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If the draft ever got reinstated, should women be included?
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When I was in the military this was the only real issue men had with woman in the military. The USA really has it's head up it's ass when it has different standards for the sexes. There were plently of woman I knew who would have done just fine on the men's scale.
*Ding* *Ding* Go to your corners!
My 2 cents:
Personally I feel like women should be a part of the draft as much as men are. I may be completely wrong here but is the physical difference really that big a deal? How much strength does it take to pull a trigger or push a button. Now in hand to hand this may play a part, but there are certain martial arts that train the person to use the strength of an opponent against them (akido comes to mind).
And if he suddenly turned white I would laugh when you bought five copies of his new pop album.
what the fuck dude?
Did you put out?
Slut.
I never, ever want to be eligible for the draft but thanks to some of my fellow women I may be forced to. I see how it’s fair though, since we’re all supposed to be “equal”. Ugh, feminism.
lol
Nobody wants to be drafted. If you wanted to be in the military, you'd be in the military. The rest of your post? I don't even know what you're talking about. You wanna back any of that up?
All wanting that equal treatment, good and bad.
It seems you're simultaneously decrying people who want special rights whilst wanting special rights yourself, mystikspyral
:rotate:
Example: I want to have the right to serve in the military should I choose to do so but I don't want to have to be drafted.
That kind of stuff just bugs me. No one really wants to be drafted but I accept that it's fair that women are listed as well because we're all supposed to be equal. I don't think I deserve an exception just because it's always been just men. It's what I mean by "equal rights" vs. "special rights".
I had a friend who dated this woman who insisted he pay for every meal, etc, would even insist he pay for groceries for their house (she stayed with him for about 3 days out of the week to take classes at the university). He asked her to help pay for living expenses, since she was, you know, living in his house, and she threatened to break up with him.
He was a college student from a middle class family, who had to pay his own way through and was by this point probably over a hundred thousand dollars in debt, she was the daughter of some corporate executive and her parents literally just gave her a ten thousand dollar a month allowance to do whatever she wanted with (she had to pay tuition, but had essentially no living expenses, so she was probably easily clearing 90 thousand a year to do whatever she wanted with, which was usually buying 2-3 thousand dollar handbags and similar crap). They broke up shortly after she graduated.
I'm pretty sure someone was being exploited here, but I don't think it was the woman.
My policy is, on first dates and formal occasions, I'll put down my card for the check, if she puts hers down too, that's fine, if not, that's fine. On the other hand, if we're just going out to McDonald's or something, especially if there are other people there and it's not a date, then no.
This also varies somewhat based on situation, I work at a university and get paid a pretty crappy salary, if I'm on a date with an undergrad who's in debt and not making any money, I'm more likely to pay than if it's a full, graduated doctor or dentist (I work around those schools, lot of people just out of school work as adjunct faculty, essentially a higher level of TAs but still get paid pretty well since they have a doctorate) who's probably making 3 or 4 times what I am right now.
I want to have the right to serve in the military should I choose to do so but I don't want to be drafted (and in fact don't want anyone to be drafted). In what way is my position inconsistent with itself?
Damn, this thread moves fast.
Right, it is common in civilian life. But, the problem is compounded specifically in times of war by close quarters of troops, extreme stress, extreme boredom, distance from home, ignorant or even complicent leadership, and probably plenty of other things I'm missing.
That's not even mentioning the consentual monkey fucking that would go on between integrated combat troops in the field.
I'm all for equal rights here, but this just doesn't seem practical. And, even if the military were to crack down heavily on sexual assault and casual banging, I'm fairly certain that there's one high-level official whose orders would supercede those of any general. Gentlemen, may I introduce to you the commander-in-prick.
That's pretty goddamn insulting. My little brother is a Marine and is fully capable of not becoming a rapist just because he has a penis. Leaving aside the fact that unless you're alleging that bootcamp brainwashes perfectly decent young men into rapebots your claim also directly attacks all men. Believe it or not some of us are able to avoid being rapists solely on the grounds that we don't want to severely hurt someone just to get our rocks off.
1) Richard_Dastardly is in the Air Force so it's just as much a condmenation of himself as anyone else
2) Like it or not, he's right in that a lot of extraneous, avoidable bullshit goes down in integrated units. Personally, I think the bonus o having female soldiers is worth the cost of the needless drama but I can see where he's coming from
Keyword: avoidable. Making excuses for it doesn't increase evasion-rate.
Look up incidences of marines accused and convicted of rape, especially in Okinawa. Or, google Iraq, Afghanistan and rape. Sexual assault is a huge problem.
I'm not implying that every serviceman is a raging rapist. That doesn't alleviate the fact that we have a problem and, in my belief, any government effort to draft both male and female combat troops would exasperate the problem.
This is an issue with integrated troops in general though, not with the draft? I suppose the draft could either exacerbate the problem, or alleviate it, depending on how having a higher percentage of women in the military affects the frequency of the assaults.
Look up incidence of people accused of rape on any college campus. Conviction rate will be lower because military courts have different rules. I'm not denying that rape is a problem with an unacceptably high rate of incidence, I'm denying that making excuses for it to argue against allowing women into front-line service is at all useful, and I'm denying that it's actually any more common in the military than outside. Perhaps report-rates are higher in the military, perhaps it just gets more coverage because that story will, frankly, sell better. There are all manner of reasons why it would be perceived as higher there. I'm not buying that it actually is.
Exacerbate.
Well, yeah. And, I'm assuming a situation that puts troops out in the field where they lack the direct authority of high level officers and NCOs would lead to an increase in assults. I don't really have evidence for that other than past wars involving the US.
Anyway, I personally know of two servicewomen who were raped. One had invited a group of dudes over for a gangbang, but she ended up saying no and the dude's apparently didn't wanna listen.
Edit: Did I actually write exasperate? My god. You know, I'm an English Major.
Ah yes "support" jobs should have lower standards. Half the woman in the MP unit I was assigned to couldn't pull back the charging handle on a MK19 or 50cal. This is a weapon they would be expected to be able to use. When you're in a supply convoy and get ambushed, you are no longer support and need ot be able to fight and haul around casualties.
The woman who could pass the men's test? Yeah, they didn't have a problem with it.
I have never served in the military nor lived on a base and I know at least a dozen, and those are just the ones who told me about it. Most keep it to themselves because the social consequences of admitting to being the victim of that crime aren't a whole lot better than the incident itself.
Are incidents of reported rape on college campuses that high?
Of course not, most rapes are not reported because of the social consequences of doing so. But are you arguing about incidence of rape or incidence of reported rape?
I think that females should be included in the draft, and allowed to join combat arms positions. I just also happen to think that until they have sufficient numbers to allows them to be greater than a huge minority, they should be all female units. The military would just need an integration period. I also think that the restrictions on access would have to be more stringent for females than males. These restrictions exist for certain jobs already, such as you can't be taller than 6'2'' if you want to be a tanker (drive tanks).
I don't think I would want to have a squadmate who couldn't physically carry what was needed. I'm 5'8'' and 150 pounds, and as a male I still struggle sometimes carrying the 40 pound rucksack and however much an IBA plus ammo and a rifle weighs. God help you/her if she needs to carry a 50 cal anywhere, they're fucking heavy. A small female would really drag down her squad, the platoon, and thus hurt a mission's accomplishment. It's something you won't understand until you're hauling ass through the brush with half your body weight on your back. Now, assuming she was at least at my meager physical capabilities, I have no problem with it.
Edit: This is assuming some sort of ground war, not quite like today's mechanized armed forces. It would still be difficult if the vehicle was out of commission, and you had to hoof it. You have to take everything with sensitive information, weapons, ammunition, and the supplies you need to roll out. Radios are also heavy.
The same dynamic that keeps women from reporting rape in the civilian world is at play in the military world, although I would presume that the pressure is far greater in the military to stay quiet. So we can compare the incidence of reported rapes between the two categories or the estimates of actual rapes between the categories. I chose reported rapes because I think it is the stronger statistic for comparison.
I don't even understand why the sit ups are different.
Isn't that more an argument for universally lowering standards for support jobs than for having different standards for women?
I'm operating under the assumption that the physical requirements are as they are for practical reasons, and not just reasons of general fitness. Like, you need to be able to haul a 50 pound sandbag, and so the fitness requirements are based on that. And if that's the case, it's retarded to have different standards.
Now, if it's more that all personnel need to be a certain level of in-shape, and measurement of that level of in-shapeness has different criteria for men than for women, then I could see different actual stats as means of testing the same basic criteria. But I don't think that's the case.
Is it? Military justice isn't held to the same requirements as the criminal justice system. Little things like not making the victim a matter of public record so that it can't be turned into a media-circus would go a long way to improving the rate of report versus rate of incidence ratio. I don't know much about military courts, so I don't know what the differences are, but there are a whole lot of little things you can change about the justice system to have that effect.
The fire doesn't wait another 3 minutes for the women to tend to it because they're women.
That being said, if I'm fighting the fire, I don't give half a crap who is fighting it with me, as long as they're capable. Jesus, the more the merrier.