Gee, where were you when I originally spelled rights with a small r? If you’re being so pedantic about this, I would have guessed you would have noticed that to begin with and skipped all of your arm flailing.
I would say that definitively, yes: in terms of her speed and strength and the quality of her serve, she stands out on the women’s tour but wouldn’t against the men. But it’s not really the point here.
Granted. But I fear “The whole reason we discuss things like ethics is because certain things might be considered ethical in some situations and not others.” was skipped as the other poster and I were bantering about. He/she was seeing an ethical right in this case. And that sentence alone would seem to preclude an ethical right to women serving in combat. The ethical nature being situational, and the discussion being virtually endless, I still contend it falls short of that level of finding. In short, ethical issue, yes. Right? Not so much.
I don’t think that this is going to open the floodgates for women to serve in combat at all. Just for women to serve in the supply rooms of people in combat. Stuff like that. There are plenty of jobs that women already do, but they aren’t allowed to do it in all units. Now they will be able to.
Women have already served in combat, it just hasn’t been fully openly acknowledged. For those who want to serve in combat units, this will help with their careers, as I’m sure many upper jobs are available mostly to those who have served in or led combat units.
That makes more sense. Plus they could get combat pay.
They said tonight on ABC News that women will have to meet the same physical fitness tests as men to join the infantry or special forces. I hope they stick to that. I recall years ago that they said the same thing when women became firefighters. It didn’t take long and the fitness standards were lowered for everybody. They even changed some of the firefighting procedures because a single woman couldn’t control the high pressure fire hoses. They also changed how fireman carried injured people from buildings because the women firefighters weren’t as strong. Shows like 20/20 and 60 Minutes did features on women firefighters years ago. I see they are doing the same thing in the UK.
If they complain about it, they should go also be prepared to give up all that “women’s lib” has given them. True equality is the right to die in warfare.
It a political imperative, so if insufficient women pas the tests, they will be altered to allow more women to pass.
The brown stuff will hit the fan if soldiers die because a female can’t do the job under fire.
I’m interested to know if barracks and toilets are now to be desegregated. In a fox hole, there isn’t space to have a seperate screened off corner to have a bog.
I’m also interested to know how the combat soldier is going to deal with periods in the field.
Lastly, now “equality” has arrived, will women be required to have short haircuts and give up ear rings, or will males be allowed long hair.
Would you still be of the opinion that women should serve if the total was 5,000?
The more women serving in the front line, the more that will die.
Males allowed long hair! Shocking!! Do you really think this will now become legal???
There is no real moral difference between five thousand men dying or 5,000 women.
If they choose not to take advantage of the various methods of suspending their period, I’d imagine they’d deal with it in the same way that combat soldiers deal with pooping. It takes approximately 30 seconds, twice daily, for me to “deal with my period.” In my case, I do that for four days every three months, or about twelve days a year. So for me, we’d be looking at twelve minutes a year.
You are really showing a basic ignorance of basic facts of how women actually work here. You realize women do long distance trekking, climb Everest, and do all kinds of tough outdoorsy stuff, right? I know that’s not the same as combat, but really, we’ve got the logistics of this worked out.
“Your mother wears Army boots!”
“I know. She’s a Captain in the infantry.”
“… Thank her for her service.”
This is such ridiculous hysteria. The vast majority of our military is men, and there’s no reason to believe that will change in the future. So what if 5% or so of our front-line soldiers are women? Even if one were to believe that women soldiers are always inherently worse (and based on my experience in the military I don’t believe this), that would mean a slight decrease in the effectiveness of 5% of our front-line soldiers at worst. The front-line women will be the toughest and the strongest, and we’ll all be fine. What a joke to get all worried about this.
There are also plenty of male infantrymen who just pass the minimum standard.
I was going to say. There was an article in Atlantic a while back complaining about modern boot camp not preparing soldiers for the physical rigors of combat because today’s young people simply wouldn’t make it through. One captain said he was getting guys in Afghanistan that couldn’t do a single pull-up or twenty push-ups.
This kind of thing happens if there’s a long period of time between boot camp and deployment in a “stash duty” (a relatively useless job meant to keep a new sailor/soldier/marine/airmen out of trouble until it’s time to report to his permanent duty station) without maintaining physical standards. And while it shouldn’t happen at all, it certainly shouldn’t happen with anyone who is relatively fresh out of boot camp. Boot camp really can turn fat slobs into lean-mean fighting machines- when I entered Navy Officer Candidate School (like boot camp for officers and run by Marine drill instructors), I could barely pass the minimum standards (for entry, not for graduation), I was overweight, and I couldn’t do a single pullup. Three-months later I scored “Excellent” in the final Physical Readiness Test (the Navy scale is Fail, Satisfactory, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding), and could do about 15 pullups (a lot for a ~200 lb guy!). And then I was stashed for a few months, and while my stash-unit did a little PT, it wasn’t nearly enough to maintain the “Excellent” level, and I fell back to about the “Good” range. And then after about 4 years on a submarine, I was barely “Satisfactory”.
Yes.
I think everybody grasps this- at least in theory; in practical terms I don’t know how much it matters these days.
I grew up with a lot of older female relatives that were veterans of World War II, either on the Eastern Front in Europe or behind the lines in the Balkans everyone one of which is a testament to fact that women can be as tough if not tougher (most women can function on less calories than men) than a man in combat. They would all also agree women can be as brutal (or worse) than men in war though I am not sure if that’s a good thing.
As a former VFD member, I’ll kick a little bit on to this. I am not sure so much that standards were lowered as they were changed as procedures changed and equipment developed. Firefighting circa 1960 was basically brute force - smashing things by hand and/or drowning them in water. Given nothing but a pry bar or wrecking bar, yeah - you needed some brute force and size to get someone out of a car or building. Now, given the “jaws of life” and other tools, a lot of high school kids (both boys and girls) could be trained to do the same thing. Same thing with carries; I see the ones used today as being pretty darn smart and had they been around way back when I would have probably used them. Actually I do in emergencies - they work well for tubby old farts to pull off too.
Training becomes the key. Again, circa 1960, to join our local VFD all I would have had to do is show up. The guys would run the truck down the river, teach me to handle a hose, and that was it. Now (at least in PA) it’s a school, operated through the counties, with certifications, continuing education, and regular physical exams.When women first appeared on trucks in bunker gear I heard all the doom and gloom and how deaths would mount and buildings fall. It just didn’t happen — had it 60 Minutes would have never let it drop.
From what I can find out at this point, the army (and I am sure other services as well) is doing two things at once. One is to reclassify some positions from “Non-combat” to “combat” in recognition of the reality of fighting a war today. With even the rear being well within rocket or IED range there is no out from combat. From Transport to Cook & Bakers you are now a target and within range. Two is to allow women the opportunity to try for slots traditionally classified as “combat”. They aren’t promised success, they are not having a certain number of slots set aside for them. They are just being given the same chance to fail or prove themselves as the rest of us.
Big change? Not IMHO. But that’s just me. The biggest change we’ll probably see is where none of us often look; command. Unless things have changed drastically in the last 10 years, to make officer over a certain grade you have to touch base with at least one “combat assignment”. That doesn’t mean actually being in combat (wars not traditionally being as constant as they have been lately) but it does mean filling A, B or C slot for Y number of weeks. I can remember a case from the 80s where a Navy officer had run into this ceiling and after several years had taken her story to the press. Congress could have made an exception for her and given her the promotion but her point was that that wasn’t a good way to continue a career.