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Ironically in this context, there's a current murder investigation about asylum seekers as "unaccompanied children" who were put in emergency accommodation meant for minors, and it now turns out one of the "minors" may in fact have been a legal adult.
Gaming the asylum system, you say? Surely not!
When Kabul fell to the Taliban, there was a widely shared picture of an overcrowded C130 filled with refugees. I love that picture because it is FULL of men, with barely any women or children. I contrast that with the fall of hanoi where evacuees had women and prepubescents. My liberal friends actually had to stop for a second to wonder what "women and children" really meant, and anytime refugees got raised in any conversation subsequently they all bit the bullet immediately before I could play the photo card.
Sorry to butt in but I don't know what you are saying here. And what's the "modal mind"?
The phrase *women and children " brings up mental images of adult human females and children of both genders typically lower than puberty age. The actual "women and children" used in politically sensitive messaging like Palestinian populations attacked by Israel or refugee migrants to the west is actually dominated overwhelmingly by males of "indeterminate" but definitely postpubertal age, with the generous lower bound being 15 years of age and typically presenting as 17-25 year olds, which fits the legal definition of "child" if you flatten every bearded youth as a 17 year old.
When you see pictures of "women and children" refugees look for whether it is a candid shot and not a file or staged photo. The afghanistan evacuation c130 was a candid photo that revealed most "refugees" are healthy adult males, not sympathymaxxing weakling women or babies. Noticing that these adult males are the ones seeking help invites the question of where are the women and if the women are safe where the males are fleeing then why are the males fleeing to begin with.
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