And we can't really say for certain that what everybody thought was controlling what happened. What everybody thinks and what actually happens in, eg, banking and finance are completely different. The people in control are not the people talking on the street.
> More broadly, if you see women primarily as baby machines, then military service should be the least of your worries when it comes to fertility.
Call me old fashioned but I'm ruling out the idea that men are the primary baby making engine of humanity.
On your actual point; the fact that there are other things to think about doesn't stop people thinking about this specific thing. The US lost 400,000 servicemen in WWII without really even seeing a foreign invasion; those sort of numbers absolutely should involve someone asking the question 'who can we most and least afford to lose?'. The militaries of the world are not warm and happy-go-lucky organisations. They ask quite unpleasant questions all the time.
I think you are just advancing your own arguments against allowing women to serve in the military here, not actually giving any evidence that these arguments were widely used in opposition to women's military service. That's a tangent.
Incidentally, in the broader context of this thread, this is exactly the kind of fringe content that just might give women the impression that the tech community has a sexism problem.
>Call me old fashioned but I'm ruling out the idea that men are the primary baby making engine of humanity.
I think you misread. I said "if you see women primarily as baby machines", not "if you see women as the primary baby machines".
This is an argument that's rarely if ever been used against allowing women to serve in the military. I think it's the argument that you'd like people to make rather than an argument that people have actually historically made.
More broadly, if you see women primarily as baby machines, then military service should be the least of your worries when it comes to fertility.