Lovely sentiment, but you know that is no way to run an army.
As long as standards are not relaxed to artificially enable a certain percentage of female Combat Arms troops, let whoever can handle it, handle it; let whoever washes out, wash out.
I can spare a fiver for a punt on the guess that it’s only a matter of time before that percentage becomes a cause for concern, and if it’s lower than it ought to be then “institutionalized sexism” will get the blame.
I don’t need to watch a damn movie to know what living in a combat zone is like. I redeployed from Afghanistan last December, so my memory hasn’t had that much time to get fuzzy.
Men and women have different standards of appearance because a basic principle behind AR 670-1 is maintaining a professional look, and our culture has different standards on what professionalism looks like for men and women.
This really hasn’t changed anything. The Pentagon has just shifted the burden of justification for excluding women from certain jobs down to the individual branches. Each branch must come up with their own reasons for exclusion. But now, instead of just saying, “Women are not serving in the infantry because there is a ban on women in front-line combat,” they are being forced to explain that “women are not allowed in the infantry because of x, y, z.”
All this decision does is change the justification for the ban from presumption to exception. As long as the individual branches can come up with an x, y, and z, there will be no change. It will just be that instead of women not serving because of a ban, they will be not serving because of an exception to policy.
If the branches cannot come up with proper reasons in three years, then the ban will be effectively lifted.
When it isn’t “Cultural Marxism.”
And should they have been asked about letting black soldiers serve?
I don’t know about blacks or women, but they definitely polled soldiers about whether gays should be allowed to serve. It was a major part of the decision and received a ton of publicity.
From the halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli
I have fought my country’s battles
I have faced every enemy
<snip>
But please
Please
Please please please please please
Don’t make me shower with a fairy
Not a fairy – fairies scare me
Cause a fairy might look at my weewee
My weewee – it’s so teeny
As opposed to the tropical lovefest that the 800 000 soviet females went to in WW2? :dubious:
Look, women are hardier than you seem to think we little blossoms are. [To be blunt, I seriously doubt a man could tolerate the physical changes, pain and horrible side effects and after effects pregnancy and birth happen to be for many women. I know most men couldn’t deal with monthly menstruation. Men turn into freaking wusses with a silly head cold.] For the length of human time women have had to deal with the same shit men did, with less body mass and a lower center of gravity. We survived being hunter-gatherers, agricultural workers when farming kicked in - hell, women used to pull plows when there wasn’t a draft animal around. Women had to do all the same shit while being pregnant, and frequently while tending one or more children in the lack of a grandparent type female around to babysit.
Look at how many recreational hissy fits are posted on the Dope alone about articles showing women walking behind some man hauling all the luggage in Africa or southeast Asia … or up to her ass in a rice paddy manually planting acres of rice toting a baby on her back and surrounded with kids.
Women not doing well in combat? Big meh. Women will do just fine if slacker men will leave them alone to get on with it. The women who want to go combat will do so, and the women who don’t will volunteer for MOS that don’t involve combat.
multiple kids under 5 years old, no man around the house, having to run the house, run the farm, and do all this with little sleep for years on end…
You do not do long pack marches with full TA50 any more, it is considered inhuman in the modern army. If you do a prolonged foot patrol, you use 30 pound packs with a minimum of excess gear. Try talking to the guys on the board like Bear Nenno again.
You try putting a guy of any size into body armor, 70 pound packs and march them for more than 10 miles, there would be bodies fallen out along the road. We use APCs and helicopters to move any great distance now.
We will deal with periods by going on the pill without the nonmedicated week to bleed. Same as many backpackers do. Also if your body fat drops down below a certain level you stop naturally, and as far as the nonsegregated bog, in combat it really doesn’t matter, hell, my dad crapped and pissed in his pants in combat, you didn’t drop trou if it wasn’t safe. I personally really don’t care who is around me, I have spent too much quality hospital time with no privacy, I could drop trou and crap in the middle of Grand Central Station if I really needed to [and it wouldn’t get me arrested.] I am sure if you are in a trench somewhere and were worried, you could be paired with a battle buddy of the same gender…:rolleyes:
Carry 2 diva cups, one in and one in a zippy bag ready to insert - in a normal woman they can go for 8 to 12 hours between servicings. Carry toilet paper. Hormonal birth control pills are damned small, I can carry a 90 day supply of norethindrone [total suppression of menses] in something the size of a film cannister. In something like a normal small pill bottle I could probably manage strips of 7 pills in blisterpack if it was deliberately kept small. I would imagine you could even do something like a custom norplant that is implanted with some total supressive medication. With the diva cups, norethindrone and so forth everything I would need for 3 months of menstruation with birth control to prevent pregnancy or suppression fit into something like a shotgun shell ammo pouch. I could even throw in an emergency diva cup just to make sure.
C’mon Marley23!
A hundred dead women soldiers vs several thousand dead male soldiers.
Put an equal number of women in the exact same situations as the men and they won’t die in similar numbers. They’ll die in greater numbers.
Your argument is “C’mon!”? Are you Peter Griffin?
Have you got anything more substantial?
This couple post exchange is outrageous.
We should make professional tennis co-ed in the name of equality because it is possible that in the thousands of times the top female players would play the top male players in the world there is at least a slight chance that a female *might *win on any given day. (although everyone knows it would be exceptionally unlikely)
I can see your logic. Integrate tennis.
“C’mon” isn’t a cite.
Thank you for being the first to answer my question in a way I can understand, and without throwing a hissy fit.
I just hope that they don’t just let women fill up all the “easy” combat jobs, and expect men to fill all the really dangerous positions. When women take the lead on a patrol when snipers are expected, I’ll accept that women are doing an equal job with the men.
Sorry, but in a war, things can’t always be controlled like that.
Think the Falkland campaign when helicopters weren’t available and the marines had to carry everything for long distances. Pack limits would have been laughable.
Just because it was like that in Iraq, it doesn’t mean all wars will be like that in future.
<women used to pull plows when there wasn’t a draft animal around.>
Seriously! When was the last time women in America pulled a plow, and we are talking about women in America, not in Africa or Asia.
Somehow, I doubt the average modern American woman could plant an acre of rice without giving up, and I don’t see the relevance to combat anyway.