. Her associations may be loose. For the story she has to pick a man and he will be either Muslim or Christian. I'm not sure yet. Whoever he is, he wins.

Which definitely reflects the era. Seems there was a lot of intermarriage, with many of the Muslim rulers descended from Christian mothers captured by the moors in the North and no doubt vice versa to a certain extent.

Thanks for this. I'll read it, though it does address a time 200 years later. The significant difference is that at 1000 CE the Christian/Muslim and Christian/Christian wars in Iberia were local and the Muslim Caliphate was powerful. After that, the Pope got involved and crusaders from all over Europe went to the fight. By 1200 the crusaders had pushed the Muslims back into what is now roughly Andalusia and the wars were almost over.

Yes, there was a big change over those 200 years, and 100O AD is a real cusp. It reads very much as localized struggles to maintain the different kingdoms and gain advantage rather than any unified struggle against the Moorish invaders. That concept was, I guess, still to come altho if you read the Song of Roland as a reflection of it's time (it was first written about 1040), it's all about the wars against the Muslims, while the battle of Roncesvalles was actually an attack by the Basques on Charlemagne's forces.

The Poem of El Cid might be good for some source material as well. It's sort of indicative in many ways of the treatment of women at the time, with El Cid's daughters being married to the princes of Carrión, who beat their new wives and leave them for dead after El Cid humiliates them. El Cid's two daughters are remarried to the princes of Navarre and Aragon. No shame about being married of, beaten and left for dead and then remarried. It was all about the dowry's and the status of the women's lineage.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Las_hijas_del_Cid_**8Ignacio_Pinazo**9.jpg/200px-Las_hijas_del_Cid_**8Ignacio_Pinazo**9.jpg
The Cid's daughters after being beaten and tied up, work by Ignacio Pinazo (1879).

I'll look at the first source, though it seems tangential. The link to the second source didn't work for me. It sounds really interesting.

Yes, that first source is. It was more of an idea for a theme.

The second source is a link to a PDF, it will download it rather than open a page.

This is the setting as I understand it. It wasn't the staid Visigoth Christian kingdom where they set restrictive laws on sexual conduct and horrible penalties for violating them. There were nations at war. The warrior factions (both Muslim and Christian) were united by common ancestry on the maternal side. Women had no power but all the influence, and morals might be loosened by the demands of war.

Yes, that's how I read circa 1000 AD. This map is of al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms circa 1000 AD, at the apogee of Almanzor. At the to,e, it would have been the Caliphate of Cordoba, which disintegrated in 1031. Some Christian champions, like El Cid, were contracted by taifa kings to fight against their neighbours. At the Battle of Graus in 1063, he and other Castilians fought on the side of al-Muqtadir, Muslim sultan of Zaragoza, against the forces of Ramiro I of Aragon. There is even an instance of a crusade being declared against another Christian king in Iberia. So it was a pretty fluid setup and obviously for this sort of thing to happen, they were quite practical at the time.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Califato_de_C%C3%B3rdoba_-_1000-en.svg/1024px-Califato_de_C%C3%B3rdoba_-_1000-en.svg.png

 

[oggbashan]

Getting back to the original question:

Rape is a weapon of war, and has been for centuries. It still is where military boots on the ground meet a hostile civilian population in Iraq, Syria, the Congo and other conflicts in Africa. The cultures that regard women as second class people which includes some varieties of Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist are more likely to regard rape in wartime as inevitable and even legitimate.

During WW2, Nazis raped conquered women; Russians retaliated on German women they captured; Japanese set up comfort camps with forced prostitution. The US and UK forces issued condoms and provided propaganda about VD...

The differences were of scale. The Western allies usually found consensual sex partners but how genuine the consent was could be dubious. The Germans and Russians regarded women as spoils of war.

 

[KeithD]

I don't think that's going back to the original question, Ogg. The original question is on women's possible change in sexual morality in wartime. Rape isn't this at all. The question is about the women, not what soldiers do to them in wartime. It's about their attitudes and whether their moral grounding on the issue of sex changes in wartime and why. When soldiers sweep in and rape them, this has nothing to do with the women's sexual morality. Morality is a matter of choice. The women have to make decisions on survival under these conditions to the limited option they have even this choice. That's not really much of a question of their moral values.

 

[Sara2000Z]

I wonder if also it's a case of the social disruption that war can cause? I am in no way an expert on the period of history the original post asks about, but I do have good knowledge about other more modern wars, and one of their features is how they break down social order, depending how widespread, long-term or violent they are. For lands and peoples being subjected to invasion and occupation by the enemy, it is often an explicit aim to break down the pre-existing order (social, economic, political etc) to make the land and people easier to control following the initial chaos of invasion. The use of rape has already been discussed in this thread. It's a weapon of control, fear and - longer term - of increasing the population of the victors. But there are other things that happen during the breakdown of social structures that overturn previously-held rules and behaviours. Sometimes this results in greater separation of men from women (as in Afghanistan under the Taliban) or the opposite (as in the drafting of women into the workforce where they worked alongside men who were not family, earning an independent income, sometimes billeted away from home, in the UK during the Second World War). So - could war offer the chance for an upset of the usual social norms? Yes.

What choices would each individual woman make, assuming she has choices that are more than binary (have sex with the Russian soldier or be bayoneted/have sex with the German soldier or watch your baby go hungry for another day)? That's where the moral choice comes, is it? Where a woman could say to herself, hey I want to have sex with that guy over there and with my father/brother/son too preoccupied by war I could risk it now? Hey, I'm going to choose to use sex as a way of obtaining information, greater social standing, money? I guess maybe so.

The other aspect I have heard people talk about, those who survived wars where they were living in occupied countries anyway, is that of the closer proximity of death. If your city is getting shelled every night and snipers are out every day picking off people queueing at the water pump, then death feels a lot closer than during more normal times. So, one's ideas about the various sins (stealing, fornicating, killing others) begin to change in relation to the perceived punishment/guilt that would follow. Overcoming one's inner dilemmas becomes easier the longer the situation goes on - the more, in other words, that sinning is seen to be performed by others around you, it becomes normalised.

Something like that, anyway