Actually, you know what? Having read some of the venom in this thread, I want people (and not just Tom) to read about Capt. Goddard - and the two other Canadian combat deaths in Afghanistan - and tell me how these cases prove their points. Tell me how the Canadian Forces been horribly weakened by the fact that there are no restrictions - and have not been for a very long time - as to what job women may (n.b. may) do. Tell me how the three women who have come back in caskets resulted in the anti-war segments of society successfully profaning their memory. Because, frankly, if you're all as right about this as you think you are, and your opinions as valid as you judge them to be, it really shouldn't be hard to find a few case reports and use them to test your hypotheses and show just how right you all are.
Well, there's this rabble-rousing dickhead, for example: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...male-soldier-killed-in-Afghanistan-named.html You could say that people of that ilk will use any soldier's death as a platform to lobby for their own agendas, and I'll agree with you. But how much more poignant are those arguments in this context?
I've fought alongside a woman on the battlefield, and would do so again. This argument reminds me of another that I read in Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything: I have never seen a black swan. Therefore, there are no black swans. Now, in this context, I have seen a black swan. Therefore, there exists at least one black swan, and that one should be allowed to serve, despite the insecurities or incapability [to keep their dick in their pants] of certain men. Because that is one of the main argument of that essay, which in the end, does not come up with any concrete facts to back it up, besides the vague and, honestly, ridiculous claim that women need to be Olympians to meet the physical standards that men do. To address the second main point, the author lists: Who are these straight males who cannot train a woman without trying to fuck them, and why are they still in your military? If two people, from different units, who are separated horizontally in the chain of command, fuck, why is that a problem? Not to obscure the point, but is there not a historically demonstrated tendency for men to charge to the rescue of their comrades in risk, regardless of sex? This can be avoided through discipline. The last point has me stumped. An active combat role unit is not something a mother unable to leave her children would work in. Surely? Then there are some other points raised: There is a noticeable difference in problem solving and rationalizing between women and men I've noticed. My suggestion would be to embrace it, and seek to use it in order to shed new light on your decisions or leadership. Again, find a new way to motivate young men, and preferably, women too. Not even going to bother with this one. I don't even know what the author is referring to here. Kind of sums up the essay for me. "Women are women and so they can't do it." Now this is turning out to be a longer post than I intended, but one last thing. I recognize the anecdote you told in your previous post. I've been there, and had to work with women who showed the same (lack of) quality as the ones in your experience. There are many women who I am working with now, in a "peacetime" unit under training that are the same. What can I say, they sound fucking awful. But why do you keep them? I know it may not be your call, but if they aren't up to scratch, then fuck em. Just like if it was a group of guys who acted in the same way. Which leads to what I think is the most sticking point against having women in combat roles. It may be well and good to let in the few that can hack it, but is that really what will happen? Or will it be the PC, liberal shitstorm that many expect, and units will be having to fill quotas with substandard soldiers?
Let's go back to what you said: I agree that cunt demagogues do their best to speak poorly of dead soldiers and I don't have the time of day for them (and believe me, I normally have a lot of time for a lot of people). However, you said that the cunt demagogue would successfully pushed an anti-war agenda by using the shock value of a dead woman's corpse. Let's go through this box by box. Cunt demagogue? Sure, but that's a mere tautology for "member of the House of Commons". Successfully push an anti-war agenda? No, Britain didn't withdraw from Afghanistan after the incident. Use the shock value of a dead woman's corpse? He didn't even use sexual identifiers in his statement in the House of Commons. He called them "two British soldiers". Ultimately, not one of the things you said on this particular point was true, and I willingly offered up three examples for you to prove your point with and you chose an example of your own. If you can't find better examples, you're going to have to yield your point.
[/quote] Sorry, I should have made myself more clear. I'm not saying that women dying will mean that those who have a personal or scummy anti-war agenda (nothing wrong with an anti-war agenda per se, God forbid) will be able to ride the wave of popular opinion into bringing about an early withdrawal. I'm saying it gives that type of person - the type of person who basically creams themselves when a drone kills a civilian because it lets them run around screaming "FASCIST MURDERING PIGS - far too powerful ammunition. There's no denying that, these days, "dead female soldier" is a more powerful headline than "dead soldier", if nothing else because, sadly, we've grown accustomed to reading about dead soldiers. So why give this type of person, who's morally equivalent to the Facehuggers from Alien, any more dry wood with which to stoke their fire? Bad enough we have to hear stuff like this: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/09/2011916112412992221.html We don't need more of this: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10829552 Point is, I feel that putting women in frontline combat roles will increase their casualty rate and thus proportionately increase the power over the uninformed or easily swayed of a certain class of politician. I'm going to leave it at that - agree or disagree - because a combination of tonsillitis and alcohol is rendering me increasingly incoherent and short-tempered, and the websites I had to trawl through to find you examples of what I mean are making my blood boil.
You're absolutely right that "dead female soldier" makes a more powerful headline than "dead soldier". If you read that wiki link, Capt. Goddard has had numerous things named in her honour and memory that your average male soldier never would have; various books detailing Canada's experience in Afghanistan will go into her in detail precisely because she was a woman, while many men will not receive such detail, if they are mentioned at all. But, she was also Canada's first female combat death, and her husband was the first widower to receive the Memorial Cross. So much of the response to her death were acts specifically honouring her sacrifice, and it's a shame that not everyone who dies in war can receive such consideration. From my memory, when the fighting in Afghanistan was the worst for us and Canadians dying there was a routine item in the news, every time there was a death, there was a response from the anti-war segments. Some people would say disgusting things about soldiers on a personal level; some of them would say disgusting things about the war and say they did not want to have any more soldiers die. The pitch and tone became higher as certain "milestones" were passed, such as the 100th dead, or the 150th dead. But what was consistent was that every time there was a headline of a dead soldier, the usual characters would be relied upon to denounce the war, just as when there was a story about a certain village getting bombed or civilians being shot by the coalition. And just as when the attention of the news media, general public, and military itself was focused whenever it was a woman who was killed, so went the attention of the anti-war types. Either Canadian society is fundamentally and irredeemably different from every other place on Earth, or the fear of dead female soldiers being held up as particularly enticing bait for the slimy aspects of society who are tasteless enough to use someone's death for the advancement of their own agenda is being overblown.
Pardon me for pulling a KIMaster. I'm going to split up your post and respond to each point. I apologize if this is some sort of faux pas (Maybe it was just his attitude that made this kind of rebuttal so douchey). I have no problem with women being in jobs like Motor T, where they go on convoys and often get into firefights. The difference is units that specifically go on the offensive. Convoys are relatively passive; their purpose is to go from Point A to Point B, and if they get into combat, that's the way it goes. An offensive operation is supposed to seek, close with, and destroy the enemy. I think that women can do absolutely fine in the former, but would be a liability in the latter. Could you clarify what the combat situation was? If you have evidence (even anecdotal) of the latter, that'd be great. The closest I can think of a female offensive unit would be the FET teams, and those were always attached to grunt units (Who hated them, from what I've been told by my infantry friends). I was in Pensacola for thirteen months. During that time, nine instructors were court-martialed for banging the students. It's generally overlooked; it's common knowledge that the instructors fuck the students with impunity. The only time that they really clamp down on it is when they threaten the women (Fuck me, or I'll make sure you stand duty every weekend) or trade sexual favors for billets and better proficiency and conduct marks. This situation happens so often that every Marine I know looks at this comic strip and goes "Yep, that's the truth all right." Honestly, I don't know. I'm really, really annoyed with this, because it's fucked up. We have a guy in our shop who is garbage. He can't do a single pull-up, runs a 25:00 three-mile, and can't do a hundred sit-ups. He falls out of every run, is fat as fuck, and is a dumb lying piece of shit. I've tried to motivate, teach, and mentor him, and his response is to lie and get butthurt because I expect him to do his job. So now I just punish him. And that's okay, even though he now hates his life and is probably going to end up breaking down and pulling a Private Pyle or something. After all, he's an example. I can't redeem him, but his suffering sends a definite message to the rest of the junior Marines. Standards are in place, and they will be enforced with pain, humiliation, and hard labor. Do that to a woman? Nope. You'll get an EO complaint on your ass so fast that it'll make your head spin. Now, I don't give two shits, because I'm getting the fuck out of the military as soon as I possibly can. I've screamed at a pregnant woman and called her a worthless shitstain; they're Marines just like everyone else, and I treat them the same. But anyone who actually cares about their career treads lightly around women because it's a career-ender to be accused of sexism. And yes, I got slammed for being a meaniehead. So women skate. They don't get yelled at, they aren't held to the standards that men are, and they aren't held accountable for their mistakes. If I fall out on a run, I get called a worthless bitch. If a woman falls out, that's just par for the course. Apply that to everything, and you get the reason why women tend to be below average. (Note: I find it hilarious that female SNCOs are insanely sexist. They HATE female Marines, because they've had to fight for respect every single step of the way and beat the stereotype of the fat, useless wook. And they can't be accused of sexism. God bless female gunnery sergeants) Here's what I predict will happen. 1. Units will open up combat roles to women. They'll say, "You'd better be able to hump the mortar plate, otherwise you have no place here." 2. Congress and the Rosie The Riveter feminist lobbyists will then go "Why are women failing in such high numbers?! The standards are sexist!" 3. They will drop the standards. Anyone who says that this will lead to a decline in troop quality will be branded as sexist and forced out. 4. Women will be sent to combat and will be slaughtered by the first enemy that doesn't suck. 5. Generals will be called in front of Congress and raked over the coals because women are dying in disproportionate numbers. Anyone want to place bets?
I've been in the military for almost 18 years now, here's my take on it: I'm all for the idea of women in combat should they choose to persue it. I have known many female soldiers over the years who are every bit as physically cabable as their male counterparts. As long as there is ONE standard I don't see this being an issue. That being said, the military already has a double standard in it's approach to physical training. Women's tests are far easier than men's and the failure rate is about the same. Given what I've seen and what I know about military equal oppertunity and standards, I don't think that this will work as intended. The standards will either be lowered for just the women or simply lowered across the board. I do agree that the US military is a reflection of our society and I believe it should change with the times to reflect our changing culture but there is no room for gender-bias or double standards in combat.
The only point of this exercise, respect, will not be realized by placing women in combat. In fact, women will lose a great deal of respect. Yes, there may now be the occasional female war hero, but within the military females will now be demonized even more. If you aren't invited to the party with the cool kids, getting your parents to call and force you invitation is not the best way to make friends.
EDIT: Noted about post splitting, apologies if it did make me sound like a massive douche. Although, I guess the content wasn't presented in the most diplomatic way in my last post either. We did have some FET teams as well, and back in the early years in Afghanistan the Swedish contingent tried using an all female Mil Observation Team called MOT Juliette. I bet you cringed when you read that name as I did the first time, and it was just as much a PC/PR statement I think, as it was a legitimate attempt to engage more females in our AOR. That said, they did still do the same operations that the others did, even though it seemed that they had a lot of time to take cool pictures in various places of them talking to kids. There was even made a documentary about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsW530VQ8VE, which is so cringeworthy at times it is painful to watch. I know of at least three women who were deployed at the same time as I was that were in rifle units, doing offensive operations, and were exposed to the same things everyone else was. As for the specific situation it was the latter. I'll be honest, when I read the essay you posted I thought the author was full of shit, and his reasoning ridiculous, but that was mainly because I didn't recognise the vast majority of what he was talking about. They way you describe things, I can see his point. Don't really know what to say other than that sounds fucking dreadful. I'm not saying that the Swedish military is filled with hardcore warrior women who shit on all the weak men, we have plenty of the type of women you are talking about in POG MOS. They tend to fall away quick enough in the other combat units though. I don't think there are any women at all in our Para / Coast ranger units for example, though I don't have any evidence to support that. I know a few women who are like the SNCOs you described. They hate being treated differently, and despise the kind of soldier you are talking about, which can be hilarious at times. Agree with bolded, I'm curious, do you think that there is another way for them to earn respect, and they should go that way instead, or do you think that there is no way and that the concept should be dropped entirely?
Agree with the possible exception of #5. As I mentioned in my post earlier in this thread, the females who will die horrific deaths as a direct result of this are from flyover country. The people pushing this don't give a fucking shit whether they live or die (hell, it's one less likely Republican voter!), they want to pat one another on the back for dealing a blow to sexist discrimination in the military. Another thing no one is mentioning is the second- and third-order effects on the non-combat MOS'. A female who could have been an excellent soldier in a POG MOS (including mine, the majority of women in my MOS are worthless but the ones who are good are very, very good and they do have certain natural advantages) will now get to be a shitbag infantrywoman. Awesome.
I don't know, I'd think if you knew half as much as you think you do about the subject, you'd look at other militaries around the world that don't de jure restrict women from combat roles and you'd find news stories showing exactly what you think will happen has happened. You know; women dying in disproportionate numbers, WOG trades suffering from lack of women, etc. You've got wikipedia and google at your fingertips, get to it.
Here's what I would do if I were a general who was forced to put women in the infantry. I'd do the first out of general principle, but they're optional right now. 1. Make all physical training standards equal. Right now, the Marine Corps physical fitness test is biased in favor of women. For the men, to get the perfect score of 300 points, they need to do 20 pull-ups, 100 sit-ups in two minutes, and an 18:00 three-mile run. For the women, to get a maximum score, they need to do a 70-second flexed-arm hang, (And it's the amount of time that it takes to go from having your chin above the bar to having your elbows fully locked out, which is even more ridiculous) 100 sit-ups in two minutes, and a 21:00 three-mile run. Right now, I can easily get a 300 on the women's PFT. Most men can get at least a 285, as long as they don't completely suck at running. Right now I'm running just under 21:00, so that gets me a 282 on the man's PFT. This bias means that women who are in worse shape than me in every way have an advantage over me in getting promoted. The result is resentment. So, if I were a general, I'd make it equal. Completely equal. You want to play with the boys and get meritoriously promoted? Hope you can do 20 pull-ups. Incidentally, they're actually making women do pull-ups for the first time in 2014. They have to do eight for a perfect score. It's estimated that this will drop women's scores by 40-50 points. 2. Enforce these standards at boot camp instead of out in the Fleet. Right now, women's boot camp is hilariously easy compared to the guys. While female drill instructors are far nastier people, it's not nearly as physically difficult. It's actually pretty sad; you look at the female O-course, it's smaller than the men's. In fact, you can see the bias in the O-course right there - did you notice the little boxes on the side? There's one group of people who use those boxes, and they don't have Y chromosomes. This ends up leading to a lot of resentment at combat training, where the women suddenly hit the male O-course and fail miserably. Oops. Also, the female humps are far easier in boot camp, as they're slower. So, again, they get to combat training and get shit out the back of the platoon because the men are all used to the boot camp Sprint-Walk-Sprint-Walk fuck-fuck games and the women are just trying to get from Point A to Point B. So, honestly, I believe that female boot camp should be just as hard as the male boot camp. If that leads to a 60% attrition rate, that's the way it goes. Probably the saddest moment was at boot camp graduation, where we did a moto-run in front of the parents. It was about four miles, and it was very, very easy. And there were women falling out on it. Lots of them. Yep, falling out in front of civilians. 3. During combat training, have a little competition. I'd make a heptathlon out of the following events: Three-mile run Pull-ups Ten-mile individual effort hike with a fifty-pound load Obstacle course (Twice through, no rest periods) Half-mile sprint Ammo can lifts Movement Under Fire Score them just like a heptathlon, with more points for doing better in each event. For the males, this would just be a game for meritorious mast / promotion. For the females, while also being a game for meritorious mast and promotion, the top 10% would be offered the opportunity to go to Infantry school after combat training. We'd then watch said women and note the failure rate. If it's too high, then next time offer the opportunity to the top 5%. If even THAT is too high, then offer it to the top three just for politics. They would truly be the cream of the crop. This way, you give women the (very small) chance of being in the infantry, and you don't get stuck with wasting massive amounts of money on people who are doomed to fail. But this is all mental masturbation; the PC police would be very, very mad about an idea like this, because you're doing an extra screening process for the women that weeds out the vast majority of candidates before they can even apply. That's sexist.
Even if it's not de jure, it's de facto. Canada has tried to make it possible for women to go into the infantry, but they don't relax standards. Right now, as a result, there are very few women in combat jobs. And they mostly serve on the FOBs instead of outside the wire. Some of that is sexism. But I see an implicit statement by the stories I've read on the subject. In an infantry unit, this treatment is what you give to the people who aren't physically able to cut it. And there definitely are men who are 03s but simply aren't physically able to do the job. They end up getting sent to Headquarters, Training, etc. And that's not a bad thing, although their comrades in arms might call them shitbag pussies. They're not able to do infantry stuff, but they're of great value when doing pog stuff. The military is just using their human capital in the best possible way. But it raises the point - if most women in the Canadian infantry are stuck on the FOB in intel and logistics positions, then why are we putting them in the infantry to begin with? That being said, these women obviously aren't shitbags, since the worst people in the unit generally get saddled with constant guard duty and burning the shitter barrels with diesel fuel.
Ok, young devildog, done. Been there done that, about 20 years ago. TBS ran male PFTs on everyone. None of the women in our company failed, and a couple maxed it. And really, any able bodied 20 something, male or female, can max the PFT; it's not that difficult in the whole scheme of things, it just takes good training and willpower. There's a lot of debate based on personal anecdotes here, and that's fine, it's just not that persuasive. I'd be more swayed by either, a) quantitative stuff, or b) anecdotal stuff from servicemembers in combat MOSs who have served in combat. The majority of opinions from folks that I know that do fit b) is that if a woman can pass the physical requirements of an MOS, that she be allowed to serve in that MOS. Some of these folks are highly decorated, nearly career long Marines and sailors. And let's not forget about the size of the fight in the dog. I served with several poster-perfect, physical specimens of young male lieutenants that also made shitty Marines. No, I didn't see them in combat, but I saw them in field training, and I saw them either lose their head in a little bit of chaos, or fail to be able to look beyond their own concerns and self-absorption, or just plain not function because they didn't like the "yuck" of being in the field (still don't understand that one). I think if the services can enforce high standards in in-take (selection, bootcamp, MOS school, etc), this integration will enhance the readiness of our fighting forces. Because that's what it's all about.
The only thing I ever saw truly respected was if you were good at your job. It didn't matter what job as long as you did it well, took care of yourself, and looked out for those around you. Map the system so that those who get the above right are fast tracked and emulated and the rest should fix itself. Note: gender, religion, sexual orientation, PT score, marital status, race, age or political leanings aren't categories in the above. But that is a fight between individual units, Tradoc, and Perscom. Oh, and Congress. Do I think this will pan out well? I expect over the next few years I'm going to hear some interesting stories from folks just getting out.
This is exactly my fucking point. I also wanted to say: This is one of the dumbest things I've read in a long time. Am I the only one who read this and thought that it wasn't too long ago that it was insisted upon that black men were not, in fact, men? And at the time that people thought that blacks weren't fully human, it was said that gays should be locked up in mental institutions? You need to do a hell of a lot better than whitewash history to make your point here.
There are a lot of studies out there on the physical burden put on women by infantry duty, mostly done by the Brits. To whit, women lack the bone density and lower body musculature to be able to handle an infantry-sized combat load for long periods of time. If I recall correctly, the Brits observed an injury rate six or seven times higher among women asked to perform those tasks. That isn't to say there aren't stellar women out there who would make great infantry soldiers, which leads me to my last point... Women will never be respected in a combat situation until their presence stops being a logistical and administrative burden. Women just need more stuff than men to get by in austere conditions, plain and simple. Even if women agreed to share toilets, showers, and everything else (and they do on many VSPs right now in Afghanistan), a lot of extra effort must be made that isn't made for a single sex unit. If women wanted to really prove their battle mettle, they would have pushed for separate, all-female infantry units that could demonstrate their prowess on the battlefield without ANY help from men. That's not what they want, though. Women aren't behind on the power broker curve because they don't have the ability to compete with men. They are behind because they have the wrong dream. Great businessmen don't get successful by copying their competitors, they INNOVATE new fields in which they can succeed first. This game of perpetual catch-up they are trying to play is unwinnable. An all-female infantry unit could be innovative. They could try to do things their own way and be successful at it. They could show the military status quo that a different way of doing things could be better on their own terms. Think about the most respected women in history, Curie, Earhart, Joan of Arc, etc. They were ALL innovators.
It would be awesome. Or a complete catastrophe. Point is: women would have put themselves out there on their own, and regardless of success or failure, would be respected for trying.