The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
[split] Uppity wimminz with guns?
Posts
Hey when you start responding to my links I'll start responding to yours.
Anyway, I read that article when it came out. And yeah, a lot of it is true. But its not "the Army lets you be" what you let yourself become. In Mosul, when I first got there, it was a huge scandal because females were taking naked photos of themselves, sending them back home, but saving them on the public computers. Well some asshole found that out and saved them all, and started distributing them.
You won't hear about that, but who the hell forced them into doing that? There was also a prostitution ring being run when I was in Afghanistan by the females in an NG construction company that resulted in them getting off the base and sent back to Bagram.
In all honesty, I'd bring back the WAC (Women's Auxillary Corps), and call it a day, for their protection and because the men tend to go fucking retarded around women. And between you and me, that was one of my biggest pet peeves over there, when someone would lose all military bearing because some girl walked by without her blouse on.
Don't women naturally have a slightly higher body fat anyway? I don't know if it's 6% (and it may be an urban myth), but a woman may well be just as strong and fit as a man but have a slightly higher body fat level, so it wouldn't make sense to refuse them on that ground alone.
Okay, lead the way.
Seriously, if you knew how endemic the bullshit was in the Pentagon (they touted Jessica Lynch as a success of integration, when obviously it was not!), you wouldn't be saying that.
Gah, that's a pity. How big is the gap and what's the justification? I'm not a fan of lowering standards overall, but I think there's room to revamp them to be equally unfair to both genders - ie up the lower-body strength requirements and endurance tests, for instance :P
its worth mentioning, since I remember several servicemen pointing this out last time round, that smaller soldiers can be handy for a lot of tasks, even if they're not as useful for carrying shit. IIRC, the average height for a SEAL is quite a bit below the average height for a guy in the general population, too.
I'm sorry, but that's a silly post. How exactly is it "realistically impossible" to implement women into front-line combat roles? If your (civilian) workplace was all men, and then one day your boss came in and said "Here's our new female employee, work with her," would the office immediately cease functioning?
Maybe it is because I'm socially liberal, but I've never had a problem interacting closely with my fellow humans who are female. If you're suggesting that units simply won't get along because the guys won't work with the gals, how is that not the guys' problem?
Its not an urban myth. Its 24% for men, and 30% for women. And a women who's 30% fat is not going to be "as strong and as fit" as you might want to believe.
Mainly because of the entire "squeeze into this mini sub" factor. ; )
Yeah, smaller soldiers are useful for things like getting into the guts of a heavy truck, but not so much when it comes to needing someone to help lift something common, like this heavy ass truck tire.
Apples
Oranges
Zal, not everyone thinks how you do, and that's what he's pointing out. Pretending that everyone has this "enlightened" mindset is what he's railing against.
What's going to be the problem? The first problem that's going to occur is when someone says "Hey carry this machine gun's tripod and ammo," and she falls out of a march and it comes down from above "Hey, go easy on her." That's where the problems begin.
It also shows your ignorance when you compare an office setting to an infantry company. You might as well compare a bee colony to a feeding frenzy of sharks.
Right, but I don't think any of the advocates here are suggesting that women with 30% body fat should qualify, since aren't these 24%/30% nationwide averages?
The body fat thing simply doesn't matter when a woman is physically fit. And based on the consensus that front-line combat requires extreme fitness, then the "women's fat gap" would close even more.
Yeah, sounds like some of them are getting up to the same shit as the bad sorts in the male half of the army (come on, you know there's proportional bad stories about the men too). I'm not expecting heroes of either component, I see this as a discipline failure. I'm willing to bet the dumb-youth behaviour like the pic-taking is exacerbated by them being coddled by the aforementioned stupid double standard too. Still, I'm going to reinforce the notion that women are shitheads too, and shouldn't be subject to extra handwringing when they behave badly.
That last sounds like the sort of lack of self control army discipline is touted to cure. I find it odd that sexual behaviour is apparently exempt from the behavioural standards expected of servicepeople (and I'm talking about Shirtless Nancy as much as Droolin' Joe here). I don't think a failure to hold servicepeople to an adequate standard of conduct is justification for kicking out the women *shrug*. There's a sexual culture in the army that's profoundly distasteful, and should be heavily censured. If the conduct's not acceptable in civilian life...
I think the main reasoning behind it is that on average women are just smaller then men. Looking at the Regular Forces Physical Fitness PDF for recruitment:
Men-Women
Push-Ups: Under 35 is 19-9; Over is 14-7
Sit-Ups: Under 35 is 19-15; Over is 17-12
Hand Grip(Kilograms with to hands): Under is 75-50; Over is 73-48
And for running, in the Regular Forces it's the same fr men and women, best as I can see, but for the Reserves we do a "Beep" Test where you have to run between two lines before the beep. Men is Level 7, women is Level 4.
The "unenlightened mindset" here is SEXISM, and why are we tolerating sexism in military policies when racism is not longer allowed?
So the military is radically different than civilian life---I buy that totally. No problem there. But why are sexist attitudes okay in the military when they aren't elsewhere? Where is this crucial military difference that requires tolerance of sexist attitudes in male soldiers which therefore prohibits females from serving?
Its not extreme fitness, its the rule of a third!
Women tend to be lighter. A 220 pound woman is in almost all cases not going to be as fit as a 220 pound man! Hence, women cannot carry the same heavy loads required of them, especially in schools/units such as Special Forces and the Rangers. The loads that those guys carry on their backs can range from anywhere to 80-120 pounds. It dosen't matter how fast you run the two miles in, how many push ups you can do, or how many sit ups you can do.
If you're a 120/130/140/150/160/whatever woman, you're not going to be able to carry that much weight with injuring yourself. That is the point I'm making and you're ignoring, pretending like combat is the Olympics!
As a progressive I'm more interested in reducing the army's role in American life than I am in turning it into a place I would feel safe sending my kids.
Women really can't get to fit-male bodyfat levels without significant health problems, though - they can be at peak fitness (and within the acceptable fitness range for service) while still carrying proportionally more fat. The main problem with women catching up to the appropriate level of fitness aside from that is that they've often got farther to go than men when they start training, in or out of a military context. Women are still subtly discouraged from being 'too' physical during their youth, and that's a problem. I think they should go through longer boot camp periods and such to compensate as a result, until that tendency fades out of society.
So female soliders should be punished because male soliders insist on being unprofessional asshats? A male solider who cannot concentrate because a woman is next to him is a poor soilder. Such instances should be treated like any other delicetion of duty not with some "boys will be boys" excuse. I hardly think expecting some level of professionalism amongst troops is too much to ask.
Not saying changing miltary culture is going to be fast or easy but actively telling soliders it's ok to be dicks isn't a good start for anyone.
We're in the same mindset here - the fact that standards SHOULD be enforced without all the silly exceptions. And yes, I know guys are just as bad as the women, and its a cycle the wouldn't exist if there weren't people on both sides to feed it.
The difference between us, is that I've seen it in action, and I know that unless you came down on both sides equally hard, you're not going to change anything (Lynnie England, for instance, who got away with a pittance because she happened to have a child).
The fact is I don't want to see the armed forces become a kickball in the entire "gender equality" debate, and what's going to happen if you bring two people to the table for fraternization is that one is going to get crushed, and the other is going to get told "you should have known better", and get off with a pittance, depending on who the presiding officer is.
I don't think being a sexually aggressive pig is actually a prerequisite for being able to kill folk, dude. You're implying that you can't kill without being fucked up on like every other spectrum as well, which is fucking retarded. The reason a lot of army dudes are fuckwits around women is because they're not expected not to be, and are often tacitly enouraged in their fuckwittery. Its hardly possible to consider that inherent, unless you hate men and think they're animals.
edit: I say fuck a lot, and its 2am. I'm out for now.
I'm not ignoring it at all.
What would you guess is the average height of the guys in your unit? And weight? There ARE women in the USA taller and heavier (with muscle!) than your average.
In a nation of 300,000,000 there ARE women who meet the physical size and fitness requirements you've listed over and over again.
They are no doubt very few in number, but they still exist and deserve the chance to serve.
Uh, it goes both ways. Which is why I think that something like the WAC would be the best course, segregating the sexes and putting females in charge of females and males in charge of males, with all the same priviledges of rank.
Just like what happened at the Citadel, right?
You're still refusing to acknowledge history, which was they did the same thing for combat support jobs, and then when the females couldn't hack the Physical Fitness test, they lowered the standards so they could make it. And there's nothing to say they won't do the same thing with combat arms jobs, which would be a goddamn nightmare if you had a squad leader who couldn't hack the same things you had to. I saw it when it involved other men, and its not going to be any different if its a women who couldn't hack it. Its the entire "breakdown of order and discipline" thing you keep poo pooing away.
I'm done with you until you can acknowledge that.
And I mean, what about those people who have to fit into mini-subs? Are they all doing what you do, too? Or do they have different roles, because being 5'5" in the military, there are some things you can't do?
Also, so women on average have 30% instead of 24% body fat. Two things can be done to address this: A.) You keep the standard where it is. No big deal, really. Some people wouldn't be able to make it, some people would. Hopefully, you would get as many able-bodied soldiers as possible. B.) You could say "well, we know women naturally start higher, and since this statistic is simply supposed to be a shorthand way of judging combat effectiveness, we can let them have a boob allowance of 6%, so long as we can be certain it doesn't have a negative effect in combat." Unless you guys use grenades that don't go off unless your body fat is lower than a certain level, isn't the point moot?
Okay. There's not much else I can say except for what I keep saying:
The failures of those in charge to adequately enforce the standards has absolutely nothing to do with the people who MEET those standards.
I'm sorry that soldiers weren't held to proper account and that unit discipline suffered. I believe you when you say that has a devastating effect on unit effectiveness and safety.
It's not the soldiers' fault, however.
If you're so convinced that the people charged with overseeing the standards will fail, then honestly I think we need more people like you trying to become part of the process to make sure that it doesn't fail.
I appreciate the compliment, but guys like me don't get put in charge of high profile assignments like this. The military dosen't want to look like it "failed", so it'll put some yes man who'll bend the data to make everything look like a rousing success. What we're getting into now is changing the entire military culture, and that's something Col. David Hackworth has been going nuts about from Vietnam to when he died.
Edit: Colin Powell was responsible for covering up Mai Lai, but look where he made it. That's just one of many examples.
So, your argument boils down to "why should we waste our time on a bunch of filthy savages".
Tell me again why we should take it seriously?
If the US Army was more about "specialist" roles for company sized infantry units, I think we'd see female units take a turn towards sniper and light mech units, while males would specialize more in heavy weapons, urban combat, and LRRP (long range recon patrol)/scouting type.
However, due to the generalist nature of the Army, you'd just see a greater proportion of females going to things like Master Gunner school and Sniper, and things like Ranger and Master Urban Ops being male dominated.
I wouldn't have a terrible objection to that. Seperate but equal is never totally true but it would give them a chance to prove themsleves with less interference. That could pave the way for real intergration later on. A good comparision would be the black units in the civil war.
Well not so much, because there really wasn't a physical difference between a black man and a white man, as opposed to a white man and a white woman.
Ironically enough, self segregation goes on today. More black people tend to become artillerymen, and more white people tend to become infantrymen.
However, I think that an entire gender segregation is a lot better then telling people "Make it happen" one day because the good idea fairy visited someone in the Pentagon.
I think I remember that at least mythologically, the Scythians and the Amazons (or whatever their proper names are) were two peoples who sort of joined up, and then fought side by side with each other.
The only other real example I can think of is the Greeks. Not mixed-gender, but certainly potentially sexual relationships existed. They even had a whole crack unit of only going-steady guys, on the assumption that they would fight harder to impress each other.
Not any that I can think of, off hand. The entire Amazon thing is so maddening (depending on who you listen to, they either fostered off all their male children and cauterized the right breast or didn't do it) its hard to look at it from a relative viewpoint.
The Russian Army used female snipers/scouts/partisans in WWII in an irregular function, but that was more of an anomaly due to the circumstances (Fritz killing everybody!!!!) and the fact that men tended to be shoved on heavy weapon/tank/commissar duties, leaving spots that the women had to fill.
Sorta like how the mobilzation of so many men in the US for war required women to take their place in the industrial setting. Except without the entire "army dedicated to the genocide of your people and nation" invading your capital, requiring desperate measures.
Its been said that if Hitler had allowed women to work instead of trying to keep them pushing babies out at home (well, this and other things, but Hitler was pretty batshit by the end of the war), Germany could have matched the US industrial output, or at least limited it so it wasn't such a massive factor in the later stages of the war. Think Rommel not having to abandon N. Africa due to production problems, leading to a drive on Palestine and the oil fields of the Middle East. Or the Luftwaffe preventing a D-Day crossing due to air superiority.
Another edit: Russian females were also totally brutalized by either sides of the battle, either for partisan activities (gang rape was the least of the concerns for a Russian female), or "collaboration" because you flirted with Fritz and gave him some eggs so he would keep his buddies from raping your blonde haired younger sister.
Homosexual and bi-sexual relationships were very common in Greek society, and were at times a major component in their militaries (such as the spartans, and the sacred band of thebes which you mentioned). The "oh no don't let teh gayz in" argument is completely baseless. If people disagree with homosexuals in the army they're either homophobic or stupid.
As much as I'd like to see women given the opportunity to serve in the front-lines, I think we need to improve our acceptance of women in society along with trying to make improvements im the armed forces. Women still face a lot of sexism in the everyday world.
One of man's primary motivators is sexual - be a better man, attract a better or more woman and so forth. Keep in mind this goes both ways but in the interest of not over-complicating the verbiage I'll focus on the men pursuing women.
Essentially what you have in the military are people trained to be warriors. They're told by society and during the recruiting process and oftentimes in the process of doing their duty that they are the ones making the big sacrifices, proving themselves to be strong, able warriors defending the weak, etc etc etc. When you get people in these kinds of high-stress high aggression high intensity type situations, it tends to focus issues of power in the individuals involved, especially in the realm of their sexuality. They come to expect to be the ones in charge, the ones with the power and strength and control over others.
Where we're seeing problems is when the rules or circumstances serve to undermine this sense of inherent value that comes from being one of the warrior class. Gender aside, weakening the rules for ANY specific subset of applicants will cause problems that need to be addressed - we see it with affirmative action in many different fields.
1. It dilutes the inherent value of the positions involved. eg: only the strongest and the best make it in this unit. Oh wait, they let someone weaker in, just for PR reasons? Maybe the unit isn't as elite as they like to tell us.
2. It reduces the combat effectiveness of the total unit, for obvious reasons.
3. The policy of non-fraternization causes the presence of "untouchable" sexual attractors to be a huge tease and denial game, which further tends to galvanize the issue. People keep insisting that people need to "learn to be more professional" and "control themselves" etc etc. What fucking planet do you live on that sexual needs aren't a primary driver for almost every goddamn thing that everybody does, ever? This puritanical need to remove sexual drivers from everything is causing way more harm than good.
Bottom line, for me, is that the underlying sexual motivators for people in general need to be addressed and dealt with, not denied. Boundaries and guidelines need to be established and enforced. Stop trying to separate men and women. Stop playing the hush-hush game and start dealing with people. These aren't machines - they have emotional needs that if used as motivators and kept in check (aka not ignored and then punished later) can serve to make a more effective force.
Balance is the key, and men and women tend to do a pretty good job of balancing each other out. Non-integration is a bad idea, both for men and women in general. Specific roles aside. There's always exceptions.
It's interesting to watch groups of women with no men and how they act, and groups of men with no women and how they act. Introduce even one member of the opposing sex into a group and everyone acts completely differently.
Very true.
I think this - for much of the forces - is a pretty compelling reason to have women in the military, especially considering the current role that US / UK forces are performing in most places (ie forms of peacekeeping). Sticking a woman into the mix automatically adds a level of restraint to the men in a patrol, for example, which doesn't happen in the same way otherwise.
There is half an argument to be made in the opposite regard though: I'm generally for women in all military jobs - not on a % scale, but on individual merit, especially after having met some quite extraordinary female soldiers / officers / potential recruits who thrashed the lads in many traditionally male areas. However, I question whether the above effect of having women on the ground cannot also be detrimental in - say - a unit such as Para Reg, tough airborne teeth infantry, shock troops who rely partly on utter professionalism, unparalleled fitness & top skills, but partly on unbridled aggression when it comes down to the sharp end. It's not pretty, it can produce some morally questionable behaviour, but we get the job done & we're the best for a reason. I wonder whether that would survive having women in the reg - not because they might not be up to it (see below), but because of the unconscious alteration of behaviour from the men (see above).
The physical tests question is a no-brainer. If the job requirement is to do X number of pressups or run X distance in Y time, then you do that whoever you are. This is because people may die if you cannot. This is bad. I also agree that it's the fault of DoD / MoD / top brass, rather than women soldiers, that standards have been diluted - though it's amusing to see people here who fervently argue for positive discrimination & adjusting standards to aid the march to equality in other areas of society, now condemn politicians for doing the same in the military. Where do you imagine the pressure comes from which prompted them to make that decision? The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars...
I'm also interested to hear the reasoning from those who are against women in combat arms, as to date I've heard little that is convincing. Would also be interested in what people think of the old Greek principle of military bonding applied to women in the military - ie since armies throughout history have often utilised homosexual relationships between soldiers to bond a unit closer, is the possibility of sexual relationships between women and men in a unit really so disasterous?
I just want to point out that the Greeks justified homosexual lovers in their military forces by claiming that it increased the bond of loyalty between soldiers and made men more brave, as they did not want to be ashamed in front of their lovers.
These are ethics that may not have been particularly useful any longer in military situations where people are not fighting hand to hand, but instead have to be ordered dispassionately into possible ambushes.
Mostly I get tired of "Teh Spartans!" being used so much as a counter argument. I don't think it carries a lot of weight.