January 30, 2013
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Women in Combat
I don’t think I have ever really spoken on this because I am somewhat of a fence sitter, but I probably should. So our government wants to make it so that women can serve in active combat roles, and while I do believe the arguments against that are stronger than the arguments for, I tend to lean more towards allowing it. But, allowing it within a set of clearly defined boundaries.
But first, I want to look at both sides of the argument, and the points on both side which I believe are the strongest.
AGAINST:
When we are talking about having women serve in combat positions we need to keep in mind that this is real life, and real life is not like “Dragon Age,” “Starship Troopers,” or some liberal fantasy which insists that gender differences are products of the imagination. You can’t just put women in combat and expect them to be able to run as far, as fast, carry as much, or endure the same level of pain and hardship as the male soldiers. Real life isn’t like that.
The fact is that women are not as physically strong as men, nor do they have the same level of endurance, on average. I have seen this demonstrated emperically time and time again. Yes I know there are some hardcore women who are exceptions, but exceptions do not invalidate generalizations.
That being said, I didn’t start seriously working out until I was 20 or 21. I think 21 but I’m not sure. In any case, at the time I was going to a university that actually required the students to be physically fit. But before I started my workouts I was tested along with a bunch of other people. I didn’t work out at all through high school, except for OCCASIONALLY running. Now, at the time I saw about 5’9 and weighed 145 pounds. I could only do about 30 pushups consecutively, and I could only bench about 115 pounds (bar included), which is sad for a man, but all the other lazy non-jockish guys were about the same as me in that area. Now the women I found were about half that in both areas. Maybe they could bench the bar, but the most weight they might be able to do is 5 or 10 pounds on each end. So the average out of shape woman can probably bench about 45 to 65 pounds.
Also, when it comes to aerobic activities women also typically do not have the same capacity as well. Women have a smaller lung capacity, I believe by about 20%, and smaller blood vessels as well. These are facts BTW which anyone can independently verify. That is why women will typically get tired before men and run out of breath quicker. I said typically because I know that there are some hardcore women out there, but we are talking about the average not the exceptions.
There is also the fact that women have their periods, which nothing can be done about.
I once had a friend who was a retired drill sergent from the army, and what he said is that women cannot be given long term combat postings because every one or two weeks they have to clean out their lady parts. If they don’t then they risk infection. That makes women less suited for long term trench warfare, or desert warfare for that matter.
Another thing to consider is the types of enemies we are fighting, and those which we have fought in the past. If we have female soldiers and they get captured by either Muslims or Communists, then things are going to go so much worse for them than if a male soldier was captured. It’s going to be a nightmare for them.
Those are the strongest arguments I know of for being against.
FOR:
As an ultra right wing quazi-anarchist individual, if someone really wants to work a particular job, even a life threatening one, I kind of have a hard time seeing it as being any of my business. It’s their prerogative if they want to risk their life, male or female. If they know the risks and are OK with them, then they are making an informed personal decision. It doesn’t hurt me if they join or don’t join.
Another thing to consider is that Israel has been using women rather succesfully as soldiers for a long time now. Of course, in Israel it is mandatory, and while I do think it is less than ideal to have women serving, I can understand why they do it. The fact is that Israel is surrounded by large numbers of hostile nutjobs who want to wipe them out. Islam is like the retarded brother of Nazism. You take Nazism, remove the productive elements from it, and add some extreme moon worshipping fanaticism and you have Islam. So Israel uses women to make up for the difference in numbers. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and the female IDF soldiers are amazing, even if they are not as physically strong as the men.
As a brief aside, yet still related topic, I have to say that the IDF women are like a fantasy come true for a lot of right wing males. Women who can shoot, and fight (Krav Maga), and still look like attractive women. There are so many guys who would love to be married to women like that.
The pictures make a strong argument.
Conclusion:
It would be best to say that I am OK with women serving. I am not particularly FOR or AGAINST, just OK with it, but only with moderation and with certain conditions being met.
Again, I cannot over-emphasize that real life is not like “Skyrim.” Whoever is in charge of commanding the women needs to remember that they are women. Men and women are different both physically and psychologically, and regardless of how much liberalism you have, the enemy is going to react differently to women on the field than men. That needs to be kept in mind when assigning posts, especially when dealing with Muslims who are notorius for raping and mutilating women. Especially the Afghan Muslim men, who are probably the most brutal and barbaric people ever to walk the face of the Earth since the time of the Assyrians.
Also, I don’t want to see women being forced to have short hair or take androgens, such as steroids. That doesn’t mean that they need to carry two cases of makeup with them, but they should be allowed to have their dignity. I’m against gender bending, even if you have people crossing over into occupations that are non-traditional for their gender. Requiring women to have short hair and take androgens would be as cruel and humiliating as requiring men to wear makeup, get their nails done, and wear dresses (or take breast implants). I don’t want to see anything like that. No mandatory gender bending please. It’s an affront to human dignity and God’s natural design. Yes I do have a very black and white view on things, because reality is concrete whether you like it or not, and no amount imagination, wishful thinking, special pleading, or PC thought policing is going to make it otherwise.
I also don’t want women to be drafted. If they want to serve that is one thing. If they are being made to serve then that is another. Israel does it because of a shortage of manpower. In the US we don’t have that problem, so there is no reason to do it. Also, Israel’s conflicts are the result of angsty neighbors who don’t know how to behave like civilized human beings, so it is self defense. Our wars are a result of traiterous blowhards in power who either don’t know what they are doing or are deliberately trying to waste our resources. Actually, I don’t want to see anyone being drafted to serve in these current meaningless bullcrap wars. Odin’s beard…
Finally, I don’t want large numbers of women in the army, for some very pragmatic and logical reasons. Suppose we have an all out war and 60% of the men are killed. If we still have the same amount of women we can restore our numbers. That is why many ancient warlike cultures were polygamous, not because they hated women and wanted to oppress them like the feminists think, but because they needed polygamy to replenish their numbers. One man can impregnate ten women, but a woman can only be impregnated by one man at a time. The amount of children a society can produce is limited by the amount of women with functioning wombs, not by the amount of men. Also, men who are too old to fight can still impregnate women. So speaking as pragmatically as possible, if large numbers of women are obliterated the effect on the society is much more disastrous and harder to reverse than if only large numbers of the men are obliterated. So while I may be fine with women serving, I don’t think we should go out of our way to encourage it.
If I missed anything here then please let me know.
Comments (8)
There’s so much good stuff in here.
One point that I’d like to reiterate from the previous thread is that, despite all of the doomsday predictions on how women aren’t up to the job, can’t handle the combat stresses, having to deal with gender-specific issues, we are forgetting that tens of thousands of female service members have been successfully deployed in combat environments and have been dealing with these for over ten years now. Women serving in combat conditions, where they are directly involved in fighting, has become so routine and has been such a non-issue for so long that it’s been non-newsworthy for quite a long time.
Put plainly, recent history has invalidated all of the common arguments presented against women in combat.
Every time that the military considers integrating a new group into its folds, there’s an outcry of how group so-and-so (women, gays, blacks, etc.) serving alongside the people belonging to the status quo will cause our military to fall apart as it would destroy mission readiness. To date:
-Despite the conservative criticism that openly allowing gays to serve in the military would cripple military units (nevermind the fact that they were already serving, just quietly), no military unit has been unable to deploy or meet its mission due to lifting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The impacts of lifting the ban have been largely, well, non-existent
-Despite similar criticisms to allowing women to serve on submarines, our submarine fleet continues to operate normally with no impact on our projection of power abroad
-Similar concerns were made about women on warships in the seventies. We still have the world’s strongest naval fleet
-Despite similar criticisms of allowing women into the military in the first place, our military has adapted and our strength has not been adversely impacted by integrating women into the active duty armed services
-Despite the then arguments of integrating blacks into the military in the forties and fifties, our military is no worse-off than when it was segregated
Point is, every time we look to remove discrimination in the military, opponents argue that it will somehow collapse our country’s abilities to fight wars, and this has historically never happened. There are some growing pains, but the military is a robust, adaptable machine. It flexes to meet the challenge and moves on. You can argue that because of the physical differences between men and women that this is a different situation than the others, but then again I submit that women have been proving that they have been handling combat just fine for a decade already.
There is a point that has to be acknowledged that women and men differ physically. The arguments that women shouldn’t be in dirty or dangerous places because of how they use the bathroom or their periods is, quite frankly, just silly. They make it work. On the other hand, there is the obvious strength difference, but nobody is saying that every women should be able to serve In the infantry. There are physical standards for general health-which are different for men and women-but no one is talking about changing the standards for the actual job at hand. If a job is uniquely physical and it requires a certain amount of fitness, women who would be eligible for those jobs would be those exceptions you described earlier, the women who have above average fitness and strength who prove they can handle the job as well as a man. Believe me, they exist, I serve alongside them.
So far, we’ve only been talking about women in ground combat situations. We haven’t discussed other jobs that aren’t infantry combat-related but very much involve direct combat, like female fighter/helicopter/bomber/attack pilots. Military police. They’ve been doing these jobs for a long time, too, with no issues.
You bring up Israel as an example of a country that uses women in combat roles out of necessity because of its small size. I offer a vastly different example of a country that used women on its front lines: the Soviet Union during World War Two. In contrast to Israel but just like us, they obviously didn’t have a “manpower shortage”, but hundreds of thousands of women served on their front lines. It worked out well for them.
On the drafting thing, I’m sorry, I have to say that this was the wildest argument I’ve ever heard. 60% of the military male population killed? You’re talking upwards of 100,000,000 people. That is so far beyond the realm of realism that if that’s your argument, you can pretty much make an argument for anything. I still believe that, in this world of equality, that women should have the same responsibility to defend their rights as men, period. No one should be able to have their cake and eat it too.
I think women as well as men should have the option to apply for the military in combat positions (and be well respected for doing so). I do not believe in drafts because it is a form of slavery; if not enough people are willing to fight when they are needed, then they don’t deserve the security of a country that needs to be fought for.
I do not believe in a nanny state that places restrictions on free persons to “protect” them. Women as well as men have the responsibility to know what they’re getting into and what they need to qualify (including whether or not it’s possible, given their personal limitations which can be anything from poor vision to limited upper body strength to disability) if they choose this type of career. I think the standards should be uniform regardless of gender. Will that create a gender disparity? Of course it will. Who cares? I am against affirmative action in all forms, and I acknowledge that some industries will have more of one group than another. I am not an expert on the subject, other than what my boyfriend (spent 4
hours in active duty, currently in inactive reserves) has told me about
it, so I will admit my ignorance.
@DrummingMediocrity - There is some logic to that.
Yea, I’m not saying that if there is a role that requires people to be able to bench 200 and carry 300 (hypothetically), that they should create a separate standard for women. Obviously if a woman can’t carry that much, then she shouldn’t be included because that is a liability. But, I don’t want women being given steroids so that they can be able to fulfill that sort of role. If you can’t do it naturally, then you can’t do it. End of story.
@SlickRick297 - So I take it you are in the military then?
Yea women have been in support positions for a long time and it hasn’t hurt anything. Also I THINK that in some places women have served on the field, but I’m not sure about that one.
I don’t really care about there being gays in the army. If they want to serve they should be allowed, although, I would be nervous rooming with one. That being said, I’m against any mandatory sensitivity training. If you’re going to be openly gay you might have to deal with some ridicule.
So what is your stance ont he draft then? Do you think that everyone should be eligible, just men, or that there should be no draft? I don’t have a problem with voluntary service for women, but I don’t want a draft for them.
My point about most of the men dying was deliberately extreme, but it is not without historical precedent.. A lot of ancient societies which engaged in regular or seasonal war were often polygamous out of necessity in order to compensate for a shortage of men. If the women vastly outnumber the men things are less than ideal, but reversable in a generation or two because one man can impregnate 10 women in a week if he wants, whereas one woman cannot be impregnated by 10 men simultaneously. If a population loses most of it’s women, then the population is going to shrink and there is nothing that can be done about it. Speaking logistically, a shortage of women is more severe than a shortage of men. Of course, another way that ancient societies compensatd for a shortage of women was stealing them from their neighbors, of course, I don’t think we want to do either of those things, which means that we need to avoid coming to a place where the men outnumber the women.
The US has not even been around for 300 years. I think it is entirely possible that most of our army and much of our population could be killed someday by a hostile country or a coalition of hostile countries. People in Egypt and Syria never thought it was possible that the Byzantine Empire (which was around much longer, especially considering that it was the continuation of the Roman Empire) would be unable to defend them one day. After their last war with the Persians, most of the Byzantine army was mostly destroyed, as well as the Persian army. As a result the Persian Empire was completely overrun by desert barbarians, and most of the Byzantine Empire was also overrun. So it can happen. The founding fathers were aware of this, which I believe is one of their reasons for giving us the 2nd ammendment. Most of the Syrians and Egyptians weren’t prepared to fight for themselves, and now they are mostly Muslims.
I’m more of a traditional guy. To be honest I would like to go back to the times when it was mostly just men that worked, period. Traditionally it was the role of men to protect women, and the role of women to stay home and take care of the children. Not every way that our society has changed is for the best. You know, when the Titanic was sinking most of the people who died were men, because there was a shortage of lifeboats, and they all made sure that all the women and children were on board before they tried to save themselves. A lot of men ended up watching them go from the deck as the ship sank. If something like that happened today everyone would scramble for the lifeboats without thinking about anyone else. Look at that captain that abandoned ship before the passengers and crew. However, as an ultra right-wing quazi anarchist I recognize that one of the most important freedoms we have is self determination. Therefore, if anyone wants to work a job, and they can do it, then I’m fine with them doing it, and I don’t begrudge anyone for wanting to defend their country physically, which is always admirable. But I disagree with you that men and women have the same responsitilbities. One of the most important (perhaps the most) duty that law abiding female citizens have is to mother the next generation. It is something that only women can do, and it is just as patriotic and at least as essential as having people in the army. If we aren’t replenishing our numbers (and actually we aren’t), then after some time there will be no country to defend.
I didn’t know that about the Soviets. I do know that they used to have officers standing behind the soldiers, so that if they tried to retreat the officers would shoot them. They also used to have a shortage of weapons.
@Ambrosius_Augustus_Rex - Yes, I’m in the military, deployed overseas for the moment. For women who have had the honor to serve, they have mostly been in support roles, which are typically supposed to be behind the front line combat forces, however, what a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has taught us is that the term “front line” doesn’t exist anymore. When you’re dealing with wide-scale guerrilla warfare, that means that troops in all roles are subject to attack. Women have been patrolling, doing logistics/support missions and stationed in remote outposts, coming under attack from enemy forces, and using their weapons to kill the enemy right alongside the men.
People make the arguments that women cannot serve in extended combat, but they have been in extended combat for a decade. In other words, for ten years, women have been doing what the chauvinists are claiming they can’t or shouldn’t be doing.
My stance on the draft is that every able-bodied military age adult should be eligible for the draft and required to register, and that is a gender-neutral requirement. The draft should not be used unless it is urgently necessary for national defense and an all-volunteer force is insufficient to meet our defense needs. Having babies is not the same as wearing the uniform and taking up arms to defend this country, its an argument I usually hear from women that simply don’t want to have anything to do with the military in the first place and would never consider serving. They are just content to let the men take on all of the danger, and want a get-out-of-jail-free card just because of their gender. That’s a load of bull, if you ask me. If a woman wants the same rights and opportunities as a man, which they definitely should, then they should be prepared to sacrifice their lives in defense of said rights, just as a man should be able to.
On a side note, I HAVE had a gay roommate I was forced to live with. Worst of all is that he was a total asshole, which I hated him more for. It was also unavoidable that he would see us naked, and we knew he looked. Bottom line, as much as being in close quarters around gay people has made me feel uncomfortable, I still think that lifting DADT was the right thing to do. Hands down.
I bring up the Red Army because it was a very powerful military that still used women in infantry units with great success. Sure, they did some pretty unimaginable things, but those aren’t relevant to the debate. If the Soviets did it and won a war as a result, I’m sure we’d be just fine, as current experience is proving.
On the topic of large numbers of women in the military… you’ve gotta step back and look at the fact that you are comparing us to civilizations that haven’t existed for thousands of years. The reason why those civilizations dont exist anymore is because the world has evolved in a way that has forever changed the face of warfare. Even though the U.S. hasn’t been around for longer than 300 years, places like Europe, Asia and Africa have, and unless you’re talking about genocide-which is not the same as true warfare-these kinds of casualties just aren’t our way of life anymore, and haven’t been for thousands of years. The only possible exception to that would be a nuclear conflict, which would also target population centers and kill men, women, children, military and civilians about equally and indiscriminately. At that point, it would not matter if we had large numbers of women in the military if Atlanta gets eaten by a nuclear bomb.
The bottom line is that, if your strongest “pragmatic” argument against large numbers of women in the military is based on events that happened millennia ago, well, I think that’s a pretty weak argument.
Also, its way out of the realm of realism that the remaining women are going to essentially contract their bodies to whatever men that remain for the sake of repopulating America. I’d be interested in seeing a poll to this affect of your female audience.
My mother, who desperately wanted to serve her country and fight on the ground in Vietnam, was physically just as capable as her male counterparts, who became an MP after she was denied a field combat MOS, and later retired as a Detroit cop after fatally shooting a criminal who was attempting to murder her male partner, would be fiercely offended if she came across this post. She represents a generation of women who wildly resent being restricted from meeting their full potential by males who supposedly know what’s best for them.
@SlickRick297 - Agree with the first paragraph.
Agree about the homosexuality, and actually if there were gay guys around I would rather know about it then have them secretely checking me out or doing something to me while I slept. The only thing is I heard that they were going to implement some sensitivity training. Do you know anything about that?
I definitely believe in traditional gender roles, and one of the traditional roles of men is to fight. I don’t have a problem with voluntary service for them, but under the best of circumstances compulsion is questionable. What do you consider the threshold for an extreme emergency? When it comes to Israel I have no problem with their compulsory service for both genders, but Israel is in a much worse situation than the US. Most of our wars are not self defense, and the purpose of most of our interference in the Middle East and Africa escapes me.
The events I listed were for the purpose of showing what techniques were used historically to compensate for a shortage of men, and to show how a shortage of men is easier to reverse than a shortage of women. That’s the thing. As for war decimating a population, there are some more recent events we could talk about, like WWII. After WWII the US population spiked after the soldiers came home and reunited with their wives or took wives. Hence the baby boom generation. When it came to the axis powers things were quite different. So many women were widowed in Germany and Italy, and many of them stayed widows because of taboos attached to polygamy. That being said, I definitely agree that nukes are a game changer. If we get nuked it probably will not matter who is in the army and who is not because most people will die, period. As it stands right now some of our enemies have nukes and others do not. So far we have not taken direct action against any enemy with nuclear capabilties. During the Cold War era we had proxy wars instead of actual all out war. MAD is what prevented an all out nuclear war, but if more Muslims start getting nuclear capibilities that is going to change. They don’t care how many of their people you kill, or how badly you damage their cities, they are just going to keep coming and coming. If they nuke us and we nuke them, we can still expect a ground invasion from whatever survivors there are on that Muslim side.
I never said I was advocating restrictions, but, I definitely believe that reproduction is the duty of patriotic women. Right now we are in a population decline. If that continues there is not going to be a US anymore. You can’t expect a country to continue when the people of that country are gone. Check this video and you will see what I’m talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjOksH8cvHE
I would like to have lots of kids but I’m a poor guy, so my breeding capabilities are rather limited. My fiance is a very traditional woman, and I’m a very traditional guy. Ideally she could stay home, and we could have 4 or 5 children and still support the family on one income. Realistically both of us are going to have to work, and we will probably only be able to have two at most. In addition, because we are both working we won’t be able to spend much time with the kids, but fortunately my parents live nearby so we can rely on them somewhat. Again, I’m not against anyone doing any occupation they want to, or being restricted, or imposing quotas of any sort. I am just saying that reproduction needs to be more of a priority than it has become lately. Otherwise everything else we do is in vain.
The usa is lucky, we are one of they few that don’t have mandatory military enlistment. My friend from north korea immigrated LEGALLY ;) (yeah pc is overrated) and her parents whenever she did something wrong would threaten to ship her back and send her to the military. I had another friend from Isreal go into the service, a girl and a military training is mandatory.
I think you make some very good points. Although women have a higher tolerance to pain than men (weaker physically and smaller lung capacity) and are ’crueler’ on average,maybe better military strategist, more than combat.
@Amandascowen - Wow, how does one get out of North Korea? Actually I wouldn’t have a problem with creating an easy path to citizenship for North Koreans, because like the Cubans the majority of people who manage to escape from there would probably be staunchly anti-communist.
I can understand why Israel drafts everyone. I don’t think the US has the same needs, and if they ever tried that I would be strongly opposed as most of our wars are stupid nonsense wars these days.
Oh yes, I have been whipped by a few female gamers in online strategy games, and that was back when I was good.