Poll: Women In Combat? Yea or Nay?

Hagi

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thaluikhain said:
Various navies have had women on submarines for years, though there's a difference between SSBNs (nuclear poweres submarines armed with ballistic missiles, stay underwater for months on end), and conventional submarines that only stay submerged for a few days.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be on submarines at all, on the contrary.

What I am saying is that given that, as far as I know, there's sometimes still a boys' club attitude as well as in rarer cases even instances of sexual assault and rape, I don't think it's an entirely smart idea to place a single woman in a large group of men and then send them on an assignment that will isolate them for extended periods of time.

I mean there's a good chance nothing bad will happen, certainly there's no shortage of good people serving. But from what I've read on the subject the strong impression I've gotten is that there's certainly a realistic chance that the female soldier may not be truly accepted within the group, leaving her with absolutely no support on what probably can be one of the most taxing jobs should combat situations occur.

So women certainly should be able to serve on subs and in special forces, but I think care should be taken on the group's composition to ensure they have the social support they need.

To add, I believe everyone needs that support, on account of being human, and such care should not be limited to women. But seeing how women's treatment in the army has popped up as a worrying topic over the past years it's certainly not something that can be brushed aside.
 

Aramis Night

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On the subject of women in military submarines, I seem to remember reading somewhere about certain biological concerns with women serving aboard nuclear submarines. It seems that there was a possible risk of permanent reproductive damage caused by such long and close proximity to the radiation aboard a nuclear sub that could cause damage to a women's egg cells. If it caused sterility, id be all for it. But from what i read it would more likely lead to problems for the child rather than a lack of child.

Other than that, i'm all for women getting blown up/killed/maimed by the thousands in more for profit wars in countries not their own. Perhaps it might actually lead to more of the military budget going to taking care of the soldiers, rather than to contracts to make more weapons of war that will just sit around unused so some private company can profit. It might be like how there were no safety standards in most industries till women got involved. If men get hurt/killed by the thousands, no one cares. Hopefully with women getting killed/maimed, it will have the side effect of putting public pressure on governments to actually take care of their soldiers instead of just using them up and throwing them away.
 

SquidSponge

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For reference, option 1.

A lot of people used have said "as long as they meet the standard", so I'll post this regarding the aforementioned standard:
I got very frustrated with the UK army officer physical fitness standards because I was until recently attempting to train myself to thr application standard - I beat the womens' standard, but a considerable time later I never quite managed the male requirement (my training kinda lost momentum, then I turned my attention back to academia). Bearing in mind that this is supposedly for the same job at the same pay. For reference [http://www.army.mod.uk/join/20153.aspx], male/female:

Beep test - 10.2 / 8.1
Situps - 50 / 50 (2mins)
Pressups - 44 / 21 (2mins)

Which as far as I can discern means that the cardiovascular fitness test has ~25% longer duration [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beep_test#Calculations] for men, and the upper-body strength test is >200% as intensive for men. And that's before considering exercises get more difficult the longer they continue. At least the core body test is fair.

Re: submarines:
I used to presume the "no women on subs" thing was due to privacy concerns, but a submariner I once spoke to said it was in case someone broke the fraternisation rules (as always happens) and got their silly self pregnant. Submarine tours can be a loooong time (months?) and a sub can't afford to be operating with a (wo)man down, nor can it afford the medical and possibly nutritional requirements of a pregnant woman while it's got a mission to complete. And, being stealth vessels they obviously can't just drop into port any ol' time to let people off, so this could potentially ruin entire operations. I suppose segregated subs might solve this, but what if a submariner got pregnant and only only found out 3 weeks into a 6-month tour? It's not at all fair, but it's a hell of a lot simpler to just stick with "no girls allowed", so I presume that's why that is (was?) the case.

TL;DR - I see no reason women shouldn't perform the same roles as men, providing they are held to the same standard and assuming solutions are found for a few issues. Because bullets, long runs and heavy loads don't care whether you have a Y chromosome or not.
 

Grampy_bone

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For all the people saying "if they can meet the same requirements as men," there is something you need to understand:

If a man only meets the minimum physical requirements to join the military, he is largely deemed useless. He will be carrying gear and peeling potatoes, not given any kind of important job (i.e. combat roles).

The vast majority of women cannot meet the minimum physical requirements that men must meet. So in other words, women in the military are less than useless.

Sure, allow women to try out for the team if it makes them feel better, but don't expect them to do any heavy lifting.
 

ShiningAmber

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If she meets the requirements. And if it bothers the men so much, I really don't see that as her problem. They can learn to deal with it.
 

Mezworld24

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Combat wise, any one who is well trained and can shoot straight should be allowed wise.
Problems only really occur within the military itself. I suppose female only regiments would be best, if there are enough willing female soldiers.
 

Heronblade

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Maiev Shadowsong said:
Heronblade said:
Because of this, even people who are collectively devoted to peace must have some means to defend themselves, even if only by proxy.
Nope. Plenty of Buddhists are utterly passive.
The term "by proxy" was in there fairly deliberately. Buddhists tend to live in countries defended by various military and police forces. Most of them are, at least ostensibly, completely devoted to peace, but they are defended by people who are not.
 

thewatergamer

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My biggest problem is when women want to sign up but they have different standards then men just because they are women, in my opinion if a woman doesn't meet the requirements that all male soldiers meet then she shouldn't be given special treatment, with that out of the way, if anyone meets the requirements for any role in the military they should be allowed in regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation etc.

As long as they meet the physical requirements welcome to the army
 

Heronblade

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Maiev Shadowsong said:
Heronblade said:
Maiev Shadowsong said:
Heronblade said:
Because of this, even people who are collectively devoted to peace must have some means to defend themselves, even if only by proxy.
Nope. Plenty of Buddhists are utterly passive.
The term "by proxy" was in there fairly deliberately. Buddhists tend to live in countries defended by various military and police forces. Most of them are completely devoted to peace, but they are defended by people who are not.
Might wanna mention that to he monks that talked to and tried to reason with the various militias that have slaughtered them over the centuries. China's done it a few times. Didn't fight back.
Thank you for proving my point.
 

Jakub324

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I used to be all for it, but the fact is, women aren't built for it. The Israelis tried it, and people died as a direct result. How? Say your team is assaulting an enemy machine gun. If it's an all-male unit, people don't stop if someone gets shot. If there's women and men, men stop for women, therefore presenting easy targets.

Also, even the fittest women have inferior grip and upper body strength, as well as a lower lung-capacity. On top of that, do officers really want to worry about the havoc relationships could play with unit cohesion in the heat of battle?

Do you believe that the a woman, carrying twenty kilos of her own gear, could carry an eighty kilo man, and his twenty kilos of gear, in temperatures exceeding thirty degrees? I don't. And given that people's lives would be lost if she couldn't, I regretfully cannot support the integration of women into frontline service.
But that doesn't matter, at least not to the US Army. How do they intend to neutralise the problems with female soldiers? By ignoring them. When lives are at stake, that's wrong.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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I'd say I'm broadly against it. It isn't that I think they're incapable of taking a bullet or delivering fire or following orders or any of that nonsense - no one is particularly well suited to being shot at regardless of gender. The problem is simply that it doesn't seem particularly worth the effort.

First, from personal experience, it was rare that I encountered a female in the US Army who could actually physically perform the job of an infantryman (for example). I'm not particularly convinced this is due to that classical "feminine weakness" so much as it seems to be a cultural thing - the female soldiers simply didn't want to do the sort of workout that would give them the condition necessary to perform the tasks. That some otherwise normal women were perfectly capable of doing the ruck march in the right amount of time or passing other physical standards set for males seems to imply that this shortcoming was a personal failing rather than one that broadly affects all women.

The second is a health concern - simply put, women are more prone to very specific types of injury. Hip injuries for example are an incredibly common malady in Basic Training. Beyond that there are additional considerations of hygiene and health associated with the menstrual cycle along with the associated changes in hormonal chemistry over the course of the cycle. Finally, there is that eternal bugaboo, pregnancy, which more or less forces a soldier in a combat role to do something else for months if not years afterwards. Again, not to assert that this would somehow make them incapable of serving; it simply presents a complication in logistics across the board that are not present with male soldiers.

The thing is, I am entirely certain there are women who could do any job in a modern military. The problem is, because of the issues with simply finding a female that meets the physical standards and then dealing with the higher risk of common injury that would prevent them doing the job, it simply doesn't make a lot of sense to try. To put it simply, if a significant number of females are, for one reason or another, incapable of performing the job, then having lots of them try out (at an egregious cost to the taxpayer - training of a soldier can cost several hundred thousand dollars for certain jobs) and then fail only to be reclassified and sent to try again seems silly.

I suppose there is a simple answer to that problem in the form of simply having a series of tests designed to weed out those obviously incapable of making the cut. Of course, since such tests do not exist for males (since the average 18 year old male has demonstrably proven themselves capable of meeting the standards) I would expect this would elicit an outcry of unfairness.

Of course, there are other issues that are far harder to define that I don't particularly believe. There are wide ranging theories (almost certainly based on nothing more than bias) that including women in combat roles intentionally is foolish. For example, western civilization is more or less hard wired to be appalled at the death of "women and children" - the adult male by contrast is seen as expendable and only worth mention by exclusion. While no society is comfortable with sending people to die, some would argue we are far less comfortable sending women to die for a cause. Then there are various theories relating to gender politics that would assert the inclusion of sex (the natural result when you stick a bunch of twenty-somethings in close quarters for long periods) would be detrimental to the chain of command and disrupt unit cohesion. You might recognize that last one as one of the many arguments used against letting openly gay soldiers into the military. All of these have at least some element of truth in them but, given that I've never seen a real academic study on the subject, it's hard to determine just how big a concern such things are. For example, if we are less comfortable sending women to die, in the event of a hard fought war with high casualties, does that affect the total number of casualties we'd be willing to accept before seeking other options? And while sex within a group has a profound impact on group dynamics, is it necessarily a negative one from a military perspective?

When you get right down to it, the question really comes down to a wholly pragmatic quandary: would the military be improved, on the whole, by letting women serve in combat rolls? I don't see any reason to believe a military facing anything short of an existential threat would see an improvement and even then it's only on the basis that such a crisis would require as many soldiers as possible at whatever the necessary cost. Such threats are rare in the modern world - at least threats that can be fought with rifle and bayonet.
 

Kennetic

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Bara_no_Hime said:
Kennetic said:
2, they have hygiene requirements that men don't. We have often been without proper hygiene for weeks or even months at a time but males can handle that, whereas females need proper hygiene on a regular basis and being in combat that is not something that cam be provided right away. Support roles allow for this which is why women are in support roles.
I'm going to ignore 1 and 3 since they are absolutely absurd. Plenty of women are that physically capable and equally aggressive.

As to 2... are you really going to claim that women can't be in combat because of their periods? I'm not sure whether to be amused by the comic immaturity or shocked that you actually think a period is going to stop a female soldier from doing her job.

If you are purely concerned about the lack of tampons in combat zones, then might I suggest those birth control implants that reduce a woman to only four periods a year? And if that's not enough for you, I'm sure the military could come up with a reusable pad for use in the field. They designed ash-trays for submarines that break into three not-sharp pieces when smashed, I'm sure they can manage this.
Those aren't my points, they are the Army's reasons. I don't care one way or the other if women can be in combat jobs. In combat, the Army only cares about getting the job done, they dont have time for political correctness. Mind you, the Army reported at the beginning of the year that they are opening up combat roles for women but they didn't say when that would take effect. I imagine that they were waiting for the war to die down some more before they sit down and decide how they want to go about changing fitness standards and whatnot.
 

Heronblade

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Maiev Shadowsong said:
Heronblade said:
Maiev Shadowsong said:
Heronblade said:
Maiev Shadowsong said:
Heronblade said:
Because of this, even people who are collectively devoted to peace must have some means to defend themselves, even if only by proxy.
Nope. Plenty of Buddhists are utterly passive.
The term "by proxy" was in there fairly deliberately. Buddhists tend to live in countries defended by various military and police forces. Most of them are completely devoted to peace, but they are defended by people who are not.
Might wanna mention that to he monks that talked to and tried to reason with the various militias that have slaughtered them over the centuries. China's done it a few times. Didn't fight back.
Thank you for proving my point.
I'm confused. What is your point? I don't meant that in a sarcastic way. This is what I've got so far: that passive people are protected by non-passive people, right? So I mentioned the times passive people were killed and not protected. How did I prove your point? You lost me.
My point is that without such protection, passive individuals are at the mercy of others.

Since a very large portion of the world are more than willing to take advantage of the weak and defenseless, a country that has no military defense and/or militaristic allies willing to defend them in turn like you suggested earlier will doom its citizens. Best case outcome for such a scenario is forceful occupation of the pacifist country by a more militaristic one. More likely however, the pacifist country's population just takes a steep decline as the hyenas tear out what they want.

To put it another way, pure pacifism just leads to a whole bunch of dead pacifists.
 

Boris Goodenough

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Jakub324 said:
I used to be all for it, but the fact is, women aren't built for it. The Israelis tried it, and people died as a direct result. How? Say your team is assaulting an enemy machine gun. If it's an all-male unit, people don't stop if someone gets shot. If there's women and men, men stop for women, therefore presenting easy targets.
Well that was a "long" time ago, I have read that report, we can hope men don't like helping women as much anymore...
 

Lightknight

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I would be VERY interested in seeing the woman that could pass special forces training like Bud/s [http://www.military.com/military-fitness/navy-special-operations/top-things-to-know-before-buds]. I think people forget that there is a non-trivial physical difference between men and women. Everything from males having larger organs (think more oxygen in the bloodstream for more endurance under a heavy load, greater average lung capacity, etc), denser bones (less chance of breakage), pelvic bones angled more efficiently for running (women's pelvic angle is wider in order to allow the passage of a large object through their body. This wider angle distributes weight less efficiently and makes running more difficult), significantly greater grip strength which even female athletes don't match, to even basic muscle growth (testosterone is a heck of a thing when you're trying to build muscle. Women are 40-50% weaker in upper body strength than men on average and 20-30% weaker in lower body strength). The fact is, for a woman to get up to even an average male she has to work her ass off and has to choose the areas that she'll compete in as working on one area can make others suffer. Imagine that a woman has to double her upper body strength just to get to the average male. There are women who do this and more and they're incredible for achieving that. But getting to the upper tier with that kind of disadvantage without giving up agility is impossible.

Women do have strengths in other areas that we do need though. From what I understand they handle pressure (physical pressure from ocean depths or gravitational forces) better than men. Current standards weed out most male applicants, let alone any possible females. And those bud/s washouts go on to special forces in other areas of the military or get 6-figure income jobs in the private security sector. That's how good even the people who don't make it through are.

The basic combat rules can be stringent, but it's nothing like special forces demands. I am against making the minimum requirements less for women than it is for men. Doing that is just as sexist as not even allowing women the opportunity should there ever come a day where they could pass.

A woman in the special forces? Highly unlikely but holy heck would I be impressed if one ever made it.
 

chainer1216

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if they meet the requirements, they deserve to do whatever they want.

that said, they also need to understand that they're going to be in a place filled with a bunch of testosterone fueled alpha males, male on male rape is a huge issue as it is, their chances of serving without incident aren't great...