Parrikle said:
Just to clarify this, women serve in front line roles in a number of Western countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Norway and the US. Using the US as an example, a number of significant medals have been given to women for their efforts in combat, including the Silver Star to Leigh Ann Hester, and the Distinguished Flying Cross to Lori Hill.
Leign Ann Hester is a medic and Lori Hill is a pilot. Neither of these are infantry roles.
Infantry roles are still kinda up in the air.
altnameJag said:
The Lunatic said:
BeetleManiac said:
Except for those societies where that was a done thing, right?
It astounds me how many dudes think that shitty stereotypes and fictional movie/games are accurate history textbooks.
The amount of "Societies" where women fought in plate Armour can probably be counted on one hand.
It's pretty basic biology that you don't make women fight.
Right, because a woman's fingers are simply too dainty to handle the trigger pull of a modern rifle.
I mean, historical mentions of lady fighters in the crusades, Viking women buried in full warrior regalia, and fighting traditions with gals in Japan and China be damned, it's
basic biology that women shouldn't fight.
End of the day, there are two main camps of feminist thought on the subject:
1) Women should
have to fight same as men
and
2) Nobody should
have to fight.
If you think that the role of a modern infantryman is just down to pulling a trigger, you're woefully ill-informed as to what exactly our military does, and you should probably educate yourself on what exactly the role involves before you give an opinion on it.
The reason women fail military requirements is things beyond their control, endurance, ability to carry heavy gear for long periods of time, ability to carry a downed fellow solider, etc.
The fact men and women are physically different is a pretty basic difference, so, I won't condescend to assume you're unaware of them.
In history, the equalizing power of a rifle simply didn't exist. As such, things like women having shorter reach, being shorter in general, having less muscle mass.
Wider hips means a higher Q angle between the hips and knees, which in turn increases the chance of injury from tripping or falling. Women also have lower bone density, further increasing the risk of breaking a bone from falling. (Something that happens a lot when you're being pushed around by somebody twice your weight.)
When it comes to upper-body strength, women have about 50%-60% that of a man. This is pretty significant when it comes to combat.
Now, I'm not saying "Women shouldn't fight", but, evolution has given them a form that's not good at it. If there's women out there who meet the requirements, they absolutely should be able to. But, in a historical context, we're talking about a time where nourishment was pretty poor, medical care even poorer and a woman's contribution to a fight was about equal to that of a 12 year old boy. There were likely better things they could be doing, and rather than risking getting themselves killed.
CaitSeith said:
When it comes to fiction, the plausible is more important than the realistic. At the end of the day, it's the author who dictates what is plausible on their creations. Comparing their fictional world with the real one is just one kind of interpretation that carries no weight over any other, and it doesn't explain the author's decisions any better than interpretations more closely related to the author's personal life.
So, have you noticed if in the past two years the representation of female characters on games you played have grown more congruent with sexual dimorphism? Or less congruent? Or they have stayed the same?
Well, when it comes to plausibility, you have to explain how a woman is capable of competing with a man despite her physical form being so much weaker.
Brienne Tarth, is a pretty good example of this. Her unladylike and generally quite manly figure is mentioned a fair bit. She's very tall for a woman and has spent most of her life training to defeat people stronger and more physically able than she is. She certainly doesn't win every fight she enters, and often ends up exhausted from relatively short bouts of combat.
I mean, if you want to go full fantasy, you could just argue that women are magically just as strong as men, despite having no physical differences from "Real world" women, but, frankly, I think that's just lazy.
But, overall, in the past two years, I'd say games have definitely been more keen to ignore the inherit physically differences and insert lazily made female characters over fleshing out and considering their weaknesses, I can't really conclude that lazy writing is a good thing, however.
