Women in combat roles

[even_sven]

Kaz_Jel, I pity your girlfriend, who you seem to view as a seething mass of smelly infections.

That said, do you have any idea what happens to testicles after a good long hike in hot damp conditions? They turn into a bloody fucking mess after you start hitting the ten mile mark. They chafe into bleeding waiting-to-be-infected open wounds. They hurt like hell. They can often lead to life-threatening complications. There are many reasons why most ultra-long-distance runners are female (which include better endurance) and men’s capacity to end up with mangled bloodied sore-covered balls is one of them.

I, for one, would much rather deal with a yeast infection.

What the fuck do you think all the millions of women who live in non-industrialized countries do? What about the endless generations of women who existed before running water? Did they around being incapacitated because of their constant yeast infections? Do you even know what a yeast infection is like? Now bladder infections are a problem- but men get plenty of those. It’s not like the female genitals are some special maggoty breeding ground for fatal infections. Now washing sucks, but the female anatomy doen’t turn into spoiled mayonaise after a couple of days without water.

[treis]

Posted by Dr. Zoidberg

That said, if a woman can make the cut I see no reason she shouldn’t serve.

Did you even read the thread before you posted? A few good reasons were spelled out.

[Alessan]

Speaking as a former (and still occasional) infantryman, I guess I have a few problems with mixed combat units. It’s not just the “chivalry issue”, or the addition of overt sexual tension to a tight-knit unit - it’s the total lack of privacy in the field. An infantry platoon eats together, sleeps together and bathes together… and that’s just the start. Maybe you could find a girl willing to squat down and pee in full view of 20 guys; I sincerely doubt, however, that you can find 20 19-year-old boys capable of being mature about it. It just flies against too much cultural conditioning.

[msmith537]

*Originally posted by Alessan *
Speaking as a former (and still occasional) infantryman, I guess I have a few problems with mixed combat units. It’s not just the “chivalry issue”, or the addition of overt sexual tension to a tight-knit unit - it’s the total lack of privacy in the field. An infantry platoon eats together, sleeps together and bathes together… and that’s just the start. Maybe you could find a girl willing to squat down and pee in full view of 20 guys; I sincerely doubt, however, that you can find 20 19-year-old boys capable of being mature about it. It just flies against too much cultural conditioning. **

How is that any diferent than a co-ed group of campers (which is quite common in the civilian world? Sorry, but I have to chalk this up there as a “silly” concern.

This seems like an easy experiment. Has the military ever conducted co-ed field exercises to examine any of these issues?

[Broomstick]

*Originally posted by Kaz_Jel *
Yes, they are pumped full of vacc and meds and yes they do carry around first aid kits, but certain infections are hard to treat, with repect to women’s privates, infections that are extremely uncommon in men, that with out proper medical treatment are fatal.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what you’re talking about.

When I was younger I used to go backpacking for weeks at a time. Weeks at a time with little soap and water and no bathing (when you have to hike 5 miles just for drinking water bathing becomes very very optional). What little bathing occured over those weeks was either from standing out in a pouring rain or swimming in rivers/lakes of questionable purity. I never had an infection of any sort. I’ve known a lot of women took even longer trips “in the bush”, some of them working as firefighters with the forestery service and none of them ever got these mysterious, life-threatening infections you’re talking about.

Istara is abosolutely correct that many of the infections found in women’s privy bits are a result of over-washing and the use of products to hide odor that wouldn’t exist except for overwashing, douching, and otherwise disturbing the natural cleaning mechanism of the female system.

but until i spoke to a friend of the family who explained to me the medical, and emotional complications (emotional not meaning womens issues, but of a mans instinct to protect a woman) i realised until societies, technology, millitary systems, and medical facilities are capable of allowing women to stay outside, unwashed for months, then womens opportunity to fight in combat role is unlikely.

So, you base all this on just one person’s opinion? What do you think women did before “modern technology”? In Medieval Europe people - men and women - would go months without bathing and while folks were dropping dead from a lot of reasons vaginal and bladder infections were not among the top killers. For that matter, what about the aboriginal population on the continent where you live - didn’t those women live outside not just for months but for years on end, their entire lives in fact?

Your statement that women are somehow prone to deadly infection from living outside and are doomed if they attempt to do so is contradicted by historical experience, not to mention the many women who live outside for extended periods for recreational or professional purposes.

[Siege]

Originally posted by Alessan
Maybe you could find a girl willing to squat down and pee in full view of 20 guys

It’s been a while since I’ve been 20, but inhibited as I was back in those times, in field conditions I wouldn’t have had a problem with it. I went caving once, on a trip where most people were in their 20’s and there were more men than women, although I forget the numbers. After the trip, we all stripped down to underwear if not less in the parking lot to change into clean, dry clothes. We were all too tired, sweaty, and mudcovered for it to be at all erotic or interesting. The pizza we had planned for after the trip was of much greater interest. I suspect it’d be the same in the field.

As for women and the lack of sanitary conditions, humanity could not have made it as long as it did. The trip to Australia took several months in cramped, crowded, none-too-clean conditions, and the settlers who populated the west United States also faced a journey of several months to over a year with no more sanitation than what they could carry with them, which I suspect amounted to a bucket on the wagon and a stack of rags. I’m afraid I can’t buy this excuse at all.

CJ

[SuaSponte]

*Originally posted by Alessan *
Maybe you could find a girl willing to squat down and pee in full view of 20 guys;

Let me provide you with a few links…

I sincerely doubt, however, that you can find 20 19-year-old boys capable of being mature about it. It just flies against too much cultural conditioning.

The same could be said about finding 20 19-year old boys in our culture capable of being mature about denial of liberty, exhausting physical training, vociferous criticism, 0400 training exercises, etc. Such concepts are alien to teenagers in our culture.
Yet we still manage to find teenagers who survive basic training without having temper tantrums or sullenly refusing to do their assigned tasks.

Sua

[catsix]

Maybe you could find a girl willing to squat down and pee in full view of 20 guys; I sincerely doubt, however, that you can find 20 19-year-old boys capable of being mature about it.

Sure, the first time they see it in a training exercise, they’re going to snicker, comment, or otherwise act like buffoons.

Do it a few times and it becomes so commonplace nobody cares. It only gets treated as odd when it’s new, not when it’s an established practice. So let 'em get used to it.

[SteveSteve]

The question is (others have sort of stated this) would women make a ground unit more effective, less effective, or equally as effective as a male only ground unit.

I don’t think anyone has done any studies to that effect, so all we have to go on is extrapolation from other sources of information.

NASA studies (sorry no cite) have shown that a female only group works better together as a team than mixed or male only. Unfortunately, as we are not talking about female only units, we have to look at mixed or male only.

That being the case, one of those sources could be the Eco Challenge. For those unfamiliar, the Eco Challenge is a cross country team race that goes over many days. Each team has to have at least one woman. One thing I noticed is that the Navy SEAL team always loses, and often doesn’t even finish. Navy SEALs should be the best physically, the best at teamwork, etc. But they lose. I would bet that SEAL training does not contain a lot of working effectively with, not protecting or putting up with, women. So maybe military training is part of the problem. Obviously teams with women win, some with more than one woman.

But let’s keep in mind; the Eco Challenge is for people who take kayaking too seriously. It may be that a male (the bulk of any ground force, so that is who needs to be addressed here) is able to work effectively with women in a high stress, but basically recreational environment.

What about in actual life or death, land mines, RPG’s, my buddy is bleeding to death and I need to leave him behind to save others, all holy hell has broken loose in my perimeter, environments. Or more appropriately for human evolution, we are being attacked by a rival band of hunter gatherers, or we are starving to death and need to some volunteers for mammoth hunting, or that tree is going to fall on that female over there.
We can look at just one little piece of the equation. Some people have said that men get protective of women. I know I do, and I am a complete candy-ass. Is this logical in today’s society? Maybe not, but humans have been evolving in an environment where it WAS logical for the overwhelming bulk of our history. Who is more valuable to a small group of humans, a man or a woman? Woman, every time. You can kill off the bulk of your male population and see just a blip in your birth rate. Kill off the bulk of your female population, you got problems. That is some pretty basic stuff, more basic than racism or homophobia. Does that mean women would make a predominately male unit LESS effective? I don’t know for sure, and it would make sense to fund a study to determine one way or the other, but I bet it would.

And that is just one little piece, that doesn’t even go into the myriad of other complications. For example, what happens if combatants fall in love (that gets into whether homosexuals should be cool for ground troops too, but that is another topic) I can tell you right now if I was fighting along side my wife my mission would no longer be “take out that bridge”, or “kill those bad guys”, my mission would be “protect my wife”.

You need to have the benefits outweigh the cost, and the benefits can not be philosophical, they have to be tangible. Just because it is fairer for women to be in ground troops, doesn’t mean it is smart. After all is said and done, there has to be research to prove one way or the other, or we are just talking shit, like I just did for the past thousand words…

[Broomstick]

*Originally posted by margin *
I’m in the military, and the guys who want to protect you are the most irritating things around. That kind of chivalry always seems to be back-handed, too----they want to protect you from other guys, but some times they expect that they’ve earned something in response to ‘protection’ you didn’t ask for. They can get offended if you try and protect yourself from them. And if they’re so hot to protect women, why don’t they recognize that we might want to protect ourselves? It seems like being ‘protected’ means being protected from the big bad world, and that includes all the risks that come with rights, too.

That’s why in an earlier post I said it was sort of a tribal thing. Sort of like how a male deer protects the does in his harem, but then expects complete access to the does. For that matter, wild horses are the same way - the stallion protects the mares, but also insists on something in return.

Even if human men do have instincts in this regard - male(s) protect female(s), then feel the women are “their” women - that doesn’t mean that instinct should rule all interactions between the sexes. We are not, after all, the sort of beasts that are helpless to resist our biological impulse. And certainly any “save the women” instinct in men can certainly be overridden under the right circumstances and become literally every man for himself. But in a high-stress situation - and combat is certainly high stress - the rational and civilized overlay on the animal impulses break down. Thus, people kill, destroy, focus on obtaining enough food and not getting harmed and, oh yes, sometimes rape and/or hump like bunnies. The fact that men are much more likely to rape during warfare does not mean that rape is OK or excuseable… it’s just that certain inhibitions come tumbling down in that sort of brutal survival situation. Likewise, if men tend to act like male animals in rut gathering a harem during similar circumstances that doesn’t mean it’s the proper way to order society (although some society ARE ordered somewhat like that).

It’s somewhat like the whole issue of nudity in mixed groups. Yes, it can be tittilating. Even in the caving episode mentioned earlier where everyone was too tired and muddy to be much interested in each other’s “naughty bits” I’m sure those bits still got looked at and maybe appreciated in memory. However, just because everyone gets naked - even if we’re talking young healthy men and women - doesn’t mean an orgy is going to commence. People can’t have sex all the time, even horny young men.

Likewise, even with a tendency for men to be protective of women does not mean that will kick in every time combat occurs. That’s why I think women troops may work better in defensive situations rather than offensive. If you’re defending your territory and the situation gets desparate enough the importance of having another fighter on your side may override the need to protect women

Of course, this is all theory and supposition. People are not hardwired with instincts in the same way birds and insects and other mammal species are. I wouldn’t even call them “instincts”, more like urges.

[msmith537]

*Originally posted by SteveSteve *
What about in actual life or death, land mines, RPG’s, my buddy is bleeding to death and I need to leave him behind to save others…

We have women cops and firefighters who face life and death situations. How do fire and police departments handle it?

*Originally posted by SteveSteve *
I can tell you right now if I was fighting along side my wife my mission would no longer be “take out that bridge”, or “kill those bad guys”, my mission would be “protect my wife”.
**

I would imagine that you would not be assigned to the same company as your wife for that very same reason.

[Dagon]

Hmm, a bit late to the party.

A British army report into woman in combat roles and and why they have choosen not to do it. Here.

[kputt]

*Originally posted by Marley23 *
**Women traditionally seem to get raped more than men do in war - though I think that’s more of a civilian thing - but the reality of it is there’s nothing you can really do to a woman you can’t do to a man. **

I was thinking along the same lines. Men can get raped, beaten, abused, assulted, and stuff. Probably the only thing they couldn’t do to a man that they could do to a woman is get him pregnant.

[kputt]

*Originally posted by Violet *
**See http://www.pbs.org/ttc/archives/erbe_articles/erbegirlpower.html **

What about france’s Joan of Arc?

[kputt]

*Originally posted by xtisme *
**The major problem I see for women in front line combat positions is that in many cases the men in those same units seem to take a higher percentage of casualties than all male units (I’m basing this on things I read years ago about the Israeli army and the Soviet army during WWII, both of which were mixed…I don’t have any cite for it, and it could be, admittedly, pure BS). There were a lot of reasons for those higher percentages of casualties among the men of those mixed units, but the long and the short of it (from what I remember) was that the men were trying to ‘protect’ those women when in combat situations…or show off in some cases.
-XT **

Ummm… So, that wouldn’t be because of women in the group, but because the men were letting their egos and “maleness” get in the way of common sense. JMHO.

[kputt]

*Originally posted by Tezmac *
**All of us American men had to sign our Selective Service Cards on or before our 18th birthdays whether we liked it or not. If women want to be equal and be take the same front line combat roles that men do, then make it law they have to be eligible for the draft as well. Until then, I say screw em; they can’t have their cake and eat it too. **

Uh, excuse Me! :mad: I’m sorry, but boys and men don’t even need to worry about this because they haven’t reinstated the draft. They might. However in case they do, they need someone to stay home and do the jobs that men sent of to war were holding, plus women would probably support the warfighters somehow here at home as they did during WWII, Vietnam, and other wars.

[kputt]

*Originally posted by Tezmac *
**All of us American men had to sign our Selective Service Cards on or before our 18th birthdays whether we liked it or not. If women want to be equal and be take the same front line combat roles that men do, then make it law they have to be eligible for the draft as well. Until then, I say screw em; they can’t have their cake and eat it too. **

Uh, excuse Me! :mad: I’m sorry, but boys and men don’t even need to worry about this because they haven’t reinstated the draft. They might. However in case they do, they need someone to stay home and do the jobs that men sent of to war were holding, plus women would probably support the warfighters somehow here at home as they did during WWII, Vietnam, and other wars. :smack:

[kputt]

Sorry for the double post.

[SteveSteve]

*Originally posted by msmith537 *
We have women cops and firefighters who face life and death situations. How do fire and police departments handle it?

You make a very good point, firefighting and police work would be good litmus tests. I can’t speak to how that is handled by Firedepartments and police forces, but my impression from some of the previous posts by women who have worked with mostly men, is that the men are “protective” whether the women like it/need it or not. Make no mistake, if it can be shown that this is not a problem, then it should not be held up as a road block to women in combat units.

As I said, you bring up a good point, I would be curious to know if firefighting teams with women on them have any issues that all male teams do not have. I did some Googling and didn’t see anything, anyone know if this has been studied?

*Originally posted by msmith537 *
I would imagine that you would not be assigned to the same company as your wife for that very same reason. ?

I was just trying to point out that if I was in love with someone on my squad, like I am with my wife, that could lead to problems. Obvioulsy they would not put a husband and wife on the same squad, but what if I fell in love with my female sqad leader? Would they have to transfer me out of the squad?