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Female spies of MI6

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Re: Female spies of MI6

#53

> For the first time ever, SIS officers reveal why women often make the best spies for our times I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. It also reads like the author relied mostly on novels, movies, and such instead on a the interview. Women spies have been around just as much, if not longer - Virginia Hall, Mata Hari, Jane Whorwood, Elizabeth Van Lew, Anne Dawson, Violette Szabo. Going even fur…

> I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. For example here it makes an explicit point: "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power. For the female spy, this weakness in the enemy is exploitable. Precisely because they are so likely to be overlooked, women have the potential to be the best spies of all." > p…

china has more women in positions of political representation than the us

Re: Female spies of MI6

#54

The propoganda vibes are pretty high for me.

Yeah this feels like a submarine article

It’s certainly a PR piece - I wondered what the purpose was beyond the obvious and naive ‘getting more women into Intelligence’?

Elsewhere there’s been news stories about British MPs complaining that the security and intelligence services have too high a media profile … so perhaps there’s some ‘push and pull’ going on behind the scenes.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak as someone who was in the same situation as the teens. This is about the time that the kids begin to cotton on to the fact that things aren't quite right. Really, this is the point at which the parent has to start lying (as opposed to saying something like "oh I work for the government") or trust to their children's discretion. The kids' entire raising up to this point has normalized strong patriotism and…

Other commenters hwre seem to think that everyone else in the family is an idiot and will never catch on, despite living together for decades. This will lead to family suspecting their mother of cheating or crime.n

Right. Lot of judgments made without considering how this might work long term in the real world.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak as someone who was in the same situation as the teens. This is about the time that the kids begin to cotton on to the fact that things aren't quite right. Really, this is the point at which the parent has to start lying (as opposed to saying something like "oh I work for the government") or trust to their children's discretion. The kids' entire raising up to this point has normalized strong patriotism and…

Other commenters hwre seem to think that everyone else in the family is an idiot and will never catch on, despite living together for decades. This will lead to family suspecting their mother of cheating or crime.n

When I was a kid, there was a guy at our church who had spent some years at a South American embassy and was vaguely in the defense industry. There were little bits of his story that all had us suspecting he likely did cloak and dagger stuff for the CIA in reality, but no point in really asking him for the truth.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. For example here it makes an explicit point: "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power. For the female spy, this weakness in the enemy is exploitable. Precisely because they are so likely to be overlooked, women have the potential to be the best spies of all." > p…

china has more women in positions of political representation than the us

By % of total offices or just raw total? China has over 4X the population of the US. Not to even mention different countries have different #s of political offices.

Just seems like a difficult comparison to make.

Re: Female spies of MI6

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was unable to find where this was answered in the article. For example here it makes an explicit point: "The UK’s main adversaries today — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — are repressive societies with few women in positions of power. For the female spy, this weakness in the enemy is exploitable. Precisely because they are so likely to be overlooked, women have the potential to be the best spies of all." > p…

> Where does it say they were not allowed? The first couple of paragraphs talk ad nauseum about how hard it was for women to become spies.

"it is difficult" and "it is not allowed" are two different things.
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