Women at war

20 Responses to Women at war

1. Steel Phoenix says:

   August 16, 2009 at 11:35 am

   Women will never have equal rights until they have equal responsibilities. I see nothing wrong with women in the military, and they should as subject to the draft as men.
2. John says:

   August 16, 2009 at 4:13 pm

   I agree. Let them serve in combat as long as they can satisfy training requirements. I also agree that, if you’re going to have a draft, women should be subject to it. However, I’m against the draft.
3. Ploni says:

   August 16, 2009 at 4:54 pm

   Those two decisions were at most distal, not proximal causes. If they were really causes at all.
4. Pincher Martin says:

   August 16, 2009 at 9:01 pm

   Steel Phoenix :

   Steel Phoenix
   

   Women will never have equal rights until they have equal responsibilities. I see nothing wrong with women in the military, and they should as subject to the draft as men.

   But that’s not the topic for discussion, is it?

   First, there is no draft. Second, women can already join the U.S. military, and they have been joining it ever since the U.S. went to a volunteer force.

   The topic that the NYT would like to push is about combat roles, and their implicit point is that women are now ready to join the special forces (i.e., Demi Moore in “G.I. Jane”) because the military has been using them to frisk Iraqi women.
5. Polichinello says:

   August 17, 2009 at 6:17 am

   I agree. Let them serve in combat as long as they can satisfy training requirements.

   That sounds nice in theory, but in practice there are so few of these women, that it isn’t worth the hassle that comes with a co-ed service. For ever woman who makes it through on a serious standard, you’d probably have something like 70-100 men. During the first Gulf War I nearly blew a fuse when our Starlifter was delayed from leaving because some female techie couldn’t carry her damned toolbox off the plane. This was in in the beginning when scud alerts were pretty common. This capped my five years in the service, which were punctuated with little incidents and frustrations of this nature. When it wasn’t having to compensate for women’s weakness, it was having to deal with the relationship bullshit and pregnancy issues.

   In a sane country, women should be restricted to medical and clerical positions in the rear. Of course, if the country was sane, we wouldn’t be stuck in pointless, world-saving expeditions to gawd-awful hellholes in the Middle East.
6. Susan says:

   August 17, 2009 at 8:31 am

   I have mixed thoughts (not feelings) about this. In theory, I believe that if we can ask men to sacrifice their health and lives, we should ask the same of women. On the other hand, the point that women aren’t physically suited for combat is a very good one. And the draft has always struck me as a form of involuntary servitude.
7. Caledonian says:

   August 17, 2009 at 9:57 am

   On the other hand, the point that women aren’t physically suited for combat is a very good one.

   So institute a rule that people who aren’t physically qualified for combat aren’t put into combat positions.

   Don’t we already have an effective version of that rule?
8. Polichinello says:

   August 17, 2009 at 10:05 am

   Don’t we already have an effective version of that rule?

   No. We did, but that rule was adulterated once the obvious fact that any woman who could make the cut was something of 5-Sigma event sunk in. One example, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher was once considered a two-man job. However, very few women could haul a 200-lb man and his kit around on stretcher, so the usual suspects did their magic, and now it’s–ta-daaa!!–a four-man job. The discrepancies between the physical requirements for men and women are obvious jokes, or at least they were when I was in. We had guys with a little bit of a paunch sweating their yearly weigh-ins, while the most ridiculous looking moo-cows would breeze through.
9. Steel Phoenix says:

   August 17, 2009 at 11:52 am

   Pincher: There is no draft? Then why are 18 year old boys threatened with all sorts of dire consequences if they don’t sign up for it, while the girls sitting next to them are not?
   Combat rolls are essentially the same point. If women are in the back in administrative roles while the men are out front, is that equal?

   Polichinello: I’m sure it was a hassle to give women rights too, but either they have them or they don’t. I’ts one thing to not stoop to affirmative action, but actually denying them a place at the front because of their gender hardly seems constitutional.

   I’m against the draft as well, but I think it should be applied equally. Caledonian is right on. We shouldn’t bar women because they tend to be weak, we should bar weak people because they are weak.
10. sg says:

    August 17, 2009 at 12:17 pm

    Uh, women and men are not equal on a measure for measure basis. They are roughly equal in number but their value to society as loving mothers is far greater than their value as soldiers. That said, there should be no law explicitly forbidding the military from creating a battalion of females who all meet the same minimum standards as men. Natural law may, however, forbid it. Women have served well as nurses and other support staff. Intelligence and reason would place any given recruit in a role to which he is best suited and women joining the military understand that their safety is of course at risk, like any other service person. Putting women’s abstract equality agenda ahead of the mission is counter productive, expensive and misguided.
11. SMK says:

    August 17, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    “Steel P’s” drivel reeks of “masculism,” i.e., victimology and feminism for males. When science discovers how to make men pregnant and SP and his fellow MRAs are forced to bear 5-6 children a piece to atone for millenia of anti-female “discrimination,” then I’ll support women in combat and female conscription.
12. Steel Phoenix says:

    August 17, 2009 at 2:53 pm

    Hah! Funny stuff SMK.

    I think you are confusing me with someone who supports affirmative action. I’m not asking for reparations, quotas, or special rights; quite the opposite, just simple equality under the law, at least as it applies to government.

    Baby making is still optional last I checked, or is there a draft for that now?

    There are plenty of women out there that are more manly in traditional sense than a lot of the more metrosexual men. Barring manly women while allowing effeminate men seems silly to me.

    When we start legislating in inequalities we open Pandora’s box. What’s to stop them from saying men aren’t allowed to own weapons, because men commit more violent crime? Maybe Native Americans shouldn’t be allowed to drink, and only Asians should be allowed to take math classes? Who decides how to separate societal stereotypes from genetic realities, or where the lines are drawn? Should you have to register for the draft if you get a sex change?
13. sg says:

    August 17, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    “There are plenty of women out there that are more manly in traditional sense than a lot of the more metrosexual men. Barring manly women while allowing effeminate men seems silly to me.”

    Got data to back that up? Self concept is not the same as height, weight, and strength measures. The percentage of women at or above the physical male mean is extremely small. The percentage of women at or above even the male 20%tile is also correspondingly small. The real threshold of course should be the actual requirement for the task. Since some positions have minimum requirements almost no woman could meet, women should not be considered for those positions because accommodating women in those positions meets with diminishing returns. It’s not personal or sexist. Many men are rejected for positions they aspire to as well because they can’t meet the standard. Some decisions have to be made for practical reasons.
14. John says:

    August 17, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    Nobody is arguing that the military should be 50% men/50% women. All I am arguing is that for any position, let’s set the standards that the position should meet, and then allow anyone who meets the standards to get the position. There may be some jobs in the military that only a few women can do. There might be other jobs that women’s abilities are comparable to men (or better).

    Right now there is a difference in average IQ between ethnic groups. However, we don’t say, “No sense in letting blacks into college. Most of them won’t pass.” Instead, we have equality before the law, and let the chips fall where they may.
15. Mighty Horton says:

    August 17, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Why don’t women play on the teams in the Superbowl? Combat is a bit more serious than the Superbowl. People are getting killed. You put your best players in, eh?
16. SMK says:

    August 17, 2009 at 7:42 pm

    Actually, virtually all “masculists” and some feminists want a 50%/50% military. And all sexual egalitarians, feminist and “masculist,” want to expand the “role” of women by repealing the combat exemption. Ergo, the existence of a miniscule number of freakish amazons with the muscularity and temperament to perform adequately in combat is totally irrelevant to the feminist-“masculist” vision of undifferentiated equality between the sexes. To “masculists,” justice is an equal number of female casualties. They’re enraged that only hundreds of women (including mothers of infants and toddlers and young children)have been slaughtered, maimed, mutilated, paralyzed, blinded, brain-damaged, and grotesquely disfigured in our senseless wars in Irag and Afghanistan as opposed to thousands of men. Obviously, their vision of “justice” could only be realized by mass conscription of equal numbers of men and women and a rigid 50%/50% quota system irrespective of merit or ability or even minimal competence.
17. kurt9 says:

    August 18, 2009 at 9:39 am

    The Israelis have had an integrated military since the founding of the country. Perhaps the IDF can serve as study model for whatever problems that may occur with regards to an gender integrated military.
18. sg says:

    August 19, 2009 at 7:16 am

    The point isn’t about integration, rather competence. I am sure no one is against women serving as nurses, doctors and paper pushers in the military. It’s the fighting part of the military endeavor that women don’t belong in.
19. Polichinello says:

    August 19, 2009 at 8:30 am

    The Israelis have had an integrated military since the founding of the country.

    The Israelis only have 6 million people to work with. Less, really, once you factor out those with religious, ethnic or physical impediments.
20. Rich Rostrom says:

    August 22, 2009 at 1:04 am

    Israel does not use women in combat arms positions. There was some participation of women in the Haganah in 1948: desperate times call for desperate measures. However, the Israelis found (in the later wars) that women in combat units is a disruptive and demoralizing influence. (Men react much worse to female casualties, and will subordinate unit success and optimum tactics to avoiding female casualties. Plus the lesser physical capacity of women.)

    Women can and do fill a lot of very useful technical and support billets. In the context of counterinsurgency and “nation building”, having women present makes full engagement with the locals much easier.

    But “GI Jane” is an ideologically driven fantasy. The services have already been seriously damaged by the inclusion of merely above-average women in roles only a minuscule elite are capable of.

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