posted
Gonna answer that last one out of order, because I'm still amazed it was typed.
First off, Clive, you keep saying how women should not be permitted on the front lines because of how male soldiers will react if they're captured. Women have been in combat for thousands of years, and has been repeatedly pointed out, many countries allow them to so serve now. Has what you feared happened? We don't have to guess, we don't have to wonder. Has it happened, can you point to it? Has a female soldier yet been captured, causing the men in her unit to totally lose their minds? Telling us over and over simply isn't going to convince anyone.
Secondly, it's true that the US military does not presently assign women to the front lines, true. largely because of antiquated opinions such as yours. But they are there, right alongside the front line soldiers, as support, in communications, as medical personnel. They're on the front lines already and have been for some time.
quote:This is the problem. A male soldier might be treated badly by other soldiers, and it's just okey dokey. If the male soldiers treat a female soldier in that fashion, it's "abuse" and "harassment" and so on. The military -- and war -- have to be made "nicer" for female soldiers. The world laughs at us.
Way to totally condescend to every women that's ever come forward with an accusation of rape! If the enemy does it then it's horrible, unspeakable, and we'll go insane with rage over it. If our own soldiers do it, it's the women's fault for not sucking it up and taking it like men.
Male soldiers should be able to serve with women soldiers without raping them, sir. Not abuse, and not harassment, but rape.
The Pentagon's own numbers confirm the high amount of rape in the military. They seem extremely reticent to admit the number of convictions, though. And time after time either the victim is forced to continue serving in the same unit as her rapist, but the rapists - the convicted rapists - often get close to no punishment, occasional promotions, and honorable discharges.
I grant you, the front line of combat is the place where testosterone and stress and full-blown alpha male arrogance will run high, so yeah, I'm totally in agreement now. Women should not be in combat with men there, that's insane. Not because the enemy might attack and rape them, but because the odds are very high that their fellow soldiers will.
Maybe we can create female units, on the front line or wherever they're needed, where they can prove their worth as soldiers without having to sleep with one eye open.
[ November 10, 2009, 12:08 AM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
The behavior Clive alludes to, if I recall is known as "hazing" where older soldiers abuse and harrass newer ones. Just because this happens among soldiers doesn't mean it SHOULD happen hazing is terrible in any military and greater measures should be taken to reign it in, if admitting female soldiers to front line duties brings this into the open where it can be studied and address then even more power to putting females into front line combat roles "officially".
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posted
Unless "hazing" regularly includes forced penetration, I'm pretty sure that's not the harassment I'm talking about, though.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Forced penetration with a broomstick has been known to happen. And then there's all the jokes about the Navy... those have to have a measure of truth behind them.
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quote:I grant you, the front line of combat is the place where testosterone and stress and full-blown alpha male arrogance will run high, so yeah, I'm totally in agreement now. Women should not be in combat with men there, that's insane. Not because the enemy might attack and rape them, but because the odds are very high that their fellow soldiers will.
posted
As a note on Norwegian women in combat, the physical requirementsare the same for men and women in running, swimming, and sit-ups, but much reduced for women in the two tests of upper-body strength, namely pull-ups and push-ups. A quick Google (so, you know, grain of salt) informs me that the proportion of women in our main foreign-service unit, the Telemark Battalion, is about 2%; I can't find out if they are rifle-carrying infantry or in support positions, though. It's also worth pointing out that Norwegian men are drafted, while women are allowed to volunteer; the Telemark Battalion is completely volunteer, but obviously a lot more men than women get exposure to the military life and come to the point of considering volunteering for it.
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quote:I grant you, the front line of combat is the place where testosterone and stress and full-blown alpha male arrogance will run high, so yeah, I'm totally in agreement now. Women should not be in combat with men there, that's insane. Not because the enemy might attack and rape them, but because the odds are very high that their fellow soldiers will.
What?
That's exactly what happens, though... women soldiers sometimes have more to fear from their fellow soldiers than from the enemy.. (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/women_in_military)
I work for the government so I know when they make rules/regs they often cater to the lowest common denominator.
I wonder if the real reason we don't have women on the front lines is because the military knows what will happen - that the immature, testosterone heavy men in the army will do things they shouldn't to them - and instead of holding them accountable for their actions or trying to fix the problem it's easier to just avoid it by not giving them the opportunity...
Edited to clarify: I support the full and complete integration of women into the armed forces. I think we need to figure out how to fix the problems that currently exist with this idea, but these problems aren't a reason to keep anyone, regardless of sex, from serving as they desire.
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Check my OP...especially the part where I link to an article that is premised on facts we now know to be incorrect about Fort Hood.
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posted
Whether or not a specific woman is or is not a hero has no relevance to your assertion that women shouldn't serve on the front lines.
It had no real relevance in the linked article (it was a useful springboard for making a point), no relevance in your OP and still, here on page 3, has no real relevance.
ETA: And because you childishly renamed the topic your OP now reads that William Saletan argues that mean people derailed this thread... which only makes it even more irrelevant...
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: I wasn't the one who renamed it.
I remember rivka thanking a mod for that.
Anyway, Saletan said "if women can defend Fort Hood, they can serve on the front lines." Well...
My mistake on the renaming then. I apologize.
The point is that if you say "no woman can do this" and I find one that did then I have disproved your negative.
If I can't find one, or I find one that I think did but actually didn't we have proved... ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. This doesn't mean she can't or that there aren't others that can't.
You can use a single instance to disprove a negative but you can't use any number of instances less that the total of all possible to prove it.
So, the fact that she didn't actually do what everyone thought is in no way relevant to the question of whether or not women can and should serve.
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posted
I agree, this update doesn't buttress any of the arguments I made, but it's an update that's interesting in and of itself. And since Saletan used the incident as an springboard, sure, why shouldn't I smirk?
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: I wasn't the one who renamed it.
I remember rivka thanking a mod for that.
No, rivka thanked PJ for changing the title of a different thread from "are women to blame for the financial crisis?" to "Blame for the financial crisis?"
I find it highly unlikely that PJ changed the title of this thread to "mean people derailed this thread" considering a) threads get derailed here on an hourly basis, and b) there was an interim thread title, something about "bickering about cookies", and c) he didn't acknowledge it.
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quote:No, rivka thanked PJ for changing the title of a different thread from "are women to blame for the financial crisis?" to "Blame for the financial crisis?"
Not quite. Clive briefly switched it to a more offensive title, which is what PJ changed it from.
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quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: I wasn't the one who renamed it.
I remember rivka thanking a mod for that.
No, rivka thanked PJ for changing the title of a different thread from "are women to blame for the financial crisis?" to "Blame for the financial crisis?"
I find it highly unlikely that PJ changed the title of this thread to "mean people derailed this thread" considering a) threads get derailed here on an hourly basis, and b) there was an interim thread title, something about "bickering about cookies", and c) he didn't acknowledge it.
Thanks for the correction. I'm pretty sure the previous title of this thread was innocuous though. The change reflected the "let's derail this thread!" cookie episode.
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