That sounds kind of……“closet like”.

-EOs

How about an option for service/roles being allocated purely based on ability?

… the fact is that most women are not up to the hardships of the job to the same degree that most men are.

I remember a lengthy discussion here on O-Nerd a while back, and someone (Will? romanizzo?) made the very good point that—given the presumption that combat effectiveness is the most important consideration in the debate—unless you could make the case that a 100% female combat unit would be just as effective as a 100% male unit, then the introduction of any women into combat roles unarguably reduces effectiveness and should be prohibited. I can’t improve on that point, so I’ll simply repeat it here and leave it at that.

Note: For the purposes of this point, “combat roles” are defined as the traditional ground combat arms: i.e., infantry, armor, artillery, combat engineers, and special operations. Please do not counter with examples that hinge on women in support roles, aviation, intelligence, etc.

For two recent examples of the “notable exceptions” I mentioned, Google “Leigh Ann Hester” or “PFC Monica Brown.” Even so, I would still argue that a unit made up entirely of SGT Hesters and PFC Browns would still be less effective that the average all-male combat unit.

Anyone have a good example? Anyone have a better example from the last 40 years in the U.S. ?

My mother is an expert in psychological warfare. Only 2% of the women I know can pic me up and cary my a hundred yards. But 60% of men could. If I’m wounded in battle, I’m hoping my partner could tutch down my ass to safety. And not in a dont ask dont tell way.

Some pro’s and con’s here.
Pros:
Women are as smart if not smarter then men and given the chance I would rather have some bastard die for their country that me. My dad was going to be forced to be drafted in the Korean war. He thought about his options and improved his skill set. Volunteering instead, he was able to get a better position behind lines that kept his ass out of that conflict.
Cons:
1. Women are not as strong as men.
If the conditions dictated, I would prefer having a man haul me out of a bad situation.
2. Given the circumstances of the confrontation, think Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”; I would prefer women back ready to repopulate the earth and looking after kids while we fight for just cause (our own sovereignty) or some bastard’s idea of our sovereignty.

So why should women serve in conflict?

I honestly don’t think women should engage in hand to hand combat on the level that men do. In an honest to goodness scenario where I have two of us and two of the enemy locked in a hand to hand combat I’m not going to rely on a woman over a man to perform well enough to win. Now, that being said, can a woman fly an airplane or sail a boat?! Or even work in other capacities that are not as physically strenuous OF COARSE, why not?!

Also, I’d be interested in seeing psychological studies on how woman adapt to battle versus men. For you Darwinists out there, there would have to be some provisions made in the evolutionary process for males to be able to sustain better in conflicts right?!

i’m a woman and had one child back in 1970. in the mid ‘70s, when i was at the U, i decided that my thesis would be about this topic and that i’d write that women should NOT be in combat. my prof, reviewing the topics of the thesi, pulled me over to the side after class and said to me, “don’t you know how unpopular your opinion is and how you will be criticized for having it?” and i said (having been exposed to women’s liberation rap groups in 1971, 1972 in hyde park-kenwood, where obama’s house is in chicago, the most ultra “liberal” community in the united states), “sure, i know that. but i don’t agree with current ideas of feminists. women were always, since caveman days, nurturers and the keepers of the hearth. women were wanted by men because men know that men do not possess the clean, honest heart that a woman has—they know that it’s a battle out there to slay the dragon and drag it back to the hearth… and so on…”

i just happened to see the poll about this issue today, 19 october 2009. i do not normally vote in polls, but i was so curious about what the men and women of today’s world in the united states think. i was SOOOO surprised to see that the top choice, “No. They should be at home looking after the children,” is in the lead.

and though i really HATE war and its consequences—your son or grandson (daughter/granddaughter) being brought back in a body bag or with missing limbs, or lost as a POW who may never, ever see us again, we who love him/her—it’s very interesting that even now, where a man can no longer count on making enough money so that his wife could stay home with the children (thanks to women’s lib and the dramatic increase of women in the workplace, which in turn, lowered men’s wages), men still don’t want women to fight in wars. and i guess that women don’t want to, either. because, obviously, the poll was answered by both men and women.

maybe women’s liberation was a big mistake.

i watch exhausted men and women board the train to go home carrying their laptops and doing more WORK on their journey. they do it in the morning too. it is a dog-eat-dog work climate because americans have ridiculous expectations. no matter what a manager says, our brains are doing too many things at one time (how fantastic our bodies are!) to “multi task.” yet you need your job, right? so you play along with this stupid expectation.

perhaps you saw, as did i, how the war in viet nam ended. massive protests against the war was what got us out of southeast asia, but what a terrible cost the GIs paid.

the only way you can change anything is to protest it. i recommend that we change the work place too and make it so that it does not take the TIME (that ever-precious commodity) to bond with, and to communicate with, our families away from us anymore. because, families are in trouble. and the kids are a mess. those kids will be the leaders of our country in not such a distant time in the future, but they certainly lack social skills that they are going to need to be effective leaders. think about that.

so what i recommend is this. do not fear losing one day’s pay at your job, and don’t fear that all of you will get fired. the more people that do this, the more the companies are going to realize that the workplace HAS TO change.

get together with the people who have been working in your department as long as you have. plan to strike your department on one day of the following month.

then get the word out to the other departments. get it so that the company is crippled by departments striking each one day a month. and get the message, by doing this, over to the wealthy CEOs and presidents of the company that you work for that you are “sick and tired, and you are not going to take it anymore!” (famous last words of howard beale in the movie, a gem, called "network).

we can change so many things about our environments, but it takes TIME, effort, and risk. but it also takes willpower. the willpower of all those that protested black people being segretated from the rest of american society is what made the civil rights laws change. and today we see the results unfolding, more and more.

so i recommend, in my old age, that you take your life into your hands and CHANGE it to how you want it be.

smiles!

Over the past few weeks, the discussion about this poll on the subject of women in combat has been hijacked TWICE, first by yet another (!) goddamn creation vs. evolution vs. god vs. atheism circle-jerk, and again by Occams feeding a whole pack of hungry anonymous and semi-anonymous trolls. Holy shit, is it too much to ask to keep discussions at least in the same universe as the original topic, AND to keep the whining, flame-baiting, and troll-feeding to a minimum?