Women in combat- where do you stand?

[Montcalm]

I don`t know if someone already said it but i say yes,just send a whole batallion of women when they have pms and the war will be over in a matter of hours.

[Pu-239]

Its 6 little rods in the arm. Look here
http://www.emory.edu/WHSC/MED/FAMPLAN/norplant.html

However it may worsen PMS...

[The Yosemite Bear]

My best friend's Fiance is presently on that method....

Well, the horomone release system is better then the pills of the 70's era.....

[tharkûn]

Isn't Norplant facing some huge lawsuit for being unsafe?

But let's face the facts here:
1. This is not a business, if you screw up ... people die.
2. There is no particular benifit to holding these position. You get the same bloody pay if you are infantry, CS, CSS, or you are a desk clerk. Hell the best paying jobs are just about ANYTHING but the grunt.

What harm does a woman suffer from not being allowed into the infantry? Is she going to come out with fewer skills? I doubt it. In all honesty you are MUCH farther ahead if you go into a supporting role than a combatant role. Is she going to get passed up for promotion? Again likely not. Is it hurting the military itself? Not really. For every combatant there are numerous supporting positions.

I could be wrong, but I frankly think it is harder to get promoted in the infantry than anywhere else.

If it ain't broke why try half assed measures to fix it?

[Lord Pounder]

Here is a unique regiment for the army to consider. Get a whole load of annoying bitches like Britney Spears and Aguilera. parachute them behind enemy lines and ask them to "entertain" the enemy with the "music". Send a message to the enemy saying that if they surrender the pain will end.

[InnerBrat]

…far fewer women want to serve in combat (especially infantry)…

Yeah, they love prattling on about equal rights, but they're sure happy to leave us men to be the ones to bleed to death on a foreign battlefield while they're off getting their nails done and shopping for shoes.

You're an asshole, y'know that? So women tend to be less bloodlusty and more pacifist - so we don't deserve equal rights? Fuck you.

[Knife]

…far fewer women want to serve in combat (especially infantry)…

Yeah, they love prattling on about equal rights, but they're sure happy to leave us men to be the ones to bleed to death on a foreign battlefield while they're off getting their nails done and shopping for shoes.

You're an asshole, y'know that? So women tend to be less bloodlusty and more pacifist - so we don't deserve equal rights? Fuck you.

How can you be equal if you are more pacifist and less bloodlusty and want to join the infantry?

[InnerBrat]

I don't want to fight in the infantry - I voted 'no'!

Unequal is not the same as different - and women can do more than shop and file...

[Knife]

I don't want to fight in the infantry - I voted 'no'!

Unequal is not the same as different - and women can do more than shop and file...

I was only razzing you. I have read your previous posts in this thread.

[The Dark]

…far fewer women want to serve in combat (especially infantry)…

Yeah, they love prattling on about equal rights, but they're sure happy to leave us men to be the ones to bleed to death on a foreign battlefield while they're off getting their nails done and shopping for shoes.

You're an asshole, y'know that? So women tend to be less bloodlusty and more pacifist - so we don't deserve equal rights? Fuck you.

Well, considering DACOWITS argued in favor of allowing women in front-line units until they were told that would make women eligible for Selective Service, I'd say there's a definite tendency to look for equal rights without equal responsibilities. I agree there should be equal rights in relation to responsibility.

[Dargos]

Its 6 little rods in the arm. Look here
http://www.emory.edu/WHSC/MED/FAMPLAN/norplant.html

However it may worsen PMS...

Damn...that would make them an elite assault unit/shock troops.

I can see it now 100 PMSing women in a real bad mood swing assaulting an enemys position. The enemy wouldn't stand a chance. Do not underestemate the Power Of PMS((TM).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You're an asshole, y'know that? So women tend to be less bloodlusty and more pacifist - so we don't deserve equal rights? Fuck you.

There's no proof that women are less bloodthirsty and more pacifist than men. The Avtokrator Irene of Byzantium gained that - masculine - title by putting out the eyes of her own son to as to retain power when he tried to remove her from the regency once he was of age. The Sultana Raziya of the Delhi Sultanate commanded armies that put down revolts against her rule, and after being defeated by one of her nobles, seduced him into a joint expedition to regain her throne - always the object of the bloodletting - though it did fail.

Catherine II was in fact merely the third, if the most famous, in a succession of female rulers of Russia in the 18th century who were primarily responsible for continuing the aggrandizement of that nation begun by Peter the Great, and in fact the three of them gained more for the Rodina's renown than Peter, if he did lay the foundations.

The Dowager Empress T'zu Hsi, mother of the Imperial heir in the mid-19th century in China, seized power in the manoeuvring of the Celestial court to establish herself as Regent, and then throughout the later half of the 19th century ruthlessly eliminated her competition - at one point she famously gave the "mercy" of beheading to someone as opposed to the "chopping and slicing process" - She was also rumoured to have arranged the death of her son's widow after he died; when he expired she certainly arranged the succession of her easy to control nephew.

When he defied expectations and started the "Hundred Days" reform, she rallied support and crushed it, reestablishing her authority at the court. Finally, of course, when the Spirit Boxers swept against the embassies and she saw their initial success, she threw her lot in with them and ordered the Army to join in the assault on the western powers, despite the savage brutality of the Boxers in that uprising, hoping to improving the Chinese position vis-a-vis the West.

And what of the famed nordic queens, to whom plot and war were not unknown? Shall I go on? The full measure has just begun!

I would respectfully submit that women are hardly somehow more peaceful or pacifist. Hell, what Irene did seems totally incomprehendable - It goes against all of those mothering instincts we have. And yet she's revered as a Saint to this day for restoring the veneration of Icons in the Orthodox Church.

The argument does not even deserve consideration because its conceptualization is based on a proposal - that women are less inclined towards violence than men - which is totally unsupportable. They have simply had less opportunity to exercise their natural violent traits due to the organization of pre-industrial societies.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Well, considering DACOWITS argued in favor of allowing women in front-line units until they were told that would make women eligible for Selective Service, I'd say there's a definite tendency to look for equal rights without equal responsibilities. I agree there should be equal rights in relation to responsibility.

Obviously Selective Service should be applied to women. I'm of the opinion that the nature of democracy is fundamentally and always has been the armed citizenry, which is subject to be called forth to defend their nation.

Nobody, honestly, would deserve the right to vote if Selective Service was abolished. Voting is a function of the civic militia. The foundation of democracy is in the voting of those who also defended the institution in which they participated. To do otherwise is rather despicable.

I think it is troubling and despicable that ultra-left womynist groups have engineered this cheap free ride on the coattails of democracy for half of the American population, and I indeed despise them for it.

Unfortunately, the association of the anti-war and feminist movements were inevitable; of pacifism, and feminism, due simply to the fact that the press for women's rights occured simultaneous to and immediately after the Vietnam War. The two intermixed and drew support from each other and so a blending of ideologies occured; and victory, though pleasant, became tainted with lingering issues such as this, which give ammunition to pacifist and misogynist alike.


As for women in the front lines? Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with it, as I've said before and will maintain, nor any reason against it.

Heck, Eritrea, a Muslim country that's hardly a stirling example of civilization, mass-conscripted large numbers of women for their border wars. They even served as officers. Eritrea still exists without major revisions to her borders, which is better than many people would make it sound. After all, the Ethiopians were fielding a Soviet-style army against people basically using somewhat improved WWI tactics who's country is essentially a glorified coastal plain.

The argument really does not exist. Women may have less capability than men physically on average, but it is not sufficient to impair their fighting ability. Consider that the average height of a woman between the age of 20-45 in the USA today is 5'7.5".

The average height of a British soldier who shouldered the ten-pound Martini-Henry rifle, working the mechanism and firing as his shoulder was ground into pulp maintaining a 12 round per minute ROF from the 480 grain 45cal weapon, during the battles of the Zulu War, was about 5'6.5".

The redcoat would weigh around 150 pounds and be slightly malnourished usually, at least when recruited and sometimes after. The average American woman today in the 20-45 range would hover roughly around that number - At least when you discount those considered ineligible due to excessive weight.

(The army's standards for female weight, incidently, are so excessive that over seventy percent of women in the army, and nearly one hundred percent in the Marine Corps, fall within civilian standards of having an eating disorder. One thinks that the bizzare idea of starving one's soldiers may be part of the reason to blame for the low standards women must meet in training. After all - if you're malnourished you can't fully perform to the best of your abilities.

Here's a blog that has a repost of the article on the subject:

www://www.scienceblog.com/community/article454.html

- One thinks that the army would be wise to allow female soldiers to eat at least within the civilian guidelines, which many scientists consider as under appropriate weight levels themselves, and thus give them the energy for the exercise to put that food to appropriate use, and likewise for the appropriate drill and training, and of course performance on the battlefield.

I assume they have some reason for starvation level weight requirements for female soldiers - Though I rather think it is one that needs to be reevaluated - but it goes a long way in explaining the lack of performance in terms of standards. How can you set high standards for people who have to starve themselves of energy to meet the weight goals required to stay in the service?)

And, as you can see, the average American woman in the US military today would also be malnourished; but slightly taller, and with a broadly equal body weight on average, to those men who stood in line at Rorke's Drift, to illustrate the example I've chosen; good mid-Industrial and all that.

British kit then would be a sixty pound pack in addition to that Martini-Henry. And remember, those are just the average guys. There'd be a fair number of men who'd never hit 5'2" back then.

So, why exactly can't women fight in the modern world on the front line, possessing broadly similiar physical attributes to a late 19th century British infantryman? (And, if the US military at least thinks, properly fed no less!)

The women in the Eritrean Army certainly proved themselves capable; and I would like to know where the warfare that we engage in is more demanding than either comparison, to that of when men themselves, due to matters of nutrition, could be compared to the average modern woman. Or, for that matter, to a country where that advantage in advanced strength is hardly available due to malnutrition, and still the Eritreans had success in both border wars in the utilization of the female populace.

[Tsyroc]

I can't speak for the Army and the Marines but the Navy was always more concerned with a person's body fat percentage and whether that person could pass the PRT than how much they weighed. Certainly the charts that they use for the body fat percentage are skewed towards the "norm" but it is possible to get a medical waver if you just don't fit in chart well. I always thought the Navy's standards were rather lenient for both men an women with the physical requirements for women being a little ridiculous away from the lowest age group.

[tharkûn]

As for women in the front lines? Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with it, as I've said before and will maintain, nor any reason against it.
So how do you handle sex on the front? Historically the only effective way to deal with sex on the battlefront has been to have very harsh penalties, and rape was not a recourse. I beleive Eretrea operates under sharia, which is a DEATH PENALTY for women having sex.

Similarly what do you do about males who take unacceptable risks to protect their female comrades?

The average height of a British soldier who shouldered the ten-pound Martini-Henry rifle, working the mechanism and firing as his shoulder was ground into pulp maintaining a 12 round per minute ROF from the 480 grain 45cal weapon, during the battles of the Zulu War, was about 5'6.5".
Yes and in those days they also marched people literally to death. 5,000 men died marching through Iberia. Further note the British army was made from the dregs of British society, they took what they could get, let the weak die, and moved on.

So, why exactly can't women fight in the modern world on the front line, possessing broadly similiar physical attributes to a late 19th century British infantryman? (And, if the US military at least thinks, properly fed no less!)
Because modern militaries view people dropping over dead on march as a bad thing, the Imperial Brits didn't give a damn. I don't think you realize how the Brits weaned out the undesirables, they didn't ban them from service, they just let them die.

Or, for that matter, to a country where that advantage in advanced strength is hardly available due to malnutrition, and still the Eritreans had success in both border wars in the utilization of the female populace.
Why does everyone always judge military fortitude by, they beat the enemy so it must work? The fact of the matter is most of the fighting in Eritrea was bloody and out of sync with modern arms. Modern wars are not fought in trenches, they are not fought on march (yes I know soldiers do march still, but the majority of war is mechanized). But above all deaths are far rarer in modern war than they are in back water conflicts or in the old days.

A few things to remember here:
In Eritrea the combatant:support ratio is ludicriously high. There is nowhere better to place your less capable (physically) soldiers. In modern forces an EXTREME minority of soldiers go into frontline infantry. Your personel are better spent using less capable (physically) soldiers in positions less demanding of physical strength, thus freeing up capable soldiers for the front.

In Eritrea woman had children while fighting, do you want pregnant women in combat?

Look over the casualties sustained by the Eritreans, look over just how costly their tactics were. This is NOT a modle for any professional army.


It comes down to this, what benifit is there to putting women in the infantry?

[The Dark]

A few things to remember here:
In Eritrea the combatant:support ratio is ludicriously high.

Arguably, the support:combatant ratio in the American army is ludicrously high.

There is nowhere better to place your less capable (physically) soldiers. In modern forces an EXTREME minority of soldiers go into frontline infantry. Your personel are better spent using less capable (physically) soldiers in positions less demanding of physical strength, thus freeing up capable soldiers for the front.

True, less physically capable soldiers should be placed in less physically demanding jobs. However, do you feel that women with the necessary physical capabilities should be allowed as tank crews or fighter pilots (or infantry to go for what seems to be the least popular idea)?

Look over the casualties sustained by the Eritreans, look over just how costly their tactics were. This is NOT a modle for any professional army.

I'll agree with the casulaties part. I seem to remember (I was only 7 at the time) a big brouha over the casualties in the Gulf War, which amounted to an astounding 0.05% of soldiers. Unfortunately, we have gone from being inured against the casualties of war to being horrified by the thought of a single life. Both extremes are socially unhealthy, since the one is uncaring of its defenders, and the other is unable to sustain a viable defense in times of tribulations.

[tharkûn]

Arguably, the support:combatant ratio in the American army is ludicrously high.
All of the premier militaries the world over are putting more into support and less into combatants.

However, do you feel that women with the necessary physical capabilities should be allowed as tank crews or fighter pilots (or infantry to go for what seems to be the least popular idea)?
Fighter pilots - I wish them the best of luck. These are rear deployed, minimal physical demands, and frankly is fairly dehumanized combat. You don't have the problem of sex on the front, discipline, or physical strength issues.

Tank crews - I could possibly see the upper echelon of women making it. First of tank crews DO need physical strength. From loading the damn thing to fixing the treads ... you want people able to quickly move heavy, heavy things. These are forward deployed troops so you do start to see some of the problems with sex on the battlefeild (i.e. pregnancy, the SEVERE problems it can bring to unit morale, etc.). I have zilch for problem with deploying all female units if they can meet the physical requirements to do EVERYTHING required of your average tanker, if this means they get light tanks instead of MBTs ... fine by me.

Infantry - infantry is physically demanding. In previous ages (i.e. Emperial Britain) the weak simply died. Now that is not a realistic option. Couple this with the extreme problems with sex and disciplines ... it is a headache worth avoiding. Again I'm more in favor of all female units, these can be given duties which are less physically demanding (i.e. gaurd duty in the rear) and their load can be cut, at the expense of the units capabilities.

I'll agree with the casulaties part. I seem to remember (I was only 7 at the time) a big brouha over the casualties in the Gulf War, which amounted to an astounding 0.05% of soldiers. Unfortunately, we have gone from being inured against the casualties of war to being horrified by the thought of a single life. Both extremes are socially unhealthy, since the one is uncaring of its defenders, and the other is unable to sustain a viable defense in times of tribulations.
War has reached the point where more soldiers are expected to die in car accidents than will die on the feild. Most military types can handle casualties. Yes they don't like them, but there is an extremely long tradition of people dying in the military. The problem comes when you have politicians without clear objectives, and clear acceptable losses for those objectives.

It is becoming increasingly common in the world. For instance the IDF deployed in Lebannon, they did a very good job of denying the area to terrorists to use as a staging area to attack Israel. However no politician ever had an endgame (except for the expand, expand, expand morons) nor did anyone say holding Lebannon is worth X number of lives.\


The military's first goal is to acheive its objectives. Its second is to do so with minimal loss of life. Everything else is far, far less important. Which dictates my position on women in combat. What is the benifit?

[EmperorMing]

"What is the benefit?"

From the discussion I had with a fellow veteran who *is* in favor of women in frontline combat units: More personnel to fill a slot which might not be filled in time.

Yes it has already been mentioned historically that women can fight and have a good/very good success rate. And this may have been proven so for modern times when the IDF went co-ed for the infantry in some test run. (will have to dig up the details).

However JEGS has hit a few things on the head which I have seen: The conduct of males and females when they are around each other in *our* military. I wouldn't trust them together in a frontline unit. Heck, I didn't trust any female when I was in because of some of the shit I saw going on at the time 5 years ago...And I seriously doubt anything has changed.

Even if they can function in a frontline unit.

[Captain Kruger]

…far fewer women want to serve in combat (especially infantry)…

Yeah, they love prattling on about equal rights, but they're sure happy to leave us men to be the ones to bleed to death on a foreign battlefield while they're off getting their nails done and shopping for shoes.

You're an asshole, y'know that? So women tend to be less bloodlusty and more pacifist - so we don't deserve equal rights? Fuck you.

"Less bloodlusty and more pacifist." Dear Christ, you have absolutely no idea what the hell I was talking about, do you? I'm talking about Selective Service, i.e. the draft, conscription, or whatever the hell you call it in your part of the world. When I reached my 18th birthday, I was required by law to register for Selective Service so that if we had another big-ass war, they could yank me out of civilian life, train me to kill, and send me off to possibly get dead or horribly maimed for the Stars and Stripes. Does this have jack shit to do with whether or not I'm bloodlusty or pacifistic? No, it has to do with the fact that I was born with a penis. Breasts entitle you to a stay-off-the-battlefield-for-free card. American women now get to enjoy all the same freedoms men do WITHOUT BEING EXPECTED TO FIGHT FOR THEM.

It's not about being a warmonger. It's about the rights you have because you're lucky enough to live in the UK instead of the Third World. Don't you appreciate the fact that you don't risk being beaten to death when you go outside just because you're not wearing a head-to-toe veil? You don't have to live under such a bootheel because of the millions of British men who've bled their guts out to make sure such barbarity doesn't exist on your island. Judging by your knee-jerk comment above, I really doubt you even appreciate that.

A few words of advice to you, innerbrat. First, learn to read and understand things, then maybe you won't spout your mouth off without understanding what the hell someone's words mean. Second, did you bother to notice the part off to the left where it says where I'm from? Have you ever been to the US? Have you been even remotely aware of the imbalance between men and women's rights and responsibilities in our country, and how the feminist movement is doing everything they can to reduce men to second-class citizens? If the answer is no and no, respectively, then you're cordially invited to shut the fuck up, because you know absolutely fuck-all of what you're talking about.

Next time, connect your brain to your mouth before you call someone an asshole.

[Shadow Walker]

Let the women into combat. Most arguments I've heard for not letting women into combat units are deeply sexist. One was they didn't want those who nurture the children to be killing. Women do fine in police forces, so let them serve in combat units.

[Raptor 597]

Here is a unique regiment for the army to consider. Get a whole load of annoying bitches like Britney Spears and Aguilera. parachute them behind enemy lines and ask them to "entertain" the enemy with the "music". Send a message to the enemy saying that if they surrender the pain will end.

No, offense but thats they ICBMs and assault rifles.