You sound old.
Meh. The same bullshit arguments have been raised about every other advance women, or blacks for that matter, have made in the military. They were exposed as bullshit every time. It’s amazing how a simple order and effective discipline can be in modifying behavior. Or do you not believe that discipline can be obtained in the modern US military anymore?
Try an argument that does *not *rationalize bigotry or rape on the basis that boys will be boys and it’s just tradition, or something like that.
How is this on page 6 now? How is this even happening? We actually have someone saying that equality isn’t a goal worth fighting for, in and of itself. We actually have a poster who thinks 51% of the world’s population is useless. These are not the crazy posters, these are not spammers or one-offs from Stormfront or AVFM. These are posters that have been here a long time, posters that are accepted as part of our community. What is wrong with this board?? Misogyny-gate was a fucking clusterfuck, but there is something seriously rotten here. This whole thread makes me so disappointed.
There is 6 pages of arguing over whether it’s ok to let women TRY to be SEALS. Damn.
If only we had a country that allowed women to try out for their special forces that we could look at…oh wait, we do :). We (that would be Canada) have women serving in our special forces and while I am not saying there are hundreds of them, they are successful and pretty badass. They have the respect of the men they serve with, and they are expected to do the same jobs to the same level.
There is no requirement, last I checked, for male genitalia to do any of the duties required of a special forces operator, so if the females meet the standard, why shouldn’t they be allowed to try? Yes, there will be very few women that make it, but there are very few men that make it either, it’s not all about who can bench press the most (most SF I know are not giants, although some are), it’s about who can get the job done in the worst conditions with the team.
Cite? My understanding is that Canada’s Joint Task Force 2 and Special Operations Regiment are officially open to women, but it’s unknown whether any women have actually served.
No it’s not you need to read more and skim less.
1: Some are arguing that it’s a questionable interference and disturbance to a mission critical part of the service. This poster questions whether it should be allowed to happen.
As a completely separate argument 2 & 3
2: Other’s argue that the insistence that women be placed into BUDS competition ignores basic differences in physiology that make the real world chances of women actually passing the course almost nil. It’s a pointless exercise bordering on stupid. No problem with women being allowed the opportunity to compete.
3: Other’s think that (similar to 2) they have no problem with women competing head to head, but that they have very little chance of being successful if BUDS standards remain unchanged due to physiological differences. Recommend either changing standards or having a separate entry program for female special forces that a reasonable number of women can complete. #2 not convinced of need for #3’s proposal as it does not answer a pressing military need.
I realize anecdotal is proof of nothing, but there was a female operator at the recruiting booth last Army Run. I’ll dig a little and see what I can find for publishable proof.
Yes, the Netherlands. The Dutch Special Forces have accepted female applicants for a number of years. Only one ever got past pre-selection, but withdrew soon after due to being unable to go the distance.
and regardless of any of this:
- The highest commander of all armed forces special operations units has been saying for years that they need to get female special ops agents in the field asap, as they add critical value to the force’s ever-evolving mission and can operate in regions where men are less effective at intelligence gathering. While he is in even in favor of gender-specific requirements that would allow more women to qualify, and has already been assigning female units attached to SEAL units to fill this need, he is also ready to let female soldiers apply with the requirements as they are and see where it goes.
but:
- A few pot-bellied douchebags are unable to wrap their tiny little balding heads around this fact - a fact that trumps all other opinion and speculation given in this thread - and still see fit to second guess the military’s wisdom on this because, after all, women are not as strong as men on average. Even though they are not strong men themselves, being members of a group they can cling to this belief about gives them some inexplicable sense of satisfaction.
If people were prohibited from trying things just because they’re really bad at it, there’s people who wouldn’t be allowed to post on this board.
Well there you go. Probably the exact same thing would happen in America if we removed current absolute ban on women and instead allowed anyone qualified.
Same thing happens in pro sports. There is no ban on women in the NBA, or NHL, or NFL, or MLB. There have been a very few women who have earned a spot on a team for a season over the decades, and they weren’t exactly superstars. But so what?
If we remove the ban on women, then in the next few decades we’ll see zero or one or two women make the cut. I haven’t seen anyone here who advocates for lifting the ban on women who thinks otherwise, and if there are one or two such people then they’re mistaken.
Does it hurt, being so stupid? I guess you’re probably used to it.
That’s an overly generous description of his views
Extra bonus gross
All that is a really asshole way of saying equality shouldn’t be a goal in and of itself. Which is exactly what I said.
They are bringing their skills as trained SEALS. Oh, but equality isn’t worth fighting for, so STFU women
So… not to gloat, but I was right and you are full of shit.
Didn’t mention that, don’t have a problem with it.
This is your stance, and I also wasn’t discussing it. I was talking about posts (and posters) like this:
which you are not acknowledging. People are (rightfully) angered by these asinine posts/posters, and you’re cleaning it up and acting like we’re the idiots. If you don’t care that we have blatent misigynists and apologists for inequality posting here, fine. Throw in your lot with the assholes. But I do have a problem with it-- I think it sucks, and people like that are bad for this board. It disappoints me that they feel comfortable posting that garbage here. It disgusts me that people like you want to brush it under the rug.
The shame is that there is actually a thread of an interesting debate to be had here, on a couple of different fronts:
(1) Is it ever OK to not be “fair” about something purely because the number of people disadvantaged by the unfairness is so tiny? For instance, I’m sure that there are plenty of situations where the legal system is not properly set up to deal with conjoined twins, because they are so vanishingly rare. Is it ever a legitimate defense to just say “ok, sure, it’s unfair, but it’s unfair to only 2 people in the entire country, and the difficulty and expense of changing things outweighs that”. (Another example: if people in wheelchairs were only 1/100th as common as they actually are, would it still be in the public interest to enforce wheelchair ramp laws?)
(2) Could special forces units actually be enhanced by women? If a SEAL team was trying to run a long term surveillance on a town, having a woman who could just wander into town looking nonthreatening and chat up the locals might give the team an entirely new set of possibilities for how to carry out its mission. Alternatively very very small women might be able to climb into or through things that no male SEAL could penetrate. If in fact we open up SEAL training to women hoping to find a few such women and none pass the very rigorous physical tests, could there be some benefit to trying to figure out a way to get a small number of the most elite women into some SEAL-team-adjunct role or something where they could be useful parts of the team able to do specialized things without having actually passed the “normal” SEAL training? Or does any discussion along those lines just represent lowering the standards yada yada yada?
This already happens, and it’s been very useful according to the brass.
If there was a way to guarantee in advance that women could reliably make up, I don’t know, 3% of the SEALs’ personnel, I wouldn’t have as much of an issue with it. But if it’s “We might get 1 or 2 occasionally. Yay, equality!”, then I don’t see the point.
I don’t believe women would be an asset to the SEALs the way they could potentially be an asset in other combat roles, and nobody in this thread has even attempted to flesh out how they could be an asset without lowering the standards or changing the mission.
That’s because none of us is in the position of research, power, or authority to make the decision to allow women to try for these positions. Neither do you, but you somehow feel you have the authority to boo and hiss without providing any real insight to your credentials, either.
*Alternatively very very small women might be able to climb into or through things that no male SEAL could penetrate. If in fact we open up SEAL training to women hoping to find a few such women and none pass the very rigorous physical tests, could there be some benefit to trying to figure out a way to get a small number of the most elite women into some SEAL-team-adjunct role or something where they could be useful parts of the team able to do specialized things without having actually passed the “normal” SEAL training?
My thoughts exactly. There are probably some physical tasks in the SEAL duties that women could perform better than men, even though these women couldn’t meet the general SEAL standards.
To draw on the firefighting example, so much of a firefighter’s day to day work involves providing medical care as an EMT, which women can do as well as or better than men on average, even if they can’t haul a 150 lb load backwards in 10 seconds or so.
Where’s the <like> button?
Of course the flip side of that is that there’s only a reason NOT to allow it if it actually has a non-trivial cost (in time or money or unit effectiveness or something), and I don’t think a general sense of tradition or offense counts as a non-trivial cost. On the other hand, there might be some set of military regulations that specify that any barracks for any branch of the service that allowed both genders must have X set of retrofitting, which would cost a few million dollars on the SEAL barracks, or something like that. But as of yet, no one has demonstrated that there is such an actual cost.
EQUALITY is the fucking point, you worthless piece of human excrement. Jesus fucking wept. Normal, non-asshole Americans see it as a goal in and of itself, an ideal to which we should strive. Equality of opportunity is the fucking foundation of civilized society, you cretin. Protecting the feelings of fat sexist losers, such as yourself, is generally not held in such high regard.
They would be an asset by being trained SEALS. Do you not see how being a trained SEAL is an asset to a group of SEALS? I mean, what the fuck???
It’s like you ate stupid for breakfast.