Should women be allowed in more military roles such as infantry?

[SacredWarrior]

In recent years, women in the military have been allowed into more jobs such as infantry. What are your thoughts on this?

I think women should be allowed into all jobs assuming they're well qualified and can actually do it. I don't approve of the standards being lowered to accommodate the women which isn't fair. Hopefully that's not happening.

 

[Drakel]

That actually is a very reasonable term in my opinion as well. I'm fully supportive for woman in ANY job in the military, whatever it may be. With that said I also believe that they should be able to do the role they chose and the jobs assigned to that role to it's fullest. If they are more than qualified for the role, than they should get it. If they are not qualified, than they shouldn't get said role and instead should go for something they ARE qualified for, just like anyone else, penis or not. I don't believe that the roles for infantry should have lowered requirements whatsoever for ANYONE since having the physical qualities to commit to said job can mean the difference between the life or death of that individual and the many lives of his/her squad.

The only time I would say lowering the physical requirements for the role of infantry would be fair would be if they are not as needed overall due to how advanced we've become. Mainly because of our military's technological advancements growing more and more by the day.

 

[Dervish]

If you can meet the standards a man has to, I'm all for it. Combat isn't something you do in half measures, so lowering standards would be disasterous.

 

[Sir Salty]

Here I go sounded like the sexist asshole. I called myself it so no worries everyone.

I say No, with a heavy emphasis on Yesish.

There is some legitimacy to not allowing woman in combat infantry. Biologically they cannot do what men can do or capable of. They Are not as strong as men. However! If a woman can prove her physicality than yes. See how that works.

 

[Cpt Toellner]

Hooo boy, not sure if you want me to get started on this. First hand experience, in a combat unit, our acting platoon Sergent for 5 years got denied an actual promotion and was replaced by a female with no experience outside of a admin unit. This is an issue were dealing with right now, and while I support women fighting, I think the implementation is wrong right now.


Will post more later.

 

[Brovo]

Short Version?

Should women be allowed in combat? Yes. If they can pass the physical requirements, they should be allowed to serve.

Do I want women in combat? No. Because war in general horrifies me and I don't want it glorified in any way, shape, or form.

Long Version?

There is no reasonably legal way one can justify blocking women if they meet the physical requirements to serve in the military. (Which, aside from some pretty extremely stringent cases in special ops groups, they can.) They're individual people first, and should always be allowed to make their own choices with their lives. Even if that choice is to sacrifice their lives on the front line so I can sleep well at night, safe and sound. It doesn't matter how I feel about it. This isn't the medieval era, people don't bash each other over the head with clubs. A 30-60 pound difference doesn't decide a fight between two people using guns. If you think it does, I'm sorry, but you're a moron. Go look up how guns work. "But the equipment!" Look up above this paragraph. "If they can pass the physical requirements" includes their equipment. Historically speaking: The further technology advances, the less differences in biological makeup matter. When man first started fighting each other as cave men, the bigger guy always won. This effect started to get mitigated (though not removed) progressively through inventions like martial arts, swords, spears, shields, armour, et cetera. Really, think about it. A woman doesn't need to have 400 pounds of lifting strength to drive a tank. Just the training and the willpower, and being strong enough to lug about the equipment necessary to do her job.

So, why am I uncomfortable with the idea of women in combat?

Because I don't like war in general. I'm uncomfortable with anyone being marched off to kill or be killed. Even patriots don't generally obsess over killing, they sign up to die for their country. They know the price they pay and it's themselves. There were points in World War 1 & World War 2 where, no exaggeration, thousands were dying daily. Imagine taking an entire town off the map every day. Just erase it off the map. That used to happen. (Especially with British town battalions in The Great War, but that's off topic.)

I don't want to see a surge of women signing up to the military because they feel some sort of fucked up equality-driven obligation to do so. I don't want to see a surge of any group of people signing up to the military because they feel some begrudging obligation to balance the stats books. You know what those stats books are for? To track how many military resources are lost. Such as your life. Such as the lives of others around you.

If you (man or woman) decide you want to sign up for the military knowing that you are essentially signing away your life to be used as a military resource for your country? Knowing that you will be marched into battles and dangerous situations--in which, any can end your life--and you are willing to pay this cost so I can live free of the fear of being conquered by another group of people? Well, firstly, I respect you. Profoundly. I don't care about your sex, I care about the price you're paying so people like me can continue to bemoan war. Secondly, I will fight tooth and nail as a citizen to ensure my government does not pay for territorial acquisitions or oil resources in your blood. Thirdly, thanks.

No, really, I can't thank you enough if you've served or plan on serving. You're doing a great service.

Just... Man or woman? I'm not comfortable with the idea of casually throwing you into warfare. I'm not comfortable with glorifying joining the military in any way, shape, or form, no matter how well intentioned. It is a grave and severe service by which no illusions of grandeur should be draped upon it.

So...

Legalize female service in the military, but don't encourage it. Let individual people decide for themselves if they wish to join, don't try to guilt complex people into "balancing the representation books" here. In other cases, it's funny. In this case, it's fucking deadly, and the only people who should sign up are the ones who think of war before they think of their sex.

Oh, and the draft in the United States, should pull from both sexes. If men and women are to be equal in rights, they should be equal in responsibilities too. Just saying.

EDIT

@Cpt Toellner See? This is exactly what I'm afraid of. People shoving inexperienced women into important combat roles where they are not fucking ready and potentially getting themselves and their squad killed as a result, just to balance some "gender representation" textbook. This. This right here. This is what I'm afraid of. Not women serving voluntarily, but women serving because some bureaucratic fucktard wants to appeal to a voting demographic.

 

[SacredWarrior]

Oh, and the draft in the United States, should pull from both sexes. If men and women are to be equal in rights, they should be equal in responsibilities too. Just saying.

Take notes from Israel basically? :P

 

[Brovo]

Take notes from Israel basically? :P

How to run a military? Yes. Why to go to war? Not really, no.

 

[Qwertronix]

I think Brovo pretty much hit all the important philosophical nails on the head. The original rational arguments for excluding women from warfare are firs and foremost reproduction, and secondly effectiveness. In our current social setups, with our population levels and with the tiny ratio of warriors vs other castes, reproduction is no longer a mitigating factor here.

As for effectiveness... Yeah, I'm going to just say "lol" on that one. Training, experience and equipment count for a lot more here and now.

 

[Shiri]

Can I have clarification on special treatment? I'm just not sure what that entails in a infantry perspective. Like are we saying they should/shouldn't have their own unit?

 

[Qwertronix]

Can I have clarification on special treatment? I'm just not sure what that entails in a infantry perspective. Like are we saying they should/shouldn't have their own unit?

I'd say the main kicker would be any policy, methodology or general way of doing things that is intended to make it easier for women to enter, be acclaimed, and gain rank and status as a member of a military.

Or for either sex, really - which becomes a very thorny issue if anyone starts throwing arguments around about the current "standards" being "purposefully" oriented towards being "easier" for males because males have a default physical build that achieves those specific standards more easily / frequently than women in a comparable percentile, gender-wise.

 

[Brovo]

I'd say the main kicker would be any policy, methodology or general way of doing things that is intended to make it easier for women to enter, be acclaimed, and gain rank and status as a member of a military.

Or for either sex, really - which becomes a very thorny issue if anyone starts throwing arguments around about the current "standards" being "purposefully" oriented towards being "easier" for males because males have a default physical build that achieves those specific standards more easily / frequently than women in a comparable percentile, gender-wise.

Also keep in mind that said specific standards are simply due to military competitiveness. The farther your soldiers can march (on average) the greater your maneuverability is on a battlefield, as one example. So you always want to ensure your soldiers, on average, are at least on par to (if not outright better than) your biggest threat. (Which, existentially and ideologically for the West, is Russia. Maybe China, but mostly Russia.) At the very least, we'd want to on par or above the middle east. So even if, say, 20 miles sounds reasonable, if your enemy can march 30 on average no problem, you need to get your troops up to 30 to match them or they have a major edge on you.

Which comes to the issue most advocates against women in the military have. (Aside from the chauvinists, but lets ignore them, their arguments are dated, we all know that.) And that is when you scale men and women up higher and higher physically, men always come out on top. In sheer strength or in raw endurance, men top out women. It's why we split sports like boxing or MMA fighting. Because even if you take a woman and a man of equal weight, the man has more muscle per pound than the woman does by sheer biological dice rolling. (I mean, men are the disposable end of the baby making scheme, so it really doesn't surprise anybody. Plus, female sex organs are more complicated, and take up more room, and the primary female sex hormone is generated by fat, which women need a higher concentration of to be healthy.)

Basically, the one argument I'll grant is that women would not function well in cutting edge special forces. Because it's so physically exhaustive, that like, 99% of men can't either, and it's only that absolutely insanely extreme 1% that can.

Just playing devil's advocate here though. It's always good to walk a mile in someone else's shoes sometimes.

 

[Qwertronix]

Just playing devil's advocate here though. It's always good to walk a mile in someone else's shoes sometimes.

Especially when they have to take those shoes back and wear them afterwards! ... Haha!

Yeah, rest of that post is pretty much what I meant to say about the "thorny" issue. Equal-opportunity advocates, meet my friend called statistics. =\

(similar issues cause a lot of clashing and tension and headaches for any other visible genetic markers that are correlated with particular performance standards, so it's definitely not an issue isolated to "women in the military", to clear that one up)

 

[Brovo]

Especially when they have to take those shoes back and wear them afterwards! ... Haha!

Yeah, rest of that post is pretty much what I meant to say about the "thorny" issue. Equal-opportunity advocates, meet my friend called statistics. =\

(similar issues cause a lot of clashing and tension and headaches for any other visible genetic markers that are correlated with particular performance standards, so it's definitely not an issue isolated to "women in the military", to clear that one up)

And thus...

"Bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy."

 

[Shiri]

I'd say the main kicker would be any policy, methodology or general way of doing things that is intended to make it easier for women to enter, be acclaimed, and gain rank and status as a member of a military.

Or for either sex, really - which becomes a very thorny issue if anyone starts throwing arguments around about the current "standards" being "purposefully" oriented towards being "easier" for males because males have a default physical build that achieves those specific standards more easily / frequently than women in a comparable percentile, gender-wise.

Ah, I see.

Ideally, I would like to see both sexes treated equally in a military setting. Unfortunately, no system is perfect, so its likely to be abused at some point regardless of which sex is doing it. This is a good step toward the equality goal, but it will be sloppy at first. That's a given.

I wish the future of the military luck in sorting everything out. x'D

 

[Sir Salty]

I also agree though with @Brovo

I do not support the war. I do not support any military industry to begin with. If I could make the world like an anime and we solve all our problems with a card game, that would be better.

I cannot support an industry that manufactures psychopathic behavior.

 

[SacredWarrior]

If I could make the world like an anime and we solve all our problems with a card game, that would be better.

 

[Sir Salty]

Exactly this

 

[Brovo]

I do not support the war. I do not support any military industry to begin with.

I'm not sure I'd go this far. War seems an inevitable part of mankind. I loathe war, but I understand its purpose. Thing is, the greatest blessing and curse of mankind is our intelligence brings about a great variety of people. Some are good, they want to build things. Others are bad, they wish only to destroy that which is different to themselves.

War is an incorrigible part of our nature. We have good men willing to do bad things to bad people who want to hurt us, so that we can sleep well at night instead of being blown up. It's ugly, but it's there, so we need to design better weapons, and stay one step ahead of the people who want to blow us up.

I'm just of the opinion that when war is necessary, it should only be after every other option has been exhausted, and the needs outweigh the loss of human life. At that point? Throw everything you have at it and end it as quickly as possible. Then, learn from what we did for Germany and Japan post WW 2. Help rebuild. Give the people our enemies ruled over a reason not to want our destruction.

 

[Hatsune Candy]

This is such a stupid question. You're basically asking me whether or not a human being, (assuming they meet all other requirements) should be allowed to do things that other human beings are already allowed to do simply because of certain biological differences, of which are almost completely irrelevant to their abilities as a person. Like, what the fuck do you think my answer is gonna be?