There's one thing I don't understand with the best will in the world.

Since the end of February, Putin has been covering Ukraine with war crimes.

And in this country you ask yourself on Twitter and in magazines, what are the oat milk flat white men from Berlin-Prenzelberg and Munich's Glockenbachviertel doing when the war comes here?

Will they even be able to fight?

In fact, you hardly did any military service?

Well, apart from the fact that these so often typecast oat milk men with dotted socks are outnumbered in Germany, it's not them, it's the men from Kyiv and Ternopil who have to fight.

So the whole thing is a very hypothetical discussion and also a bit cynical when you think about the almost teenagers that Putin is sending to die on the battlefield right now and that the Ukrainians have no choice but to defend their country.

A masculinity seminar is not military service

In Germany, a very archaic idea of ​​"masculinity" and, accordingly, "femininity" still seems to haunt the lecture series and guidebooks.

Just think of the umpteen “masculinity seminars” that are offered for a lot of money by self-proclaimed “men coaches”, where, if you scroll through the offers, it’s about rediscovering the “warrior” in you, the “male primal power" of the "hero".

These ideas have nothing to do with war.

A masculinity seminar is not military service.

But not only the oat milk men are moving the debate about the Bundeswehr and war these days.

Fear is fueled from the right that the Bundeswehr has promoted too much family-friendliness and diversity, day-care centers instead of combat aircraft, equality instead of guns.

The tenor here again: Our Bundeswehr is too effeminate.

Just as absurd are all the questions, would the world be a more peaceful place if more women were in the command centers?

As if women were "naturally" the gentler, peace-loving beings.

Totally forgotten are war criminals like Lynndie England, the US soldier convicted of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Iraq.

Or the women of the so-called Islamic State's al Khansa Brigade, who tortured and murdered.

Where do these esoteric ideas come from?

Yes, gender plays a role in war, but differently.

Rape was officially listed as a war crime in 2008.

Sexualized violence has always existed in armed conflicts.

Feminist foreign policy and flying helicopters are not mutually exclusive

Reports of rapes by Russian soldiers are also increasing in Ukraine.

Feminist foreign policy is by no means a gimmick, as Annalena Baerbock Friedrich Merz countered in the general debate last week in the Bundestag, when it came to the special assets of the Bundeswehr.

The two are not mutually exclusive: feminist foreign and security policy and helicopters that can fly.

On the contrary, sometimes the protection of civilians, especially vulnerable groups, women and children, must also be able to be enforced militarily.

Now feminist foreign policy is even included in the coalition agreement.

This is progressive, in the sense that gender-specific violence in wars is taken into account and not simply ignored or treated as collateral damage, as has been the case for so long.

Trying to protect women from sexualised violence.

Documenting the deeds and holding the perpetrators accountable.

However, it becomes questionable when, based on the “peace-loving nature of women”, one demands radical pacifism and rigorous disarmament.

Don't get me wrong, a world completely without weapons would undoubtedly be a better one, but one wonders, are Ukrainian soldiers supposed to defend Mariupol with dustpans and brooms?

And where would the IS be today if the Kurdish units hadn't been supplied with weapons and the anti-IS coalition organized?

"Lions are lions, male or female"

When people talked about gender and war in the last few days, I had to think of a Peshmerga general I met in 2018, an Yezidi who fled from IS in 2014 and joined the armed forces.

She had fought against IS on the Mosul front, leading a women's battalion.

When she opened up about her old life as a singer and showed me a video of her once playing and singing saz in a red dress, she started crying.

I had to think of a Kurdish proverb: "A lion is a lion, whether male or female".

I thought of Svetlana Aleksveivich's book War Has No Female Face.

About the hundreds of interviews she conducted with women who fought in the Red Army.

I never enjoyed the images of fighting women as feminist icons.

The women were brave, no question about it, but war remains what it is.

He is neither male nor female.

He doesn't have a human face.