Panetta To Allow Women in Combat

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Except for those who join because they can't do anything else; the Army hasn't had a manpower shortage for a single day since the recession started. Not everyone who volunteers to shoot foreign people is a vicious scumbag (damn, this sentence is satire gold). It has been such because the modern world offered more, better, safer and less annoying venues before a few financial directors fucked it up.

[amigocabal]

He means that most gay servicemen are no different then the average soldier, aside from where they like to cum.

This is true.

One of the arguments against letting gays serve in the military openly is that they would demand and receive special treatment.

First of all, people who join the military are less likely to demand special treatment than the general population.

Second of all, I know enough that if I joined the military and demanded special treatment, the only special treatment I would get is KP for seven nights a week.

Third of all, the only way gays would get special treatment is by executive order to the Pentagon, which would be a bone headed move.

[Spoonist]

Exactly. You arent going to get certain types of people in the military, except for rare cases, regardless of sexual orientation.
Its kind of one of those jobs that selects for a certain mindset that is unpalatable to certain people. Some of which is anathema to many. People who strongly desire to be Social Workers or be artist arent usually the type that would like to rearrange your face because it speaks the wrong language.
Artist and soldiers have generally been antithesis to each other, especially in volunteer forces.

I'd say that stereotyping like this is usually flawed.
In this specific case it is utterly useless and easily disproven when we look at history, how we learn skillsets, and last but not least - geneaology.

Take history first:
Most of the persian empires rulers were artists and poets. Most of the elite-warrior class in feudal Japan, parts of China, and whole swatches of europe had artistic training. In europe that continued into the Victorian era where lots of officers painted or whatnot in their spare time.
Almost everywhere you look in the middle ages - wherever you'd have large courts etc you'd have the elite being both warriors and artists.
And almost every "tribe" or historical culture which is associated with warfare is also associated with art. Sassanids, Persians, european knights, Samurai, etc etc Its prevalent in the european continent, in the Indian continent, in the Asian continent etc etc etc.
This is why lots of fameous artists, poets etc throughout history also were involved directly or indirectly in warfare.
We can even invoke rule 34 and go straight to the furher.

This is because there is no such thing as what you are talking about. Warfare and artistry are skillsets. Not attitudes. Attitudes only comes into play when we look at cultures. What you are thinking about is modern pop-cultural traits/prejudice limited in time and space. Without that you'd not see the effect you are talking about.

And here is the kicker, ever heard of the warrior gene(s)? Google it. When we started mapping the human genome and DNA etc there was some evidence that certain alleles where more common in violent criminals. That was flawed. What it turned out to be is that there are some alleles which make you more "sensitive" and others which make you less "empathic".
Turns out they are only conditional triggers, ie, just because you have them doesn't make you more of a warrior, it only implies that if you have them and are subjected to specific environments you will be more likely to respond correspondingly. So with one upbringing and teenage stimulus you'd get the "reclusive artist" but with a different one you'd get the "living for the corps" type, as well as the "absentminded professor" etc etc.
Almost everywhere where you see someone (usually males) who gives up everything else and specifically social relationships, to dedicate their life to something then the statistics will show that they are likely to have the combination. But if that cultural concept that they are striving to become includes both artistry and warfare then they will become good at both.
Why this took a while to figure out is because of people like you thinking that cultural traits should say something about how people should behave. But that is as flawed as other stereotypes like "french are cowards" or "females can't perform in the military" etc

Now I hear your brain already churning to come up with silly excuses. Don't bother.
No the "effeminate gay fashionistas" of modern pop-culture are not less likely to be good with weapons or at warfare. That is up to their ordinary education. And no they are not less violent. That is proven by statistics on domestic abuse. What happens is that their environment and their own clique's culture have the prejudice that they shouldn't be good with those things. Then when tested they will not perform as well due to their conditioning, but remove them from the conditioning environment and they will perform better. (Part of why boot camps are so effective on people in general, even outside the military).
There was a great study on culture and math which showed that in anglo-saxon cultures teenage girls would perform worse on math if they thought they were attractive and there were boys present. Remove the boys or select for those who didn't think they were attractive and they would perform normally. The same thing was then done in the middle east, where that effect couldn't be seen at all instead it was boys in general who performed worse when girls were present. (and no - there were controls for mixed schools and muslim burkas etc)

[Ziggy Stardust]

We can even invoke rule 34 and go straight to the furher.

Um ... "rule 34" does not mean what you seem to think it means ...

[Dominarch's Hope]

Spoonist...no just no. Please fix your method of paragraphs and kindly narrow down what in the fuck you are getting at in your response.


And ZS is right.

[Metahive]

Spoonist...no just no. Please fix your method of paragraphs and kindly narrow down what in the fuck you are getting at in your response.


And ZS is right.

I guess getting an in-depth reply overloaded your tiny 4kb brain, huh? I mean, it's obvious since you seem to be unable to grasp that military duty and artistic aspirations are not anathematical, but hey, if you have to work with that small amount of memory, you kinda' have to think in cheap stereotypes I guess. Also, you're one to talk about crappy formatting, looking at all the empty space you tend to fill your posts with, both literally and metaphorically.

[Dominarch's Hope]

In depth reply? "warrior gene".


Im sorry, but no, fuck off metahive.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Spoonist... no. There is enough of rule 34 and Hitler already, just say you "pulled a Godwin".

Dominarch, look, Spoonist is saying that your sensitivity and whatnot is in your genetics, but these genetics are influenced by how you were brought up. Then he goes on to say that artistry and warfare, or homosexuality and warfare, seem antithetical to you because this is the culture in which you belong. Other cultures thought that being a warrior poet, and a (active, not passive) homosexual to boot, was an ideal to strive to. This is what he's telling you once you remove all the fancy sciency words that make your brain hurt.

[K. A. Pital]

Spoonist's historical point about warriors also having art skills (sometimes waay more art skills than the average peasant) is perfectly valid and more than enough to obliterate DH's idiocy about "mindset".

[Metahive]

Trainwreck, stop overloading his cranial microcomputer with all those words! Do you want his CPU to overheat and melt all over again? What do you think all that snot running out of his nose continually really is? His mind is still blown from back when his mommy told him that things fall down and water is wet.

[Spoonist]

We can even invoke rule 34 and go straight to the furher.

Um ... "rule 34" does not mean what you seem to think it means ...

Spoonist... no. There is enough of rule 34 and Hitler already, just say you "pulled a Godwin".

Haha, a freudian memeslip. Well it was bound to happen eventually. Now I'll have to use brainbleach to get the disturbing images of short and nude austrians doing disney dwarves out of my head...

Spoonist...no just no. Please fix your method of paragraphs and kindly narrow down what in the fuck you are getting at in your response.

Which part didn't you understand?
The one where you are wrong based on history?
The one where you are wrong based on how we learn skillsets/education?
The one where you are wrong based on genes/hereditary traits?
Or the bit at the end on how you are wrong based on contemporary pop-culture trends not being rules of thumb for humanity?

And ZS is right.

He often is. How nice of you to acknowledge that you should listen more to him.

In depth reply? "warrior gene". Im sorry, but no, fuck off metahive.

Yes, the warrior gene. It was the rave in the early 2000's. It was even used in defences for criminal cases. Hence why I told you to google it. I think there are at least 4 published studies and some follow up things on scholar. There is even a wiki passage for it and some ted talk references if you prefer video.
If you can't even bother with that there is a youtube series with Henry Rollins, although that one bungles some of the science a bit which is to be expected with popular TV.
All of which is recommended reading/watching for everyone, it is quite interesting.

Dominarch, look, Spoonist is saying that your sensitivity and whatnot is in your genetics, but these genetics are influenced by how you were brought up. Then he goes on to say that artistry and warfare, or homosexuality and warfare, seem antithetical to you because this is the culture in which you belong. Other cultures thought that being a warrior poet, and a (active, not passive) homosexual to boot, was an ideal to strive to. This is what he's telling you once you remove all the fancy sciency words that make your brain hurt.

Spoonist's historical point about warriors also having art skills (sometimes waay more art skills than the average peasant) is perfectly valid and more than enough to obliterate DH's idiocy about "mindset".

There, here I thought it was the language barrier again, but it seems that most could read my ramblings. Can't really tell what was so difficult to parse though, did I scramble some grammar somewhere?
Maybe he just isn't a history buff so he wouldn't know the references?

[K. A. Pital]

Thing is, you don't need to be a history buff to understand such uber-advanced terminology as "feudal Japan", "parts of China" and "swathes of Europe". In fact, even a Forrest Gump would understand this.

[Spoonist]

Sure, but you wouldn't know what that signifies.
If one didn't know that Shodo(Kanji?) was a big part of Bushido tradition then one wouldn't grasp why the samurai would depending on era spend more time working on their artistry than on their fighting skills. So then one wouldn't understand how much "feudal Japan" would disprove one's pet stereotyping.

Given the attitude I don't think he is the type who goes : "how interesting, what does that signify, please tell me". So that would explain certain educational black wholes. Talking to normal people about history is usually a minefield of misconceptions and missing information. Usually because they found it boring in school.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Trainwreck, stop overloading his cranial microcomputer with all those words! Do you want his CPU to overheat and melt all over again? What do you think all that snot running out of his nose continually really is? His mind is still blown from back when his mommy told him that things fall down and water is wet.

But it's so funny to see him switch to dummy mode! Come on Trainwreck, think of three technical terms in a row... hmmm... asynchronal... CPU... malfunction! No... asunchronal CPU... optimization! There, this should be enough to make him reboot in Dummy Mode. Think we can make him stick an uninsulated fork in a socket? (Now, just please tell me you get where this comes from.)

[Ziggy Stardust]

Spoonist...no just no. Please fix your method of paragraphs and kindly narrow down what in the fuck you are getting at in your response.


And ZS is right.

Well, I *AM* right, though I'm not sure why you care, it's not like I was disagreeing with Spoonist, I was just teasing him.

In any case, as several posters have pointed out, there really is no reason that a "soldier/warrior" mindset and an artistic/poetic/creative one should be mutually exclusive. I can understand that it MAY seem non-intuitive, but in reality there is no conflict. In fact, depending on your perspective, there could even be an active correlation. After all, creativity and artistic inclinations tend to correlate rather well with social discontent and feelings of alienation; these same traits can easily manifest themselves in a desire to join the armed forces, the desire to "belong," etc.

So even once you get past the ability of humans to possess seemingly contradictory viewpoints, you can argue that there is nothing contradictory about this at all.

[Aaron MkII]

Yeah...there need not be any conflict between the two. I served with guys who made models, painted, drew, sang, carved (1 with a chainsaw) and a guy who made a bit on the side drawing tattoos for the troops in the barracks.

[Dominarch's Hope]

Um, lets disregard the pre-nuclear age and the conscription years. Because back then, it was either national survival or you simply werent given a choice.

Which means it different than today. Like a lot. Im going to have to think how to phrase this without.


Fuck it. I have said my piece and enough people concur on the relative points. I have little more to say in this thread.

[Spoonist]

Um, lets disregard the pre-nuclear age and the conscription years. Because back then, it was either national survival or you simply werent given a choice.

Which means it different than today. Like a lot. Im going to have to think how to phrase this without.


Fuck it. I have said my piece and enough people concur on the relative points. I have little more to say in this thread.

So you want modern only examples on why you are wrong because history proved you wrong?
Let's start with Aaron's post right above yours. To not go completely insane when doing active military service it is very common that you should have a good hobby to make your mind relax. Want to guess in which fields those hobbies tend to be?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Um, lets disregard the pre-nuclear age and the conscription years.

My post had nothing to do with the pre-nuclear age. In fact, my post was mostly referring to psychological research that has only been done in the past two decades. So... yeah.

[edaw1982]

What people were saying about standards, is there's a very vague 'standard' in the military.
Look at some of those portly Chiefs? Do you think they'd be aloud to put on the mass if they were mere Seamen? Of course not. But paygrade hath it's privileges.
Do you think the Colonel has to go through the same PT standards as Private Dick? Hell no. He can skim a little owing to his Colonelness.

[PeZook]

Well, most soldiers will never have to actually shoot at things, really. Who cares if the mechanics have beer guts? Are they good mechanics? If yes, they still help kill people just fine.