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Women in combat positions


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Yay for equal rights? Or is the army getting desperate for soldiers?

What are the implications of this? Will women be included in the next draft? Will military rape increase?

I believe they should be included in the next draft. No equal rights without equal responsibility.

Military rape going up? Probably not by much, those horndogs could just as easily rape women in support positions. Plus I wouldn't want to rape women who know how to kill me.

Shoot the shit, what do you all think?

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Quote from wikipedia:

In On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman briefly mentions that female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces have been officially prohibited from serving in close combat military operations since 1948. The reason for removing female soldiers from the front lines was due less to the performance of female soldiers, and more due to the behavior of the male infantrymen after witnessing a woman wounded. The IDF saw a complete loss of control over soldiers who apparently experienced an uncontrollable, protective, instinctual aggression, severely degrading the unit's combat effectiveness.

Overall it seems to be consensus that it's relatively easy to program men (and I suppose women, too) to kill and do as they are told, but very difficult to program them to neglect the woman. To my understanding, military doctrine is still about following orders like a robot and not doing that, or losing yourself in a protective sort of rage is going to be detrimental to your objectives.

Mind you that, in my opinion, this should bar women from serving as combat infantry, at least among men. This shouldn't necessarily ban them from any other role.

As for rape culture and all, that'll probably fix itself as women become more common in the military.

Edited by Daigoji Excellen
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Quote from wikipedia:

In On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman briefly mentions that female soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces have been officially prohibited from serving in close combat military operations since 1948. The reason for removing female soldiers from the front lines was due less to the performance of female soldiers, and more due to the behavior of the male infantrymen after witnessing a woman wounded. The IDF saw a complete loss of control over soldiers who apparently experienced an uncontrollable, protective, instinctual aggression, severely degrading the unit's combat effectiveness.

Overall it seems to be consensus that it's relatively easy to program men (and I suppose women, too) to kill and do as they are told, but very difficult to program them to neglect the woman. To my understanding, military doctrine is still about following orders like a robot and not doing that, or losing yourself in a protective sort of rage is going to be detrimental to your objectives.

Mind you that, in my opinion, this should bar women from serving as combat infantry, at least among men. This shouldn't necessarily ban them from any other role.

As for rape culture and all, that'll probably fix itself as women become more common in the military.

Without having actually examined the quote or article yet, my first reactions that came to mind were to wonder how thoroughly this response in male soldier was studied. Could it possibly be suppressed, or avoided altogether, by acknowledging that it would be a likely first reaction and warning male soldiers against it ahead of time? Could the reaction at least be mitigated to some degree if the male soldiers accumulated some experience serving together with female soldiers? Is it possible the reaction would be more or less prevalent in different cultures?

I'd also assume that this wouldn't be a problem if there were no men in a given combat unit to be at risk of having the reaction, though the idea of "separate but equal" as it might apply there doesn't exactly leave a great taste in my mouth. Unless it was recorded that female soldiers had the same reaction to seeing female soldiers wounded? I wonder if/when there have been any recorded cases of a similar reaction occurring among soldiers of either gender when it was a male soldier that was getting wounded. Have gay soldiers of either gender been recorded experiencing this reaction?

(for the record basically none of this is rhetorical, actually wondering about this stuff)

Having heard a bit, if only a bit, of some accounts female soldiers gave of experience in combat, I'd like to know what their experience, and what the experiences of the other soldiers in their units were when they or any other female soldier was injured in the middle of combat.

IIRC I've also heard a conflicting account of Israel's policy towards women serving in combat roles. I can't remember the specifics for the life of me, but I listened to an NPR article where some (male) Israeli military official was quoted as saying something along the lines of, "we haven't had the luxury of being prejudiced against/turning away potential soldiers." I wouldn't trust that quote over a link to the actual regulations themselves or some other harder source, but I'm pretty sure I at least heard it implied that women are more welcome in the Israeli military's combat roles than, say, those in the U.S. military.

In the same radio article, I think I heard something along the lines of U.S. women still being decidedly barred from some certain special forces divisions? The exact reasoning for which, I don't remember.

In response to the hypothetical increased risk of rape thing, are there specific figures/studies/educated guesses other particularly significant analyses that suggest it could be a problem? Beyond making the military less of a boy's club in general over time, I don't know what exactly there is to the issue.

My gut "I have no idea what's going on" opinion-thoughts on the overall topic are pretty simple-minded: material equality owns, equal opportunity owns, women warriors own, hurry up and get us to the gender singularity already

Edited by Rehab
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As a war veteran: I'm against it.

* How many women can pass a man's physical standards? I'm not saying that women are inferior to men. I'm saying that you need physical strength beyond what most people are capable of in combat positions, and as far as women go, they are inferior *in this area*. the worry has always been dumbing down the standards for the sake of a woman, and in every branch that allows them, womens' fitness standards are below that of a male's; in some cases (push-ups), drastically lower. I was 215lb. in the service; find me a woman that can drag that out of a space three levels down on a ship, and I'll find you a dude that's transitioning FTM.

* In combat, no one cares what the other's gender is. It's out of combat you have to worry about. I got laid more on the ship than I did off it, because what else are you going to do when you're out to sea for a month and a half consecutively, flag your staff in your rack? If you join the Navy, I guarantee you: the machinists know all the places where you can have sex without getting caught. It's a little harder in a tent in Afghanistan, but that doesn't mean the temptation isn't there.

* When I was on the George Washington from 2000 - 2004, I'd guesstimate that 10% of our female crew explicitly got pregnant just before major deployments. These "unplanned" pregnancies took these women off of their ships, and reduced their teams' effectiveness. What are you going to do, ban women from procreating unless they're on a desk job on shore, or out of a combat zone?

* Sexual assault is a reality. One in every three females have been sexually assaulted, according to the Department of Defense. That's 33%! Now, you want to stick these women into combat zones, where testosterone is at its highest? As likely one of the few - if only - women in a platoon, the risk is made that much worse. We tell civilian women to not drink alone, watch who they go home with, travel in groups, etc., but we're going to tell military women "hey, sure, go into this platoon with 19 other guys who are trained to kill people without thinking, we're sure everything will be fine because something something UCMJ"? Word?

* Here's the uncomfortable truth to all of this: everything I mentioned degrades the military strength of the United States Military, and you cannot just legislate it out. Sure, you can put the rapists in Leavensworth, and give the females treatment (and maybe not play blame the victim; I'd like to truly know how many women have been raped but were either scared out of reporting it, or outright had their reports torn up by senior NCOs), and all that stuff, but those are two bodies - with guns - that you've taken away from the group, that haven't been replaced, and make it more likely that, in the case of a firefight, other people will die.

That is literally all that matters.

Social justice has no place on a battlefield, or in a sea evolution, or whereever we're at where we have to kill bad guys. Feminists and other activists are absolutely right in calling for equality of the sexes, and it's something that I believe in... everywhere else. Not when lives are on the line. If that's hard to hear, tough shit. Women have been used as war prizes for millenia; the first thing armies of old (and even modern armies in Africa and other third world countries) would do was rape and defile the women. Forget our own guys; what happens when a woman is taken as a POW? I have two words for you: Traudl Junge. Or, hell, how about the way the Army lied about how badly Jessica Lynch was raped, to drive public opinion towards further blowing up Iraq, when she herself said that was bullshit?

War is, by its very nature, barbaric. Our attempts to sterilize and clean the process up, while admirable, have directly lead to our losing in Vietnam, and our continued clusterfucks in Afghanistan and Iraq. We're intentionally tying a hand behind our backs. Letting women into combat positions, in consideration of all of this, further tightens the rope. It's a horrible thing to say if you consider women equal to men, but in this case, with thousands of years of human warfare backing this up, they truly are not, and the direction from a few civilian military commanders does not change that.

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As a war veteran: I'm against it.

* How many women can pass a man's physical standards? I'm not saying that women are inferior to men. I'm saying that you need physical strength beyond what most people are capable of in combat positions, and as far as women go, they are inferior *in this area*. the worry has always been dumbing down the standards for the sake of a woman, and in every branch that allows them, womens' fitness standards are below that of a male's; in some cases (push-ups), drastically lower. I was 215lb. in the service; find me a woman that can drag that out of a space three levels down on a ship, and I'll find you a dude that's transitioning FTM.

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Though given the gear one'd be sporting, I'll admit I'm not sure if that's exactly what you're looking for.

I've heard in passing that alongside putting women in combat roles in the case of the U.S., there would be certain higher physical standards they would need to meet through testing IIRC, but I don't know how they compare to what men are set with. Can you think offhand of all the things you'd need to quantify to meet what you think should be the bare minimum of the capabilities any soldier in a combat role should be expected to have?

Also, can you say anything else about what your experiences of the female crew you had were, like with regards to how well they performed their basic duties? Is it harder to evaluate outside the long term?

Having no experience in the armed forces, obviously this has the potential to be an incredibly naive view, but with regards to "we're sure everything will be fine because something something UCMJ," yeah, I guess that sounds about right to me on first reaction? But I'm assuming there that the military could weed out as many potential rapists as possible during recruitment and training. Unless it's actually a lot easier said than done to qualify who'd be liabilities in that department? I'm just kind of confused by the idea that soldiers should be held to the same standards as regular guys, because they're not just regular guys, right? Again, maybe this is harder than it sounds, but I'd assume the armed forces would have extra motivation and means to recruit and train soldiers who'd be as unlikely as possible to fall into whatever percentage of people are likely to be rapists, or to have unsafe sex? Is there any known way to mitigate this risk through training or psychological profiling, ahead of time?

If I may ask, are there any particularly relevant rules concerning male soldiers and sex while on duty? Is some guy going to catch any heat for knocking up somebody in a foreign port, for example? Or is it viewed as not being that much of a problem, because he himself will still be physically able to perform his duties? On that note, thinking out loud here, I wonder if getting somebody pregnant while on duty has been observed to have any effect on male performance [in the line of duty etc].

What are your opinions on female soldiers that have already found themselves on the front lines of combat, despite holding positions not designated as such, that claim to have already proven themselves able to perform combat duties, and thus able to handle the risks that come with it?

I'm not about to question that war is barbaric, but I'm not seeing why it's worse to subject a female soldier to its horrors than to subject a male one.

Edited by Rehab
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Maybe we're just sick of men telling us what we can and can't do and the number of these threads are really irritating. It's the 21st century and our rights are still being under discussion instead of already being a thing? Fuck that shit. To bar us from combat positions would imply that all women are unconditionally weaker, which is not true. Just have the same goddamn physical standard for everyone. If she can't pass the test then she shouldn't be on the frontlines and that goes for men or anyone else really, but if she can pass the damn test, there's no reasons to bar her at all.

If there's a problem with men wanting to "protect" female soldiers doing their job, maybe they aren't qualified to be soldiers and not the women doing their goddamn job. Don't blame us for that one if you can't handle yourself like a soldier. Just because it's a hard to change that stupid mentality doesn't mean it can't be changed. Change is how progress happens.

Sexual assault is a problem, but it doesn't only happen between men and women either. Man on man and women on woman also happens and sexual assault itself should be treated as a more serious problem dealing with the perpetrators instead of just sweeping it under the rug.

If a woman wishes to enter combat positions on her own free will and know exactly what she's getting into, and is physically qualified enough to serve in combat roles, I see no reason to bar her from it.

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No opinions from women huh? I guess they don't like to talk about this stuff.

I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of women (and other dfab people) are straight up tired of talking about this shit in SD. I sure am. It never ends well on this forum and I'd rather not waste my time and energy when I've got more important shit to deal with than trying to convince people on the internet of shit.

So I'm just gonna second what Lumi said and get out of here. The only thing I really have to add is that allowing women on the front lines isn't going to change the sexual assault problem for better or worse because the problem isn't caused by which positions we let women fill. For that to get better we need to change the way the military handles sexual assault cases and actually listen to survivors, which is completely independent of where we let women serve.

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What about things like nuke subs?

Some of those can stay submerged for 6+ months, and they simply don't have room to build barracks for 2 genders. Hell they even have to share their bunks with someone else. (One person works while one sleeps) Would you be ok with sleeping, showering, and shitting with men for potentially 6 months at a time?

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Maybe we're just sick of men telling us what we can and can't do and the number of these threads are really irritating. It's the 21st century and our rights are still being under discussion instead of already being a thing? Fuck that shit. To bar us from combat positions would imply that all women are unconditionally weaker, which is not true. Just have the same goddamn physical standard for everyone. If she can't pass the test then she shouldn't be on the frontlines and that goes for men or anyone else really, but if she can pass the damn test, there's no reasons to bar her at all.

If there's a problem with men wanting to "protect" female soldiers doing their job, maybe they aren't qualified to be soldiers and not the women doing their goddamn job. Don't blame us for that one if you can't handle yourself like a soldier. Just because it's a hard to change that stupid mentality doesn't mean it can't be changed. Change is how progress happens.

Sexual assault is a problem, but it doesn't only happen between men and women either. Man on man and women on woman also happens and sexual assault itself should be treated as a more serious problem dealing with the perpetrators instead of just sweeping it under the rug.

If a woman wishes to enter combat positions on her own free will and know exactly what she's getting into, and is physically qualified enough to serve in combat roles, I see no reason to bar her from it.

Hmmmmm? You need to change your gender in your profile. Unless you're a tranny which is cool.

No one's talked about the draft scenario. Barring all that other stuff aside, what do women think about men being able to be drafted and women not being able to be drafted. Is that fair?

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As far as my own beliefs about women in the military go, I'm fine with them, as long it doesn't compromise the effectiveness of the army/unit that they serve in.

Asking me is irrelevant because I do not serve in the military. Whether or not the servicewomen themselves is okay with it is up to them, not me. Some of them probably has no qualms about it, others will.

Well then Lumi, assuming you were in the military, would you be happy sleeping and showering with men for long periods of time?

Edited by NinjaMonkey
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Assuming you were in the military, would you be happy sleeping and showering with men for long periods of time?

I dunno, I wouldn't be unhappy. Oh wait you weren't talking to me. I'm sure abandoning social customs is pretty easy when your life is at risk. Plus the army doesn't have the budget to build two separate bathrooms for all of their operations.

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Thor is Lumi/nescent Blade, it's just a joke/thing for fun. of which we may recall Hika, for example, is a veteran

Not all men are comfortable living in close proximity to women either in general, groups being another case. Not all men are comfortable living around other men in groups. But those are cases of individual preference, and it's kind of implied that's shit everybody has to get over to function in the military. Theses aren't just some random dudes they'd be living with, they'd be people in your unit, people you could be fighting alongside, effectively family. The ideal, the expectation is that soldiers in a unit they leave their differences behind, and whoever's making that harder is the person who deserves to get lit up for it.

Not that that accurately reflects everybody's experiences, in fact I've heard of several [sexual] harassment cases that were as swept under the rug as they could be, but that's our military shitting on its own people, not their fault. I'd think the only way to stop that is to bite back.

I have another acquaintance who was in the navy, and while she had a grudging respect for it at best, she implied that camaraderie within the rank and file crossed gender lines, and was strengthened (at the very least in a deadpan joking way) by their "shared hatred" of the officers.

Edited by Rehab
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My display gender is partially for fun, partially 'cuz some people think I'm a dude anyway, and partially because I got hit on by creeps in the past and it just really makes my life easier. Most people who know me know that I'm a woman.

Assuming I'm in the military, whatever is gets the job done I'll do.

On topic of separate bathrooms, Google NY actually has unisex bathrooms and they're pretty cool IMO. The doors are more secure than your average bathroom stalls, though.

Edited by Thor Odinson
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I guess what I don't like in this thread is the seeming commitment to combat and modern warfare that dogs every post? But by all means, in the case of sexual harassment in the military or out of it, I think victims should be able to or should fight back. As for fitness, it seems like if the government is offering jobs, they should be equal opportunity as can be...in the specifics, it seems like it helps to have some insider experience in order to be able to offer a useful perspective...(or research insider experience effectively...).

I think the most important thing is that recruits know what they are getting into among other recruits, as well as against the enemy. Haven't I heard a lot about misleading recruitment ads? I think I'm more against misleading information for potential recruits, than barring potential recruits on the basis of gender (or a number of other physical attributes...).

The ideal, the expectation is that soldiers in a unit they leave their differences behind, and whoever's making that harder is the person who deserves to get lit up for it.

Well I'll just talk freely.

>_< That would be the ideal of someone who is lazy, and wants to light someone up for the fun of it. However, the practicality of service is that regardless of what's deserved, what makes sense is to eliminate that problem, or not worry a lot about keeping it from being dealt with. And my reality (apparent) to me is wondering what business that is of people who aren't serving but demand service (as a population, I mean), except in deciding whether to commit to war in the future. Or if they really have made enough effort to commit to something. You know..."why make the thread...?"

What I mean is that I can't get past the question of why we fight wars currently.

If you can explain how it's the other way around, I guess I won't go back to some of the earlier stuff.

As for hating officers, I think it only makes sense for a soldier to recognize that when they went to war, they made a commitment to being willing to risk their life for their country - unless that's an outdated ideal, in which case they didn't! - and that creates a difficult barrier for complaint. But where an officer is really incompetent - by nature of their position or their mentality - it's acceptable in the practical sense for them to be despised or maltreated or disposed of, just like an incompetent soldier would be, because of the simple realities of war.

But if someone doesn't deal with them, or with someone, directly enough in the practical sense to solve the problem, then I don't see how the moral comfort of knowing who's at wrong, yet that they're fine and dandy, "should" comfort them. If it does, though, well and good? The kind who seeks it out, though - that, fellows, it is a pathetic troublemaker.

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I guess what I don't like in this thread is the seeming commitment to combat and modern warfare that dogs every post? But by all means, in the case of sexual harassment in the military or out of it, I think victims should be able to or should fight back. As for fitness, it seems like if the government is offering jobs, they should be equal opportunity as can be...in the specifics, it seems like it helps to have some insider experience in order to be able to offer a useful perspective...(or research insider experience effectively...).

I think the most important thing is that recruits know what they are getting into among other recruits, as well as against the enemy. Haven't I heard a lot about misleading recruitment ads? I think I'm more against misleading information for potential recruits, than barring potential recruits on the basis of gender (or a number of other physical attributes...).

Well I'll just talk freely.

>_< That would be the ideal of someone who is lazy, and wants to light someone up for the fun of it. However, the practicality of service is that regardless of what's deserved, what makes sense is to eliminate that problem, or not worry a lot about keeping it from being dealt with. And my reality (apparent) to me is wondering what business that is of people who aren't serving but demand service (as a population, I mean), except in deciding whether to commit to war in the future. Or if they really have made enough effort to commit to something. You know..."why make the thread...?"

What I mean is that I can't get past the question of why we fight wars currently.

If you can explain how it's the other way around, I guess I won't go back to some of the earlier stuff.

As for hating officers, I think it only makes sense for a soldier to recognize that when they went to war, they made a commitment to being willing to risk their life for their country - unless that's an outdated ideal, in which case they didn't! - and that creates a difficult barrier for complaint. But where an officer is really incompetent - by nature of their position or their mentality - it's acceptable in the practical sense for them to be despised or maltreated or disposed of, just like an incompetent soldier would be, because of the simple realities of war.

But if someone doesn't deal with them, or with someone, directly enough in the practical sense to solve the problem, then I don't see how the moral comfort of knowing who's at wrong, yet that they're fine and dandy, "should" comfort them. If it does, though, well and good? The kind who seeks it out, though - that, fellows, it is a pathetic troublemaker.

..My response was originally going to be all "WHAT NO," but then I realized that I gave off the implication I was endorsing actually waging war, context aside.

It might be a sign of U.S. culture's hold on me, with regards to war, that while at the same time as I'm personally holding the belief that war is the most embarrassing thing human beings are capable of doing to each other (alongside being incomprehensibly brutal, of course), I also have conflicted and/or confused feelings on questions like "if we can afford it, just how big an army do we need for 'defense,'" or "if war is so terrible why don't I feel like I can endorse my country simply not participating in it ever given my relative safety and that like no sovereign nations have actually declared war on us or wish to really invade us," and so on, but I..

I was going to say I think that's beside the point, but then I just up and went on a tangent about it, and you were also saying that you thought the purpose of the topic itself is questionable, and I might even be going further off on that tangent right now, and I have kind of lost my train of thought. Huh. Typing out loud here.

This may be a distinction that still leaves some things muddy, but I do think, in any case, that the immense pressure combat, and war in general, can put on the people actually used as the tools of waging it, demands my respect, and that everybody should be equally able to apply to do that job, assuming they are capable of performing whatever duty the job requires of them. This is even though I not only could never/would never want to do the things they have to do, but indeed actually wish that they would stop doing it at all. ..Sometimes. In at least some situations. Because I'm conflicted, you see.

I also don't think it can be said that everybody goes to war for even remotely the same reasons, very much including in the U.S.- some simply have no other way to pay for college, and the acquaintance I mentioned earlier was thrown out of her house by her family with nowhere much to go until she joined the navy.

So, in her case, she had ample reason both to be thankful for and hate certain aspects of her situation, including who she was working for, but I really think she was joking about the officer bit to an extent. Like there was an occasion where a really junior naval officer posted a picture of himself at work, and she said something along the lines of, "So, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to refer to you exclusively by the title 'assfaggot' now. Matter of principle." And it seemed like he knew exactly what she was talking about <:

Inside joke, I'm guessing.

I'm just not sure what you mean by my quote there though? Because what I intended to say was that I don't think there should be a question of whether a female soldier would be capable of bunking around male soldiers for months at a time or would be too uncomfortable, or rather I don't think that should be posed to women in an "Is this what you really want?" way, because I think that sounds almost like it's implicitly holding them accountable for potentially being harassed. That is, I think it would be better to ask "how can that be made a non-issue?" I'm not sure if I communicated that, and that's what you meant to reply to, or if you got something else entirely, though.

And by lit up I intended to say that they should be "appropriately punished for hazing or otherwise harassing others in a damaging way," rather than "shot so much with actual firearms that it would be akin to a fireworks display if it was observed at night," for the record.

Edited by Rehab
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If there's a problem with men wanting to "protect" female soldiers doing their job, maybe they aren't qualified to be soldiers and not the women doing their goddamn job. Don't blame us for that one if you can't handle yourself like a soldier. Just because it's a hard to change that stupid mentality doesn't mean it can't be changed. Change is how progress happens.

If the argument were to follow that it's an instinctual reaction you can't argue that it's illogical to avoid it occurring. If it's true that it's very difficult to maintain unit cohesion because of a biological imperative to protect females then that should obviously be taken into consideration.

This is not a discussion of rights so much of effectiveness. We can treat men and women equally but it goes without saying that men and women are simply different. To what extent is debatable, but the fundamental fact that there is some divide should be acknowledged instead of ignored out of fear of future rights abuse.

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You could always have separate combat units, those with females and those with males, if the instinctual desire to protect females is really that much of a problem.

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Superbus has the right idea. Who gives a fuck about gender equality in a warzone? If a woman cannot physically perform as well as a man in those situations, she should not be allowed to serve in that position. If she can perform as well, that's when other things may be adressed.

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I suppose a good way of putting is that the world revolves around a patriarchy. Although, that word carries with it more implications than I am referring too. For simplicity, I merely mean the fact that male will have privileges any women does not. A good example of what I mean by privilege are those unconscious things we never seem to notice a whole lot. For example, when you refer to rape it has typically always implied female victim and male aggressor.

Thus, when you get to the topic of women in combat positions to me it seems only one of two opposing factions of reasoning for this sort of decision: 1) Agree with it for inherently it seems unjust to have a ban rather than be allowed an opportunity. 2) (I cannot phrase this exactly without using an example) "It may be 'just' to lift the ban, but doing so opens up a variety of problems that you will have to face with otherwise. In doing so you are really waging a war on some of those privileges which only causes problems. With this in mind, its simpler and more effective to keep the ban than otherwise."

Its a guess, but I suppose I would like to believe that if the world wasn't so patriarchal, then many of the reasons for having a ban in the first place wouldn't even be considered.

So, really, I dunno what to really go with. There are dozens of "equality" discussions going on that restrict opportunities or strip privileges. Time and time again, I just don't get what's the problem. There are a few physical limitations, but so many socially generated ones were stereotyped from it. Maybe in the end it all has to deal with how a person has resolved themselves. "We believe what we want to believe". Quite derailed, but whatever.

I was surprised to find out that many physical standards for women are much less than men in military training. I don't get that at all. I suppose if the reasoning was to allow more women in, then that's BS reasoning.

Oh, and be wary of statistics if you are unaware of how they were decided. My guess about the 1/3 women being raped withing the military statistics was probably decided with a random sampling of a small size and theoretical factors taken into account such as "oh, there are probably many people who do not come forward about it, so lets take a guess and say X amount of people were actually raped within our sample size and never said anything about it. Oh, look, we now have a big number 1/3".

Edited by Erika the Explosive One
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If it's true that it's very difficult to maintain unit cohesion because of a biological imperative to protect females then that should obviously be taken into consideration.

But is it really instinct? I'd argue it's more likely a product of centuries of social conditioning rather than instinct.

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But is it really instinct? I'd argue it's more likely a product of centuries of social conditioning rather than instinct.

Yeah... This is sort of what I was eluding too in my other post. Lots of those reasons about there being battlefield issues I would tend to blame on family, friends, media, stories of old and legend for conditioning many of those problems even happening in the first place. Some of it is unavoidable such as the super annoying physical traits.

God damn it. Why couldn't we have just all been like what the most of our body has done, replication.

Edited by Erika the Explosive One
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But is it really instinct? I'd argue it's more likely a product of centuries of social conditioning rather than instinct.

Maybe you haven't wondered these two could be the same thing, except for some reason "social conditioning" is a dirty word and "instinct" isn't?

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