Aside from the glaring mistakes as Roman has put it...
The whole book was in my mind a satirical outlook on the female-male battle of the sexes thing.
I don't know if Terry had intended this but this is how i saw it.

(Excuse me... I am a feminist - this is my opinion and if it offends somebody i'm sorry)

Women in war are always the people who suffer the most. Through the ages who always bore the brunt of all the consequenses of war- the raping and pillaging, slaving, the cost of getting your life together when there is no more men left.

But women in that sense are a lot stronger than men because even in the face of absolute desolation we can always go on.

In a more general sense it just about women most of the time can do the same things as men and maybe sometimes do them better.
I liked MR in that sense - but it was dark bout in a silly way.
I must say i agree with roman - i liked NightWatch much better.

Actually, I completely disagree with that…it’s an invalid, and frankly, sexist. There probably is no sex that always ‘suffer’ more. But if we want to ‘score’ it what do you think men get up to during wars? I think it would be wrong to say that the women of World War II suffered more than the solders in the trench. And, while it’s slightly stupid to try to collate suffering I’m sure in the history of war more men have died horrible slow painfull deaths than women have been raped (now I know, that many women would choose a bullet in the gut rather than be raped but I think it’s fair to say that both options involve a lot of suffering).

the cost of getting your life together when there is no more men left

The cost of getting your life together is more suffering than actually dying, now, I can see how losing the people around you can be unbarable (your father, your brother, your son), but don’t you think that men suffer these loses too?

women in that sense are a lot stronger than men because even in the face of absolute desolation we can always go on

Which implies that men cannot do this? Well, I disagree this that. Men have just as much resolve as women.


Now, you could, argue that men cause wars therefore women’s suffering is worse because they didn’t bring it on themselves. But really Wars are started by the powerful. Women in power are just as capable of starting wars as men, it’s not the sex, it’s the position.

I really don’t think that you’ve looked fairly at both sides before you made up your mind on who suffers more.

edit:spelling

I completely agree with Rincewind.

A little background on your point of view would have been nice.

That way, one is left to ask themselves: Why, of all, is a feminist tapping into the old trap giving, in a generalizing way, all women the victim's role?

In the case of feminist history, basically to portray them as the better half of humanity. They're not, per se.

Most societies in the recent centuries restricted them to a rather passive role, at least officially, when it came to war. When you look at the photos of history books where massacres are being executed, you almost always see men with rifles, and women, men and children in front of them. I suppose those images shape a lot of mental images of how war works.
But it's not that women are less capable of committing atrocities, once they have been integrated into the institutions supporting them.

A woman committing them is often taboo though, as if it were against nature - another aspect of "women don't do war", I suppose. Lindy England? The women who worked, and tortured, in Nazi era concentration camps?

Women have always participated in war, though often not exactly in the spotlight, as the thing propaganda wanted the people to see was mainly male heroism (which has, most often, partly been portrayed as protecting women from the enemy).
They followed their men during the Roman era, and during the crusades, and all the following wars, they took part as medical and technical staff during the world wars - all of which included joining the fight once you were in the melee.
A lot of people are in an ideologic dilemma because since recently, women are allowed as soldiers, not only medical staff, into the German army as well. If you're from a political camp that is for pacifism as well as sexual equality, its probably hard to decide wether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Of course, in most wars, there were always civilists of both genders being killed, and fighting the fight only in the trenches was more of an exception. (Every bigger city at least in Europe, Asia, and surely a lot of cities in africa can tell that story.) Plus, it always was a tactic of war to rape as many of "the enemy's women" as possible.
Though Rinso is right in saying the powerful decide starting the war, its often human nature that takes over the rest - you don't have to [i:9669f3b964]order [/i:9669f3b964]your army to rape every girl (and boy) they can get hold of, in some cases you just don't forbid it. (Nanking?)

Which is basically what Terry inferred when it was revealed that a third of the high command (including the main general) were women. Women are just as capable of continuing a senseless war as men (would Cynth argue they are better at it? :p )

I liked Monstrous Regiment, not as good as The Truth or Night Watch but still a very good book and not the worst for me. The everyone was female was a little grating, but not enough to really detract from the story as a whole.

And thus, Electric Man elegantly steers the digressing discussion back to PTerry's works.

I agree.

I agree with Rincewind as well, and therefore with Roman and Hsing.

I also thought the joke of everyone being female was stupid, although I didn't particularly think any particular female, Maledicta or Jackrum or whoever, should have been male.

Gah! And it would've been subtle, it it weren't for those meddling Germans...

Is it me, or was there a hint of Russian WW2 tactics in Brogravia? i.e. chucking as many (wo)men as you can at the opposition, even if you haven't got enough weapons to go around (as proved by the quartermaster)

Maybe, yes... although that was a widespread phenomenon in wars that either stretched very long or were led with all available resources, no matter what the cost. (WWII f.e., but not only the Russians, but also the Germans who started force-recruiting everything from old -really old- men to 14 year old boys and girls).

Oh, that's the old-fashioned Russian way of waging war. Who needs weapons and training when you have a great big sea of people you can send forward?

In truth, weapons and training were available, just on a far lesser scale than in other armies. Russian warfare maxim at that time was 'make it simple'. Which is why Russian tanks, while being less accuarate and manueverable than the German ones, were far simpler both in terms of use and repair, so what took days to repair for the Germans could be repaired in a matter of hours for the Russians.

As I said in the begging it's my point of view...But the arguments afterwards are just as valid...

Not wanting to make a big deal of this, but adding this 'Is just my opinion' doesn't change the nature of the statements. It's not a case of all opinions being equally valid. Your point of you seems heavily bias towards your own sex. So much so that it leads you to make claims like 'Women in war are always the people who suffer the most.' Or ' women in that sense are a lot stronger than men because even in the face of absolute desolation we can always go on.' Such Claims have no proof to them and have obvious flaws. Do women *always* suffer the most? In every war in the history of time? What about childredn? Etc. While it's fine to be a feminist, it's better to realist. In realitity, women don't *always* suffer more than men, or there is no way to calculate the suffering so such claims are pointless. In fact, I don't really see the point in spilting amount of suffering between the sexes. Wouldn't it be better if we stopped defining ourselves as sexes and started just saying 'people'. Isn't that what feminism is really about?

Ba isn't going to get into the discussion itself. But he will say that when a person puts their opinion out for others to read or hear, then they have to be prepared for people to disagree, and to argue against their positions. Just because it's an opinion doesn't mean that others can't find it wrong. This is a discussion board. That's what discussion is about.

I don't think Cynth has a problem with people disagreeing with her opinions, indeed, it's something that she predicted. What I disagree with is the implication that because it's a personal opinion it doesn't have to be based on fact. But the arguments afterwards are just as valid... This gives me the impression that Cynth believes that all 'points of view' are 'just as valid'. Which I don't understand, how can an posing view be just as valid as yours without negating the entire discussion. For me, the valildly of an argument is demermined by the reasons and evidence in which it is expressed. Not by adding the pre-curser 'this is my opinion.'

Cynth, I don't mean to sound like I'm giving you a hard time or anything. I know I'm jumping on everything. It's mostly because I'm bored at work and like these discussions. I don't mean to be annoying (if I am)

Something interesting I just stumbled upon - Charles Dickens' illustrator was nicknamed 'Phiz'